by Irvine Welsh
I would until recently, have unreservedly chosen the latter, only now, it's not my fantasy world. I now have as little control down there as I did in the real world . . .
— Hiya Raw-oy . . .
The dull, nasal tones tell me that my sister Kim is visiting me. I can expect a monologue concerning some guy; it'll consist of either unrealistic, unbounded optimism, or be a sorry tale of woe, but it'll be delivered in the same sick, bleating voice.
—Ah'm seein this newfelly n eh'sa wee bit aulder n it's likesay eh's mairried n eh's goat two bairns bit it's likesay eh's gaunny leave hur cause it's likesay eh disnae really love hur any mair n it's like, eh loves me nown wir gaunny git a flat somewhair . . .
Yeah yeah yeah
— . . . wi him huvin the mortgage n the bairns n wi his responsible position in the civil service n aw eh sais
Get a fuckin brain, ya daft sow
— . . . bit ah'm like, still sortay seein Kevin n aw, well no really seein urn bit wi met it The Edge n ah wis a bit drunk n a really only went back tae his place tae see this leather jaykit thit eh goat bit one thing sortay jist led tae anothir n ah jist sortay ended up steyin the night, ken wi Kevin likes. . . it wis jist like ah kinday felt sorry fir urn bit ah sais dinnae think thit this is sortay like us gaun back oot thegither cause it's no, cause ah've goat a new felly now . . .bit the thing is. Roy, ken it's like ah've sortay missed another period again n ah dinnae ken if ah'm, well, ken, that wey, n if aham whae's it is ken, Roy? Cause ah've been wi Kevin n the new felly, bit thir wis this other laddie ah met one night it Buster's n we went back tae his fir a perty so ah'm no really sure . . . bit that's jist sayin like, that's jist supposin ah am . . .
You undoubtedly are, you daft cunt. Is it Tony's mutant bastard you're carrying again, Kim? You fuckin stupid sow. The budget room, I'll fuckin well bet. Standing up or on Tony's pish-saturated mattress . . . the smell of rubbish . . . the flies . . .
— . . . the bairn's daein fine though, Roy. Kevin's Ma's goat him the now, jist fir the weekend, cause as ah sais tae Ma, it's likesay Kevin's Ma n that are entitled tae see the bairn . . .
Kevin. Kevin Scott. Poor fuckin doss cunt Kevin. Mairrays intae the Strangs. What a total fuckin radge of the highest order.
Clickity click, clickity click . . .
Somebody's coming, Kim. I can sense them. Yes, I can hear those nursey shoes clacking on the lino.
— Hello . . . sorry, we're going to have to disturb you while we see to Roy.
— Aw that's awright, ah wis jist talkin tae um aboot some things . . .
Kim's fuckin verbal equivalent of the Chinese water torture is interrupted by Nurse Patsy DeCline, who has come to give me a good seeing to. Just as well: I'm too tired and too frightened to even try to hunt the Stork just now. The whole thing is becoming far too draining. It's too much, all this bullshit, just too much. But I have to see it through. I'll just sit here on my little ledge, recoup my strength, work up the bottle, and then it's back to the fray.
13 Marabou Stork Hunting
Damn and fucking well blast this shit . . .
There's something in my throat. I try to scream from the narrow alleyway in the festering slum town but the words seem to be stuck. This confounded throat!
The cornered Stork has a bundle in its mouth. It's not going to go down without a fight. Then it mumbles something as it springs to life and stampedes past us, but Sandy fells it with a powerful sliding tackle. As the beast's thin legs buckle and loose feathers fly, Jamieson springs to his feet and swings around, his palms outstretched, with an innocent expression on his face. The Stork is rising behind him.
— Play to the whistle, Sandy! No foul! I yelled. This is SFA rules and we are wearing the blue shirts.
As Jamieson turned, the Stork, which was well over six-foot tall, jabbed at his shoulder with its massive beak. Sandy screamed in pain and fell backwards. I drew my machete and advanced, but the creature turned and ran; flapping its great wings which spanned the alley, building up speed and managing to take off, rising slowly out of the close and into the main street, where it narrowly cleared a bus, before vanishing over the rooftops.
To our great fortune, the beast had dropped its cargo. Approaching with caution, I picked up and tentatively unwrapped the bundle to reveal a foetus, the size of my hand, bloody and prawn-like.—We have to put this devil-child under the sword, Sandy, I said. I took my machete and thought about who, or what, could have spawned such a thing. It had a large head which twisted inwards from the forehead to squashed features, curving out to a big, flat chin. It looked at me in a pleading kind of way, softly shrieking.
I didn't have the heart to machete it. Instead I put it on the ground and recovered the jeep. Reversing into the alley, I backed over the bundle not once, not twice, but three times. There was a squidging sound and I left the vehicle to examine the flattened package which now oozed a dark liquid.
— Whatever you do Sandy, don't look.
It was not a baby. It was
DEEPER
DEEPER
DEEPER– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Deeper into shark-infested waters. What the fuck are we doing here? Sandy seems reluctant to put on the scuba gear as we take our boat out along the coastline, determined to enter the Emerald Forest Park by another route. Our efforts to locate the beast's nest on the shores of Lake Torto had proved fruitless. The creature could always spy our approach and move the site of its nest accordingly.
Ghostie had the Evening News coming round to talk about his life as a casual. He sent a couple of the baby crew out to Thins and Waterstones to shoplift some guerrilla warfare and military strategy books. They came back with a big pile; Che Guevara, Liddle Hart, Moshisma, all that stuff.
— Goat tae gie the media the right impression, he smiled. — Wind the daft cunts up tae fuck.
He made sure he had the mobile phones ready, out on display. We started using the mobiles just to keep track of where the other crews were heading, but in reality, the thick cunts were so predictable as to reduce the exercise to pure self-indulgence on our part. The sheepshaggers we had a bit of respect for, but the soapdodgers were just as dense as fuck. The hun soapdodgers had even taken tae getting English cunts up to try and give them some sort of organisation. If you had a bunch of Weedgies stranded on a small desert island, they wouldnae be able tae organise a fuckin trip tae the beach.
Fuck.
Fuck . . . where am I here? The sea. The beach. The organisational skills of the Marabou Stork.
STICK TO THE FUCKIN STORY, ROY, YOU STUPID CUNT.
— These waters are infected by sharks, Sandy said, still reluctant to don the scuba equipment and dive. I had anchored on the edge of the reef and it was a short swim to the shore, but I could smell the fear from Sandy.
— Infested with sharks is what I think you mean, Sandy, I corrected, then I began to wonder. — Maybe the term infected also has relevance.
— I want you to know that I'm a professional sportsman and, as such, do not use drugs. I certainly don't share needles and I practise safe sex. I am not HIV. This is so as we know where each other are coming from, okay?
— As you prefer, Sandy.
— I didn't hunt any lions either Roy, that was just bullshit, he sneered.
I am losing it badly in here. Losing as much as I did on the outside. In a strange split second I am back in the alley and the praying mantis is there, the one with the blonde wig and the lipstick on its insect jaws and it is holding up a red card. Sandy throws off his strip, close to tears, and exits the alley, comforted by Diddy, with Dawson shaking his head in disgust. The mantis is writing his name in a black notebook, which bears the title: YOUTH IN ASIA. Then l feel the spray in my face and we are back on the ocean.
We struggled into our gear, preparing for our dive into the clear, light-blue water of the reef. We would make our way
to the shoreline and our alternative point of entry to the Emerald Forest. It was a risky strategy, as it limited us to the hardware we could carry.
I'm not feeling well here; there's a ringing in my ears and a strange, sterile smell in my nostrils. The smell of hosp. . . no fuck it, I'm in control here, I'm in control. Sandy's okay again, he's my mate, my guide. Me and Sandy, we're hunters. We're the good guys in this.
Then Sandy said something which tightened my stomach and sphincter muscles and made my pulse race. As we prepared to dive from starboard side he looked at me and smiled, — We're going in at the away end.
14 Winners
And Losers
If my auld boy found out that it was me who fucked over Winston Two, the cunt would have killed me. He was even more protective of the beast in its injured state, and he seldom let it out of his sight. Winston wore one of these cone things around his head; to stop the daft cunt from scratching at his wounds with his paws. In the wild the beast would have died. I was all for nature.
Despite Winston Two's suffering, I was disappointed at the outcome. I wanted Winston Two offed for good. To merely mutilate him as he had done to me was not enough. My initial remorse at what I'd done had quickly evaporated and I had to get him once and for all. What made me decide to go for the cunt was this lassie I was shagging.
Julie Sinclair was her name. She steyed up in Drylaw wi her Ma and her sister. She wisnae a bad ride as I recall, and I used tae fuck her in her bedroom then stick aroond and watch the telly wi her and her Ma. I used to sometimes fantasise, no really seriously, just idly likes, about giving her Ma and her sister one as well. Basically, though, I just liked it up at her hoose because you could watch the box in peace.
I didnae have any strong feelings for Julie, but I respected her. She just wanted fucked and went for it in a big way, but she was always in control, you never got intae her heid. That suited ays though; I wisnae bothered aboot getting into her heid and she wisnae clingy like some slags. Anywey, eftir ah'd fucked her one time she asked me aboot the scars oan ma leg. That was what set me thinking about Winston Two again. I remembered how much I hated that monster, and the fuckin family who revered him. I still had my fireworks.
Shagging Julie always made me think of Cramond Island, cause that was where I'd first got intae her. Cramond Island is a small island less than a mile out in the Forth Estuary. You can walk out to it at certain times, before the incoming tide cuts it off from the mainland. There's fuck all to see over there, just a few old pill-boxes from World War Two, full ay beer cans and used condoms.
It was a common tactic of local guys to take lassies over to the island then wait until the tide came in soas that they'd have to spend the night there. Tony told me all about it. I seldom mucked aroond wi Bri and that crowd now that I was a top boy, but one time Bri and I went oot wi Julie and her mate and got 'stranded' on the island and ended up riding them.
That was where I was headed with Winston Two.
I had fortunately accumulated a great deal of flexi-time at my work; I'd been showing the daft cunts in one of the offices how to operate this new set of mainframe computerised procedures I'd installed. My eyes were stinging from constant exposure to the VDU and an eye-test revealed that I needed glasses. There was no way that ah was gaunny be a specky cunt though. Not only would it have been something else to be self-conscious about, I would have looked the spit of my auld boy.
Fuck that for a game ay sodjirs.
I got contact lenses fitted.
The day I took time off to get the lenses sorted out, I decided to go back hame and get Winston Two. I hadn't told anyone that I was taking the day off, and I made sure that nobody, except Winners, would be home.
We walked through the scheme and crossed over by the golf course, passing the Commodore Hotel and going down the esplanade onto the foreshore. I had a large spade I'd bought from B&Q, its head wrapped up in a carrier bag. I felt a little sad when I looked at the dog with the plastic bucket on his head. It was no life for an animal. I began to think of Winston Two as a puppy, and now as a loyal chum. It might have stopped me had the whistling east wind from the north sea not cut through me, particularly stinging my old scar tissue as it swept down the Forth Estuary.
I had my spade, I had my bucket and here I was at the seaside.
It was still quite early, an autumn morning, and Silverknowes beach and the foreshore were deserted. The tide was going out.
I marched Winston Two over to the island, his paws making indentations in the soft sand. The human footprints and the paw prints would soon be washed away.
We reached the island and I tied the dog up to a rusty hook which conveniently jutted from the side of a concrete pillbox.
The bleak wind whistled around us as I removed Winston's cone and taped an assortment of fireworks to his stitched-up face. I bound them tightly around his head with plastic masking tape then put the cone, attached by a separate collar, back onto the beast. I heard him make those almost-empty-Squeezy-bottle noises dugs make when they're shitein it.
As Winston Two struggled, I saw a small bird land on top of the pillbox. It was a robin, that early symbol of Christianity . . .
. . . I thought for a second or two about the meaning of this, about turning the other cheek and Christian forgiveness and all that sort of shite. But nobody believed in that crap anymair. It was you against the world, every cunt knew that: the Government even said it. The wind seared through my denims, stinging my scar tissue again. No, Winston had to go. In Christian terms this was a just war . . .
. . . I looked at the dog for a bit, just looked at him straight on. He was strange; one eye gleaming from the mess of masking tape and coloured cardboard tubes secured to his face, framed by the plastic cone. The funny thing was, he had now stopped that fetching but futile scrape with his front paws and was now just lying down on his side, panting softly.
He seemed almost contented.
My boot cracked heavily on the schemie fashion-accessory's fur-lined rib cage . . .
JUST WHAIR AH WANTED YE CHILD-KILLING CUNT THAT YE ARE ME FUCKIN SCARRED AND CRIPPLED FOR LIFE
DINNAE HURT WINSTON DINNAE TELL THEM IT WAS WINSTON
FUCK YOU FAITHER FUCK YOU DUG SHOULD HAVE BEEN DESTROYED IS THAT HOW MUCH AH WIS WORTH, HOW MUCH AH WIS VALUED?
DESTROY
DESTROY
Winners. . . Winners . . .
here boy
here boy
Wots wong bwoy? Huh bwoy? Winners my woyal fwend . . .
I lit a couple of fireworks where the blue touchpaper was exposed around his face and, following the instructions for safety, stood well back. Winston Two unfortunately chose to disregard the instructions.
THAT WAS CWUMBSY OF YOU BWOY
There was a small explosion, and a splatter of red blood discoloured the clear plastic cone. The dog struggled but was silent. I was trying to work out what was happening and went closer when a screaming rocket shot a sparky orange trail out from Winston Two's face . . .
. . . it was like Krypto, Superboy's dug . . . the dug had heat vision . . . he should have let me put that cape on him . . .
. . . Winston Two thrashed blindly against the leash . . .
. . . then there was a larger explosion and the dog just toppled over as bits of charred flesh and blood shot out of the cone. I winced and moved out of the wind as I caught the scent of an almost overpowering smell; fainter, though, somehow different from Gordon's. Worried at the noise, I looked over to the mainland, but the foreshore was empty. On the other side there was a small fishing boat, but it was too far away, over by the Fife coast.
It was like Winston Two had no head at all; just a large, black, charred cinder in a wrap-round piece of melting plastic.
Who did this tae ye Winston, eh boy?
Show me boy
Show me who it was
Winners
Winners
Who do'ed it?
Who do'ed dat to Winalot?
Tell us wh
o it was, boy
Tell us
Winners Winners
Winalot
Winners Winners
what you got
Winners Winners Winners.
Loser.
Who do'ed it?
But you can't tell
and that is
just too bad for you
you silly cunt.
I whistled Roy Rodgers' 'A Four-Legged Friend' as I dragged the corpse of the dog, stinking and smoking at one end, across to the other side of the island, the side invisible from the Edinburgh coast. I pulled the body down onto the wet sand and started digging with my spade. I removed the round metal tag with WINSTON on it, and the address overleaf. What was it that the auld boy said about the dug's namesake: in a war ye dinnae have tae be nice, ye just have tae be right.
I looked at the hole I'd dug and cast my eye over the body, before glancing across at the Fife coast. The tide would be in soon. I almost shat myself as I heard a shuffling noise and looked down to see the body of the beast shaking violently. Without thinking I kicked it into the hole and started shovelling the sand over it. Some of the sand was instantly displaced, but I kept shovelling and the movement subsided and the struggle seemed to cease.
I climbed back to a vantage point and watched the tide come in, lapping up to the edge of the island, covering Winston Two's grave, then I ran over to the foreshore side. I had to move swiftly to avoid being cut off as the water started to cover the uneven shelves of sand around the island.
I slung my spade in the woods by the River Almond, which reached the Forth estuary at the old Cramond village. Then I went for a coffee at the small cafe in the village. An old biddy came in with a yappy wee dug, one of these wee bits of fluff on a string. The animal sniffed at me and I patted it indulgently. — I love dogs, I told the wifie.