Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) (31 page)

             
I turned to see Laura Bell hollering at me, anxiously shuffling on her feet as she did so. She beckoned me over and I reluctantly scuttled her way.

             
She stood near the boundary of the playground, where a five foot metallic perimeter shaded a view of the thick woodlands beyond.

             
‘Kerry wants to see you,’ she said with a wink and a smile.

             
I made a gesture of looking around the playground.

             
‘She’s behind the bike-sheds,’ Laura inserted.

             
I frowned at her, unsure what she was suggesting. 

             
Her mild manner changed to frustration as I remained standing. ‘Just go would you?’ she pushed.

             
Laura had judging eyes that bore the hallmarks of prepubescent psychopathy and windowed the mind of a future dominatrix. I didn’t want to obey her but I didn’t want to disappoint her. I found myself following her sternly pointed finger and drifting towards the rear end of the school where a shaded corner housed three bike-sheds and an unused, dilapidated, janitors shed.

             
Kerry was waiting by the side of the bike-sheds with her hands on her hips, chewing her lips as she surveyed the playground with anticipated disappointment and annoyance.

             
She often wore her golden-blonde hair in pigtails, but Peter Bell -- an effeminate, mini metrosexual who passed his break-times playing Hopscotch and skipping games with the girls -- had spent his morning braiding her golden locks into three long strands that swung pendulously down her back.

             
Her hazel eyes twinkled with delight and she ambled towards me.

             
‘Laura said--’ 

             
Kerry grabbed my hand and quickly turned away, not interested in anything I had to say.

             
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, careful not to trip over the heels of her scuffed black shoes as she pulled me across the playground. 

             
‘Come on,’ she urged without explanation.

             
The side of the furthest bike-shed was bordered by a thicket of outstretched bushes. A thin, wood-chipped alleyway led to the rear of the sheds and a secluded spot used by the older, more delinquent, juveniles. 

             
Cigarette butts covered the floor like a carpet of discarded cancer. I stepped through the slalom of filters -- blackened and soggy from the rain -- and found a patch of clean mud to rest my tattered trainers on.

             
Kerry didn’t seem to mind the ashy assault course. She waded through the butts with tiptoed glee and rested her back against the shed, her hands tucked behind her backside. She eyed me with a sly smile.

             
‘What do you want?’ I asked, wondering why I had followed her this far.

             
She giggled, looked away awkwardly and then exclaimed: ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,’ without lifting her eyes from the pavement.

             
I let a smile creep onto my face. I didn’t know she was interested in 
that
, if I had I wouldn’t have been so reluctant to follow her. This was what my schooldays were made for after all, this was the reason I became exited at the thought of going to school.

             
I looked around to double check that no one was looking. There was no movement in the bushes, no eyes peeking through the many holes in the back of the shed.

             
‘Okay,’ I said with a 
prepare yourself for this 
inflection.

             
I pulled it out and beamed a broad, dimpled smile.

             
Slowly, preparing herself for what she was about to see, she lifted her eyes from the ground. 

             
‘What the hell is that?’ she declared, twisting her face.

             
I looked down at my hand. I turned it this way and that, examining the grasped item.

             
‘What’s wrong with it?’ I said, worried, ‘It's perfect.’

             
She shook her head as she stared at me, disbelief in her eyes. ‘A football sticker?’ she spoke slowly.

             
‘Not just any football sticker,’ I said proudly. ‘It’s Andy Cole. Leading Premiership goal scorer, record breaker, signed from--’

             
‘I’m not interested in bloody football!’ she spat, annoyed.

             
I looked around, visibly aware that she had dragged me to the middle of nowhere. ‘But you said--’

             
‘I didn’t mean 
that!
’ she spat.

             
‘I have Teddy Sheringham, but it’s nowhere near as--’

             
An exasperated sigh stopped me short. ‘You’re useless!’ she said, throwing her hands in the air. She barged forward, knocked me aside, and trudged angrily back towards the playground.

             
That’s hardly fair,
 I thought to myself as I watched her stomp away. 
I never got to see hers.

Synopsis:

Kieran McCall has never been lucky in love. This socially awkward, intellectually impaired Romeo has had his fair share of relationships, but none of them have ended well.

There was the time behind the bike-sheds, his 
first
 time, when he kissed little Kerry Newsome, vomited on her and then received an arse-kicking in the cloakroom. The time he found himself embroiled in an animal murdering plot after trying to acquire his first girlfriend. The ‘bulge’ incident in front of a naked class of showering classmates, and then there was the time he lost his virginity to an unenthusiastic sociopath in the supermarket stockroom; but these things were merely incidental in comparison to the others, because as bad as growing up was for this persistently unlucky idiot, adulthood was worse.

An Idiot in Love
 is a fictional piece written in an autobiographical style, following the car-crash life of protagonist Kieran McCall to a happy ending with the one girl who he didn’t insult, maim or hospitalize.

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The Line the Itch and the Rabbit Hole (Memoir):

Sample Chapter: “The Sniffles”

             
‘Where are we going?’ I pleaded with my mother, desperate for an answer she had given many times.

             
‘I told you a million times, it’s a safari park,’ she replied patiently.

             
I was eight years old and had the attention span to match. Information went in clearly enough but it was soon diluted by a million other things and then quickly forgotten.

             
‘Christine is taking you and your brother,’ my mother went on to explain as she pottered around the kitchen making dinner, with me hot on her heels.             

             
Christine lived just down the street from us, her house nestled in the middle of our tidy little cul-de-sac. She had a son, Rob, who was a couple of years younger than me. My brother Graham was exactly eighteen months older than me, but we all often played together on the street with the other kids in the area.

             
‘Graham is coming?’ I wondered. I looked into the adjoining living room, my brother was in there watching television, his face almost pressed up against the screen. ‘Can’t you leave him here?’

             
He shot me an angry look and stuck two fingers up at me when he thought our mother wasn’t looking.

             
‘Or on a bus somewhere,’ I mumbled.

             
‘David! Don’t talk about your brother like that,’ Mum snapped, Graham laughed a silent and mocking laugh. ‘And Graham, don’t stick your fingers up at your little brother.’

             
A mother was always looking.

             
Later that night we all sat down to watch television after dinner. Coronation Street, not exactly a favourite of mine but the heavy rain ruled out any chance of playing outside.

             
With my eyes on the screen and my attention everywhere but, I suddenly felt an odd urge. A strange feeling crept through me and I felt anxious about refusing to meet its demands, like needing to scratch an aggressive itch or blink moisture into dry eyes.

             
Sniff.

             
It was a small inhalation of air, it was what my brain was telling me to do yet it wasn’t quite right.

             
Sniff Sniff.

             
I did it again, but it still wasn’t enough. Now deepening my interest in this experience and forgetting that I was sandwiched between my parents, I concentrated.

             
Sniff Sniff-iff Sniff.

             
The elongation on the second one made me feel better. Maybe that was the way to go.

             
Sniff-iff-iff.

             
There was something else.

             
Sniff Sniff.

             
This time I exhaled at the end. I was getting closer to what I felt needed to be done.

             
Sniff-iff-iff-iff.

             
Louder this time, pushing out so much air that I left myself breathless.

             
Sniff
--
Urghhh.

             
I sucked the air back in through my nose with force. A grunting noise ratted out from the top of my nose. That felt much better, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

             
Sniff-Snort-Sniff-Sniff-if-if.

             
‘What are you doing?’

             
My dad was looking at me. I had a pleased look on my face, momentarily content that I had achieved something and satisfied some inner part of me.

             
I looked back, puzzled.

             
‘It sounds like he’s coming down with a cold,’ Mum said warmly, reaching across to feel my head. ‘He’s only just gotten rid of one as well. I hope you’ll be fine in time for the safari park next week,’ she said, removing her hand.

             
I settled into the sofa disappointed. I really didn’t want to get a cold and miss going to the safari park, I loved animals and my experience never went beyond seeing them in cages, this place sounded far more exciting.

              As the week progressed so did the sniffing, but it never worried me and was always forgotten about. It came and went and I didn’t let my mind dwell on it. On the day of the safari trip I ran downstairs with a spring in my step and vaulted straight to the back door and out into the garden.

             
It was the biggest garden in the street and I loved it. My dad could be a grumpy and seemingly careless person at times but that was just a facade which hid a really thoughtful and caring father. Years ago, when we moved to Yorkshire, he picked the house because of the garden, so that when me and my brother grew up we would always have a place to play.

             
A large deck, fitted with paving slabs, adorned the top of the garden and overlooked a huge lawn. To the right of the lawn, and at its bottom, there were patches of mud and ground we rarely touched. Rockeries and fish ponds would cover these areas in later years but the focal point was the lawn.

             
The top end of the grass had been ripped apart -- the end we used for a goal and a cricket stump -- but the rest was well maintained. In the middle of the garden, off from the centre by a few metres, was a huge stump of a bygone tree. It was my seat when resting and my fort when playing but I could never remember the tree when it was alive.

             
On the deck were two wooden cages, different styles but both bought at the same time and for the same purpose. On the top of the cages were several folded sheets of tarpaulin and plastic which were used to shield them from the wind and the rain at night. The sheets had been lifted and stacked an hour ago, my parents beating me to the morning unveiling.