'Well personally I think it went rather well?' said Uncle Lucien.
Freddy explained that he did not know what his uncle was talking about.
'Mr McGregor's funeral,' Lucien went on. 'Marvellous resplendent affair!'
'You are talking rubbish! It was just an average funeral,' said Freddy miserably. 'We handled it like we were meant too, like professionals. It was business.'
'But don't you still feel that it was all a rather cozy affair?'
'In what way was any of it cozy? People were crying. People were upset. I still don't understand your angle?'
'What I mean is nothing real bad went wrong,' Lucien explained. 'I mean men with guns didn't turn up. There wasn't a shoot-out. I mean that could have happened. It was Mr McGregor after all, old war hero, one of the Kings, enemies with the Irish, friends with the Kings. New York turned up as well. That fellow who leads them had the temerity to start talking about how good he was at playing pool? I thought to myself "How dreadfully selfish - talking about your hobbies during a funeral!" What kind of a man does such a thing?'
'That is L.A Thinns. That is just how he talks in general, no matter the occasion. I was there one evening when we were all locked in a nasty confrontation with the gangs, facing death itself, and all Thinns could do was compare the situation to a game of pool. He is obsessed. We just have to go along with it.'
'But still I say, how rude, obsessed or not. Obsessions are the possessions of the obsessed, and the obsessed deserve to be oppressed even by an atom of reserve, to help preserve the peace that all funerals deserve. I know McGregor was an old sot who talked about the war all of the time, I know it is impressive to be a freedom fighter at the age of six, but still he did go on, no wonder that his pub was so drafty and empty of cheer, nobody wanted to drink his beer, or go anywhere near a man who waffles O how so drear! I couldn't stand standing in the place. Did he ever tell you that story when he stabbed a German soldier for trying to steal his grandfathers beer?'
'O yes! I have heard all of the stories,' Freddy replied drearily, and then he added, just as drearily, 'And I will not be hearing them ever again!'
'You sound sad about it?
'Because I am sad about it. McGregor was a friend,' said Freddy. 'He looked after me when I was down! When I was truly down he was there for me. I was out in the streets, homeless as a streetwise fox. I didn't even have a box, to cover my head against the dreaded roof of the night. I was on the cobbles all cold, miserable and not even that old, but I felt like my grandfather did when he moaned about the damp sleeping in his limbs! It is a hard thing, some might even say a strange thing, to find a good friend these days Lucien. Friends are a rare commodity, as rare as daisies in a desert. There is no one left to trust. My mother and my father threw me out. My business partners turned their backs on me...'
'Isn't that because you stole money from them for that printer business that failed?' said Uncle Lucien unhelpfully.
'I did not steal the money! Those people invested in the business on their own free will!'
'Whatever you say, Freddy. Carry on with your sad story. There is enough room able to stable in my heavy and depressed heart the wearies of another upstart. Finish your story good man.'
'Mr McGregor was a good friend indeed and I want have anyone speak bad about him,' Freddy continued in his depressed voice. 'Very good man indeed I say indeed a very fine man indeed. He put a roof over my head. Gave me something to eat. It is the least a human being can do to another human being, but finding the least these days in the streets is usually the last thing you will find.'
'How did you end up homeless again?' said Uncle Lucien wistfully. It was beginning to sound like to Freddy that his uncle was enjoying hearing about his suffering.
'It was after my wife, Bolly, threw me out of the flat!'
'Ah yes! Precious Bolly. What a fine and fair lady. Heard from her lately?'
'She refuses to talk to me,' Freddy answered drearily. 'I tried knocking on her door the other day and she just slapped me round the face. I saw her in the streets but a mere week ago and I said hello, and she spat at my feet. I still love her, you know? But she still talks to me like I am some kind of an old dog with an affliction.'
'Didn't she used to attack you?'
'O yes! Regularly. Whenever she was drunk boy did I ever know it! She used to get that glove of hers with claws on it. She used to cut me threw the skin, used to terrify me whenever she had a drink. Gin was her muse, she used to neck bottles of it like an old sailor in the war days. She would have fitted in quite well with the sailors from the old days, but then these days, the precious year 2025, anyone can be a sailor even me I imagine?'
'Most of the old sailors didn't have a choice but to be sailors,' Lucian replied grimly. 'That was what all that press-ganging business was all about. The government would grab all of those urchins off of the street and put them to sea, to drown somewhere in the deep depths - to be kidnapped by pirates, or be grabbed and strung up from the mast by the Spanish or by the French. Sad business being a sailor of the seas. I am glad I never got involved with anything like that. But that was always my skill, not getting involved. For so long as I have been alive I have never gotten involved with a single thing, and I think that is a rather fine thing, something that needs to be drunk in after a little thinking. What say you?'
'Not yet. Maybe in a minute,' said Freddy wearily and drearily. 'No amount of alcohol can heal my wounds. My wounds are of the spiritual kind. I just can't stop thinking about my beloved and dear Bolly. I would do anything to see her again. I need to get my family back! I cannot live like this on my own all of the time. Do you know what she did to me the last time I talked to her? She beat me, smashed an empty gin bottle over my crown, beat me down, and then slashed me with the claw...'
'Ah! The fairer sex!' said Lucien. 'You can't live with them and you can't live without them. Not that I am speaking from personal experience, of course. I have spent my whole life alone and I am proud of it. I have no idea what it is like living with a woman. But I do know what it is like living with spiders. And these days ants as well!'
'Ants? What are you talking about now?'
'Well there is a whole massive gang of them brooding and scurrying and breeding in the corner of the shed where I live. I like having them there! Gives me a sense of power I never thought I would ever have...'
'I don't know what you are talking about. Power? I might regret asking this but can you explain what you mean by having power over ants?'
Uncle Lucien cleared his throat and said this:
'Every ant colony is a little nation of bodies living and working for its mighty queen. They live in my home at my leisure. I have a tin of oil in the corner, all I need to do is add a tiny drop of that into their nest that and a tiny whisper of a flame and up goes the whole colony! Ants no more! That is power Mr Freddy! Those ants maintain a vast and bustling empire in and under the cracks of my wall, but one wistful decision on my behalf, one moment of gloom with me in a bad mood and I could wipe them out forever! I have the power and the wrath of a God over those ants. And I love the feeling that gives me!'
'Yes. I can tell you live alone, Uncle Lucien,' Freddy replied. 'Madness and loneliness are well known bedfellows.
It was time to have a drink.
'It is the G-Juice for me these days,' said Lucien. 'It used to be whiskey but I am done with that stuff. No more hangovers for this old man. Our friendship with the Kings has proven to be quite profitable in more ways than one - not just the money but drinks in a glass! With that family in our pocket we have G-Juice on tap forevermore!'
'The Kings have been good to us, I will agree with you on that. But they are certainly not in our pocket. No sir. It is the other way round I assure you! We need to work hard and keep our heads down. They are a very dangerous family! The moment they find that out they no longer need us then things will get bad. And then it will be back to our grave robbing ways and they are days I do not want to ever see again!'
'We need to keep on keeping them sweet...'
'Now that is easier said than done, Uncle. Right now I am taking what I can get and going along with things. Right now I don't have a plan. I am just cruising... cruising!'
'I have a plan!'
'Of course! Whenever do ever never have one? You might as well tell me what it is then. You are going to tell me anyway of course...'
'As long as people are dying they are going to need burying. And we are tucked up here in this nice little business burying a certain breed of dead people... We are burying victims of a war! So all that we need to do is keep the war going, and going, and going, till at least one of us dies or is finally arrested. We do everything that we can to keep the fighting going in the streets!'
'You are serious about this, aren't you? Your morality was always as bent as a dying and broken tree rotting in a stream! But now I am beginning to think you might actually be evil after all!'
'Shades of grey!'
'Rubbish! There is evil in the world. I know. I have seen it before and I am seeing it now! I am hearing it talk out of your lips!'
'Not evil. Survival, Freddy. We are survivors surviving. Survivors need to survive, and so we take on any opportunity that might arrive, and we have arrived upon quite the opportunity, Freddy, one that we might not get again. A treasure has fallen in our lap! We must treasure it with every beat our hearts have left to give us.'
Just then, and totally without any forewarning, Mr Vincent King came rolling into the building on his wheelchair. He did not say hello. But he did say this:
'There is a name of a man written on this card,' and he planted the card down on the table. 'He is currently resting in a grave of yours. Dig him up and bring him back to our place. We need the body this afternoon.'
Freddy managed to find the guts to ask what the hurry was all about.
'We are getting a visit from Dr Vistogg. A friend of the family,' said Vincent. 'He is helping me with my problem.'
'Ah! I am assuming you are referring to your anger issues, right?'
'NO! Idiot! If you haven't already noticed, cloth ears, I am dead from the waist down! And one day too soon I might be dead from the waist up as well! I was born with Homo Rotis. He is working on a cure, but he needs samples taken from bodies of men who have already died from the disease. This man named on this paper died from the disease. And I need him to help me to not die from the disease. So get to work! Snap snap chaps!'
Freddy and his uncle were standing next to the grave, shovels at hand and they were both feeling very awkward.
'So we are supposed to dig this body up in broad daylight and get away with it?' said Freddy.
'We have to do it! Survival, Freddy, remember survival! Survival is the key!'
Freddy let out a curse or two and then got to work digging.
They dug and dug until they finally revealed the coffin under the soggy clay and then they cracked the thing open. O my! No words can describe the horrible stench that flowed out!
But they had to do what they had to do.
'How are we supposed to get this putrefying thing to the King's place?' said Freddy.
He asked his uncle if he had any ideas.
'We can do it,' said Uncle Lucien. 'Here look. I have got some cotton wool sticking out of my coat. I will stick this wool in his cheeks like this and there look! He looks a little bit more alive now!'
'No! Uncle! He still looks as a dead as a man who has been dead and buried for little less than a week! We cannot carry this thing about in this state!'
'We have no choice in the matter Freddy,' said Uncle Lucien. 'Now you grab one shoulder and I the other. If anyone asks we just tell them that we are taking our poor grandfather to hospital for a check up!'
So off the two men went, propping up the dead corpse between them, walking quickly through the streets for all to see.
Luckily most people had the common sense to just ignore or walk away form the two corpse bearing madmen, but there was one stranger who approached, an elderly gentleman who thought that he recognised the corpse they were carrying.
'That looks like my old mate Billy,' said the gentleman.
'Everyone says that,' said Lucien. 'This is Ted, my grandfather. We are taking him right now to the hospital. He has gotten himself a cold, bless him! He needs taking care of right away so if you don't mind...'
'He needs a box in he ground that is what he needs,' said the gentleman, adjusting his coat he stalked away with nothing else to say.
Moments later Freddy and Uncle Lucien were finally within reach of the King place.
The garage opened up to let them in.
'Excellent work!' said Vincent rolling up to them on his wheelchair. 'You two lads are doing good work right now! Now let me introduce you to my Doctor, Mr Vistogg.'
Now Mr Vistogg was a character indeed! Mr Vistogg looked less like a doctor and more like a man wearing a mad scientist costume made specifically to fit in with a Halloween party for fun. The beard, the crazy hair, it all looked perfectly fake. And he was wearing a white laboratory coat that looked like some cheap-knock off purchased second-hand from a memorabilia store. 'I will take the body now and then I will begin the work,' he said. 'With enough samples I may be able to find a cure...'
Freddy heard this and thought:
O gosh? O golly gosh! He doesn't mean to suggest that we might have to do this all over again with another hapless corpse? O please anything but that!
'Good work lads!' said Mr Vincent. 'We will be talking like this again. Keep your shovels ready lads!'
Freddy and Uncle Lucien returned home feeling equal amounts of pure unadulterated unfiltered depression.
What had they gotten themselves into?
(Remember! All spelling errors and grammatical mistakes are intentional - the author 😆)
There is a prequel to this story. Check the link below if you would like to read it:
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