The guitar riff prevented Lucy from closing the door the third time and from turning the latch to the window once and the cuckoo clock twice. The beat disturbed the routine that calmed her heart, when she normally plucked the milk bottles from the outdoor step with her slippered feet planted on the W and L of the hall mat, her eyes never leaving the crack in the weathered concrete, where the ants always crawled.

Lucy hesitated as she went to close the door a third time, surprising herself by breaking the ritual with calmness, bypassing the latch turning and going straight to spraying the milk bottles with furniture polish, as she cleaned away the reflections of the flaming cars from the field at the end of the lane, and the black smoke of burning tyres that punctuated the street corners.
The guitar filled her hallway again as ajar door let the pollution and the monsters invade her bleached walls and disinfected handles, but she couldn’t close it. The bass riff moved on to a synth and she found herself moving closer to the entering draught, and the flicker of the burning night that she only ever entered every third day and never on Sunday, the days when the milk man wasn’t afraid to deliver and the weekly groceries arrived intact. Lucy listened to the outside as she looked at the photograph on her wall, Lucy with her javelin and her medal, Lucy when the world was hers to explore, the old Lucy who’s universe was bigger than a two bed tenement with damp and rats.
The music began to sing and Lucy opened her barricade further. Her heart crash landed her ears. Then the drum started and she looked out, forcing her eyes up from the crack of crawling ants as the drum moved her.

The song was coming from a cranked up radio, inside the white car outside her gate , the one with different color doors and cinder blocks for wheels, and graffiti painted along its side that said Knuckle Shuffle Shop. There was another just like it on the other side of the street, a red one that was once a Nissan, and graffiti that used to say Finger Fuck Wagon, but the Wagon had gone missing with the drivers door, when they’d dammed up the street so they could riot against the employed. Lucy had stopped watching them from her window after the door went missing, her imagination had been kinder. Lucy liked the riots, it would mean she could sleep; they were too busy to wank each other outside her door and they avoided the bottleneck of the fuck alley that ran along her gable. Nobody wanted to get cornered by the filth, in the filth, where a pig-cop baton was acceptable, but a mouthful of syringes and sticky condoms wasn’t.
The drums and riff were now joined by a voice. It was angry, like Lucy was. It was talking about housewives, like Lucy used to be. She moved her feet from the W and L of her hall mat and stood either side of the crack in the outdoor step.
The drum beat and the riff moved up gear and Lucy vomited into the overgrown hedge that hung over her path. She wiped her face and her spit dribbled on to the shined up milk bottle. She spat furniture polish and gagged again, but her stomach was empty. She blinked five time with her right eye and three times with her left.
The music became louder, the night stars became clearer and the hue of the flaming bonfires shadowed the street. Lucy took a step and dry wretched again, she began to pull at her hair, the milk bottles rubbing against her cheek. She took another step. The music was nearer, the drum beat in time with her heart. She took another step. She tapped her false teeth together and then chewed some hair. She put her foot forward again. She was now at her gate and her skin was wet.

The song was building with attitude and she could now hear the words. The stereo was resting on the dented roof of the Knuckle Shuffle car and the two occupants were oblivious to her presence. The girl was in the passenger seat, kneeling as she chewed gum furiously and held on to the car seat with one hand and jerked the boys cock with the other. She was getting faster with the music and had her eyes closed. The boy was slouched down, his denims around his knees, crumpled against his Dr Martin boots and his left hand buried between the legs of his gum chewer, moving faster, as if he was playing the guitar riff that was again blasting into the sky. He had his eyes closed too.
Lucy held the milk bottles to her cheeks and spat the hair from her mouth. The song was reaching to the sky and the gum chewer was moaning. The bangles on her cock arm began clacking loudly with the effort and she opened her eyes as she reached for the can of beer on the dashboard to give herself a break, she saw Lucy standing at her gate with the milk bottles against her face. She opened her mouth to say something but the boy smacked her jaw and then pulled her face down before she could get any words out. Her mouth was now full.

Lucy clenched the bottles tightly but found her feet beginning to tap with the beat of the music and rhythm of the gum chewers head. The chorus erupted and the milk bottles felt cold against her sweating hands. Lucy held them up in front of her and looked at her reflection, the wild white that her hair had now become, the sagging cheekbones and frown lines of loneliness and lightbulb. She looked back at the bobbing head of gum chewer and the tight forearm of her boy as he shoved the gum chewers head up and down with a violent ferocity.

Lucy shifted her grip on the milk bottle and watched the boy, waiting for him to get the ejaculation face that her uncle used to have. The boys mouth tightened, his head tilted back. Lucy now knew the chorus of the song that blasted from the stereo that was vibrating on the dented roof of the car. She sang along beneath her breath, her confidence building with her anger as the girls head was pushed and pulled up and down. Lucy worried if the chewing gum stuck in the girls throat when suddenly the boy began to moan and shift in his seat.
Lucy drew back one of the milk bottles. She balanced it in the air, leveling her forearm to be parallel to the ground. She loosened her knees and stabled herself like the javelin coach used to teach. She pulled her hair to her mouth and clamped it between her gums. She shifted her hip as the boy began to tremor, and she rotated her shoulder in a snap movement that belied her age. Lucy launched the milk bottle into the air as the stereo blasted the last line of the song. Glass shattered as the DJ ‘s voice filled the night. The boy began screaming as his face mixed with milk and blood and the girl cried out as he pulled her hair and neck backwards.

Lucy forced herself to wait until she heard the DJ name the song. She ran back up the path and closed the front door three times, the screams of the boy and girl making her laugh out loud. She turned the latch once towards the window and twice to the cuckoo clock. She smiled as she took the photograph from the wall, the old Lucy with her javelin. She pulled out some of her hair as she took bleach from the closet beneath the stairs and began to wash the walls.
It was indeed a Town called Malice.
But maybe she could fight back..