Daft Wee Stories (22 page)

‘Get water!' shouted Julie. Good idea. Off he ran and back he came with water in a pint glass, spilling most of it on the floor in the process. He poured it over the coal. Steam and water everywhere. Steam, and water as black as soot, everywhere. What a fucking shambles. The fire was out, but what a shambles.

When the smoke had cleared, they shut the windows and sat back down on the couch, not saying anything for a bit. Maybe not wanting to, because they weren't sure who was to blame. Eventually Julie made the first move, with a fairly neutral, ‘So what happened?'

‘I don't know,' shrugged Kenny, before standing up and heading over to the fireplace, slipping on the spilt water and nearly falling on his arse. Kenny looked to Julie to see if that brought some comic relief, but no. He looked back to the fireplace. ‘I think the chimney's blocked,' he said, crouching down and inspecting it to see if he was right. He couldn't see, it was dark up there. He got out his phone, stuck on the torch and had another look.

He couldn't believe his eyes.

He looked around at Julie slowly. She could tell something was seriously up. ‘Kenny, what is it?' she said, worried. ‘Tell me.'

‘It's …' Kenny had trouble finishing what he was about to say. He put his hand up the chimney and held on to what he saw, partly to make sure he wasn't imagining it, and partly because he was about to pull it down to prove to Julie that he hadn't lost his mind.

‘Julie,' said Kenny, before giving the thing a yank. ‘It's Santa.'

Before Julie had the chance to say ‘Fucking shut up', down came Kenny's proof from the chimney, crashing into the fireplace and knocking the tongs and other tools flying. It was the corpse of Father Christmas, followed by a couple of dead pigeons.

Kenny looked down at the body in its tattered, chimney-stained clothes. It looked like a cross between the Santa that he knew and loved and a zombie.

Julie inhaled to scream, but stopped when the elves appeared. Three of them, out of nowhere. Pop, pop, pop! She inhaled again and fell back on the couch. She couldn't remember if her next breath should be in or out. She was stumped.

The elves explained that they'd been looking for Santa everywhere since last Christmas, and thanked Kenny for finding him. Now, they announced with pleasure, it would be Kenny's turn to be Santa.

‘What?' said Kenny to the elves.

Elves?

What the fuck?

The elves explained that that's how it worked. Oh, it wasn't the first time Santa had died, it happened every few years, whether it was getting stuck down a chimney and dying of suffocation, or falling 20,000 feet from the sleigh, steaming drunk. The elves would just find a replacement, no big deal. And Kenny would be that replacement, if he'd like to just come along nicely.

‘No fucking way,' said Kenny, pushing one of the elves. Kenny noticed that pushing the elf only pushed himself away. It was like pushing a brick wall. Although the elf was only half the height of Kenny, the wee prick was solid.

‘Very well,' said the elf, turning to Julie. ‘Then it will be you. Come.'

The elves walked towards her, and she started booting at them. ‘Fuck off. Get yourselves to fuck, fuck off!'

‘No,' shouted Kenny. ‘Take me! Take me!'

‘First answer counts, mate,' said one of the elves, a wee jobsworthy type. Kenny tried pulling one of the elves back, but he may as well have been pulling at a lamppost and expecting it to budge. The elf swung his arm, throwing Kenny through the air as effortlessly as a bull goring a seven-stone junkie.

‘Take me,' groaned Kenny as he fell against the wall. But it was too late. As the elves put their hands on Julie, she started to change. She began ageing, at a rate of five years a second. Her face began growing that familiar white beard. And she got fat as fuck.

She inhaled one last time, and Kenny braced himself for an ear-piercing scream. He didn't brace himself for this, though …

‘Ho ho ho!' she boomed, with the voice of an overweight man in his sixties. Kenny would never forget the look of surprise on her face when she heard that come out. And then pop! She and her elves were gone.

Kenny lay in the corner of the living room, in the silence, wondering if what had just happened really did just happen.

But it did. He didn't know how, but it did.

Kenny shook his head.

He was going to phone the solicitors after all.

Tomorrow morning, first fucking thing.

Stuart got handed a flyer. Normally if he got handed a flyer, it would be from some young guy or lassie to promote a club or a special offer in a shop nearby. But this flyer was from an old guy, for a bowling club. Haha. He couldn't help laughing.

He looked at the old guy, there with his navy-blue blazer and his thinning ginger hair, not too happy about being laughed at. Probably sick to death of these young ones having no manners. ‘Where is it?' asked Stuart, feeling that he owed the old guy a bit of small talk after hurting his feelings. The old guy wasn't up for talking; he just pointed to a gate in the hedge behind him, still in a mood. It would take a lot more than small talk to make it up to the poor old fellow. Stuart had a spare few minutes, so he thought, Fuck it, and through the gate he walked.

He walked down the path and around the building, following the sound of bowls gently hitting off other bowls and the sound of old folk chatting. He didn't hear many young people, and wondered if maybe they were indoors, inside the building. He wondered why anybody his age would want to come to a place like this anyway. Maybe the booze was cheap.

Eventually he reached the bowling green, and saw the people there bowling. At a glance he could see that all these people were old, not a young face amongst them. There were men and women, wearing all that lawn bowls attire, the white jumpers and trousers and skirts, all of them old, some old as fuck. Over to the left of the green he could see a group of old dears having a game, three women with ginger hair, having a natter. Over at the other side were a group of old but not old-old men, also with ginger hair, taking things very seriously.

Hell of a lot of ginger folk in here.

And there in the middle were two very, very old men playing a one-on-one match, maybe a grudge match that had lasted for decades. They were wearing hats. A gust of wind blew off one of their hats, revealing a head of ginger hair.

Ginger. Again?

The ginger guy who had lost his hat was about to chase after it, but the other guy offered to give him his. He took off his hat, revealing his hair to also be ginger.

This was all getting strange. And it didn't seem quite right.

Stuart thought he'd seen enough, hopefully enough to make that old guy out there on the street a bit cheerier. Mind you, the old guy wasn't his top reason for leaving. He'd just really like to leave now. He turned to walk out, and in doing so, he got a glance inside the bowling club through the windows that faced the lawn. It was busy, full of lots of older folk whiling away their time. No young people. None.

And all of them were ginger.

Stuart made a run for it.

He sprinted down the path and back around the building, not looking behind to see if they were on his heels. He shot out the gate in the hedge and onto the street, with the intention of running for another few minutes for safe measure. But that was soon brought to a halt.

‘Away so soon?' asked the old guy with the flyers, standing in Stuart's way.

‘What the fuck's going on?' asked Stuart. He could easily have just run away from all this, but he needed to find out. ‘They're ginger. They're all ginger!'

‘Yes,' said the old guy. ‘They are. But so are you!'

Stuart felt his head tingle. He turned to one of the parked motors at his side and looked at his reflection in the window. And sure enough, his hair was changing colour, from jet black to carrot orange. He looked to the old guy to ask what the bloody hell was going on here, and saw that the old guy's ginger hair was turning black.

‘And here,' said the old guy, ‘here you shall remain. Like I have for many, many years. At this gate, with these flyers, a ginger, until you can find someone to replace you. This is where I bid you farewell.'

The old guy was about to hand over the flyers, but Stuart just said, ‘Fuck that,' and carried on running. Stuart's hair started turning back to black, as the old guy's hair turned back to ginger.

The old guy watched Stuart run away. No point in chasing after him – nothing he could do. You know, he'd had just about enough of this. The old guy really was sick to death of these young ones. The way they'd run off like that. No manners. Out of control. No respect for the rules, no respect for their elders. And there really is nothing you can do. You can't give them a clout round the ear, you can't grab their arm, you can't even lay a finger on them or else they'll get you done for assault.

That's why this country's gone to pot.

He was walking through a bookshop, just having a look. Just killing some time during his lunch break until he had to head back to work, back to his shite job. He liked coming in here. It was one of those big bookshops with four floors and a lift and a coffee shop inside; it was a nice wee escape. He'd never actually buy anything, though, or be one of those people who sat on the floor with a book in their hands, all wrapped up in a world of their own. It was just a nice place to wander around, occasionally picking up something that had an interesting cover, looking at the description on the back, then returning it to the shelf. It kind of reminded him of going to the video shop when he was a boy, surrounded by all these covers, scary ones, romantic ones, funny ones, all designed to attract your eye and draw you in and get you wondering. Aye, it was a nice wee escape, this, a nice wee getaway.

He looked at the time and sighed: time to head back before he got another talking-to for being late. He walked down the stairs to the ground floor and off towards the door, stopping for a second or two to look at the stuff near the tills: notepads and pens, board games, pocket-sized books of inspirational quotes, stuff like that, the bookshop equivalent of the chocolate temptations they have at supermarket checkouts. They had a wee globe, an inflatable one about the size of a football, sitting on top of a stack of atlases. He picked it up and had a look at it, not that he was going to buy it, but you do that sometimes when you see a globe, you have a wee look. You maybe tell yourself you're going to go to one of the countries one day, but will you fuck. He looked at the first country he saw, Japan, and gave it a tap with his finger. One day, he thought. One day. He didn't know why, it wasn't one of his lifelong ambitions to go to Japan or anything, but it would be good to get away, to Japan or anywhere else. He put down the globe and off he went, back to finish his shite day at his shite job.

When he got home that night, he headed to the kitchen to make himself some dinner, stepping into the living room briefly to turn on the telly before walking out – he liked a bit of noise on. In the kitchen, he got a pot out the cupboard, stuck it on the worktop and held a handful of spaghetti over it, getting ready to break it in two.

He froze.

He just heard something from the news next door. Something about … he couldn't remember now. Something had made him stop, he didn't know what. He got ready to break the spaghetti once more, then he heard it again. Something the reporter said. He walked through to the living room to make sure he wasn't hearing things. Maybe he was just imagining it. But no.

There had been an earthquake in Japan.

And it wasn't just one of those wee ones where they show you CCTV footage of filing cabinets wobbling about in an office. It wasn't something you'd see in some compilation programme of funny home videos where the studio audience would laugh at people falling about daft. It was the kind of thing where the newsreader warns you that some viewers may find the following scenes disturbing.

That's unbelievable. He was only just thinking about Japan today, and then this happens. How often does he think about Japan? Not that often. But today, for no reason, he walked over to that globe, picked it up and looked at Japan. He even gave it a wee tap with his finger. And then this happens. That's like some kind of premonition, surely.

Wait. Wait a minute.

He gave Japan a wee tap with his finger. And then this. An earthquake!

No, don't be silly. Don't be silly, now. He switched off the news and went back to the kitchen to finish making his dinner, and didn't give it another thought. Some coincidence, though, eh?

A couple of weeks later, back he was in the bookshop. No, nothing to do with the globe – he'd got himself caught out in the rain during his lunch break, and bolted indoors before he got soaked top to bottom. And, as usual, he wandered around between the floors, looking at book covers and descriptions, at biographies of people he'd never heard of, and at classics that he'd always heard of but never read. He looked at the time; it was time to head back. He looked out the window; it was still pouring. Fuck off. So he walked down the stairs to the ground floor, and had one last look at the stuff around the tills. Things had changed a bit since the last time he was in, a few things had come and gone, but one thing remained: the globe.

He picked it up, gently. His heart raced slightly, as he wondered what he'd do if he saw that Japan was gone. But that, again, was just fucking silly. Japan itself, the actual country, wasn't gone, the earthquake didn't sink Japan into the sea like Atlantis, and even if Japan was missing from an inflatable globe, it would be a printing error: a highly coincidental printing error, but a printing error nonetheless. He turned the globe slowly towards Japan, and saw that Japan was still intact. He was relieved.

He looked out the door to the rain he'd be running out into, and looked back at the globe. He quite fancied getting away from all this, to somewhere warm. He looked at Spain, to Brazil, before finally resting his eyes on India. Now there's an interesting place, so they say. He almost gave it a tap with his finger, then thought twice. C'mon, now, don't be silly. Don't be fucking silly. You can't tap a country on a blow-up globe and cause a tragedy, it's unheard of. So he touched it. He didn't want to, but he felt he had to, just to put this silliness behind him. One touch. Not a tap-tap-tap, just a touch. Then he put down the globe, walked to the door and sprinted into the pissing rain.