Ugly Beautiful (23 page)

The van was right up my arse as I accelerated faster. I accelerated to well over one hundred miles-per-hour, continuing to weave in and out of the fairly thin afternoon traffic. If I could just make it to the Newcraighall turn-off, then I might have a flickering chance to lose him. I spied another two police cars screeching down the opposite lane ahead. They must be coming for me, yet thankfully they had a fair trek to go in order to find a turning point along the steel barrier frame that split the two sides of the carriageway in half.

The slip road down to the retail park was fast approaching. The police van hounding me down remained hard on my tail. There was no sign of any other police cars blocking my route ahead, so I took the turn off, gently applying the brakes and swerving around another four cars as they slowed for the red light. Not me though, no danger of that. I bumped up onto a narrow curb and blitzed through the intersection like a bat out of hell, mounting the next pavement to avoid smashing into any oncoming traffic from the crossroads. When I peeked into my rear view mirror, I was shocked to see the large framed police van doing the exact same thing while clipping cars, and taking out all other road signs in its path. I returned concentration to my own driving and rattled through another two roundabouts, passing through another retail park and hitting the approach road to the Niddrie estate. This would be as good a place as any to lose these persistent policemen fuckers. Niddrie! Sending a patrol unit into the heart of that schemey, war torn, shit hole was every Edinburgh policeman's worst nightmare.

I drove along a boarded-up housing street, then another, before taking a sharp turn down a narrow side street. The whole scheme was strewn with garbage, more stray dogs than you could swing a cat at, the occasional random fire burning in a garden or two, and smoke coming from the roof of another random building. Cars with smashed windows, cars without tyres, tyres without cars—all of this decorated the housing estate passing me by. Then there were the dozens of tracksuit-wearing teens and young adult Neds wearing their clan hoodies and baseball caps. All lounging around, sitting and standing, smoking and drinking, sniffing and staring. The police van remained glued to my rear end and sped recklessly with me around the next street corner. I caught another glimpse of the groups of lounging teens in my mirror as they jumped to attention, fully alert and falsely believing for a few anxious seconds that the screeching police van raging behind me was coming for them. Then they relaxed, laughing amongst themselves while playfully pushing one another as it whizzed on by behind the quieter police car in front, me.

I made a sharp turn just before a row of shops and sped off into a large park and grassland area. I swerved around a frail old man walking his dog as he entered the park. Perhaps he was deaf, because he didn't even hear me roaring up behind until it was too late. When I swerved around him, he crouched to the ground in fright. Looking like he'd just literately shat his pants. I zoomed on by, inches from him.

The police van followed, hot on my heels into the park after me. It was like something from a car chase movie, and the van was gaining fast. Even managing to race alongside me. I could see a crazy-looking policeman behind the wheel. Just by the look in his eyes I could see that he meant business. No doubt about it. He pulled back and away for a second, then barged at my back
-
end before pulling up beside me on the passenger side. I almost lost control during his sneaky manoeuvre, yet somehow managed to keep the vehicle from spinning away from me. I couldn't help but give out a little innocent wave to the raging police driver. It must have pissed him off big time, because he swerved into me again, with even more ferocity this time, forcing me towards a group of trees in the swiftly approaching distance.

'Shite! Shite! Shite!'

I should've braked. That was the right and obvious thing to do. That was what the police driver had expected. So I accelerated hard instead, fuck it. The police van sped with me, both of us dragging and scrapping the other along. As we reached the trees, I saw my split second opportunity. There was a blind summit approaching. It was a deceiving little dip in the grass which led on towards the small forest of trees up ahead. I didn't think, I just swerved right, edging the van with me. Quick as a flash, I swerved left, swinging the full front bonnet of my vehicle hard into the side of the police van. I slammed on the brakes, including the hand-break. The van was knocked off balance with the manoeuvre. The dip in the grass didn't help its balance either. The policeman driver tried to turn his van away from the dip, desperately trying to regain his abandoned control. Until the most amazing thing happened. The van flipped up and over onto its side, skidding and rolling down another grassy slope towards the trees. Watching it happen before my eyes was spectacular. Like a work of art I had randomly created.

'WOO WHOO!' I couldn't help but roar in a moment of pure exhilaration. I really did hope the driver was okay though. Hopefully he'd been wearing his seat belt just like me. If not, then more the fool he. I didn't stop to find out, and continued towards the far end of the park. Eventually, I found another main road and realised that I wasn't too far away from Edinburgh city centre. Maybe a mile or two at the least. It was time to ditch the police car.

I sped through another set of red lights, almost ready to pull over and chance my luck on foot, until I spotted a speed camera dead ahead. No better parking place, I suppose, than on top of my second pet hate of all time. Second, that is, to traffic wardens. So I headed straight for the steel contraption, ramming into its grey, metal exterior, completely uprooting it from the ground while slamming the main body of the camera down hard onto the concrete road in front of me. A couple of passing cars beeped their horns. Some even cheered and waved from their rolled down car windows with sheer joy as they drove by. Some young Neds across the road waiting at a bus stop started applauding and cheering me too. One even toasted an already half-drunken can of lager up into the air like he was accepting me as one of his own. A smashed up police car on this estate was worth more than any million pound wining lottery ticket, that's for sure.

I exited the police car and waved back at the Neds and all the passing drivers still beeping their horns. I smiled and took a bow before getting the hell out of there. I legged it over a nearby stone wall and made my way towards the south-eastern foot of the volcanic hill, Arthur's seat.

***

Chapter 1

A few weeks earlier.

I couldn't help wondering if she gave good head as I sat opposite the middle-aged doctor inside her private office at the Royal Infirmary. She'd just told me that I had some form of terminal brain cancer, but it hadn't registered properly because I wasn't paying attention to her words any longer. She was overweight, apple-figured, yet with a cute round face that could still turn heads when walking past a building site, although couldn't anything in a skirt these days? I imagined she'd been one of the popular, pretty girls back in high school. Back in the days when she'd at least had her figure under some lenient control.

I couldn't take my eyes away from a tiny little bubble of spit on her lower lip. It made me aroused watching it linger there all seductively, taunting me. I felt an irresistible urge to just lean over and lick it gently from her face. But I controlled it and refocused. My mind snapped back to reality. Fear and sadness once again overwhelmed my thoughts. Something in the air felt wrong. Very, very wrong. I lowered my head, raising my hands at the same time. Halfway into the motion the two met and I found myself buried face deep inside my cupped hands.

'I just, I just can't take this in'.

Even though I was Scottish and had lived in the country on and off since birth, the Scottish accent I'd acquired over the years never really dominated my tongue like most born and raised locals. The Doc was proper south of the border English though.

'I'm so, so sorry Liam'.

I tore my face away from my hands, gently shaking my head before smirking sarcastically.

'So how long huh? How long have I got?'

The doctor sighed.

'Please Liam. Don't do this'.

'Come on eh? What's my sentence? Best guess. Give it to me'.

'Liam, I really couldn't say'.

'How about the last person you diagnosed. How long did they get, huh?'

The doc remained silent, curiously observing me with both sorrow and pity. She really wanted to give me a good, positive answer, I could tell. A wee bit of good news for the long road ahead. But of course, that wouldn't be very honest of her now would it? So all she could do was stare. Briefly I wondered if she found me attractive. I imagined making my seductive move on her. Would she welcome it? Would she let me stick my tongue deep inside her mouth and move it around, entangling it with her own, before letting me run my hands all over her soft, plump body in the process. Would she enjoy it? Would she make the move for my zipper and then...my wandering mind snapped back to reality and rage consumed me.

'Well let's hear it then doc, Jesus!' I exploded, unable to contain my mix of frustration and sexual desire. 'It's like waiting for the bloody
X Factor
results, for Christ sake'.

She shifted in her seat, shaken abruptly from her staring trance by my aggressive manner.

'With treatment, chemo, I don't know Liam. Maybe a year, maybe less. That's my best guess'.

I refocused upon that tiny spit bubble again. It calmed me. Soothed me immensely. It made me feel good. Fuck the chemo. All that shite just to be able to cling to a few extra months of life. To hope for a year at best. My uncle had passed away a few years earlier with leukaemia. It made my stomach churn just thinking about all the crap he had to put up with when he could have been doing something else with his life. Something more memorable and productive with the remainder of his time. Screw that shite. I was out of there. I nodded kindly at the doc. Thanked her for all the information she'd passed on and left. She stood abruptly, calling out about making an appointment with some other specialist next week. More tests. More horseshit clairvoyance. More wasted time and taxpayers money. I wasn't listening anymore.

I walked past the cancer ward's waiting room, which was filled with more sad cases and zombified victims waiting to be told about their afflictions and survival rates. I kept walking. She fell out of ear shot. I followed one of the ridiculously coloured lines on the hospital floor leading to some other part of the building. I chose the yellow path and prayed that it would lead me to the exit. I felt like the fucking Scarecrow from
The Wizard of Oz
. 'Oh, we're off to see the Wizard...'. But there would be no magical wizard with a new brain, or magic cure, lying in wait for me at the end of this brick road.

I made my way outside. Grey skies towered and rumbled above, urinating upon me with their wet drizzle. A storm was coming. A big fucking storm. When I reached the car park, a cool breeze gratefully hit my face like a soft, cool fan on a humid summer's day. It felt good to be outside. To be at one and at peace with nature's earthly fresh air. It felt good to be alive. They say that some people, some lucky few on this earth, only really appreciate life and its real meaning when they're given their own personal expiry date. But oh, how I've pondered over the meaning of it all these past few weeks since having the possibility of a near terminal end thrown in my face. The things we do to live a so-called long, healthy, and normal life. The empty, meaningless, monotonous, and mundane tasks, hobbies, activities, careers, love, sex, friends, family, people—and all the other trivia shite—that we fill our empty lives with. All of them doing their very best to fill some hollow void in our conscious minds and distract us from the day-to-day process of growing older and nudging another step, another minute, another hour, towards our inevitable doom. Our species, Mother Earth's own terminal cancer, has never been more spiritually- or intellectually-minded in all of our existence than we are today. Yet still are minds are so narrow and rammed full of such pretentious and superficial self-importance, convinced that our own individual lives have more worth and meaning than that of any of our fellow neighbours' lives, while still harbouring some hope and belief that there will be a simple, perfect meaning and explanation to it all in our final conscious hour. Our minds have evolved so far beyond our basic animal caveman way of thinking, yet we still harbour the possibility that there is going to be some kind of redemption. Some sort of beautiful ray of light or magical white-bearded wizard welcoming us at the end of it all. Oh, what images and illusions of grandeur our minds conjure up in our most desperate times of need. Let me tell you about the meaning of life. We are all acts of a random nature, and none of us should even be here in the first place.