Toecap and the Fiddler

Copyright © 2016 by Sid Wright.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/07/2016

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Contents

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Just a quick word before we start. Please do not be fooled by the childish front cover. This book is for adults. Your sproggletts will not thank you for making this purchase, and you, the loving parents, will face many awkward conversations if you allow them to read on.

I think you’ll agree that you’ve had fair warning.

At the time of starting this book I’m close to turning twenty-five. For some reason, twenty-five seems a good age to take stock. Twenty-five is a good number, a solid, sturdy number. I have been led to believe that wild turkeys can run at up to twenty-five miles per hour. How about that? Did you know that the number twenty five is the sum of the first five odd numbers? Incredible. It’s fair to say I’ve squandered a few years acquiring useless information, but twenty-five does feel like a good number and therefore a good age. Long gone are the shackles of childhood; I’m firmly an adult. I can now hire a car abroad or become a volunteer for the United Nations. I can even back a lorry driver into a space without him telling me to get my dad or simply to piss off.

I never worry about getting older. I’ve become more comfortable within myself the older I get, which is how it’s supposed to work. Plus, I’m bald so I actually enjoy getting older as I’m slowly reaching the age I look. I’m a bald man with a beard, so I look considerably older than I actually am. I’m allowed to grow a beard because I’m single, so it’s well within my rights to let myself go a bit. I enjoy being single. I’ve come to learn that being alone doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I don’t want to be alone forever and there was a time when I thought I’d found someone I wanted to grow old with, but it wasn’t to be. I don’t want to die single but, certainly for now, I embrace it like a hot water bottle in winter. During the turbulent teenage years love is something you had to go out and get, quickly, along with everyone else, so you weren’t deemed odd. Adults are more cautious by nature and my door is still open to love, it’s just that now I ask it to take its shoes off before it comes in. Few get to twenty-five without learning exactly how their heart fits together.

Anyway, I’m proud of the goals I’ve achieved. I’m an artist and for me art is all about the progress. Progress, not perfection. Some people might say I’m not progressing with my writing but I’d have to call them liars. This is my sixth attempt at some form of book and I’ve come to learn exactly when my readers are going to call me up and say, ‘That is too offensive’.

That’s progress.

I don’t know what the future holds, but that’s what’s infinitely exciting about the future. All I can say is that I’ve made it through the first twenty-five years and I’m still standing. I’ve lost friends, people I’ve loved and - most importantly - I’ve lost my hair, but I’m still kicking about. It’s good to take stock now and then. I make enough money to get by, I’m single, I’m bald, I don’t drive and I’m not yet on the property ladder but…

… Christ, what a dreadful exercise. I feel awful now.

Let’s get on with it.

1

One man can make a difference - Daredevil

A team of heavily armed officers progress through an old, abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, deep inside the gloomy lands of northwest England. Covered in tactical gear from head to toe, they glide over worn-out floorboards that creak under forgotten weight and years of accumulated dust stirs from its slumber and wafts gently up into the rooms they pass through swiftly. Doors lead to more doors, passing covered table after covered table like a scene from Scooby-Doo as they pad out an episode (or an opening paragraph in a book). Flower pot, lamp, chair. Flower pot, lamp, chair. On and on, one after the other, breach and clear, breach and clear. This is an experienced group of hardened professionals. The beams emanating from small lights perched atop semi-automatic machine guns snap from side to side, guiding the team through an unknown location with the perfected familiarity of routine. Hands do all the talking in short swift orders, clear and precise. Power to the building has been cut and the only noise that can be heard is the night rain sulking outside. It taps against the windows like small children trying to get their parents’ attention. Of course it’s raining. This is England.

* * *

There are things in life that you can’t trust. Things like junkies, politicians and, occasionally, the odd fart. But friends should trust friends, patients should trust doctors and employers should be able to trust their employees. I was here tonight because of the man who worked for me. I was in the middle of nowhere, hunted by the very people I had sworn to protect. I was in over my head, endless forward rolls in a sports day for a school I didn’t attend. I sat frozen with fear, a dead body in my lap for company. I was too late to save her, way too late. I had been outplayed by The Fiddler.

The glazed-over eyes of the innocent female stared up at me with disappointment. I held her in my arms as I knelt on the floor. I was getting cramp. The faint, fast-paced thudding of footsteps bounced through the old hallways and I glanced around the room upon hearing them, trying to pinpoint their direction. Close to where I knelt was a chair, recently in use. The room was thick with betrayal. A headache was retrieving its key at reception, having booked a long weekend in the hotel of my mind. When you die you can only hope it’s quick, but I know The Fiddler would have dragged out this lady’s suffering. She would have been in this room for hours, poison that shut her down one cell at a time and I couldn’t save her. Anger brewed within and to be honest I could have cried - you know when you just get one of those days? You wake up and everything is downhill (or uphill, depending how you look at things). I lay her on the floor gingerly and stood up; the cramp was too much.

Think, Toecap, think.

The SWAT team was getting closer and any moment the wooden double doors to this room would burst open and it would be game over. I couldn’t let the Fiddler win like this. The double doors were the only way in. Behind me the rain vied for my attention by slapping against the window panes. The windows would take me outside, but I was on the first floor. I unlocked the hatch on the nearest window to me and opened it as far as it would go. Refreshing cold air rushed in. It’s good, clean air up north, that and damned fine drinking water. In fact, I’ve yet to taste better, and perhaps I’m biased because I’m from here but it really is good. I imbibed the night air and my mind began to refocus. My headache had checked out early, unhappy with the service. It was pitch black outside and looking down proved useless; I could barely see a thing but I could hear more police arriving and setting up a perimeter. I had to act fast. I was gearing myself up to move outside and carefully scale down the building to avoid giving away my position, but I’d left it too late. The SWAT team had reached me.

A team effort brought the door off its hinges and armed soldiers flooded the room, breach and clear. The lady on the floor was approached. Small lights scanned over her and found the name Toby Malloy in permanent marker on her head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. That’s me, by the way. I’m Toby.

Luckily for me, my plan of slipping on the wet window ledge and plummeting to the ground in a big ball of flailing limbs had worked brilliantly. With minor injuries and leaving a distinctly distorted-looking bush quivering in surprise behind me, I limped away from the scene and got as far away from there as possible.

2

Previously

Molly Cooper was in a relationship when I came to know of her. She was in my year at school and, unknown to her, we shared some classes. But she was dating a boy called Jacob Pike, forcing me to love her from afar. Come to think of it, the last few people I’ve found attractive turned out to be in relationships. I’ll be a bit annoyed if that’s my type - I like films, nights in and home-wrecking.

I’ve never liked anyone the way I did Molly; it was all brand new with her. Molly and I were Facebook friends, which meant I could legally stalk her, an activity that occupied a lot of free time. Time that should have been spent doing homework, or masturbating (I’m a teenager - it’s important). Molly was great. I had picked out names for our children and yet we’ve never held a conversation. I kept that to myself for obvious reasons. I kept lots of things to myself. Things like my inexplicable crush on Jo Brand or, to be more precise, my love of her voice. She talks how I imagine a drunk bee to sound and it does something strange to me. That seems a minor secret compared to other thoughts I hide from society.

I have a gift.

A talent.

A power.

I’m a superhero.

Although, to be fair, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, for I have not used my power for anything as yet, primarily because I have no control over it. It’s a violent mixture somewhere between the mists of rage and strength. I’ve always felt its presence, lurking under the surface, slowly rising to boiling point. It’s only since I became a teenager that it’s become worse. The shift in hormonal balance and the chemical warfare that currently plagues my body has exacerbated my idiosyncratic behaviour. My power isn’t as cool as having my bones coated in Adamantium like Wolverine, or even having been exposed to a mental amount of gamma radiation, like the Hulk. It’s nothing that epic.

It’s my toes.

It’s a problem because it’s triggered when I least expect it. Whenever I stub my toe I’m consumed by rage and for a short window of time I have god-like strength. I become a different person, so full of anger that I have no control over my immediate responses. It’s extremely unpredictable and nothing short of a nuisance. It’s a shame really because, apart from my curse, my life was pretty good, or as good as it can be for a teenager. It would be a lot better once Jacob Pike sods off.

I live in the county of Cumbria. A country lad born and bred (strong in the arm, thick in the head). If the shoe was on the other foot and I was a villain (I’m not saying I’m a hero yet), I’d still want to live in the country. Heroes like Spiderman and Batman would be almost useless in the country, for we have no tall buildings out here. I don’t want to be the bad guy though; it’s too much hard work. I want to harness my power and put it to good use and although I don’t have Bruce Wayne’s wealth or Peter Parker’s genetic modifications, I do have the advantage over them of being real.

I live with my mum and dad, who are happily married. My mum is called Jenny and she is tall for a woman, with dark brown hair that sits neatly on her shoulders. I have been told I have her eyes. She is kind and loving. Then there is my dad. He was my first hero. I call him Sam, the same way everyone else does. He’s also tall and built like a brick shit-house. He’s the sort of man you feel safe around. He has hair the same colour as my mum and he’s always halfway towards having a beard. When I was a baby he would pick me up in one hand and hold me above his head.

My mum is an artist and spends most of her time at home working on commissions. She paints landscapes, as most artists do in the northwest, surrounded by the beauty that is the Lake District. She’s talented and gives classes to enthusiastic retired folk filling in their remaining years. It had taken a long time for her art to become her only source of income, but nothing worth having comes easy. Art is a wonderful lifestyle but a hard living. I used to watch her paint when I was a child. When she was finished she would attack me with her brushes and I’d come out of her studio looking like I’d been murdering Smurfs.

My dad, on the other hand, is a dry stone waller. Plenty of work in the county for him. His massive hands are perfect for his job and the sheer size of him allows him to endure most weather. Dry stone walling is the art of construction without mortar. Structural integrity arises from compressional forces and the interlocking of the stones. Considerable skill is required in this line of work. With the introduction of modern wire fencing, fields can be fenced with less expense and time, and so wallers are few in number. But with the increasing recognition of the value of heritage, they remain in demand, which means a roof remains above us.

I grew up wanting to be just like my dad. He made everything exciting. He used to tell me bedtime stories of how his walls kept out terrible, evil beasts such as the Vikings, dinosaurs and the Scottish. He would work on walls thirty feet high to ensure no harm would come to us. Armies a thousand men strong would turn up at our borders and not a single one would ever get over his walls.

So you can understand how upset I was when I learned the truth about his employment. The disappointment I felt when, in reality a thousand strong army was a rogue sheep that had wandered too far. Parents lie. It’s part of the job. They bend the truth to protect us and to keep us excited. The world is wondrous when you’re young, everything is shiny and new. We hear incredible stories of incredible people who in time whittle down to being nothing more than unpaid babysitters, people like Jesus, working seasonal shifts. Jesus had a belter of a story. The great comedian Jimmy Carr once said, ‘If we’re all God’s children, what’s so special about Jesus?’ Well, let me educate you…

A very long time ago there was a man. A Jewish man by the name of Jesus. Like all men, Jesus died. But Jesus came back to life, so technically he was a zombie. He is the only recorded zombie in the history of man, with a very poor kill count of zero. Don’t have a go though, because Jesus was a humble carpenter whose talents lay elsewhere and which didn’t necessarily include eating the living. Sorry, I should also add that Jesus could live forever. But (there’s always a but) he could only live forever if you, by the amazing force of telepathy, accept him as your master. Then, and only then, can he rid your mortal soul of evil forces that are only present in humanity because a woman, made from a man’s rib, was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

Pretty good, right? On the face of it, putting everything else aside (primarily logic and sense), that could make a great summer blockbuster. It needs bringing up to date a little, but we could get a professional to do that. On a serious note, the Bible has sold well enough that the author never needed to write another book, which is a missed opportunity because sequels and prequels are really in at the moment. AC/DC could provide the soundtrack to the film and the opening sequence could be Jesus riding down from heaven on his Yamaha. What an intro that would be. Or it could even work as a TV show, as a sitcom with a live studio audience, perhaps? It could be the right platform for an up and coming actor, a breakthrough role. Fair play though. Quit while you’re ahead; I get it.

I can’t remember what I was talking about. Ah yes, my parents. They had known each other for some time before they had ‘hooked up’. A friend of a friend type thing. My dad was an old romantic and persistently asked her out, chipping away at her until she caved in. As far as I know, they still have a healthy relationship. They laugh a lot and make the effort each week to go out somewhere new, be it a highly recommended restaurant or a late night showing of a new film. I looked forward to the day they saw my name on the credits of special effects epic To Hell and Back, a two-hour thrill ride of Jesus H Christ breaking necks and cashing cheques.

I could only hope that one day I’d find the same love my parents had. My parents knew nothing of my secret. Incidents would come and go that I couldn’t explain but I blamed it on being a teenager; so maybe I could explain it. I am their only child and so I guess they accepted it as some form of normality - hormones an ever-present scapegoat. The incidents were pretty rare anyway and I paid for any damages out of my own pocket.

I worked weekends as a waiter at our local watering hole. I lived at 15 St Helen’s Street in the town of Cockermouth and I worked at The Old Grey Goat Inn, a mere ten feet from my front door, which made pulling sickies really hard work, perhaps harder work than working hard. The money was ok but in a job like this it’s the tips that make it worthwhile. It was my first taste of independence and it made me feel grown up, a useful part of the world order. When the apocalypse finally comes I like to think that while NASA picks out the best doctors and scientists to send into space, searching for a planet to rebuild our race on, I’ll also be given a seat because of my impeccable customer service and passion for delivering the best possible eating-out experience. They will need someone to set the table on the spaceship and while I don’t know how many waiters there are in the world, I do feel confident about my abilities.

We come back to Molly because it was while working here that I first met her properly. Molly lived a short walk away, somewhere on Kirkgate. She had started not long after I had and we learned the ropes together. She vaguely knew of me from school, whereas I knew exactly which famous landmarks she had visited while holidaying in Greece last year, thanks to the wonders of social networking. I became her friend and she became almost everything I wanted from my time here on earth. It wasn’t long before she found she could confide in me and after the basics of discovering similar tastes in music, film and her passion for political propaganda techniques in South East Asia (I winged that one, let me tell you - a masterclass in bullshit), she eventually spoke to me about Jacob. Most things I’d known before she told me, but I entertained her relationship rather than tell her how I spent my evenings going through her various internet profiles. I’m not a proper stalker and if anything came up in court let’s just remember that I was already an employee here before she started. Stick to the facts, your honour. We grew close but I was forever aware of the ‘friend zone’. Men don’t have a friend zone. We can attach ourselves to a woman, grow close in friendship and laugh our way around all the stalls and attractions of a busy, joint social life but regardless of time spent and promised, if a woman offers it up we’re the first to say ‘get your knickers off’ with no thought to the aftermath. With women though, unless you act quickly, before you know it she’s burdening you with all her problems and you haven’t so much as seen her elbows. Molly would ask me about other girls and I’d reply nonchalantly or I’d throw a curveball into the conversation. I’d pretty much do anything so I didn’t have to tell her that my nob was like an unused piano - free to a good home.

3

You can’t live in fear – Ghost Rider

Randall White is my best friend. He is an idiot, but he is my idiot. In primary school we were given the task of growing a sunflower. I think the idea was to get us to understand how flowers grow but also to teach us that things take time and care, and how to be responsible for something other than ourselves. Randall was my sunflower. I had helped him grow, I watered him each day and I’d worry if he didn’t get enough sunlight. We knew everything about each other. I hadn’t told him about my power though. It might be safe to divulge information like this to a certified moron as no one would believe him, but I thought it best to keep it to myself just in case. It’s not really that exciting anyway. If I could fly or turn invisible we might discuss it and put it to some sort of use but as it stands, my toes just aren’t that interesting. It’s typical that I get a power but it’s something as lame as sensitive feet - that’s just my kind of luck. I’m surprised I got off that lightly. Knowing me, I’m amazed I wasn’t bitten by a butterfly and transformed into one, only to find out my natural enemy is a closed window. I’d look pretty though.

Not many people like feet, I’m not sure why. Some time ago, I read about a watchmaker who lost his hands (somehow), so he learned to fix watches with his feet. Isn’t that incredible? His will and determination must have been outstanding, because if it was me I’d just hire an assistant. I don’t think I could be bothered with all the hassle (I’m not shaping up to be a hero anytime soon). I hoped my apathy was due to being a teenager and that one day I’d snap out of it. I’d grow out of it even sooner if I could be bothered.

Randall and I had travelled through time together, a double act much like Mitchell and Webb,