Charlie Rhodehouse may have long since left his childhood behind him, but he loved maps too. Above his bed an old map of Europe was carefully pinned; Russia sprawling crimson from East to West. Older maps sloped off towards the ceiling, held up with ragged strips of sella-tape, Persia, Turkey and ancient Imperial China. The imagined kingdoms of Prester John and Eldorado - the work of some dreamy cartographer - clustered around the windows, deliciously edged with the blank white of Terra Incognita, and peopled by strange, wild chimeras and krakens. Charlie loved these maps the most, delighting in their subtle inking and the antique yellow of their creased, heavy paper.

The morning Charlie saw his brother for the last time the light slanted through his windows in golden sheets so bright they hurt; a painful, headache yellow. Charlie had been awake for several hours, listening to his clock radio crackling gently to itself, muffled slightly by the dirty washing that mounted one side of the room. Charlie considered getting up. He stared blankly across the broken tableau of empty beer bottles, overflowing ash-trays and, worst of all plates; encased by mounting crusts and plateaus of speckled mould. He hadn’t the inclination to pick his way through the chaos to silence his alarm, hadn’t the inclination to get up at all. His brother was coming to see him today. His brother . . . Hell!

Charlie coughed, his lungs hacking, shuddering with pain; the air in his room seemed suddenly suffocatingly close. As if the fumes from the swarming columns of cars outside had forced their way through the peeling strips of gaffa tape that held his window together. His duvet shimmied down his chest in time with his jerking spasms, wrinkling uselessly around his legs. Then he shivered, though the sun-light was intense, it was still toe-numbingly cold.

Despite everything, Charlie loved his room; sometimes it seemed his only refuge from the world outside, but it was not invulnerable. His serenity could by no means be taken for granted. That was why he hated his brother, loathed him as he loathed the tiny brown bugs which crawled beneath his carpet. For all the distant places, foreign names and strange, rocky coastlines in the world couldn’t defend against his brother’s effortless worldliness. More than anything, it was scary. Charlie pulled his coffee stained duvet up round his chin. “God” he said, “I really need to go to the laundrette.” But the horror of such a journey; where to start? First, the grimy stairwell, with its acrid tang of urine and scrawled grafiteed pictures; faces, dicks, skulls. Then the people; in cars or on foot, even just sitting in their dirty little rooms, just knowing they were there was enough! It made his skin crawl. Horrible! Horrible! And finally, the laundrette itself. The cold, clinical light, the rows of rusting, clanking machines, thrumming as they swilled their dirty, sudsy loads in monotonous, rhythmic time. And the mothers, watching in grim silence, dead behind the eyes, their babies old before their time.

“God!” He shouted, his back against the wall, his duvet rising in humped mounds. “Don’t make me see him,” a slice of floral wallpaper peeped through the narrow sag between two maps; Charlie’s filthy duvet suddenly repulsed him. He shook it off and stretched out gasping on his mattress. He wriggled his toes, glaring at the flaking, ingrown nails. “Not here, not now. God, take me somewhere, somewhere out of this world!” He bought a hand up to his face - “Not a working hand, not a man’s hands” - his step-fathers voice shaped words inside his head. “But how?” Sliding his other hand down the length of the map nearest his bed, he traced its crinkled topography. “How?” He pushed inwards, “when there’s nowhere to go!”

A sharp rapping on his door shook him from his musings. Charlie stirred and heaved his feet over the side of his bed, sucking the chilly morning air through his teeth and wrapping the duvet around his shoulders. “You got a key?” he shouted. The door opened and, dressed in his usual attire of faded blue jeans and sloganed t-shirt, was his younger brother. “Hey man, you not up yet?” Charlie narrowed his eyes and suddenly conscious of his near nakedness pulled the duvet closer. “It’s only me, stop worrying about that and come here!” He reached out to drag Charlie in for the hug. Charlie recoiled, shuffling back over his mattress and pulling his knees up into a foetal curl.

“Sorry I’m not more ready, it’s just I . . . well, you know how it is.” Charlie’s brother nodded amicably, his eyes moving back and forth over the room. The debris of months of squalid living covered the patchy blue carpet - crushed beer cans, crumpled letters and empty pizza boxes; fragments of stringy cheese leaking over the greasy cardboard. Charlie liked to order out.

“I know how it is with you, Christ alive but it’s messy in here, what happened, hurricane blew through? Mum would’ve had a fit.”

“Mum’s not here any more; you know that. I’m in my flat now, not staying in your poky little box room. So it’s my business, I like it like this.” Charlie surveyed the room from his huddled position, feeling a guilty sense of pride. It was messy, he knew that, but it was safe and it was his.

“Like this?” Charlie’s brother snorted, “Still, suppose it’s none of mine to know none of yours, your life, your mess, your cross . . .”

“ . . . And I’ll bear it, yes, was there anything else?”

His brother ploughed on with small talk. “Thought I’d see how you were. Say hello, a quick nosy round, duty done and . . . well I would say dusted, but I can see not much of that gets done round here!”

“You’re right, my cross, my problem. Now you can . . .”

“ . . . Go?” Charlie’s brother lowered his voice confidentially. “You know that’s not the only reason I’m here, now I don’t want to argue but I’m worried, you’re in more trouble than you know and I’m not going to bail you out. Not again.” Charlie bowed his head, a burning, nervous pain tickling its way through his stomach.

“Stay then” he said, “but I’ve no tea or coffee, no . . . whatever it is you drink, I forget.” His brother didn’t waste a moment, settling into a comfy window seat.

“Seeing as it’s a special occasion, make mine a whisky.” He raised his hand as if to receive it and left it there, jutting off at an angle.

“But . . .”

“Just a splash of water, don’t drown it” his fingers opened and closed on air. “Then we’ll get down to business. Charlie?”

“Alright, give me a minute, and don’t, touch, anything.”

“Would I?”

Charlie got up and moved to the kitchenette area, returning with two tumblers; one slightly chipped. He gave the chipped one to his brother who lent forward, balancing it precariously on one knee.

“So, what are you here for? Get it over with. Then you can go.”

“Well . . .” As his brother spoke Charlie slipped into an easy reverie. He looked through and into his brother, imagining the map-like web of blood vessels and veins, arteries and organs that wormed their way underneath the skin. He imagined striking his brother down and tracing his fingers through the labyrinthine by-ways of his brother’s internal selfhood. Streaking twisting patterns in the pooling blood and finding strange countries and seascapes in the crimson cartography. But it’d do no good. His brother would be as useless in death as in life. Police, judgement, prison! He glanced up at the layered maps and took some small consolation.

“ . . . I paid those bills last month, seriously man, they’re going to cut you off! They say you’ve had warnings.” He glanced at the discarded letters on the floor. “I’ve talked to them, but it’s you who need to do something. Get me?” Charlie shrugged, refusing to meet his brother’s gaze. “It’s these maps. What’s the deal? I’ve seen this kind of thing on T.V, you’re . . . obsessed, neurotic.”

“I like to travel.” Charlie said.

“But you don’t! That’s the point. Travel broadens the mind. Look, maybe you should come away with me sometime. Have a break, then, when we come back we can start afresh, get things ship-shape.” His brother waved his hands in the air, imitating an aeroplane. “You like that?”

“Well, it’s just . . .”

“Seeing the world man, that’s what it’s about.” His brother smiled and kicked up his feet, resting them on a tottering pile of papers.

“I just don’t think like that, it’s more . . .”

“I mean, you need to see something, even if it’s just the city, anything!” Charlie stood up, goaded into action.

“Give me a map, that’s all I want.” Charlie fixed his brother with a steely glare, all nervousness gone. “People are the same all over, places too; ugly and vulgar. It appals me. I long for what a place should be.” Charlie ran his hand down the wall, gently tracing the azure line of a river as it wound through the dusty yellow of a desert. “Babylon, Samarkand, Baghdad. Genii’s citadels, mysterious heroes, warriors and wizards. The Assassins, the Old Man of the Mountains. The Knights Templar! A place where the sand is golden.” He indicated his map. “Not a grubby, sulphurous tint, but gold! Where there are divine palaces, not internet cafes, and Temples instead of shopping malls. At least give me the gauze of hope, a map over a plane ticket.” Charlie put down his drink and fumbled for a cigarette, his hands shaking.

“What’s wrong with the real?” His brother grinned, deliberately baiting now. “Other than its brutality, I can give you that, but man.” His smile widened “don’t brutality have beauty? Brutality is sexy Charlie. Sexy.” He swirled the last drops of whisky round the bottom of his glass. “What you need is a woman, a down and dirty woman. You won’t want your maps then.”

“I don’t want a woman.” Charlie shuddered with suppressed disgust. “Give me legend, myth, the 1001 nights, The Metamorphoses, anything. If nothing else just the map and the name. I can dream the rest.” He trailed off; his brother looked suddenly serious again.

“O.K, fine, not a woman then . . . how about the church? Least you’d see people there, a club maybe? A library? Night school? Seriously man, you need something. A job! Christ don’t you need that.” Charlie turned his back on his brother “Don’t turn your back on me man, remember I near as damn pay the rent on this place. Christ Charlie, do you even think you’d still be alive without me? Fuck you!” He gestured wildly. “I’ll be out of that door if you’re not careful.” He made no attempt to move. Charlie got up and walked over to him.

“Go then, get out! I don’t want you here any more. I don’t need you’re help.”

“You’re saying that now man, but when you’re lying in bed, crying, sobbing, when they kick you out of this place, I won’t be here to help. Remember that. Christ but I’ve been a fool.” Charlie grabbed his brother by the arms and shook him; he was much bigger than his brother.

“Christ Charlie.” His brother squirmed out of his grasp and darted to the door. “You’ll never do that again. I’m going, no, I’m gone, fucking bastard.” He turned and left, slamming the door behind him. Charlie was alone.

Charlie leant against the closed door. The confrontation had scared him and his heart was beating like the engine of an automobile. His brother was gone. Gone! Perhaps - and please God, he thought, let it be true - forever. Charlie moved over to his window and polished a splintered segment with the edge of his sleeve. The sun dazzled with renewed vigour, shimmering off the besieging tangle of cars. The city seemed to stretch out below him like an enemy army. Tenements rose like castles, deploying, from every balcony, rank upon rank of pot-plant soldiers. Spiky bamboo shoots rose like spears, spider-plants tangled and sparred over the edge of rusting fire-escapes, flowers displayed their colours like standard bearers. Beneath them cyclists and pedestrians jostled between the cars and vans. Charlie shuddered; the ugliness of the scene repulsed him. He turned and kneeled to pull open his large, paint-splattered plan chest. He opened the middle drawer and rifled through the papers inside, emerging with a slightly dog-eared map of his home city. Picking up a ball of blue-tac with his other hand and tearing it into rough pieces he tacked the map over the window. Then, pleased, he sat down, the sunlight glowing tawny and dim through the thick, reinforced paper.

He reached over to a stool that served as a coffee table and picked up a green, faux-leather photo-album. He opened it, flicked through a few pages, and gazed at a photograph. There were two figures; a boy and a worried looking woman. The boy seemed unhappy, a vague sense of longing evident in his dark, evasive eyes. They stood in a small suburban garden, the bright flower-beds making them appear grey and weary. Frowning, Charlie let the album drop and gazed up towards the ceiling, lost in memories of childhood. In the photo two unhappy faces stared out and off into the distance. Charlie stood up. He fumbled under his bed and pulled out another map, it was huge and unwieldy, crudely bundled together and bound with a fraying coil of string. Charlie carefully untied the string and unfolded the map, crept over to the door and, stretching to reach, stuck it to the doorframe. It fitted well, covering the assembled gallery of post-cards and pushing out only slightly around the doorknob. Charlie moved away and sat down; gazing in silent rapture at the sprawling vista the map opened up, the long, dirty corridor beyond forgotten. To Charlie it no longer even existed.