'HOW DID I die? Well, I’d only just retired when the pain started up. Terrible pain. I ended up in hospital. They did tests. It was cancer. They tried chemo, but it was too late.
Then they needed the bed, so I had to leave. I wanted to go back to my place, to my own bed, begged our Jill to let me, but her Brian said I had to go into a home. He explained it all to me: I was riddled with cancer, couldn’t look after myself, needed palliative care, and only had a month or two left at most. I really wished he hadn’t told me all that. Anyway, they shoved me in a home to die, parked the problem and walked away, leaving others to deal with it. So, there I was, stuck in a dingy little room—the dying room. The telly didn’t work, the walls were scuffed and there were stains and crumbs and a needle on the carpet, and that soiled yellow towel over the chair. And all the din. Trolleys with rattling cups and saucers, hoovering all the time, people playing favourite Beatles’ songs to dying relatives, and the bloke next door shouting over and over again: ‘Mam. Please help me, mam.’
Well, it was too much on top of everything else—I hadn’t had much of a life, had a crap job as a school cleaner, no real friends, and my wife left me. I just couldn’t take any more. I lost the will to live, decided I’d be better off dead, wanted to die. So, I just gave up… Near the end they phoned my cow of a sister to tell her I was dying. It took her and him over three hours to get there, from a mile away, and they brought the dog with them. I hated that dog, but there it was in my room, whining and growling. And Brian started complaining about how long I was taking to die, and how he was starving and could do with a pint. So, I let go, slipped away, escaped from my horrible life and all the…But why am I here? And where is this–’
‘I’ll tell you why you’re here, ya wee shite. By your own admission you gave up, you stopped living. In other words, you committed suicide. Which is a mortal sin, contrary to the Fifth Commandment. Your body is not your own, it belongs to him—Big G. The Catholic church had it right all along. So tough titty, now you’ve got to pay for that. Ha!’
‘But that’s not fair, I was at the end of my tether, I just couldn’t –’
‘Look, pal, I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them. Right? No use whining to me. Anyway, that’s not all. Your body is a temple, and before you destroyed that temple, you desecrated it. Defiled it, polluted it. Repeatedly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Masturbation.’
‘What?’
‘Beating your meat, jerkin’ your gherkin, bashing the bishop, slapping the salami. Got it? I hate to tell you this, my little cabbage, but masturbation is also a mortal sin. Violates the, er, Fourth, no I tell a lie, the Sixth… oh, some fucking Commandment or other. By spilling your seed on the ground, or into paper hankies, you destroyed life. And you were always at it, you dirty bastard. So, you’re a serial killer. A mass murderer.’
‘But everyone–’
‘For those two grave offences inter alia, you merit and will now receive condign punishment, here in the bowels of hell. Tee hee. So, just for starters, pedicabo ego te et irrumabo… Don’t be staring at my horns, you little wanker, take a look at my todger…Look at it! See that? Yes, it’s split into two. It is now two peckers like pythons. A neat trick if you can do it. That is what’s technically known as a bifurcated penis. You don’t often come across them—so to speak. You should feel honoured to see one. Positively honoured. Do you feel honoured? Positively or negatively?’
‘What? Yes. No. Er –’
‘No matter. You are now about to experience the best of both worlds. I’m going to enjoy this—ghouls just want to have fun, you know? So, heartface, one of my willies is going to tickle your tonsils, and more, much more, very deep throat. The other mickey is going up your bum. Not just an inch or two, way up, all the way up. Until it encounters whatever you had for your last meal—hey, the Last Supper, ha ha. Then comes some prolonged and vigorous rumpy-pumpy. In fact, so prolonged and so vigorous that when I finally withdraw my massive member, you’ll drop out of your own arse… Right. So, Mister Better Off Dead, open wide… Both ends.’
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