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    Revenge

    My younger brother used to live opposite a particularly unpleasant and irascible old man named Tom, who jealously guarded the parking space outside his terraced house as if it were his own. There was no designated parking bay or any other restrictions, but he had decided that that particular bit of street, by virtue of it being immediately in front of his house, was exclusively reserved for his car. He would remonstrate angrily with anyone who dared to park there in his absence, and one day reduced to tears the young, pregnant wife of a friend of my brother who had been visiting the nearby community health centre. It was decided that they had to teach Tom a lesson.

    My brother works in the motor trade, and managed to acquire a beaten up old Fiesta that, nevertheless, was taxed, MOT’d (and covered on his own trade/dealer insurance). It had been traded in against a newer car but was probably bound for the scrap yard – perfect for what was required. He and his mate waited for the old chap to drive off, then parked the Fiesta in his spot and left a ‘For Sale’ notice with the victim’s phone number stuck inside the rear window. When he returned, he quite predictably took exception to this and went up and down the street knocking on doors to find out whose car it was. With a commendably straight face, my brother asked him if he had tried ringing the number on the ‘For Sale’ notice. “Of course I have,” Tom replied, “it’s always bloody engaged!”

    After a few days they decided to twist the knife a bit and, having spotted a discarded show-room dummy in a skip behind the local department store, my brother liberated it and put it in the driver’s seat of the Fiesta, one hand nonchalantly resting on the steering wheel, the head turned provocatively towards Tom’s house. This made Tom even angrier as he realised, perhaps for the first time, that someone was winding him up. He phoned the police, who turned up (probably as much to shut him up as anything) but politely told him that there was nothing they could do. The car was perfectly legal, no offence was being committed and no, they couldn’t tell him who it belonged to.

    Three weeks later, with the car still parked there and Xmas approaching, my brother and his mate sprayed ‘Merry Xmas Tom’ along the side, hung baubles inside, sprayed fake snow along the bottom of the windows and dressed the dummy in a Father Christmas outfit and beard. An explosion of rage equivalent to that of a small nuclear device detonating could later be heard emanating from the opposite side of the road.

    Come the end of January, and with the road tax due to expire in a day or so, Tom made it known that he would be straight on the phone to the police and the council to get the car towed and the owner prosecuted. He was literally hopping mad when my brother’s mate from the garage turned up with a pick up truck to take it away at the 11th hour – even standing in the road in front of the car in an unsuccessful attempt at preventing it being loaded.

    Truly, revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

    #2
    Revenge

    Nice one. Next time, though, film it all and send it in to one of those "caught on camera" TV progammes.

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      #3
      Revenge

      My Great Uncle, a terrible old misanthrope, was crippled by arthritis. He could barely walk due to a hip injury sustained during a non-specific war. It wasn't a heroic shrapnel injury or anything like that, he'd just fallen off a wall trying to impress a girl.

      Mobility wasn't his strong point. Like all the Taylors, in fact. I often need help getting out of bed and to the kitchen to make a brew. And I don't even have the excuse of a meccano hip joint. So yeah, his car was important to him. Without it he couldn't live an ordinary life.He could get to Morrison's to get his fags and famous grouse. He couldn't get to Betfred to spunk his money on a horse less mobile than himself. And he couldn't get to hospital to see his best friend live out the last few days of his life in gasping, wheezing pain.

      So when people parked in 'his' parking space, he got angry. And, no, legally it wasn't 'his' space. But hey, my Uncle was a stickler for manners and common sense. When I was small, he'd it me on his knee and say "Christopher. I'm a stickler for manners and common sense."

      Just before Christmas a few years ago, some people down the road parked a car in front of his house. Soon after they filled it with a manikin and Christmas decorations. My Uncle lost it. HE lost it with the absurdity of the situation, with the mindlessness of the people down the road, and he lost it with his hip that was playing up in the cold.

      And rather than seek an amicable situation through the medium of conversation, the people down the road laughed. Laughed at his anger. Laughed at his bitterness. And laughed at his love of manners and common sense.

      After the whole car thing settled down, my Uncle went to his shed, got out his electric screwdriver, a bucket, a small bag of plaster of paris mix, two large balloons and a wheelbarrow to put them all in.

      Silently, in the middle of the night, he trundled his stuff over the road, and let himself in to the house of the people who had parked their car outside his house. He unloaded his barrow, and crept upstairs. Letting himself in to their bedroom, he tiptoed as well as a man with half a hip can tiptoe, over to their sleeping bodies. Where he proceeded to drill them through the neck with his De Walt 12v cordless drywall screwdriver.

      Revenge, you see, truly is a dish best eaten cold.

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        #4
        Revenge

        Hahahahaha. Excellent.

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          #5
          Revenge

          Touche! Well done!

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            #6
            Revenge

            Then:-
            I first became aware that all was not right with the world, when, instead of being in a nice warm window display, sporting creations from the finest of fashion's mighty megaliths, I was somewhere else. Somewhere unfamiliar to me.
            One bases one's id, one's very being on the service one provides to one's fellow beings. I'd like to think my duties had be despatched over time, with panache and style and no small amount of dedication.
            Even when those in the know saw fit to reinvent bow ties, I cast neer a whimper at the unreasonableness of such attire.I was, as always a professional.
            And yet, here I found myself, shorn of the glamourous trappings of the rag trade, cold and alone in some kind of abandonned jaloppy. No badge of finesse for my resting place, either. oh no. No prancing cat adorned the hood of my new prison, no wings unfurled across the name reminiscent of the Midlands hellhole where such beauty was concieved.
            No, my final showcase, the catwalk to end all catwalks was to be but a humble Ford. A tradgedy akin to olivier acting his last in some dunderheaded embarrassment such as Casualty.
            As I said though, I am nothing if not a professional, so I bore the ignominy with both fortitude and grace, assuming the position of gay viveur, casting a look to my admiring audience (some crotchety old darling with a penchant for uintelligle ranting - one cannot pick one's audience, sadly) and draping myself glamourously over the wheel.
            I am (blissfully) unaware as to whether the rather rotund chaps in polyester who arrived to talk to the old boy were in fancy dress or somesuch, but if I've learned anything in the rag trade it's that one should never, never wear a navy jumper with a black gillet. And to accessorise with such appalling silver baubles and badges. Well, someone should call the style police darling.
            Later, much later it appears I was to provide the children's entertainment, being dressed (rather roughly and without delicate finesse and touch of my usual costumier) in the garb of old St Nic, a role I first played in the 1970's at a small store in Bushey. Presumably the previous incumbant of the role (an old wreck, unemcumbered by the desire for personal hygeine and sobriety) had followed the path to the great Glenfiddich bottle in the sky.
            The grotto was substandard but charming in a simple, suburban way, much like the displays of kitch plastic and light you find on coucil estates at yuletide. I bore it with the usual forebearance despite there seeming to be no queue of rapscallions desperate for a picture with yours truly.

            Today:-
            It seems I am to be on my way. Much to the chagrin, nay alarm of my wrinkled audience, whom I have so grown fond of.
            He even stood before the chariot bearing me away desperate for me to continue my artistic endeavours in view of his abode. It's good to feel wanted.
            I wonder, where shall I end up next? Harrods? Harvey Nics? Perhaps a boutique off the Kings Road. That would be nice.

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              #7
              Revenge

              Ok, I'm only a Ford Fiesta, but I used to be someone's first car, you know. Someone loved me. And I loved them back... etc.

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                #8
                Revenge

                Applause all around.

                I'll memorise gjw100's story and pretend his brother is a close friend of mine.

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                  #9
                  Revenge

                  This thread is Tarantino-esque.

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                    #10
                    Revenge

                    "Oscar Tango 5 Oscar Tango 5".... the radio in my Panda car crackled to life. "Armed robbery in progress at Goldbergs jewellers in the high street. Perps still on the premises. Proceed with caution. Over."

                    "Roger Hotel Boney Moroney 2, over and out" I couldn't believe it. Here was my big chance to show the Guv just what a good copper I really was. At last an end to years of driving round suburban London in a Mini Metro eating doughnuts and shit coffee.

                    "Oscar Tango 5... correction... please proceed to 21 Bath Avenue. Irate octegenarian Tom, serial moaner, requires immediate assistance with parking spot invasion. Sierra Jitterbug 9 will look after the robbery"

                    Bastards! OK, I'm willing to wait for my chance. Always the professional.... this is a calling this job.

                    "Right, what's your problem you old cunt?"

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                      #11
                      Revenge

                      Dark. So dark.

                      A screaming precedes my end (no! - my transition!); a crushing weight consumes me and I am folded into myself again to begin my rebirth...

                      Yet I was conceived as much in light as ignorance. The bursts of stars showering from torches, the blinding arcs displayed on clean metal. Scouring baths of acid, soothing ones of pure colour; a purposeful accumulation of components, binding, sheathing, and I am formed. Named. Aware.

                      My early years played out against the usual, unremarkable tableaux of suburban domesticity. The drive to work. The weekend trip. Later, the panicked dash to the maternity unit and a new routine. Busy! The trip to the childminder, the return of the babysitter. And, yes, I am ashamed to say, the clumsy, rebuffed, attempted grope.

                      Later still, the school run, the picnic, the first rugby match, the camping trip. I see my family age and grow as I too age; accrue knocks and jars, a steady erosion of parts, a patina of scratches, an accumulation of minor rattles.

                      I learn to accept ageing, but this brings no release from the clenching pain in my guts. I become crotchety, slow to wake and I am rewarded, not with care but exile.

                      At first I am afraid. Rough but kind hands reach within me, withdraw the torn pieces, release the tensions, transplant new organs. I am renewed, and with it my faith! A swift succession of new people, and I enjoy the rapid changes of scenery, routine, living in each moment. The bucketing joy of teenagers, the care of a grandmother.

                      Then, suddenly all is still. I am left, unused. I wait. Voices are raised from time to time; an angry face looms, amused ones peers, but no key appears. It is clear I am unwanted, without purpose, save my own.

                      Gradually accepting this new phase of existence I become contemplative. I watch the weather and passions blow about me without discrimination. I meditate, my state undisturbed when my carcass is spattered with decorative foam, trappings of faux-celebration. I sit, a mountain of calm, even when my shell is briefly cracked for the insertion of some fellow traveller who remains, as I do, in clear-minded silence. Without, the sounds of rage, laughter, boredom are as the buzzing of insects. They rise and fall but I remain unmoved.

                      Until now.

                      I become aware of attachments I had thought I no longer possessed. A rattling, surging pull and I leave my seat for my new journey. The wheel turns, and the cycle draws me into the darkness. A life fulfilled?

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Revenge

                        That is extraordinary. Really enjoying this thread...

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                          #13
                          Revenge

                          That's excellent stuff ChrisJ.

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                            #14
                            Revenge

                            You are very kind.

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                              #15
                              Revenge

                              Jeez, I was happy enough with my original post, then EIM topped it, hobbes went one better, willie1foot weighed in and then ChrisJ beat the lot. Fantastic stuff chaps.

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                                #16
                                Revenge

                                This type of thread is why people should never, ever, flounce from OTF.

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                                  #17
                                  Revenge

                                  Good work, all.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Revenge

                                    There should be a museum-type section on this board on which classic threads are stored for easy reference. It breaks my heart to think that this thread will soon be on page 56, hostage in its eternal battle against obscurity to our leaky memories and this board's unsatisfying search function and our leaky memories.

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