When Dairy Means Revenge pt 2: Chocolate Milk
He found himself in the Co-op buying chocolate milk. Some called the location down rent, but he like to call it proletariat. He had just got off at Essex Road station and needed to pick up some bread anyhow. He probably hadn’t had chocolate milk in over a decade.
Today was going to be different though. This was to be a two pronged approach. First was it was milk, therefore had the highest lactose content and was something he’d been working his way up to. Second, he reckoned it being chocolate and very sweet it would make him able to chug it fast without retching which would otherwise ruin the whole thing.
He walked south west down Essex Road towards The Target. He liked to call it The Target, fancying himself an operative on a dangerous mission. He was having those thoughts again. John quickly realised he wasn’t on a dangerous mission for MI6 but was an old man about to go squat and then shit all over a very important but diabolical politician’s doorstep.
There he was, nearing the end of the road where he would turn right onto Colebrooke Row and then the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, would pop into his head, doing things, unspeakable things he would never expect. Helping a cat out of a tree. Or helping an old woman on to the bus. Or handing a homeless man a blanket and a hug. More hugs at the refugee centre. Genuine and heartfelt smiles and humility. Unspeakable things like this kept on popping into his brain. He could not control it. He thought of his bowels, imagining the vagarious twists and turns of his intestines, wishing to vile life the torrent the Target deserved.
These intrusive thoughts would happen at the most inopportune times, laying down for a rest late on a lazy afternoon, or sitting with a cup of tea as the morning sun beamed in on him warming his day. At the most inopportune times. His mopped head and shit-eating Cheshire Cat scheming grin would be everywhere he looked, but the grin would be one of benevolence and humanity. His evil had unmistakably invaded his mind. He’d been too long about the whole thing, thinking about him, leaving ample space in his ageing brain to invade and make itself home.
But there John stood, just a couple doors down, the milk was almost done. He hoped that drinking the chocolate milk It was a level of sweet he enjoyed for the first minute of the experience, but made him nauseous for the remaining five minutes. But it was a special occasion and he thought of it as liquid cake. A stomach lubricant to make the people’s will known.
John Higgins was about as average and unexceptional as a white man not only in a well to do neighbourhood of London, but actually from there. He was as white as can be, not just in sun hating pallor, but physiologically whiter than the milk his body hated him for. He stood at average height, nondescript even in micro altitude, just fitting in enough with heights of head whilst waiting for a bus, tube or train. His gait, average, stooped slight but not enough to notice and his voice even and flat. In all things considered John Higgins was there only in that provided the background to life in Angel, he was the washes of muted colours blended with others in the background of a city that was run by another extremely white personal that lived in his neighbourhood and now ran the country.
This was his 10th doorstep shitting on the Prime Ministers residence and he couldn’t have been happier about it. Just then a woman walked by carrying some vegetables in a mesh net wearing a shiny, expensive, black track suit and talking on the phone. She saw but made pained efforts to not see.
“Oh don’t mind me miss, just having a bit of an episode here. You know old men and their testy bowels and whatnot,” he said holding his breath through gritted teeth.
A policeman walks by, without shopping of any sort and looks quizzically at John not sure what to do, he politely asks him to finish up and be on his way as he was white.