Ugly Puggly 83

I holed up in Ugly Puggly’s house with a litre of vodka and some cans. The electricity was still gubbed. Rain washed up against the windows like a ship’s cabin with a hard sea below it. Dampness and heaviness in the air matched my mood. I knocked a pile of his books and the pads he scrawled notes in onto the shiny and matted carpet, and plonked down on his chair with my heavy coat wrapped around me. I’d lit a candle and dripped wax onto the table. The flickering flame and warm colours of a rust-coloured sunflower were guttering out. Sitting damp and grey in the darkness suited me.

I heard a banging carried by the wind. Slapped my hand against my chest as I coughed and roused myself from a drunken sleep. Wondering where I was. Then remembering, reached for the vodka bottle. My hands shook. I poured a measure and clasped the rim of the mug to my lips as I sipped at it. I reached blindly for a can to wash it down, but the first one I picked up was empty. Squinting the length of the table, I looked for a can that might still have something in it among the dim-shaped debris. My heel nudged against a plastic bag. A sly side-shuffle kick and felt something solid and a slight metallic clink. Things were picking up.

The fluttering of the letterbox and a voice shouting, ‘I know yer in there.’  

‘Fuck,’ I sighed. Recognising the voice, I ducked and hunched down into the chair. Hoping he’d go away. Splayed my fingers over my mouth, but I coughed and it sounded like a small dog barking with a muzzle gagging it.

Wee Jim was persistent. He hammered on the door and shouted through the letterbox. ‘Fuck-ups is who we ur. They don’t make yeh a failure. They jist make yeh humble and mair like yersel. Don’t let a slip become yer slide.’

‘Fuck off,’ I turned my head and shouted and felt better for it. Took a swig of vodka.

‘Daeing the same old shit.’ It was as if he could see through doors and walls. ‘Shame keeps us stuck. Guilt paralyses us. You’ll still be a cunt. But nae need to be a sad cunt. Open the door and we can talk?’

I picked up my mug and took another drink. Wandered over to the window and looked out.

Wee Jim had a tartan bunnet pulled low over his head. Damp patches made darker the rounded shoulders of his Crombie coat as he peered through the letter box. He noticed me in the way people do when they’re not looking. Waved a hand as if we were strangers. I held my mug up in salute.   

Wee Jim smiled. He fed on AA meetings and God like a chain-smoker on fag smoke till it was coming out of his ears and mouth. ‘Let go and let God. Be bigger than yersel. Bigger than the drink. God leads, but you gotta follow. But he won’t meet you halfway. He’ll meet you anyway. But you gottae take the first step.’

I opened the window to put him straight. ‘Nah, I cannae. Yeh don’t understand.’ But it stuck in my craw and my body was shaking.

His voice was  pleading with an unfamiliar softness. ‘I dae undertand, or I wouldnae be here.’ He mimicked putting a hand up to his ear, and on an upbeat note. ‘I tried phonin yeh.’

‘Nae phone,’ I muttered and turned my head away. ‘I left it at Molly’s.’    

‘I don’t mind yeh greeting,’ he said. ‘That’s the river of life flowing through yer body. Stirrin hings up. The devil likes a stagnant pool. Picks the scabs on an old toxic relationship. Pick up some new insecurity about yer body or yer mind. Tell yeh nobody gees a shit.  Yer mind becomes sick all over again. Yer disease sets up the mind…without even a thought of a drink yer life has nay meanin, because it’s got nae meanin anyway. So why gie a fuck?’

I shrugged and tiptoed away from the window and fell into the chair, made an empty can on the table jump. Took a swig of vodka and rolled it around in my mouth before swallowing it with a gulp. But it didn’t block out the sound of wee Jim’s voice droning on through the door.

‘Yer no in there yersel. The devils in wae yeh.’

I must have fell asleep again, my body jumped and I heard a knocking sound. A yellow light was coming from the kitchen. Groaning, I whimpered as the light came nearer and I’d images of fire and brimstone. ‘I’m sorry,’ I cried, holding my hands up to protect myself.

‘Sorry about whit?’ Dave shone the torchlight into my face and down over my body as if checking to see if I’d peed myself.

‘I thought it was the devil.’ I blurted it out before I could take it back.

He sniggered and with a rustle of paper sat on the edge of the couch. ‘It might well be. Would it make any fuckin difference?’ He pointed the torch up his nostrils. The face of a Madonna. An illumination of pink flesh and licked his orchid coloured lips.

I tried to get up from the chair, to scream, but I couldn’t move as he came closer and closer. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Early-morning light and a stillness that made me want to cry. I’d wet myself and the pee had soaked into Ugly Puggly’s seat. A desecration of the indentation his bum had made. My joints were stiff as I roused myself got up to wash upstairs in cold water and change my clothes. Cowards were always brave in the morning.

Glassy eyed. I gargled with toothpaste and spat blood into the sink. A bony hand shook as it dropped the toothbrush. Ribs poking through scaly skin. A bandage unravelling on my swollen ankle, but I couldn’t remember where it had come from, or who had put it there. I was getting ready to leave, but I didn’t know where I was going or how I’d get there. I was unravelling too. I finally cried for Ugly Puggly, because if he was here, he’d have been able to tell me what to do and where to go.  

I avoided glancing at myself in the mottled mirror.