The Sanity Grant
I brought Puppychild for a playdate today, to the house of a domestic Goddess. This is a woman who has three children, all under the age of five, and another mouth on the way. She bakes scones and muffins every other day, makes marshmallow surprises for an entire classfull of children with no excuse needed at all, and organizes extravagant parties and picnics for enormous groups of parents and children at the slightest hint of a sunny day. She even brought a batch of strawberry double-chocolate cookies to my hen-party which was bizarre, but much appreciated!
Today she was baking chocolate mousse-ish things with meringue and treacle strands, brandy was involved somehow with the prospect of blow-torch action later on, all for an impending dinner party she was hosting. They looked delicious, but different to the photograph in the recipe, and this mattered to her, no matter what I said. Three children (plus my own anklebiter) were fighting in the background and a sickening THUMP could be heard followed by inevitable wails from the smallest child, who came runnning into the kitchen, covered in Toilet-Duck goo.
A war ensued, involving a chocolate covered mother (don’t go there, Maxi!) and a four-year-old who refused to relinquish the bottle of highly toxic toilet bleach. The war ended with a slap… a swift slap across the back of the kid’s head which ended the fight, but destroyed the Goddess. She crumbled and covered her head with inner turmoil – “I did it again!! I’m such a terrible mother!” She was utterly ashamed that I had witnessed the act.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard those words, sure I’ve said them myself. As a wise friend once said to me… ‘it’s far easier to punish yourself than to recognise the good things you do.’ How true. Okay so in this instance, the mother would have been better off removing herself from the situation, or just not allowing her stress levels to get so high, maybe hosting dinner parties isn’t such a good idea when you have so many dependants constantly vying for her attention, but she’s entitled to a life, and leaving a room crawling with small kids and a bottle of bleach isn’t such an ingenius thing to do. Either way, in years to come, her kids won’t remember that slap, they’ll remember coming home from school to batches of fresh-baked biscuits every day. She is an excellent mother, and I told her so.
This Goddess wouldn’t listen. She wanted to punish herself and cringed at the bad example she was giving. Everything was her fault.
Nothing is her fault. Society is at fault for segregating her from female peers. Irish women covet what they have and compare social status, they don’t reach out to hug and help. Irish mothers are teeny islands all on their own, all forced to keep a brave face and shut the fuck up.
I’ve seen this too many times, all of us torturing ourselves silently because we have rare occasions when we can’t cope and we lash out at the child, or the dog, or the plate-cupboard. We turn to booze, to drugs, to self-harm, because we feel unworthy of our children, of our lives. National Geographic shows tiger mothers showing no regret at biting her cubs because they pissed her off by crawling on her while she’s trying to nap, why should we?
Domestic violence is entirely different, I feel I should probably stick this in here. There is no way any of us could ever condone the sickness that is child-abuse, but child-abuse is NOT the same as a temporary lapse in sanity. Abuse is constant. Deliberate. A show of contempt towards those who are weaker… repeated beatings in moments of clarity. A smack caused by an incessantly whingey child plus a barking dog plus a spilled canister of sugar is simply natural cause-and-effect. Even a Saint’s patience only reaches so far.
I seriously wish there was a law that provides a grant for mothers, and otherwise un-kiddified women to compulsively meet up at least once a week outside the home environment for a jar or two with other women… to unwind, to advise, to complain, to share grievances and short-comings, to praise each other on the fact that their kids are still alive at all.
But, there isn’t. Everywhere there are closed doors with apparently perfect women inside with apparently perfect children. These apparently perfect people scream for help all the time, but they scream into pillows and get bad advice from lonesome google searches.
This needs to change… there needs to be an emphasis on the fact that a child’s health depends on that of its mother’s. The hand that rocks the cradle is not powered with batteries, but with reassurance, of which there is an enormous shortage. THAT, if you ask me, is what’s wrong with the world today.
Men may be the head of the household, but women have the neck.
Something pissed me off last week. More than anything has pissed me off in ages, in fact. It was a stupid thing, borne of stupidity and stupid circumstances.
It was a text message from Carpenter Dude, and the translation from TAT… something along the lines of ‘woman… know your place’. I don’t know, I wasn’t about to read the text.
What you have, my loyal readers, is ‘one of the lads’, I’m a girl’s girl, but also a man’s girl. I’m in that lucky 50-50 position. I play poker and Playstation and the Sexbox and I change tyres by the roadside in the rain quite happily (who doesn’t like wet nuts?). I also like small fluffy animals and am quite partial to a well designed pair of funky shoes. 50 – 50. Most of the company I keep is of the male persuasion, but I have an ultimately female neighbour (with wine) to maintain the balance, a perfect existence for me.
Paint and hinges threw that the fuck out of whack however.
Hinges are hinges. Some are easy, some you have to hang, then re-measure and re-screw and then re-measure and re-screw again. Carpenter Dude did not like the fact that I knew this, Carpenter Dude is oldskool. This was not my place. He also did not like the fact that I don’t like white. When new unit #2 was installed and I returned from my (ever so kind) escapist ventures from drillage and sawing hell, only to find that everything had been coated with white gloss, I ventured an alternative opinion.
Woman, know your place.
Colour is bad. So is feminism, but it also has its place.
It’s interesting though, from a vox-pop of everyone who visits my house, it seems that the only people who like white, are mothers, mother-in-laws, and blokes. Whearas the first two are to be expected, I’m surprised at the blokes, especially TAT, a man who once painted the entire inside of his bachelor pad in gloss marijuana green.
I’m told not to go out and buy paint, to leave it to the men to decide.
Fuck that.
I went to my neighbour’s house, she fed me with Vodka and Ginger, she told me that while men may be the head of the household, women are always the neck… we can turn that head in whichever direction we choose. She also told me that should my dog ever die of poisoning, I should stay the fuck away from my house. She is indeed a very wise woman.
To that effect, I’ve gotten busy not with paint, but with Paintshop. Why trawl aroud Woodies with swatches when I can just get pissed on Guinness and fart around with a computer program?
This is my living room as she is now…
As boring as the subject may be, it’s my living room, my obsession, my need to be different. White just doesnt’ match! Twenty minutes on Photoshop has spewed forth this:
Nothing grabs my interest yet, but it’s early days.
Woman might be good at darning socks and making babies and cooking, but if Carpenter Dude ever wants free website from Woman, Carpenter Dude can whistle.
Revolution – now or never.
Revolution.
I mentioned it before, and the concept is on everyone’s minds. Bloggers alone have had a field day writing about government grievances, if I linked to them all it would take up the whole page. This one is just a taster: Living in a Banana Republic. The general consensus seems to be that we are heavily depressed about the fact that we’re being kept in the dark about most decisions, that the leaders of this country don’t give two flying f*cks about the public. They are the exceptions to their own rules, and Robert is dead right, it is depressing, this lack of control that our so-called democracy has.
Herein lies the problem. The facebook group which started this idea is barren. With 116 members, you can practically hear a pin drop on the message boards. Nobody has any ideas, no suggestions, there is no way of finding out how we can all collectively make a change because everyone’s being to damn quiet. Are they scared, or just lazy? Are people waiting for someone else to do the work, or are they waiting for a written constitution that they can get their heads around?
Here is a very eloquent post that I robbed from Maxi Cane, below. You can see it at his site, or at the Blog pound, or at 1 Blank Page.
He’s looking for your help. I am looking for your help. Soon, there will be something concrete on the web that everyone can contribute to, but we desperately need your thoughts. Serious thoughts and suggestions. Links. Ideas for public protests… anything. If you’ve had enough, channel it. Now’s your chance.
Imagine.
Imagine that Cowen and his whole party of a backslapping, brown envelope stuffing, self righteous clique were thrown out tomorrow.
Imagine that before he could even try it, we stopped Kenny and his bunch of not much betters from rubbing their hands and taking control.
Imagine we had control.
Imagine YOU had control.
The reality would be that you’d have no money and the people who do have it are increasingly worried about giving you any.
- The country is angry. Not because we’re an angry people, but because we’re scared. We’re scared that this time last year only the people in charge new what was coming.
We’re scared about what they’re keeping from us now.
We’re scared that we’re losing jobs, homes and things that we worked hard for and assumed would have been safe, because the people in charge would do their jobs.
They haven’t.
- The country is angry. Not because we’re an angry people, but because we’re unsure. We’re unsure about what to plan for this time next week, never mind next month or year.
We’re unsure about what they’re keeping from us now.
We’re unsure about the future of our education, health and welfare systems that we worked hard to pay for and assumed would be managed and governed properly because the people in charge would do their jobs.
They haven’t.
- The country is angry. Not because we’re an angry people, but because we’re tired. We’re tired of hearing the same excuses and blame games. We’re tired of being told to tighten our belts when we have no choice as dole queues grow and incomes drop.
We’re tired of information being kept from us now.
We’re tired of mini budgets and incompetance. We’re tired of worrying about where our next euro is coming from. We’re tired of having to beg for social welfare payments and benefits. We’re tired of the people in charge defending the elite and blaming us. We’re tired of electing people into power who promise to do their jobs when they never do. We want to be lead by people who instil confidence.
They haven’t.
We have to act. We, not them. We need to rise above this anger, uncertainty and worry.
Now, this will seem like asking a 6 year old what they’d do if they were King for a day kind of an idea, but hear me out.
If you were standing in front of the Dáil and its members who were prepared to legislate and stand behing one point of action that you demanded, what would that be?
Let’s roll up our sleeves and get this done, because the people who have the power don’t use it for the better. Regardless of your political backgrounds or beliefs you can’t deny that action is needed.
It’s our time.
What do you feel we need to get sorted first, and how?
Trips
It always gets me how these things happen in threes.
First was the phonecall last week from a very troubled teacher (with what sounded like a weeping assitant in the background) in Laughingboy’s school. Apparently the child lurched out of his hoist in an unexpected fashion and ended up head-first on the floor. This, I explained to the frought teacher, is not the first time he’s had a bump on the noggin, and it won’t be the last. It took me fifteen minutes to calm the man down, my overall reasoning being that a certain bit of pain is good for the body… it gives adrenalin glands a bit of excercise and toughens up the consitution somewhat. Laughingboy is proud of the poppy bruise on his forehead, I can tell. He thinks he’s well ‘ard now.
Then there was the comedic dog-walking accident. Yesterday morning, while trapsing to Puppychild’s playschool on a busy road, my large and cumbersome dog managed to wrap his lead around my ankles twice before I knew what was happening, and dashed behind me excitedly towards a small yappy dog, thus yanking my feet out from under me. It’s the sort of situation where you really do have to stand up immediately and laugh, despite the swimming spotty vision and the temptation to pass out with the pain of a cracked knee-cap. Today I have a swollen knee, a grazed elbow, a sore hip and a very stiff neck, and am searching on Ebay for an oversized hamster wheel for the dog in order to avoid such accidents in the future.
I dropped Puppychild into school this morning, and got a phonecall ten minutes later from a panicked teacher. She too, was inconsolable. ‘You need to come quick, I think she might need stitches… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…’ she babbled. Upon arriving, I found my very pale child covered in blood with a half-inch gash in her forehead from an overenthusiastic tricycle accident. Her teacher was more upset than she was and again, I found myself spending more time consoling her than the child, explaining that it’s probably a good lesson for the kids to see what gravity and speeding is capable of. This still didn’t stop the flow of apologies… I think she expected me to go Medieval on her, from the way she acted. Accidents happen. Always in threes.
One of my favourite jobs as a mammy is the nursing… the mopping of blood and the fixing of butterfly sutures and the wiping of tears, I’m damned if I’m queueing up in Accident and Emergency if I can avoid it in any way possible… hospitals seem to be the most effective way to infect a wound anyway, especially in this country. Superglue and vodka – yer only man for the job.
We three are now watching CBeebies… me with my banjaxed kneecap, Laughingboy with his swollen noggin and Puppychild with her puffy closing eye and blood clotted hair. TAT will wander in any second now, take one look at us, shrug, and go back to bed. Wise choice.
Means to an end
I swore I’d never write anything politically orientated again, but I can’t help it.
Anyway… this is more anti-political, for those like me who have a thin patience for the bullshit.
In the words of Billy Connolly;
“I think, roughly, the desire to be a politician, should ban you for life for ever being one. Don’t vote, it encourages them.”
I’ve had conversations with plenty of people about this country, comedians are loving the constant supply of new material. I’m fed up trying to figure out who’s actually voting for people like that Cleverly Fluthered Bint or whatever her name is, because it’s not me, and I do vote. The common opinion seems to be that we, the four million bogdodgers of Ireland, should have more of a say with what’s happening, should be privy to the way our highly coveted cash is spent… we should be given a chance to convey for ourselves why we thought the Lisbon Treaty concept failed, for example. Instead we are made look like fools by people who can rarely be bothered turning up for Dáil meetings. There’s far too many of them in there anyway, if you ask me.
There’s a certain unanimous frustration with our socio-political situation (marmalade… that’s another big word) which seems to be itching under the skin of this country… it’s like there’s a gas leak waiting for a spark. The laypeople, the ones underneath, they want to have their say and they want to line the bankers up.
A buddy of mine (a poker playing/band playing/lumberjack friend who’s responsible for The Accidental Terrorist’s apt naming and definitely not the violent type) set up a facebook group last week. He named it the Irish Democratic Revolutionary Party.
We will be set on the overthrowing of the Irish Ruling Elite, through peaceful means, by popular consent.We shall reinstate the meaning or the word Republic, as defined as, For the People By The People.
Our revolution MUST be carried out through peaceful means. The rule of law MUST be respected. Our revolution will NOT become an excuse to attack any vulnerable targets in our society.
Ted support
This new theme I have going on… it doesn’t work. That is to say there is a glitch on the other pages (Blogroll/About/A cry for…) in that the comments have vanished into thin air. The comments are enabled, they’re still sitting in the database, they’re just invisible. I can’t figure it out.
So… I downloaded another theme which is even prettier still.
This afternoon found me pulling my hair out, trying desperately to decipher PHP and CSS files in order to tidy the page up a bit and eventually I won. I went back to the home-page to admire the view and found that the entire header had… vanished.
What the f…?!?!
Brain approaching overload, I just stared at the server for a while and watched the pretty letters milling around in their little nonsense convention. That’s when Ted caught my eye.
Now I would, until recently, have been slightly unnerved by grown men with teddy obsessions… take The ChrisD’s Baby Bear, for example. But!!! This is not regression or the display of a softer side, it is pure common sense. Teddies are problem solvers, but it takes an open mind to understand this. They’re inanimate, they’re stuffed with fluff, but their power is never to be underestimated.
Me – “Hey… Ted, I have a problem.” Puppychild glanced at me and agreed, but for different reasons.
Ted – “…”
Me – “I can find the header image file in the server and I can find the scriptish file that tells the image what to do, but something else is cancelling it out and I can’t figure out what it is.”
Ted – “…”
Me – “Does WordPress have a CSS file?”
Ted – “…”
Me – “No you’re right, that’s stupid. Sure why would they give a gobshite like me access to it?!”
Ted – “…”
Me – “There must be a setting somewhere on the Dashboard that’s screwing things up, but I didn’t touch anything there. I don’t get it.”
Ted – “…”
Me – “But I don’t want to go through those files again… that language is a pain in the ass to understand. Oh hang on… I’ll try counting the files.”
Ted watched, his little cotton heart brimming with pride as I found that it was simply the fact that I’d forgotten to add a file when uploading things. He winked at me with his missing eye and revelled in my trimph at having figured it out all by myself.
-o0o-
Meanwhile, Puppychild watched me dubiously and eyeballed Ted the traitor, Ted who belongs on her windowsill with all the other (slightly less technically minded) Teds. She’ll thank him when she wants a blog someday, I know it.
Santa is not fat, my daughter is.
All waded out of the crud I am, and life is suddenly worth living again. I find it much better to spew all the depressed crap out of the way instead of slowly dribbling it onto these pages… you may thank me for it though you don’t know it, for this last week was hell, best kept for the bottom of a whiskey bottle, if you ask me. But, sadness is a season and it passes.
In the last week I have done the following:
-Watched Puppychild sled downstairs on flat-packed boxes as I sat smoking a fag in the attic doorway.
-Been interviewed on East Coast FM about Laughingboy’s school without getting nervous because I knew everyone was listening to 2fm or Today FM at the time.
-Stolen the (old) next-door neighbour’s kitten
-Watched the home I was once proud of slowly turn into a shit-hole
-Been offered a job in Puppychild’s playschool
-Fallen down a mountain escaping with a dirty knee and a fellow dog walker’s raised eyebrow
-Argued with the Health Service Executive and won
-Argued with tinsel and blu-tack and lost
-Watched Santa Claus sacrifice my child over his ass as his chair collapsed
-Driven 725km
-Packed 28 boxes and 52 bags
-Watched 84 episodes of Family Guy (that’s 21 episodes 4 times)
-Hated this blog and everything it represents
-Made a cozy fire from nothing but a heated toaster element and an eighth of a bag of wet coal
-Become accustomed to whiskey
-Made 139 mountains out of 14 molehills
-Done absolutely no Christmas shopping apart from blackmailing my new local shop into giving me its last Christmas tree for 10 euros
-Moved into a completely free house which seems to me as big as the Taj Mahal. This brings me to the following point:
I can’t believe I’m here! 6 years of waiting for some sort of suitable house for Laughingboy and I get this! A house on the end of a quiet row surrounded by fields full of men in horses and endless tennisball fetching potential. An electronic device that picks my kid up and carries him into the shower. Neighbours that don’t pound my windows with footballs and don’t curse like sailors. Wide doorways. Wilderness. My home.
To all you solid taxpayers of Ireland:
THANK YOU
Your money is going to wonderful, amazing places. If you should ever find yourselves in a position like mine, where you are humbled and find that the housing ladder is but a far-off dream, know that it is grand to live in a country where fellow sufferers will give you a dig-out, as long as you’re prepared to bear the cross of time and red tape. I owe you so much, I only hope I can return the favour to you one by one, in every walk of life I will repay you. I will drop tenners outside pubs. I will pick up your bill in the coffee shop. I will pack your groceries for you if you’re ahead of me in the queue at the tills at Tescos, I will even pick up my own dog’s shite. One by one I hope to repay you. This house rocks.
xxx
me
Talking shite…
This seems to be my week for receiving filthy letters!
As you might know, I’m anxiously awaiting a letter from the Co. Co. to tell us that there is a brand new shiny key to our new house sitting on somebody’s desktop somewhere, waiting to be collected. We got a letter this morning, but it wasn’t addressed to me, it was addressed to TAT, and bore the council’s distinctive post-mark on the envelope.
I don’t open other people’s letters or read their diaries, the guilt of knowing something I shouldn’t know can be a bitter thing, especially if it ruins a surprise at the end… but this! This letter sat on the coffee table, full of promise, loaded with the future… my fingers itched. I did my best to ignore it, to be patient, I distracted myself with an array of pointless household tasks and made several cups of coffee which only made things worse. Sitting on the edge of the couch, my senses tingling and my foot incessantly tapping, I decided to do the bold thing and simply live with the consequences.
***rip***
The excitement was unreal – The white tip of the letter inside gleamed at me like the tip of a new life… a life free from snot-nosed children, from nosey (all too closely related) neighbours, from small-minded absurdities! I pulled the letter free of its envelope slowly, I savoured the moment.
The print gleamed – a short letter, brief and to the point – my heart did a small hiccup as I began to read…
A Chara
We have received a complaint that you have a dog which is allowed to go out onto the estate and go to the toilet and that this is not cleaned up by yourselves.
I would be obliged if you could contact me to discuss this situation.
Yours sincerely,
Jane Smith
I collapsed on the couch, my emotions plummeted and hit the carpet with a heavy thud. Part of me was delighted that Wouldye had finally exacted revenge for the countless piles of anonymous kitten crap that had been deposited on the various rugs and duvets in my household, for the piss-stain that was left on the corner of my couch by my next door neighbour’s dog, for the money wasted on pretty flowers for my front garden that had been ripped up unmercifully by my neighbours charming children.
The rest of me… the rest of me was very bitter indeed.
We spend hours trying desperately to contact the council, to contact the one person who knows anything about our new house… we wait for days – no, weeks – for some sort of coherent reply. We chase our tails constantly in the effort to find somebody in the council who won’t pass the buck, but if they have a complaint about us? That’s a different story altogether. Immediate action must be taken.
Immediate my ass – no… immediate Woudlye’s ass! They can wait. Let Wouldye carry on with his dirty protest! For now, I leave the buck with him.
I always watch the dog, on the rare occasion that he’s let out onto the road to mark his territory, my plastic bag is at the ready in case he takes a dump in some unsavoury place… but it seems that some shite slipped past me somehow. If somebody should knock on my door and point this out, I am always only too happy to come and collect! It’s my duty, after all. What annoys me is that this particular somebody didn’t knock on my door – they complained anonymously to the council instead, presumably meaning that they went and picked up Wouldye’s crap themselves… a martyr to their own doorstep. That, presumably, is what they’re into.
This is my stance from this point forth. I shall not stir the shit like my anonymous neighbours, instead I shall bag it and leave it on Jane Smith’s desk. Or in her shoes. I might even put some into her shredding machine.
My name is K8 the Gr8 and I’m an annoying neighbour. For God’s sake, get me out of here.
Gummyboy
My son came home from school in parts today.
The main part was in his wheelchair as it usually is, the rest was wrapped in a tiny piece of tissue and sealed in an envelope. Hollah to the Tooth Fairy – you’ve a stop-off here tonight!
It fell out in school, much to the dissapointment of his daddy, the Accidental Terrorist. Terrorists like to exact pain on their victims… you know, the usual… for information, to make a twisted point, or just for the fun of it. This terrorist however, has a more noble motive.
I’m sure you remember having wiggly teeth – impossible to leave alone, the focus of many hours of intesive tongue-work until finally it’s either knocked out, or pulled out by a cruel relative and a piece of string. This is the natural way.
With Laughingboy however, it’s different. His physical abilities are still on a par with a three month old’s, so he can’t deliberately play with it. He can’t wiggle it or give it gentle tugs like your usual seven year old, and he certainly can’t muster up the courage to give it that final yank.
Instead, one of us has to do it. We can run the risk that if he swallows the tooth, he’ll most likely be fine, but if he inhales it, he could do some nasty damage to his breathing apparatus. When I say ‘one of us’, by the way, I mean ‘not me’. I’ve tried. I can’t pull teeth. It’s not in my genes apparently.
TAT, however, sent me a photo of the first one he pulled from Laughingboy’s skull. He was proud as punch, his son’s hero. When the next one (the one that fell out today) showed first signs of wobbliness, TAT was right on it. He wiggled it religiously every day, gave it gentle tugs… ‘I’ll have that out any day now!’ became his mantra. I just watched and cringed.
This was why TAT was gutted to see the little brown envelope today and a big gap in Laughingboy’s smile.
“That was mine to pull.” he sulked.
I would’ve been slightly disturbed by that comment if I didn’t know better.
Another Saturday…
I watched as he nervously approached the front door like a man on the verge of discovering the meaning of life. He seemed so damned happy and full of hope that I almost felt bad for him, guilt quivered like a hamster in the corner of my mind that such a nasty deed should have to happen to this random bloke and to whoever lived inside that house, but nevertheless, it had to be done.
I waited until he had stepped over the threshold to leave my stakeout position, closing the door of the seemingly innocent taxi cab quietly so as not to attract attention. Slinking unseen to the front door, I pushed it a little to find its lock engaged, but this didn’t matter, for I’d been given a key. They had almost made it too easy for me… I was privy to names, addresses, alarm codes, times of expected visitations… the plans had been laid out in detail with the omission of the actual reason for it all, but I didn’t care. At a price of €20,000 per head for these people, I didn’t ask questions for fear the job would be given to another taxi driver because hey, I have a wedding to pay for.
I pressed my ear to the door and waited as voices receded before inserting the key into the lock. I opened the door slowly and a warm smell leaked out; pine and perfume mingled with a feint suggestion of home cooking and guilt twinged again, but was quickly squished underfoot as I inched into the first available empty room and waited behind the door-jamb. Dusk was approaching, my timing was perfect. I waited.
As night fell, I heard laughter, sometimes nervous but mostly warm and interested; the cadence of conversation rose and fell and I was getting bored. The time had come… I had to separate them, only to have them re-join in un-imaginably unpleasant circumstances, the details of which only my boss had knowledge of. He was probably welcome to them given his reputation as a twisted gang-lord who seemed to have his filthy hands dipped into more pots than I care to imagine and I knew I was just as bad, but nobody needed to know except for a random few other taxi drivers who had the ability to slink through the night in such obvious disguise… the chosen ones… such a strange honour. I tapped on the radiator with an unnatural urgency.
“What was that?” I heard the question, deliciously predictable.
Footsteps approached as I fished in my pocket for the first syringe with my gloved hand. A shadow darkened the doorway and I sucked in my breath. A man entered the room and I instinctively knew he was reaching for the light-switch by my head, so quickly grabbed his mouth from behind and emptied the contents of the syringe into his jugular - he collapsed like a popped balloon and I dragged his limp form silently to the couch with little effort. Far too easy.
She however proved to be a tougher target, for I sensed immediately that her natural instinct had whispered to her that something was amiss – I heard the silvery sound of a kitchen knife as it was slyly removed from its housing block and suddenly the house was far too quiet for my liking. I edged toward the fireplace and stole the poker from its hook and primed it for reckless damage… the suspense was fun.
I heard her. A creak, a tell-tale sound of nervous intent. We stood for a second, back-to-back, separated by the section of wall adjacent to the doorway, each aware of the other’s position by sheer logic alone. The blade suddenly flashed as an arm appeared, the knife flailing in a random fashion as I almost realized too late what was happening. I ducked as the knife caught my arm; the sharp pain awakened my instinct as fresh warm blood began to ooze into the fibres of my work shirt. Shit. I ducked and crouched, swinging the poker a full 360 degrees around the door jamb. I connected with soft tissue and heard a shriek as I rounded the corner to face my victim, then heard a sickening whistle as the blade passed too close to my ear. I grabbed the opportunity while her balance was off. The syringe sank into her neck and she fell, the knife clattering to the hard-wood floor with alarming volume.
Careful not to contaminate the scene, I removed my sock and tied it tightly around my wound, then checked the floor for spilled blood to find nothing… lucky. Satisfied that my work was almost done, I began to prepare the limp bodies for transit. He fitted nicely into the boot and she, well she did an excellent impression of a drunken innocent.
The journey to the drop-off point was uneventful. I played Beethoven’s 9th symphony over and over to inspire the madness… sometimes I fear the truth that A Clockwork Orange may have had more of an effect on my soul than I’d first realized… good old Ludwig Van. I was empowered by the fact that the deed had run smoothly, laughed my way through a police-check along the way as I gushed through the tired old phrases… ‘Yeah, a little worse for wear I’m afraid’ and ‘I bet she’ll feel that in the morning!’ They didn’t give me a second glance.
I spotted the white van at the address I’d been given… a quiet by-road near an unsuspecting village. I fished for the second key I’d been given and checked for passers-by as I opened the rear doors of the van and transferred the unsuspecting couple with speedy stealth, right on time. I approached the driver’s door of the van and waited. The man inside rolled down his window and nodded subtly.
“Not bad for your first job… good timing. He’ll be happy with that.” He noticed the bloody patch on my arm and the ridiculous looking bandage. “Small price to pay, hey. I’ve seen worse. Here’s your consolation prize…” He fished a small briefcase from the passenger seat and handed it over with a wink.
Neat bundles of notes lay inside to the tune of €40,000 and I smiled. A small white envelope lay on top of the piles which I opened as I sat back into my taxi cab, but I paused before reading the name. Do I really want to do this all over again? I have a reputation for being a soft-head, a do-gooder… if they only knew. Is it worth throwing all that away for dirty cash?
Hell yes.
I opened the envelope and read the name of my next target, then frowned, placing the paper on the seat beside me. What does it mean? Who cares? I fired the engine up for its second job of the night and glanced once again at the mystery name of my next victim.
I’m coming for you, English Mum.
