An Ugly Way To Go - and other Quintessentially Quirky Tales Read online

An Ugly Way to Go

  and other Quintessentially Quirky Tales

  Iain Pattison

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by DoubleQ Books

  www.doubleqbooks.com

  Guest story The Missing Signs and Wonders © 2015 by Chloe Banks

  All other stories © 2015 by Iain Pattison

  Cover illustration by Jean Hill

  Formatting and design by Peter Jones

  Editing by Maureen Vincent-Northam

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. This is a work of the imagination. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, businesses, locales or events is entirely coincidental.

  Designed and produced in Great Britain by DoubleQ Books

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  About Our Guest Story Author

  An Ugly Way to Go

  Sale of the Centuries

  Medium Rare

  Once Upon a Crime

  Extended Run

  Crowning Glory

  Interview with the Vampire

  Hampered

  Artful Dodger

  A Rum Tale

  Future Tense

  Christopher Robin Went Down - With Malice!

  Open Sesame

  The Babel Fable

  Missing Signs and Wonders

  Spreading the word

  Don't miss the other fun titles in the series

  About the Author

  Internationally-acclaimed humorist Iain Pattison has been entertaining readers on both sides of the Atlantic for more than 15 years with a succession of short stories that have won prize after prize, appeared in magazines and anthologies, and been broadcast on the UK’s most prestigious speech radio station, BBC Radio 4.

  As well as penning quirky tales, he is a creative writing tutor, competition judge and after dinner speaker.

  Originally from Glasgow but now living in Birmingham, Iain hates shortbread and porridge, can’t abide whisky and has never worn a kilt – not even for a bet. All of which may explain why they didn’t give him a vote on Scottish independence.

  To find out more about Iain follow him on Twitter @AuthorIain or visit iainpattison.com

  About Our Guest Story Author

  Chloe Banks lives with her husband in a quiet corner of Devon, where she is employed as Mum to one tiny boy and Story-teller to anyone who’ll listen.

  She is a prize-winning short story writer and her debut novel The Art of Letting Go was published by Thistle Publishing in 2014. When not trying to get toddlers or words to behave she can be found tramping the moors or eating pudding.

  Chloe can be contacted via her website – chloebanks.co.uk – or tracked down on Twitter @ChloeTellsTales.

  An Ugly Way to Go

  Barry squinted cross-eyed in the searing midday sun, grinning both at the eight rifles levelled straight at him and at the large crowd of peasants who’d turned up to watch his impending demise.

  He knew smiling wasn’t the normal reaction of victims facing a firing squad, but he had the advantage over most condemned men – he actually wanted to be there.

  True, he’d have preferred not having to die if there’d been any other way to achieve his desired goal, but it was a small price to pay. You didn’t become a legendary revolutionary by playing safe and keeping out of harm’s way, he told himself. Troubadours didn’t sing rousing and tearful ballads about your deeds if you lived to cash in your annuity and tend your rose garden.

  And while he’d have preferred meeting his end anywhere else but this fly-blown, God-forsaken, barren, dust hole of a town, he knew you had to go where the work was. And there currently wasn’t much call for dashing iconic rebel leaders to battle the jackbooted forces of evil in Milton Keynes. Well, not in the part where he hailed from…

  No, this was what he wanted – a death that would make him famous, revered, loved; a glorious heroic end that would make men envy his devil-may-care bravery and women swoon at his memory and curse the Gods that they hadn’t thrown themselves at his feet and begged to be swept away to his bed.

  This was the end that would finally make people see him for what he was – not how he looked.

  Okay, he admitted to himself – as a line of sweat trickled from his forehead down the side of his squat, misshapen nose – ending his days in a gunfight would have been more courageous; and better for the legend of Barry the brazen bandito. But bullets were bullets after all, he reasoned, and they’d kill him just as certainly whether it was here tied up in the town square or free in the cactus covered foothills in an ill-fated ambush on the Federales’ payroll convoy.

  At least this way the common people – his beloved people – would see him fall for their cause.

  “You wish a last cigarette, Senor?” the mustachioed Captain asked him, interrupting his reverie.

  “I don’t smoke,” Barry replied, adding with a wonky wink: “Besides, they can kill you and I wouldn’t want to take the risk.”

  If the officer got the joke, he gave no sign of being amused. But he did nod slightly, acknowledging the bravado of a fearless hombre who laughed at death.

  “Well, maybe some other request… a last wish.”

  That was a tricky one. Barry frowned, pondering, huge bushy eyebrows meshing into one hairy caterpillar. A fabulous meal would be nice, maybe a glass of a decent chardonnay and an after dinner mint. But considering the rancid beef he’d been served up and the beer that tasted as though it had already been through one pistolero’s body, he knew it was unlikely he’d find anything in this depressing dump that was remotely palatable.

  “I tell you what,” he said, after a few moments deliberation. “It would be good for my image if my last request was a long, lingering, sexy embrace from the prettiest girl in the village.”

  At this the Captain did a double take. “You want a girl to kiss you?” he said, obviously surprised.

  Barry sighed. He’d half expected this comeback. It was the same reaction he got whenever he suggested that he’d like to enjoy the company of a gorgeous woman.

  “Okay, I know I’m not the most attractive man in the world,” he began defensively. “In fact, I know I’m downright ugly…”

  “Repulsive is the word I would have used, Senor.”

  “But that’s why I got into this whole South American freedom fighter lark. It didn’t matter that Che Guevara had a face like the back end of a bus or that Fidel Castro was no oil painting. The chicks digged them. Rough-hewn liberators with beards and guns give off this hunky, sexy vibe – they’re babe magnets. That’s what I wanted a slice of.”

  “And did it work?” the officer enquired.

  “Not really,” Barry admitted regretfully, with a crooked, buck-teethed grimace. “But I thought the poetic firing squad death would at least make some women fancy me after I was gone.”

  A look of pity touched the Captain’s stern countenance. “That is sad, so sad, my friend. I promise I will do my best to get the prettiest girl in the village to kiss you. You deserve at least one moment of happiness.”

  Barry nodded his thanks to the man. For a vile, swaggering, mad-dog lackey of a corrupt, oppressive, fascist regime hell-bent on trampling the long-suffering peasant population to dust, he seemed quite a decent sort.

  So this was it. Only moments to go. Only a few seconds before he would meet his maker. Goodbye hideous Barry – hello the swa
shbuckling fable of fanciable El Barry.

  He watched the Captain approach a ravishing beauty who was dressed in a flowing gypsy gown – an almond-eyed girl with wild raven-black locks, red full lips, and bare sensuous shoulders.

  In a silent mime the Captain spoke to the smouldering senorita and jerked his head towards the post where Barry was tied. The girl looked stunned and threw up both hands.

  Enticingly, the officer produced a roll of banknotes and began peeling them off. With each note, the girl hesitated, but it was no good. Even being offered the equivalent of a year’s wages wouldn’t sway her.

  Barry cursed his repellent Quasimodo features as the Captain turned and shrugged helplessly. Well, at least the chap tried.

  “I have let you down,” the army man said on his return, voice heavy. “I was convinced… even with the way you look… that I could persuade her. But I failed. I am sorry.”

  Don’t worry about it, Barry told him. It was a stupid request anyway. “Let’s just get on with it, shall we?”

  Nodding, the officer signalled for the drum roll to begin and held up the customary rough canvas bag.

  “But I don’t want a hood,” Barry exclaimed. “I want to see the faces of my executioners.”

  “Yes, Senor – but they don’t want to have to see yours. They’re having lunch just after, and the boys are already complaining of feeling a bit nauseous. It would be a great favour if you would just…”

  Dejected, Barry agreed. It was the final insult, the last of many. What a ridiculous way to go, what a stupid idea the desperate Che Guevara thing had been, he suddenly understood. Even the reward offered for his capture hadn’t been handsome!

  As the Captain put the hood over his head, Barry heard a whisper. “I have one question, my friend. Something that has been troubling me. Whatever made you think that becoming a radical rebel would make you attractive?”

  “It was the last girl who turned me down,” Barry replied as the firing squad’s guns cocked. “She gave me the idea…”

  The drum roll ended abruptly and the square rang out with eight deadly whip-crack bangs.

  “She told me I had a face like a guerilla,” he gasped as he slumped.

  Sale of the Centuries

  Blinking in disbelief, I read the incident report. It didn’t make any sense. Why would anyone want to steal three hundred 40kg sacks of out-of-date, sub-standard, condemned cement powder?

  And more to the point, how the Dickens did they smuggle it off the base? They’d have needed two lorries and a forklift truck. And that’s the kind of thing the MoD guards at the main gates would have noticed – even on an off day.

  I rubbed my eyes. Unfortunately, as chief of security at The Institute, the sticky conundrum had landed in my in-tray. And I hadn’t a clue what to do. No-one was going to miss the stuff, but the fact that someone could just wander into one of the country’s most top secret and militarily sensitive research establishments didn’t say much for security, or the longevity of my job.

  I could just hear my boss’s stinging words: “Ah, I see we’re now operating an open door policy, Jack. God knows who is going to turn up next. Today a builder on the make, tomorrow a fanatical terrorist. Perhaps we should just open up the place to tourists.”

  Ouch! I had to solve the puzzle – and fast.

  Gloomily I reread the six-paragraph document. It had to be an inside job… but who?

  The door opening broke my train of thought. That and the lights suddenly going out.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” a voice growled from the darkness, “I’ve stubbed my bloody toe. I can’t see a damn thing!”

  Reaching into my top drawer, I took out the torch and shone it over at Frank Peters. My deputy was hopping on one foot, rubbing the other through his shoe.

  “That’s the third time this week,” he complained. “They keep knocking the power off. It’s buggering up my Sky Plus box. Can’t you do something about it?”

  “What?” I asked deadpan. “Fixing your Sky Plus box?”

  He made a sour face. “You know what I mean. Stopping the geeks in Y lab causing chaos every time they play with their science projects. I swear it’s worse when they watch Star Trek. I bet they’re trying to invent warp drive.”

  I told him I couldn’t intervene. I had no authority over the scientists based at The Institute and that went double for the pizza-munching, t-shirt and bearded skateboarding weirdoes who worked on the highly classified Dark Matter Project.

  No-one had a clue what they were working on. Maybe it WAS warp drive! All we knew was that they were running up equipment bills big enough to fund an entire shoe collection for a dictator’s mistress. Usually people gave the long-haired, unwashed nerds a wide berth, which was probably a good idea as the geeks were responsible for at least half of the explosions that kept the builders permanently mixing concrete to repair the base.

  “I’ll have a quiet word,” I promised. “I don’t know what the problem is. They have their own nuclear generator. They shouldn’t be tapping into the main base supply.”

  The lights flickered back on.

  “That’s better,” I sighed, putting the torch back for the next time. “Now, Frank, what did you want to see me about?”

  My number two frowned. That was bad. When Frank’s brow creased it always meant trouble.

  “It’s Doc Mitchells,” he said, referring to the facility’s longest serving egghead. “I’m worried about him. He’s acting screwy.”

  That was hardly news. “He’s always acting wacky,” I pointed out. “He’s the original mad professor.”

  “Yes,” Frank replied. “But this time I think he’s really flipped.”

  I opened my arms in an expansive ‘go on, amaze me’ shrug.

  “He’s blabbering on about us all being in deadly danger from quantum paradoxes and alternative timelines and inverse space feedback loops…”

  I gazed back, unimpressed.

  “…and he keeps raving about some missing cement.”

  Ah! Now I was impressed.