“…numbers 2, 29, 17, 6 and 34. The bonus number 20. Those winning numbers again…” I muted the radio. I didn’t need to hear twice. I didn’t want to hear twice. I just wanted to keep drinking down this beautiful feeling you get when you win ten million euro. I’m guessing that you’ve never experienced his, so I’ll try to explain it. As a child, did you ever run down a hill so fast that you couldn’t actually stop? If you haven’t, go now. It’s quite the experience, and costs less than comparable highs, such as glue. Now, imagine that you are running down that hill, but to cushion your inevitable faceplant you have a massive pile of €50 notes. Are you giggling? You should be. I know I was.
I had strolled into the local Spar, receiving the nod from the manager, fluorescent light reflecting from the sweat on his bald head. He had frowned when I detoured from my usual aisle - Bargains and Sell-By-Date Specials – and went toward the “Vice Counter”, as I like to call it. A parade of dazed and pasty soap opera ‘stars’ had gazed back from the shiny scandal-rags, trying to convince the overweight and middle-aged that celebrities were “just like us!” but with better publicists. Calorie-laden sugar highs had jostled for attention with authoritative cigarettes, who wore their warnings with indifference. Damages sperm? Who wants kids anyway?
I wouldn’t call myself a gambling man, but buying the occasional lottery ticket was my Dadaist way of getting back at the Man. As Keith had told me
“Buy food? That’s what He wants, man. All those E-numbers? Frickin’ mind control, man!”
It seemed that the manager cared deeply about my health, though. He had punched those numbers in himself, claiming that
“Fugghan Quik-Pik’s a bleedin’ scam boss. Never seen a Quik-Pik winner, ‘n oive sold thousands of the feckers!”
I was grateful – and not a little freaked out – by his kindness. His head seemed to be getting shinier by the minute, so I duly made my escape to my lodgings.
“Lodgings” are the best way to describe them. Once you lodged yourself in the narrow confines, it was very hard to become dislodged. The general design approach I had gone for was “cluster bombs filled with rubbish”. Several pizza boxes lingered in the corner from the heady days when I could afford such luxuries. They were on the cusp of sprouting legs and marching off to the bin anyway, so the scientist within me refused to dismantle the important experiment. In lieu of a sofa, I had piled all my clothing in the general shape of a beanbag. Next to the ‘beanbag’ was a coffee table – so named for the elaborate pattern of coffee-rings on the surface – with the Leaning Tower of Cigarette Butts perched precariously on the top. A desk slumped in the corner of the room like a tramp. It had been bought in a whirl of freshman enthusiasm, but I was quick to realize that ‘student’ was a misnomer: the true student couldn’t find a lecture hall with a map and compass. And that was just the Geography students. I’d describe the smell of the room, but I’ve just eaten, and the manuscript wouldn’t be accepted with recycled scrambled eggs on it, now would it? In short, it was a place Stig of the Dump would turn his nose up at.
I had crouched over my wind up radio - my landlord, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to an anorexic stick insect, rivals Ebenezer Scrooge for fuel consumption - and those glorious numbers had filled my box room. Not that that was an incredible feat. I smiled. What would I buy first?
“Oh Christ” moaned my liver.
I took out my 1980’s cop movie surplus mobile and dialed Keith’s number. I needed to get very mindless on as many illicit substances as possible, and Keith was the only man up to the task. His brain had long succumbed to the tug of various narcotics, and now his psychedelic-Swiss-cheese noggin responded to only three things: shiny objects, primary colours and more narcotics.
No signal. Honest to God, stepping into this flat is like going back to the Industrial Revolution; all that’s missing is the flat caps and elaborate facial hair. I ran down to the street, and Keith answered. I waited a few seconds for him to work out which end he spoke into, and began.
“Keith!”
A noise like a badger snuffling through leaves.
“Keith, come over to mine, we have to plan a night to forget!”
Notice how I start every sentence with his name; he thinks that you’re talking to someone else if you don’t address him.
“Dude, can we even, like fit in your apartment at the same time?”
“For someone who couldn’t pick himself out of a police line-up, you’ve got a clever mouth”
“Uh?”
Long sentences that aren’t punctuated by the word “like” tend to confuse him.
“Come. To. Mine. Now.”
End call.
I skipped back up the steps to my apartment, held my breath, turned sideways and stepped in. It’s hard to gasp when you’re holding your breath, but I did when I realized my ticket wasn’t where I had left it. I searched the room from top to bottom. It took roughly 47 seconds. I happened to glance towards the window and there it was. It looked like a tarred-and-feathered potato with random twigs for legs. But its seemingly scruffy body contained an evil, scheming brain and a black, shriveled excuse of a heart. The Magpie.
I ask you, dear reader, to recall the idea of running full tilt down a hill, only to land in a pile of €50 notes. Imagine if that pile turned out to be a very cleverly disguised pack of rabid wolverines that had just got root canal. They’re angry, they’re in pain, and you appear to them to be a punching bag full of painkillers. Moments before you are torn apart, your heart attempts to escape through your mouth, your internal organs try to vacate the premises by the “emergency exit” and your brain cryogenically freezes itself. That moment of sheer terror has enveloped your plucky narrator. Now multiply it by a number with lots of zeros. That’s what it’s like to watch €10 million fly out the window in the mouth of a vindictive villain.
I tore down the stairs, crashing through Keith.
“Dude…? Are you on America’s Most Wanted or something?”
“Follow! Magpie! €10 million! Now!” I screamed over my shoulder as I exploded through the door.
“Is the magpie on America’s Most Wanted?”
Keith’s car was pulled up on the pavement. He could only have parked closer if he had crashed through a wall or two. Being Keith, the car door was open and the engine was running. He must have thought he got a taxi or something. I leaped into the car, and was about to screech off Starsky & Hutch style till I noticed Mr. Potato Bird across the road, staring at me malevolently with its one eye. It performed a little jig of victory, flapping its tattered wings and stepping from one misshapen leg to the other. I hurtled across the road, followed by Keith. The bird took off through the park. I elegantly flipped over the fence and came to a soft landing in a pile of grass clippings.
“Good thing they didn’t lock that gate, man” Keith said, as he strolled past. It was a good thing that I had a football field worth of grass in my mouth, or someone would have got seriously offended. My battered little buddy wheeled toward a copse of trees, and we followed.
It landed in its lair: the upper branches of a monkey puzzle tree. Keith stared at the tree and scratched his head in confusion.
“How are you gonna get up there?” Keith asked.
“Assuming that I’m the one who’s climbing it?”
“It’s not my ticket, man” he grinned.
Back seat drivers. I don’t drive (how could I afford the insurance?) but I still find them annoying. However, back seat climbers rank on the annoyance scale around the same level as “railroad-spike-through-forehead”.
“Dude!” he called, “move your foot to the right!”
It was as if some malevolent animal had greased that exact spot up.
“Advice. Not. Wanted.” I grumbled through gritted teeth.
Several splinters, a torn pair of jeans and enough cursing to give a convent of nuns a heart attack later, I reached the nest. The numbers looked back at me from different parts of the nest. €10 million worth of refurbishment. Once again, I ask you to remember those enraged wolverines. A twist of fate has placed a machinegun and 10,000 rounds in your hands. You feel a grim resignation to the task that lies ahead. Sure, the wolverines are just angry because they got painful dental work done. Maybe on a different day, you’d find a shared love of the work of Gary Newman, and sit around drinking beer and singing “Cars”. But not today. Your trigger finger twitches. You are, to put it indelicately, gonna tear these sons-of-bitches a thousand new holes to breath through.
I didn’t have a Gatling gun, but I did have 10 tonnes of unrefined anger to spill on this miserable excuse of a nest. I was about to do a demolition job on the lair, when I noticed the trophies of his various evil shenanigans. Watches, earrings, gold chains…the Magpie had tangled with the wealthiest and had won. The once-evil spud had – indirectly – decided to go Robin Hood, and I was a lucky benefactor.
I got out of the tree the easy way. Once the dust had settled and I had checked my ribs, I dusted myself off, checked the time on my two new Rolex’s, confirmed it on my diamond-embedded Cartier and adjusted my Chanel earrings.
“An interesting look, I must say” murmured Keith.
It wasn’t exactly €10 million, but Keith and I managed to get hangovers sufficient to turn the Great Wall of China into a pleasant rockery, and the little Potato Bird keeps me in steak and cider. If only I could get all these needles out of my-
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2 comments:
:D This is boss yo. What'd you win?
Thanks very much! I won a 100 euro voucher for a book shop, which was pretty awesome.
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