Straitjacket Blues 3: Straitjacket Blues, #3

Straitjacket Blues 3

Stories of Unease

Published by Baby Ice Dog Press

© Dave Franklin, 2015

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Table of Contents

Brief Meetings

Maintaining A Certain Image

Then Came The Last Days Of May

The Goodreads Killer (Part Three)

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Brief Meetings

I don’t like coming to see granddad in the nursing home.

Mum and dad moved him from our place because he got really feeble and kept falling over, but now I have to visit on Saturday afternoons which means I can’t play soccer with my mates. It drives me nuts having to sit here surrounded by crumbling old gits in their dressing gowns knowing that Gear, Rog, and Partridge are kicking a ball over the park before doing something really cool like going for a ride along the river and making a fire.

I love fires, especially when you chuck on old aerosol cans and you have to run for the bushes screaming with your hands over your head because sometimes they explode so fiercely that they whizz through the air like rockets. Gear actually got knocked to the ground by one and when we looked at the rip it left in the back of his coat it was just like he’d been taken out by a sniper in a tree on the other side of the river. Other times the bang can be so big and loud that there’s nothing left of the fire. Like, nothing, except a blackened dent in the ground and a few scattered, smoking bits of branches.

I tried to get granddad to tell mum and dad that it was much better for me to play soccer rather than visit him on a Saturday – fresh air and exercise and all that – but I don’t think he understood. Well, he is as deaf as a post. I either have to repeat myself three times or shout everything and it’s not like I’m trying to talk about complicated stuff like that boring John Major on TV.

What makes today even worse is that Gear has just got an amazing new fighting game for his Game Boy called Mortal Kombat. You’re this warrior in a martial arts tournament with an awesome name like Sub-Zero or Johnny Cage and once you’ve knocked the shit out of your opponent and he’s standing there with his head spinning like some spaz this really deep voice says Finish him! and then you can kick his head off with a roundhouse or rip his spine out while buckets of blood spray everywhere. It’s just the coolest thing ever.

Cooler, you know, than drinking endless cups of tea and watching old folk shuffle about like zombies in a stuffy nursing home. They never do roundhouses, although sometimes they get all agitated. Like for no reason. They just start moaning or banging something and wailing in their funny little voices. You have to wait for a nurse to come along and calm them down.

I hate watching ’em eat, too, especially when they drool or have to be hand-fed. Just the sight of their hearing aids and walking sticks and big thick glasses and the women with their hairy chins and those brown spots on the men’s bald heads... well, I dunno, it freaks me out.

And there’s this one super-creepy guy with huge ears who looks like an alien. I mean, there’s no way anyone born on Earth can end up looking like that. I call him the Weird Old Alien Dude or the WOAD for short. Mostly he just stares into space, as if the nursing home isn’t really there and he’s sat in the middle of a big field or something, but every so often this change comes over him. I don’t mean he grows claws or two heads and starts puking green slime, but his weedy body kind of stiffens as if some sort of enemy has drifted into the room.

His eyes follow whatever it is before his skull-like head gives these sharp little jerks. Sometimes it climbs the wall and hangs from a corner and he’ll stare at it for ages while chewing on the stem of his old black pipe. I mean, his eyes are fixed on it, but no matter how hard I look I can never see a goddamn thing. Once or twice I’ve even seen him talking to it, which makes me feel dead weird, but that’s nothing compared to when it comes up close, like right next to him, and he’ll mumble to it with his mashed-in mouth. I really wanna know what he says, but I can never make out the words. He doesn’t exactly seem scared, but this thing makes him tense and occasionally it’ll get too much and he’ll leg it to his room.

I don’t know if the other old folk have picked up on the iffy vibe he gives off, but they definitely steer clear. Not that the WOAD seems to care. He obviously prefers his own company and I bet if someone asked him to join in a game of Scrabble or any of the other boring things that old people do he’d probably tell ’em to get lost. I guess he’s bit of a rebel, really. Well, as much as old farts can be a rebel. A long time ago, like two months or something, I saw him light his pipe indoors causing this nurse to charge in flapping her hands and shriek about the fire alarm.

It’s really funny seeing old people get told off. I thought it was only kids like me who got an earful and once you reached a certain age nobody could have a go at you anymore. Anyhow, the WOAD just gave this nurse an evil stare, slowly turned his back, and walked out the patio doors puffing away. To be honest, it was kind of cool.

But it’s not often something good like that happens around here. There’s just no way to have any real fun in a nursing home. Believe me, I’ve tried. The one time I used the stair lift and pretended it was a rocket blasting off into space I got shouted at by the ultra-strict manager and told it was only for the residents. Not that I cared. That thing was really slow.

I tell you what, though, I’m never gonna end up in a place like this. I’m gonna play football over the park forever.

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My brother Tom brought me to see granddad today. Whenever I think about granddad being eighty-two, I just can’t really get my head round it. I mean, how can anyone be so old? As usual, he greeted us with a big ‘Hello, boys!’ His craggy face kind of lit up as if he hadn’t seen us for a couple of years which was weird because the visits are only a week apart. Maybe he forgets. Or maybe a week seems like a year to him. I dunno. It’s hard to tell with old people.

Tom, however, only stayed fifteen minutes or so. He’s off in the garden with one of the semi-hot nurses, leaving me to play dominoes with the old coot. I sigh, trying not to think about ear-deafening explosions and scoring hat tricks and spines being ripped out.

I stare at granddad’s bushy white moustache, which seems to have joined up with all the other hair sprouting out of his big nose holes, and realise it looks like a mauled mouse lying there on his upper lip. I have to slap a hand over my mouth in a bid not to giggle.

‘OK, Damien?’ He wipes his leaking eyes. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Yeah, granddad.’

He pats my wrist with a discoloured hand. ‘You’re a good boy.’

The nursing home’s grey cat Mr Snuggles brushes against my legs. It’s kind of nice when that happens. I stroke it for a while as it purrs before turning back to granddad. ‘Wanna play dominoes?’

‘Eh?’

‘Dominoes.’

He still looks blank so I just get up and retrieve the box from the long table by the wall. He nods happily as I dole them out. He turns them on their edge in a little semi-circle, his gnarled hands reminding me of those tree roots that poke up through the ground. I always let him go first. I’m good like that. Sometimes I think about suggesting we play for money, partly because he never seems to give me a quid or even 50p anymore. It’s not like he needs the cash for anything. Plus, it’s another six months to my birthday when I’m guaranteed a fiver.

After what seems like an age, he picks up a domino tile and squints at it, obviously struggling to read the numbers. He moves it back and forth in front of his glasses.

‘Give it here, granddad.’

But I don’t think he hears or maybe he’s dead set on doing it himself so he slowly half-swivels toward the light coming in from the window and holds it up. Then he drops it and it hits the carpet at a weird angle and seems to jump, finishing up by the end of the sofa about six feet away. Granddad doesn’t even realise it’s gone and he’s actually frowning, as if some mysterious force has snatched it from his hand.

I sigh. Old people.

I push my chair out and get down on all fours. The stray tile is near a slippered pair of feet and I can see all these spidery purple veins streaking up the incredibly pale and hairless skin of the man’s ankles. For a moment I can’t look away from the disgusting mess and as my hand closes on the domino I’m certain the guy is staring hard at the top of my head. It’s like I’ve done something wrong, but I’m not too bothered because I know that sometimes old people get bonkers ideas and become angry over things that don’t matter.

Slowly my eyes climb the red pyjama legs, pass over the big newspaper spread on the lap, and up onto the face.

It’s the WOAD, looking more like he’s from outer space than ever. He’s so skinny that the skin stretched across his face seems almost transparent. There are green veins zigzagging across his temples, a few fine tufts of white hair on his otherwise bald scalp, and both his eyelashes and eyebrows appear to have fallen off. His black pipe is jammed in his mouth and for a moment I half-expect a laser beam to shoot out from it.

We stare at each other.

Then he grins and leans ever so slightly toward me, saying in this strange, whispery voice: ‘I’ve killed hundreds of people.’

‘What?’ I jump to my feet, clutching the domino. ‘What’d you mean?’

The WOAD smiles to himself and returns to his newspaper, giving it a flick with his twig-like wrists to straighten it. I wait for him to say something else, but apparently he’s lost interest. Oh my God, this guy’s a nutter.

I go back to granddad and sit down again. Now and again I look back.

****

That night I watch The Omen on ITV. Horror movies are ace but I’ve never seen this one, probably because it’s so old. It’s like from before when I was born. Weirdly, the kid in it has the same name so sometimes it’s like the people are talking to me. You know, through the TV. There’s this one super scary scene early on where Damien’s nanny – a pretty, brown-eyed girl with a long, slender neck – hangs herself at his fifth birthday party. Like, it’s really full on.

All the kids are gathered in the garden enjoying the rides and balloons and cakes and stuff and then she’s standing on the roof with a rope round her neck and she’s telling me to look at her while shouting about how much she loves me and how it’s all for me. And then she jumps and the rope goes tight and she snaps back into a window smashing through it and everybody starts screaming. I mean, it’s dead cool, but kinda sick at the same time.

During the ad break I pop upstairs for a pee. I try to leave the toilet door open, but it keeps swinging shut. I have to take my trainer off and prop it up against the bottom of the door. As I’m peeing I start thinking about the WOAD and the way he looked at me whispering I’ve killed hundreds of people. Then I feel all strange and these goose bumps shoot right down the sides of my face and onto my arms. My skin is crawling and I don’t like being in such a narrow room. I even look behind to see if the WOAD’s sneaking up on me.

I finish peeing and zip my fly, but don’t want to pull the flush because it always makes such a loud noise. There’s no one in – mum and dad have popped to the pub for a drink and won’t stumble back for at least another hour and a half while Tom’s at an Indian restaurant with his girlfriend – and the house seems full of dark, empty places.

Like it’s watching me.

I keep trying to flush, but I can’t shake the idea that pulling the handle down will trigger something. The movie’s back on any moment and I don’t want to miss what happens next so I do this long yell to drown out the flush’s noise before running really fast across the open landing and down the stairs and back into the front room with only one trainer on.

At school on Monday during the morning break some of the other kids who saw the movie start pointing at me and calling me Devil-Child and Anti-Christ. I don’t mind at first. I even put a finger on either side of my head like horns and chase them as they run away screaming. It’s kind of fun, but they won’t stop so I push David Agnew over and kneel on his chest and grab his throat and start squeezing, but then he bursts into tears like the big baby he is and I get sent to Principal Crosby. The school secretary has to phone home.

Mum slaps my face and tells me no more horror movies for a month.

****

I’ve killed hundreds of people.

I can’t get what the Weird Old Alien Dude said out of my head. Why would he say something like that? It can’t be true. If he’d killed loads of people, he’d be in prison like my cousin Martin, who stole a car and was chased by the pigs before crashing into someone’s front garden. I dunno. Maybe the WOAD’s got that Alcoholic’s Disease which turns your brain into mashed potato.

My mates say he’s full of shit and the next time I see granddad I should point-blank ask him what the hell he’s talking about. I want to run it by mum and dad, but after The Omen screw-up I’m not keen to risk them banning me from the nursing home as well. I’m sure my mates are right and the WOAD’s a nut job. It’s just... Well, it’s the way the other old folk treat him, as if they sense something’s a bit off.

And when I think about it a bit more, I realise I’ve never seen even one member of staff fuss over him. I mean, they fuss over everybody else puffing up their pillows and whatnot. They’re good like that. And it’s not like they won’t have anything to do with him, but just prefer to hang around with the other crumblies.

Maybe they know the truth. Maybe he really has done some bad shit. Well, there’s only one way to find out.

****

At the nursing home mum and dad are in granddad’s room talking all serious with a doctor. We turned up about half an hour ago and were having some really nice Dundee cake while granddad watched the horse racing on the telly. The races always perk him up, but I can never make out what the commentator’s saying because he talks at like a million miles an hour and it’s only good when the riders fall off and get trampled. Anyhow, everything was going fine until granddad just peed in his pyjamas. There was this really thick silence, but he didn’t notice and when he did he started crying.

It’s odd how being around old people makes you feel more grown up. They’re like a bunch of babies. I can do tons of stuff they can’t and it’s been months since I wet the bed.

I tell mum I’m gonna duck out and she gives me a thin smile and tells me not to get into any trouble.

Then I’m out looking for the WOAD. He’s not