Daft Wee Stories (3 page)

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
apartment.

Just look at the poster: ‘Luxury apartment'.

It says so right there.

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.

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 ‘every 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.

A ball. And what's the bets it's the same ball, eh? What's the bets it's the same fucking ball?

You turn your head slightly to look through the gaps in the fence. Is it the same ball? Would they fucking dare? You can't quite see. But then you spot it as it flies high in the air for a moment, high above the fence. It's a football, but it's an actual football, whereas your son's football was more of a beach ball, to be fair. But that doesn't make everything all right. The fact remains that it's a ball. They're out playing with a ball while your son does without. Even if they didn't bin his ball, which they fucking did, it's the insensitivity of it. You've never seen them out with a ball before, not for a long time anyway, they're rarely out in their garden for anything, they were never there to chuck your son's ball back whenever it went over, and now they suddenly spring to fucking life with a ball when your son's ball goes missing? They're fucking rubbing it in, that's what they're doing. They're fucking rubbing it—

Their ball lands in your garden.

There's a wee silence. Your son looks at the ball, then looks at you. You can hear the wee lassie from next door tell her mum what happened. Then there's mumbling between the mum and the dad, maybe deciding on what to do. It must be a tricky one for them. After all, what do you do when your ball goes into the neighbour's garden a few days after you decided to bin theirs for landing in yours? It certainly is a dilemma. Do they seriously have the fucking cheek to ask for it back? Do they? The answer is aye, aye they do. The guy shouts over, sounding a lot more friendly than he was when you chapped on his door, now that he wants something. He asks you if you mind throwing back his daughter's ball.

Fuck that, man, pretend you're sleeping.

You shut your eyes, but you keep them open just enough to see what's going on. You can see the guy walking up to the fence. He asks again, a wee bit louder. You can hear his daughter ask why you're not throwing it back; it makes you feel a bit bad. But stay strong! Remember it was him that started this, not you. You can see him looking at you, before mumbling something to his daughter to say that you're sleeping. Fuck off, mate. Who does he think he is? Staring into your garden, telling his family what he sees; you should get up and tell him that's an invasion of privacy. But don't. Stay strong. You're supposed to be out for the count, just give it a few more seconds, he'll go away. You're doing well.

But now your son joins in.

He thinks it's a funny game, he's only three after all. He comes over to you, shouting, ‘Wake up! Wake up! The ball. Give them the ball.' The poor wee guy wants you to wake up and throw the neighbours' ball back to them, even though he knows they're the same neighbours that put his own wee ball in the bin. It breaks your fucking heart. He starts shouting louder, to the point that it's going to be hard to keep up the pretence of sleeping for much longer. Fortunately, he stops, but unfortunately it's because he wants to pick up the ball and try throwing it over the fence himself. He can't do it, it's too heavy; this is an actual, real football we're talking. The guy next door puts his hands over the fence to help. His hands, over your fence, and into your fucking territory, fuck right off. That is trespass. If this was America, you'd be entitled to shoot him, shoot his fucking hands off anyway. But over here, you can't. It just isn't right. None of this is. Your son trying to throw a ball back to the guy who put his ball in the bin, it's just fucking wrong. Worst of all is that your son can't do it, and you're glad that he can't. This guy next door's got you pleased that your son isn't good enough while he spurs your son on and gives him encouragement. It's like he's turned your son against you and you against him. This guy's like the fucking devil, isn't he?