We pushed for a second time.
And The Pain growled again. But louder now. Louder, longer and wilder.
It made Mum and me twist our heads towards the noise. And we saw The Pain’s face all red and screwed up with the strain and the big vein on his neck bulging like a hose about to burst. He was doing exactly what he’d asked us to do. He was giving it everything he had. Maybe more. Maybe too much.
When Mum saw him, she squeezed in closer and harder against the stump and let out her own cry. Her face became a smaller version of his. It was like she was being tortured. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to make them both stop before someone got hurt. But they didn’t look like stopping. Not until the stump came out or they both exploded.
And without realising it, I found myself pushing more and more until I was trying harder to move that stump than anything I’d ever tried to do in my life. Harder than I ever thought I could. I was making a noise too – a squeal that I couldn’t stop. And then I heard The Pain’s voice snarling through his gritted teeth.
‘This-is-it-guys. We-can-do-this. One-last-push. GO! AAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH!’
And even though my arms and chest were already burning, I found something else. Something deep down inside me. Something more powerful than the hurt I was already feeling. Something I didn’t think I had. Some last desperate ounce of effort. And I found it, because now for some ridiculous reason I couldn’t explain, I actually wanted the stump to move. I wanted us to do it. I really did. And I knew that Mum had found the same thing deep inside her, because her cry had become ear-piercingly shrill.
Then, right at the death, just when it seemed like nothing was going to happen and the stump would have to defeat us, we all combined for one final, desperate, muscle-tearing TEAM US HEAVE and …
… nothing happened. Except of course that the stump defeated us.
Totally.
Completely.
Utterly.
Absolutely.
Finally.
And for all time.
The Pain collapsed backwards on to the ground, his chest heaving. His face was flushed and dripping with sweat. His shirt was torn on the shoulder and his neck scratched and red. Mum rolled back beside him. She was massaging her arms and groaning. Her hair was plastered to her forehead. She had pale blotches on her cheeks and there were tiny specks of burst blood vessels under one of her eyes.
I was bracing myself against the stump. It was the only thing holding me up. My head was swimming and my heart was throwing a violent tantrum inside my chest. I looked at my hands. They were blotchy white and cramped up and shaking.
I glared at The Pain. Anger and frustration were boiling up inside me. I couldn’t believe that I’d let myself be sucked into being part of his dumb Team Us metaphor. I knew it wouldn’t work. I wanted him to apologise. NOW! I wanted to hear him say sorry. I wanted to hear him admit how STUPENDOUSLY AND EPICALLY WRONG he’d been.
I waited, seething and sweating and burning up inside, while the cause of my rage sucked in and blew out huge gulps of air. Finally when the rise and fall of his chest had slowed to something below heart-attack levels, he lay staring up at the sky. Come on, Pain! Where’s my apology? Admit you were wrong. Let me hear it!
At last he cleared his throat and swallowed. Then he rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. He looked down at Mum still recovering beside him and moved a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead before he spoke.
‘I think I’ve figured it out,’ he said. ‘I think I know why we couldn’t move that thing.’
YES, SO DO I! Because your stupid ‘awesome family’ metaphor was complete crap!
Mum was hardly capable of speaking but she managed to puff out two words, ‘Why … not?’
‘Because that stump is the same as me,’ The Pain told her, ‘It’s not going anywhere. It likes being around this family too much.’
What?
WHAT?
WHAT!
NO! NO WAY!
Did you hear that? Did you see what he did there? He CHANGED THE METAPHOR. He was completely and utterly WRONG, so he just CHANGED THE METAPHOR to save himself! You can’t do that! You’re not allowed to swap metaphorical horses in mid-stream just because the wheels start falling off! The Sister-minator would permanently terminate him for that!
I checked Mum’s reaction. She was gazing up at The Pain like he’d just delivered the Sermon on the Mount or the I Have a Dream speech. Now she was reaching up and touching his cheek. There was a sickly smile plastered all over her face. My mother was grinning with dopey, box-ticking eyes at a METAPHOR ABUSER!
I couldn’t take it any more. I had to get out of there. I pushed myself away from the stump and tried to leave. But my shoe got caught against the big root that bulged out from the base and I tripped and fell forward, landing like a drunk giraffe on my knees. At the last second I threw my hands out and only just managed to avoid a full face plant.
‘Oooooh, Maggie. Be careful, sweetie! Are you okay?’
I didn’t answer my mother. I just picked myself up as quickly as I could and continued my exit. But I also had something to say before I left. I doubt that it qualified as either pleasant or reasonable. I threw it back over my shoulder as I went.
‘I hate that stupid stump! I wish we could get rid of it. It doesn’t belong here.’
(Hint: I might not have been talking about just the stump there.)
22
The porking porkers
Even though I was still angry with The Pain about the whole stump thing, I was determined not to let it or him spoil my date with Jason the next day. After all, Jason Price was the antidote to The Pain, right?
This was the plan. Because Jason didn’t live too far away, he was going to walk to my house and then we were going to catch a bus together into town where the movie was showing. All good except for one thing. On Saturday night I found out the bad news that Mum and The Pain were going to be there when he arrived! They were supposed to be going on a drive somewhere, but Mum said they’d changed their minds and they wanted to do some more work in the backyard. Sure! More likely they wanted to check up on me and Jason.
As soon as I heard about their revised plan, I went straight into damage-control mode and gave Mum five strict and clear instructions about the day.
Mum’s Five Strict and Clear Instructions
1. Jason was due at twelve-thirty, so no one was allowed to answer the door after midday except for ME.
2. If she happened to be around when Jason turned up, Mum was permitted to say a brief hello and goodbye but couldn’t ask Jason any embarrassing questions – i.e. NO QUESTIONS AT ALL!
3. Under no circumstances was The Pain to have any contact (physical, verbal or visual) with Jason.
4. See Instruction 3.
5. See Instruction 4.
At around quarter past twelve I was in my room waiting for Jason. He was due any minute. I was feeling more than a little tense. Goal 2 depended on this going well.
To distract myself, I started re-checking a few minor things like my hair (I can still see you there, Taarsheeba!), my face, my Mum-supervised and mostly applied minimal make-up, my teeth, my skin, my freckles, my pores, my smile, my ears, my eyes, my eyelashes, my eyebrows, my lips, my pout, my tongue, my facial expressions, my breath, my profile (left and right), my butt, my shoes, my ankles, my legs, my butt, my subtle (squint and you’ll spot it) cleavage, my butt, my clothes, my butt and my fing –
Eeeeeeeek! One of my fingernails had smudged.
PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN – IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIC!
I grabbed the bottle of polish from the dressing table and sat down on the edge of my bed to apply a quick touch-up. I unscrewed the top, balanced the opened bottle carefully on the thigh of my crossed leg and began dabbing on some extra colour.
Just as the phone in the kitchen rang.
I jumped. The polish bottle wobbled and tipped … but I caught it just in time.
PHEW!
Disast
er avoided. I’d nearly spilt crimson nail polish on my white jeans. I thought that ringing was the front door bell. I sat back down on the bed and breathed in slowly to calm myself down.
Just as the front door bell rang.
I jumped. The nail polish bottle slipped from my hand. It bounced on my thigh and tumbled end over end down my leg. A line of sticky crimson blobs was dotted across my best jeans!
I leapt up, ripped a ‘super ultra-absorbent’ tissue from its box and with one easy wipe – smudged the crimson blobs to five times their original size! Why don’t things ever work like they do on television? I stared at the massive smear. Is this how Lady Macbeth felt when she screamed, ‘Out, damned spot!’? I clamped my hand over my mouth. Not sure whether that was to stop me swearing or to stop my intestines from sliding out. Probably both. In the meantime, I was hoping that if I stared at the horror on my leg long enough, the stain would magically vanish.
Hey, what do you know? It didn’t.
I performed a very convincing mime of someone going totally mental and screaming silent obscenities at the ceiling. Once that was done, I sprang into action. I kicked off my shoes, yanked off my jeans and charged to the wardrobe for a quick change.
Of course that quick change would have been a lot quicker if I hadn’t stepped on one of my kicked-off shoes, rolled my ankle, lost my balance, got my other foot tangled in my half-yanked off jeans and crumpled as gracefully as a heavily tranquillised wildebeest to the floor.
Just as the front door bell blared out for a second time.
Cue a repeat performance of my psycho mime. With the addition of a few carefully chosen words. Or more accurately, one carefully chosen word repeated three times.
‘Shit! Shit! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!’
I kicked free of my jeans, scrambled to my bedroom door, opened it and poked my head into the lounge room. I half-screamed, half-whispered, for Mum.
‘Mum? Mum? Are you there? Mum? Can you get that for me? Muuuuuuuuum!’
I heard movement from the kitchen.
YES! THANK YOU!
Then The Pain stepped into the lounge room.
NO! CURSE YOU!
‘I need Mum. Where’s Mum? Where is she? I need her. Now!’
The Pain pointed back over his shoulder.
‘Working in the backyard. I just came in to get us some cold water. What’s up? Can I help?’
The door bell rang for a third time. The Pain pointed towards it.
‘Want me to get that?’
I was trapped. It was The Pain or nothing. I had to take a chance on him. I had to trust him. I had no other option.
‘Can you … please? It’s Jason. You know, the guy I’m going to the pictures with? Can you just tell him I’ll be out in a sec? There’s something important I need to do first.’
The Pain sucked on his teeth and nodded.
‘Is it put your pants on?’
‘Huh?’ I looked down. CRAP! I jumped behind the door. ‘Look, can you just ask him to wait outside? I won’t be long. He can stay there. You know. Outside. He’ll be fine. You don’t have to ask him in or wait around or talk to him or anything.’
In other words, DON’T BE A PAIN!
‘Gotcha, chief. It’s all under control. Leave it with me.’
But then, instead of just going to the door like a normal person, The Pain more than lived up to his name. He pretended to put his hand inside his imaginary jacket, pull out an imaginary revolver and jam an imaginary cartridge of bullets into it. Then he bounded in three big steps to the door, pressed his back against it and held up his imaginary handgun beside his face. (Although technically, it was in fact an actual ‘hand’ gun because it was made out of his actual hand.)
I was panicking now and my heart had dropped to somewhere near my bowels, but just as he was reaching for the knob, The Pain stopped, winked, and mouthed some words at me. The words were ‘Just kidding’. Then he went back to being ‘normal’ (or as normal as he can be, given he’s a lunatic). That annoying smile of his was spread all over his face.
I laser-beamed him with my eyes and slammed my door shut.
What I needed now was a warp-speed jeans change to save Jason from what could be a fatal exposure to The Pain! On the other hand, maybe everything would be fine. After all, Jason Price was the antidote to The Pain, wasn’t he? So maybe he would be able to keep The Pain under control. I wanted that to be true much more than I actually believed it.
As I fumbled madly with my new clothes, muffled voices floated in from outside my room. I was trying to dress as quickly as I could, but my fingers were fighting amongst themselves and the questions flooding my brain were slowing me down even further. What were they saying to each other? Just how painful was The Pain being? What if he started singing? OMG! Are there any songs that have ‘Jason’ somewhere in the lyrics?
Then I noticed one of the voices outside starting to get louder.
It was definitely Jason’s. I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying but I heard the word ‘serious’ used like a question. Then I heard a short laugh. It wasn’t a happy laugh. I wanted to hear more, but the harder I listened, the slower I dressed. Then other muffled words came sifting through. A deeper voice. It was The Pain this time. It was followed by Jason’s voice, loud and perfectly clear.
‘NO WAY! WHY SHOULD I?’
This was bad. This was very bad! I’d heard Jason use that tone of voice before. At school. To teachers. What the hell was going on out there?
I rushed to finish getting changed, dragged a brush through my hair and checked myself in the mirror. What a shame. If only I’d had the benefit of a skilful and dedicated team of photoshoppers working diligently throughout the night, I could have looked jaw-droppingly passable. I was on my way out to rescue Jason when his voice cut through again, but with the volume cranked up even further. I only caught the very end of what he said. And the very end of what he said sounded like this.
‘– KIN’ JOKE!’
The next thing was the noise of a door being closed.
Huh?
I rushed out into the lounge. Jason was nowhere to be seen. Just The Pain. He was standing in front of the closed door. With his forehead leaning against it. He twisted round and looked at me. There was no sneaky smile on his face.
‘Maggie … just let me …’
But there was no time to hear what he had to say. I had to find Jason. I ran over to the front window and looked out. He was marching out our gate. He wasn’t happy. I could tell this by the way he punched our letterbox with the back of his fist and the way he tore the head off one of Mum’s favourite roses and chucked the petals in the face of our neighbour’s yappy dog.
‘What did you do?’ I shouted at The Pain.
I pushed him aside and charged out the front door.
By the time I got to the footpath Jason was already a few houses further down the street. The neighbourhood trees and shrubs were taking the same kind of pounding as Mum’s roses. I called out for him to stop. He just shot a glance over his shoulder, put his head down, folded his arms and kept walking – thankfully a little slower.
I set off after him. By the time I finally caught up, I had learned two things. One was that I was even more unfit than I thought I was, and the other was that the shoes I was wearing weren’t ideal for sprinting. Luckily, when I put my hand on Jason’s shoulder, he stopped and I was eventually able to wheeze out some questions.
‘W-What happened? W-What’s wr-wr-wrong?’
Jason gave a sharp nod back in the direction of my house.
‘Wrong? Your psycho father, that’s what’s wrong!’
Now I was confused. What’s he talking about? I don’t have a psycho father. I have a bastard father. Get it right! Then I realised.
‘Oh that’s not my father. God no. That’s a psycho friend of my mum’s. But what happened? What did he do?’
‘Just reckoned it’d be a good idea if I went home and got changed. Wanker!?
??
‘What? Why … would he …’
But I already knew the answer to the question I’d been going to ask. I’d just seen it. I couldn’t very well miss it. It was right there in front of me. Right there on Jason’s chest. Right there on the shirt he was wearing. It was a red teeshirt with black cartoon figures drawn on it. The cartoon figures were pigs. (I could mention the pigs were naked, but then, pigs mostly are.) The pigs were in pairs. There were sixteen pairs of them. Four rows of four to be exact. Thirty-two individual pigs in total. And they were all ‘doing it’ (or ‘doing the dirty’ as Jazzmin Mellors was fond of saying). Thirty-two pigs ‘doing the dirty’ in sixteen different ‘doing the dirty’ positions. And below the porking porkers was a question. And the question was this: How do you like YOUR bacon?
I was contemplating the difficulties and challenges of positions nine and thirteen when Jason started replying to my half-asked question.
‘Because of this,’ he said, pulling at his shirt. ‘Reckons it’s not appropriate or something. What bullshit! Told me to get rid of it. I told him to get stuffed.’
I was getting the feeling that The Pain and Jason hadn’t really hit it off.
‘Said to go get another shirt. Reckoned I could wear his if I wanted to. As if! No way I’m gunna wear some old dude shirt. Said to find something else to put on or forget about going anywhere with you. So I said forget it then. No prick is going to tell me what to wear!’
So that was it? Our date was off? Pretty depressing to think that when it came to the crunch, I’d come runner-up to some crappy teeshirt. I put that thought aside and did my best to rescue the situation. But Jason was still pretty wound up. His lip was curled and he kept pacing about and kicking at the ground.
‘Look, I know you’re upset,’ I told him, ‘but why don’t you just try to calm down and maybe –’
But he wasn’t listening to me at all now. He was staring past me and back down our street. I turned round and saw why. The Pain was standing at our front gate.
‘WANKER!’ Jason shouted and gave him the finger. Then before I could stop him he was back off down the road again, slaughtering any innocent bystander vegetation that was stupid enough to get within his reach. I called out, but this time he didn’t even slow down. I thought about chasing after him again but decided not to. It was a decision that had nothing to do with my questionable fitness levels or my unsuitable footwear.