The Locker Room — by Gareth Davey
The empty locker room shuddered as the door slammed into the wall, the metal handle chipping away at the light-blue paint. The team colours. Light blue, like denim.
Vig stomped in. Alone. He screamed as the door swung shut behind him — and then tensed his left leg, took one long step into the room and punted an innocent sports-bottle, emblazoned with his team’s crest, towards the empty benches.
With a plastic-snap, the bottle burst against a metal locker, showering the wooden bench below with whirling water. Long marks stained the wall behind the bench, like a creature had raked its claws down the plaster.
Vig stood in the centre of the large changing room and felt like a speck of dust in a desert. The space was so large, so perfect, aside from the water stain and the snapped bottle that lay like roadkill beneath the bench. Outside the room, from the pitch, he could still hear the referee’s piercing whistle. Could still hear the crowd, their booming unity muffled by the enclosed walls. It no longer felt real. None of it felt real.
He reached up to his shirt and ripped it from the collar, the fabric tear not easing Vig’s rasping breaths. He ripped it further, the split running all the way through the sponsor, tearing it almost in two, exposing Vig’s chest. With his hands trembling, he made the final rip, and threw the torn fabric on the floor.
The locker room was too clean. White vinyl floor cleaned twice daily by the staff, and so it glowed with bleachy clarity. Large images of old players, most of whom Vig has never seen play, were embossed on the wall in thin black strokes, watching him. All of them glaring out at Vig.
He remembered when he first came into this locker room — his first taste of it. It was beautiful, so full of life, full of his future. Him and Karsen — before Kars got injured — they were there together, playing with the reserves in one of their bigger games. One they used the stadium for. The two of them couldn’t hide their grins as they took it all in.
And he made it, on his own, to the first team. A dream.
And he fucked it all up.
Locker room. Vig was the only person he knows that called it a locker room. The others, the team, the staff, the other youth players, they all called it a changing room. Kars definitely did, used to call Vig a wannabe-American whenever he’d say locker room. But changing room reminded Vig of public swimming pools. Of getting dressed, sandwiched between old men, with his towel wrapped around his waist, desperately trying to avoid the loose plaster on the soggy floor.
Locker room.
A place for the team to build up to a game together, to get their energies synchronised — to understand each other. When the whole team was there, the room felt like an overflowing coffee, spilling out into the tunnel in loose droplets of sweat and noise.
As Vig simmered alone, the locker room felt enormous. All consuming. The black hole of the stadium.
There was too much space in the locker for one man with a cracked forehead, with bloody knees and a splatter of mud all down the side of his neck. It was too much space for a man — a boy — with red-stained eyes and knuckles pulled so tightly together that the bone almost spilt the skin.
Slowly, tensely, Vig stumbled over to the nearest seat on the benches. There was a ten printed on the locker. Vig could even smell the Kelvin’s aftershave lingering in the air. He sat on the bench, anyway. Fuck Kelvin.
Vig tore off his right shoe, ignoring the pain that flared through the arch of his foot. That familiar pain always told him to cherish the game. An old injury, one that he’s played through, one that haunted him every match. A ghost — the ghost of his footballing future. It could end. Just like that. One injury, one too-bad flare up of that arch could be enough.
One bad decision.
He’d just made it.
Vig’s entire body tensed again. The pressure only relieved when he launched the boot as hard as he could at the old player on the wall. It thudded, staining the outline with a small hole and a large mud stain. With a sad little bounce, the boot landed on the floor.
‘You fucking prick,’ Vig muttered. Only then did his head sink into his palms. He sat there, in the non-silence of the locker room, trying not to hear the noise outside, and didn’t move.
He just sat there. No tears. No. His eyes had dried up.
He squeezed his own head. His temples. Squeezed them until his vision blurred. He was a boy, pretending to be a man. That’s the truth. Nineteen, but that’s a boy. Really. A torn t-shirt, on the floor beside him. One boot on his foot, the other cast into the vast locker room. Bloody, bruised. And lost.
A Lost boy in a locker room.
*
‘Fuck,’ Vig whispered. The mud from his palms now stained his face, like a contagion spreading across his skin.
This was everything. This locker room, this club, these chanting fans. Everything.
When he’d left the pitch, Coach Rise had just stared at him with his cold eyes as Vig passed. Didn’t say a word to him. Just stared.
He hadn’t needed to speak. Vig knew that the photo would be in the papers tomorrow. Coach staring at him like he’d just committed a heinous crime. That photo, probably retweeted a few thousand times with some chirpy caption.
Vig had let his coach down.
‘Make yourselves proud out there, gents,’ Coach had said. He’d stood in the centre of the locker room, hives of footballers all watching him intently as he spoke. The scrape of the studs on the vinyl flooring was like a thrumming applause.
‘Do it for each other, do it for me. Heck, do it for them ladies you always trying to impress. Don’t matter who you do it for. Just damn do it! I mean — this is why we play this sport, gents, is it not? Days like today? We win, lads, and you’ll have far exceeded this club’s expectations. Our biggest game today. So yeah. Don’t fuck it up.’
Vig knew a few of the lads looked over at him then with dirty looks. He’d come off the bench in their last two games — had got an assist in the first one. But starting? He hadn’t started yet. This was his first start, and Coach decided to do it in their biggest game? It was a huge call. A risk.
He was pumped. Of course he was. A little — not nervous, because Vig didn’t feel stuff like nerves but there was something inside him — but it was like his stomach was alive, tensing and turning inside him. Sure, he was way too good for the youth game now. It had been a year at least since any reserve player could get anywhere near him. But this was the big team. The real fucking deal.
He’d seen the replies to the team sheet on Twitter. That Trevor Noah dude from American comedy, with the who caption. But that was the sort of thing that made Vig come alive. His blood was like a dam-burst river, blood raging through him. Even during the pre-match, he could feel it pumping in his ears.
The game started fast. Both teams going at it, and Vig was involved heavily, chasing everything down like a hungry fox, tearing across the pitch. Ryan Ellis was the right back he was up against, a seasoned pro with a skinhead and a tattoo that snaked up his neck. Vig tackled him two minutes in.
When he won the ball, the crowd’s response made him feel like drunk. Roaring, the screams and shouts, the chants of he’s one of our own (even if they were all pronouncing his surname wrong) — was like sherbet in the eyeball.
If anything, Vig got too excited. He overhit a cross, which was a decent chance, and cut in to take a shot when he probably should have played a pass. The shot landed way up into the writhing crowd, who still greeted it with an ooh, despite how it wasn’t even close to the crossbar.
‘Think you a big shot,’ Ellis had growled at him, when he was next over by the right back ‘Mate, I seen hundreds of you. Fucking flesh in the pan, mate. Probably be loaned to Scunthorpe next season, won’t see you again ’til you’re in the fucking conference.’
Ellis, to his credit, was a seasoned pro. The press wanted him in the England squad.
Vig didn’t respond, but the next time he got the ball, Vig nutmegged him, much to the crowd’s amusement, and whipped in a cross that Kelv connected with — narrowly heading it over.
‘You need to be brought down, son,’ Ellis hissed. ‘Fucking joke.’
‘Close your legs,’ Vig said, calmly, laughing as he walked away, not looking back. Then, five minutes later, Vig had the ball again, pinning Ellis to the sideline. He feigned cutting in, chopped back at the last moment and was grinning as the ball squirted by Ellis’ stretched leg. The right back was left on the floor, as Vig put in the cross — and Kelvin headed it into the net.
The crowd’s roar was just fucking unreal. Vig wished he could explain that feeling better — it was like nothing he’d ever known. That roar was at something he did — those shouting men and women, literally rapturously screaming, out-of-their-mind wildness were screaming because his cross was headed in.
When Vig was a kid, sixteen maybe, him and the youth team had done some tournaments in Canada. They’d won all the games easily, and then the day before they went home, their coach at took them to Niagara Falls. He’d sat on the boat with Karsen, pissing about, talking about whatever shit him and Kars would talk about (literally anything, that boy could talk and talk) — but when they’d got to the waterfall Vig just couldn’t hear anything. Kars still tried to talk about GTA or whatever, but Vig couldn’t hear him. That waterfall was a swelling roar of water.
This was louder. Kelvin, of course, was lapping it up, leading the boys to a huddle right next to the advertising boards, cupping his ears at the writhing fans. Vig was drawn to the huddle, sprinting over. He was patted on the back as he entered, and Kelv grabbed him round the shoulders.
‘Kid, that’s some ball. Couldn’t fucking miss!’ Vig grinned — fist pumped to the crowd and –
Back in the locker room, sitting on his own, Vig stood up. His muscles shuddered. He knows should go back out there. Try and yell from the sidelines, support the team. Show his face.
Sure, he fucked up. But if the team won — well Coach might forgive him.
Right on cue, a small rapturous cheer came through the wall. Too small to be the home fans.
The opposition must have scored. Drawn level.
Shit. It didn’t matter how they’d scored. Just that they had. Just that they’d put the ball in the net, and it was entirely Vig’s fault. He was in here, and they were a man down. He’d let his team down. He’d let his family down. They were here, watching. His mum and dad. They were here.
Vig stood up again. He screamed, slammed his fist into the wall, ignoring the bone-crunching pain, punching again.
He’d let them down. Let Coach down.
Everyone. And why?
Well, because of Karsen.
No. Not because of Karsen.
The team had made it to halftime with their lead intact. They’d gathered in the locker room, the lads all grinning because their job was halfway done. Rex, one of the young lads that Vig vaguely recalled from the youth squad was on the bench for the game. The kid stood next to him in the locker room and smiled.
‘That was a great cross,’ he said.
‘Yeah ur — thanks,’ Vig muttered, before turning back to one of the senior players.
Then Coach spoke and all the grins turned to grimaces.
‘You ain’t done yet. This lot are scrapping for their lives, don’t you forget that.’ He looked round at all of us. Somehow, when he glanced over, his eyes seemed to settle on all of us individually. I can’t explain how he did it. It was a skill some managers just had. One look and it hit took every single player in. Like he was staring into everyone’s eyes, that kind of intense eye contact reserved just for love or terror.
‘Now, don’t get me wrong. You lot are playing well out there. Got heart, pressing the space well. Keep doing that. Don’t let ’em settle. And you, Vigs. Keep at it.’ He nodded at Vig. A nod of trust, of faith.
A nod that Vig fucked up.
All the hard fucking work. All the fitness training, in the summer, the winter, the rain, trying to run against the fucking wind, all with Kars local park. And a year without Kars.
All the dieting, the fucking pasta and chicken every day. The morning, afternoon and evening drills, both before and after Kars had got injured. Before and after Kars was — found.
All the late night calls with his mum. So far from home, she’d say. And your friend, that must have been hard.
All the extra hours at training. The hard tackles. The injury setbacks.
That one too hard tackle.
Kars on crutches. Kars getting dropped. A twisted knee. His best friend. A twisted damn knee that would end a whole career.
The suicide attempt.
It would all be worth it if Vig could just live his dream.
And then he’d fucked that up, too.
Coach Rise walked up to Vig just before the halftime break was up. He put a palm on Vig’s shoulder. It was a cold palm.
‘That Ellis is a vet. He’s gonna try everything to rattle you. Don’t.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Don’t.’ And that was it — the Coach led them out of the changing room, back to the pitch.
And then Vig let Ellis rattle him.
It was five minutes into the half, and Vig had just won a corner off the toe of Ellis, who, in fairness to the skinhead, had come out fighting in the second half, with a couple of well timed, meaty slide tackles. Vig was reasonably tall, just over six foot, and had a decent header, so he’d joined the centre backs and a few of the other lads in the box.
The penalty area was weird when it was a corner. An absolute melting pot of pushing and shoving. It was like being trapped in an elevator, only everyone was trying to get to the doors first. Most of the pushing was gentle — and Vig was up against one of their taller players.
‘Swap,’ he heard Ellis say, who had been kicking his boot against the post. A speck of mud was left on the white pole. ‘I want Viggy Stardust.’ The guy who’d been marking Vig shrugged and trudged off to the goalpost — and then Ellis was there, right in Vig’s face.
He was a few inches shorter than Vig, his forearms just the right height to jab Vig in the chest with. The elbow didn’t hurt that much, but it pissed Vig off enough that he pushed back. Not hard.
Ellis grinned manically. He looked like that kid in Toy Story that took toys apart and sewed them into weird Frankenstein creatures. Ellis’ teeth were too straight and too white.
‘Come on, Viggy,’ he growled. ‘You gonna win this header?’
‘Won’t be hard against you. Didn’t realise there were eight dwarves.’
‘Long as you don’t injure me, eh lad?’ Ellis was still grinning. He pushed his white teeth towards Vig’s face. ‘Wouldn’t want to put in a hard one on me now, would ya? Might leave me injured. Like your buddy. What’s his name? One that tried to kill himself?’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Vig growled.
‘Karsen is it? Yeah that’s it. Karsen. You ended the kid’s career with a fucking tackle in training. You did that shit to him.’
‘Shut the fuck up, man.’ But Vig was seeing it. The loose ball, the first team scouts on the sideline. The slide tackle, just too hard. The crunch as his studs connected with Karsen’s shin, as Kars’ knee caught in the turf and then bent the wrong fucking way. The crutches, the hospital visit, the grovelling apologies.
It weren’t on you Karsen had said. But it was on Vig, he didn’t need to tackle like he did. Shit, he didn’t need to tackle at all.
And then the silence. Karsen basically disappearing. Dropped from the team, no help with the injury. The lonely walk to training, the fucking silence.
The call when Kars had done it. An overdose. Sleeping meds.
Fuck.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Vig said again, but Ellis was closer, right up to his nose, and he was goading and jeering and — Vig didn’t even hear what the little bastard was saying. Didn’t even know what he was doing.
But he did. Really, Vig did know what he was doing. Ellis was that little voice in his head, that little voice that said it was his fault Kars’ career was over. His fault Kars picked up those pills, basically drank a fucking bottle of them.
He was silencing his conscious when he headbutted that little bastard, Ellis. Not hard — not hard enough for Ellis to fall to the grass, writhing like a soldier shot with a rusty bullet, which is what the little prick did. But he had headbutted him. For sure. His forehead hurt so much that it must be true.
And then the penalty area broke out into a thrumming madness. The other team in Vig’s face, Vig’s own team pushing them away. Kelv muttering something like you stupid prick in his ear.
The ref was there, pulling Vig away, but holding a red card into the sky, like an offering to the Gods. And Vig just walked. Slowly, off the pitch, his entire career prospects left in that penalty area, imprinted on that little bastard’s big forehead. He walked right by Coach Rise, who didn’t say anything, who just stared. Who stared and then turned away.
And Vig knew that image would be on the back of the papers, plastered on Twitter with some shit caption, and thousands of likes and retweets. Shit, he was done for.
The crowd must have been making some sort of noise, but he couldn’t hear it as the shadow of the player’s tunnel engulfed him. As his studs lost their grassy grip. He almost fell as he walked, silently, towards the locker room.
He was done. There was no coming back if they lost. No coming back.
*
Vig felt physically sick. His anger had abated to a low, mournful, simmer, and had been replaced by a fear that spread through his body like frost through a field.
The crowd were still chanting outside, but he could feel the frenetic energy from them. The game was getting close to the end, and, judging by the lack of roar from either set of fans, was still level. One all. Not enough. Vig’s fault that it wasn’t enough.
He was just breathing. That’s all he was doing. Standing, leaning against the wall, one boot on, no shirt. Just breathing. His cheeks were starting to dampen again. A pressure headache had built inside his skull.
Vig was thinking of putting a training top on when the door to the changing room opened.
A quiet opening, not like when he’d burst through. He expected to see a member of the coaching team appear through the door, telling him to get back out and support his team-mates, or to fuck off home for good.
Shit, Vig was ready to fuck off.
But it wasn’t a member of the coaching team that came through the door.
Rex. It was the youth player, the young lad that had congratulated him at half-time on the great cross. It was Rex, the dark-skinned, fuzzy haired, quiet youth player that had been given a courtesy place on the bench. He was no older than seventeen. Had big oval eyes that seemed to be trembling. In fact, his whole face was gaunt. There was sweat on the kid’s forehead.
Vig had all but decided to ignore the youth player, when Rex took two wobbly steps into the locker room and spewed the remnants of their pasta bake from lunch out his mouth. It fell mostly on the floor in a lumpy brown puddle, but several strings of it drooped down Rex’s chin, and onto the first team shirt he had on.
The first team shirt. Vig realised that Rex was going onto the pitch, as he jumped to his feet, being careful to avoid the puke-puddle.
‘Mate, you got food poisoning or something?’ Rex looked at Vig with his big eyes — like the midnight prey of a leopard — and twitched his mouth.
‘No I’m just — I just — nervous. Queasy. Coach he — wants me on.’
‘Jesus,’ Vig said, wincing at the puke smell as he approached from the side of Rex. He plucked his torn up shirt from the floor, and handed it to the kid.
‘Clean yourself up then,’ he said. ‘Cameras out there. Want your first impression on men’s football to be puke stained?’ Vig threw the shirt, and Rex caught it. The sick-faced kid glanced down at the number twenty-three on the back and shrugged, as he wiped the vomit from his chin with it. ‘You scared?’ Vig said.
‘I just yacked. What do you think?’
‘I think you’re probably scared, yeah. Good. What are you, midfield?’
‘We played together.’
‘I’m a prick. Big woop. So midfield, right?’
‘Centre, yeah.’
‘Why they bringing you on?’
‘Connor’s got a knock.’ Vig shook his head. You don’t screw with your midfield in a premier league game, not a tight one. And certainly not to bring on a vomit-streaming, still-acne-riddled kid. Rex could be a liability. He definitely didn’t seem to be the kid that would win them the game.
Unless.
A memory bobbled to the top of Vig’s mind, like a body surfacing in the ocean. A tournament, with the under twenty-three’s. Rex had been there, on the bench. He’d come on, late and they’d won a corner, which was headed away. Smart as you like, Rex had picked the ball up, dummied past their rushing defenders, and slotted it into the bottom corner.
‘That goal, you remember it? Edge of the box after a corner. Maybe it was against Villa?’ Rex nodded. ‘Hold back on our corners and do that. They aren’t rushing out, like they should be. You’ve got fifteen minutes. One falls to you — don’t listen to Kelv. Curl it bottom corner.’
‘This isn’t under-’
‘Nah,’ Vig said. ‘It’s football. Doesn’t matter whose watching, or where you’re playing. Don’t matter if it’s the first or last kick of the game. That ball does what the fuck you tell it to, if you kick it right. Do it. Hold back on our corners. And Rex, mate?’
‘What?’
‘You better hurry the fuck up if Con’s got a knock.’ Rex smiled.
‘I told Coach I was taking a shit,’ he said, and then he turned and ran out of the locker room. Back to the pitch.
‘You better fucking score,’ Vig whispered. ‘Come on you plucky piece of shit.’ He waited for a couple of minutes, before the smell of vomit overwhelmed him. Vig grabbed a training top from his bag, pulled it on, and then followed Rex out of the tunnel. He was still only wearing one boot.
Vig emerged from the tunnel’s shadows, into the sun-soaked May afternoon, just in time to see Rex pick up the ball from a corner.
Just in time to see Rex curl the ball into the back of the net.
