by Limmy
He followed the legs with his eyes to try and find the guy’s face. He heard the panting again. They were short breaths. The breaths of a man trapped under the weight of the rubble, making every breath an effort.
He leaned over and began to lift one of the rocks away from the rubble, but then stopped when he saw that the guy was one of those guys with the funny moustaches. The type of moustache that curled up at the side like Poirot or an old-fashioned boxer.
Frank liked people like that, usually, these cartoony types with their funny moustaches or big beards or bow ties, the ones that treated life like it was one big fancy-dress party.
But now wasn’t the time. There had been an explosion, and people needed help.
He put the rock back down and ran back to the woman from before, to make sure she had got out from beneath the corrugated iron.
He found her as she was getting to her feet with the help of another man who was taking her arm. Frank took her other arm.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘My God, what happened? What was it?’
‘It was that factory,’ said Frank, pointing towards the flames. ‘There was a factory there.’
The other guy spoke to Frank. ‘Is there anybody else?’ he asked. ‘Back there?’
‘Aye,’ said Frank. ‘There were a couple of boys over this way.’
Frank and the other guy guided the woman to the pavement at the other side of the road, then they rushed back onto the road to help the boys.
One of the boys was already on his feet. His denims were ripped and Frank could see a graze on the legs through the hole, but he looked like he got away with it. He was very lucky, relatively speaking. The other boy looked like he was in more pain, holding his hip.
‘How’s your leg, son?’ asked Frank. ‘Is it your hip? Do you think you could get up?’
The boy got up quickly after Frank spoke to him, like he wasn’t really in that much pain and all it took was a grown man to snap him out of his childishness.
The boy’s pal helped him up, and Frank and the other guy stood by, ready to help if need be. But the boys were fine, and off they went, with the luckier one of the two helping the other one limp away.
The man asked Frank ‘Anybody else?’ as he looked around. ‘Who else?’
Frank looked towards where the boys had headed.
‘Boys!’ shouted Frank, into the cloud of dust.
‘What?’ shouted one of them.
‘Did you see anybody else?’ asked Frank. ‘Any of your wee pals missing?’
‘No,’ came the voice.
‘All right,’ shouted Frank.
The other man looked around, standing on the spot, swivelling to the left and right, to see or hear anything.
They heard a conversation from somewhere in the cloud of dust.
A lassie said, ‘What are you looking for?’
A woman said, ‘My phone.’
Frank ran off in that direction, to help this woman find her phone. She’d need it to let her family know she was all right. But he’d have to be fast. It wouldn’t be long until the police came and cleared everybody away and taped the area off, and if she didn’t find the phone before that happened, it would probably be lost for good. He’d help her find that and anything else that was missing, he’d see if anybody else was missing anything, then he’d come back to check on the guy with the funny moustache, if there was time.
Porridge
Jason sat at the kitchen table, eating his breakfast. It was the same breakfast he’d had every day for the past three months. It was a bowl of porridge, made by his wife Mary.
He didn’t like it.
His favourite cereal was Frosties, but he wasn’t allowed to have that anymore. He’d been stuffing his face too much recently, not just with Frosties but with everything, and Mary blamed it on what he was having for breakfast.
She told him that what was happening was that he was starting the day with a sugar rush. He was starting the day on a bad foot. Then he’d come crashing down an hour later, and crave more sugar. She said that was why he was snacking throughout the day, eating chocolate and crisps and whatever else he bought at the shops on his way to work. It was why he was fat and always tired.
So it would be porridge now. And he wasn’t even allowed salt in it either, because salt was bad for you. It would be porridge oats and hot water, with a splash of milk on top, if he wanted.
Soy milk.
That was how he started every day. Every single day. He’d go to bed, knowing that the next day would start that way. And in the morning, he could barely bring himself to climb out of bed.
He couldn’t take it.
He asked her if he could maybe have Frosties as a weekend breakfast treat, as a wee reward for managing to stay off it during the week.
But she said no and told him to stick with it, he’d thank her in the end.
He told her he understood that she was trying to do a good thing, but he asked her to consider if it was any kind of life to deprive yourself of the things you like, just for the sake of being a few pounds lighter or having a bit of extra get up and go.
But she told him he was fat and tired, how was that any kind of life?
He said all right, all right, he’d do it, and he asked her how long it would last. A couple of weeks? A month? Or was it when he got down to a certain weight? He could do it as long as he knew that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
She said that there was no reason for it to end. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said. But he never did. And it was driving him out of his mind.
But then, one morning, something happened.
‘Look at this,’ he said, holding up a spoonful of porridge that he’d just lifted out from his bowl.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Come around here and look.’
‘What is it?’ she asked again. ‘It isnae a fly or something is it? If it is, I don’t want to see it.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just come here and look. It’s funny.’
‘Funny?’ she asked.
She wondered what could possibly be funny about porridge, so she stood up and walked around to his side of the table. She looked into the bowl of porridge, and then at the spoon. There was nothing funny there.
She asked: ‘So what is it?’
Jason raised the spoon and turned it slightly. ‘D’you not think that looks a bit like Charlie?’
She began walking away, without looking at the spoon. She couldn’t be bothered with this.
‘Look!’ said Jason, smiling.
She stopped and turned. Curiosity got the better of her. She walked back to Jason’s side, knowing that it was a waste of time. But she was curious.
She looked at the spoon, ready to say ‘No’ and walk away. But you know what?
‘It does!’ she said.
She leaned closer to it, and tilted her head from side to side to view it from different angles. She laughed. ‘It actually does!’
She looked for her phone to take a picture, she was going to send it to Charlie’s wife Deborah. But she couldn’t find it.
Jason smiled at the porridge on the spoon, then pointed at one bit with his pinky. ‘Do you see that bit there? That’s his hair. Do you see it? How much does that look like Charlie’s hair?’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s the spitting image.’
And it was. It was the double. Charlie had thick, wiry fair hair that looked all wavy and bumpy like a cloud. Or like a lump of porridge.
Mary looked at it for a while longer, then she lost interest.
She walked back around to her side of the table and sat down. And it was back to business as usual, as quickly as that. George went back to eating his porridge. They finished their breakfast, left the house, got into their separate cars and went away to work.
A few days later, something else happened.
Mary read about it when she and Jason were having breakfast. Deborah had posted an update on Facebook.
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��Oh my God,’ said Mary, looking at her phone. ‘Did you see the news? Are you friends with Deborah? On Facebook?’
‘No,’ said Jason, looking concerned. ‘What news? About Deborah?’
He paused the telly and waited for her to speak, but she looked lost in thought, trying to get her head around something.
‘Mary,’ said Jason. ‘What is it? What’s wrong with Deborah?’
‘It’s not Deborah,’ said Mary. ‘It’s Charlie.’
She looked at her phone again in disbelief, then looked at Jason with her mouth open. ‘You remember we saw Charlie in the porridge?’
‘Charlie in the what?’ asked Jason. ‘Oh that. That bit of porridge that looked like Charlie? What about it?’
‘He crashed his motor.’
Jason’s eyes widened. ‘What? Is he all right? He’s not fucking dead, is he?’
‘He’s fine,’ she said, looking at her phone. ‘But it could have been a lot worse. There was some kind of fault, but it happened just as he left the house.’ She blew through her mouth. ‘Imagine he was on the motorway.’
Mary looked up from her phone to Jason, but he was looking at his porridge.
She said: ‘Did you hear me?’
‘Aye,’ he said, still looking at the porridge. And then: ‘Mary. We saw his face in the porridge, and then that happened. That is fucking spooky.’
‘It is,’ she said. ‘But he’s fine, thank God. Really, imagine he was on the motorway or somewhere, like, busy.’
Jason put his spoon down into his porridge and pushed the bowl away. ‘I’m not touching it,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, picking up her knife and fork to eat her own breakfast. She was having toast and poached eggs.
‘I’m serious,’ he said, folding his arms. ‘I know it sounds daft, but do you expect me to put that porridge in my mouth after that?’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It does sound daft. Eat your porridge.’
‘Mary, we saw Charlie’s face in the porridge, and there he goes and has an accident. And you expect me to put that in my mouth? C’mon, where are the Frosties? Have you put them somewhere?’
She ignored him.
He looked at his bowl as it sat halfway across the table towards Mary. He pulled it over to himself and looked inside. He looked to Mary, but she was busy with her own breakfast. He shook his head and got back to his porridge.
A few days passed.
Jason and Mary left messages on Deborah and Charlie’s Facebook pages to wish them well. Deborah suggested that Jason should tell Charlie about the porridge thing, to give Charlie a laugh, but Jason said he’d rather not think any more about it. He said he was really struggling to eat the porridge, and he just wanted his Frosties. Mary always said no. She said there was no connection between what they saw in the porridge and what happened to Charlie, and Jason was to stop being so silly. He was to just stop.
So he did. He stopped complaining and going on about how spooky it all was. He even began to joke about it. Mary would sometimes ask him if he could see somebody else’s face in the porridge, and she joked about how she hoped that he would pull out the face of her boss or her brother-in-law or somebody else she didn’t like, and they’d both have a laugh about it.
While laughing, he asked her if he could have Frosties.
She said no. And that upset him.
He told her that he’d rather pull a face out of the porridge and for something terrible to happen than for nothing to happen. His preference, of course, would be to have Frosties and to not pull out any faces. But if he was forced to eat porridge, he’d rather pull out a face. That’s how much it was getting to him. He couldn’t go on eating this gruel. Mary told him to stop it. Just stop.
Then, one day, it happened again.
They hadn’t talked about faces in the porridge for over a week. Jason had been quiet. Not one complaint. He put his spoon into the bowl, under the pool of soy milk at the top, and lifted out a lump of porridge.
And there, on the spoon, was another face.
Jason held it up in front of him, and waited for Mary to see. She was looking at her phone. When she sensed that Jason wasn’t moving or making a sound, she looked up to see him sitting as still as a picture.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What you doing?’
He didn’t reply. He just looked at the porridge. He looked scared.
‘Jason,’ she said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Look,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the spoon. ‘Look at this.’
Mary stood up and walked around to his side of the table, and looked at the porridge. She looked for a while, but didn’t see anything of interest. It didn’t even look like a face, never mind one that she recognised.
‘Who is it?’ she whispered, while moving her hands around in a mystical manner. ‘Who do you seeeee?’ She was taking the piss.
Jason snapped out of it, and looked at her.
‘Who d’you think that looks like?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Are you saying it looks like somebody?’
‘Can you not see?’
She looked again, as he turned the spoon in different ways.
‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘No.’
She began to walk away, but he stopped her when he said who he thought it looked like. ‘Your dad.’
She looked at him and screwed up her face. She walked back towards him and had a look at the porridge on the spoon again.
It didn’t look like her dad. ‘It looks nothing like him,’ she said.
‘It does,’ said Jason. ‘No offence, but look. The wrinkles.’
He pointed at some of the creases between the lumps of oats.
‘Oh Jason,’ she laughed. ‘You’re clutching at straws now. Wrinkles? That could be anybody over 40. That could be me.’
‘Not just the wrinkles,’ he said. ‘But you know that spot your dad’s got at the side of his nose?’
She smiled and had a closer look at the porridge, but she couldn’t see where he meant. He pointed it out with his pinky. One oat was poking out slightly more than the others.
‘Jason,’ she said.
He replied quickly with ‘Can I please have Frosties?’
‘Jason,’ she said again. ‘You’re insane.’
‘Am I?’ he asked, as she walked back to her seat, but she didn’t hear him.
She sat down and continued eating her breakfast. She picked up her phone to have a read of an article she was looking at. When she sensed that Jason was still watching her, she laughed and looked back.
He was very still and calm.
She said, ‘You’re giving me the creeps looking at me like that.’
He didn’t say anything, then he blinked and said, ‘Am I insane?’
She put down her phone and asked, ‘What are you saying, Jason? You really think you’re getting a premonition? In porridge? Is that really what you think?’
‘I don’t want to eat it, Mary. I really don’t want to.’
‘Jason,’ she said.
‘Please just get me the Frosties,’ said Jason. ‘Have you hidden them? Or did you bin them? I cannae eat this porridge, this isnae right.’
She looked at her phone and shook her head. ‘You’re insane, you really are.’ She laughed, but it was a fake laugh.
A week passed. Then something happened.
Mary phoned Jason in the afternoon to tell him. ‘Jason,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Jason. ‘What is it? I can’t speak, I’m driving. What is it?’
She didn’t answer, and he thought she’d been cut off. So he said ‘Hello?’ again.
‘It’s my dad,’ said Mary. ‘He’s in hospital.’
Jason told her that he was pulling over the motor to talk to her.
When he got parked, he picked up his phone again and said, ‘Mary. What? What is it? Did he fall or something?’
‘Fall? No. It was they wee cunts.’
‘What wee cun
ts?’ he asked. ‘What?’
She reminded Jason of the local youngsters her dad had been moaning about for a while.
Her dad lived in a ground-floor flat, which meant that if youngsters decided to stand about and yap away near his block, it would be as if they were yapping away right inside his own living room. He couldn’t hear the telly.
Mary had always advised him to just let it pass, which he used to do, but recently he had taken to opening the window and having a word with them. Mary was worried that they’d make him a target, but he said he’d never get any backchat, they’d apologise and move on, they seemed harmless.
‘But obviously not that harmless,’ she said. ‘The wee fucking bastards.’
‘Mary, what happened?’ asked Jason.
So she told him.
Earlier that day, her dad was watching This Morning. He had just made himself a cup of tea, and had picked it up from the table to drink it. Then a brick came flying through the window and hit him on the shoulder. His face was cut from the glass and he spilled the full cup of piping hot tea on his chest. A neighbour heard him shouting in pain, then knocked on the door, and an ambulance was phoned.
After Mary finished telling the story, Jason was quiet, and it was Mary’s turn to wonder if they had been disconnected.
‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Mary,’ said Jason. ‘The porridge.’
She told him to shut up.
The next morning, Mary made herself her breakfast. A bowl of Shredded Wheat, with a plate of pistachio nuts to the side. Then she made porridge as usual, and put it down on the table in front of Jason.
He couldn’t believe it.
He had watched her make it without saying a word, and now he sat looking at it in the bowl, with the soy milk on top, as he sat there in silence.
She began eating, then looked at Jason, who wasn’t eating. She shook her head and looked at her phone.
‘Mary,’ he said, quietly, looking into the porridge.
‘No,’ she said.
But he continued.
‘First, I pull out Charlie’s face, and he has an accident.’