Daft Wee Stories (18 page)

He was the sort of guy that you wouldn't look at twice if you saw him walking down the street. You'd see him, you'd think ‘person', then look at something more interesting instead, like the pavement. Even when you looked at him, the chances are you weren't really looking at him at all; you were looking through him, the way you'd look through the wallpaper of a waiting room. A mere glance at him would make you think of something else, to occupy your mind during the vacuum that his appearance had created. Perhaps your mind might decide not to see him at all. It might pick him up in your peripheral vision, determine from his normal shape and normal average colour of clothes that he was of no interest whatsoever, and tell you not to bother looking, that it simply wasn't worth even a second of your time.

In fact, he was so normal that he could probably walk straight into a bank, his face in plain sight, and rob the joint of every penny without fear of being caught. It wouldn't be because the police would have trouble finding a robber described as ‘normal', although that would be trouble enough. It would be because nobody would see him do it. The security guard wouldn't see him walk past towards the safe; the cashiers wouldn't see him lift the money from the till right under their noses; the customers wouldn't see him remove their purses and wallets and watches and rings right out their hands.

And funnily enough, here he was. In a bank.

To rob it?

No.

To pay a bill. Just to pay a bill.

See, I told you.

Mr fucking Normal.

One night a man had a wee bit too much to drink. His friends told him it would be best if he left the pub and went home to his wife. They meant it in a nice way, they knew he was in a bad place right now, and he was making a fool of himself. After all, he wasn't just some lad in his twenties, he was fifty-two, and a good father.

He left, and soon got lost. He ended up walking down some country road in the dark.

He saw a dead goat trapped in a barbed-wire fence.

He shagged it.

Davie was watching the telly on his couch when he felt something move. He got off his couch, turned around and noticed that his couch had come to life.

‘Feed me,' it said.

For a second Davie did nothing. Then he walked calmly towards the living-room door. He was going to arrange an appointment with a doctor, he had a feeling he might have a brain tumour or something. But the couch moved quickly to block his path.

‘Feed me,' it said again.

Davie could smell the couch's breath. It smelled of raw mince, it smelled like a butcher's. No, this was no illusion, not with that breath. This was real.

‘What do you want to eat?' asked Davie. ‘Biscuits? Cornflakes?'

‘No,' said the couch. ‘People. Feed me people.'

Davie shook his head. ‘I can't do that. I can't.'

‘You can, and you will,' said the couch. ‘Or else!'

‘Or else what?' asked Davie, taking a step back.

‘Or else I'll never let you sit on me again!'

Davie imagined what it would be like watching the telly without a couch. He remembered having to do it once after he had his mate Frank over to watch the football. They had a few drinks, Davie let Frank crash on the couch, and the next morning Davie woke to find the couch was soaked in lager and Frank had fucked off without a word of explanation. Two days it took for the thing to dry. It said you weren't to put the covers in the dryer, so he had to just let it dry in by itself. Two days. Two days without a couch. The only other option he had was this bolt-upright seat that always done his back in, or lying on the deck with his hip bone or elbow or something else digging right into the laminate flooring. It wasn't exactly comfy.

‘All right,' said Davie. ‘I'll do it.' And he headed out.

It didn't take him long to decide on who to bring back. It was Frank, of course. He told Frank it was some laugh that, last time he came round, and that they should do it again. They should just forget about that thing that happened, put it behind them, just get the booze in, get the football on, and just crash out on the couch. That sounds good, doesn't it? Frank could just crash out on the couch, just like last time. The second they get back to Davie's, Frank could just lie on the couch, the whole thing to himself, and crash there for the night. Crash on the couch.

‘All right,' said Frank. ‘I get the message. I can crash on your couch. Thanks.'

They got back, took off their jackets and turned on the telly. The football had already started. A penalty. A penalty in the first five minutes. Frank stood watching, his eyes glued to the screen. He sparked open one of the cans and picked up a pint glass from the table. Davie gestured towards the couch. Frank stepped over to the couch, his eyes never leaving the penalty. He began crouching down slowly as he poured the lager into the glass. The referee whistled for the player to take the kick. The player ran up, Frank sat down and the couch opened wide. It opened up like a gaping arse with the teeth of a shark. Crunch! Gnash, gnash, gnash! Gnash, gnash, gnash, gnash, gnash, gnash, gnash!

And that was the last time Frank went round to Davie's.

He knew Davie had a brain tumour and everything, but he'd had enough of this pillow fight thing or whatever the fuck it was, every fucking time he went over, every time he sat on that couch.

Lager fucking everywhere. He was soaked.

Plus he missed that fucking penalty.

So I'm walking up the road and I bump into somebody I know and we stop and chat. He talks a bit, I talk a bit, and we're back and forth like that for a minute or two until he finally says, ‘Listen, I'll let you go.'

He'll let me go.

I know what that means.

I'm not stupid.

It means that he thinks he's got somewhere better to be and I don't. It means he thinks he's so busy with places to go and people to meet but I'm some sort of sad-case loner that has nowhere to go and nobody to meet and I just want to spend all my time talking to anybody who'll have me, like I'm one of these folk you see standing up the front of the bus talking to the driver. That's what that means. That's what he thinks. But he doesn't want me to know that that's what he thinks in case it hurts my wee feelings, so he's making out that in fact it's the other way about and that I'm actually the one with important business and he doesn't want to take up another moment of my precious time, so he'll let me go, he'll kindly let me go.

No no. No, I'll let him go.

But I can't. He's just let me go, he's just finished the conversation, you can't tell somebody you don't have time for this conversation when the conversation's done.

So I start up a new one.

I ask him where he's staying these days, as a kind of by-the-by, and he tells me he's staying in roughly the same bit, but in a nicer house. I ask him to describe the house to me, and he does. Then I ask him if he ever bumps into any of the old faces that we used to hang about with. He tells me about one or two that he's seen, and about halfway in, I decide to look at the time on my phone then look up the street at an imaginary place I need to go. When he's finished, I say, ‘All right, that's good. Well, listen, I'll let you go.'

And guess what he says. He says, ‘All right, bye.'

I know what that means.

I'm not stupid.

It means that he thinks that, unlike me, he hasn't got time to play silly wee mind games. It means that if I think I've won this wee battle, he's happy to let it slide, because he's too busy to care, he's got bigger fish to fry. Even though it was him who started it. Even though I wouldn't be standing here playing his silly wee mind games if it wasn't for him fucking starting it, and now that he lost he's going to bail out and try to kid himself on that he's the big grown-up with the pure big busy fucking schedule. That's what that means.

And now he's going to tell everybody. He's going to tell everybody that I just wander about with nothing to do and that you should cross the road when you see me, like I'm some sort of fucking screwball.

No, no. Can't have that.

So I try to hook him back in, I ask him, ‘By the way …' but he says he has to go. I say, ‘No wait, it's just one wee thing,' and he says he doesn't want to be late. I say, ‘No, listen,' and he says, ‘What?'

And I ask him, ‘Has your house got a garden?'

But before he has a chance to answer, I run. I run like a whippet. I run faster than I've ran in the last twenty-five years. I don't think I've run that fast since secondary school. I run so fast I can't hear his answer because of the wind in my ears, it's like I'm on a bike.

So he can tell whoever he wants about me, tell whoever he wants whatever he wants, tell them a pack of lies for all I care. And the same goes for you.

Because I don't care. I don't care at all.

I've got shit to get on with. A lot of people want to talk to me right now and I've got a lot of things to do. And all of it is important and critical as fuck.

So listen, if you don't mind …

I'll let you go.

Jason didn't know how to go about it, so he went into the Citizens Advice Bureau to ask. He wanted to know if he needed some kind of planning permission thing for what he was about to do. He hoped not, because he didn't want to have to wait, he wanted to do this now. But he asked anyway.

He explained that he'd not been feeling too happy recently; he'd been feeling a bit down in the dumps. He'd stick on the telly to watch something funny to cheer him up, but it'd never raise a smile. He thought about meeting up with some mates to see how they were doing, but he couldn't give a fuck. And last night he treated himself to a bubble bath, he actually went into a shop to get some bubble bath, and he used it last night, he had himself a bubble bath, and waited, waited to be happy, until his fingers were all wrinkly and the water went cold.

Nothing.

So that was it. He'd tried everything. So while he was there in the bath, he thought he may as well top himself.

He got out, plugged his radio into the socket in the hall and carried it back into the toilet. He got in the bath, holding the radio above the water, and switched it on. He was just about to drop it in and be done with it all, but on came that song. That happy song. The one about being happy, by Pharrell. That one.

Jason told the Citizens Advice guy that he lay there in the bath, listening to Pharrell singing about how happy he was, much happier than Jason. He wondered how the fuck anybody could be that happy, he wondered how you got that happy, that way Pharrell was singing in the song. Singing about not having a care. Singing about being a hot air balloon. But it was that bit where he sang about ‘a room without a roof', that's what really got him wondering. ‘Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof'. Jason didn't get it, he didn't know what was so happy about that, about ‘a room without a roof'. Maybe it's because it lets in more natural light, or maybe it's because it feels good to sleep under the stars, like when you go camping. He just didn't know. But he was going to give it a try.

The Citizens Advice guy asked him to clarify just what it was he was going to try. Jason said that he knew what the guy was going to say, that he was going to ask Jason about the rain, what if it started raining, but Jason said he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. The Citizens Advice guy still wasn't sure what Jason was saying. Jason said he wanted permission to remove the roof from his house. The guy asked Jason if he was serious. Jason said he was deadly serious, mate, deadly serious, he had to give it a shot, he'd tried everything else, bubble bath, the lot. The Citizens Advice guy asked some questions about Jason's property out of politeness, even though he knew Jason had fucking no chance. Jason said it would be cool, he lived in a flat, but it was a top-floor flat; he was sure his neighbours wouldn't mind. The Citizens Advice guy tried not to laugh. When Jason pointed out it wasn't even his flat and that he was renting it off the council, the Citizens Advice guy couldn't hold it in any longer, he laughed Jason out of there. He felt bad for doing it, but for crying out loud.

Jason went ahead and did it anyway. It was either that or he was topping himself, no two ways about it, and he didn't need permission to make that decision, not from anybody. So he climbed out of his living-room window, up the drainpipe and onto the roof. Some people in the flats across the road saw him and thought he was a thief stealing tiles, and they phoned the police.

The police took Jason to the station and let him off with a caution, but as soon as Jason got back home he went right back onto the roof and started tearing tiles off like he was the Hulk. When one of the tiles smashed onto the roof of a passing motor, the police were phoned again, and this time the judge had no option but to give Jason a custodial sentence.

He had a lot of time to think. He had a lot of time to think not only about his actions, but about that song. The song that inspired his actions. What the fuck was Pharrell on about? His attempt to have a room without a roof hadn't brought him happiness, it had landed him in the fucking jail.

And then it clicked.

‘Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof', that's what Pharrell said. Maybe what he was saying was a room without a roof is actually shite, so if you feel like that, if you feel shite, clap along, it'll cheer you up.

Outside the cell, one of the prison staff responsible for Jason's twenty-four-hour suicide watch took a look through the peephole.

He saw Jason clapping, and smiling.

It was a fucking shame for that boy, it really was. He shouldn't be in here, caged like an animal, there was obviously something wrong with him.