Doze Snooze Sleep

So here it was again, that time of year, I couldn’t believe how fast it had come around, well, I mean I could believe how fast it had come around as I had learnt about it at school – I had been top of the class for triple (not double) science – but, what I meant was that I couldn’t believe how fast it had come around in a figurative sense, not an actual sense. If I had meant it in a literal sense then it would have been 100% more likely that I was typing this on a council estate, alternating every sentence with a quick rant at the benefits cheat on Jeremy Kyle, followed by a rant at the Postman for not having delivered my own benefits cheque. Oh, and if you are on benefits and you’re now moaning inwardly that ‘I don’t get benefits via cheque, I get it bank transferred by direct debit’, well then it just proves that I’m not typing this from a council estate, and that I don’t have an innate understanding of the benefits system, because I’m not poor. Unlike you. No, not you sir, I meant the other reader, the one reading this in his underwear, with half a can of Fosters resting in his lap, like a stubby blue erection, at 11:13am. Get a job you.

Can I start now? Thanks.

So here it was again, that time of year, I couldn’t believe how fast it had come around, but it had (and I definitely understood how it had come around), it was Valentine’s Day. That is, Saint Valentine’s Day if you want to use the full name, Mister Valentine’s Day if you know it through a friend, or Cupid’s Cock-Fest if you know it personally. Well, it was here and as usual I was confronted by two problems:

1)   A girl I didn’t know was fast asleep in my bed, most likely tired out from all the sex, rather than the three-hour sexual health presentation that followed (a presentation, that I have been reliably informed, is as arousing as it is informative).

2)   I had no Valentine’s Day present for her. Not a card, nor flowers, not chocolate, nor blowers. Not a fingtungle, bintongle, glizzard, or yowers! Not even a fucking Dr. Seuss book. Nothing.

*

When you’re as romantic as I am – and I assure you you’re not – that’s pretty hard to take. Does it matter that I don’t know her name? Does it matter that I’d known her less than 24 hours? Does it matter that she snored loudly, or her hair was too frizzy, or her breath stank worse than a skunk with a yeast infection? No, it didn’t, because it was Valentine’s Day, and every lady deserves to be pampered on Cupid’s Cock-Fest day (and no, pampering is not a synonym for fucking, the pampering leads to the fucking, duh). I couldn’t let her wake up and realize I had nothing ready for her, on this day of all days. I was too damned romantic not to pamper her. So, I did the only thing my rational and romantic mind could think up. I killed her in the most romantic way I could think: I turned on the theme music from the film ‘Ghost’ (film 8/10, soundtrack 9/10), and shoved a load of clay down her throat, and by clay I mean my penis. I had gorged her to death through fellatio, accompanied by Unchained Melody, and if that isn’t a romantic death, then I bloody well don’t know what is.

That’s when the guilt set in. No, not a feeling of guilt over the fellaticide I had committed, but an overwhelming sense of guilt that I had robbed this poor, and still nameless, girl of her Valentine’s Day. Her one day of pampering for pampering’s sake had been stolen callously, and erotically, from her. I felt awful. I was too romantic not to give this girl the perfect Valentine’s Day – and that’s exactly what I decided, then and there, to do. I would give this nameless, lifeless girl the greatest Valentine’s Day of her life, sort of. I would buy her chocolates and flowers; I would get her a card and treat her to a day out, and even feed her breakfast in bed, all the while pretending to overlook the intrinsic argument against her enjoying herself, aka she was dead. Yes, I would go out of my way to overlook the fact that this girl - dare I say woman? – was a cadaver, and would show her the time of her life.

With the agility of a cat I rifled through her purse and found her College ID, the photo looked exactly like my nameless girl, but it implied she was only 15 years old. Now I can spot a fake ID a mile off (I’ve got loads of them for various business ventures, mainly importing, exporting, and distributing. You may have met my alter ego: Willian del Guilhermo)

and she had plenty of fakes – Provisional Driving Licence, Passport, Birth Certificate, she had all the big hitters, and all of them were fakes, definitely fakes. She had even managed to somehow fake the special Passport computer chip and the holographic cover of the Driving Licence, two things I had thought were impossible.

The discoveries I had made may have led a cynical person to assume I had picked up an underage girl at a bar and then wantonly murdered her through vicious oral love making. I pity you, you cynical bastard. Myself however? I’m a glass half full kinda guy, as in, if the glass is half full I’ll finish it off immediately and order a Tequila Slammer as a chaser. And that’s exactly what I did. After necking the bottle of tequila that I surreptitiously keep under my bed, in case of emergency parties breaking out, my mind was awash with a new sense of optimism, and how could it not be? After all, here was a gorgeous – admittedly dead – but nevertheless gorgeous – possibly underage – but nonetheless gorgeous girl in my bed, adorably cuddled up to the empty tequila bottle that I had slipped into her bosom. She looked the epitome of serenity.

I decided it was time for breakfast. However, the tequila made cooking breakfast a far more precarious and dangerous activity than it usually is, especially since I was pulling out all the stops to give this girl the best damn Valentine’s Day breakfast of her life. Thankfully, it went off without a hitch: I poured the Corn Flakes into the bowl (only spilling a few), I poured the milk in afterwards (only spilling a bit) and managed to stumble back upstairs (only spilling a little bit more on the way) before presenting it to my Valentine. She didn’t seem as keen on it as I had hoped, and I quickly discovered why: there was nothing left in the bowl at all, I must have spilled more than I thought!

I ran (read: drunkenly bumbled) to the door, slipped on a puddle of milk and fell down the stairs. When I think back to it now, I’m sure that the bumping of my head on the stairs sounded identical to the drumbeat in that White Stripes song, you know the one, that song; God I’m talented. The tequila combined with my newly acquired concussion was a potent mix, a mix that, most likely, was as ill advised as Paul McCartney releasing ‘Ebony & Ivory’ in South Africa during the 80s. My head was swimming (thankfully I’ve got my 50m and 100m badges) as I made my way to the Kitchen, where an ungodly scene greeted me. Whereas I had thought, in a tequila infused stupor, that I had spilled only the tiniest amounts of milk and cornflakes, it actually transpired that the scene that greeted me was one that I can only describe as ‘Ed Sheeran exploding after being pumped, beyond breaking point, full of male cum’ – there was white and orange everywhere, a real Corn Flakes and Milk nightmare. It was a mess. I was a mess, both disorientated and drunk, and the situation was a mess. I didn’t know what to do, so, once again, I did the only thing I could think of. I turned Unchained Melody back on, dragged the girl to my car and told her that I was taking her out for the day; Romantic impulses to the rescue once again.

I had no idea where I was driving, but I knew wherever it was had to be romantic. One place immediately leapt to mind: The Fun Fair, but more specifically the Tunnel of Love. What is more romantic than a Tunnel of Love? Not only is it a secret, romantic retreat in which any number of sex acts may be exchanged between two willing partners, but it is also a euphemism for a woman’s vagina, or if you prefer the Latin, her ‘Cunt’. The trip was fairly uneventful as it turned out my Valentine wasn’t the overly chatty type, preferring to maintain a stoic silence – it was clear that I had ballsed up this morning; I mean I look back now and think to myself ‘Cornflakes’? Why didn’t I crack out my Jordans Country Crisp Flame Raisin Clusters cereal? Everyone has one of these moments in their life, and I guess this was mine, my very own Macbeth moment (to Country Crisp, or not to Country Crisp?), and surely a decision that will haunt me to my dying day, or at least until the end of next week.

Anyhow, needless to say, but I had brought the soundtrack to Ghost with us, and was contentedly humming away to Unchained Melody, when I noticed that my Valentine had now begun to enter rigor mortis – her grip on the Tequila bottle was quite formidable. Somehow, through the haze of tequila and constant pain of my cranial injuries, I realized that maybe my Valentine’s rigor mortis might actually be detrimental to any chance I had of a 100% successful seduction in the Tunnel of Love. If I made the move would it be considered rape? Can you a rape a corpse? Can a corpse consent? Is it not just like making passionate love to the ground, or a giant fabric Art Attack, or a seasonally fruiting tree? Questions beget questions, and I was a man who was now panicking ever so slightly…but in a romantic way - I can guarantee that.

*

In the end I had to do it; it was the only way I could of done it.

My plans for a romantic Tunnel of Love experience had been thwarted by a combination of my fragile, drunken, concussed mind, and my Valentine’s fragile, drunken, deceased body. Now, I may possess levels of agility far beyond a normal human, but even I couldn’t smuggle a corpse into a Fun Fair, on a weekday, during half term, in the summer. It simply cannot be done, and believe me I tried – several times! By my third attempt a hangover had begun to kick in, and, Jesus Christ, I definitely didn’t need that at 11:30 in the morning. The pain was intense, more than enough to knock out any regular man; in fact, I would describe it as being similar to fisting Keira Knightley, but with my head. Agonizing indeed.

My Valentine had begun to get on my nerves: firstly, she hadn’t eaten the ice-cream I had bought her, preferring instead to dribble it all over herself, in what I can only interpret as an act of defiance; and secondly, she was starting to attract flies. I couldn’t be doing with it, romantic spirit or not, she had to go. After about thirty minutes of driving I found a river, probably the most romantic river you’d have ever seen. There were flowers – romantic, singing birds – romantic, and a babbling brook – romantic. As it turned out, I was actually still drunk! The flowers turned out to be weeds, the brook a trickle of dirty water, and the birds, crows. The very same crows that rushed me in a tightly knit formation as I removed my Valentine’s body from the passenger seat; the very same crows that ripped her eyeballs from her sockets, and yes, the very same crows that forced me – FORCED ME – to ditch the body, jump in the car and get the hell out if there.

Looking back, not only can I see that it was my most successful, and romantic, Valentine’s Day ever, but if I squint really hard, and look even further back I can still see the crows jostling for position.

In the words of The Beatles, “it must be love, love, love. It must be…”