On Mugging

Chris Killen

There's these lads that sit on the benches at the end of my road. They sit there most nights. They're seventeen or eighteen, I think. It's hard to tell as they have their hoods up.

This time of year, it's always dark by the time I get off the bus from work. When I walk past, I can feel them watching. I'm waiting for them to mug me. I'm not a big guy, and there's usually six of seven of them. All they'd need to do is follow me down Barlow Road and cut me off. It would be easy to surround me. I don't look like the kind of person who'd put up much of a fight. I'm thin. I stoop a bit. My floppy hair bounces when I walk. It should be like a beacon to these lads. Look, it should say. Here is a posh ponce, ready for a mugging.

I wear a suit.

I carry a leather satchel over my shoulder.

The leather satchel looks like it probably has lots of expensive things inside.

But so far the lads haven't done anything. They've not shouted twat at me, or thrown an empty WKD bottle. They've just watched me walk past them, probably, from under their hoods.

I want to be mugged.

All my friends have been mugged.

Everyone I speak to in this city has been mugged.

Mugging! I think, walking home from work.

So last week I upgraded my phone. I bought an iPod. I waved them around as I passed, listening to rubbish pop music very loud and making a call at the same time in a posh squeaky voice.

I've begun to mince when I walk in case the lads are homophobes.

I've bought a gold bracelet and last night I dropped it on the pavement right in front of the lads as if it'd accidentally slipped off my wrist and when I bent down to pick it up my iPod came falling out of my pocket too and I thought this is it this is it.

But nothing happened.

(I was never hard in school. I was what you'd call a 'soft lad'. I managed to not get in a fight, my whole time there. At our school there was a fight almost every break time.)
 
I keep thinking about it. At the bus stop, I kill time picking out the people who look like they'd be easiest. The perfect type, I've decided, is someone exactly like me: he is a white, suit-wearing, middle-class twant in his early twenties.

On my day off, I'm hanging around by the bus stop on Stockport Road. It has just gone five o'clock. It's getting dark already. Soon the commuters will be getting off the bus.

Twenty minutes later, I'm following one down Albert Road. He could be me – the cheap suit, the satchel over his shoulder. He clips down the street in his shiny leather shoes in a scared almost-run.

He knows I'm following. He's looking over his shoulder. He's considering crossing the road.

I'm almost behind him.

Hey, mate? I call out, in the voice of a man I heard on the bus yesterday. You got the time?

He turns back and slows down and before he can say anything else I've pushed him up against the hedge and stuck my keys in his belly. The soft cunt: he doesn't know they're my keys. He thinks they're a knife. His eyes are widening. He can't see my face properly. (I have my hood up.)

Give us yer fucking wallet and phone, I say like a mugger off the telly. Give us yer fucking wallet and phone, or I'll slit you open.

And he does it – he actually hands them over – a cheap Nokia phone and a Paul Frank wallet. It has a tenner and some cash cards inside.

Now fuck off, I say, and he does.

Surely it shouldn't have been this easy? I think on the way home. Why didn't he put up a fight? He could've beaten me up, no question. There wasn't even a knife. It was just my house keys.

I am angry with him and with myself and with the street and with everything.

At the corner of Barlow Road – when I see that the lads aren't sitting on the bench – I sit where they sit for a while, watching the cars and the busses going past. It's dark now. I shouldn't be too late tonight. I have an early start in the morning.

So as I get up to leave, I put his phone and wallet on the bench, and hope that this might be enough.



© Chris Killen 2007

Chris Killen was born in 1981 and is currently living in Manchester. His short stories have appeared online at 3:AM Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Pulp.net and Laura Hird.com, and in print, issue four of Parameter Magazine. He recently completed his first novel. For more information please visit: The Bird Room.