Ugly Puggly 73

They say when your near death your life rushes up to meet you. I’d a memory of being tamped down like a new bit of turf on top of another body. He let me go and I was struggling and wheezing for breathe. ‘Yer evil, daeing that tae yer best mate.’I pushed his hand away, he was no longer trying to strangle me, but console me.

‘Sorry,’ he cried.

We both heard it, the click of the front door, and the squeal on the third step, tiptoeing feet knocking against the boards. My eyes tore around the room from the religious picture on the wall to the dusty offerings of old shoes under the bed, but none of them would do much damage when used as a weapon. We were silent as wraiths, consoling each other with our presence before the armed mob of men took us away to one of their torture houses.

‘Hide,’ whispered Ugly Puggly out of the side of his mouth.

It was a stupid idea. A children’s game of peek-a-boo. But the only one on offer. I crawled under the dusty bed, pulling in my legs and peeking out through the bed fringe of the old blankets. I heard them galloping up the stairs mob-handed, no longer worrying about catching us unaware.

Ugly Puggly roared, an inhuman sound, as he went down to meet them. The stramash echoed off the walls and beyond that. I hoped neighbours hearing it would phone for the police. I put my hands over my ears when I heard him screaming and crying. Using my elbows I partially crawled out, but slithered backwards just as quickly. I waited until the dust settled and the house went cold, before I slid out, and cautiously lifted my head.

Ducking down, at the window, I glanced outside. No new cars in the car park, the tree creaked in the wind and everything had changed but seemed back to normal. Frozen, I let the sense of the house wash through me, until I was sure there were no hidden surprises. Then I went down the stairs. A hole had been knocked through the plasterboard. I tiptoed down and checked the front door. It was locked. I pulled on it again, to check.

Panic set in and I shook and wanted to cry. My mind was playing funny buggers. Ugly Puggly was probably dead or worse. He’d acted as a decoy and saved me. But one good think I thought, at least the wedding was off. A man could legally marry another man, but not even the playboy would marry a corpse.

The thought weighed on me. I’d need to tell him and Molly what had happened. But I couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face them, not without a drink. The idea licked away at me like a mongrel dog panting beneath his feet for its master to notice it, when he’s come home. I checked my pockets for cash. But I’d hurried out without any.

I was already looking at the house differently, not as a crime scene, but a place where there might be a bottle or two hidden, or something I could maybe sell. I went downstairs to the kitchen and rattled about looking for the cheap plonk that Ugly Puggly sometimes used for cooking. Glancing out the window I noticed a shaven skull bobbing along outside the fence like a balloon. They were coming back for me. Maybe Ugly Puggly had grassed me. All those thoughts rushed through my head.

I turned the key in the lock slowly. Praying it wouldn’t click and alert them. I left just enough of a gap to slither out and pushed the door shut behind me. I’d little memory of putting the key in my pocket. I crouched down and when I got to the fence next door climbed over it and kept low. Climbing over McGrory’s fence I knew I’d stood on dog shit, but there was no time to knock my heel against the fence. His dog started barking from inside the house. I made a run for it, through the back gate and onto the lanes.

I’d gotten to the canal bridge before I knew nobody was chasing me.  I was wheezing and knew that if they didn’t get me, the fags would eventually. A bright lycra-clad cyclist in shorts on the other side of the canal breezed along with spotlights lighting up the path and showing scatterings of rain drifting down in monochrome.

When I got to Molly’s house I was shaking with the cold. Pressing on the buzzer, I got mad when she didn’t answer immediately.

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘Conan the fuckin Barbarian.’

‘Right!’

The buzzer made that jarring noise and I pulled the door open. Climbing the stairs I was trying to think of something to say about Ugly Puggly. Some kind of eulogy that summed him up, but gave hope that he wasn’t dead, or worse, brain damaged enough to marry the playboy.

I stopped on the landing. Conjured up visions of how valiantly he’d defended me, defended us. How many books he’d read. And I figured they were still there in dusty piles and I could read them too, but I knew I never would. He saw thorough me, but he forgave me for that and flung Hegel at me, and told me to write it down, like God did with Moses and the Ten Commandments. Don’t forget it, he said and it seemed to me now he was saying don’t forget me:

The tragedy, his tragedy, wasn’t between right and wrong, but right and right.

Molly pulled open the door and stuck her head out. She’d put in her curlers. Her face was all hard angles as she frowned. ‘Whit’s the matter wae you?’ and her voice was hard too. But she floated down the stairs in her housecoat with daft flowers on it and put her arms around me, cuddling into my back. ‘Whit you greetin for?’

I couldn’t answer and she was greeting to, holding me closer, her nails ripping into my arms. She pushed my forehead into her breasts.

I glanced up and Dave was beside us, cuddling into Molly’s back and huddling in, ‘There, there,’ and crying too.