Daft Wee Stories (24 page)

He put his hand in his pocket and shoved in the rest of the change, he didn't know how much. He just shoved the lot in.

Nothing.

Mind you, on the last shot there, the wee numbers on the reels added up to three. He needed four exactly to get onto the feature thing. One of the numbers on the reels was one, so if he put in more money and got a hold, he could hold the number one, spin the rest, and hopefully no other numbers would come in, resulting in four. Providing he got a hold, though. And a feature hold. If you don't get a feature hold, the numbers just go back down to zero.

He went to the bar to get change of a tenner. He asked for a fiver and five pound coins – he didn't want the temptation to shove a tenner's worth of coins in. The lassie came back with ten pound coins anyway, she said they never had any fivers. He said that was fine and cracked some joke about the fruit machine. She didn't hear him, and walked away.

He headed back to the fruit machine and stuck in a pound. No hold, no feature hold. Nothing.

Then he stuck in the rest of the tenner, and got nothing.

He went back to the bar and asked for change of a twenty. She asked if he wanted a tenner and ten pound coins. He said no thanks, he wanted twenty pound coins please.

He stuck in the lot, but won two quid back. Then he stuck that in, and got nothing.

He went back to the bar for more change, but noticed he had no cash in his wallet. He asked if they did cashback, but they didn't. The lassie told him that there was a cash machine next to the toilet, so he headed to that. It charged him £2.95 to use it, so he made it worth his while and took out a hundred.

He went to the bar and bought another pint, getting change of a twenty while he was at it.

He walked over to the machine, put his pint on the top, and filled the slot with five quid before hitting start. One, two, three, four, five quid in. Start.

Nothing.

He picked up his pint to walk away; he wasn't going to fill the machine up with the rest of his money, fuck that. Then he changed his mind and put his pint back down and decided that he'd stick a few more quid in after all. But he'd keep ten of the pound coins in his pocket, he wouldn't spend that. He'd just spend the change from the pint. He stuck it in, and got nothing.

He put in the other ten pound coins, and got nothing from that either.

He walked to the bar to get change of another twenty, then saw a young couple enter the pub. He got change of another twenty, just in case. He got it just in case he headed to the bar after this twenty was done and the couple swooped in and got the jackpot. So he got change of forty. He wasn't planning on shoving in forty, mind you, but better safe than sorry.

He went back to the machine, and shoved in forty.

Nothing.

He headed to the bar to get more change, watching the couple like a hawk. If they tried to swoop in on the machine, he'd make sure he was there first, even if he had to pretend that he still had a credit left. But they didn't swoop in. They were too busy having a laugh.

He was going to ask for sixty pound coins, but saw that he only had forty quid left in his wallet, so he asked for forty. To get that, the lassie at the bar had to go round the back and empty out those wee see-through bags of change. She cracked some joke about the fruit machine. He didn't hear her, and walked away.

With the first pound coin, he got onto the feature, at last. The game asked him to pick higher or lower than a two, on a reel numbered one to twelve. He picked higher.

It came back with a one.

Nothing.

He stuck in the rest of the forty in no time. He might have won something, but it wasn't much, and it went right back in.

When he was finished, he thought about getting more change, but something inside him decided not to bother. He found a seat and looked at the projector screen for a while, where they usually play the football. The projector wasn't on right now, but he looked at it anyway. Looked through it. He was going to ask them to stick something on, but he decided not to bother.

He looked around. That couple were away.

He stood up to leave and noticed that he hadn't finished his pint, so he sat back down, and looked at the fruit machine. Then decided he'd leave anyway.

As he walked past the machine, he checked his pocket. He had a 5p piece. He walked over to the machine. It was 25p a credit, but sometimes you don't stick in exact multiples of 25p, like when he was shoving in all that smash from before. Maybe there was 20p sitting in the machine right now, waiting for another 5p for a credit.

He was just about to stick the 5p in the slot, then stopped.

He would keep that.

He would keep that 5p.

It seemed ludicrous to keep 5p when you've just stuck in almost a hundred and fifty quid, but no, he would keep that. Because it wasn't just five pence. It was a symbol. A symbol of control. And if he could stop himself from putting in that last 5p, then it meant he could also …

He put it in.

Nothing.

There once was this guy, a sensitive type of guy, called Pete. He was so sensitive that his mates thought it would be hilarious to send him a video of a guy being killed.

Pete didn't like videos like that, he found them to be deeply disturbing. He'd never watched any before, mind you, but the descriptions alone were enough to get him down. Every few weeks, his mates would send a group email linking to the latest video doing the rounds. ‘Oh, you've got to see it,' they'd say. ‘There's this guy with a saw,' or ‘There's this guy that gets shoved in this box,' or ‘This guy puts this thing to his head, thinking it isn't plugged in, but what happens is …' No, fuck off. Fuck off with that, stop talking. It was almost worse than watching the video itself, he imagined. By not watching it, his imagination would fill in the blanks, it would imagine the sounds, it would imagine the expression on the victim's face, it would imagine the smell. It was almost tempting to have a look, to compare what was in his mind to the video itself, but he never did. He'd read the description, get the shudders and give it a miss. This time, though, they didn't give a description. Not an accurate one, anyway. You know, for a laugh.

They told him it was an advert for a travel company, a cheesy and unintentionally funny promotional video that they all thought he'd like. He'd heard about it but never seen it, so he clicked on the link. But what he got was something else. Before he knew it, screams were blasting from his laptop speakers, as he watched a man go from being alive to being dead.

It was horrific. Pete felt his face go pale. His hands felt cold and sweaty. He felt spaced out. When it was finished, he stood up and looked out the window, at nothing. He chewed the fingernail on his thumb. He put on the kettle to try and carry on as normal, but it was no use. He couldn't get it out of his mind. It was there at the forefront, no matter what he did. It would maybe leave his thoughts for five seconds or so, then it would be back. He went for a walk, he stared at some ducks, he went to the shops and bought a new top, his mum phoned and they talked about how she was getting rid of her microwave because the light inside didn't work any more. And all the time, there was that guy, in Pete's head, getting done in.

So Pete tried something to get that video out of his mind, he decided to do something that maybe went against common sense.

He decided to watch it again.

He thought it would be best to go back and watch it again until it became normal. Maybe the problem was that he was too sensitive. Maybe he needed to watch it over and over until he toughened up. So he did. He watched it over and over, over and over. Ten times, forty times, countless times, until he wasn't that bothered, until he couldn't care less, until he actually started to see the funny side. He went back to one of the old links he'd been sent by his mates, one he'd never clicked. He read the description and remembered his distress at reading it the first time around, but this time he felt nothing. And when he watched the video, he discovered he was all right with that as well.

He liked his new thick skin. He didn't realise how much of a scaredy cat he was before, hiding away, shutting his eyes, not prepared to fully accept what was really going on out there. Living life by half. Half a person. Now he felt complete. He felt strong. The video had helped him cope better with day-to-day life, in a way, with stuff on the news, with family tragedies, terrible stuff, stuff he used to care about, stuff that used to break his heart, and now it didn't. He wasn't a religious man, but there was something almost spiritual about it.

He began watching more, more of that stuff; there were whole sites dedicated to it. It had a profound effect: it brought about a kind of awakening. It reminded him of when he was told Santa didn't exist; it was upsetting, but there was something empowering about knowing the truth. You could almost feel it in your lungs, you could feel it in your mind, that stretch, as you realised that what you thought was real was nothing but a fairy tale. And there it was with each new video, each new horror, that painful but rewarding feeling of being warped.

But eventually the videos weren't enough. They weren't real. They were recordings of something real in the past, but they weren't real, they were rectangular and flat, they weren't here and now and all around. That stretching feeling became more and more rare, it was hard to get. It looked like he'd reached a dead end, and it made him a bit glum. Then one day he saw something that cheered him right up. He saw a guy getting hit by the side mirror of a bus. Pete saw it coming, he could have shouted over to tell the guy to look out, but he chose to just watch instead. An ambulance was called, and Pete looked on, feeling that stretch he hadn't felt in quite some time, as he thought, I did that.

Well, what came next was only a matter of time.

‘Barbaric!' said the judge.

Pete had sent his mates a video. It was a good video, it didn't just have one thing in it, it had lots of things, like a compilation album. There was an old man at the top of a flight of concrete steps; just as he was about hold on to the handle and take his first step, a foot came out from behind the camera and kicked him flying. There was a steaming guy sleeping in a doorway, a smart/casual type in his twenties at the end of a night out; a hand came out from behind the camera and pushed a nail into his neck. Then there was this silver-haired businessman with his head in a vice, getting his balls taken off with a can opener. Pete ended it by turning the camera on himself and giving a big thumbs-up and a smile and wave to his mates, which was a mistake, looking back. You would have thought they'd have been all right with it with all the shite they were into. Grassing bastards.

‘Barbaric!' said the judge.

Haha. Fuck off, ya prick. Man up.

Iain held the spoon of tomato soup an inch from his mouth, motionless, as he stared out the cafe window with his jaw on the deck.

Outside, at the other side of the road, was his mum. There she was. They weren't due to meet for lunch or anything; she had no idea he was in there staring out at her. If she did, he was quite sure she wouldn't be doing what she was doing.

She was kissing a guy.

Some of the soup on the spoon dripped down into the bowl below, splashing one or two drops onto Iain's T-shirt. He didn't notice. His mum was kissing some guy.

He felt like chapping the window to get her to stop, the way a primary school teacher might chap on a window with keys to stop one of the children flashing their genitals. But he didn't. As much as he didn't want to see his mum like that, he didn't want to see his mum seeing him seeing her like that. But she'd find out eventually. She'd find out that he'd found out, because he'd have to tell his dad. He'd have to. ‘Dad,' he'd say. ‘Know how you and Mum stopped shagging years ago? She's still at it, mate. She's still at it.'

She squeezed the guy's arse. Iain lowered his spoon into the bowl and pushed it away.

They stopped kissing for a moment, only to adjust their heads and get fired right back into each other once again. Iain could almost see the guy's face now, but not quite, he couldn't get a good, clear look. However, he did get a good, clear look at the semi that was bulging through the guy's middle-age trousers. He saw that all right. He was surprised at how little he was shocked by it. Surprised and concerned. Concerned at what it meant for his mental health, as he had clearly become warped. He looked away. He reckoned that when he got round to telling his dad, he'd maybe leave this bit out. Dad needed to know the truth, but he didn't need to be tortured with it.

Iain looked back at the pair of them. They'd turned slightly, and now Iain could get a good, clear look at the guy's face.

His heart sank.

No. No, it can't be.

Iain leaned his elbows against the table, closed his eyes and gently put his palms against his face. He wouldn't be telling his dad after all. Not now. If the guy had been a stranger, aye, but not now.

It was bad. Pretty bad.

It was Dad.

Mum was with Dad.

The cafe owner walked over to Iain, the guy at the window, the one who'd been staring into his soup for the last fifteen minutes. ‘Is everything OK?' she asked, looking at the soup. She'd made it herself.

‘It's revolting,' he whispered. ‘Revolting.'

Suit yourself.

I've got a mate, he's a bit of a film buff. He's got it in his Twitter bio: ‘Film buff'. He's the sort of guy that refers to films like
Rear Window
simply as
Window
. I remember asking him why he did that, and he said that if you're into films as much as he is and discuss them as much as he does, then it just makes more sense, it saves a lot of time. I told him that I understood why he sometimes shortened
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
to
One Flew
, even though it's not something I'd do myself, but shortening
Rear Window
to
Window
? You're only losing a syllable. I remember saying that to him online one night, I said, ‘Are you sure you don't just do it to sound clever?' but he never replied. Have a sense of humour, mate, fuck's sake.