Cannibal

Part One -How far would you go to save the person you love?

 Not that he ever noticed before, all that much, but the graffiti in this town has been getting really bad lately. Though, logically, he knows he shouldn’t really be that upset about it, the ugly yellow scrawl is really starting to get on his tits.

He supposes, fleetingly, that he probably just never had enough time before to notice. He was probably too busy- once upon a time- to pay the slightest bit of attention to the sprayed grey bricks confining the old park; with school, with his band, with his friends.  But he has far too much time on his hands these days.

Frank thinks, that it’s probably one of my many factors harbouring the hate he has for the graffiti, but only if he’s thinking logically. Frank hasn’t been very logical lately.

Mostly, Frank is just bored- of Jersey, of the park, of the graffiti, of never having anyone to talk to.

When he dropped out of collage he pretty much lost all the friends he had made there –they were all, suddenly, too sparky and intellectual for him, and they kept giving him these looks like he was a lost puppy or something- and somehow the high school stoners weren’t really doing it for Frank anymore, Frank’s not very good at keeping friends anyway. So mostly Frank sits alone at the local park- he got kind of bored of it by the first day but there isn’t really anywhere else he can go.

Well apart from home, but things have been getting worse there, lately, he can barely stand to look at his Ma anymore, let alone his Dad and well he guesses, he prefers being outside anyway, Frank’s always been sort of claustrophobic, he grew up with the fear of being tied down.

Maybe that’s why he left school, maybe that’s why he can’t keep a girlfriend, maybe Frank shouldn’t blame it all on his parents.

He’s pretty lonely though, and after three weeks of sitting in the park smoking and staring loathingly at the graffiti Frank is pretty much ready for any form of social interaction. He thinks of maybe complaining to one of the elderly women that invade his small personal pocket of air daily, he’s pretty sure they’re allowed to get angry at the graffiti. But most days he chickens out before he can say anything and endures the staring match alone.

Some days women with buggies or small children come and sit next to him, these are exciting days in Frank’s book. He likes listening to the mothers hushing their children or talking feverishly on the phone to their friends or bosses. It’s amazing really, how someone he has never met can mean so much to the person sitting next to him.

Frank never talks to these women either, though, mostly he just listens and scuffs his shoes drawing the line somewhere between wanting to be noticed and not wanting to make a nuisance of himself.

Frank is only eighteen so his life really shouldn’t be over yet, but he’s having a hard time imagining spending his days doing anything different to working up the courage to talk to OAPs and running errands for his Dad.

He used to have dreams, one’s about rock bands and fast cars when he was a kid, then about culinary school and opening up a restaurant when he grew up a little bit. But now, not so much his parents need him around a lot so Frank’s dreams have to wait.

Frank pretty much left everything behind when he left school and his scholarship two months ago. Frank still dreams of leaving the town, dreams of a more exiting life, but he does little to act upon his idle fantasies so that’s pretty much all they will ever be.

It doesn’t bug him, at leas not as much as it used to and, Frank realises with a sickening drop in his stomach, it doesn’t bother him nearly as much as the graffiti.