Short stories:
Introduction
Noang lish
Hero
Lose-lose
So low, so high
WeighTWATcherS
Multi-storey
Apt pupil
One flew over the policeman’s bonnet
Win-win
Inside I’m dancing
Also by Pete Sortwell (Book samples)
-- The Village Idiot Reviews
-- The Office Idiot Reviews
-- The Idiot Government Reviews
-- The Complete Idiot Reviews Box Set
-- More Village Idiot Reviews
-- Dating In the Dark: Sometimes Love Just Pretends To Be Blind
-- Bride and Gloom: Sometimes Love Is Better Off Blind
-- The Diary of an Expectant Father
-- The Diary of a Hapless Father
Contact Pete
Noang lish
Lightship Publishing competition winner 2011
This ain’t a bad job really, I get to sit on my sleeping bag all day. Except for getting up and flicking a few switches every six hours. They say after I have done six cycles of the crop I’ll have paid my way, then I’ll be taken off to the nearest local authority and dropped off. From there it’s easy street for me, free house, money from the government, more if I say I am a child and disabled. I have a script.
‘Ah yam sik steen noang lish chile, chile.’
Quang, the man who collected me, told me this, says he has done it loads of times. It’s his job. A few of my friends have done this and told me it is a good way to get out of the country and start looking out for the elders that are stuck there. Mother was sad to see me go but Father looked at me like a man when I told him of my decision to go. Quang promised my mother I would be looked after. We shared a joke at how silly the rich country was, just giving money away. I know it is naughty to be doing it, but Quang says there is very little chance of getting caught. Quang said the police here even feed you. I know the English word for police.
There is everything to gain. It will save them taking my sister, too, she does not want to leave and I am scared they will hurt her.
The stuff I have to grow really smells. Makes me feel funny, too. I have put a sheet up over the door of the small room where I rest between turning these huge fans and funny shaped lights on and off. I only get three hours sleep at a time as the four rooms of the place have different rules on when I need to change the settings. It takes about half an hour to do it all then I go and sit back on my sleeping bag and put the sheet up.
The men that picked me up from Mum and Dad’s house were friendly and nice. They brought me cigarettes and chocolate for the journey. The men that picked me up from here were not so nice and one just shouted at me. A Vietnamese man explained my job and the rules. I must not to go out of the place, I must not to write anything down, I must remember the timings of the lighting, and I must practise my script in English. He was not as nice as the men in Vietnam.
The only time people come to the house is at night, every few weeks. I never know when they are coming exactly, but it is after I have bagged up the latest crop. I get jumpy at any noises in the night. Just in case it’s them. They don’t speak to me nicely like Quang said they would.
I get hungry often. The plants here can be eaten, but I always sleep more when I do that. I eat tins of food that the men bring. I don’t like being here, but I need to provide for my family, they are good people.
I think about them a lot.
I was thinking about them today, actually, when there was banging downstairs then lots of men came in screaming. I was so frightened, until I heard the words I understood.
‘Police! Police!’
I only know one thing to say to them.
‘Ah yam sik steen noang lish chile chile.’
Hero
First published in True Brit Grit
In my area we have this little corner shop cum Post Office, you know the one, where the local centre it's in used to have separate shops for everything – a butcher’s, newsagent, grocer, Post Office and pub. Then Tesco came along and wiped out most small businesses in a thirty mile radius, like some kind of nuclear blast. These areas then shut everything except one shop. If they were really lucky then they got left with a shop and a pub. So the ‘local shop’ was born – a scaled down supermarket with higher prices, but a free funny smell. Some of them, like the one I was in, had little wooden shacks erected inside to act as Post Offices to dish out the dole money and pensions to the local workshy and coffin dodgers.
I’m just a regular working guy, skint like everyone else at the moment; I don’t earn much and they cut my hours at the factory. About a year ago I’m stood in the queue for the Post Office waiting to send off some of my unwanted tat to some idiot off the Internet, minding my own, being patient, tasting the air, that sort of thing, when in comes some trampy looking guy from the estate. Simon’s his name. He lives in the flats near the main road – everyone knows him. He's one of the local smackheads.
First of all he just goes behind the counter and starts necking the vodka off the shelf until Devina, the owner, manages to keep some of her stock by pushing him to the floor. I’m just watching the show at this point, not getting involved. Simon starts shouting up from the floor that his back and neck hurt, Devina’s claiming she never pushed him. Before we can all get our stories straight, two young scoundrels from the estate run in and go straight behind the counter and reach around the back of the tills and pop the drawer open.
Sneaky fuckers, I think to myself, where’d they learn how to do things like that? I’ve never seen it on the TV.
Simon is still on the floor and as Devina heads for the lads, he grabs her legs. It don’t matter anyway as they’ve emptied the tills of all the notes and are heading over towards the Post Office lean-to, the bigger of the two just does a running jump at the door of the structure, shaking it like jelly. There's a lot of panicking in the queue; the woman in front of me starts crying and the woman in front of her is looking to the ceiling and praying in a language which isn't one of the two I speak, English or Bullshit.
I’m a little scared, to be completely honest. I challenge any man reading this to say he wouldn't be with all the banging, shouting and panic going on around him.
The first thought that goes through my mind is run, sod everyone else and just look after number one, but something inside me stops me and my ego kicks in. I've always wanted to be someone. Not super rich or harassed in the street, famous or anything, just … someone, you know? Have people nod at you out of respect, talk about you in a nice, respectful way when you're out the room, remember you when you’re gone, that sort of thing. That’s probably why I did what I did, why I risked being on this earth, why I risked never seeing my mum again, never feeling the joy that being a father brings, never being able to shout abuse randomly and without retribution in the street as a pensioner.
I check the door; there’s no other members of this outfit blocking the exit. Then something inside me, call it bravery or stupidity, makes me dig my heels in against my original plan of leaving the pool of crying grannies to it. I look about for a weapon. ‘Ah ha,’ I say excitedly and grab a tin of mixed veg.
Before I know what I'm doing I’ve hurled the bomb of canned goods at the two likely lads, who are kicking the door and screaming at Devina’s husband, Tufan, on the other side to ‘Open the fucking door, you cunt.’
The tins miss, but pound against the thick plastic front and make the lads turn their attention disorders towards me.
'You fucking want some, mate?' the ginger one with the lame eye shouts across.
'Err,' I reply. I mean what do you say to that? In that situation! It’s gotta be only nutters that turn round and say ‘Yeah, alright mate, I’ll have some.’ It just sounds bent.
‘You’re not my type,’ I shout back, launching a few more tins, all of which miss. They cause the rest of the people standing in front of me to drop to the floor as the
lads start hurling them back, knocking things off the shelves all around us.
‘Stop it,’ one older lady, scared out her wits, says from near my feet.
Just then one of their cans catches me right between the tit and shoulder blade. Arrrgh! That fucking smarts.
It isn't my throwing arm, though, so I just continue to belt tins at the two perps.
It seems all their attention is now focused on taking me down now, rather than kicking fuck out of the poor excuse for a Post Office employee.
'Yea blud, you step to us you’re gunna get messed up,’ the boss-eyed one shouts at me.
The cock behind starts heading my way. ‘You want some? You fucking want some?’ he says, moving forward with his arms outstretched, leaving himself wide open and much closer.
WHACK! A tin smacks him right on the forehead and he goes down.
'Aha! Got him!' I yell, forgetting I am in the middle of a robbery and not at a funfair.
I feel like doing a little dance and picking the granny up off the floor in front of me and kissing her in celebration. My elation is short-lived, though, as I feel an almighty pain in my right ankle. I look down and Simon is fucking biting me. Arrrrgh!
'Get off, you stinking junkie,' I shout down at him. He doesn't listen, so is rewarded with not one, but two, tins to the side of the face, leaving him out cold, bleeding on the floor next to the granny.
I look up and the other assailant is just standing like a rabbit in the headlights. I'm weighing up what to do now, sit down and cry from the pain in my leg or just keep pelting these tin grenades. I choose the latter and just keep hurling them; BANG BANG BANG they go, as they all miss and hit the Perspex safety glass. They are having the right effect, though, as he looks like he is going to cry. 'You’re out your league, son, just give it up and get on the floor,' I order him.
‘No, you'll knock me out with a can if I do that,’ he shouts back, guessing my plan.
'Well, you'll save yourself the fall, then, won't you!' I say in mocking tones as I lob one more, aiming for the Perspex this time just to create a bit more panic in him. DUFF!
'Fucking hell, mate, leave it out, I surrender, OK?'
This is where it all goes pear shaped; I show weakness, I'm not one for watching someone suffer and as I look at the fear in his eyes, I crumble inside and come down off whatever adrenaline high I’ve been on, chucking the tins.
I put the tin I’m gripping tightly in my hands down and start to approach him.
'Call the police, will you?' I shout over to Devina.
'Already pressed the button,' she replies smugly.
I approach the robber, who looks no more than sixteen. God knows what I think I’m going to do when I get there, hold him down or something, but it doesn't get that far.
I’m so pleased with myself for stopping the robbery single-handed that I don't see the knife he’s pulled out until it’s well on its way towards my gut.
I don't know why, but I put my hands over my stomach to block it. I think it was just a knee jerk reaction. The first blow hits my wrist, which makes my hands, which by now have a mind of their own, move away; I don't have time to try and shake the pain away before the next thrust gets me in the stomach. I feel an awful pain instantly.
I've seen on Crimewatch that some people think a stabbing feels just like a punch, but not in my case; it fucking hurts like a punch on the outside and a hot sharp thing cutting open my stomach lining on the inside. I start falling as soon as the knife comes out, I don't have much time to think before the next few digs go in and out my left arm.
I’m on the deck by the time the stabbing stops. I have eight wounds in total.
After the only surviving member of the gang has had it away, Devina comes over and asks me if I’m OK.
‘Not really, girl, I’m in a bad way,’ I reply. That is the last thing I remember before I black out.
The police dragged Simon and the ginger from the scene, as they hadn't stirred from their snooze by the time they'd arrived. I think Devina or Tufan had given their bollocks a good stamping while they were out cold, the court papers stated they had injuries there, too, and I know my aim with the tins wasn’t that good. Sadly.
Devina had tried her best to stop the bleeding with towels before the ambulance crew arrived, but wasn't able to stop the stomach wound and I had to take a fast trip in the back of an ambulance, which I can tell you now is not as comfortable as it looks on the TV. I lost five pints of blood that day.
I stayed in hospital for a week in total. I'm told on the first day Simon and the ginger were in the same ward, both cuffed to their beds.
It's funny, I never thought at the time I might die. I have since, though, the nightmares still scare the living shit out of me. The hospital told me it would happen, post-traumatic stress they call it.
It took six months for the case to go to court. With my statement and witness testimony and, of course the CCTV, Simon got three months, Mikey – the one who made it away – got seven for attempted robbery and attempted murder, and the ginger got four for attempted robbery.
Me? I got six months off work, post-traumatic stress, negative feedback off the buyer of the item I was posting that day, and my name remembered by Devina and her husband every time I go in their shop now.
The best thing that came out of it, though, was the newspaper article. It read:
HERO STOPS ARMED ROBBERS
Yeah, I was publicly named as a hero.
Just what I always wanted.
Lose-lose
First published at The Killing Pandemic blog
Waiting outside the court there’s been nothing on my mind more than letting the scumbag get the comeuppance he deserves. If the great British justice system can’t serve justice, I will.
I’d been inside the courtroom, of course. A two year suspended sentence he’d been given. That basically meant he wouldn’t go to prison at all for what he did. A day in court, a couple of hours in the cells, and he’s deemed to have paid his debt to society. Well, he hasn’t paid his debt to my dead wife and baby yet.
This country does nothing for the victims of crime. He chose to get behind the wheel of his motor after six pints, he chose to drive it down the high street at sixty miles an hour. No one, least of all my loved ones, chose to have a red Fiesta drive over them, causing horrific injuries.
Getting the call was one of the worst moments of my life. I can’t remember putting the phone down or leaving the office. I remember getting to the scene to find the emergency services lifting the car off my wife. There was blood everywhere. My daughter was found in someone’s garden, she died from head injuries. My wife was in such a bad state, almost cut in half. It would have been a painful death. That’s what this cunt will be getting, too. Peter Andrews, a lawyer, no less. No wonder they let him off. The judge said he’d have to suffer for the rest of his life; I don’t suppose he knew how short that would be.
I’d had the conversations with my parents, of course, they begged me not to do it and waste another life. I, of course, agreed not to, but in the back of our minds I think we all knew I was lying. Killing this guy is the only way I will die anything close to happy.
He comes out, all smiles and relief. His family in tow. This just makes me all the more angry. How dare he? I wasn’t going to do it in front of his kids, but I can’t help it. I run over from the bench I’ve been waiting on. I’ll always remember the look on his face as the broken bottle I’m holding comes towards his face. It’s a look of shock. The impact isn’t what I expected, it’s firmer; I expect the bottle to break up more, but it doesn’t, it just goes deep into his face. The plan was to pull it out, but it seems like it’ll hurt more if I leave it in. I pull the knife out my belt and go to work on the vital organ areas with that. There’s screaming and at one point a woman jumps on my back, but she’s light enough to throw off.
The police come, of course. I knew they would. Cells, court, his kids and wife looking at me, prison, Mum crying, and then numb
ness.
Killing him was easy.
It’s living with it that’s hard.
So low, so high
First published in Off the Record 1
As I’m stood up here, for a few split seconds at a time I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I’m pretty sure I am. These bastards need to learn that they can’t keep fobbing people like me off. They can’t and they won’t. It ends now. Once this hits the news, that’ll show them.
Today I was in there telling the doctor how bad things had got again. For a moment I thought he was going to help me.
‘Here, Jed, take these, you’ll feel much better.’
Brilliant, I thought, some relief from the voices and noise I can never switch off.
As I reached over to take the prescription from the Doctor, he continued.
‘They can take up to two weeks to start working.’ Then he sat back in his chair smiling like he’d actually helped me.
‘Two weeks!? TWO FUCKING WEEKS!’ I yell, standing up.
‘Please, Mr Collins, it is really effective medication,’ he starts to say, but I cut him off with more screaming and shouting.
‘You bastard doctors have no idea, DO YOU!?’
He keeps trying to butt in but I’m not having it and in the end his desk gets turned over. He must have pressed some kind of panic button because before me or the voices have planned our next move a deafening alarm is going off. So I do what I always do when I’m scared – run.
As I belt it back through the waiting room and past reception, people are bottle necking trying to get out. Old, young, women, the lot are pushed to the ground as I make my way past them and out into the car park. I can hear sirens so it’s then I decide to head up here, to the roof. By the time I've managed to clamber up, most people have gone back into the surgery. A child sees me, though, and points me out to his mum. She must have told the staff inside because within a few minutes there are nurses, doctors and the braver of the patients all in the car park, all looking up to me.
‘I’ll do it,’ I call down trying to make them scared. If this gets in the press, they’ll be sorry. They’ll have to do something other than dish out pills that don’t work, then. I can see the headlines now: MAN JUMPS FROM DOCTOR’S ROOF AFTER BEING REFUSED TREATMENT.
And it’ll serve them right.
‘Jed, come down from there, we’ll help you,’ one of the nurses calls up to me.
‘How?’ I reply, only to see her starting to confer with the doctor standing next to her. I can’t trust anyone. They’re all liars.
I can see right down the lane from here. The police and the fire brigade are heading down. The voices tell me it’s the right thing to do. So, much to the horror of everyone watching, I just jump.
The landing went as expected.
‘You must be mad,’ says the WPC as she looks down at me hanging half-in and half-out of the hedge I'd aimed to land in.
'I might be mad, but I'm not bloody stupid,' I tell her, looking back up at the single storey doctor’s surgery.
WeighTWATcherS
First published in Near To the Knuckle, Gloves Off
I always have to stand next to the weirdos, on the Tube or in the Post Office. Even if I sit on a town centre bench I’m absolutely guaranteed to get a ‘class A’ nutter introduce themselves to me and talk about their latest medication. Tonight’s no different. I’m in the queue of Weightlosswatchers, sandwiched between the two most boring people this town has ever produced, and that’s saying something. They’d give an aspirin a headache.
‘It’s ridiculous. I mean, I haven’t even got a car and they’re charging me for the whole year’s insurance,’ the guy is saying.
‘I know, they make you sign up for a whole year, how do they know that you’ll keep the car for the full year? You should be able to cancel. I agree,’ his partner in boredom tells him.
It’s all I can do to point out that most normal people don’t smash their car up on the way for secret midnight McDonald’s on third party insurance. If you’re into late night driving to feed your burger addiction, at least go for ‘fully comp’. It makes sense if you think about it.
I don’t really want to be here. I’m compelled to be, though. The missus needs me here. She isn’t even that fat. A bit porky, but nothing that calls for all this. I don’t like clubs like this. Fat clubs are just sex clubs for bloaters. They just sit around jamming health bars up each other and licking jam rings suggestively. Barry told me he’d seen it when he looked through the window once. I’m not going to let any of these whales harpoon my missus though.
‘So I counted out seven chips and just added them to the Weightlosswatchers’ pizza,’ the bird behind me tells Mr Dull, causing me to offer her my place in the queue, which she readily accepts, but it doesn’t quieten her down. I consider sticking the pen I was given into one of my ears, just to cut out fifty per cent of the utter tripe these two barrels are compelled to share with each other.
It’s busy here tonight, at least seventy people. This queue is long, I should have come earlier. The wife’s sitting down now. She looks upset, maybe one of the lard arses has offered her a go on his banana. I’ll have to stop getting distracted by these two.
It’s funny how the thoughts of killing people can take your mind off the task in hand, isn’t it? I get it all the time. In Tesco I can get totally engrossed in what to do to a woman that’s been stood waiting for ages, then decides to fish her purse out of her bag right at the end of the process. They can never find the purse without emptying everything they own onto the counter, then they have to sort through photos of their fish and points cards for shops they haven’t been to in years. After I’ve finished judging, hurting and killing her in my head, I forget to get my fucking money out, too. Other people are just a pain in the arse and these greedy cunts are the worst of the lot.
By the time I finally get round to the scales, the wife’s made it to the seats. I can see her from here, though. I wonder what’s upset her. I hope this speccy cow I’m about to speak to hasn’t done it. There’ll be trouble if she has. I’ll kick her stand over later, just in case it was.
‘Take your shoes off, then step on the scales please, Mr …?’
‘Kendall,’ I tell her, taking off my first shoe. My feet fucking stink. She tries her hardest not to turn her nose up, but with the gas northbound there’s no way she can avoid it.
‘Let’s just do it with shoes on this week, shall we?’ she tells me, stopping my arm from taking the other shoe off and causing me to wobble on one leg as I try to steady myself.
We go through the pointless process of the weigh in. I might be a little chunky, but I don’t care about it. I’m here for one reason and one reason only, for her.
I weigh in at fourteen stone. As I get off the scales Hilary addresses me.
‘So what brings you here?’
‘That,’ I tell her, pointing at the digital screen of the scales that is still displaying my weight.
‘Oh, just here to feel better about yourself, then?’ she asks me, taking me for one of these other comfort eating bloaters.
She then hands me a little folder to keep my thoughts on eating in or something; I don’t know, I’ve stopped listening.
I take a seat at the back, away from the boring people. The wife looks like she’s stopped crying now and she has her mates with her, so I just hang at the back and keep an eye out from the rear. There’s a fair amount of chunkers in the queue waiting to get patronised by the leader behind me. I can hear all their weights from here. They might as well put a huge screen up so we can all see. It would be more motivational if people were mocked and laughed at for being Big Macs.
The meeting finally starts. Hilary starts going on about how exercise can help people lose weight, who didn’t fucking know that? Half the losers here didn’t seem to. A particularly huge lady in front of me puts her elbow into her mate’s folds and whispers, ‘Here, Vic. You know that? I didn’t.’ Clearly you did, you just ignored it
because you like cake in and around your mouth.
It gets even more painful as Hilary, who seems to have few social skills and a poor grasp of when a crowd has given as much as it can, starts singling people out and asking them what exercise they think would be good. Which is a fucking stupid question from the word go. Any exercise is good, unless it’s running through a primary school with an AK47.
Some pig in the second row gets the first go at public humiliation.
‘Mrs Brown. What do you do?’ Hilary asks.
‘Er, er,’ Mrs Brown says, realising a smile isn’t going to get her out of this one. She’s got to answer, it’s gone well past the point of awkwardness.
‘Walking my cat?’ Mrs Brown says, causing me to snort the cold I’ve been carrying round down my top.
‘Shit,’ I vocalise without meaning to, wiping the snot from my jumper.
‘Mr Kendall, wha …?’ That’s as far as Hilary gets. The wife turns round and sees me, as does her mate.
‘You bastard! You know you’re not supposed to be within a hundred yards of her! Someone call the police,’ her mate shouts.
The game’s up.
At least I got to take Hilary’s stand down with me when the gang of beach balls all started practicing the exercising theory by charging at me and pinning me down till the Old Bill got there.
Multi-storey
First published in Radgepacket Volume six
I’ve only been here an hour and already I hate it. My first job in five years and it’s boring me to fuck already. Don't you just hate the way the job advert and the lying bastards that interview you lie about how good it is? I do.
‘Security operative’ is the title of the job I applied for. Well, as I’m sat near the barriers in this Portakabin that’s smaller than my understairs cupboard, I am not doing much fucking operating. The guy that interviewed me, David Foster, told me I’d have no time to be bored; that it would be varied work. Well, half an hour in and with no lunch left, I can tell you that’s bollocks.
Most of the car park is shut as they are renovating the complex attached to it. Only the bottom level remains open. Inside, only the cinema is open. The casino closed early this morning for the last time until the whole place reopens and makes the town’s residents’ lives far less dull than mine seems at the moment.
One car I've seen tonight. One! There’s only three more inside and one of them is a van that will no doubt be here for the night.
I had hoped I’d get to move about to a different location tonight but there's been no talk of it. Paul, a fat guy that supervises the operatives, dropped me off and just said he'd be round every few hours to check on me.
‘And don’t let them fuckin’ skateboarders in,’ Paul shouted out the van window as he left.
Hardly fucking varied, is it? I've got a good mind to let the fucking emo weirdos in to skate all they like, just for entertainment.
I might run to the parade round the corner later, see if there's any takeaways. I'll never see the night out on an empty stomach, especially once I’ve smoked the two joints I brought with me.
Deciding to have a little wander, I walk over to the back entrance. How they can call this place a ‘complex’ I have no idea. It comprises a fleapit of a casino, two crappy fast food joints and the world’s smallest cinema. I've seen bigger screens in people's homes.
As I get to the door I spot an alley to the left that leads past the back of a shop and out to the street. I stand just into it, so I can still see my Portakabin, and I spark up.
‘Giz a bit, then, mate.” A girl’s voice behind me makes me jump out my skin and the voice turns to a laugh. I turn round to see some ugly emo girl standing behind me.
‘Christ! Don’t sneak up on people, girl,’ I tell her. ‘And no, I ain’t giving you any.’
‘Come on, honey, I’d make it worth your while,’ she says, getting closer and breathing alcohol all over me. I turn my face and screw it up like someone’s just dropped a silent but violent. Ugly is not the word. She looks like a gargoyle in leather, after having just being run over by a make up truck. Christ, She’d give Viagra a floppy. I pull wildly on the joint until there are about four goes left and turn back to the girl.
‘Will you fuck off if I give you this?’
‘Sure,’ Emo girl says, taking the joint out my fingers and stumbling off down the alley again. I suddenly don’t feel so peckish now.
I waste an hour running my phone battery down to nothing on Beach Racer 2, then the next five minutes wondering what happened to Beach Racer 1. I've never seen it. I go back to being bored and hating myself a little for having eaten my lunch already. Christ, I'm so bored. They could have put a TV in this shoebox. Well, they couldn’t if they wanted to close the door, but even so ...
After an hour sitting there counting the parking spaces in view (there are either seventy-six or seventy-seven, if you’re interested) I decide to head back over to the complex. I know Fat Paul told me not to leave my post, but I'm hungry and bored. I can't sit in here any longer. It's only when I'm halfway across the car park I realise I've left my wallet at home, for fuck’s sake.
It's as I'm just heading back to the Portakabin that a battered, white Transit pulls up to the barrier. Before I've remembered my lines about telling them to fuck off, politely, a huge gorilla in a boiler suit and balaclava jumps out the van and sticks a sawn-off shotgun in my face.
‘Get in the fucking van. Try anything and you won't be going home,’ Gorilla Man screams in my face. I can only see his teeth and eyes and they both need fucking cleaning.
I mean, is there anything you can say to that? I can't think of anything and just start to climb in. Maybe it's because I'm stoned, but I don't actually feel much fear, I just keep thinking that Gorilla Man needs to clean his teeth in his choice of work, dealing with the public and all. Politeness costs nothing.
The back of the van contains two smaller men, the chimps of the operation I assume. They all wear the same boiler suits and balaclavas, and there’s more dust than in my spare room.
‘Knock him out, Stan,’ Gorilla Man instructs the chimp closest to the front.
‘Hang on!’ I yell, but it's too late, Stan's already trying and failing to knock me out with the butt of his gun.
‘Argh, you fucker, ARGH!’ I shout. It’s funny, but the more he hits me, and the longer I'm still awake, the more angry I get; I don't so much feel the pain. There’s more frustration that I have to be awake throughout this lame attempt by Stan to knock me out. After several whacks I just play dead, it's easier all round.
‘Done,’ Stan tells everyone.
‘You made a fucking meal of that, Stan,’ the other chimp says.
‘Fuck off, Pete. As if you'd have done any better. It isn’t like we've practised techniques for this,’ says Stan.
‘We fucking will later if you two old cunts don't stop flirting,’ Gorilla Man tells them both from the front. ‘Now tie Sleeping Beauty up and don't take too long about it.’
‘OK,’ the chimps tell him.
The only one I haven't heard speak yet is the driver. I don't, either. He stays silent as the chimps do a better job than expected of tying me up, then they all exit the van, locking it as they go.
Brilliant. A gang of armed criminals have tied me up in the back of a dusty old van on my first night in a new job. And my head is starting to hurt now, too. Makes me wish I’d stayed on the dole. Fucking Job Centre and their insistence on job seekers doing just that.
I struggle a bit and realise I am tied tight. The chimps must have been in the Scouts when everyone else was practising caving their mates’ heads in down the boxing club. Even if I do manage to untie a hand, I don’t have battery on my phone. Fucking Beach Racer. I just have to lie there.
After what seems like about a week I hear alarms going off all around me and then I hear feet running across the car park. If anything happens, it is going to happen now. The van doors are yanked open and, after I have had what seems like ten o
r twenty large heavy bags chucked on me, the chimps return.
‘We fucking did it!’ Gorilla Man shouts as he jumps in the van. There is lots of whooping and celebrating going on as the van skids towards the exit.
‘Hang on, what about this one?’ Stan asks.
‘Sling him in the Portakabin,’ Gorilla Man orders. Thank god I am not going to be kept with this lot any longer than necessary.
The van stops and I feel a couple of pairs of hands on me. I’m dragged to the open door and thrown into the Portakabin. Well, halfway in, it isn’t big enough for all of me, so my legs are just left outside the door.
It's as I'm just thinking about having a go at getting myself up off the floor that someone enters the Portakabin and a familiar voice says, ‘See, I told you it's a varied job,’ and I feel something being put into my top pocket. ‘You never seen a thing,’ he says, and the van drives off.
Apt pupil
First published in Off The Record 2: At the Movies
Boozers, I love them. The people, the layout, the décor — everything. Then there’s the beer, of course. I fucking LOVE the beer. None of these new age alcoholic milkshakes that the student types who insist on coming to my local drink. Just beer for me.
I hate students. They don’t do anything productive. They just sit there staring at the world and nattering to themselves about how great they'll all be one day. It's always ‘one day’ with this lot. There's just no get up and go in them.
I use my local most days. I ain’t an alky or nothing, I just like the atmos. Except when the local adult learners come in to shake each other’s satchels in celebration of spelling their name right.
I mean, I work hard six days a week — well four and a half out of seven. Call me a liar if you like, but I contribute more to society than these wasters ever will. The times I'm sat at home catching up when I could be in my local, I tell you; if I got paid for all the overtime, my salary would be doubled, I swear.
I saw one of them pay for three drinks with a cheque the other day. For god’s sake! A cheque for under a fiver! Barry, the landlord, made them buy a couple of packets of crisps to make the money up. He hates them as much as I do. Mind you, he still takes their money. If I was him, I wouldn’t. If it was down to me I'd ban the lot of the chair-stealing sad acts. In fact, I have actually made a few anonymous signs, but Barry always tells me to take them down, says there is more than one way to skin a toad, whatever the fuck that means. I hope he hasn’t tried skinning one without me; I'd like to see that.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ I asked Barry one night after he'd rolled out his favourite cliché.
‘Well, Greg, I've got a plan to get them lot back for keeping on making my bogs smell of that Wanja leaf,’ Barry told me, leaning in closely and lowering his already gravel-like voice.
‘Can I put a hate poster up?’ I ask hopefully.
‘Give it a rest with the posters, will you Greg? You don’t even spell them right,’ Barry says, a little louder than necessary, making old Tom and big Jimmy Temple piss themselves at the other end of the bar.
‘I bloody …’ I start.
‘Spastic!’ Big Jim hollers, interrupting me mid-denial. Everyone in the pub laughed. Even the fucking students that were over near the pool table. I vowed to remember their public disrespect towards me.
‘OK, so no posters. What are you going to do, Bazzer?’ I asked, continuing to ignore big Jim who had started making spak noises.
‘I think we should do what him next door,’ Barry continued, with a flick of his head towards Stavros on the other side of the wall, ‘does to everyone’s chips, Greg.’
‘Spunk in them?’
‘Oh god! He don't do that, does he?’ Barry asked, repulsed.
‘I wouldn't put it past him, the filthy bastard. I haven't been in since I saw him sweating into the fryer. Smiling away he was. He must have known he was leaking into my dinner.’
‘The dirty bastard! That’s the last time I eat there,’ Barry spat out in disgust.
‘Yeah, don't eat there, mate. So, what's the plan to get the students?’
‘Well, I was thinking about spiking the bastards with Kaliber and then letting them pretend to be drunk. But I might use Stavros's trick now and just gob in their drink.’
‘Erggrrrrrh,’ Jim shouts out.
‘Quiet, Jim,’ Barry tells him, waving his shushing finger about and giving the students a sideways glance.
‘You could gob in their Kaliber,’ I offer hopefully.
‘That’s a grand idea. I must ask you though, Greg, why do you hate them so much? I mean, they’re your students …’
One flew over the policeman’s bonnet
First published in Matt Hilton’s Action: Pulse Pounding Tales, Volume 1
The doctors had been telling me for ages I was ‘stressed’, then I had what they called a ‘psychotic delusional breakdown’. That’s bollocks, though. I saw it as a break through, as this was when I became aware of my calling in life – my one chance to do something good for the world and, more particularly, my wife, Mary. They didn’t see it like that though: they locked me up. I know how Jesus felt – betrayed!
I’d never really given karma too much thought before I went into hospital. In my job it can be hard to think about any kind of spiritual stuff – all the scumbags I’ve nicked made me see things black and white, right and wrong. I never even considered the science behind it until God spoke to me and filled me in on a few things. The role God and His angels have in making sure all is even in the world is huge. It is too much for the normal human brain.
My mission is to kill a mugger. Doing it will level things out and make sure that me and Mary are safe in retirement, which is fast approaching. I’ve been an exceptional copper over the years, arresting thousands of lowlifes, probably the reason God chose me as one of his Karma Agents.
The mistake I made was telling people what I know: the knowledge I was given is too much for the normal man to comprehend.
I thought people would understand. It isn’t like they know everything and every outcome of all the ways of the world, is it? No. They just think they do.
But I really do.
‘For your own safety, Fred,’ they’d said.
‘You’ll be out in no time,’ they’d said.
Mary said I would feel better and understand things when I had given my head a holiday.
Eight weeks they kept me in. Locking me up didn’t stop me getting my messages from God, though, He sends them in loads of ways: T-shirt slogans, the TV and the radio. No one can stop them coming, not even the liquid cosh they put in me. I refused the tablets, but several burly ‘nurses’ jumped me and injected it. Knelt on my head and everything. I’m told these are Devil’s agents hell bent on destroying my mission. I need to watch out for these.
My mate, Mike, wants me to stay on sick leave then retire when the time comes. I have other ideas, though. I WILL be donning my uniform one last time.
I got a message through the TV pointing out Simon, a hopeless drug addict and a thief. He used to nick cheese exclusively, but things changed when his parents – nice, good people – cut him off after he was booted out of St Paul’s Rehab for dealing. He's been given every chance to sort himself out and hasn't. He now mugs old people to get his fix.
I’d been walking one day thinking over the message about Simon when I saw a T-shirt slogan. It told me: Just do it. And I knew there was no mistake, no mix up. Simon has to die.
Today is the day it is going to happen.
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