Flash Fiction Friday

It's friday, it's five to four, but it's not crackerjack. I'm building up quite a collection of short stories now, so every now and then, I'll post one here.


Highland Games


It was Fatty Alan that came up with the idea. Mind you, every idea was Fatty Alan’s. We were down the Crown, drinking ourselves into oblivion. Between jobs, see, and we were spending enough for the Landlord to finally redecorate. Not that it’d be the same if he did. He always threatened it though, said it was like a sixties fucking shrine. That’s why we liked it. That and the lack of customers. It felt like home there. Somewhere we could relax.

So Fatty Alan starts remembering something. When Al gets going it’s like watching a firework explode, he’s always been the same. The idea’ll start bubbling up from his boots, shaking, twisting him. He struggles to get the words out, gets tongue tied, his whole body shaking. Then, all on a sudden, it just explodes out his mouth. Ranting fast, he was telling us he’d seen this news clip, knew we’d be interested, knew we’d want in.

He’d sky plussed this news clip, so after the pub we goes back to his place. His house still stinks of that lonely male smell, Eau de Bachelor we call it, guess it’s infested the walls by now, nothing’ll ever shift it. Horrible it is, but you gets used to it after a while. He cracks open a bottle of scotch and washes some mold infested cups as we settle down to watch the telly.

I thought it’d be something big, but it’s just some fucking news report on a football club. After the build up he’d given, I was expecting a bullion shipment or something. But no, just some tiny Scottish football club that kept winning games in the cup.

“Don’t you see?” he says. “No we fucking don’t,” we replied. So, he plays it again, just the last twenty seconds of it, mind. Gobby Phil, who’s a clever bastard, said, “Fucking ell. You don’t mean?” Al nods at him, all smug like. But the rest of us, we still ain’t got a pissing clue what’s going on.

He plays it again, just the last ten seconds this time. The reporter on the telly’s banging on about this team and how it’s playing Rangers this Saturday and the away fans have already bought five thousand tickets. He then says, ‘for a population of only two thousand, it’s going to be like a ghost town here Saturday.’

It was then that I twigged. Thick twat Jim didn’t, had to fucking spell it out word by word till he got it, the twat. But, that was it. The entire town watching a football match. That just had come and rob us written all over it, didn’t it?

Randy Gav and his brother stole us two seven tonners from that lorry park off the motorway and we stashed them till Friday night, changed the plates then drove up there, all six of us. Took all fucking night to get there, mind, driving at sixty all the way. It took forever, we passed all these lochs and little roads, barely bigger than tracks they were. Got lost twice, too. Eventually, we parks up near the next town and gets a few hours kip. Gotta be fresh, you gotta be fresh.

Kick off was early, one o’clock, so we hit the town at twelve, reckoning they’d have all gone by then. We drives in, it was like the lone ranger arriving at some fucking Wild West town with tumbleweed. No people on the streets, hardly any cars, just nothing.

We breaks in the first house, gets a nice plasma, stereo, Playstation and computer. In and out in a few minutes, we were. By the tenth house, we’d run out of room. Chucked all the stereos back on the street and stuck to tellys after that. Fuckin hell, by the time we’d finished we could have opened our own Radio Rentals branch.

At three o’clock we left, cursing for not bringing more lorries. We swiped three motors too, twat’s had just left the keys lying round, hadn’t they? I was driving a Discovery full of flat screens, weren’t a brand new one mind, but still worth some dosh, if you know the right man.

Back over them hills and round them lochs was hard work. We was carrying loads of weight, lorries were struggling to pull. We had the two lorries sandwiched by the cars we’d nicked, thought it’d be less obvious that way. Turned out, the lorry at the back was pulling better than the front one, so we was all bunched up.

We comes over the top of this hill, real steep one it was, and there’s a tight bend just after it. Course, this being Scotland, it’d been raining, road was drenched. Randy Gav tried to brake, but the lorry skidded, twisting as it went. Broke through this barrier and come to a stop with one of its rear wheels hanging over the edge.

We skidded to a halt behind. Fatty Phil was driving the other lorry and he crashed into the back of my new Discovery. Carnage it was. But it was then that we saw them.

Loads of coaches and buses all driving up this hill, right in front of us, must have been over fifty of them. All full, rammed full of football fans. We thought about running but it was too late, three of the coaches drove by us before we’d even got out. The coaches that’d passed screeched to a halt, someone on them must have spotted the cars, knew we’d nicked em.

So that’s it, there’s hundreds of em here, surrounding us, slowly moving in and there’s six of us. I don’t like them odds. Really don’t like them odds.