Daft Wee Stories Read online

  And that scared her. It scared her that she was beginning to lose track of what she was scared of. It scared her that she didn’t know what happens when you can’t take being that scared any more. It scared her that if she got in whatever state that was and people asked what was wrong, she wouldn’t be able to tell them what it was she was scared of. Claustrophobicphobicpho … Fuck it, she got off.

  She just got off. An air hostess asked her where she was going. ‘I’m just …’ was all Lesley said, and then she was gone.

  I last saw her in Paisley. She was waiting outside a chemist, at eight in the morning.

  It was pishing doon.

  She looked freezing.

  HAZY DAYS OF SUMMER

  It was just one of those days. It was one of those crazy, hazy days of summer. Something about that heat just goes straight to your head, doesn’t it? Puts your brain in holiday mode, makes you think that you’re a thousand miles away without a care in the world. Aye, that’s the best way I can put it. Your brain goes on holiday. It stops working!

  That wouldn’t have been a problem if I actually was on holiday with nothing to do, but as it turned out, I did have something to do. Well, not something I had to do, no way I was doing something I had to do on a beautiful day like that. It was something I wanted to do. Two things I wanted to do, to be precise.

  The first thing I wanted to do was I wanted to thank the postman, for what he did. It was nothing, really. I’d been waiting for a parcel, recorded delivery, but I really fancied nipping over to the shops for a Solero. It’s just one of those things I liked getting when the sun’s out, I used to do the same thing with a can of Lilt, but I don’t know if you get them any more. Anyway, the thing was that if I wasn’t in to collect the parcel, well, it would get sent back to the depot and I’d have to walk there and back. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting something delivered, doesn’t it? Plus I’d probably have had to search the house for my passport to show them at the depot. (And by the way, don’t tell me you don’t need a passport, a mate told me that once, but when I got to the depot they said that I did need it and I had to walk all the way back. I turned the house upside down looking for my passport, couldn’t fucking find it. It was the last time I took that guy’s advice, let me tell you.)

  Anyway, that didn’t matter, because of what the postman did. I nipped over to get a Solero, I just decided to go for it, I thought it’d only take a minute. But when I got there, I ended up getting caught up in this conversation with the guy behind the counter when I asked him if he had any Lilt. I don’t even know if I wanted a can, I was just wondering if they still sold them. He didn’t know what it was, so I was trying to describe it to him, it’s harder than you think. (What does it taste like anyway, is it pineapple? I couldn’t remember.) Anyway, I realised I’d been there for ten minutes or something, and I thought, Fuck! I nearly ran out without paying, then when I tried to pay, I dropped half my cash on the floor, I was all over the fucking place. That’s what happens when you try to do something too fast sometimes, like trying to get your jacket zip down or untying your laces, you just get in a muddle and it ends up taking you longer. I managed to pay him, then I sprinted out the door. I was 99 per cent sure I was too late. I thought, well, I’ll make a run for it, but I was pretty sure I’d be taking that walk to the depot anyway.

  But listen to this, guess what happened? The postman stopped me outside the shop! He had the parcel on him and he asked me if I wanted to just sign for it right there and then.

  I think that is brilliant. I think that’s the mark of a good postman who’s good at his job, when he actually recognises the people he delivers to and does things like that. He didn’t have to do that, he could have just taken it back to the depot; it was my fault after all, diving over for the Solero and going on about Lilt.

  Before I got the chance to thank him, he was off. But there was no way I was letting that go without giving him a hefty pat on the back. I told myself that when I got up the road I was going to phone his work to thank him and tell him how much I thought he was doing a cracking job. And fingers crossed that his boss was listening in. You know, so he got brownie points or a wee pay rise or whatever. He deserved it.

  So that was the first thing I wanted to do.

  The other thing I wanted to do that day was that I wanted to kill the guy that murdered my da.

  They said it was an accident, they said it wasn’t murder, but it fucking was. When you show that degree of negligence, you prove yourself to have no respect for the safety of another man’s life. And to me, that’s murder.

  But here’s the funny thing. I got mixed up!

  It’s like what I said about it just being one of those days. You see, what was in the parcel was the thing I was going to use to kill Craig Malloy, the guy that murdered my da. (It was a trench knife, a kind of spiked knuckle duster with a knife coming out the side. You can get them online.) When I took it out the box, I think I must have got too excited, just wanting to get on with it. It’s like what I was saying about trying to do something too fast, you just get in a muddle. A trench knife for Craig Malloy in a parcel from the postman. Parcel, Craig Malloy, trench knife, postman, know what I mean? And if you keep in mind the heat of that day, that heat that just goes straight to your head, it was no wonder what happened.

  Before I had time to know what I was doing, I chased the postman up a tenement close and stabbed the utter fuck out of him on the stairs. Can’t remember how many times, it was a blur. All I remember is him shouting at me saying that he didn’t kill my da, but all I was thinking was, Aye, you would say that.

  Then I headed back to the house and gave Craig Malloy a phone. I told him that I thought he was cracking. Told him that I thought what he did was considerate and thoughtful and, oh my God, I can’t even tell you the rest, what an embarrassment. I can feel my face going red.

  But you’ve got to laugh, man. You’ve got to. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. I’m shaking my head just thinking about it. But what can I say?

  It was just one of those days.

  LUXURY APARTMENT

  They were going to put an offer in for the house. It was perfect, a terraced house on a leafy street, the type with trees coming out the pavement. Nice and quiet, but only a short walk away from the hubbub of the city, if they ever felt like getting in amongst it. It had three bedrooms, a living room at the front, and another living room type of thing at the back. Tons of space for both of them. He’d always fantasised about having a games room, and with all this he could have a games room and a home cinema. She quite fancied a gym. And they both loved the back garden, perfect for when they wanted to start a family, and perfect for getting mates round in the summer, for barbecues and that. And best of all, the price was right as well. It was fucking perfect.

  Aye, they were going to put in an offer. Until they saw that poster on their way back home, the one outside that new development.

  ‘Luxury apartments’, it said.

  Well, there was no point in having a look, the pair of them had already made up their minds about that terraced house, it was perfect. Mind you, the poster did say ‘luxury’. They thought they’d better check it out. And two months later, they had the keys. To their luxury apartment.

  No, it wasn’t as big as the house, quite cramped in fact, but the estate agent said that meant it didn’t take as much energy to heat. And no, it didn’t have a garden, but then you don’t have the pain in the arse of having to maintain one. And maybe it was in the middle of nowhere, but the noise from the neighbours through the walls made you feel like you were close to the hubbub.

  And, aye, it cost about forty grand more than the house, way over their budget. Aye, it would probably postpone having children for a year or two. And aye, maybe their parents were right when all they could say was, ‘It’s a bit expensive for a one-bedroom flat.’ But they were wrong about one thing.

  It isn’t a ‘flat’.

  It’s an apartment.

  A luxury a
partment.

  Just look at the poster: ‘Luxury apartment’.

  It says so right there.

  YOUR SHITE IS MY SHITE

  Hamish walked to the pub toilet and opened the door. A guy was leaving, so Hamish held the door open for him, and the guy walked past without a word of thanks. Oh, at your service, your majesty. Hamish walked into the toilet. A guy was at one of the sinks, washing his hands. He walked away from the sink, leaving the tap running, dried his hands with a paper towel, left the paper towel crumpled next to the sink, then walked out the door. Hamish shook his head, turned off the tap and put the paper towel in the bin. He didn’t know why he bothered doing it, he didn’t work there; maybe he just did it to annoy himself.

  The toilet was empty now, except for him. He walked to one of the urinals, then decided to go to the cubicle instead. He only needed a pish, but he didn’t want to have another encounter with these animals. He didn’t want to pull down his zip and get started just for some guy to come in and join him, the pair of them pishing side by side, the other guy using the semi-private moment to get all his farts out. No.

  So Hamish opened the cubicle door, walked inside, but then turned to walk right back out. It was fucking stinking. He had a look in the pan; the dickhead hadn’t even bothered to flush, like it was so stinking that even the guy that caused it had to make a sharp exit. Shite was splattered everywhere like a shotgun blast. And, honestly, it was fucking stinking. And that, that smell, was everything that was wrong with people. That just summed it up for him. That smell, that putrid smell, was humanity.

  People are disgusting, he thought. Fucking disgusting. Our disgusting ways ooze out of us like shite, both literally and metaphorically, to the disgust of whoever has the misfortune of being caught up in its presence. Oh, it wasn’t just the guy at the door that didn’t say thanks or the one who left the tap running and the litter, it wasn’t just that. It was everything. It was just everything. The things we say, the things we do, the way we treat each other. The things you read in the paper that leave you wondering why. Why? Because we just can’t help it, that’s why, just as we can’t help making the stench that comes out our arseholes. Vile creatures, so we are, pretending we’re not, scrambling to disguise it, cover it up, waft it away, pretend it doesn’t happen, or blame it on somebody else. And sometimes, as the case seemed to be in the literal shite here before him in the pan, we produce an odour so foul that not even we can bear to stay around long enough to flush the shite away.

  Hamish wondered what the metaphorical equivalent of being disgusted by your own shite would be. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible to do a shite so stinking that it disgusted even you yourself. He certainly couldn’t remember such an occasion. It was an interesting thought.

  Why, he wondered, are we all right with our own shites, yet everybody else’s can get to fuck? Why was that? It’s not as if other people’s shites smell worse than our own, it’s not as if our own shites smelled lovely. One shite was as bad as another, on average. This shite that he was currently being disgusted by, it could have been his own, theoretically. If an experiment was carried out where he was asked to do a shite in a toilet, before being administered with memory-erasing drugs, then brought back in to smell this shite that he was unaware was his own, he imagined he’d be just as disgusted by it as he was by this one in the pan right now. Conversely, if an experiment was carried out where he was brought into a toilet and told that the disgusting shite in the pan was his own, without being told that the shite was actually done by another guy, he could imagine that he’d think, Well, that’s all right then, it’s his own shite, it isn’t disgusting any more – he’d maybe even stay in the cubicle a while to savour it. But the fact was this shite here, this one in the pan right now, was somebody else’s shite, and that made it disgusting.

  And he didn’t like that. There was something about that way of thinking that he didn’t like. He didn’t like what it signified, not at all.

  That way of thinking, now that he thought about it, that was everything that was wrong with people. That way of loving the smell of your own shite but hating the shite of others. Not just actual, literal shite, but that other shite, the symbolic shite, the metaphorical shite, the general shite within a person, the faults, the mistakes, the weaknesses, the shite that exists within each and every one of us. Had he himself always remembered to thank every person that ever opened a door for him, or remembered to turn off every fucking tap or put every fucking paper towel in every fucking bin? He didn’t like the way we were disgusted by the shite of others but not so much by the shite of ourselves. Or, on a larger scale, the shite of our race, or the shite of our nation, or of our culture or religion or however else you want to look at it, our tribe.

  Humanity, he concluded, as he looked into the pan, would never be as one until we could say that your shite is my shite. Until your shite is my shite. Why did Jesus not just say that? He could have just said that. The shite back then in biblical days was every bit as honking as the shite today, and would be for ever more. It’s all Jesus had to say. It’s all the Bible had to say. It’s all God had to say.

  Until your shite is my shite.

  Until your shite is my shite.

  He looked down at the shite in the pan. It was like somebody had put a firework in a jar of Nutella, it really was. He got down on his knees slowly, put his hands on either side of the toilet seat, closed his eyes and put his head inside the pan. Then he took a long, deep sniff of the excrement within.

  He was sick. On the shite. And then he was sick again.

  Which is a shame; I thought it was quite an interesting theory.

  But don’t ask me to go in there and try having a sniff myself – fuck that, man.

  I don’t even know the guy.

  THE BALL

  You’ve got a son, a wee boy, a wee three-year-old, and he loves playing with his football in the back garden. He loves throwing it more than he loves kicking it, he loves throwing it high in the air, as high as it can go, and watching it come back down. And sometimes he throws it so high it goes right over the fence, right into the neighbours’ garden. You can’t ask them to throw it back because they’re never really out in their garden, and the fence is too high for you to quickly vault over and nab it. But it’s all right, the following morning, it’s back in your garden; they chucked it back. Your son starts throwing the ball about, as high as he can throw it, and oops, over it goes again. But the next morning, it’s back. And then later in the day, you guessed it, over it goes once more. But it’s all right, you know it’ll be back the next morning, it always is. You get up, have breakfast, and your son asks to go out into the garden to play with his ball. You open the door and out the two of you go. He asks where his ball is. You look around and, well, no ball. Where’s his ball? Is it still in the neighbours’ garden?

  You’d better go and have a peek.

  You have a wee look through the gaps in your neighbour’s fence to see if you can spot the ball. You look at the garden; you can’t see it. You look to the right towards their house, you look left towards the back gate, but no, it’s not there. Here, they’ve not just stuck it in the bin, have they? You almost couldn’t blame them with the amount of times that ball’s landed over there, but they wouldn’t just stick it in the bin, would they? They fucking better not have. You know what you should do? You should go next door and ask them. Don’t ask them if they put it in the bin, nothing confrontational like that, just ask them what they’ve done with it. See what they say.

  So you nip next door and give their bell a ring. You don’t like doing stuff like this but, you know, it’s your son’s ball. Your neighbour opens the door; it’s the guy. He doesn’t say hello, he waits for you to speak first, he’s not a friendly sort. You ask him if he’s seen your son’s ball at all, knowing that he has. He tells you that they chucked it back last night, ‘as usual’. You tell him that you can’t see it, but he assures you they chucked it back last night, like they do ‘ever
y night’. He’s hitting you with an attitude, basically. So you point out that that isn’t true about him throwing it back ‘every night’, because your son doesn’t throw it over every day, just some days. Your neighbour shrugs it off and says that they throw it back whenever, they don’t know how often, they’ve ‘lost count’, but they threw it back last night. You’re ready to reply to that ‘lost count’ bit, but he tells you he has to go now, their dinner’s in the oven, they don’t want it getting burnt. Then he shuts the door without saying goodbye. What a fucking attitude, eh?

  You go back to your garden, and you have another glance about. No ball. No way they chucked that back. Tell you what they did, they got sick of it landing in their garden, so they binned it. You heard the attitude on him when you went over, that thing about how they chucked it back ‘as usual’ and having to chuck it back ‘every night’ when they don’t. Total exaggeration. And when he said that they’ve ‘lost count’. Fuck off. Trying to make you out to be a pain in the arse. No, trying to make your son out to be a pain in the arse.

  Your son looks around the garden and asks you where the ball is. You tell him that your neighbours chucked it back over but you don’t know where it is. But that’s bullshit, isn’t it? They didn’t chuck it back. They bullshitted you, and now they’ve got you bullshitting your son. They’re probably listening at their window, probably having a right wee chuckle. So you correct yourself and tell your son the truth, that you think that lot next door put his ball in the bin. Your son asks why they’d do that. You tell him that your next-door neighbours are naughty. Naughty. And you say ‘naughty’ quite loud so that if the nosey bastards really are listening at their window, well, they can get an earful of that.

  A few days later, you’re sunbathing in your back garden while your son plays about with a clothes peg. It should be a ball he’s playing with, but he doesn’t have one any more, so he has to make do with a clothes peg. Does that not make you fucking sick? It should, not just because he doesn’t have a ball, but because now you can hear your next-door neighbours playing in their garden – playing with a ball.