The Long Slog Back

By Jonathan Antony Strickland

On a dark lonely night, a young lad, having missed his taxi, walks home after a night out with his mate. During the long slog back to Tremwell from Durham he encounters a girl in a pink dress in very unusual circumstances. However, after an awkward introduction the two hit it off and decide on trekking back together.

Things are going well for the young lad but there is something odd about the girl that he can’t quite put his finger on. However, with a belly full of beer and his bonny companion to keep him company he puts all other thoughts from his mind. That is until he realises what is actually wrong with her. The question he has to ask himself now is what is he holding hands with, and can he keep his nerve as the pair stroll along hand in hand.

This is just the start of the mystery.

......

If you read this story, any constructive feedback (be it good or bad) is most welcome.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Antony Strickland
• Release date: Oct 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310045172

Jonathan Antony Strickland

You really want me to reveal personal information here?O.K then... here's some stuff you might (or might not) like to know about me!Well for starters you can contact me on [e-mail] Hobbies:1_Are you bored. Then do what I do. Take off all your clothes and paint your face and arse bright blue. Then run outside and shout abuse at passers-by... passes the time if nothing else!2_Managed 18 keepy ups with ye old pigs bladder once....What's that you say? Not that impressive! Well... what I failed to tell you was that the pigs bladder that I did the 18 keepy ups with, was still inside the pig!3_Not pissing on the evil that is Milthy Swinebuckle, if he were ever to catch fire4_Scratching my arse!5_Watching Milthy get his arse kicked by a three legged tortoise...HA !!!6_Scratching my arse and..oh wait I've already said that! Ah, what the hell. It's a good one so I'll say it again.7_???? **** ???? with **** then ?*?*!8_Wondering what I'm doing during hobby seven?MY most prized possession: Hitler's missing left testicle (NOT FOR SALE).My most famous quotes:1_A step in the right direction can still mean the death of an ant!2_I look down on almost everybody...although come to think about it, it's probably because I do climb a lot of trees!3_You know that poem "if", what a load of crap. Kipling got it all wrong. What he should have said was "If you can portray the ideas you get to a sober man (no matter how shite though's ideas may be), and keep a straight face. Then you'll be a man MA SON!4_HMMMMMM........I think I'll eat my socks!5_MMMMM.......cheese and onion flavour .........NNNNIIIICCCCEEE!!!!6_Ignore the above quote's and instead just read and live your life by number 7.7 As far as I'm concerned you should not judge a fellow person on their looks, sex, race or beliefs. There are only two types of people: 1_Everyday ordinary people who just want to get on with their lives and not bother anybody else...2_The preachers, the arseholes and the gobshites, who want to tell you what to do, what you should be doing and how you should be doing it.My favourite words:...knickers, bra's, boobs, bums, knockers, shit, shite, bollicks, twat, boobs (such a good word it needed to be said twice), gussets, stains, ugabalooga, randy, stodgeflaps, fgkgkujhghrewh, and TURD!!! That's TURD... Got it? No? Then I'll say it again, just in case you missed it...T.U.R.DMy Arch Enemies:1_Milthy Swinebuckle....Beware he who sneaks, creeps, squawks and chortles. He who goes by many names. Names such as... Archibald Stott, Feagus the mostly squidgy, Terrance the quite nasty tormentor etc... but to me he will always be Milthy Swinebuckle (or if I meet him face to face... ARSEWIPE!)2_Mr.Hairy Monkfish... Swinebuckle's main henchman (and suspected bumchum)3_Randy Stodgeflaps... not much to say about this guy except he is one of Swinebuckle's best mates and a bit of a ballbag!Charity work.....Milthy Swinebuckle has been infected with writers tourettes. Only I can help him. I really hope I don't catch it though, as every few words he writes he can't stop himself writing words like..."KNICKERS" or "ARSE" or some other filth! It takes him a good twenty minutes to write and edit a single sentence. I really "NADS" feel sorry "BOOBS" for the "GUSSETS" poor guy......"B...BB...BBB BOTOMSSS, ARSEHOLES, PANTS,......Oh bugger!"PS: Does anyone actually read any of this personal information shit?

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The Long Slog Back

by: Jonathan Antony Strickland

Through the light breeze and cold dark night, senseless questions raged. And mixed up within these questions were incomplete sentence's, words and pictures too distorted and grey to make any sense of. All these things swam through the night's air with the same kind of ferocity a shark can possess when it has sensed a helpless prey struggling close by and makes ready for the kill.

For far too long had its mind been shrouded in a network of past images, made from old memories that spilled out of a brain, ripped and torn to shreds, until only a deep and bitter madness made it function at all.

It had not always been this way though; for once the brain had functioned strong and true. Clear in thought, sharp in response, deadly in action. Now however, things were a lot different. Even on the first night of the first month did the brain struggle with it's one and only purpose. Trying desperately to remember what drove it, what had made it the way it was, until at last a clear picture would form. The picture of the girl in the pink dress. And although the brain had forgotten it's true reason, on this night (the first night of the month) things would always became clearer, though never ever revealing all but giving it something of a memory nonetheless. And brushing aside some of the cobwebs that covered its age old thoughts of a past long since forgotten, it knew that at all costs the girl in the pink dress MUST BE STOPPED!

...............

PART 1

THE DAME, THE DEMON, AND THE DICKHEAD

...Galileo Figaro, Magnifico O O O O O O, I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me..., sang Ned Fragillpot in his head as he took step after swaggering step down the long badly lit road. Yep, for young Ned it had been a good night indeed in the city of Durham, helping his best mate Richard Pontopping celebrate his 21st birthday party.

Then again, every night was a good night when him and Rich got together for a good old booze up. Rich and Ned had been friends for as long as the pair could remember, though their parents claimed that they’d first met in 84, aged four, when each had started nursery school. Since the two families lived close to one another the two young lads played regularly together, becoming best friends in no time at all. In this adolescent period they’d play all types of boyish games together, which to the two young lads always seemed to involve crazy bone shattering stunts not for the faint of heart, though in reality they mainly ended in little injury with the odd knee or elbow being mercilessly stripped of skin. They learnt to swear, sharing any new word (even if the meaning at the time was not clear) with each other and having deep psychological discussions on subjects ranging from how to send a rocket to the moon and just what made girls and really brainy lads so crap at football.

Insane bets and daredevil dares that could involve cruel boyish pranks on other kids, adults, or even on occasion one another, were also a favourite pastime for the two young scoundrels. In fact, still to this day would Rich take great pleasure in bragging to anyone who brought up old childhood stories (a common occurrence shared in all pubs when old familiar drunken heads get back together and remember the innocent days when childhood dreaming seemed forever) of how he'd tricked his best mate on his seventh birthday to eat seven magical sweets. And how Ned's poor mother and father had panicked when the young lad had arrived back from playtime with a face swelled up like a giant red balloon. Rich would also brag about how they’d never got him to tell what the magic sweets had actually been that he'd used to trick poor young Ned into eating. And that was even after stinky Sue (who had been playing close by at the time) had claimed to have seen on that very day, young Richy capturing honey bees in a jam-jar.

As they’d grown up, and boy had slowly turned to man, the silly pranks and japes had lessened, instead to be replaced with smoking fags, going out on double dates with any pretty young girls they could pull, but more importantly downing pints of beer in one another’s company, then throwing up outside several hours later when each had drank his fill.

Drinking was most important of all. And if their friendship did need cementing any further (which it didn’t) it came on the night when the two had first entered into the Black Pig, a pub which would soon become their local. Here they drank their first proper pint in one another’s company. A once in a lifetime experience, an experience that would make them beer-brothers forever.

Were the hell had that shithead buggered off to! thought Ned, remembering seeing Rich last on the disco floor, dancing like a wild one while simultaneously trying to cop off with a buxom brunette who looked old enough to be his mother.

Dirty useless bastard, bet he’ll regret it in the morning though the filthy sod, Ned thought with a half turned smile on his face. The annoying thing for Ned was that he'd planned to get a taxi back with Rich later in the night having missed the last bus by several hours and only having enough change left in his wallet from the nights beer guzzling exploits to get him a kick up the arse and a slap in the mouth from a pissed off driver who'd want ten times the amount to travel back to his home town.

Tremwell, nine and a half miles out from Durham, and without the money to get his self back to it, Ned found himself walking the long slog back.

It was not the first time Ned had walked back from Durham. In fact in the last six months he'd probably walked it four or five times under similar circumstances, though always with Rich who'd be as skint as him at the end of a nights good drinking.

Still, with a belly full of beer the walk never seemed that bad. Though he'd miss the pointless conversation from Rich which could involve anything from alien invaders to chimpanzees with aluminous purple arseholes that Richy would have read something about in that magazine he'd always take far too seriously.

Ned tried to remember the name of the mag as his shoes kicked up small clouds of dirt and a light breeze flowed at a steady pace through the cold night's air making bushes and trees rustle their leaves on the edge of the road side.

Strange and Unusual Investigations, or some-it of the sort, he said out loud remembering something of the title of the magazine. It didn’t matter anyway, and soon his thoughts began to drift in totally different directions before he once again went back to singing a song in his head to pass some more time.

...............

Ned had been walking nearly half an hour now and he was beginning to get hungry. Not only that but a familiar pain in both feet was starting. He knew from past experience that the cause of the pain was brought on by his best pair of super shiny black polished nightclubbing shoes that were designed to catch the eyes of lovely ladies and not for trekking miles down hard concrete paths in the middle of the night. But as he marched quickly along he suddenly remembered the small amount of loose change still in his pocket as it beat out a tireless (almost indiscernible) jingle. He knew that another ten more minutes walking would bring him to that old dusty garage that seemed strange and spooky on the outside (what with it being situated in the middle of nowhere in particular) but on the inside it was another story, for on the inside cheap tasty crisps could be obtained, and best of all, large chunky king size snickers which only this night Ned had proclaimed king of the chocolate bars, beating down the pathetic argument Rich had put forward that the sad and miserable king size mars was the daddy for true chocoholics. The very idea!