Thursday 16 June 2011

Aftermath, Part 4

James was pushing with all his might.  He didn’t care what women went through during childbirth, this was definitely worse, and he was definitely pushing harder.  The roof of the boot wouldn’t move, the back of the seats weren’t responding to his incessant punching and he was exhausted.  The chocolate raisins had been all well and good for the first half an hour, but now he felt ill, his mouth tasted like socks and old caravans and his stomach did not have a good rumble about it.  He was dangerously certain that he was now completely sober. 
He tried not cry and sat back for a rest.  And a little contemplation.  Would Morag wake up filled with regret?  She had work too.  Wherever the bloody hell work was to her.  He probably shouldn’t ever have got it out.  And to then put it on her pizza and make her publicly eat it was almost certainly a bad plan.  It didn’t really show him in the wise middle-class gentlemanly role he was going for. 
But she had said that she liked mushrooms, and working around idiotic children day to day meant that natural drug-related assumptions were understandable.  It’s not like he bought the stuff.  He merely confiscated a few magic mushrooms from a pupil and forgot to do anything with them, leaving them in his jacket pocket all weekend and all through Monday and Tuesday.  Well it said nowhere in his contract that he had to instantly report such matters.  Probably.  He’d never really read his contract.  He was a history teacher, he taught history.  He at least knew that much.
 In all fairness they were both very, very drunk by the time they’d made it to Hollywood Pizza at 3am (two meals in one night, this girl was getting the special treatment) and anyone that drunk who was trying to impress a clearly insane and maverick girl would do the same.  Magic Mushies, they were both children of the 80’s, it made sense at the time.  And she had ordered a veggie pizza anyway, so why not spice it up a little? 
Admittedly, her reaction had been a little adverse, but he was not blame.  Definitely not to blame.  Not entirely.  It didn’t constitute drugging her, how was he know that she didn’t take drugs?  He offered extra mushrooms, she said yes.  That was a verbal contract was it not?  He wasn’t to know that she’d disagree with the pavement and be upset over the sky.  She should have warned him.  That should have been in the notes on her profile.  The whole bloody point of online dating was that you knew what you were getting.   Tendencies towards bad trips surely constituted a serious medical condition that he should have been warned about?
But sod it.  He had the more pressing matter of his impending death to concern himself with before he worried about the illegal poisoning charges.  It’s not as if he date-raped her... he date-kissed her, but it was not his bloody fault... he didn’t know.
He sat back against the boot of the car.  There had to be something in here that would help him escape.  A crowbar?  Why did he not keep a crowbar in his boot for such emergencies?  What a foolish man he was.  From now on he was definitely always keeping a spare mobile phone and a crowbar in the boot at all times.  This had clearly always been something that might happen to a man like him. 
He put his hand in his jacket pocket on a hunt for more of those chocolate raisins, having already forgotten what a bad idea chocolate was a to dehydrated man.  He checked the wrong pocket and came across the wrong thing.  But oh how it was the right thing.  He’d forgotten all about the trip to the corner shop to buy fags.  Morag had been insistent that they smoke Lambert and Butler to remind her of the old days.  She’d taken the left over fags home.  He’d taken custody of the lighter. 
‘Right, mister made of steel but actually made of cardboard boot lid.  My man strength might not be able to beat you.  But my fire will’.  And so James click the lighter on, and began trying to set his own boot on fire, with himself locked in it.  The perfect plan.