All stories

‘This is not kickercise, or Kettleballs, or any kind of balls.’

‘And this is not some infomercial crap, this is not the Insanity workout.’

‘THIS. IS. LUNACY!’

And with that, the Lycra clad Rastafarian God that was DrDreymon released the hounds.

For a half second Jackie stared at the fourteen Rottweilers before she was elbow to elbow with thirty other wannabe chiselled abs, all of them fighting to flee the snapping canines. Pushing and shoving they fought their way through the narrow door at the end of the studio, into another chamber where DrDreymon was already poised by another lever.

Jackie forced air into her lungs, pushed sweat damped hair from her eyes. She stared at the steel double doors already shaking from whatever beasts lurked behind.

DrDreymon was shouting again.

‘Who wants abs? You wants abs? You can have abs. But first, you have to…flee the alligators!’

---

It was Justin’s dream that gave her the kick up the backside she needed. Sat there with his Frosties, telling her he’d been in the water, telling her about this creature, this huge mass of blubber wrapped in a life jacket had been clawing at his body.

Jackie didn’t tell him she’d come home after 2-4-1 cocktails with the girls feeling amorous.

She gave up crisps, she gave up booze. She turned her nose up at the doughnuts foisted on her in work, she said no thank you when Justin rang to ask if she wanted a pre-dinner Big Mac and fries.

And then she saw a poster for the Lunacy workout programme.

Seven weeks of hell. She ran from dogs, from big cats, from horses with chainsaws and cows who’d been shown a video of what went on in the abattoir. She was dive bombed by turkeys and menaced by killer bees, swum in pools with water fearing leopards and in spike dropping ceilings filled with centipedes and cockroaches.

She became nine stone of varnished steel.

---

Only one way to celebrate – Justin’s favourite, Big Mac and fries before they hit the restaurant. One tiny burger wouldn’t matter, would it?

Into McDonalds with the killer abs and the toned arms and the tight butt that needed to be seen. She gave her order and then as she waited she turned to survey the sheeple with their fat slovenly bodies. Were they jealous of this Adonis who could gollop down fast food and not let it show, as far they knew?

The nearest Big Mac to her dropped slowly to the table. Justin looking at her with hamster cheeks stuffed with burger. Jackie’s legs waded the treacle that must have flooded the restaurant. She stood by the table just as the second Big Mac lowered. Sitting next to Justin was Julie, the woman who had been with her through Slimming World and Weightwatchers and through umpteen boxes of special offer Quality Street.

Justin grinned weakly.

‘Er, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about…’

“Only the brave or the stupid go out on the lake at night...”

Captain O’Rourke clamped his pipe between his teeth and squinted dramatically, as his audience shivered with delighted horror and drew closer to the pub’s fire. The ancient wooden beams loomed overhead casting shadows onto the flagstone floor. Near the door the statue of a lithe man dumbly held a collection of dripping waterproofs that steamed and stank of the sea.

The storm battered the window as if to break in and drag them all out into its howling tantrum. The Captain waited for the city boy to ask, as they always did.

“Why not?” the scrawny lad called, cocky behind a pint that seemed enormous in his city-bred hands. His baggy t-shirt showed a guitar-playing Rastafarian and his jeans clung obscenely.

“Because of The Creature!” The Captain cackled and rolled his eyes rabidly as lightning flashed behind him.

“They say it’s the bastard offspring of a giant squid and a monstrous prehistoric crocodile. They say it has a hundred tentacles and a thousand teeth. They say if you look into its myriad eyes you’ll turn to stone, but no-one who’s seen its face has ever lived to tell the tale. No-one - except me.”

The locals egged him on, enjoying the boy’s complacency: “Go on then Cap’n - what happened?”

“They all warned me, but I wouldn’t listen. No, I rowed to the middle of the lake at the stroke of midnight, just to prove them wrong; to show there was no Creature. But I was wrong.

“It was still; not a ripple, not a splash. I was staring at the moon when the tentacles crept silently into my little boat. Almost had me, only the reflection of its awful eyes glinted off my lifejacket’s metal rings and I managed to dodge it and whack it with my oar.

“I rowed back as fast as I could and I never did that again. I learned my lesson alright.”

“Aye Cap’n - we’ve all learned that lesson - every night for the last 30 years!” The locals guffawed, but the Captain stared at the boy, deadly seriously.

“You mind what I’ve said” he warned, before striding out into the storm.

The boy smirked at the old man’s lunacy, but as he lay in his bed that night, enveloped in the eerie calm that settled after the storm, the lake seemed to call him. He looked out at its vastness which, in the moonlight, seemed like a challenge. The Captain had mocked him and now the lake, too, affronted his bravery. His eyes found the small boat at the lake’s shore. He’d show them.

The next day Captain O’Rourke and the pub landlord hefted the new coat-stand inside the pub and placed it near the door. It was heavy; an exquisitely carved statue of a scrawny boy, frozen, arms outstretched as if to ward off a blow, an intricately realistic design of a Rastafarian playing a guitar etched onto his t-shirt

‘Steve? Is that you? Come on, you know I can’t give you anything until I see a response’

He lay there, sleeping bag pulled up over his head, refusing to move, to respond to the persistent questioning coming from Jeff.

He was hungry, and the coffee and bacon sandwich that the Jeff was offering was so tempting, but nothing was free in this world. If he popped his head out, confirmed his identity, and took the breakfast, he’d be opening himself up to a world of questions. ‘How had he been?’, ‘where had he been?’ ‘was he back on the gear?’. ‘What had happened to the hostel they’d got him into?’.

No. it wasn’t worth it. Clinging to the last vestiges of his privacy like a lifejacket, Steve wriggled further into the filthy sleeping bag and pulled it tighter around himself.

It hadn’t always been like this. He’d been pretty successful until that asshole had tried to touch up his wife in Buffalo six years ago. He’d seen red, punched the guy. Unfortunately, military training meant he knew how to hit, and in his beery stupor, had forgotten his restraint. Poor pillock had been in a coma for 6 months after that, and, by all accounts, was never quite the same after. And Steve? 3 years for ABH, divorce, and of course, a dishonourable discharge to boot, all for a well-aimed and, as it turned out, unjustified punch. He couldn’t believe it when Sarah started screaming at him, crying over the useless limp on the floor between them. Hardly surprising he’d turned to the drugs whilst inside, and here he was, maladjusted – like so many former military men – on the streets, on the gear, and unemployable.

His paranoia verged on lunacy at times. That was why he’d been asked to leave the hostel. He’d woken all the other… what? Guests? Inmates? Hard to know what to call the poor creatures holed up in there, each with their own sodden, miserable, broken lives and convoluted stories. Anyway, he’d been shouting that Rick - the pseudo-Rastafarian with whom he’d shared a cell – was trying to climb in the window. Poor Rick. He was madder than Steve. He’d eventually hung himself using his own sheet.

The Cardiff City Centre Team moved on. They’d be back the next day. Maybe Steve, if it was him, would pop his head out then, turtle-like. He’d take a sarnie and a coffee, and chat, amiably. They’d catch up on some news of the street, who was sleeping where, who’d been in a barny on Queen street, who was back on (or maybe even off, if they were lucky) the sauce. Or maybe he’d be ranting, raving, snarling that they were all out to get him. Who knew – it could, and had, gone either way so many times before. But for now, they’d leave him to it, tucked up in his polyester shell, physical and psychological. If he felt safe there, so be it.