That’s been my main problem, standing on the bridge looking down at the water. It’d be a kind of reverse baptism you know? And maybe you wouldn’t even die, just get maimed or decapitated – though decapitation would most likely rule out a normal existence thereafter. Anyhow, it isn’t like standing on top of a building peering down at concrete humanity and certain fatality. I wasn’t in psychotherapy for that anyway, I was in analysis for pulling girls off their perches by their pony tails. Don’t know where that came from – the bible maybe, there’s a definite link between the bible and caffeine - all those bitches outside of coffee houses . . . in Gomorrah, drinking mochas. It’s funny . . . sometimes they don’t even shriek, and if you do it quick enough the shock wave covers your getaway. Dr Ely, my headshrinker, says it’s something to do with my childhood – like hello, what isn’t? Reckons my not being able to have a pony tail when I was a fourteen year old stoner is the root cause. Blame it on mother . . . and her being a hairdresser too. Life is a complex series of dictated protocols and behaviour patterns, and all you have to do is figure out where you fit into the bigger picture – the one with Jesus in it – Jesus standing there with hair down to his waist wearing sandals – I reckon Jesus smoked dope. I bet Mary never told Jesus he couldn’t grow his hair long or stand out in the street preaching. No, Mary was the perfect mother . . . and why all this biblical referencing? Long story – but it all goes back to the Manic Street Preachers. Their album the Holy Bible, and Richey, who vanished . . . only he didn’t and then he did again, confused?
Take a seat, or a ledge on a bridge but just be careful in those fucking sandals mind, those things can kill you. I was down on the Point fishing, not that I fish – I was looking at other people fishing wondering if I ought to fish too just in case there was something in fishing that I was missing, after all, even Cobain referenced it. Then again, fishing looks fucking boring . . . I was just about to finally leave when I see these bubbles. Bubbles in the water, thought I might get lucky and be the first to snap a shot of some alien invader or unknown monster and if I’d had a camera I would have. I stand there watching the bubbles and then this thing comes to the surface . . . I take a step back and glance around at the men fishing and they’re all looking in the other direction. This thing, covered in slime, struggles toward the rocks and when it gets one slimy hand on one it looks up at me through fish-pecked eyes and says, calm as you fucking well like, ‘Gissus hand mate.’
Yeah, I think to myself, as fucking if. Then the penny drops, through the seaweed and slime and brine – ‘Hold on,’ I say, ‘aren’t you fucking Richey Edwards?’
‘Ha ha, as if, half my luck that’d be eh?’ The thing says, smiling as water laps gently around its still submerged body.
‘You fucking are!’ I say, ‘you died didn’t you?’
‘Look pal,’ the thing says in-between spitting out salt water, ‘if I was this fella you’re on about I wouldn’t be here barely alive and almost half-drowned would I?’
‘You can’t be almost half drowned,’ I tell him matter of factly, ‘or half-drowned for that matter, you’re either drowned or you aren’t.’
‘What are you?’ He splutters, ‘a fucking marine biologist?’
‘Half my luck, nah, I’m a social engineer.’
‘A fucking what?’ He queries trying to fend off a savage looking gull.
‘I engineer social change.’ I say.
‘Things have bloody changed since . . .’ he swallows the rest of the sentence along with a bit of thoughtlessly discarded polystyrene.
‘Since your day?’ I smile.
‘What fucking year is this?’ He coughs noisily.
‘How long you been down there, under the sea?’
‘A while my friend, now, you gonna help me out before this fucking gull eats my brains or what?’
Seriously, I had no choice in the matter. So me and what I’m presuming (then) is the just-resurrected carcass of Richey Edwards lope off toward my council flat. It’s not grand, just a room on the sixteenth floor with a grey view. Richey needs a bath, which is weird seeing as how he’s just come from the water . . . but, in he goes, aqua boy, leaves a few strands of weed and skin on the mouldy grout. I’m thinking I should call someone, NME maybe, that guy who wrote England’s Dreaming, John Peel, no, wait, John Peel’s dead. Right on, no one’d believe me anyhow.
This is obviously what comes of being a manic depressive, and a manic street preacher I suppose, so, Richey stays in the bath an awfully long time – it just isn’t natural, the kid’s as wrinkled as, finally I go tell him tea’s ready.
‘Fish?’ he asks me.
‘This is fucking England man, remember? We might be surrounded by them but that doesn’t mean we can afford to eat them. I’ve got a tin of sardines though?’
‘Well I guess,’ he starts, obvious unenthusiastically, ‘great source of vitamin E, your piscatorial delicacies.’
‘I’m sure,’ I say, ‘but vitamin E is the least of our problems, what’s good for skin?’
‘D, I think, sunlight, all that outdoor jive.’
‘Well, we’re pretty fucked then, sardines?’
I think Richey would have been better off under the sea, not a chance of him making a comeback, not in the state he’s in. We watch a bit of telly, Richey coughs up sea water now and again – smiles apologetically. The rank smell of those sardines engulf both us, he doesn’t seem to mind. If it wasn’t minus 5 I’d open a window – if the window opened that was. The last occupant super-glued all the windows shut then gassed himself, where he got the bread to feed that meter I’d like to know, aren’t too many round here could afford suicide like that – pay as you go – like, imagine if you were almost done and the gas went off? No, jumping is the way to go, cheaper, plenty of wannabe jumpers, it’s dangerous though to the underclass, a serious occupational hazard to those planning a long-term career in the disenfranchisement industry; people tend to go around peering upwards in case some crazy decides today’s his day to try flying – sometimes they walk into lamp posts coz they’re looking up instead of ahead and get concussed – then mugged of their meter money, makes the muggers job a lot easier – pre-concussed victims (look, here’s some tosser who prepared himself earlier), the mugging sector is booming apparently. Council took all the gas ovens out anyhow after the gas company complained too many tenants were reneging on their bills by suiciding – their shareholders were fucked off with it – dropping dividends and all that – lamp posts will be next to go I suppose, save on power and facial reconstruction expenses.
A couple of weeks, bookended by dole cheques, pass murderously – there’s Richey, eyes like two arrester beds, playing around with an emo cover of Fanfare for the Common Man – apt, especially as there’s common men floor to ceiling round here. I suggest Cocker’s Common People might be more befitting and less misogynist but Richey just turns what’s left of his nose up, says since Shatner did it it’s lost what street credit it had in the bank. I disagree, I thought Shatner did a classy job on it, Richey tells me to fuck off, I remind him that it’s my fucking bathtub he’s dossing in – fucking back from the dead rock stars, who’s he think is, Jim Morrison?
Next he asks me if I could ring the band. Like fuck, I tell him in no uncertain terms, I’m already in psychiatry and shit like that could get me a long way to a restraining order – the type that comes with its own restraints. If he wants to get back in the band that’s his lookout, but no way do I see Rolling Stone slapping him on the cover, born again or not; wrapping him in old NMEs, dousing him in vinegar and serving him with chips yes . . . but the rock n roll hall of fame . . . nada amigo.
Richey and yours truly were shacked up in my damp flat; the living embodiment of a Soft Cell song, one step down from bedsit land and one step up from the Thames embankment, the real odd couple. Then it dawned on me, the original eureka moment – only it was Richey in the tub and not me of course. ‘Hey!’ I said to him, ‘what about all the fucking royalties huh?’
‘Money’s not important.’ He offered casually. Too damn casual.
‘What? How long you been dead?’
He shrugged, a chunk of algae-infested skin slid from his shoulder, ‘Four, five years?’
‘Man! You know what those ghouls make out of memorabilia and commemorative re-releases! You must have an account somewhere . . . no wait, did you leave a will?’
‘I left it to my cat Gobbit, only, I’m not . . . certified.’
‘Your cat! Bloody typical . . . sorry, okay, what’d you mean you’re not certified, sane or insane . . . hang on, Gobbit? What kind of a name is that?’
‘Dead and it’s a good name, a punk name.’
‘You’re not dead?’
‘Technically.’
‘Get a hat and coat we’re going out.’
‘What? It’s raining . . .’
‘Hello, earth to Richey, you came out of the sea man!’
‘Yeah but dude, that’s like, fresh water?’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s only this saline skin protecting me from these savage earthly elements.’
‘Wear a fucking mac, toughen up, we could be eating well tonight!’
‘You can’t really expect me to walk into a bank five years after I vanished, presumed dead, to take out a few quid for fish and chips, think of the furore that’d cause!’
‘You mean we’re starving because you, aka rich rock star returned from water world, costing a fortune in salt I might add, won’t go down the bank and withdraw money in case some pop junk press get a hold of the news and blow your cover?’
‘Exactly, think about it a minute . . .’
‘Wait, have you got online access?’
‘What in the name of Icelandic Cod is online access?’
‘Fuck! You jumped too soon! Everything’s online these days!’
‘I’m not!’
‘No? ha ha, Richey Edwards this is your fucking life! Now sit up and shut up!’
Okay, I shouldn’t have handed him the plugged-in out-of-date laptop when he was in the bath – Compaq were never renowned for their electrical stability – then again, he was already dead yeah? Plus I didn’t think . . . didn’t think all that salt we were chucking in the bath would conduct electricity . . . didn’t even realise I had no Net Cred anyhow . . . his webbed hands were too slimy . . . in it went, plop, my lifeline to pseudo normality, cheap Asian electrical components in a brine bath, fizzing and popping and smoking, and Richey? Well, it really perked Richey up, that voltage.
Which was how we came to be yanking girls off their seats outside coffee franchises by their pony tails, don’t see the connection? Well duh, wake up and smell the coffee man. Everything comes back to the theory of relativity – relatively speaking. Girls drink a lot of coffee because they have more to talk about than men, and while they’re talking they like to drink coffee, which in turn spawns yet more coffee shops, and coffee shops as everyone knows, are run by Christian fundamentalists and the CIA. Or so Richey said . . . and who was I to disagree, indeed, sweet dreams were made of this.
But why just girls with pony tails? Uhm, another great Richey Edwards conspiracy theory – apparently, girls wear their hair in a ponytail so that it resembles, well, a pony’s tail, and the pony’s tail is above the pony’s arse . . . and uh, yeah, turns out Richey had this whole anal thing going down (pun intended), only, even though he was a big rock star (deceased), some girls still wouldn’t acquiesce to his uh, advances. The pony tail, in the gospel according to Richey Edwards, was worn solely to attract attention to the rump . . . yeah, sounds pretty bent I know, but hey, don’t shoot the messenger.
I never asked him to clarify the situation with men wearing ponytails, it just didn’t seem necessary, and besides, common logic would dictate that yanking a guy off his perch by his pony tail might well lead to . . . yeah.
Trouble is we have to traipse further afield, obviously people round here don’t sit outside coffee shops, I mean, there aren’t any for a start and even if there were, people wouldn’t drink coffee in them, they’d rob them. Then there’s Richey’s saline issues, he’s like one of those burn victims who needs constant applications of the stuff. Saline is his drug of choice now – his physiological pick-me-up and we procure it any way we can – hold on, status update, I procure it any way I can. This two-pronged lifestyle might be healthy, what with all the walking and air intake it entails, but it’s got its pitfalls too. Great big gaping manholes like; sooner rather than later we’re going to be recognised as those two morons who yank girls off chairs – yeah, that’s them officer, that dumb-looking one there and that creature from the black lagoon he knocks about with, fucking perverts.
Chemists are getting edgy too . . . we’re always hanging around chemists, posh chemists in posh boroughs, chemists without wire cages and in-store bouncers but with comfy chairs and CCTV. Chemists where people like Bob Geldof buy their cough syrup. ‘Is that fucking Bob Geldof?’ Richey whispers to me, I glance over, tell him it is and so fucking what, even Bob Geldof needs to shop once a while. ‘I thought he was dead?’ Richey says quietly as he pockets yet more saline.
‘That was you dickhead.’ I remind him.
‘Is he wearing his hair in a fucking pony tail?’
‘What if he is it’s not against the law.’
‘We should follow him . . .’
‘What the bloody hell for?’
‘I can’t remember . . . incense maybe?’
‘You’re pretty fucked up man, you know that don’t you?’
‘Who wouldn’t be if they’d been living in Atlantis for five years?’
‘Ah! So the truth outs itself huh! Nice vacation was it tosser?’
‘Keep your voice down man, Geldof’s staring at us, oh shit, he’s coming over . . .’
He fucking was too . . . oh Haile fucking Selassie, the last person you’d want to mess with would be Sir Bob, patron saint of meals on wheels. I turn away but it’s too late, the pharmacist is on one side, eyeing us menacingly through a bottle of contact lens cleaner fluid, Bob Geldof’s on the other, looking perplexed, or stoned, who knows – what I do know is that it’s a rat trap and we’ve been well and truly caught, I knew it would happen eventually, and Richey with pockets full of saline and . . .
‘Aye up.’ Geldof says. I thought he was Irish, not a Yorkie.
Neither of us respond in kind.
The pharmacist leans in and says ‘Excuse me Sir Bob, but do you know these two gentlemen, are they bothering you?’
Gentlemen! Ha!
Bob thinks he knows Richey from someplace . . . Richey isn’t letting anything slip other than his mildewed skin. This is crazy - I’m locked in the arms of a crazy life, going crazy, crazier. Finally, we somehow extricate ourselves from Geldof’s inquisition and flee (tramp) across town to pastures new. There is no respite from the insanity however, manic by name manic by nature I guess, we end up in the West End - Richey wants to peruse his impressive back catalogue in the Virgin Megastore. After this we start the trek homeward, eventually we pass a coffee shop and . . . and it all happened in a flash, like a ray of light . . . Richey yanks this chick off her stool, only, it aint no ordinary caffeinated chick. No, this one doesn’t lay on the ground looking dumbfounded, this one is up in a flash swearing in a coarse American voice and it’s then I realise that by the grace of whatever unscrupulous quirk of fate we’ve stumbled upon – Richey has managed to yank Madonna off a stool outside a swanky coffee parlour in Kensington . . . and no, it’s not like a prayer at all; even though Richey is down on his knees . . . Oh Lord, I wanna be sedated.
And I am; one bony knee to the face pretty much sedates me. When I come around there’s police and Madonna and Fleet Street mongrels but no Richey . . . okay, I have an imaginary friend, forget sedation take medication.
After signing a release – releasing Madonna from any liability whatsoever from any-goddamned-thing, I shuffle off home with a fine for breaching the peace. Only as soon as I get back inside my flat I hear splashing . . . ‘What the fuck?’ I say to him after I’ve shoved the bathroom door open.
‘Sorry man,’ he offers, ‘obviously I couldn’t be around a gig like that, messy business.’
‘Oh really? You are one piece of work you . . . and what the hell is that?’
‘What?’
‘That!’ I point.
‘That’s a cod.’
‘Why is it my bathtub? Why are you in my bathtub?’
‘I’m in it because I need to be, he’s in it because I caught him en route, you like cod, don’t you?’
‘You caught it where, exactly?’
‘Man you live in this city and you’ve no idea what goes on underground! There’s aqua ducts, viaducts, hidden lakes, salt water pools, midnight at the oasis my friend!’
‘Really? And why would I be interested in what’s underground? My problems are well and truly above ground! And how did you get back here anyhow, where’d you vanish to?’
‘Slithered, well, slipped, through a grate, easy as, all apologies, nice shiner you’ve got there!’
‘That bitch has a knee like a boiler plate, glad I never bought one of her albums.’
‘Yeah, I bet you watched the in-bed-with video though huh?’
‘Fuck you man.’
‘How about some dill anyhow, to go with Freddy here?’
‘Oh yeah, I’ll just get some out of my gourmet herbs window box, maybe slip on down to Jamie Oliver’s continental deli.’
‘That’s the spirit, say, what time’s the Tube on?’
‘That finished years ago, shit, where you bin . . . oh yeah, sorry.’
‘So we’re eating Freddy are we, let me guess, Freddy after Freddy Mercury?’
‘That and the fact he’s full of mercury.’
Sewer cod and Wasteland greens all washed down with flat cider. Less than an hour later I’m over the big white telephone assailing god – Richey is gnawing on a fish head watching Time Team when the electric goes. ‘Hey,’ he yells out, ‘the juice has gone off man and they’re just about to date the remains of that abbey!’
I answer god first through a mouthful of intestinal pieces and fish flakes.
‘Hey?’ I hear Richey ask again.
The bathroom is a watery grave – it stinks of fish guts – Richey did the gutting while he sat in the bath and then he . . . oh Christ another mouthful, wait . . . and then he ate that cod’s guts raw . . . ah fuck . . . I’m dying, can’t you catch something bad from fish? Botulism?
Something like that, not to be confused with Botchulism which is to do with plastic surgery and spin doctors. Hello paralysis, break down of the spinal column, cold chicken noodle soup . . . god is a spin doctor . . . we fought a war over cod once, can you believe that shit?
‘Can you stop retching up your guts and find fifty p for the meter?’ I hear Richey moan.
Deep down in his pocket he finds fifty p, is that any way for a young boy to be? Geldof is a saint . . . bona fide.
‘It’s freaking dark in here, and cold, so damned cold.’
‘Look man, if anyone’s pissing on anyone’s parade it’s you, my meter money used to last me easy between cheques now it’s gone in less than a week, maybe you should look for alternative accommodation.’
‘I like the way you said that, the ease of your fecundity, and you used two M’s too, good boy.’
‘I mean it man.’
‘You sound like an old Sex Pistol.’
‘Very droll, least I don’t sound like a washed-up preacher.’
‘Ha! Touché, washed-up, I can dig it, you think eyeliner’d help?’
‘What? My budgeting? I doubt it, it’s not cheap you know.’
‘I used to have the best cosmetics . . .’
‘Oh please, not another crawl down memory lane, why don’t you turn yourself into some A&R guy, start all over again?’
‘No way! That’s how I got in this mess in the first fucking place - those jackals stripped me of everything in the name of product.’
‘Some product huh?’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean? Didn’t you think I was great?’
‘A great wanker yeah.’
‘Oh thanks, maybe I should doss with Annie Lennox.’
‘Maybe you should, why don’t you go and ring her?’
‘One, I don’t have her number, two, as you’re well aware I’m in a precarious financial state right now.’
‘That’s right I forget! Oh shit man, like, sorry yar, there’s you with several million quid in the bank and me with no electric and a scummy bath, hang on while I go outside and mug an OAP on the way home from bingo for you.’
‘You’re so facetious you know?’
‘And you’re so fucking wet.’
I had this bizarre dream, somehow, and mercifully the dream censors cut that bit out, me and Richey had had a baby and the baby was Darryl Hannah. She came out perfect, looked all tousled and salty – which is okay. No idea which one of us played mum but in the end Darryl got all uppity about domestic arrangements shaved her hair off and moved in with Gary the nonce Numan. Before all of this I used to dream about fairgrounds, Alice the checkout girl at Video Plus and my aunt Maureen the nun – not all at once naturally, but sometimes there’d be a crossover or a prequel, like aunt Maureen getting it on with Alice as Splash plays in the background while I’m away taking photographs of the fairground with Tom Hanks (making a rare cameo) . . . hold on . . . but now it’s always about me and fish boy having little fish head kids and having to take them down the sewers to set them free. Richey has to go, it’s as simple as that, and I know exactly how to do it, I’ll go see Geldof, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll tell him everything and let him decide, but not tomorrow because tomorrow’s Monday and Bob hates Mondays.
He lives in Chapel Mews, swanky yeah, but hey, he’s earned it, working boy made good and all that. Oh wait, you’re thinking how’d I know right? Like what am I some kind of celebrity stalker, the whole raincoat McMuffin thing? Nah, I know right because Raphael’s kebab van parks up there and celebs buy art off him – celebs like Marc Babel the author, the guy who wrote “White Tepees” that book about Red Indians. Great book, I bought it, saw the movie too, the one starring Sean Penn, and then after the premiere, Penn was outside smoking pot and I went over for his autograph like you do and the son of a bitch accused me of touching him inappropriately. Like, as if dude, but anyhow, it got messy and finally the author stepped in . . . nice guy, well-adjusted, Penn eventually lit off into the night with Twiggy Ramirez. Babel took me for a kebab as compensation, signed my book too, the whole Mark Chapman gig, that’s how I first met Bob, he was there walking his Cocker Spaniel, Fingers, and perusing food stocks in the late edition Evening Standard – so that’s roughly how I know where Bob lives and it certainly isn’t a stalking issue, although yes, I do own a plastic raincoat, I’ve read Catcher in the Rye and I’ve seen Trainspotting six times, so fuck you anyhow.
So I hike up to Chapel Mews on a ruse of going out to borrow bread, in a lateral way the whole gig is becoming Satanically biblically veiled. I sit on a bench staring at the pond – which is the size of a fucking lake and has real ducks on it, I could go a duck right now, roasted, all that oozing fat . . . man oh man how the other half live. And what the Boomtown Rats am I doing here anyhow? I’ve missed two sessions with Dr Cross already . . . and who’s to say if Geldof is even in situ huh? He might be in Liberia fact finding for the UN or the Cote d’Azur eating red duck with some tin-pot dictator looking for a monsoon-season rock gig to boost morale amongst his voodoo hit squads. Bob’s like an ambassador now for the Red Cross and Oxfam and Save the Motherfucking World, like Bono, all those Irish find their way up the stairway to heaven one way or another, only last month I saw Bono on ET swanking around with the First Lady, mulling over ways of maintaining sustainable food production in Yoko Ono or Ohio or someplace equally barren. Not the Edge though, no, you never see the Edge gallivanting about on Air Force One encouraging Tibetan weavers to weave faster for the sake of balding rock stars everywhere. I heard Geldof on Radio Five the other afternoon waxing lyrical on the Street Beat – about how the world had gone from “groovy” to “sick” in forty years . . . a searing (tongue-in-cheek) indictment on urban yoof and popular culture . . . Bob always did like to gnaw on the hand that feeds, which is why he hangs about with Lemm Sissay and Jeremy Irons and I sit on park benches dreaming up ways to snare a pea fowl (when I’m not babysitting zombie rock stars of course).
Hours pass, probably days, I watch Raphael pull up in his Merry Prankster kebab van and open for business, a hundred gaudy fairy lights and the sweet aromas of marinated lamb and fresh turpentine fill the tepid evening air. I watch Raphael bung up his easel and go to work on another five grand masterpiece that some celeb will most likely take home still dripping along with one with the lot. People pull up to the stand in fucking limos, butlers and chauffeurs climb out and hand Raphael wads of notes and Raphael laughs gaily and intermittently drags on a spliff the size of a Subway meatball lovers to go. Given half a chance I’d drink that turpentine and when I was just about as rabid as Gwen Stefani on MTV awards night I’d . . . ah, Herr Geldof approaches, I’d recognise that lope anywhere, only two people who’ve lived have had that signature lope, Geldof and Jesus, though Jesus was hauling a cross I suppose and was probably in no great hurry to get it up that bloody hill. Oh fuck me, is that Kate Bush? It damned well is . . . well, there’s a turn up, I should call Mojo, claim a reward, take a mobile snap . . . wait, I don’t have a mobile and even if I did I’d have no credit . . . wow, she’s only two feet six tall, probably talks backwards too – fucking scary, her aide is lifting her up to the van’s hatch now so she can order . . . oh man . . . this is sick, sorry, groovy, no, it’s sick and fuck yoof street vernacular of the now - tossers.
By the time Geldof saunters along I’ve all but had enough. It was a bad idea, but, Bob’s kind of approachable, not at all like Simon Le Bon, and after having waited three hours I pluck up the courage to wander over to where the great man is hanging patiently for his dog to take a dump so Divine can come along after and clean it up. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ He says to me menacingly, without even turning around.
‘Uh . . .’ I falter.
‘I’ve got a wolfhound here you know, savage brute too . . .’ he mumbles.
I can see it isn’t a wolfhound - it’s only a foot and a half tall for starters.
‘Nice dog.’ I offer.
‘Hound.’ He corrects me.
‘Yeah, hound.’
We wait for the “hound” to do its business. Then Bob kicks some dirt over the shit and turns back toward the van, ‘Oh, you still here . . .’ he says as he shuffles by me.
I nod, which is dumb because Bob has his down, ‘Well, come on then.’ I hear him say.
‘Uh . . .’
I am in the presence of greatness.
Bob has a full size snooker table which is bigger than my entire flat. A big snooker fan Bob is, fancies his good self on the green baize whereas yours truly is rubbish with balls of any type. I decline a few frames based solely on that, despite the fact I’m standing in Bob Geldof’s den being offered the opportunity to sink a few. ‘So, what is it you want,’ Bob starts laconically, ‘it’s about Captain Justice isn’t it?’ He adds, brushing a fleck of dust off his gleaming snooker table.
‘Who?’ I reply.
‘Well if yer don’t know then it most probably isn’t, something to do with holy innocent’s day is it?’
I hate the way Geldof pre-empts everything.
‘Flocculence?’ He says before I’ve even processed holy innocent’s day which sounds like some bootleg Manic Street album.’
‘None of the above,’ I finally spit out, ‘I think, though it depends what flocculence actually is.’
‘A kind of bad wind . . .’ Bob begins, then his phone rings and I know for sure it’s Midge Ure - don’t ask me why, it’s a gift. Bob comes back several minutes later, ‘Bloody pop stars.’ He moans, which is my cue . . .
I spit out my ridiculous tale in quick fire sentences that all join together to create a stream of verbal gibberish that’d make any social retard proud. Bob though appears to have understood every word . . . ‘Thallium.’ He answers instantly.
‘Huh?’
‘In lay person’s terms, rat bait.’
‘You’re suggesting I kill Richey Edwards?’
No need to elaborate, suffice to say, two weeks later and I’ve developed a theory. Bear with me, it might sound far-fetched, but wait, give it due consideration. Okay, here goes, Richey Edwards is obviously a zombie, no arguments there, much as I might have liked to have thought otherwise – goddamned true. But, he isn’t just any zombie, no, I mean Christ all fucking mighty he used to be a Manic Street Preacher – worshipped. No, Richey Edwards is a prince among zombies and he’s returned to overthrow, wait for it, suck in a big one, to depose Geldof! Crazy, you say? Ha, think about it, Bob mumbles and shuffles and he never fucking sleeps man, EVER! Bob Geldof is king of the zombies – correction, king of the rock star zombies, ha! I’ve researched this you know, thoroughly, and you know what? There’s sighting’s every damned where, only, people are too freaked out to talk about it – right on. This guy in the White Rabbit last week said he knew a guy who’d swear he’d seen Sid Vicious panhandling for coinage outside Kings Cross with a switchblade . . . this girl reckons Keith Moon gate-crashed her party over in Marylebone and demanded Pete Townsend’s address! But wait, there’s more . . . Brian Jones, no less, seen lazing in the public baths at Clapham as if he didn’t have a care in the, uh, after world . . . shit is happening and as per usual NME journalists don’t have a bloody clue.
It’s obvious what needs to be done and I’m not the only one thinking it. Ted’s Garden centre hasn’t been so busy since the blitz began. No fence stakes there, he’s waiting for a new shipment from Iran . . . same story at Lockley’s Hardware, fence posts have vanished from all over the allotments, Dad’s Army are out on the march again, spitting and polishing old medals and old wounds. When I need a goddamned stake there isn’t one to be had for love nor money, and me with the King of the dead rock star zombies living in my bathtub! But wait, what the hell am I thinking about? Me kill Richey Manic with a stake? Hold on, that fucker’s already dead . . . but still, that’d be like trying to kill the king of the gypsies with a barbecue fork, and anyhow all this bollocks about being able to kill the un-dead (maybe that’s an oxymoron, always wondered what that meant) with a piece of wood and a rubber mallet is most likely bullshit. Bloody Hollywood . . . strangely it’s a lovely day out, dappled sunlight and girls with tattoos chewing gum . . . life on the dole.
Down by the old sweet factory I don’t find fifty pence, but I do find a mouldy old piece of wood that with a bit of luck and a half decent blade I can fashion into an instrument of zombie death. I meet Ewan from the video store on my way home, he has blood caked on his hands and smeared across his lips. ‘What up?’ I say, going into estate gang boy vernacular.
‘Yo man,’ he says as he lights a rollie, ‘took ten of us to kill John Entwistle!’
‘The guy from the Who? Fuck man he always looked half dead.’
‘Fucking Who, I hate the fucking Who man.’
‘Yeah, this is fucking weird shit innit?’
‘Gonna get messier when that fucker Manic rocks up looking to sick it on.’
I blush slightly, so everyone knows that Richey Manic’s started all this apocalyptical shit and if they find out he’s in my tub then the whole estate’ll go gaga, they’ll probably burn the whole shithole to the ground like something out of Kafka and good riddance to bad rubbish. I’m on the bank of the canal, correction; I’m on the bank of what used to be a canal in the steam punk age and that’s now a ditch full of hard waste and shopping trolleys. Least there’s an old saw in there along with the rats and me with no fucking tetanus booster either . . . so there I am worrying about infection when the rusty saw I’m using to fashion my fast fading post into a stake rips across my own thumb. Just what I fucking need . . . no point complaining, my country needs me, the rock and roll hall of fame too. Elvis Presley and Joey Ramone are on the rampage in America, not my business, we have our own slash and burn festival right here right now. Right, that’s it, good enough, though I doubt it’ll pass through a cardboard box let alone a breastplate I forge on regardless; England didn’t get to be the shallow gene swamp it is today without few good men and the odd dyke queen getting up off their arses and swinging a claymore or two in anger.
Secretly, I’ve grown kind of fond of him . . .
Of course he’s in the bath; wrinkled, green and smelling pretty ripe. He’s a smart one though – I catch his watery eye, the good one, ‘Ha!’ he sneers dismissively.
‘Ha what?’ I reply coldly.
‘Is that a stake you’ve got in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
‘It might be . . .’
‘Think you can use it?’
‘I think I could try.’
‘You could, go on, try, dare ya.’ He goads me. Two things I don’t like, being goaded by the un-dead, having some twat stick a finger in my face. I whip the stake out and raise it above my head. ‘You look like fucking Anthony Hopkins playing Van Helsing!’ He laughs bitterly. ‘And you look like him in the Rite!’ I shoot back.
‘Well I am fucking Welsh, what’d you expect?’
‘You’re not Welsh.’
‘Am so.’
‘What fucking ever, Welsh or not, you gotta move child.’
‘Keith Richards eh, there’s a zombie ain’t even dead yet!’
‘Keith Richards isn’t in my bathtub!’
‘Half your luck, you going to use that stake before the termites eat it all?’
I’ve had enough of this bullshit, this back from the grave repartee, I plunge the stake down closing my eyes as I do, hear him gasp, let out a liquid moan, push harder, wait, wait, wait – then I hear him laugh.
I open my eyes and there he is, smiling like Satan himself on barbecue Friday, my stake clutched to his chest in a great b-grade horror pose. I immediately let the stake go, he crumples it in his hands until it’s nothing but matchsticks, ‘Wanker.’ He says to me condemningly.
Worse part is he’s fucking right too.
‘Takes one to know one.’ Is all I can think of to say in my petulant schoolboyish way.
‘Egg fucking zactly!’
‘That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ He asks smarmily climbing from his slime bath.
‘Look,’ I begin but for a zombie he’s pretty fucking nifty, grabs my old steel comb off the basin, the one I’d sharpened long ago in metalwork 4 with Herr Morris, spins around and plunges it into my cheek.
‘What the shit!’ I scream, clutching at my own face.
‘And now watch this . . .’ he says like a fucking magician as he pushes me toward the fractured mirror where I see . . . he yanks the comb out and with it comes half my face – no blood. I grip the basin for support; hear him laughing at me from behind, the cocksucker. I see the comb still stuck in what was a piece of me in the basin, instinctively retract the comb, turn around and shove it into his mush. Startled, he rocks backwards, ‘You cheap little fucker!’ he reprimands me.
‘Me, cheap? I wasn’t the fuckwit who leapt off a bridge man!’
‘What would you know about the pressures of success? All those black eyed girls with garrotted dreams hanging around, never fleeing the scene of the crime – have you any idea how many I killed in the name of love?’
‘Whoa, wait up, word up, shut the fuck up, you just said how many you had to kill, right?’
‘Yes, kill, it was the only way man the only way.’
‘How come none of these deaths were reported?’
‘Grow up dude, what’d you think record companies are for?’
‘Yeah right . . .’
‘Man I just had to call this number they gave me and they’d come clean up the fucking mess and sort me out an alibi, even ran some red herring story in the papers about a possible serial killer called the Stage Door Killer, ha! They never had any originality!’
‘How many?’
‘Does it really matter now, in the wash-up? No pun intended.’
‘You slimy fucker.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk my newly dead friend.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t notice anything different, say about your state of personal hygiene, eating habits, sleeping arrangement . . .’
‘So what, I’m tired, I’ve got no bread for deodorant and I’ve developed insomnia since you turned up plus I’m on a diet, it’s called the welfare diet.’
‘A diet, please, since when has human flesh been a part of a well-balanced diet?’
‘WHAT! I’ve never partaken of . . .’
‘No?’ He cuts me off, ‘then who the hell’s he? Let me re-phrase that, who the hell was he?’
I look at the crudely-gnawed corpse on our sofa, recoil in horror - feel my guts rumble hungrily, how the fuck did Ewan from the video shop turn up dead and half-eaten on our sofa? I was only talking to him . . . oh dear shit, no.
‘Talk about my antics, damn, that’s the pot calling the kettle black for sure, now what’s to eat, I’m famished.’
We both stare longingly at Ewan, well, what’s left of Ewan to be precise, guess I needn’t worry about getting Return to The Planet of the Apes back anytime soon. Outside we can hear shrieks, not the usual Friday night shrieks that accompany muggings, weird high-pitched banshee shrieks. Richey shuffles to the window and in the half-light with half his face missing he closely resembles the charismatic lead singer he once was. I put my hand to the hole in my face, my fingers slip inside but all I can feel is nothing.
‘It’s time . . .’ he says, kind of reverently.
‘That’s what Jim Morrison said once too.’ I find myself answering, though the words no longer fall to earth from between my lips, now they get sucked out of the hole where my cheek used to be – like passengers in rows D thru F when a plane has blow-out.
‘We have to make the bridge, the bridge, it’s our only option.’
‘What? If we’re already dead then surely death can’t hurt us, what’s the drama?’
He spins on me fast, a blur of flesh strips and mildew, ‘Doesn’t hurt? Don’t you fucking believe it!’
There’s no point in arguing, what else am I going to do? I crawl through the night with Richey Edwards, ex lead singer of the Manic Street Preachers, toward his favourite haunt, the only place he feels safe other than my bathtub I guess, a ledge on a bridge staring at the sanctuary below.
Right at the end, when we’re up there, watching the city burn, he smiles awkwardly at me, with the state my face is in my reciprocation must look pretty damned ghoulish. ‘Well?’ He says quietly as the wind whips the word away to a grey eternity.
‘Well, guess this is goodbye then.’ I say.
‘You not coming?’
‘Think I’ll pass, I fancy seeing what life’s like post apocalypse.’
‘Life, yeah, I faintly recall that.’
‘Take care Richey.’
I watch him hurtle down, like a crippled pelican, juggling velocity and viscosity as he descends, then I see a small impact, it’s too dark to see much – was that what it was like the first time? Sad, that’s what it is, sad . . . no one likes record companies really.
Turns out my head-shrinker Dr Ely completely understood my situation, told me that a whole host of agencies had been set up to rehabilitate the un-dead back into society. There were no more stakings and burnings, now they had zombie collectors, folks who rounded them up like stray dogs and put them into a holding facility, the living are even adopting them! Things have sure changed . . . pity Richey couldn’t hold on, he’d have liked it here I’m sure.
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