THUGLIT Issue Twelve (13 page)

"
I am so sorry, Simon. I fucked up."

I sat down, put him on the speaker and opened Minesweeper on my computer.

"Geoff, mate. Slowly. Just tell me what happened."

What had happened was that the stupid fuck had bought a flask of schnapps, swallowed twenty paracetamol and called an ambulance. Who, in the name of arse, tries to off himself with paracetamol? It dawned on me that good old Geoff might be a bit of an attention whore.

"They'll keep me here for two days now, have me talk to a psychiatrist."

Here
's what wrong with our health service in a nutshell—in a perfect society a doctor would gather some nurses around Geoff's bed, tell them what brought him there and then they'd all have a good, long laugh and kick Geoff out of the clinic.

It was so absurd and blindingly stupid, I felt better already. Elevated.

"I hate to ask you, Simon, but could you maybe come around and fetch the keys to my flat? Someone has to feed my cat."

"
Say again?"

"
My cat, Donny. He's outside most of the day, but he needs his evening bowl."

After I hung up, I started to giggle. I couldn
't help it, the giggles came like hiccups, spastic convulsions of the midriff and turned into hysteric laughter.

I was going to feed the fucking cat.

If I had given a fleeting thought to Geoff's surroundings, I'd more or less have ended up with the sore sight his flat offered. There were no books, no plants, no display of private things whatsoever. Blindingly white woodchip wallpaper gave the room the atmosphere of a dentist's waiting room. And he kept it incredibly clean. No specks, no dust and somehow he seemed to have vacuumed any smell out of the air, too. The floor was coated with a plain grey carpet (the kind that went out of fashion after the Blitz), a cream IKEA couch with little yellowish cushions, a glass table and a twenty-inch TV. Neither CDs nor vinyl.

I copped a look into his bedroom. It was empty but for one huge faux Biedermeier wardrobe with tiny fat angels carved into the upper corners. He probably kept his mummified Mom there. No bed, so he slept on the couch, just to get some crippling b
ack-pain he could grouse about.

I stepped on the balcony for a cig. Even a distinctly non-suicidal person like myself could hardly look down the twelve stories from here to asphalt without suffering some heavy vertigo and feeling a bit lured into taking a header straight to eternity. Geoff
's seriousness about leaving his mortal coil behind got more dubious every day.

And then I sat down and waited for the cat to show up.
I don't even know why I wanted to see the furry shitball. I can't stand cats. In the end I hung on for over four hours, staring at the wall till I felt lost in the Arctic. When I heard the cat flap squeak, I went into the kitchen. A rusty red, blowsed troll stared at me. He hissed, back arched.

"
You're one ugly motherfucker," I said, grabbed the dried food, rattled a bit with the box and put it back on the shelf. The loppy bugger actually looked surprised.

"
Catch a mouse, you fat slob." When I closed the door behind me, Donny still gazed dumbfounded. I called Geoff.

"
Wee Donny's doing great, mate. He says you should chin up."

"
Thank you so much, Simon." For the first time, the monotonous droning gave way to an almost cheery emphasis on my name. "It may sound stupid, I know, but I think that I'm only still alive because my subconsciousness tells me that my cat needs me."

"
Nothing stupid about that, Geoff." It's not stupid, it's the most asinine, deliriously harebrained piece of verbal dickcheese I've ever heard.

"
They'll discharge me tomorrow morning."

Did I detec
t some undercurrent there? As in 'so-why-not-pick-me-up'? I cut him short.

"
Great news, man. I've got to hurry back to the office, so just give me a call when you feel like it."

When I pocketed my phone
, I realized that I felt better again. The dead-end flat, the charming, subconscious linkage to a fat cat, the sight of him at the hospital, squished as the fifth patient into a room fit for three, blanket up under his chin—it all lifted my spirits enormously. I was so energized, I ran back to my office, called one of our former customers cold, and sweet-talked him into signing back with us. Geoff was like a healthy version of cocaine, pumping me up and making me feel invincible. Hail fucking Geoff.

But just like coke, the buzz waned quickly
, and in this hopefully-only-transitory phase of business, I needed all the buzz I could get. And Geoff didn't call. Apparently I couldn't ring him. It would make me feel…I don't know…dependent. It's not helpful if I felt like a twat for making the first move, he had to come to me to make the magic work.

It
was high time to take measures.

Six days later he phoned.

"Simon?" His voice was empty. "I think I've slit my wrists."

He thought? How can someone be in doubt about the state of one
's wrists? It's a binary operation. Wrists are either slit or not. This isn't quantum physics. He isn't Schrödinger's Geoff.

"
Holy shit. Call a bloody ambulance."

"
I don't think so." Long pause. "There's no reason anymore to carry on."

Say it, Geoff. Say it...

"Donny…he's dead." I waited for the crying to subside.

"
That's awful." I said.

For all the stress the damn cat had caused me, it
'd well better be dead for two. The first two days I sat in my car for eight hours straight, waiting for the fat fuck to show up. No dice. And over the following three days I found out that Donny was quite the quick and cunning bastard, hooking and crooking like a young rabbit. This morning I finally caught Donny, ran him over twice, just to make sure and flattened the little shit until it looked like a russet bathroom rug. It cost me twenty-five Euros to get the Porsche speckless again, but it was money well spent. Some posh tossers managing a delicacies chain store were to meet me later that day and doped up on Geoff's pathetic dirge, I'd wrap the wimps around one finger and fuck them with another.

"
How does the cut look, Geoff?" I didn't want him to die. Geoff might be of further use. And, of course, I'm not a total wanker. "Fuck that. I'm coming over."

The cut? If he were an hemophiliac, it
'd take him a week to bleed out. Hadn't I pancaked the cat, I'd have taken it for a wee scratch. But Geoff had the hurt of the world in his eyes. The highlight of the day came when he opened his cupboard and presented a massive photo album, dedicated to the life of the deceased—a hundred and then some pictures of a cat resting its furry ass in various places throughout the flat.

Every picture had a story, naturally, detailing how fate had shat upon him and ending with an appreciation of the comfort little Donny offered him by molting on the yellow pillows or dragging his bum over the fugl
y carpet. It was the ending of
Old Yeller
, stretched over two hours. When I, ready to go, put my hand on his shoulder and he held it, appreciating the comforting gesture, the strangest thing happened. A sudden surge of power poured through my body, I sucked up his misery and my neural pathways transformed it into energy and will and I felt a wave of adrenaline breaking around my heart.

I had turned into a misery ju
nkie.

Business got better by the hour. We signed on a brain-impaired wanker who had won the National Lottery. Sweet, cool millions
to toy with. Scott, our IT guy, transferred 200,000 quid from the wanker's account into his and put it all on Randy Devil, cause he was banging the jockey. A seven-to-one bet. When the horse crossed the finish line, we were made men again. Back in the saddle.

And time for me to kick the habit.

When he called me a couple of hours after the last celebratory bubble of champagne had been belched up, I planned to cut him off after his usual whiny introduction and tell him that it was over. Turns out, I couldn't get a syllable in edgeways. For the next few minutes, an uninterrupted, unmodulated, partly-unintelligible torrent poured through the ether, and when Geoff had to catch breath, he used the pause to hang up on me. I returned the call, but only got the busy signal—and God knows, I should've left it at that. Text him to fuck off, maybe. But the tit had hung up on me. No one does that. It's one of the best ways to tick me off, so I called a cab. Hurling some verbal abuse would put matters right, I figured, and also thoroughly dissuade Geoff from speaking to me ever again.

I knew what this tantrum was all about. I had made a few calls, from Geoff
's bank to the local tax office and the labour bureau, and told them about a rather huge investment he wanted us to place, preferably offshore. As far as I was able to decipher his moaning, they had already frozen his bank account and informed him that he was off the dole and investigations were under way. Jesus, these guys were fast. But all in all, it was merely a prank between mates. It wasn't like I had killed his cat again. Good thing the whole sorry affair would be over in a couple of minutes.

His door was slightly ajar. Who in his right mind leaves his door open in a council housing? Even if there was nothing to nick but a mini TV and a deserted cat pan. For a moment I thought he really had gone and offed himself this time, but then I heard distinctive, clumpy wet snivelling.

"Geoff?"

"
In here."

The fetus was deflated. A raggedy puppet with torn strings. Small,
yellow pills were strewn over the glass table, a bottle of cheap gin was missing a few finger's breadth. Geoff reeked of old sweat and matured fear.

Pathetic.

"How many of these have you taken?" My guess was three.

"
I...I was just about to start." He looked up, but left his features behind, cheeks sagging, his lower lip a fat, red worm, two sets of bags under each ashy-rimmed eye, a ribbony thread of drool dangling from one corner of his mouth.

"
You spineless piggyfucker…"

Through tears, snot and
phlegm he chortled up a "What?"

"
You haven't got the balls to live, you haven't got the balls to die. You're nothing but the bloody bastard of generations of incestuous jellyfish. The waddling, babbling proof social Darwinism is a myth. Just look at you, all hunched and googly-eyed, like a constipated toad on the shitter." I grabbed the gin bottle and drank half of it in one go. When I put it back on the table, it tumbled and toppled over and Geoff, panic in his eyes, tried to stop the trickle with his hands. I took the bottle again and hurled it at the telly. I missed. Geoff made little chuckling sounds, as if he was trying to regurgitate a vowel that got stuck in his throat.

"
Nobody lives like this." I cried. "Looking like an ironed ballsack. With no job, no money, no sex and a shit flat. Anyone with a shred of decorum left, would've hung down that ovarian cyst you call a noggin and snuffed it the moment he could perform some prime motor skills like turning on the gas. But not Geoff, oh no, sir. Geoff thinks—"

That
's when he decked me.

I
'm using "decked" in the loosest sense possible. Geoff swung his upper half to the side, stretched out his right arm, made a fist and swung back. Since his fighting style had totally mesmerized me, I stepped back a second too late and a knuckle grazed my skin. I toppled over my own feet and fell.

"
What the fuck?" I admit, I was a bit pissed off about Geoff in general and specifically my own clumsiness. I got up, stared him down. "You want to try it again? Have another go at me? Cause even you should be able to do better. Come on, pussyfart."

He was still sobbing, but now from anger. Did I detect a glint of loathing in his eyes?

"Why are you doing this, Simon?" His fists clinched open and shut.

"
Because I can, dickwit. I can make your sorry life even more miserable, and then I watch you wince and whine just because it makes me feel better on a crap day. Your whole life isn't worth my weight in owl piss and still you hang on to it. You'll just never fuck off. I really thought that once I killed your fucking cat—"