The Fear

The Norns (Arthur Rackman)

...Help the aged
‘cause one day you’ll be older too
you might need someone to pull you thru’...

Singing along to the just audible radio, Frankie pushed back his chair and crossed his outstretched legs admiring his latest Adidas trainers as he did so. “So what do you say lads; are you with me or not?”

The five figures sat hunched over the table staring at the proposal Frankie had just dropped on them. They glanced sideways at one another not quite believing what they had just heard.

Jim was the first to look directly at Frankie. “Christ. He is. He’s bloody serious. Hah! Well yeah, count me in; I’m not missing this.”

Frankie raised a scarred eyebrow at the others, “What have we got to lose lads? How many times these past months have we muttered if only?” He leaned forward jabbing his finger on the sheet of paper “This is the if only that we’ve been dreaming of. It’s ours for the taking and it’s time we took with both hands.”

Five heads nodded in single agreement.

“But what about the girls?” Asked Vic

Frankie grinned then gestured for the waitress. “Where do you think I got that proposal? The girls are already in. They just needed me to sell it to you lot - they knew it would be quicker than them having to work on us individually.”

...In the meantime we try
try to forget that nothing lasts for ever...

“Ok my loves, what can I get you?” asked the waitress, playfully covering her ears at Frankie’s off-key singing.

***

Six months earlier, Frankie and his friends, had gathered to pay their last respects at Mike’s graveside. As his casket was lowered into the ground all eyes took in what had been placed on top of the casket. The police had found Mike’s favourite runners beneath the bed of one of the suspects arrested in relation to Mike’s bungled mugging. Mike had been hit from behind. His assailants soon discovered Mike had neither watch, wallet nor phone to steal so they’d stripped him of his runners before angrily hitting him again, and again with the lump of wood.

Mike’s distraught family had voiced their concerns with the lads, begging them not to train alone. They’d pleaded with the lads families too. Insisting a watchful eye be kept on them over the coming weeks; depression was something easily hidden within their age group.

All of Mike’s friends had had similar childhoods: disrupted schooling, absent fathers, mothers living on their nerve ends. But all knew and respected fear, it was what had kept them together; that and their love of running.

***

Senior scientist, Doctor Valerie Moor, was on the cusp of a major breakthrough. One so large, it would catapult PharmaKopeia International into pole position of a brand new Global Market. She and her dedicated team, were in the final stage of clinical trials which would see the culmination of twenty years extensive research finally come to fruition.

She dropped her ipod into its dock, turning the volume up high: Pulp were the lunchtime radio guests at Back to Back and they were belting out The Fear.

...the sound of loneliness turned up to ten...

On the wall, above her desk, hung a framed print of The Norns, a birth gift received from her maternal grandmother. A small gilt plaque with the inscribed line ‘The woman who deliberates is lost’ had been added to the frame twenty years ago. It was said The Norns would visit each new born child to weave its personal web of fate and destiny. Not all webs weaved by the three sisters would be favourable or long lived. But, save for a little loose tension here and there, baby Valerie’s web had been spun from golden thread.

... oh baby here comes the fear again
the end is near again
a monkey’s built a house on your back ...

Valerie Moor was about to lob a stone so hard that state and church would shatter back in to the shifting sands from which they had been built. A reformation. An old order was about to be re-born and lads like Frankie would be its catalyst.

(to be continued...fear willing)

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