"Just Some Old Guy" - complete sci-fi story from "Continuum"

A perilous place for Old and Young alike?

I collected my pension at the bank, paid my two regular bills for this month, and was heading – tottering, more like – to the pub to see my mates and have my afternoon drink in Wetherspoons.

Hardly got a hundred yards, just round the corner onto Wellington Street, and this youth’s coming at me fists first, knocking me flat back. I’m rolling over in a tangled, shocked-to-death heap all legs and arms flying and head on the pavement and he’s on top of me and hitting my face and snarling like he’s got rabies and mauling at me and hitting me and he’s got my money; and still kicking and snarling and ranting. And he’s going and running off and he’s laughing.

‘I got a view of him,’ I told the police, and described him very clearly, right down to the wart on the side of his chin and the scrubby little moustache on his ferrety face.

‘They weren’t interested. Not interested!’ I told my mates. They were full of sympathy and bought me an extra half. ‘But that policeman told me I had no visible injuries, so I should go to victim support. Huh. No help at all.

‘I told him I just gave him a very clear description. But he said I couldn’t see a thing. You know, got that touch of derision, how they do.

‘I could then, I said. A bit blurred now cuz I hit my head. That kid hit my head, too.

‘But the officer said again I wasn’t visibly harmed; so get myself to A&E if I was worried. “Otherwise, this is an incident, not a crime.” He put on his special ponderous-idiot voice for that bit, and shrugged when he read out the incident number to me. He even expected me to write it down myself.

‘I didn’t know what to do with that number. Asked him if I should I phone it, or re-program the combination on the door? He shrugged again and spoke with his gormy-looking over-scrubbed oppo with the Brylcreem hair. I heard him saying, “Nah. Just some old guy, witter-arsing away.”

He looked over my head, and nodded to somebody queuing behind me, dismissing me. Ignorant git.

So I concentrated on getting well. It wasn’t easy. I was really shocked by the whole occurrence. I mean, at my age, getting knocked over on the pavement is not helpful to my well-being. Especially so close to home, where I always felt safe before.

Well, anyway, after a time, I was getting on a bit better and had a sub from Victim Support, and carried on with my little job caretaking and cleaning round the flats – all the concourses, picking litter and sometimes hosing down, depending what filthy vomiting, peeing or defecating party somebody had had the night before on the landings.

Hello – that’s him.

Three floors below, in the quad where the garden benches are. I’d know that figure, and hoodie, anywhere. He was yelling into some old lady’s face and she was answering him back and he hit her and was ripping her bag away and went dashing off.

‘He’s coming up this way.’ Obvious escape route – up to this floor, where the main landings go from one block of flats to the neighbouring ones, and he can make his escape in any of four directions.

Up here, it’s concrete steps. Bare brick and concrete walls. Scaffold pipe hand-railings. Cigarette ends in a cluster; couple of packets’-worth. He’ll be bouncing up this way, two at a time, not looking, just gloating.

I wasn’t going anywhere. I waited. Perhaps twenty… thirty seconds. Here, he’s close… Now! He rounded the corner straight into my fist.

It took his face apart. Nose disintegrated – splattered apart. Blood everywhere, and he went flying back down the steps – feet flailing. Tumbling in a crumpled heap on the next landing.

I only permitted myself a small smile, for around three seconds, then went back to my own flat to get changed – there was so much blood splattered all down me.

The police came round that evening, canvassing for witnesses. They were concerned about the youth.

‘You weren’t bothered about him before,’ I said. ‘When he was a clear and present danger to the community.’

‘He’s a hospital case,’ my previously unconcerned officer lamented, when he’d finished giving me a funny look. ‘Like an iron fist went through his face.’

Totally destroyed his looks,’ Lady officer with sad eyes and dark roots said. ‘Cheek and jaw bones broken. Teeth… One eye.’

‘They don’t know if he’ll ever recover.’

‘We can but hope,’ I said. ‘He had a terrible appearance when he came at me the other week; I don’t imagine it can be any worse. Besides, as you told me previously, officer, there’s hardly anyone round here to witness anything, day or night. I expect it was him, frightened everybody off.’ I can look and sound everso innocent.

When they’d gone, I felt quite pleased, looking at my right fist. I allowed it to morph into its natural form, a shellac claw. Big, solid and strong enough to smash through concrete, so a human face was scarcely noticeable. I flexed it a little. Smiled. Keeping up this senile human image is pretty good for the disguise angle, but it’s so satisfying to resume my native form now and again. You know, stretch all my legs at once; unfurl my eye stalks to their fullest extent; rattle my tail plates…

Oh, yesss. I’ll enjoy a drink of putreen for relaxation. Then I’ll get back to my real caretaking job – taking care of my next incoming group of colonists from the orbiting transfer station, ready to take up their so-well-disguised role among the general Earth population.

We don’t want any further delay to our little occupation schedule, do we?

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Twenty tales of entertainment and despair from the starry heights and black hole depths of the quadriverse