Crazy Tim strummed his banjo beneath the monkey-puzzle
trees that crowded around his crumbling home. As the romantic bards
saw nature through rose-glass, Tim saw the world under the influence
of whisky. Drunken and clothed in a state of crust, he sat on the
old porch, casting arpeggios from his finger tips into the soundscape
of the night; the rolling of corn under the spell of the breeze; a
breeze that drew a groan from the stiff branches of those ancient
trees that were his only audience.
Tim was born with the random forces in the world infused
into his fate. He was never a drifter; he was a water-skater. He
trod upon the system with step so light that the serious people of
the county never once felt him. He was a ghost, a poet, a tramp, and
a petrol thief.
Just as the sophisticates flock to theatre, and as the
punks stand in lines before wailing overdriven noise, there was to be
live audience for Tim’s nocturnal show. Indeed, it would be the
only possible audience that could empathise with the irreverent Tim:
three lost teenagers, darkest fear within them, galloped like
panicked beasts through the pine wood surrounding Tim’s cabin.
When they came to beat their steps over the gravel of Tim’s drive,
they splashed those stones around, like salmon frantically dashing
upstream on their pre-ordained flight.
As he heard the pummelling of boots, a suspicion formed
in Tim’s mind. He laid down his banjo, poured a shot of whisky,
and stood to address the interlopers.
“Damn crazy drunk bastards! I’ve a machine-gun
that’ll shoot fists at your balls!”
At the very moment he finished with speech, those three
troubled kids each skidded out from the darkness, and landed heaped
in the orange light that streamed through the open door. Tim
appeared to them in silhouetted form; his bedraggled dressing gown
looked a robe of authority, signifying command in this peculiar
realm. He downed the whisky shot and eyed the newcomers with a wary
eye.
“Are you the feds?” asked Tim.
“Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god”, mumbled one of
those teenagers, a girl in a hoodie that was decorated with
blasphemous and bloody design. She lay trapped by the others at the
bottom of the heap, limbs awkwardly spread over the dirt.
“Shit, are you alright, lady? Say, do you like
whisky?”
“Help us!” the teenagers implored in unison.
“Why, whatever could be the matter, on such a
beautiful evening as this?” enquired Tim, gesturing around at the
darkness, and his ramshackle home.
The girl swore and then pushed the other two off her.
They each wobbled to their feet; one was another girl who picked a
battered trilby from the ground. The other was a boy, who dusted
muck from his tracksuit. “We’ve been chased!” explained the
girl.
“Chased? By what?”
The three spoke at once.
“Badgers!” shouted the mosher in the hoodie.
“Aliens!” shouted the boy in the white trackies.
“The police!” shouted the other girl with the hat
and the tweed coat.
Tim dropped to his chair heavily, in clear shock. His
expression was grave, and still he held the empty glass, forgotten in
his hand.
“Are you alright?” asked the mosher, stuttering a
little.
Tim placed down his glass with an air of one leaving the
bar. When he spoke it was in a sombre tone. He faced the girl and
said, “Tell me about the badger.”
And so the mosher girl began her tale.
The Tale of Two Badgers
“We were walking together when we saw these two bright
lights ahead of us. Then I realised they were eyes. They looked
really big and scary so I thought it must have been a badger. I
heard badgers were really dangerous.”
“They assuredly are”, confided Tim with a
conspiratorial quietness to his voice. “A badger can take a grown
woman’s leg right off. What's your name?”
“I'm Sez. Yeah, so we ran”, she continued, “We
just ran until we came here.”
“I think that was a very wise choice,” Tim observed.
“I had a nasty encounter with a badger myself, and I can tell you
that everything you’ve heard about them is true.”
“Really, what happened?” inquired Sez. She looked
around, a little afraid that another beast would appear from the
gloom; yet her attention was transfixed as Tim began his story:
“Back in the day, at school, I played with this cover
band. We used to practise over at Ballsy’s house on the way to
Garmouth. Well, we played in his garage, with the door right wide
open. That was our first mistake. You see, badgers are attracted to
noise, because where there’s noise there are always people, and
people are a badger’s natural prey.
So after a while of playing the same song over and over,
we had a break. I smoked a joint and then other guys just talked,
when suddenly we heard this rustling down the embankment. This is
where we made our really big mistake. We didn’t appreciate just
how evil badgers are. We took our lives for granted and I paid for
it. We snuck over to where we hear could better, and waited in grim
silence for a glimpse of the creature.
After a while of listening and waiting, we heard a twig
snap. Our senses came flashing back, and we ran the hell away.
However, there just so happened to be a tree right behind me. So
when I turned to run, I found myself tangled in branches. I snagged
my wrist on one before I could free myself. I escaped in good time,
and ran back into the house. But blood was pouring from me, so I had
to get a bandage fast. Luckily, Ballsy’s older sister Cat was at
home. She got out some medical gauze and antiseptic and cleaned the
wound.
By this time, the other guys figured the badger had
passed, so they went outside to practise some more. Meanwhile Cat
was tying up my arm. I had a crush on her, and well, when she was
done tying up my arm, I just asked her for a kiss. It was my first,
and I swear I was completely lost within the sensation. Indeed I
never heard the band had stopped playing. The first I knew was
Ballsy standing in the door. He just said ‘What the fuck!’
Cat ran out embarrassed and Ballsy just walked off. I
found the guys outside. They managed to get the song really tight
without me. They said it was my fault that we couldn’t nail it
when we tried before. They actually looked pretty sad, but still,
they asked me to leave the band.
I never saw Cat again. And on that day, Sez, I lost a
friend, my band, and a lot of blood; all because of that evil fucking
badger. Yet I only heard the badger; you’ve seen one, Sez, and I
think you’re lucky to be alive.”
With his tale at an end, he refilled his glass, and
sipped, reflecting on the desperate episode. The three teenagers
each swore they would always be wary for badgers, and would never
risk their lives to seek one out.
“But we didn’t run from a fucking badger!”
protested the boy in the white track-suit. He began speaking faster.
“Swear, dude, it was aliens. They were just sitting there in a
spaceship cloaked in smoke, making weird fucking bleeping noises.
But the real reason I knew it was aliens is because I just felt this
massive fear, like when aliens mess with your brain.”
“You are a reject, Chiz,” spat the girl in tweed.
“There is no such thing as aliens. That was a police car. I can’t
believe we had to run just because you like taking drugs.”
Chiz, coughed a greener before retorting, “No Megan,
it’s fucking aliens. End of.”
“Simmer doon, everybody,” said Tim with the prim
expression of a school-teacher upon his face. “I wouldn’t be
surprised if there were aliens and police in the woods together.”
Dougie, the Police, and the
Extraterrestrials
“Last time my pal Dougie was over, we had a bit of a
situation. I was basically holding on to several kees of hash for
him. Anyway, he sped into the driveway hoorna fast, jumped out and
said “The fucking cops are coming.”
We knew they have dogs, so we couldn’t just hide it
outside. We didn’t want to burn it either. So we were standing
out here, smoking a joint and thinking what we could do. All of a
sudden Dougie says “the fuck is that”, and points towards a star.
It glowed all bright, and then came straight overhead.
It was definitely aliens, because that’s when we both
got the idea. The aliens sent us the light as a message, telling us
to hide the shit in the light fittings. So I just took out the
lights, bunged all the fucking hash up there, while Dougie cooked up
a bunch of bacon and sausages to cover the smell.
Anyway, after a while, the cops turned up. They were
real pricks. The dogs went mental because they could smell the hash,
but the cops couldn’t find it anywhere. They turned the whole
place around, but never checked the lights. In the end they
apologised and left, so we ate a bunch of bacon and smoked a massive
joint. It was awesome.
Basically, cops are stupid, and aliens want us to smoke
pot. So dinnae worry about it.”
The three teenagers each agreed that wouldn’t worry
about the police, or aliens, any longer. However, the initial
dispute had still not been resolved. Each still held their original
opinion of what they had seen. The argument could have continued
until the whisky dried. But their debate was cut off as the
soundscape of the evening was ripped apart again, as an engine roared
from afar. In the forest it echoed, booming like thunder, as if the
spirit of life was rushing toward them. The darkness was shot apart
by headlights, before the car halted with an ostentatious power
slide. The engine shut down, its tumult succeeded by pumping techno.
“Oh aye, that’s Dougie now,” said Tim, who stood
to greet his friend.
As Dougie stepped from his vehicle, he was followed by a
vast outpouring cloud of smoke. As he trod toward the cabin, the
others saw that blood had drained from his face. His steps were a
little uneven; he faltered as in shock.
“Holy fuck,” he began eloquently, “Holy fuck. I
just saw three aliens in the woods.”
“Fucking bat-balls, kids!” Tim shouted, “It was a
spaceship!” He collapsed into the chair, and poured another dram.
