A Damaged Boy

By Alex Burrett

A great value second collection of short fiction from 5* rated writer Alex Burrett – author of ‘My Goat Ate Its Own Legs’. Three years of original thoughts, worlds and characters crammed into a single ebook. An egg-eating snake made to feel unwelcome, a promise “never to love anyone ever again” tested to the extreme, a Welsh village where everyone is knighted, and goose with a very fat head. To name but a few. (4 of the 45.) This volume contains two novelettes that indicate Burrett is gearing-up for a longer form work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Burrett
• Release date: Apr 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476326252

Alex Burrett

Alex Burrett lives in London, where he works in advertising. This is his first collection of stories.

Book preview

A damaged boy

by Alex Burrett

(Fiction for grown-ups)

Copyright Alex Burrett 2012

Publisher Fedw

Smashwords Edition

Dedicated to Mitchell, Scarlett, Morgan, Lauren and Gorse.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not download it free during launch week or purchase it on a subsequent date, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the endeavour of this author.

***~~~***

Titles

Eggs & Omelettes

Wrestling with Jesus

Night Bus

An Old Relation

The Promise

Oberon’s Flower

The Source

The Village of Many Knights

Nuts

Lady Hill Circle

Vacuum Packed

Death Again

Scrumping

Loki Karaoke

Falling Apart

Caribbean Encounter

Bridging the Divide

Letter to the Mayor

Heartless

Scar Tissue

Horse Play

Totem Pole

Pigeon Mule

Rabbits are Terrible Perverts

Speed Trap

Zip It

Tongue Twister

The Unbreakable Wall

Goose Fat Head

A Very Valuable Pen

The Bend

Smoking Kills

Little Red Riding Hoods

Liftless (novelette)

Clinging On

Living in Crouch End

Jail Mate Confession

Character Building

Factory Tour

Leviathan

Working Week

Kallista

Hill Face

The Dark Side

The Great Unloved (novelette)

About the author

***~~~***

Eggs & Omelettes

An egg-eating snake slithered into a greasy spoon café after a tough morning bending reinforcement bars. A fellow labourer opened the door for him, saving him the ignominy of having to shove it open with his nose then slide quickly in before his tail got trapped. Locating a workman’s café near a construction site isn’t always easy, so there’s no point holding out for one with an electric sliding door.

For the snake, finding a place where he was made welcome was more important than the access/egress method anyway. Not everyone warms to egg-eaters. Occasionally pernickety individuals kick up a fuss at his eating habits. As far as he was concerned, that was their issue. An egg-eating snake can no more adjust his unique method of devouring raw eggs than a leopard can change its spots. And after all, it wasn’t so long ago that knife and fork users were contemptuous of chopstick users and vice versa.

Despite believing in his right to eat anywhere, budget eateries were the most likely to be accommodating. Once he’d found somewhere, the limbless reptile preferred to not be gazed and gawped at. Whenever possible he chose a dining location that wouldn’t make him feel like he was an exhibit at a zoo. There was an empty table for two near the counter, so he took that.

The menu was pretty basic but it was cheap, which on a labourer’s salary is an important consideration. There were several things available with chips, a range of sandwiches (toasted if required), baked potatoes with various toppings, omelettes and, for the record, nothing with spam. (That strange processed meat has gone out of vogue since the days of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.) The waitress brought a complimentary glass of water in a plastic beaker, plonked it down on the table next to the knife he wouldn’t be using and asked for his order.

The only thing the snake fancied was an omelette. Without chips. He asked for a plain one with just a little pepper and a dash of Tabasco. The waitress explained, with a fair sprinkling of petulance, that he might not have noticed as he entered at ground level, but a cockerel and a couple of hens were dining at the table by the window. All three, quite understandably, hated the sound of an egg being cracked; it went through them like sixteen claws being scraped down a chalkboard. But twenty times worse. They were regular customers and in gratitude for their patronage, the owners of the café had promised never to crack an egg in the kitchen while they were dining. ‘And you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’, the young woman snarled through pursed lips, as if she was the originator of this pearl of wisdom.

The snake was too hungry to wait for the clucking bunch to finish pecking at their food. As well as being sloppy eaters, fowl are notoriously slow diners, preferring long animated conversations interspersed with occasional beakfulls rather than chowing down and getting the flock out of an eatery. And they didn’t appear to be under the same time pressure he was – haunted by a vulture of a foreman who docked half an hour’s pay for every five minutes after lunch a worker returned to the site. In fact they looked posh enough to be the sort of creatures who could spend all day nattering in a restaurant without the slightest concern of getting back to any type of work whatsoever. Based on these assumptions, the snake made a suggestion. If the waitress would be so kind as to bring him a couple of whole, raw eggs, he’d make the omelette himself… in his stomach. He had a method, he explained to the frosty attendant, of cracking eggs without making a sound. He could swallow them whole, crunching them with a spiny protrusion inside his gullet once the orbs were completely encased within his tubular frame. He detailed how his thick snakeskin and muscular flesh would absorb the sound of them breaking, describing an occasion when he’d scoffed a brace of rare goose eggs at a wildfowl visitor centre during an open day picnic. Although plenty of visitors were well within earshot, no one even raised an eyebrow. He assured the reluctant serving girl his technique was infallible, the nattering poultry wouldn’t have a clue.

At this point the waitress had to admit that the offer of the café’s owners never to break an egg when the chicks were in rang a little hollow. It was a cynical overture since all the omelettes they served were in fact frozen ready-made ones – a detail they didn’t openly inform customers of. All they had to do when an omelette was ordered was remove one from the deep freezer and pop it in the microwave. They had tried letting the chef prepare them himself, but he was no Gordon Ramsey. More often than not, omelettes he whipped-up would be sent back for being runny or charred. The wages they offered couldn’t attract a better cook, so they stuck with him. Beans and bacon were his bread and butter, omelettes definitely weren’t.

But even zapping a pre-prepared omelette wasn’t something they were willing to do when the birds were in, she insisted. Seeing the youth of tomorrow broken and presented on a plate deeply upset them, turning them frantic with pity for the lost lives and sending them into a flapping frenzy which disturbed all the customers.

Despite the fact he was in an eating establishment, the only thing the hungry snake had been fed since breakfast was two ludicrous stories in as many minutes. He didn’t know which, if either, to believe. Both were suspect. Surely no chef could be so inept that he wasn’t capable of making anything more complicated than a toasted sandwich. The idea of a temporary moratorium on egg-containing products was deeply flawed too. Half the meals on offer had egg in them: from all day breakfasts, through egg sandwiches (whose mashed mayonnaise-drenched mixture was clearly displayed behind the counter) to all the cakes in the shop that needed eggs. And what would they do if the birds strutted in and customers were already tucking into eggy dishes? Whip their food off them? That would certainly drive customers away.

Whichever tale he felt most credible, the logic of refusing him an omelette had more holes in it than a roll of chicken wire. Everything he’d been told boiled down to a situation the belly-to-ground creature had encountered many times before, snakism. He got the distinct impression that the waitress didn’t want him in her workplace, regardless of what he ordered. Rather than kick-up a fuss and fortify the general misconception that all snakes are trouble, he slid dejectedly down the front left leg of his chair and onto the floor. Not wanting to hang around for someone to open the door for him, he stretched upwards towards the letterbox slot in the middle of the café door. Balancing on his tippy tail, he was just long enough to stick his head and neck through then begin sliding out. It was an ignoble way to exit a building, but having already been refused a meal, he had no reputation to protect. Half way out, curious to get a closer look at the feathered locals who’d deprived him of a decent lunch, he swung round to peer through the exterior window. There on plain view to anyone with legs long enough, sitting on the table in front of one of the chicks, was a very expensive snakeskin handbag.

***~~~***

Wrestling with Jesus

Jesus is a mean wrestler. Not ‘mean’ as in nasty, but in its more modern sense of being damned effective at winning physical contests. Jesus could never be nasty. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.

Greco-Roman is his style, unsurprising considering his upbringing. But he happily competes in all the other disciplines – some of which exist in just one corner of one district of one country in the world. Despite the variety of rules and regulations he conforms to, he generally wins gold medals in all competitions. And he’s competing all the time. There is no let-up in his wrestling schedule – it’s like the modern professional tennis season. One day he’s grappling on hard-baked mud in the centre of an African market town, the next he’s pinning someone down on the tough grasses of the Mongolian Steppe. He loves the sport. In his opinion it demonstrates the ultimate expression of admirable masculine values: strength, courage, quickness of mind and body, and guile. Wrestling, he told me, is the only sport capable of unifying all men. He believes that if every male on the planet competed in some form of unarmed sporting combat or other, there’d be no appetite left for waging wars.

I did judo for a few years. I enjoyed the experience of fighting one to one with another man without worrying that he’d to reach for a knife or gun if I won. I was no Brian Jacks though. I was more of an enthusiastic fighter than an effective one. Groundwork was my strength. Once I was struggling on the mats with an opponent, my strength and courage made up for my lack of skill. On my feet, I was far more vulnerable. I lacked the speed of body and mind that allows good practitioners of judo to outwit and outmanoeuvre the person they are fighting. Because of my lumbering attacks, I never progressed through the grades. I would sometimes do well in competitions, defeating brown belts who also lacked striking speed and relied on being physically obstinate on the floor. I’d eventually get knocked out when I came up against someone who could attack much more quickly than I could react or defend. I never imagined during those fruitless years on the dojo, that I’d end up regularly manhandling Christ. But I did.

Everybody wants to fight Jesus. Even getting your name down on the waiting list is like trying to get last minute tickets for the best seats in the house at the opening night at La Scala. But ask often enough and one of the dozen or so angels tasked with timetabling his contests will appear from out of the blue and add your name. Unless you want to specify a discipline the rules are simple. There are no rounds; you fight till a victor emerges. It’s wrestling, so no punches or kicks or blows of any kind are allowed. (Jesus is a pacifist, after all.) You can’t do anything nasty like bite, gouge or pull hair but other than that more or less anything goes. Simply throw your man solidly to the ground or force a submission from him to win. Jesus has never been a uniform man, so you can wear whatever you like to fight him; a ceremonial costume or the designated outfit of any sport body you affiliate yourself with. Some men like to get all ancient and fight Jesus naked. He doesn’t care, its not like he hasn’t seen a man naked before. For my first battle I wore long tracksuit trousers and a thick cotton sweatshirt. Like him, I’ve never been much of a conformist.

We met in a field, grass close-cropped by overgrazing from sheep, earth then turned dry and dusty by several weeks without rain. I’m not sure if he arranged that surface or if it is just the way it was. I’m not an expert on Christianity, able to qualify to what degree divine powers are allowed to interfere in the planet’s weather these days. All I can say is that the hardness of the ground is what encouraged me to wear full body covering. In the fortnight before the contest, I visited the venue every day to help with my mental preparations. I could see that grappling around on the solid earth would be pretty rough on the skin and I didn’t want to be put-off making bold moves by the concern of sustaining superficial grazes. Unfortunately my long sleeves were instrumental in my first defeat. My celestial opponent used them to wrap me up in a knot on the ground, twisting them behind my back and pinning me down, forcing my face uncomfortably into the dusty soil. He held me there, unable to escape, until I was exhausted from trying to free myself and half suffocated by the grainy air. As soon as he saw my strength was at low ebb, he flipped me on my back and grabbed one of my arms for an arm lock. The lock dug in really quickly and I submitted by slapping my free hand flat down on the rock-hard soil. The slap raised little brown clouds of dust particles, towering pestilent storms to nearby watching ants. I’m sure his second-cum-referee Michael smirked when he saw my dejected, scratched face, mud-stained mucus drizzling out of my nostrils. But it’s so hard to tell with angels, they always look so bloody self-satisfied. After that defeat, I always fought Jesus wearing cheap shorts and an old battered T-Shirt.

Once you’ve lost a fight with Jesus, should you request one, you are fast tracked for a rematch. Most choose not to, calculating that it would be impossible to beat him and realising that all they really wanted to do was have a go at The Son of God rather than harbour any ambition to vanquish him. I wanted to beat Jesus – not to force him to abdicate from the throne of Heaven then usurp him and impose a new world order, but because I was fed up with propaganda that he was perfect. He is a man after all. And no man is perfect, my mother always told me that. Despite every God Botherer I’ve ever met telling me he’s infallible, there’s evidence in the bible that he isn’t. He’s got form for trashing a legally held market, sending poor honest traders’ goods flying to the floor in a temper tantrum because he disagreed with their legally approved venue. That report was the chink in his armour that kept me going. He had an Achilles heel and even Hercules was defeated eventually. So, with the single agenda of proving no living being was incapable of losing, I dedicated myself to overcoming Mr Christ. If he was going to walk amongst us, he should at least once taste the bitterness of defeat.

For over ten years we met in private places to engage in physical contest. He’d throw me to the ground on a deserted beach; put a choke on me in an abandoned quarry and lock a limb in an empty warehouse. The odds were always against me; he was a master of countless forms of wresting and I had just a few years of judo under my belt. Regardless of the statistical chances of defeating him, I always immediately booked in for a rematch. Towards the end of my long stretch of defeats, I began to detect a change in Christ’s demeanour. He wasn’t used to men coming back at him time and time again. A few ignoble defeats was usually enough to pacify the greatest human competitors. That was my strength. I knew I wasn’t one of the best wrestlers to have ever lived. Defeat, therefore, was not nearly as humbling. I always believed there was a way to overcome him. And faith moves mountains, after all.

My victory came in the centre of a little-visited stone circle set at the top of a small green hill in South Wales. I don’t for a moment think that those stone circles marked ancient wrestling arenas or that the stones infused me with some Druidical power, but it seemed like a fitting place to get to grips with a flashy foreigner. The Land of My Fathers. Michael, his ever present second, signalled us into action with an effete, languid wave. My persistence bored him. He presumed that, as usual, his champion would shortly throw me to the ground with such force that the air was involuntarily expelled from my lungs, or master me with a lock or choke and have me begging for mercy. Jesus’ eyes told a different story. He was worried. I could feel in it my soul.

We charged together like two mighty stags fighting for territory. I had learnt early on in my series of one-to-one matches with The Messiah that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, or, in other words, charging headlong at the divine quick-witted, experienced fighter was the quickest way to end up on your back. This time, it was the turn of the revered prophet to end up on his back. As we closed in on one another, I did a little sidestep which caught him unawares. He turned towards me as we passed and his outside leg span out forwards, his tough Roman-nail-scarred foot flicking up and catching my shin. Caught off-balance at the combined speed of our approach toppled him and he fell to the ground. But a fluke like that is never enough to beat an experienced fighter! He twisted in mid-air like a falling cat, landing on his side. I turned as quickly as I could but wasn’t quick enough to take advantage of his tumble. Maintaining his momentum, he rolled over his shoulder then sprang to his feet in readiness of continuing action. At this point, Michael started to take an interest, his eyebrows moving further away from his chubby cheeks and closer to his halo. The next thing I knew, Jesus was upon me, his strong arms wrapped around my torso, his powerful carpenter forearms taut as he gripped his own wrists in readiness for a takedown. This tight clinch was exactly what I’d needed. I wanted to smell the sweat on his body before making my move. Jesus expected me to fight him shoulder to shoulder as I had for years. Our repetitive battles had become shows of strength that I was always destined to lose. But we were fighting open rules and I’d come to realise there was no advantage in tackling him head on. So, after years of refusing to accept his absolute mastery of me, I did the one thing that was capable of surprising him. Like a penitent catholic priest confessing his abuse of altar boys to the almighty, I dropped to my knees with the force of a construction site pile driver. The guile of my action stunned Christ. I slipped from his grasp and flung my hands around his knees pulling them together so tightly that not one single ray of light could pass between his legs. As he leant forwards to make a counter attack, I put part two of my plan into operation and rose to my feet like Spartacus escaping his chains. I drove upwards and forwards, my right shoulder leaning into Christ’s crotch as if I’d tackled him to prevent a touchdown in the Super Bowl. The vigour with which I rose up lifted him clean off the ground and he flew backwards in an elliptical curve, his hands gripping my shoulders with my arms still wrapped tightly around his legs.

Michael acknowledged my victory the moment my opponents’ shoulders slammed squarely and heavily into the ground. I was offered another fight, but declined. I’d only ever wanted to prove a point. Jesus was incredibly noble in defeat and congratulated me on my persistence and guile. He told me that I should enter some open wrestling competitions and even suggested a few. But, unlike him, I was growing older and it was taking longer and longer to recover from the impacts and contortions of each struggle. I asked him if he intended to carry on fighting. Absolutely, he replied, wrestling was in his blood.

***~~~***

Night Bus

Will was having a nightmare. A living one. It was quarter past four on Friday morning, he was all alone, he’d fallen asleep sitting waiting for a night bus and his knitted woollen jumper was decorated with his own vomit.

The chilled October air had begun robbing him of body heat from the moment he’d reached the stop. Thick mist had turned the swollen moon into a gigantic eerie spectre, with the muted city lights becoming its ubiquitous phantom army. The smell of death was all around; rotting leaves filled the gutters, sickly-sweet fungi feasted on dead wood in nearby wasteland and fetid air intermittently wafted across from a black bin bag full of rank chicken flesh left outside a nearby fried chicken outlet. The misery of Will’s situation forced him to find sanctuary in the Land of Nod. His comatose drunken arse was slumped on a charcoal-grey plastic bench that was bolted to frost-dusted paving slabs. His backward curved spine was propped against the rear glass panel of the bus shelter – with drunken stupefaction enabling him to use that cold vertical sheet as a pillow. The only noise was that of occasional cars and delivery vans groaning like moody behemoths prowling empty streets in search of lost souls. But the malevolent creatures were avoiding him. He wasn’t in a fit enough state to be able to flag down a taxi or cadge a ride and it was the worst possible time to board a municipal carriage.

From late evening up until midnight, buses on Will’s route homeward left the central station every twelve minutes. Then, from the start of the witching hour until four am, that steady processions of coaches reduced to a thrice-hourly service. Later on, from six in the morning onwards, the people transporters picked up in regularity again, being dispatched every quarter of an hour to collect immigrant office cleaners and ambitious executives. But, between the hours of four and six, only three buses were scheduled to depart; one on the hour, each hour. If you were really unlucky and had just missed the four o’clock and the five was cancelled because the intended driver had overslept or due to mechanical failure (something which happened mysteriously regularly to that particular timetabled charabanc), you would have to wait almost two hours before obtaining a ride to your destination. If you were at the station, you’d know straight away if you’d missed a bus or if it wasn’t running. But the further out you were, the greyer the situation became. Will’s stop was supposed to be thirteen minutes from the centre. In reality, the time it took for a bus to reach his location was unpredictable. If buses were running ahead of schedule, the drivers would race along chasing extra sleep. Although the opposite was far more likely, it was impossible to tell if they were running late.

Earlier, when Will and his inebriated mates were kicked-out of their final watering hole, they’d prescribed themselves the usual antidote to head-spinning disorientation – a kebab. For all but him, a packed pitta pocket was enough to bring them back from the brink of delirium. But Will hadn’t managed a morsel of food all day. He’d also drunk more than everyone else, hoping alcohol would drown the vengeful spirit that was writhing inside his stomach and gnawing at his heart. After realising his hand meal was insufficient medicine, he mumbled goodbyes to his drinking buddies and headed off into the night. He hoped a long trek would render him sober enough to utilise public transport, so trudged all the way from the buzzing centre of nightlife to the desolate edges of suburbia. His meandering march brought him to the most distant bus stop he’d ever walked to. Exhausted by his effort to reach it, and with eyelids tightly shut to banish the blurred multicoloured ghosts from his field of vision, he’d drifted off.

Unconsciousness gave Will the respite from troubled thoughts he’d been searching for. But the long approach march had not delivered the desired sobriety. Shortly after a third crammed bus had passed his sorrowful slumbering frame, his mouth lazily opened and his disoriented brain emptied a gutful of puke onto his chest. The regurgitated kebab clung to the fibres of his thick-knit jumper like fresh plaster clings to wattle. He didn’t wake. The combined influences of self-pity and alcohol had driven him into such a deep coma that spewing failed to resuscitate him. Two more buses, basted on the inside with condensation and filled with morbidly fascinated passengers peering at Will through finger windscreen-wiper portholes, passed by. The gawping late night commuters were delighted that the vomit zombie didn’t rouse and stagger onto their bus – a monster capable of contaminating whomever it sat near with further foul eruptions.

Two minutes after the four o’clock was scheduled to arrive, but well within the window of it actually pulling up, Will came to. Despite the distracting eerie orbs of pulsating light hovering in the fog, the acrid smell of decay drew his gaze downwards. He discovered an ugly design on his knitwear but was too hammered to care about how he looked. Only one thing concerned him – summoning up sufficient physical and mental vigour to mount a bus and wave his monthly pass at its driver. Consequently, he made no more than a ceremonial attempt brush away the noxious gravity-defying platter he was wearing. Not wanting to corrupt his bare flesh, he dealt with the elliptical spillage by using his right sleeve as a puke snowplough. This action achieved an element of success, with some larger bits of hastily gulped-back kebab falling to the floor. Most of the lethargically ejected late night snack, however, was merely smoothed out into a larger lumpy pattern, with a few tenacious chunks attaching themselves to his fluffy sleeve like gooey burs. He then turned his attention to the more pressing matter – catching a bus home. Hoping he hadn’t missed the four o’clock, Will turned his head with a tired roll until his cheek was pressed against the glass behind him and his chin came to rest on his hunched shoulder. He stared with straining eyes down the road; squinting out the watery haze of his intoxication in an effort to sharpen-up some of the blurred panorama. Peering through touching eyelashes did the trick. By concentrating really hard, he was able to see as far as the traffic-light-controlled crossroads a few hundred metres away.

Five minutes later a bus came along. It was almost as if, once he’d woken, it had sensed his desire to get home as soon as possible and raced to collect him. Buses don’t generally do that. Buses tend to do the exact opposite of what you desire; turning up quickly when you’re not quite ready for them and taking ages to arrive when you’re in a desperate rush or tired or drunk. This bus defied that rule. For the first time in over twenty-four hours, Will felt lucky. Perhaps, he let himself think, that its timely arrival was a sign that life was about to take a turn for the better, that a brighter future might start to unfurl for him. The bus, he imagined, was a chariot sent by the gods to pluck him from his tortured existence and deliver him to Olympus where he could dine alongside cavorting goddesses of beauty and nudity. This fantasy seemed entirely appropriate to the fuzzyheaded traveller. The charabanc had appeared like a mystical vehicle, materialising through the haze of low cloud and intoxicated vision flanked by red then orange then green floating heralds. Curiously, and he couldn’t be sure in his state, but it seemed to swing into the crossroads from the left, rather than the right. Not that such detail troubled him. If a diversion had been responsible for delaying its arrival until after he’d regained consciousness, then all the more proof that Lady Luck was on his side.

The preceding twenty-four hours had been one of the worst days of Will’s life. The seed of that misery was sown over three years earlier; shortly after he’d started dating Nicole. Their relationship, which had lasted until two months before this particular drunken night out, would have survived no more than a couple of weeks had he not desperately fancied her sister. Seeing Nicole was the perfect excuse for being regularly exposed to her divine close relative. Weekends, when the offer arose, he’d hang out at the flat their protective father had bought the sisters while they were at university; and in which they both continued to live. Will’s best moments during the frustrating years of dating Nicole, were the hungover Sunday mornings when her sister would join them in the lounge for late morning coffee, dressed only in an overlarge T-shirt. Of all those glorious mornings, the cream of the crop were the ones when the nearest T-Shirt the svelte nymph could find was one Will had accidentally left in the bathroom. When she did wear one of his T-shirts, he’d rescue it from their washing basket once she’d dressed for the day, then leave earlier than usual, smuggling it home. During his Nicole period, rubbing a T-shirt perfumed with her sister’s scent all over his naked body was the closest Will could get to the younger and considerably more attractive sibling without making a clumsy attempt at an affair. Eventually, being tantalizingly close to the woman he desired became impossible to cope with. Will reached a point when he wasn’t willing to put up with Nicole’s lesser appeal, so he ended the relationship as gently as he could.

He thought he’d performed his exorcism well, having planned it for months. But Nicole was devastated. She locked herself in the toilet of the restaurant where Will broke the news. As she sobbed and pounded the interior walls of the cubicle with the bottoms of her fists and her forearms, Will, begged by the owner to coax her out (they only had one Ladies), falsely claimed he’d changed his mind in order to extricate her. He then took his emotionally battered soon-to-be ex-partner home, where he had to repeat the message in front of her sister. While this wasn’t his initial plan, he hoped that a compassionate severance performance would impress the younger sibling. As Nicole sobbed on the sofa, Will put on a brave show, absorbing her anger and answering all her questions – falsely, of course. During his inquisition he occasionally glanced over at her hastily-adorned T-shirt-wearing sister, trying to sneak a glance between her legs. He hoped that being in a rush to see what the commotion in the lounge was all about, she’d foregone the time-consuming act of slipping on a pair of panties. Eventually, frustrated by body positioning that prevented him getting a good look, he insisted there was no more he could say to Nicole and headed home. Eight weeks, one day and several hours later, he was waiting for a night bus with sick splattered all over his pullover.

Will left it eight weeks before embarking on his campaign to win over Nicole’s sister. He felt two complete moon cycles was a long enough period of time to let the dust settle on their expired relationship, without providing the eye-catching sibling much opportunity to find someone else. (Will had sensibly made sure she was single when he finished with Nicole.) Apart from his Machiavellian attempt to secure the affections of the maiden he’d secretly worshipped for years, Will was largely a decent man. He worked hard, putting in long hours as a junior sound engineer at a post-production recording facility, hoping that industriousness would help him rise up the ranks. He wasn’t a gifted sound engineer, so raw talent was never going to get him to the top. What he did know was how to manipulate circumstances to his best advantage – an approach he hoped would bring positive results with Nicole’s sister. Will was well liked by his clients, who made television promos for kids’ cartoon channels. He had a devilish sense of humour, treating taboo subjects with a cheeky grin that rendered them inoffensive as he placed cartoon sound effects into short animated sequences. Everyone had fun during his dubbing sessions, clients and voiceovers sometimes sliding with laughter off their leather armchairs. Because of the free entertainment, promo producers didn’t mind his slow, error-ridden work. For them, an out of place or badly mixed springy boing was as likely to add charm as to detract. And they could always book back in with another sound engineer to fix things at the studio’s expense if they went seriously awry! It wasn’t just at work Will made people laugh, Nicole’s sister for one would often crumple in giggling fits at his outrageous observations. There were some who were immune to his infectious sense of humour though – Nicole’s sombre father and several of his austere male companions forming the large majority.

Although he and Nicole’s sister had always got on well, Will realised that courting the sylphlike temptress would take considerable tact and diplomacy. His regular happy-go-lucky disposition would not be appropriate for dealing with the considerable challenge of forming a close bond with his ex-girlfriend’s nearest and dearest. He needed to take a more solemn approach, something more in keeping with the serious demeanour of the girls’ father. Their only surviving parent was a formidable man, a towering part-time Judge who socialised with the types who decide the fate of the hoi polloi over snifters of very expensive brandy. Pops, as they called him, would be Will’s greatest obstacle in winning the affection of Nicole’s sister. He decided that the best course of action would be to clear the air with the old man first.

Thursday morning was overcast and damp, the perfect conditions for the undead to escape cracked tombs and skulk around forgotten graveyards. Will turned up at the huge, detached, nineteenth century family home at ten in the morning; half an hour after the girls’ father would have returned from his regular Thursday morning round of golf with his coven of stick-swinging cronies. They always teed of at the break of day, preferring the half-light of a musty autumn morning to the scorching rays of a summer afternoon. Will was more nervous than ever at the prospect of entering the foreboding residence. Although the gothic arches above the doorways and windows aped the architecture of religious edifices, Will always sensed a brooding atmosphere within. Even from the outside, the imposing building exuded darkness; the pollution-stained stone walls, overhanging cast iron roof fittings and leaded windows giving it the appearance of a best-avoided archaic asylum. Two grotesque gargoyles, each mounted on a fabulous beast standing atop a stone plinth gatepost, guarded the entrance. One deformed jockey had a misshapen mop of knotted limestone hair, deep-set staring eyes, an ale enthusiast’s belly and fat childlike fingers equipped with over-length claw-like fingernails. It rode a blockish monster with the head of a tortured, square-jawed lion, a rectangular dragon-like body and a stunted tail. The other hobgoblin had long bony limbs wrapped around a muzzled, suffocating toad. While the crazy-haired troll with the elongated nails stared outwards at passers by, this gangly one stared directly at the threshold of the manor with a sneering gaze that seemed to see into each visitor’s soul – at least that’s what Will always felt. In all the times he’d visited the house, there were only a few places where he’d felt at ease: one was in Nicole’s bedroom, where her love seemed to shelter him from the unsettling ambience; the other was in the walled back garden where he’d whiled away many an hour with his arm around Nicole whilst watching her sister sunbathe.

Will had often worried that the sun-shy homeowner had suspected his coveting of the younger child. This unsettled him. But it was not the time for turning back. He put his concerns to the rear of his mind, crunched his way up their weed-free gravel drive and rang the bell. It chimed once, deeply, as it always had – the confident single bong of an established household. The old boy swung open the portcullis wearing his regular Dr Jekyll smoking jacket. He presented Will with an exaggerated version of the expression he’d always used to greet him; a face that unashamedly projected his disregard for the useless creature his elder daughter had been romantically engaged with. The responsible guardian would have happily repelled the lad, but he had shown courage turning up after breaking his daughter’s heart. So, bedazzled by curiosity, he invited him in. Once the iron-panelled heavy oak front door had clunked closed behind them, the six foot four aristocratic titan ushered Will to the study. The study was the most sacred room in the house, an inner sanctum reserved exclusively on an invite-only basis for particular men. Will had only been in there a few times before; once when he snuck in to have a snoop, and a couple of others (early on in his relationship with Nicole) to smoke late-night cigars with her father and other privileged menfolk. The visits stopped as soon as the aristocratic head of the household had come to the conclusion that Will was an insubstantial prick.

Most of the wall space in the room was taken up by bookshelves that reached from floor to ceiling. On the occasion Will had sneaked in to peek at them, practically every book he pulled off the shelf was dedicated to the occult. In response to this revelation, Nicole joked that like most of the judiciary, her father was also a high priest in the dark arts. Will had laughed that off at the time, but, looking around as he prepared to announce his intent to ask the younger daughter out, he noticed that practically every objet d’art on display depicted some arcane subject or another. Aware that Will was distracted by the surroundings, Nicole’s father sat down in his brass-buttoned high-back armchair, cleared his throat and gestured for Will to take a seat opposite. Will declined, feeling that delivering his sensitive monologue standing up was the more courageous and respectable thing to do – qualities he hoped would impress his host. After refusing a seat, he explained that although he was very sorry for the distress he’d caused the elder daughter (someone whom he hoped in time would start to see him as a friend), he had developed in recent weeks, long after his relationship with Nicole had come to an end, a strong affection for the man’s younger daughter. After he had delivered his news, Will imagined this noble chap would bring his big hand to his chin, gently stroke it with thumb and forefinger, ponder for a while at the unfortunate but understandable predicament that the troubled sound engineer was in, then magnanimously grant Will permission to court the new object of his desire. That solid bear-like paw went somewhere else. It shot above the claw-footed coffee table that stood between them, grabbed Will by the back of his collar and lifted him off the ground as if he was a side of beef in a refrigerated warehouse. Hoisted above the wide antique walnut floorboards, Will stretched his toes downwards and just managed to reach the ground, enabling him to tiptoe under forcible direction to the front door rather than suffer the ignominy of be carried all the way there. At the portal, one giant arm flung the door wide open while the other crane-like upper limb winched Will into the air and catapulted him onto the paved front yard like a plague-ridden corpse slung over a besieged city wall by a trebuchet.

If you ever go even anywhere near either of my daughters, ever again, I’ll fucking kill you, you miserable little fucker, the girls’ father bellowed, showering his cowering victim with spittle like a venomous serpent spraying its prey. Stunned Will had never heard him use even mild expletives before.

After issuing his warning, the agitated colossus retreated into the shadows and slammed the door to behind him. Will, his left knee badly grazed and his jeans ripped at the same point by the impact, limped sorrowfully off. As he approached the stone gargoyles, the sneering one whose chiselled face he’d winced at hundreds of times before, seemed to have changed its expression to a supercilious grin. He shuffled past and gingerly stepped onto the pavement from where the previously blank staring organs of the other troll had become the bulbous eyeballs of a demonic laughing policeman. Knowing he was out of sight of the angry old man, Will walked towards the mocking big-haired abomination and whispered into its clumpy cauliflower ears, I’ll fucking shag her anyway you crusty old wanker. See if you can shitting stop me.

Apart from the driver and one passenger, the night bus that pulled-up in front of the sorrowful vomit-coated sound engineer later that night was uncharacteristically empty. Night buses during the anti-social hours are usually dragnets to all the human flotsam and jetsam that waves of hedonistic excess wash up onto the deserted city streets. The driver, a podgy Shockheaded Peter in his mid-fifties, gave Will a shifty smile as he fumbled for his bus pass and gormlessly held it up for inspection. The heavy-headed, reeking bachelor expected to be given a hard time about the state of his clothes, a lecture about not being allowed on if he was still feeling sick, or at least a deeply disapproving look. He got instead an angled upward nod that invited him to take a seat. In his condition, the nearest seat to the front would have been the obvious choice. But the driver’s appearance and demeanour unsettled him. His smile was a little too encouraging, self-satisfied even. He had the air of a permanent night-shift worker whose distorted view of humanity might cause him to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. Keen to put some distance between himself and the wide-eyed driver, Will progressed up the aisle, head bowed, seeking somewhere to sit.

Right in the middle of the bus was another shady looking character, a passenger. He was tall, gaunt and grubby with a rotten set of teeth that he menacingly displayed when Will looked in his direction. His long scrawny arms stretched along the back of and behind his seat, and his skeletal legs stuck out into the aisle. Will suspected this dodgy-looking geezer was a crack head on his way to meet an out of town drug dealer. Not wanting to be anywhere near either the dishevelled coachman or this menacing fugitive, Will headed for the end of the bus, having to step over his ghoulish fellow passenger’s ankles en route. He stumbled his way to the rear, using the fixed handles on the back of each seat to remain upright as he made his way there. His progress was slow and awkward, like that of a sloth that has been shot with an anaesthetic dart, attempting to escape zoologists along an uneven jungle floor laced with trip wires.

As he bumbled down the aisle, most drivers would have made sport by pulling sharply away, sending a stupefied customer crashing to the floor. This one didn’t. He patiently waited as Will staggered, eyes fixed on the comfortable-looking back seat that he fancied as his sanctuary. When he reached it, using the chair handles in front as supports, he turned. As he did so, he allowed himself to smile for the first time since landing on the hard slabs outside Nicole’s family home and being warned off by her cursing father. Convinced things would start to get better from that moment on, Will began to lower his sorry arse down and the whole cushion section behind him flipped upwards like the upper jaw of a wide-mouthed crocodile. Underneath was a rectangular chasm the size of a gravedigger’s pit. Will began falling backwards into the void until fear enabled him to save himself by clinging onto the back-of-the-seat handles in front. In response, a foot-wide leathery tongue half the length of the vehicle shot out from within the hollow. It wrapped around Will’s midriff, gripped him tight then dragged him down inside the belly of the bus. In an instant he was gone and the back seat cushion section snapped shut behind him. If he screamed, no one would have known, the lagged bowls of the demonic charabanc were capable of absorbing any noise he might have made. As it pulled away, advancing into the mist, the only discernable sound was that of its engine – which sounded very much like the contented purring of a monstrous mechanical feline.

***~~~***

An Old Relation

Great Aunt Agnes got on at Pimlico. She plonked herself down and faced front like a well-behaved schoolgirl. In Pompeii’s ashes. Her swollen, black leather handbag rested on her lap. Squat and flat underneath, no amount of carriage rattling could have dislodged that overfilled matronly holdall. Nevertheless, she held onto its stiff upright handles like a rally car driver gripping a steering wheel.

Agnes was wearing her only winter coat; a thick, beige, windproof garment produced specifically for pensioners. At the neckline I could see that, as usual, she was dressed neck-to-knee in readiness for a chance meeting with royalty. But her lower legs revealed her common heritage. She was wearing tights so thick they hid any hint of skin tone. Thick tights had saved her parents the expense of providing their daughter with both winter and summer outfits. It was early September. And her parents had long departed.

As much as she meant to me, I hoped the old dear hadn’t seen me. I was physically and psychologically ill equipped for a family reunion. Substances taken the night before (alcohol, nicotine, Columbian Viagra) had turned me