Part Two: The Fatman

The House That Shadows Built

Soon after meeting The Kid I moved in with him in the Last Free House in the World. It was during a cold winter, the kind which cracks cobblestones and the room we shared had broken windows that he’d hastily repaired with gaffer tape and cardboard and a corner bed made from an old door stacked some beer crates.
Our room was on the first floor, only one flight of stairs away from the backyard. Only one flight of stairs from the mound of decaying waste. Only one flight of stairs for the rats who scavenged their survival in the mound to ascend. Some former resident had even painted a large rat over the door and when I first met him The Kid sometimes went by the name The Rat King. He was still pre-pubescent then and addicted to glue and skunk. In those early days together we shoplifted exotic fruits, the names of which he poetically mispronounced, and spent our days sleeping and our nights exploring the city looking for back alleys that looked film sets and forgotten chunks urban something or other than reminded me of the slithers no-man’s land between carpark fences and petrol station forecourts...
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