Across the street from a nocturnal grease vendor, a closed charity shop frames my outline in a dark and recessed doorway. On nights such as these this blackened hollow multi-tasks as a convenient too public latrine. Litres of 'special promotion' alcohol are released streetward through fumbled hanging penises. Gagging throats gurgle with overflowing ingested surplus. Stomachs and bladders are purged of their sins; of chips, gravy and German brewed shouting water.

The daytime clientele of beige ladies and Alzheimer gents welcome the smells of home; of their own comfortable and soiled bedclothes where the smell of fresh urine at least reminds them they are still alive. Through the door they fuss round garments born of a time when trends and fashions still existed; before homogeny and apathy stalled the clocks. ('To copy' was cool, first yesteryear then yesterday, until an endless loop crashed the system into a pastiche of 'now'). Arthritic hands twisted like paws, slide deflated coinage to naïve young volunteers; good girls and boys folding items of history into recycled supermarket carrier bags. New mornings greet them with pavement breakfasts and a moist ammonia miasma. They have no love for the smell of the doorway, but cleaning it up makes them retch.

A young species male drops into the alcove; dazed by Belgian wife-beating liquor. Poisoned drowning eyes stare at depths in the back of his own head; a barren, vacant housing evicted of higher functions. A fistful of genitals are on display before my presence is felt. A short jet of urine bursts out of the gristle; flinging wet heat to my leg in a slice of a moment. A slim and vaporous mist rises from the stain bringing reality to my nostrils. A condensing mixture of human effluent reaches down my throat with the flavour of diesel exhaust. I don’t move. I don't care enough to move and stare holes through the faceless pissing male.

Over his shoulder the mulched corpses of animals are changing hands for crisp and disposable money. Consumers predictably consume - as is the way of their wanting; coughing down cuts of mechanically separated protein slurry under a polluting sign. 'American Chicken' hangs in the air and bleeds on the road in a blue and yellow banner of Perspex and glow. Bellow boys and cackle girls magnetise to grease like pied piper rats; unconsciously drawn to a fruit machine tune and the cloying plasma of super-heated lard. Society made you shit for brains, made you eat till you split, made you drink till your sick, let you live if you turn purchases into faeces. A non-stagnating economy flows through your innards and you flush away the receipts to make room for more.

The silhouette of the urinator moves with the mannerisms a multiple offender; a two dimensional hole throwing postures of a fighter concealed under normality. 'honest mistake' noises grunt from the cut-out's neck in an insisting demand for surrendering forgiveness. The silhouette is a blank and empty space; an inoffensive 'nothing' of dark matter between particles, significant only by the interest it displaces and hides. It waits for a response and I leave it waiting. Somewhere a laugh reverberates against a window, an engine revs and dies in the distance, a bacterium divides and conquers in a discarded pork-rib. I leave the alcove and cross the street. Somewhere behind, parting words rasp away from the lungs of the shadow...

"Fucking cunt" it breathes.

I leave it behind.

Fluorescent tubes illuminate 'American Chicken' with the headache radiation of invisible strobes. The white noise hiss of hot cholesterol on steel reaches out from the cooking area like radio static. A gaunt faced male cuts a cist from a chicken wing and pitches a shot into an empty oil bucket. Customers lob and wait their turns; resting swivel hips and bleeding fists on the salt and vinegar flavoured counter. A sliver of a man leans his lethargy at the head of the line, dressed in a short sleeved shirt exaggerating the sinewy sickness of his arms. Words fall from his mouth like Down's syndrome saliva.

"Kebab mate, with all the shit."

The grey Turk behind the counter blinks and pauses; visibly considering the appropriate use of 'stating the obvious'.

"We have no kebabs, this is American Chicken"

He states it in a tone of disposable confidence; a throw-away comment fortified through experience of Saturday night fuck heads.

"what? Eh? Ah… a fuckin’ chicken kebab then, whatever..."

'Sick arms' flicks his tendons in random acts of variance. The Lazarus limbs point vague signals at non-existent items on the menu board. The chicken pusher messes with buttons on the till and raises the temperature of his vocal colour.

"no kebab, we have fried chicken, chicken burger, beef burger, cheeseburger, chicken and chips, burger and chips, coca-cola, fanta, whatever you want... we have no kebab."

The accent is thickened with extra ethnic flavour and the customers lick it up like international gravy. It's what they understand, what they want, what they've seen on TV; The cliched greasy kebab shop owner and the greasy Turkish stereotype. Viewers are confused by perfect English from a foreign face so he does what is expected of a Turk behind a counter. He plays up the part and the audience fucking love it.

"ah... Gimme some of them fuckin' chips then... fucks sake"

An atrophied head scans the customer queue for eyes to contact. The arms twist like dead branches in a November wind; hollowed and stripped by insectoid hunger. A young blonde trophy picks at 'blu-tacked' posters of 99p specials. A mismatched couple whisper repetitions of 'it's up to you' in affectionate soprano. The needy gaze of 'Sick Arms' presses for allies and finds none for his actions. Embarrassment gets hidden under a facade of aggression.

"any chicken?"

"eh?"

"Chicken? Any chicken? You want any chicken?"

"no, no fuckin’ paki chicken… fucks sake"

"sorry?"

I stand at a door next to American Chicken and let the dialogue die in the drowning pools of interlaced conversation. Distant fights and proximity whispers gravitate into a choking fog of homogenised sound. Words interlock from unseen masses with the deafening audio of nothing and everything.

A smeared trail of mayonnaise draws glutinous streaks over the paint scabbed doorframe. Bare wood peers through the crackled gloss, a history of colours flake away like psychedelic pastry. A single portion sachet holds tight to a loose and beaten speaker panel. Condiment fingerprints dab thick spatter onto buttons and nameplates of scribbled biro. Handwritten names fade and hide inside the sepia tint of sun sullied paper. I decipher the labels from vanishing lines to comprehensible data; 'Steve Matson' prises away as a familiar name in the background brown. I poke at the corresponding button and wipe the filth off my fingers with underfoot litter.

A speaker rattles in its casing; quivering to a voice of scratched and distorted fuzz.

"Hello? Yes? Yes, who is it?"

I speak a name I fed to him earlier; stolen from a radio phone-in about deviant school masters. The name was unimportant; two artificial words that erroneously inform and encompass an entire identity. They are valued by the ones that wish to be remembered, discarded by some that seek to disappear. Philip Irving will never care if I borrow his own given label when underwear examinations and anonymity are on his mind. I pick up a splintered wooden chip-fork and scrape mayonnaise out of my fingernails. Somewhere above the shop, Matson would be fumbling around for the door release. Somewhere in Huddersfield, Irving would be fiddling with a training bra. The door hums like an electric chair and clicks itself open. I throw the chip-fork and go inside.