Pandora's Crotch: The Dark Novel

Fergie Park is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, a lair built for creatures foul and loathsome.
     This housing scheme of the damned is an untidy sprawl of monolithic council flats, permanent skips and burning Vauxhall Astras. The buildings themselves are sulphurous warrens of pure function; they are tall blocks of unloved and unlovely masonry, the brickwork slathered in harling cladding and topped with cheap grey slate. Rusting sheets of corrugated iron line the balconies and verandas. Overhead, washing lines are strung out between the buildings; sheaves of dirty knickers blow in the wind whilst football strips fly like battle standards.
     All God’s failed prototypes are dumped into this biological refuse tip by the uncaring local council. Environmental pressure has mutated the already unstable human genepool, resulting in a terrifying new species of violent tracksuit monkey. Specimens of Neddus Nikeus and Homo Adidas slope around the concourse, knives and electronic tags half-hidden beneath their designer nylons.
     Society’s other abortions are forced to eke out an existence amongst them. Desperate single mothers roam the streets, trailing conga lines of dirty children behind them. Derelict old ladies are sandwiched between warring pairs of junkies. Here we have alcoholics and addicts, pensioners and pedophiles; here we have three hundred shitty council flats in a concrete microcosm of Hell.
     Now, gaze with trepidation upon the ruins that Irish Mo calls home. Come, see the cracked guttering, see the splattering waterfall cascading from the roof. Behold the white harling of the flatblock, spotted black with mould and moss. For your consideration, I give you window frames that lack for windows, I give you broken glass, three times bricked and replaced with chipboard.

The stairwell fairly reeks of stale piss and spray-paint. The hand rail is made from pitted black plastic, worn with age, yet strangely filmy to the touch.
     Ziggie leads our charge and climbs the stairs in silence. Gambit follows her, and he will not shut his fucking mouth. He bewails his lot in life; he mourns for the woman he left behind and the love he lost thereafter. Did I know, for example, that the Cabbage used to be a stripper? That, during her tenure at law school, she paid her way towards the bar by grinding on a pole?
     A kinder God would have taken pity and lain Gambit with a stripper this night. It would have been good, the cripple says. It would’ve really cheered him up.

We clumsily crest the concrete stairs, silent now but for the sudden, echoing crack of a junkie’s needle crushed underfoot. The taste of wet concrete taints every laboured breath I take. I see a child’s plastic trike abandoned next to a rusty mop bucket, I see split black bin bags, I see graffiti, words hacked into the wall with a knife.
     Here stands a door, number twenty three, the first on the right at the top of the second stairwell. Ziggie has been rendered half-blind, there is condensation forming on the lenses of her glasses. She is struggling to depress the doorbell; her first few drunken stabs miss by varying degrees.
     She removes her glasses and attempts to wipe them clear on the sleeve of her sodden jacket. Satisfied, she strikes forth again and her efforts are rewarded. The musical doorbell begins to chime, and a tinny rendition of God Save the Queen fills the stillness of the stairwell. Gambit attempts to straighten himself, his fingers move to adjust a non-existent tie. Ziggie scrapes her boots across a threadbare welcome mat. I cough, and reach down in what I hope is a inconspicuous manner; - yes, yes, very good, my trouser flies are still in their upright and locked position.
     The battery of the doorbell struggles and dies. God Save the Queen expires in a tuneless dirge.
Staggered footsteps sound from somewhere inside the flat; the light in the lobby flickers and a yale key clatters in the lock. A deadbolt is drawn; the door creaks open just a fraction, painting the flagstones with a line of dirty light.
     A bloodshot eyeball hoves into view over a taut security chain; the eyeball gives us a bleary once-over before widening, blinking twice and retreating back from sight. The chain sags, metal clicks, the lock rattles as palsied hands struggle with the latch.
     Finally, the door swings back upon its hinges – unveiled at last is Irish Mo, owner of the flat, stalwart of the Meadow, bane of the IRA and father to the Fatmandu.
     And, if he won’t sell us a bottle of vodka, then this whole trip has been wasted, and we are doomed.

He is an alcoholic at the end of his tether; he is a testament to the validity of the warnings plastered across a lifetime’s worth of cigarette packets. His frame is gaunt, his skin is sallow; his eyes are rheumy, moist, seeming to forever verge on the edge of tears.
     Irish Mo’s head is crowned with half a mullet; it, like everything else about him, is lank with grease and oily as sin. His skin is paper thin and stretched across the bone; he wheezes when he’s tasked with breath and speaks in tongues of cancer.
     His clothing is typical of Oxfam, his trousers made from corduroy. He wears a horrendous knitted cardigan, oft shrunk in the wash, oft stretched back into a vague approximation of human proportions again. The cardigan is warped and twisted, it is malformed and mutated, it is worn and torn and utterly fucked.
     The cardigan is a lost cause. In truth, it never really fitted him in the first place anyway.
     And so rendered, Irish Mo stands before us, his eyes wet, his brow knotted with confusion; - why, he asks himself, have these three fools come knocking to his door? The hour is late. What could they possibly want from me?
     He smiles half-heartedly, hardly daring to hope. His eyebrows flutter and I feel a weight lifting from my chest. It would appear that our voyage has not been in vain, that, against all the odds, Irish Mo is actually pleased to see us. Old age or loneliness, hellfire or damnation, choose your pretext or pick your poison - I, personally, believe that Irish Mo would have been pleased to actually see anyone.
     He gestures expansively upon his doorstop, beckoning us to come in from the rain and make ourselves at home. He has a flannel to hand, an ancient scrap of rotten cloth kept stationed by the door. Would we, perchance, like to avail ourselves of his boundless hospitality? Would we take this opportunity, would we warm ourselves by the fire? Would we like to dry our hair?
     The flannel is a fecund abomination. The flannel looks like it used to be a nappy, and so I must decline.
     The fire, however, does sound rather inviting.
     We advance down the verminous lobby carpet and I see that unwashed bath towels are the very least of our worries. The smell of old foost hangs in the air; spread liberally before me is evidence of dirt and filth aplenty.
     The walls play host to grime, dust, and the occasional worrisome splatter. Crooked picture frames hang on peeling paper; the hall is lined with a parade of photos that date back to Mo’s days serving Queen and Country. In the pictures, the man himself looks hale and hearty; - he poses macho with machine guns, he salutes his guests with a toothsome, winning smile.
     The old solider marches afore us towards the lounge, impervious to our growing revulsion, apparently heedless of the fact that Ziggie is walking on the balls of her feet to avoid excess contact with the carpet. The door to my left is partially open and I glimpse the kitchen, a tale of woe writ bold in grease. I see a mountainous pile of crockery, creaking and shifting in the confines of a festering sink. Ceramic tiles and laminate cry out in the darkness, begging for the touch of bleach. There, unseen within the peddle bin, plague and penicillin fight a never-ending war for supremacy.
      Irish Mo chances to see me as I stare aghast at some tentacled horror come crawling from his kettle. The old solider pauses in his step and fumbles awhile with the clasp of his tobacco tin. He has been chatting quietly whist we walked, mumbling as much to himself as anyone else in the room. It transpires that he has been building up to the unveiling of some great secret, that he is in possession of a revelation that may well forever change the lives of those who chance to hear it. He wishes to explain, if not apologize, for the fact that his flat is about as clean and tidy as the average landfill site.
     Irish Mo has a theory. And, before we judge, we must learn to listen first.

Life is short.
     Indeed, life can be very short. One minute you're alive and sharing a cigarette with your best friend in Belfast, the next minute you're dead, blown to bits by some republican bastard with an RPG.
     This, then, was Irish Mo’s kirk and creed. The old solider reasoned that he could die at any time. It could be tomorrow, it could be next week, it could be a month or two or more from now. Who could say when the great conductor would come to punch Mo's ticket?
Regardless, soon the Irishman’s soul would leave for pastures new; that soul, therefore, finds itself at liberty. That soul feels no need to don marigolds and do the dishes.
     Towels, he continues to preach, pointing down the corridor to where his flannel is hanging on a coat-hook. Why would one wash towels? To be sure, the only time Mo ever used a towel was when he emerged from a scalding hot shower, scoured and reeking of carbolic soap. When Irish Mo was given cause to use a towel, he was one-hundred percent certified to be the cleanest object in the entire house. The towel was almost certainly dirtier than he was; – logically, every time Mo dried himself with his towel, the towel itself was actually getting cleaner.
     Genius. Madness. Two sides of the same old fucked flannel. Irish Mo calls his theory Procrastonistic Enlightenment, and he annunciates the consonants carefully, and with great pride.
     This, then, is the stale, spoiling fridge in which the lager dwells. To the right is the ground-floor lavatory that seethes with virulent microbeasties. The sink is blocked, the old pull-chain cistern is a little temperamental and the toilet bowl is probably a sentient lifeform by now.
     As such, the management advises us not to take a shit in it.
     Mo concludes his tour by leading us into the living room of the flat, which he maintains as a shrine dedicated to the glorious nineteen-eighties. A fat box television squats in the far corner, set above an old video recorder and a ragged formation of plasticized darts trophies. The floor is a patchwork conglomeration of old rugs and carpeting; the hearth is home to a three-bar electric fire and an empty clothes horse.
     A trio of tweed sofas have somehow been crammed into the less than spacious living room, and this is where we will sit. Two of the sofas are currently bereft of carriage; the third, however, is a tall-backed throne of scratchy foam and sewn leather patches, and this two-seat abomination is home to another human being.
     Beware! For this, my friends, is the creature known as Fatmandu.

Whatever name Mo bestowed upon this firstborn son will not be recorded in history. That babe in arms was hungry, and sucked his mother dry. He sucked and sucked and grew enormous, even as she emptied herself, and died.
     Aye, from that first day, he ate and supped without restraint. Come puberty, he fell upon the canteens of the world like a ravenous locust, and all he did devour. His stomach was an infinite bucket and his hunger was insatiable; his waistline expanded like the birth of a galaxy and no force of man could keep his girth contained.
     Aye, history does not recall the name that Mo gave his firstborn son; all of you, in time, will come to know that babe in arms only as Fatmandu.

He grows a beard upon his neck and on his neck alone. He lives and sleeps in a heavy metal t-shirt, and he leaves his armpits unwashed and ringed with stinking sweat. He is six foot five, he is pushing thirty stone and he looks forever hungry.
    Fatmandu is red of face and mostly bleary; he is angry, his soaring blood pressure is threatening to pop his head open like an overripe tomato. Unhappy is he, this Fatmandu, for reasons entirely of his own creation. He has lost his job, he has lost his wife and child, he is in a court mandated program and he is sleeping roughly on his father’s couch. He is, in short, not fit for good company, and he is restrained in his constipated indignation only by dint of his father's warning glare.
      Fatmandu squats upon the couch and stares at us like a malignant Buddha. His plan is simple, his thoughts childishly transparent; he thinks that by making the atmosphere in the room utterly unbearable he can force us out, we will go home, that we will leave him to slumber in peace.
     More fool him; - I have been an alcoholic for far, far too long to let the odd hostile stare run me out of a perfectly good drinking establishment.
     Made bold by the presence of Ziggie, I scoff at the rumbling threats emerging from the patchwork sofa. And then, at Irish Mo’s direction, I humbly remove my water-logged coat and add it to the pile forming in front of the three-bar heater. Scabby breeks are seated upon shabby settees, lagers are proffered and accepted with thanks. Two boots thump wetly onto the carpet; soon I sit with my feet up, gratefully turning my trenchfoot to the flame.
     We sit around a coffee table with Mo placed at its head. Gambit parks his arse next to Fatmandu whilst I sit next to Ziggie. Now, and only now, we crack out lagers open; we take this moment to relax, to enjoy the fruits of our great labours.
     Mo is cheered to have worthy company and cannot bear to still his tongue for long. He begins to talk the talk of the pubic house, to blag and boast and tell tall tales.
     If one has the knack for separating fact from the fiction, then there is potentially much to learn here.
Taken straight and at his word, Mo has fought in every major military conflict since the end of the Boer War. He has rubbed shoulders with Che and flown bombers over Bologna; he lit the fuse of the hydrogen bomb and drove a submarine up the beaches of Normandy. Irish Mo had killed a hundred thousand Germans with one hand tied behind his back; he had once climbed the German Cenotaph and bared his bum to Hitler.
     There is a great deal of laughter, eye-rolling and further copious drinking as Mo’s yarns unravel to the point of sheer lunacy. The old solider is now telling us about the time he witnessed an Indian snake-charmer lure a tapeworm out of his second lieutenant’s arse. Ziggie’s guard is lowered, and she soon loses herself to the infectious good humour. Gambit is snorting, and he slaps his good knee in merriment.
     Fatmandu is not amused. His soft drink hits the table, and it hits it hard enough to scatter empty lager tins. He wants to rage but thinks better of it; he composes himself and enquires politely after the possibility of an end. It is late, after all, and he is overtired - perchance his father’s guests might be persuaded to wrap things up, to drink their drinks and go. Pity poor Fatmandu, for he must face the rigors of the labour exchange tomorrow.
     As such, he would like a few hours sleep beforehand.
     Irish Mo nods. The hour, he acknowledges, is getting late indeed. It is time for unwelcome guests to part as friends, to shake and make their glad departure.
     Irish Mo reaches into the crate by his side and doles out further gifts of lager. Fatmandu’s coke glass sits unheeded on the table; it remains pointedly unfilled. There is, Mo says, a park bench at the bottom of Fergie Park. Perhaps his son would like to borrow a sleeping bag?
Father and son stare at each other, brimming over with unbridled contempt. Gambit, God bless him, takes it upon himself to defuse the situation, to heal the rift between them. He already has a tin of lager in his hand, and now he finds himself burdened with a spare; - graciously, Gambit offers it to the fat man sitting to his side, inviting him to drink and be accepted into the fold.
     My disabled friend’s efforts are soundly rebuffed. Fatmandu would rather die than take his lager.
     There will be no reconciliation tonight.

The beer has been flowing carelessly and, with the exception of Fatmandu, we have all imbibed our share. Alas, then, for the arrival of the inevitable. Ziggie has just returned from a hunter-gatherer expedition to the fridge and she brings back nothing more than bad tidings.
     The beer, she says, will flow no more.
     Even Mo’s garrulous tongue falls silent, stilled by this grievous misfortune. Conversely, his son positively glows for the first time of the evening, privately gloating to himself that our makeshift gathering has finally come to an end. His smile is a sickly, condescending thing; - he is not magnanimous in victory.
     Irish Mo takes note of his son’s change in demeanor; I wait with baited breath, but no reprimand emerges from the Irishman’s lips. The old soldier sits instead on the edge of his couch, apparently beset by indecision, wrestling with some unknown inner turmoil.
     I, too, am at a loss. I rip the ring-pull from my tin in impotent frustration. The can reverberates, hollow, sadly empty.
     The sound seems to inspire a revelation in the Irishman, who nods to himself and rises stiffly from his chair. I make to do likewise until Mo makes soothing noises and begs a moment of my time. He will return shortly, he says, and he invites us all to bide.
     Without further ado, Irish Mo leaves the room. He has a look of wiley determination plastered across his wizened face.
     Ziggie still stands by the door; she looks doubtful, but moves with solemn grace to let the Irishman pass by. Gambit, for his part, is heedless and insensible to the comings and goings of our host. My disabled friend has started to slouch lopsidedly, much to Fatmandu's annoyance. Mo’s son keeps turning his head to the side, only to find Gambit's ugly fizzog lolling on his shoulder like a particularly loathsome parrot.
     Gambit grins at him, exposing a mouth that looks like Broxden after the train derailment. He still has half a tin of lager and he waggles the stale relic under Fatmandu’s nose; he is offering him the last few swigs, and all he wants in exchange is the gift of friendship.
Fatmandu declines. The tin goes flying and the last lager in the world is spent, spilling itself in vain, becoming nothing more than a wet stain on the carpet.
     Ziggie cries out at this deplorable waste of alcohol and I find my chloer rising in concurrence. Don’t get me wrong, hitting Gambit is almost acceptable and entirely understandable; - in fact, hitting Gambit is probably about as much fun as you could ever expect to have in a room that contains a Gambit. But you do not hit Gambit at the expense of the last beer in the house. You must drink the beer first.
     Then you have permission to hit Gambit.
     The ensuing argument never happens, postponed indefinitely by Irish Mo's reappearance. The old man’s rummage through the closet has been entirely successful, and he returns with a package that greatly lifts the spirits of all present.
     Cradled in Mo’s arms is a whiskey of fine heritage and awe inspiring age. The dust cannot hide the provenance of the bottle; it is amber nectar, it is the ambrosia of the Gods. The label is green, the foil on the neck is silver. The whiskey has a coat of arms, and it is made from gold and antlers.
     Mo announces that he has been saving this bottle for a special occasion. He would be honored, nay, humbled, if we would rise from our seats and join him for a dram.
     Ziggie, with avarice a forethought, touches him on the forearm and assures him that the honor would be ours.
     I am sent to retrieve four glass tumblers from the ancient oak armoire in the lobby. Ziggie has taken possession of the whiskey and is attempting to tear the foil from the cork. It is not a task to which she is suited; even with the dust wiped off upon her trousers, her nails are chewed right down to the quick and she cannot gain much purchase.
     I return to the scene, a finger in each of the requested glasses, and there I stop dead in my tracks. Ziggie now stands with her back turned, she has opened the top buttons of her shirt, she is rooting around inside. Gambit leers lopsidedly to her left and Fatmandu’s face has turned an even deeper shade of crimson.
     Only Irish Mo has the good sense to look even vaguely embarrassed by this turn of events.
     Ziggie turns; in one hand she holds the bottle of whiskey, and in the other she fingers a shard of serrated dentine. It is her necklace, her shark tooth necklace, the root of which is clasped in silver and anchored to a chain. Deftly she rises the bottle to eye-level, deftly she runs the serrated edge of the tooth over and around the foil.
     Slice. Slice. Slice.
     Three identical pieces of metallic foil fall languidly to the carpet. The tooth vanishes into a pocket. Ziggie clamps the bottle ‘twixt her thighs and pulls the bulbous cork.
     The pop is not loud, the cork does not fly from Ziggie’s hand to ricochet across the living room. I feel slightly disappointed; I feel that the moment rightly deserves a smidgeon of glorious fanfare. And then I start to breathe again, and I discover that the air has changed.
     I inhale, and the breath I take is tinged with peat and malt.
Ziggie gins in triumph, her cheeks flushed; she looks so healthy and so happy that it damn near breaks my heart. She passes the bottle around the circle, allowing us all to take a deeper, more meaningful sounding. Even Fatmandu is intrigued and, at Mo’s instigation, he cautiously raises the bottle to his nose and takes a healthy snifter.
     The man’s head snaps abruptly backwards; to Fatmandu, the whiskey is a poisonous snake come striking forth with fangs.
     Mo retakes possession of the vintage before his foolish offspring can slop further alcohol onto the carpet. I bring forth the glasses with near indecent haste and hold them splayed with one, spidery hand; the Irishman carefully decants a generous splash of whiskey into each.
My index finger is wetted in the process, but no one seems to mind.
     We stand before the heater and raise the malt in a Gaelic salute, a toast to our heath and our health alone. Fatmandu sits forgotten behind us, glassless and sweating, playing with a coin and mumbling snatches of prayer beneath his troubled breath.
     Toast complete, we raise the glasses to our lips and take but a little into our mouths. Forgotten are the coarse alcoholics of old; we are reborn in this moment, we will not throw a fine malt over our throats in feckless, barbarian abandon.
     No, we sup now as erudite gentlemen and gentlewomen. The whiskey, smooth as oil, glides across my tongue and I am happy to be alive. The malt warms my tongue, it slips across my throat gladly and lights a fire behind my heart.
     Murmurs of pleasure and approval greet the ears of Irish Mo. Once again we raise our glasses, this time to salute our gracious host.
     A second mouthful, then. I smack my lips as my stomach begins to burn, somewhat pleasant at first, before turning into something of a concern. The fire inside is spreading unchecked, rapidly blazing out of control. Acid rises in sudden reflux; my mouth salivates wildly as my esophagus is put to the flame.
     Houston, we have a problem. I am burning up on re-entry, I am exploding on the launchpad. I belatedly remember that I am no erudite gentleman; I am an alcoholic, I am the lowest common denominator, I am drunk as the skunk of ancient proverb and I am in immediate danger of throwing up all over the carpet.