Daft Wee Stories (14 page)

Yet how quickly it changed.

It was outside some pizza place a few hours later, when the clubs were starting to empty, when folk really were well and truly wrecked. If I thought I was getting mobbed before, it was nothing compared to now. But nothing too scary, nobody pushing or pulling more than I could handle, just good-natured manhandling, like when footballers congratulate a teammate for scoring, that type of thing. It was a never-ending natural high.

Then a lassie asked me what I was wearing the suit for anyway. I was about to answer, then some guy turned me around for another picture, so I didn't get the chance to reply. Then she asked me again. Out of the whole night, I think she was the only one to ask.

So I told her.

She seemed like a good laugh, a bit mad like me, so I told her.

I told her that it wasn't for anything, it wasn't for charity, nothing like that, I thought I'd just wear it for a laugh. I told her about the person in the bear suit I saw at the traffic lights. I told her the lot. Her expression sort of changed, and she walked away to join her mates. She said something to one of the guys, who leaned closer to her like he didn't quite catch it the first time. She repeated it, then he glanced over to me with a look on his face. His mate saw the look and asked what the problem was, because it was the kind of expression you only had on your face when there was some kind of problem. Then they all glanced over with that very same look.

I started to walk away. I had a bad feeling.

One of them shouted over to me, but I pretended not to hear. Then a few of them came over and stood in my way, and asked me if what the lassie told them was true. They asked me if I bought a bear costume to pretend to raise money for charity. I said that wasn't true, that's not what I told the lassie, and I called her a liar. She told me not to call her a liar, because she told them what I told her, they just got mixed up, they just got that into their heads because they're steaming and weren't listening, so I wasn't to dare call her a fucking liar.

I just started walking away again, but one of the guys booted my arse, and a few people laughed. It was sore as fuck, because I wasn't ready for it, all I could see was straight ahead, no peripheral vision wearing that thing. I kept walking and one of the guys pulled me back, and I could hear a tear in the costume.

One of the guys, steaming, asked me to explain myself. I wasn't paying attention because I was too busy overhearing some of the other guys saying stuff about me to strangers walking by, talking shite, just making stuff up, like that charity thing again, and worse. Just making it up.

I started to walk away once more, this time walking backwards so I could keep my eyes on that lot, and that guy who grabbed me before tried to grab the costume again. So I started to run, because no fucking way I was letting him put another tear in it. Keep in mind how much the thing cost me.

I managed to lose them right away by turning down a wee lane, one of those wee lanes where clubs and restaurants keep their bins, the type of lane where all the guys go for a pish. But as I was about to turn the corner down another lane, I had a look around in time to see them spot where I'd vanished to, and they started coming after me.

I think that kept up for about twenty minutes. Me running down one lane, before turning up another. Me losing them for a while, then being spotted again. I don't know if they were doing it deliberately, I don't know if they were pretending to lose me in order to drag the thing out like a cat-and-mouse thing, but I know that they were enjoying it. Each time I got spotted, they'd toot imaginary bugles and cheer, like they were having a fox hunt. I wasn't enjoying it, personally. I was pretty sure I was running for my life.

But that's me knackered now, so I'm going to stop. I turned around to see if they'd given up, but they haven't. There's around half a dozen of them. I don't know what it is they're going to do, but I'm sure after all this chasing, they're going to make it worth their while. But that's me knackered now.

One of them's doing that bugle sound again, and it's getting another cheer. It's funny. It reminds me of when folk were beeping their horns and cheering at that bear at the traffic lights. God, that seems like ages ago.

Another one of them's just picked something up from the ground. I feel like running again, but that's me done. I really am knackered.

Honestly, these people that run marathons wearing a bear costume.

How do they do it?

Sometimes we'd like to go back. Back in time. Back to a happy memory from our past, to relive it for a moment. Or perhaps we'd like to go back to a simpler time in our life, before things got so complicated. Or perhaps we'd like to turn back the clock to a bad decision we made, one that we regret, to make it right and then take it from there. Well …

He was on his computer, late at night. Very late. He should have went to bed hours ago, but he couldn't help checking out one last thing, then another, stuff he wasn't even that interested in. He finally ended up on Facebook, which was his cue to call it a night. He had no interest in that at all, so when he found himself there, he knew he really was scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of ways to avoid going to sleep. And no wonder, the things you'd get on there these days, it was a shambles: the constant game requests to help somebody unlock a level or get a pink ruby or a magic cow; the surprisingly racist posts from people he thought were all right; or the wee People You May Know thing that showed him page after page of people he'd never seen or heard of before. He didn't realise there were that many people he didn't know. Tonight, though, there was one face he did know, very well.

He was about to close the browser when he saw her. She was older now, but he recognised her almost right away, even from the wee thumbnail. Same sort of hair, same colouring. He looked at her name; he didn't recognise it at first because her surname had changed, and her first name was down as Amanda. He'd always known her as Mandy.

He loved her.

He clicked on her picture and went to her profile, hoping that she didn't have all the privacy settings up to the max. But no, everything was there, so he had a nosey. She was married now with a family. There were albums of her on holiday with them, or away to a theme park, or dressing up for Halloween. There were other albums of her on nights out with her mates or taking part in some charity thing or attending somebody's wedding. She was always smiling, smiling that smile that he remembered. She looked so happy and content. He wondered if she would have been that happy and content with him, or he with her. He just wondered, that's all.

He looked through some more of the albums, and then he looked at her posts. Most of them were just wee updates to say she was at some restaurant or bar in Rutherglen, or to say what she thought of the latest person to get booted off whatever reality programme she was watching, or a link to a donation page to sponsor her for one of her charity things. Nothing that interesting in itself. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, half asleep in his seat, until he spotted something that woke him right back up again. It was a picture. A picture from back in the day. Old pictures like that took you right back, it was a time warp, but this one especially, because he remembered that it was him that took it.

It was taken in Millport, a wee town on Great Cumbrae, an island just off the west coast of Scotland. It was where he first met her, and where he last saw her. It was a place where a lot of families would go for their summer holiday when he was young, families from Glasgow, Paisley, Greenock and thereabouts. The parents would relax and do nothing for a fortnight, while their teenage sons and daughters would meet up with old mates they'd met before, or be introduced to new ones. Like he was with Mandy.

He remembered where it was. Him and a crowd of them were drinking round at the cove, a hideaway from the police near the sea. They were only fifteen, most of them. ‘This is my mate Mandy,' somebody said, and he and Mandy shook hands. They had a laugh about how it felt weird when guys shook hands with lassies, it felt like a guy thing, it felt like they should be doing the kissing-on-the-cheek thing like older folk – so they did. A couple of hours later, they were kissing for real at the disco. He told her he really liked her, and she said she liked him as well. He couldn't believe his luck, that somebody like her could like somebody like him.

He woke up the next morning, dreading bumping into her, scared of seeing her pretend that nothing had happened. Later that day, they finally met, when a crowd of his mates met up with a crowd of hers. She smiled that smile at him, and he smiled back. They walked together, and he didn't know what he was supposed to say or how he was to act. She took his hand. He felt fucking light inside when she did that, he felt like he could float away.

A fortnight later most people were heading home, including her. He was fucking gutted, it almost made him feel sick, but he didn't want to show it in case he came across as all clingy. She spent her last day taking pictures with her disposable camera, pictures of her mates, pictures of the cove, before getting one or two pictures of him – it was hard smiling when he knew she was away in twenty minutes. She had one picture left, and asked everybody to get in for a big group photo. He said he'd take it. She said no, she wanted him to come and stand next to him, but he said it was all right, he'd take it. Fuck knows why. Maybe he didn't want a big happy ending, it just didn't feel right, the lot of it felt wrong. He took the photo and walked her round to her house to say goodbye. She offered him her phone number, but he said he didn't think it was best, because she stayed in Rutherglen and that was a good bit away from where he stayed, it wouldn't work out. She shrugged and said, ‘Fine,' pretending that she was all right with it, before giving him a cuddle. He walked away, and she walked up the path towards her front door. He turned around to see if she was looking back, if he could get one last look at that smile. She wasn't. And that was the last time he saw her. Until now.

He looked at the group photo on Facebook. There they all were. Ross, Helen, whatshisname, Gregor, Fraser, whatshername, Colin, Carol (or maybe it was Caroline), plus about a dozen more he couldn't quite remember the names of or couldn't quite see. And there, near the middle, was Mandy. He wished he could get a better look. He clicked next, and got just what he was after. It was a copy of the group photo, except she'd cropped it to show just her, and blown it up full size. She filled the screen, her and her smile. That smile, smiling at him, as he took the picture. The smile of summer. He looked at the caption below. ‘Happy days', it said. He felt a lump in his throat, and smiled back, before drifting off to sleep.

The following morning he awoke with his head on the desk, as the daylight streamed through the window. He opened his eyes slowly and saw feet standing nearby. He turned around. It was his girlfriend. ‘Morning,' he said. But she didn't reply. Instead, she looked at the monitor. He turned to see what she was looking at. It was Mandy.

Or, to put it another way, rather than coming to bed with his girlfriend last night, he apparently chose to fall asleep looking at a picture of a lassie on Facebook. A lassie in a bikini top. A lassie that looked no older than sixteen. And it didn't help matters that she had big tits.

He couldn't help feeling a strong sense of regret. He wanted to go back. Back before he saw Mandy pop up in People You May Know. Back before he made the bad decision to click on her name and end up here.

Back to a simpler time.

Before things got so complicated.

He woke up, face down in the dirt of the dusty Nevada desert. He got to his feet and brought his hands to his eyes, to shield them against the midday sun. He couldn't remember passing out. He couldn't remember a thing. But one thing he did know was that he was in trouble. His skin was sunburnt, his head was dizzy, his mouth was as dry as a bone. To his left was an empty road that stretched as far as the eye could see, and the same again to the right. There was nothing out here. Nothing. No signs of life other than the small, dry plants that somehow got by without a drop of water. No snakes, rodents or anything else, dead or alive. No sounds of insects, no cars in the distance, no birds in the sky. Nothing. He didn't know how he got there or how to get out, but he did know that one thing. He was in trouble.

Suddenly, he was hit in the face with a wet tea bag.

It had flown in from the side, smacking him on his cheek, before falling off and landing at his feet. It took a moment for him to realise what had happened. At first, he didn't know he'd been hit, he thought that his skin had simply given in to the sunshine and burst open like a blister. But when he looked down, he understood.

He had been hit in the face with a wet tea bag.

He stared at it, then looked around. He smiled, as if a mate had just chucked it at him at a party, before remembering that he wasn't at a party with his mates. He was in the middle of a desert, with nobody.

What the fuck?

He looked down at the tea bag again and wondered if that's what it really was. Maybe he was looking at some kind of vulture dropping that somehow looked like a tea bag because his eyes were fucked with the sun. But there were no vultures, there were no birds in the sky, and his eyes were fine. He knew what he was looking at. He picked it up for a closer look all the same. No doubt about it: it was a tea bag.

It was a wet tea bag. It was warm, like it had just been used. He gave it a squeeze, and watched the tea dribble down his fingers. He brought it to his nose. It smelled like tea. And after some consideration, he brought his fingers to his mouth and gave them a lick.

It tasted of tea. It was tea.

It was a wet tea bag. Somehow, out here, he had been hit in the face with a wet tea bag.