The front door swung open, and in walked one of the biggest men I had ever seen in my natural life. He was singing. And this was his song:
“And we will make merry with juniper berries
and bounce down the stairs of my love …”
The regulars and myself turned round to see him. He made his way to the bar, pulled up a stool, and ordered a small drink. “This isn’t for me,” he said, tipping the contents of the glass into a little flask that he kept in his pocket. “I have to give this to a dying man. He needs one bolt of whiskey inside his filthy guts before he chokes his last choke.”
And then he started giggling – just like a girl all smacked up to the eyeballs with junk. His eyes rolled backwards and his fat head creased with the rolls of stubbled flesh around his shaved head. The people around me moved back, with various unspoken excuses. The big man turned and grinned a fleshy smile. I realised that his drunken attention was fixed on me. I smiled back.
“So who’s the dying man?” I asked, to slacken the tension.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked me, leaning close so I could smell the stench of cheese and testosterone on his breath.
“Yes,” I replied, although I didn’t really want to.
“You,” he said, his teeth flashing in a crazy cracked grin.
Before I knew what was happening, he had licked his beefy knuckles and driven his fist of meat into my face, knocking me about the shop.
I was stunned into a smoky daze. He held me around the neck, lifting me up a clear metre into the air, against the wood panelled wall. Two of those fingers were pushed into my mouth, past my teeth, holding down my tongue. They tasted of cheese and onion crisps.
I tried to scream, but with those fetid digits against the roof of my mouth all that came out was a vomitous blubber. Saliva dripped down my chin. My terrified eyes flashed around the bar, but inexplicably no-one else seemed to have noticed what was happening, apart from the barman, who was laughing as if it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. The giant of a man bellowed like an earthy guttural wolf hound. Into my face. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but I could just about see remnants of rabbit fur in his molars.
The flask was then in my mouth. Warm whiskey flowed over the mess of fingers and tongue the inside of my mouth had become. With some chagrin, I felt more happy that the liquor may have destroyed some of the filth that had been pushed into my mouth. The big man leaned close and whispered into my ear, which was a relief after his roar.
“Hustle, hustle,” he said. The next thing I knew we were out of the pub and half way down the road. My face was jammed into his bouncing sweating paunch. We were travelling faster than the average car. Despite this speed, the beast of a man was still heartily laughing. So much, in fact, that his disgusting belly was repeatedly pounding my face. “The dead man is thee,” he laughed, and hurled me high into the air.
Fresh air! How sweet it was to be free from the thick smell. My body was spinning itself around – the man did have some toss. I had now reached the apex of my freedom, and was speeding back towards the ground.
My heart leapt for two reasons. The first reason was that my chest had thumped against a large rock – I heard one of my ribs crack. The second reason was that I had felt no waiting arms to catch me as I fell. For one beautiful second I thought that he had vanished as inexplicably as he had arrived – until a large hairy foot rammed itself into my stomach, and I heard him shout with joy. With the little vision I had left, I could just about see his disgusting form towering above me. He was dribbling large globules of acidic saliva which splashed into my mouth and eyes. The taste of cheese and onion crisps returned to me.
“Baby loves the merry man,
The merry man does love the boy!
And so our ends do meet in woodland
With love and joy and pain ahoy!”
I winced with pain, which was a mistake. “Fear! You do fear me, little one! And I do hate thee and love thee for that.” He picked me up, kissed my bloody forehead and then tossed me over his shoulder. We were running again, more blood and teeth spilling out of my broken body. With an unhappy sigh, I passed out.
I awoke to the sound of singing.
“Skipping in the merry morn,
I came across a baby boy,
Round and pink and just fresh born,
I played with him, he was my toy.
I taught the babe to walk and talk
I loved him like he was my son
But now I’ve found another babe
to be my little cuddly one.”
I opened my eyes and the big man was staring down at me with a maternal expression on his face. We were in a clearing in the woods. There was the crackle of a roaring fire, in which he appeared to have placed a large black metallic cauldron which ferociously bubbled. And twas into this that I was gaily tossed.