Don’t Tell Me Your Last Words
A deathbed confession
‘I’ll never look into your eyes again were his last words to me,’ my sister Edith tells me after sipping her red wine and immediately wiping her teeth. ‘He looked so pained, so bereft. Before it, he told me that it was so short. Hundred years old, and he still wanted more.’
God knows why – all he did was complain about living for the last five decades and live for dire practical jokes.
I gaze around the empty pub and wonder why more people don’t get drunk at 1 pm. It always helps me.
‘You sure you went to see our uncle?’
Who was this eloquent, wizened imposter she spoke of who didn’t swear every second word?
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Why, what did he say to you?’
I look around the pub again, but I don’t know why. It’s still empty, and the same applies to the contents of the only barman’s head, which would need a brain transplant to upgrade to a dunce. How he messed up a pint and a glass of house red twice was astounding. There’s no contest if the Guinness World Book of Records is looking for the world's worst barperson.
I needn’t worry about anyone listening or glancing in my direction. Said barman is busy taking a selfie after fixing the solitary curl that poops down his forehead and stroking his infuriatingly patchy Van dyke beard that’s more of a coffee stain on humanity. Edith looks around where I’m looking and wonders what I’m looking at. We are so worried about people hearing our business even when we usually have fuck all to say to each other anyway.
‘Well, what did he say to you?’ she whispers like we’re in MI5.
I consider coming right out with the main, disturbing headlines from his garbled, discordant parting speech, but it’s too heavy for me, never mind Edith.
‘Come on, I know what he was like.’
I thought I knew what he was like, too. I look away from her.
‘Just the usual vulgarity,’ I mumble.
She edges forward in her seat.
‘Like what?’ she asks with a smile.
Wine does loosen her up a bit, though she did just wipe her teeth again after her second cautious sip.
‘I don’t think you want to hear it.’
She rolls her eyes.
‘You’re acting like I haven’t heard it all before.’
I’m pretty sure she hasn’t heard this or else she wouldn’t be so calm and unperturbed. Now, I have to divert the conversation.
‘Well, he said the usual crude shit.’
‘Like what?’
‘You know… like they used to call him the gas man because he serviced a lot of old boilers.’
She laughs a bit and catches herself.
‘That’s awful,’ she says, wiping her teeth again after another sip. ‘And I never heard anyone call him that.’
‘I had. But I thought it was because of his farting.’
That stench could always take me back to my childhood. Proust, eat your fart out.
‘What else did he say?’ she asks after cringing at the mention of farting.
‘He said he’d been lifted and laid again more time than the floorboards in John Wayne Gacy's crawlspace.’
Her face contorts, and her forehead creases.
‘Who’s John Wayne Gacy?’
She whispers again like John Wayne Gacy is eavesdropping from that rendering plant in the deepest part of Hell.
‘Never mind,’ I tell her after throwing out an image of the rotund killer clown. ‘You don’t want to know. Believe me,’ she scoffs.
‘Is that it the guy he worked with who wore that daft cowboy hat to the karaoke night?’
‘Eh? No, that was that Lee Starving, sure. Like Lee Marvin, but starving because he was always one meal away from just being emaciated. The only cunt who could drink Guinness every day and never put weight on. A biological miracle. Or a man who must’ve shat like a racehorse.’
She shakes her head and looks around, still expecting the world to be listening when no one would notice if Scotty beamed us up in super slow motion.
‘Lee Starving – he must be dead by now,’ she says.
‘He’s still going.’ Her mouth goes all O-shaped. ‘Must be pushing a hundred, and he still goes to the pub.’
‘Really? That’s crazy. And kind of inspiring, isn’t it?’
She’s grinning like a dafty, and I need to cut this down.
‘Aye, he’s a regular Olympian.’
‘There’s no need to be like that. It’s still an achievement living so long.’
‘So all the kids that die young achieve nothing?’ Her face tightens, and she looks away. I was too harsh, but his deathbed confession has rattled me, and no mistake. ‘Sorry, I’m just on edge a bit.’
They do say a problem shared is a problem halved or some shit, but I think she’d rather do work experience with a suicide bomber than hear what that mad bastard had to say to me.
‘Being on edge doesn’t give you license to be a tit,’ she tells me.
This cold beer is a kiss from God right now. I’ll take another drink and finish it. She watches me as it leaks down my chin. I burp before I burst like the fat swine in The Meaning of Life. I’m hoping she’s moving on and forgetting all of this, but I can tell she’s just going to get pissed off until I spill it in the dead of afternoon.
‘It’s not something I think you want to know, but at the end of the day, I’m not going to my deathbed laying this on someone else, so I might as well unburden myself.’
She takes two quick sips of wine and wipes her teeth again with the edge of her index finger.
‘Right… what did he say then?’
She juts forward in her seat, and I look around again.
‘He told me he was…’
I can feel sweat meandering down my forehead. I need to hit a gym and avoid deathbed confessions for the rest of my life.
‘Come on, we’re not on American Idol here.’
I sigh and fail to find the sugar-coating.
‘He said he was the Perthshire Ripper,’ I whisper.
She guffaws, waiting for me to laugh, but no pisser is getting pulled here.
‘But…’ she says, shaking her head. ‘He’s from Glasgow.’
I almost laugh and check myself.
‘It’s not the geographical bit I was focused on,’ I tell her. ‘He even told me some details – details of where one of the missing women could be found.’
‘He must’ve been joking. That’s his sense of humor. He was always darker than a, a, a…’
‘Pint of Guinness in a blackout? Aye, but this isn’t gallows humor. He gave me a detailed fuckin map, for fuck’s sake.’
I pull the map from my pocket and unfold it from my sweaty, rattled hand. Her eyes widen at the paper, then at me.
‘There’s coordinates and everything,’ she says.
I fold the map and stick it back in my pocket.
‘Put it in your wallet, at least!’ she screeches.
She always was terrified to lose the steam off her own piss. The barman still doesn’t look over. Not even a cursory glance.
‘Don’t worry, I took photos on my phone.’
It’s not every day that you’re near a dig for a missing person and about to exhume who your uncle really was in life. I hate myself for being excited as well as horrified. It takes time, enough time to put years on me. The suspense is killing me slowly. I feel like I’m decaying bit by bit.
We’re in some drab, identikit, unimaginatively inoffensive beige hotel lobby bar nearby, and Edith is chugging back the wine and forgetting to wipe her teeth. Situations like these make a morbid beast of us all. It doesn’t help that Westlife is playing, either. Boyband music makes me drink quicker. I don’t know what it is about shite pop music that turns me into an apocalyptic drinker. I can savor it more with heavy metal and Bob Dylan.
We both catch the door opening and that bald, chubby detective who screams of a bad hangover starts pounding the floor towards us. His skinny female colleague, who puts me in mind of Olive Oil at the end of her tether, struggles to keep pace.
‘You lousy bastards!’ the detective shouts, hurling a piece of crumpled paper off my half-empty pint of stout. I pick up the paper and unfold it.
Made you look
Even in death, my uncle had gone too far.
My novel BOOTLEG KARMA is out with Razur Cuts Books on September 6th. Razur Cuts is a Scottish independent publisher that celebrates unrepresented writers, artists, punk music, and old-school lit magazines. Link below:
