A Fucked Up Life in Books

by AnonYMous

  She probably read about four pages. Her eyes narrowed as she closed the book and then she turned round to her friend who was sitting on her left, across the aisle. She whispered to her and I leant forward in time to see her pass the book to her fucking friend who turned it over, read the blurb, and then opened the book for further examination.

  I’d had enough.

  ‘Excuse me, please could I have my book back?' I enquired, but it wasn’t really a question. I stuck out my hand to receive it.

  The friend passed it back to the Mum who held it for a moment and looked at me.

  ‘Are you some kind of perv?’ she asked.

  I laughed. Then I looked at her. She wasn’t laughing. I thought for a split second about how much I fucking despise stupid people.

  ‘No, I’m not. That book is a classic. The author actually wrote it in English even though English wasn’t his first language.’

  She looked at me like I’d shat in her cornflakes. She handed the book back, staring at me all the time. Then she turned to her friend and they began whispering.

  I opened Lolita and started to read. The women were still whispering, every so often both turning to look at me. And then the Mum got up, took her baby and swapped seats with the other woman.

  ‘I don’t want no perv near my baby,’ she spat at me as she fell into the seat across the way and her mate sat down next to me shooting daggers through her eyes.

  ‘Fine.’ I sighed. I didn’t want to argue with these twats. As well as being so fucking ignorant that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, they also looked like the type who would rip your hair out and scratch your face off.

  We travelled to London in silence. Me reading Lolita, the women taking it in turns to turn and look at me to check that I wasn’t masturbating or licking the window or whatever it was they thought I was into, and the baby reaching out about once every fifteen minutes to try and grab Lolita out of my hands.

  Fucking pervert baby.

  Smoke and Mirrors

  My housemate woke me up one morning by hammering on my bedroom door. After calling him a cunt because he would not shut up and fuck off I decided to open the door and see what he wanted.

  I found him on the landing, washed and dressed and shouting at me to get washed and dressed too, he had a brilliant idea and he was not doing it alone.

  He was one of these incredibly impulsive maniacs that you either love or hate. Luckily for him, I loved him, so washed and dressed myself and we got in his car. On the way to our destination he decided to tell me what was going on.

  ‘I had a dream last night …’ (a lot of these silly things started with this sentence) ‘… that I spent my last twenty quid in the world on buying the board game Risk and then we stayed up all night playing it. I’ve decided that I should spend my last twenty quid on a Risk set and that we are going to stay up all night playing it.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘fine.’

  We pulled up at Toys ‘R’ Us and my friend jumped out of the car and marched at quick pace into the shop and straight up to a sales assistant.

  ‘Where is Risk, please?’ he asked her, not one to fuck about. She pointed us in the direction of the board games and within ten minutes we had the game, had spent his last twenty quid on it and were back in the car driving home.

  When we got home he took all of the pieces carefully from the box and set the kitchen table up ready to play. He phoned four more friends and told them to be here in an hour, and to bring rum.

  An hour later and everyone was ready. There was rum and cigarettes and John Lee Hooker on the CD player. It felt right.

  Now, I love Risk, but very quickly I got very bored. By the time it got to early evening and we were still all playing for world domination. The rest of the friends that I were playing with were boys. Not just any boys. Geek boys who had lived their whole lives up to this moment in preparation of such a game of tactics and endurance. Fuck, I was bored.

  I took my next go and then went upstairs to get a book, Smoke and Mirrors. It seemed like the right choice, lovely short stories by a lovely man. The amount of time my friends were taking to decide what to do on their turns meant that I could probably get a story in between every one of my goes.

  And so while the boys argued over the dice when it was thrown and landed ‘cocked’ between the table and the board as to whether it was a four or a three or a re-throw, I was ignoring them all and reading Smoke and Mirrors. And as the evening went on, one by one, my friends would take the book and have a read of one of the stories themselves and pass it round. The cigarettes became joints and soon rum, the dice, the book and the joint were all being passed round happily, as the game got slower and we got drunker and picked our favourite stories out.

  It was probably about five in the morning when yellow won world domination and was all over. I went to bed and dreamt of masturbating into a clay gargoyle head and counting tiny plastic soldiers.

  The Da Vinci Code

  One of the boys I used to live with was a bigger reader than I was, and probably still is a bigger reader than I am. He lives far away now and I don’t know what his reading habits are because all of our conversations now start with ‘We never dance together any more, you and I …’ and end with ‘Well fuck YOU.’ Like all true friendships.

  When I’d run out of books to read and I didn’t have any money to buy anything new from the charity shop down the road I’d wander up to his room and see what I could borrow from him. This was one of those days.

  He was sitting on his bed reading and I told him that I needed something new to read and he told me to go ahead and take something. All of his books were stacked up on a really high shelf and so I stood on the edge of his bed and leaned over to claw them off and onto the floor before rummaging through them.

  There sat The Da Vinci Code. It had been out a while and I hadn’t read it. I’d heard mixed reviews; one of my friends becoming so in love with it that he bought a special illustrated edition and would cradle it in his lap each night, one friend saying it was a bit of a page turner, and the friend that I wanted to borrow the book from who was still sat in his bed reading some epic fantasy, who had told me that it was shit.

  I picked it up and waved it in the air.

  ‘I’m going to take this,’ I said.

  Suddenly he was behind me. I don’t know how he’d moved so fast.

  ‘No you’re not,’ he said, and plucked the book from my outstretched hand. ‘It’s shit. It’s fucking dreadful. I’m not letting you waste your time with it. Pick something else. Here, take this book about the Kublai Khan.’ He swept down, grabbed the book and thrust it in my face.

  ‘I think I’ll take the other one. Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said. He stood up. I’m very small. He is very tall. If he’d put the book on his head I’ve have had a hard time reaching it, but instead he held it right up in the air and stepped backwards.

  ‘It’s bollocks,’ he reiterated.

  ‘I’ll risk it,’ I replied.

  He looked at me for a while, trying to work out what I was going to do next. I jumped up for the book but he saw it coming and moved away and I crashed into his desk.

  ‘MotherFUCKER,’ I mumbled. ‘Give me the fucking book.’

  ‘No,’ he said again. He held his hand out towards me, palm facing me until I stood still, and then while looking me in the eye he opened up the book, tore out a page, put it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed.

  ‘You can’t read it now, that was …’ he paused, looking down at the book ‘.. page ninety-seven. There is important information on page ninety-seven that will mean that you will not possibly understand the rest of the book. You can’t have it back because it is in my belly and later on I will shit it out, and unless you are going to break into the bathroom and go at my shit with a twig or a fork or whatever else you find then you won’t get it. Here. Take the book about the Kublai Khan.’

  I took the book and backed out of the room, while he f
lung The Da Vinci Code under his desk and settled back down on his bed to finish what he was reading.

  ‘You’re a fucking headcase,’ I told him.

  ‘I have saved you a lot of time and effort,’ he replied.

  He was probably right.

  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

  When the last Harry Potter book was due to be published I was so fucking ready. Having read the rest and been waiting for this one for what felt like forever I was incredibly excited to go and queue up with all the rest of the losers at Waterstones in the city centre to pick up my copy.

  Being a sensible cunt, I had pre-ordered my copy six months in advance and had declined all social engagements from the day of publication up until two days afterwards, which would give me time to read the book twice.

  If you were as excited about the book release as me, then you will know what an absolute twat it was to try and keep from hearing what happened in the final book. People were ringing up the radio saying things like ‘yeah I work in ASDA, innit, and we’ve got the books in the back yeah, and …’ and that’s as much as I heard because I’d destroyed the radio that the spoily bastard knobend’s voice was coming from, just to be completely safe.

  So I had a brilliant plan for the queue. I’d borrow my friend’s iPod and listen to music really loudly until it was time to go in, at which point I’d switch off the iPod and start to piss my pants with anticipation.

  Along came 11pm and I left the house, had a leisurely walk into town with the iPod in, picked up my ticket (number 308) and stood outside to wait. Ten minutes in the battery on the iPod told me that it was low. I called it a cunt and it promptly died on me, in my time of need.

  Now I was with the rest of these dickheads, waiting to pick up my book and being subjected to the drunk students walking around the city centre.

  ‘HARRY POTTER’S A CUNT!’ shouted one in a girl wearing a Gryffindor scarf’s face. I’ll give him that one, I thought. Harry Potter is a bit of a cunt. But the rest of them, they’re fucking great. Professor McGonagal is the fucking epitome of brilliance and Professor Snape is one of the coolest, driest and darkest characters I’d seen in a long time. I loved him.

  ‘THAT HERMIONE BIRD’S FIT!’ screamed another at no one in particular. ‘SHE CAN RIDE ON MY WAND, FILTHY BITCH!’ Alright, I’ll let that one go too, I thought, thinking back to watching the Harry Potter films with my male friends where they’d play a drinking game to drink anytime they had any improper thoughts about Hermione.

  ‘HE DIES AT THE END, YOU KNOW!’ bellowed someone else, right in my face.

  ‘What, Harry?’ I said.

  ‘YEAH,’ said the drunk.

  ‘Mate, you’re forgetting the first rule. Never kill the hero. Harry doesn’t die.’

  The drunk laughed at me. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t die. I know who does though … whatshisface … Alan Rickman, Snape, yeah, he dies. I heard it on the radio. Some lad in ASDA had the book in the back and read a bit of it out and …’

  What happened next around me was pretty amazing. People who had been standing silently, or chatting quietly with friends, people with lightening scars on their heads and scarves of all of the four Hogwarts houses put their hands up to their heads, covered their ears and started shouting to block this guy out. As angry as I was at this prick I couldn’t help bursting into laughter as I watched manic twenty-somethings with closed eyes go ‘ARGHHHHH’ or ‘SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP’, or the best one, sing the Harry Potter theme: ‘DA DA DA DA DAAA DAAA DAAAAAAAAA DAAAAA, DA DA DA DAAAA DA DAAAAAAAAAAAAAA …’

  The Drunk looked confused, and after a minute turned back to me. ‘Yeah, so he dies. Snape. He was good all along.’

  ‘FUUUUUCCCCKKKKK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.’ I roared in his face. What a bastard. And Snape. Poor Snape. I hoped it wasn’t true.

  The Drunk mumbled something about us all being ‘mental’ and then fucked off to the nearest Wetherspoons.

  ‘What a dick,’ said some girl standing in front of me. I nodded solemnly.

  What a dick indeed.

  The next day I got a call from the boy I was seeing who told me that one of his friends was stood a few people back from me in the queue. He forwarded on the text that his friend had sent.

  ‘Hey, I went to get the new Harry Potter last night and XXXX told some drunk guy to fuck off! Well, she didn’t tell him really she kind of screamed it in his face. She’s fucking mental.’

  I’m not mental. I just fucking love Harry Potter.

  Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales

  ‘What do you want for Christmas?’

  ‘I don’t care. Anything. Nothing. I hate Christmas. I don’t want anything. Oh, er, it’s okay, it’s alright. How about a book? A book, just get me a book.’

  ‘You’ve got loads of books … I don’t know what to get. What if you have it or you don’t like it? I don’t know what books are the good ones.’

  ‘Go to Smiths and just get me a pretty book. I don’t have any pretty books, just paperbacks, so whatever you get I won’t have and I will love it, I promise.’

  This boy that I was seeing was a bit different. He was sweet and kind but got into the most horrible panics when he had to plan something, or do something. He always wanted me to tell him exactly what to do, and if I didn’t, he got so stressed that he couldn’t cope with it and got really upset. To make it even worse he wasn’t a bookish kind of person. I didn’t care that he wasn’t a bookish kind of person, but it did bother me that it was making him panic.

  I didn’t want him to get upset, and I also wanted him to feel like he’d done something right and not feel bad about it. I was going to be in a similar situation in a couple of days when he sent me to HMV for an ‘interesting South American film’, but that is another story, and I rarely panic in shops. So on the day when he headed off into town I waited a few minutes, met my friend, and then followed him.

  He arrived at Smiths. We arrived at Smiths. We followed him in. I’d already been in there earlier in the week and had made The Plan with my friend. Unfortunately, it was a massive Smiths which is why I had to be there too. He walked into the huge books section on the ground floor, and so did I, ducking into the maps and reference section and peering out towards where he was now standing anxiously, looking around for ideas.

  It was time for The Plan. I phone my friend.

  ‘He’s in children’s books. Ground floor on the left. Next to the lift. No, not next to the fucking stairs next to the LIFT, Jesus, woman.’

  My friend walked into the shop and vaguely towards where he was.

  ‘Good, now, he needs to be in the back left corner. There’s loads of shit there. Fucking loads of it. Hardbacks. Illustrated classics, poetry, big ornamental coffee table books. Steer him, he’s just going to stand there all day and then leave if you don’t. Go.’

  She walked towards him. I’d told her to be cool. She’d better be fucking cool.

  ‘OH, HI! FANCY SEEING YOU HERE! Are you looking for X’s Christmas present?’

  Dickhead.

  He looked panicked, he told her he didn’t know what to get. He couldn’t find anything.

  She needs to be cool.

  ‘OH! Well! I am also here looking for a present for someone who is a lot like X! What a coincidence! I was going to go to the back left corner, let’s go there TOGETHER!’

  Twat. So much for being cool.

  He looked uncomfortable as she steered him in the right direction. They stood and looked at the books as I shuffled closer.

  He stood for a long time just staring at the selection in front of him. My friend started to pick some of the books up and comment on them, and eventually, he started to pick some up and turn them over in his hands and look at them.

  I thought he was alright then. I rang my friend.

  ‘HI MUM!’ she shouted down the phone, nodding at him and then turning and scanning the aisles.

  ‘Mum? Fuck you. He’s okay now, let’s go.’ She excused herself and we l
eft.

  The last day that I saw him before we went home for Christmas he excitedly handed me my present. Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. He’d got it, he said, because it had pictures of cutouts that Hans had made, and because he likes the cover, and because he recognised one or two of the stories.

  It was perfect.

  Confessor

  A few years ago my Dad was told that he needed to have a hip replacement. My brother was still living at home and I decided to go back to my Dad’s to help out a bit while he was recovering. On the morning of his operation my brother and I hid his car keys so that he couldn’t attempt to drive while he was on the mend, and drove him to the hospital.

  After checking him in and saying goodbye and I’ll see you tomorrow, we decided to go for a walk around the city centre of this town. It was a little way away from where we lived, and we hadn’t been there before. My brother just fancied a look around, but I had bigger things on my mind. The new Terry Goodkind had come out that day and I wanted it. My brother said he’d buy me it for my birthday. Excellent, I’d already saved myself twenty quid. Off we went.

  We had some time left on the parking in the hospital car park and so left the car there to start the twenty minute or so walk into the town centre. After five minutes of walking my brother’s phone rang.

  ‘Hey man, I’m sorry to do this to you, it’s your Dad’s op today, right? Is he okay? Well I’ve just come outside to get in the car to go to work and my car wasn’t there but there was loads of glass on the floor. So I walked up the street a bit and there was the car, all smashed in halfway down the street. It’s fucked, the whole back end is caved in. Yeah, and listen, that’s not the bad bit. I followed the glass along and it led to your Mum’s house. Her car’s parked outside and the front of her car is smashed up and the windscreen is only half there. I rang the doorbell but there wasn’t an answer. Could you give her a call?’