Written to accommodate Facebook plot points from various people when I should have been at work, working.
He didn't like it when people called him Dememto. But he realised that
being given a nickname was being acknowledged; good or bad, it was better, so
they said, than being ignored. The day was as swiftly deadly as most of the
others. The rain flew sideways, needling at the eyes of the moiderers
congregating at the former home of Bangor City FC. A crane loomed in a sky that
quite frankly couldn't be bothered.
Once, these people had been comrades,
screaming together at life defining moments like that time when Mossley visited
and Spike fashioned a chance by playing a one-two off the knee of the ref, but
the linestwat flagged in confusion and the finish was wasted. Or when Reggie
backheeled through the legs of his own goalie, just so he could stop the ball on
the line and dribble back the other way, a moustachioed harkback to
Worthington, Friday and the rest. Or, in the case of Cassius Fag, the place he
felt at home with all the other misfits, drunkards, musicians, revolutionaries
and fast-eyed hawkers. No need to hide here at Farrar Road - Cassius was
Cassius and the nickname was one he'd given himself anyway.
"Do you
remember that time in eateasy?? When we were having lunch together??" said
Totty, sidling past the crew watching the demolition ball ready itself to
assault a stand of a thousand dreams.
Cassius looked back a generation and found
himself empty of empathy. Did he remember? There had been so many lunches over
the years. Pie, bacon, cabbage: the tastetrack of a different era. In those
days, he felt, things seemed easier: ten hours a week - mostly evenings and
Saturdays - and ten quid to knack on Bentley's Yorkshire Bitter necked down
Belmont Road, getting home at 9pm and straight to bed, or a couple of bottles
of rotgut plonk direct from Albania.
He smiled, regardless: old friends expect
both silence and confusion, because they are friends and know how it is.
Cassius – Demento - knew this as much as
most, but still felt dodgy about it. He had no real shocking secrets, which was
something that truly disappointed him. Maybe he should do something, right now,
which in the future would be something he could tell nobody about. He resolved
to cottage like living fuck in the morning; hopefully arrested, or at least
needing to rush to buy mouthwash immediately afterwards. That would do the
trick and no mistake.
But by the time he'd come to that
realisation Totty was gone, giggling down Farrar Road with Captain Bangor and
talking about the time Erol shat his pants in the Globe.
The crowd watching the demolition of a
dream seemed to sag at once when it became clear that the Jac Codi Baw wasn't
moving any time soon, mainly due to the driver going for lunch. People
murmurred and sighed; many had taken their lunch hour to come here to protest
the erection of a hypersoup but the anticlimactic atmosphere was like a fart
long-held in but released stinkless. Like the forest tree that makes no sound,
a peacock flounders when its plumage is unseen.
Demento wandered past the paint shop and
turned left down the high street - the second longest in Wales, according to a
man in the pub. He lit a fag with as much ennui as he could be bothered to
muster. Unfortunately, the Silk Cut satisfied him beyond belief.
Disappointingly, it failed to rain. Under the slate sky, in truth, it was approaching
balmy.
And
here, in the distance, at Kyffin Square almost, came DD.
The man of a thousand stories, none of
which were true or interesting.
Demento veered into Wetherspoons, which he
still felt strange about because he once went to church here as a kid and also
lost his virginity in the cellar as a slightly older kid. Still, it was
something familiar, somewhere he automatically ordered a Mackeson's and perched
in the corner, half-hiding and half wanting to be found.
He took a sip of the ale, shuddered with
its sweet foulness and looked up to find DD, orange WKD in hand as ever.
"Itellyamanitwasfuckinrighteous,"
burbled the dragonchaser,
"therewasmepiersyaknowpiersthepervertedpercushonistanfavabeanfrank"
Demento shuddered again. DD was off on one;
there was no escape.
"WewentdownOckyanPiersputhisfuckinstickinthisgirlsmingethedirtytwatthenhetookherfuckinhomewherewereyouanywayboynevermindnexttimeyougottabethereyafruitcakehesafilthbagmonkeyfuckmanfuckmehawhatatwatfuckintalkaboutbeergogglessheshouldofhadbeerfuckinIdunnobeerfuckinDVDorsomethinhessuchacunt"
A rumbling in the distance and both men
stopped in unison; a wrathful chaos insinuated itself into the ears of the
pair.
Clearly, the JCB driver had returned.
Necking his Macky and nodding at DD, Demento
legged it back down Farrar Road.
Where once had been a football ground now
should have been a rank aggregation of, well, aggregate. And there should have
been half a hundred lads, lasses and grifters shouting at the desecration.
But there was nobody there; only a hole.
Demento panted with the exertion. The skies
were black, he now saw, with vultures, circling and eyeing him because they
knew that time was their only friend.
Waiting.
For him, or someone else. No matter, any
dead dream will do.
One preened
its wings, beading at Demento seven shades of hell.
Where the football ground had stood was now
a purple, pulsing blob of ectoplasmic fug, beneath which was the outline of a
thousand sets of referees' glasses prescriptions.
The air seemed full of curses, chants,
songs from ten thousand games of football. The clouds above wended their way
into an image of a footballer. Demento, Cassius, somewhere in the back of his
bruised brain, recognised it as Dave Fuller, the left back who later found some
kind of fame as the unwitting subject of one of those Man in the Street-type
adverts. He was the only one who could correctly identify Garden Brown Spuds
from Golden Idaho Potatoes. Such talents, mused Demento, are often hidden,
maybe perpetually wasted. Who knows what a man is capable of? Maybe I'm the
world's best korfballer, or turd chaser, or fatfighter. I'd never know; you
just don't unless you try.
And the corollary of that: don't try, in
case you find out. All learning is good for is reiterating your limitations.
Better, by far, to keep everything possible for as long as possible.
But enough of such matchbox philosophies;
appearing fatly was the everlasting DD, running toward Demento and brandishing
his latest mixtape; a conflagration of over-rapped sketches and Beach Boys
outtakes no doubt.
"demomanheresademoforyamanhahafunny"
Demento turned his back as the devils
started to form from the portal to Hades that Watkin Jones' bulldozers had
unleashed.
Sighing, he took the Maxell D60. Demento
noted that it was called Basingstoke Beckoned, released on Zug Regords, of
course. Who else could it be? He resigned himself to the future. There really
was nothing else to do.
"Deeds, fancy a drink?" he
managed to say, as cackling whorefish and half-headed demons piled into the
world from the Hellevator.
"yeahmanwhynothowaboutAngels."`replied
DD.
"Bosh," admitted Demento.
The two wandered off, together, backlit by
the crimson screams of the underworld, shadows merging in mortality and the
fundamental glory of pointlessness.
