Daft Wee Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

the garden. It’s not a very high wall, it only comes up to your knee, but he could hurt himself. And he does. His foot slips away as he tries to lift himself up and his knee bangs against the edge. He starts to cry. He’s not screaming, more like whimpering to himself, and looking over to you to make it all right. This is his fault, man, that guy, putting his hands over the fence, encouraging your son, it makes your fucking blood boil. You want to get up, but you can’t, you’re in too deep. They’ll wonder how you can hear him crying all quietly at the other end of the garden yet you couldn’t hear him shouting in your ear. They’ll know you were pretending to be asleep and you’ll look childish.
    And now they’re asking your son if he’s all right. Mum, dad and daughter, all up at the fence, tending to your son with kind words, the people who stole his ball, making sure he feels loved and cared for while you do nothing, pretending to be asleep. Look what they’ve reduced you to. Just look at it. You are going to make these people pay. You have to. But for now, just lie there. Wait.
    So you lie and wait, pretending to be dead to the world until they go back inside. Around two hours it takes. Two fucking hours. You stand up; your son tells you about his grazed knee and the ball in your garden. You ask about the grazed knee, but pretend to not hear the bit about the ball, in case they’re up there listening. You go inside, make him some dinner, then put him to bed. You read him a book, but you don’t put on your usual funny voices, you’re not in the mood. Then you leave. And you wait until nightfall.
    You wait until it’s dark enough to go into your back garden without being seen by prying eyes, when you can get your hands on that ball. Their ball. And you won’t be chucking it back over their fence, don’t think that for a second. No, that ball is fucking getting it.
    Go. Now. Pick up something sharp and go.
    You pick up a pair of scissors lying on the kitchen worktop and you open the back door, and you walk up to the ball in your garden. Their fucking ball. Their stupid ball. And you stab it. You stab it three, four, five times.
    More!
    Six, seven, eight times.
    Again!
    Nine times. Until there’s nothing left to stab, until you’re poking at ribbons. Fucking hell, that felt good, didn’t it?
    Hold on, did you hear something there? Did you hear somebody in the neighbours’ garden?
    No. I don’t think so.
    You take the ball, or what’s left of it, and walk towards the back gate; you’re going to stick this fucking thing in the bin. You open the gate, find your bin and open the lid. But stop. Stop!
    Don’t put it in your bin. Put it in their bin. When they look through the garden fence tomorrow and see their ball’s away, the first place they’ll look is your bin. That’s the way their minds work, takes one to know one and all that. So put the ball in theirs. Lift some of their bags up, stick it down deep, and put the bags back on top. If they want their ball back, there it fucking is, mate, there it fucking is.
    You turn around to find their bin.
    And there’s your neighbour.
    He saw the lot. I think he saw the lot. I told you I heard something.
    He asks you what the bloody hell you think you are doing. You try denying it, despite having a pair of scissors and a shredded ball in your hands. But I say it’s too late to go on the back foot. Go on the offensive, that’s what I say.
    So you tell him he fucking started it by putting your son’s ball in the bin. Too fucking right he did. Then it’s your neighbour’s turn to start denying it, saying he chucked the ball back over, he told you. Oh, he ‘told you’. Know what to tell him? Tell him to fucking shut up.
    You tell him, then he says he’s going to phone the police and show them what you did to his daughter’s ball. Aye, but