The police van followed, hot on my heels, into the park after me. It was like something from a car chase movie. The van was racing alongside me. I could see a crazy-looking policeman behind the wheel. Just by the glint in his eyes I could see that he meant business. No doubt about it. He pulled back and away for a second, then barged at my back end before pulling up beside me on the passenger side. I almost lost control during his sneaky manoeuvre, yet somehow managed to keep the vehicle from spinning away from me. I couldn't help but give an innocent little wave to the raging policeman. It must have pissed him off big time because he swerved into me again with even more ferocity, forcing me towards a group of trees in the swiftly approaching distance.
'Shite! Shite! Shite!'
I should've braked. That was the right and obvious thing to do. That was what the police driver had expected me to do. So, I accelerated harder instead. Fuck it. The police van sped with me, both of us dragging and scrapping the other along. As we reached the trees, I saw my split-second opportunity. There was a blind summit approaching. It was a deceiving little dip in the grass which led towards the small forest of trees ahead. I didn't think, I just swerved right, edging the van along with me. Quick as a flash, I swerved left, swinging the full front bonnet of my vehicle hard into the side of the police van. I slammed on the brakes, including the hand-break. The van was rocked off balance with the manoeuvre. The dip in the grass didn't help with its balance. The driver tried to turn his van away from the dip in a desperate bid to regain control...until the most amazing thing happened. The van hit a hidden log and flipped up and over onto its side, skidding and rolling down the grassy slope towards the trees. Watching it happen before my eyes was spectacular. Like a work of art I had randomly created.
'WOO WHOO!' I couldn't help but roar in a moment of pure exhilaration. I did hope the driver was okay, though. Hopefully he'd been wearing his seat belt like I had. If not, then hard lines, he wasn't very good at his job. I didn't stop to find out and continued towards the far end of the park. Eventually, I found another main road and realised that I wasn't too far from Edinburgh city centre. Maybe a mile or two at the most. It was time to ditch the police car.
I sped through another set of red lights, almost ready to pull over and chance my luck on foot when I spotted a speed camera dead ahead. No better parking place, I supposed, than on top of my second pet hate of all time. Second, that is, to traffic wardens. I headed straight for the steel contraption, ramming into its grey metal exterior, completely uprooting it from the ground while slamming the main body of the camera down hard onto the concrete road in front of me. A couple of passing cars beeped their horns. Some even cheered and waved from their rolled-down car windows with sheer and utter joy as they drove by. Some young neds waiting at a bus stop across the road started applauding and cheering me on too. One even toasted an already half-consumed can of lager into the air like he was accepting me as one of his own. A smashed-up police car on this estate was worth more than any million-pound winning lottery ticket, that's for sure.
I exited the car and waved back at the neds and all the passing drivers still beeping their horns. I smiled and took a bow before getting the hell out of there. I legged it over a nearby stone wall and made my way towards the southeastern foot of the volcanic hill, Arthur's Seat.
Chapter 1
A few weeks earlier.
I couldn't help but wonder if she gave good head as I sat opposite the middle-aged doctor inside her private office at the Royal Infirmary. She'd just told me I had some form of terminal brain cancer, but it hadn't registered properly because I wasn't paying attention to her words any longer. She was overweight, apple-figured, yet with a cute round face that could still turn heads when she walked past a building site… although couldn't anything in a skirt these days? I imagined she'd been one of the popular, pretty girls back in high school. Back in the days when she'd at least had her figure under some control.
I couldn't take my eyes away from a tiny bubble of spit on her lower lip. It aroused me as I watched it linger there all seductively, taunting me. I felt an irresistible urge to lean over and lick it gently from her face. But I controlled it and refocused. My mind snapped back to reality. Fear and sadness once again overwhelmed my thoughts. Something in the air felt wrong. Very, very wrong. I lowered my head and raised my hands at the same time. Halfway into the motion, the two met and I found myself buried face deep inside my cupped hands.
'I just, I just can't take this in.’
Even though I was Scottish and had lived in the country on and off since birth, the Scottish accent I'd acquired over the years never dominated my tongue like it did in most born-and-raised locals. The doc was proper south-of-the-border English, though.
'I'm so, so sorry, Liam.’
I tore my face away from my hands, gently shaking my head before smirking sarcastically.
'So how long, huh? How long have I got?'
The doctor sighed. 'Please, Liam. Don't do this.’
'Come on, eh? What's my sentence? Best guess. Give it to me.’
'Liam, I really couldn't say.’
'How about the last person you diagnosed. How long did they get, huh?'
The doc remained silent, curiously observing me with both sorrow and pity. She really wanted to give me a good, positive answer, I could tell. A wee bit of good news for the long road ahead. But, of course, that wouldn't be very honest of her now, would it? So all she could do was stare.
Briefly I wondered if she found me attractive. I imagined making my move on her. Would she welcome it? Would she let me stick my tongue deep inside her mouth and move it around, entangling it with her own, before letting me run my hands all over her soft, plump body in the process? Would she enjoy it? Would she make the move for my zipper and then...my wandering mind snapped back to reality and rage consumed me.
'Well, let's hear it then Doc, Jesus!' I exploded, unable to contain my mix of frustration and sexual desire. 'It's like waiting for the bloody X Factor results, for Christ sake.’
She shifted in her seat, shaken abruptly from her staring trance by my aggressive manner.
'With treatment, chemo, I don't know, Liam. Maybe a year, maybe less. That's my best guess.’
I refocused upon that tiny spit bubble. It calmed me. Soothed me immensely. It made me feel good. Fuck the chemo. All that shite just to cling to a few extra months of life. To hope for a year at best. My uncle had passed away a few years earlier with leukaemia. It made my stomach churn just thinking about all the crap he had to put up with when he could have been doing something else with his life. Something more memorable and productive with the remainder of his time. Screw that shite. I was out of there.
I nodded kindly at the doc. Thanked her for all the information she'd passed on and left. She stood abruptly, calling out about making an appointment with some other specialist next week. More tests. More horseshit clairvoyance. More wasted time and taxpayers’ money. I wasn't listening anymore.
I walked past the cancer ward's waiting room, which was filled with more sad cases and zombified victims waiting to be told about their afflictions and survival rates. I kept walking. She fell out of earshot. I followed one of the ridiculously coloured lines on the hospital floor leading to some other part of the building. I chose the yellow path and prayed it would lead me to the exit. I felt like the fucking Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. 'Oh, we're off to see the Wizard....’ But there would be no magical wizard with a new brain or magic cure lying in wait for me at the end of this brick road.
I made my way outside. Grey skies towered and rumbled above, urinating upon me with their wet drizzle. A storm was coming. A big fucking storm. When I reached the car park, a cool breeze hit my face like a soft fan on a humid summer's day. It felt good to be outside. To be at one and at peace with nature's earthly fresh air. It felt good to be alive. They say that some people, some lucky few on this earth, really appreciate life and its real meaning only when they're given their own personal expi
ry date. But oh, how I've pondered the meaning of it all these past few weeks since having the possibility of a near terminal end thrown in my face. The things we do to live a so-called long, healthy, and normal life. The empty, meaningless, monotonous, and mundane tasks, hobbies, activities, careers, love, sex, friends, family, people—and all the other trivial shite—we fill our empty lives with. All of them doing their very best to fill some hollow void in our conscious minds and distract us from the day-to-day process of growing older and nudging another step, another minute, another hour, towards our inevitable doom. Our species, Mother Earth's own terminal cancer, has never been more spiritually or intellectually minded in all our existence than we are today. Yet still, are minds are so narrow and rammed full of such pretentious and superficial self-importance, convinced that our own individual lives have more worth and meaning than those of any of our neighbours while still harbouring some hope and belief that there will be a simple, perfect meaning and explanation to it all in our final conscious hour. Our minds have evolved so far beyond our basic animal caveman way of thinking, yet we still harbour the possibility that there will be some kind of redemption. Some sort of beautiful ray of light or magical white-bearded wizard welcoming us at the end. Oh, what images and illusions of grandeur our minds conjure up in our most desperate times of need. Let me tell you about the meaning of life. We are all acts of a random nature, and none of us should even be here in the first place.
***
Before anyone starts feeling sorry for me, let me just say that I am not a nice guy. I want to get that out there into the polluted airwaves from the beginning. I mean, I'm not an utterly insane, mind-fuck, George Bush/Tony Blair mass murderer of millions and a shit pit of festering evil. Nor am I anywhere near the peak of Mother Teresa's rich, heavenly, Mount Everest of eternal goodness. I'd like to think of myself on the just-below-sea-level-mark on that particular scale. If I'd been born a country, I'd like to have been Serbia. Stuffed with a few deeply rooted rugged charms and not a complete and total fuck-up loss to humanity by any means, just 'not a nice guy' when it came to people. Especially relations and feelings with people of the feminine kind. Although, recently I had been trying. I really had. I battled constantly with this conflict more and more as the days rolled by. Like, the more I aged, the worse of an arsehole I moulded myself into. In all fairness, it was just too damn easy to be an arsehole… but an arsehole who, deep down inside, wanted nothing better in life than to settle with his own demons. To be completely devoted and faithful to one woman and one woman only. A woman whom I loved wholeheartedly and who loved me, without all the other mind-trap relationship bullshit games getting in the way.
I thought a lot about living in a house that filled me with pride, in a suburb and city I wasn't ashamed to call home. A home I'd be able to speak fondly and openly of some day while chatting with like-minded strangers on a family holiday abroad. Yes, this was what I dreamed about sometimes in the darkest hours of the night. A good life and a good home, surrounded by gardens, flowers, and freshly cut green fields. Surrounded by friends, family, and children I adored with all my heart, who adored me in equal measures. But for some people, life doesn't quite pan out like that. And the longer you resist putting off this comfort and happiness and fantasy bullshit of a good life, the harder it becomes with each passing day to find it again. To accept it and finally come to peace with it before letting go of all your insecurities and grasping it with all your heart, passion, soul, and desire.
Lately, I'd been coming to terms with the fact that I would most certainly die alone someday. And way before I'd been diagnosed with this untreatable brain cancer inconvenience. Yes, dying alone. Like some sad, old, lonely, sex-crazed fool with no friends, wife, children, or family to call my own. All I seemed to care about was where my next shag was coming from. This insatiable lust, which had infected my body and soul ever since my very first sexual awakening in my teenage years. A guilty lust which felt far worse than any incurable physical decease. Some days I woke up in the morning and felt, deep within my bones, that I could be truly happy with just one special someone in my life. Someone to love, protect, and come home to at night, cuddling up on the couch and spending free time together. A reason to get up in the morning. A reason to live and fight onwards and upwards.
On some rare occasions, I even longed to find that perfect someone who could make me want to be a better man. But alas, I knew it was useless and just prolonging the inevitable. What if I finally found that perfect someone and spilt my seed deep inside her soul and everything felt good and perfect for that short, singular, orgasmic heartbeat, trapped inside that perfectly wrapped, bubbled moment of harmony for one priceless and meaningful second, only for me to realise there was no such thing as a perfect compatible soul mate and that dark, sinking loneliness would eventually consume me and my feelings for her, just like everyone else who'd come and gone before her. Ultimately it would all disappear, fading like dusk from dawn. Evaporating into thin air, faster than a steam of hot piss in a frozen winter field, like those feelings always did. Always. And I, once more, would begin to long for something different, someone new. The never-ending monotonous circle of my daily life. That addictive chase for a new day. A new dawn. The grass is always greener...
I knew at the heart of this mental affliction I was what some might call a 'Selfish Narcissistic Prick.’ Sex had always been a weakness and a downfall. I knew I needed sex a lot, and with as many partners who'd give themselves willingly to my cause as possible. It had always been quantity over quality over the years, that's for damn sure. And maybe that's the problem. Who knew? Certainly not me. I didn't really believe it mattered any longer whether someone was that perfect one for me. I really didn't. I knew I had this other horrible terminal lustful cancer embedded deep within my soul, and it was only spreading further and deeper through my veins with every new notch I claimed. This need, want, urge, curse… this longing. This goddamn disease which would absolutely be the end of me even before the real cancer had its wicked way. I needed to fuck. I wanted to fuck all the time and with as many different women as I possibly could. Christ, didn't all heterosexual red-blooded males want the same when you got down to the bare-knuckled nitty-gritty of it? I just didn't act upon it anymore as much as I'd like to, that's all. Maybe settling into a comfortable suburban lifestyle and approaching middle age had finally grasped a hold of my balls and slowly squeezed the final droplets of lust and zest for life right out of me.
But at the other end of that scale, I'd considered cutting off my own damn balls just to spite the suffering and finally live that so-called normal life. To end this cursed pleasurable and insatiable torment. But I was too weak… too goddamn weak to do it. Or then again, in hindsight, maybe I wasn’t weak after all! Maybe I was just a man.
Chapter 2
I woke up around 10.30 in the morning. The fuckers next door, or one particular teenage fucker for sure, were playing their music at full volume yet again. Boom, boom, boom, BOOM. I felt almost immune to it. Feeling those vibrations had become part of my morning routine. Outside it looked grey and miserable, but on the plus side, the streets were clear of most traffic. For today, at least, I would put the brain cancer thing right to the back of my mind and become a self-employed plumber once more. I'd even convinced myself that yesterday was all just a bad dream. Shite! Was it a dream? Was it really?
The best thing about being self-employed and your own boss was definitely the fact that you got to dictate your own wake up calls and working hours. Me, I loved to get up late. Beating the morning rush-hour traffic with all the nine-to-fivers, eight-to-fourers and ten-to-sixers out there who only ended up queuing in traffic for half their goddamn miserable lives anyhow. Trapped inside their steel four-wheeled coffins as punishment for getting up at such ridiculous hours of the day.
So, I worked as a plumber and I guess I did okay. I wasn't the best or fairest tradesman out there by any means but I certainly wasn't at the bottom end of that scale either. My
only uncle, on my mother's side, the one who rotted away with the cancer too, prolonged his life by a few extra pointless months by taking every medication under the burning sun. Living out his final days in a deeply drug-induced, mind-warped state. By the end, he couldn't even tell what planet he was living on. Well, he told me once, back in the days when he was his real self and had full control over his mind, body, heart, and soul, that to be great at something you had to enjoy it immensely. You had to be utterly passionate about it. One hundred percent. It had to make you feel super excited to get up in the morning. Leaping and bounding out of bed with a big, fat, cheesy-arse grin on your face that said, 'Sweet Goddamn Mother of God, I love my work. I love my life.’
Sadly, with my job that was not the case, and never had been as far as I could remember. To me, plumbing had always been just a job, a trade, a career to get by. Something to fall back on in case I never made it as a rock star, movie star, racing driver, Scottish International Rugby player, male model, spy, fire fighter, policeman...poet. The poetry thing had always been one of my more achievable goals in life. Dare I say, my dream. But, alas, it had died an ugly death many sweet moons ago, along with most of my soul. In fact, it was right after I'd joined the rest of the working-class arsehole elite and had to pay my very first utility bill, followed shortly afterward by taxes and more taxes, then an endless, spiralling combination of the two ever after.
I still dabbled in rhyming slang from time to time. More or less when I became super stressed or bored out of my tits. The women enjoyed it for shits and giggles when I brought it up in conversation at bars and clubs or while out gallivanting on first dates. In fact, most of them ate it up for reasons I can never fully explain. Drunk women and their 'struggling artist' fantasies, I suppose, when you put it against the backdrop of a handsome face. So, of course, I abused my mild talent and trust and ended up getting so dependent on using my poetry as an extension of my sexuality and pulling more girls into the sack that I never really pursued it on a more professional level. Is there such a thing as a professional poet in this day and age? Are there really people out there who still make money from this and nothing else? Or is it just a rolling fantasy, set up to the backdrop of one particular eighteenth-century Scottish bard? Right now, my own toilet wasn't even flushing properly. It needed a new internal flush cone, which I kept forgetting to purchase every time I headed out for work. Even though I'd bought countless numbers of them in the past for my customers. So, to hell with it. I guess my brain had been programmed to bypass any work for which I wasn't actually getting paid. I had to be content with pissing in the shower or kitchen sink whenever nature called. For the kitchen sink, I had to stand on my tiptoes, so it could get a wee bit stressful on the old calves. And remembering to take the dishes out beforehand became a constant nightmare. Especially in the middle of the night, when I didn't want to burden my sleepy eyes with bright lights. But it was the distant bathroom basin that worked best of all. Situated at a good height, much lower than the kitchen sink, to comfortably support my balls and slip the wee man over the edge without straining my lower legs. Of course, urinating in the bathroom sink turned out to be a real stroke of genius in the long run. It cut my bathroom time in half most mornings since I could do it while I brushed my teeth, waxed my hair and sprayed my armpits. And they say men can't multi task.
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