He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond

make me feel worse afterwards than before?' I asked her. She lay back on our mattress and lit a cigarette. 'Look, Charlie,' she said, 'I mean this—why don't you try and find somebody else?' 'I don't want anybody but you,' I said. 'Christ,' she said, 'you just bring out the very worst in me. You make me really enjoy hating you.' I rolled over on our mattress away from her and wept. She took no notice, but went over to the cooker and made herself a cup of tea, whistling 'Vincent'.
    I spent all afternoon in a state of misery and rage. 'I know you're going to ask me for money at some point,' I said to her. 'You're not much use for anything else, are you?' she answered.
    That evening I was violent with her. It had been boiling up in me all day, but it began when she said: 'I'm bored. I'm getting up. I'm going out.'
    'Out? Out where?'
    'Just out.'
    'To the Agincourt?'
    'I don't know. Anyway, I shan't need you hanging around, you're enough to make a monkey weep. Just give me some money, a tenner'll do.'
    'I haven't got much money. I haven't had a chance to cash a cheque.'
    'I'll make some.'
    'I wish you wouldn't say things like that. I wish you wouldn't even talk about going with other men. I'll tell you what, I'll come with you.'
    'I said no.'
    All at once my hands were in her hair, I don't even remember doing it, but I picked up one of her shoes and hit her on the side of the head with it. I've never done such a thing to anyone in my life before. She didn't scream or anything; she just lay back again on the mattress looking away from me, with blood running down her face.
    'Well,' was all she said. 'Well, well.'
    I knew I had lost any ground with her that I'd ever made.
    'Now you won't go anywhere!' I shouted.
    'Wrong,' she said. She put the bloody corner of the sheet to her head, got up, went over to the sink, dragging the sheet after her, and started cleaning herself up. She was naked, and her sex looked huge as she bent over the sink with her back to me. Her breasts looked awful, too; they always do when she isn't wearing a bra.
    'I want you again,' I groaned in spite of myself. 'It isn't as if I were impotent.'
    'You're worse than impotent,' she said into the mirror above the sink, 'you're a bore, Charlie. I'm fed up with you; who needs all that intellectual crap you go in for?'
    'I'm sorry I hit you. I truly am.'
    'No harm done,' she said, 'except to you.' She started dressing. 'You spend your life apologizing. You shouldn't. Never apologize. Never explain.'
    'Where are you going?'
    'Some club. Maybe an African club. I feel like some Africans, they're uncomplicated.'
    'They're violent, those clubs.'
    'I know what they're like,' she said, 'I've been working them since I was fifteen. Anyway, violence and pleasure— you can't have one without the other. You should know.' She added: 'You can stay in all night if you like; I shan't bring anyone back to this shithole. I shan't be back till tomorrow sometime anyway—maybe not till the day after, or the day after that.'
    'Well, take your ten pounds,' I said.
    'Fuck the ten pounds,' she said. She went out, slamming the door. It was a door you had to slam to shut it properly, but to me it sounded like an indefinite departure. It always did when she slammed it. The noise her high heels made on the staircase sounded final, too.

14
    It was nine when I got to the Agincourt, and the place was full. The man with the face like a snake's was there, talking to a mild-looking bloke in glasses, but I couldn't see anyone who looked like the Laughing Cavalier. The governor wasn't there, either. When I asked the barman about him, he said he'd had to be hospitalized on account of his face, which had turned septic.
    I ordered a pint of lager—it came up warm again—and leaned my back on the bar. In a corner not far off sat a lovely quartet of National Fronters. Two of them were mods and the third a rocker (normally they were mortal enemies); he had polished nails studded into his leather jacket