I'll Show You!

As he submitted his hundredth story to the short story competition he ground and gnashed his teeth and gave his mind free reign. His mind, let loose to do as it pleased, gave forth with a flurry of expletives. The writer should have taken note as rare, if not unique, combinations of swear words reeled through his mind. He could have dropped them into one of his next stories to convey a joyous and entertaining anger, the swear words releasing doses of positive endorphins as they hit home, happy anger darts conveying said anger, but making the reader smile with the very theatre of it.

The writer though was too caught up in thoughts of vengeance.

“I’ll show you!” he whispered as he watched the celebratory fireworks going off on his screen to indicate that his money had once again been taken and put in a mysterious bottomless pit that would never see his efforts come to much of anything at all.

One time he had been told he’d been shortlisted, or rather that his story had. 

Then nothing.

He supposed that he’d been one of the first one’s on the list and then he’d been pushed and squeezed down the list until he was on it no more, falling back into the nothingness of overlooked and underserved obscurity. As he thought about the fortunes of that story in a queue, only to be denied, he remembered as a small boy queuing patiently for an ice cream. The day was hot and the queue was long. He watched as child after child walked from the window of the ice cream van with Mr Whippy ice creams clad in strawberry or chocolate sauce and sometimes dipped in nuts, most had a chocolate flake pushed inside the already melting confection. This, he knew, made those ice creams into a ninety nine.

Back then, he had not known why the addition of a piece of chocolate would lead to the ice cream being called a ninety nine, but now he did know. That was one benefit of growing up and retaining the inquisitive mind gifted to all children, but squandered by many an adult. It was all thanks to the Italians. Ninety nine was special to them. The last conscripts for World War One had been born in 1899 and the King of Italy had had ninety nine guards. Sadly, it had nothing to do with a rapper who had ninety nine problems, a hundred if you included his obsession with counting and recording his problems instead of dealing with them. 

For the little boy waiting and waiting in the queue, the sun boiling the t-shirt on his back and making him so uncomfortably hot, the prospect of an ice cream was very special indeed. His dedication in the queue alone made him deserving of that ice cream. In the sweaty palm of his fist were just the right coins for him to buy the object of his desires and he salivated as ice cream after ice cream was conveyed away from the ice cream van by the delighted children at the front of the queue. He could have been any one of those children, and soon enough he would be. He dared to hope, and he dared to dream, and he remained steadfast in his utter focus and dedication to the ice cream cause.

Several times, adults joined the queue in front of him. He knew they were pushing in. They hadn’t been in the park, he’d seen them walk in through the main gate, look at the queue and then scan it’s length for someone they knew. Each and every queue jumper was going to order a number of ice creams. He knew this regardless of whether their children joined them or not. Seldom did an adult join a queue such as this in order to buy an ice cream for themselves. Adults lost touch with what really counted and they gave up all too easily. Or they cheated. Like the queue jumpers making his wait longer and his life more difficult.

But what could he do? He couldn’t very well approach an adult and explain how queues worked and that they weren’t being fair on him or anyone else behind him in the queue for that matter. He couldn’t understand why no one else said something to these big, rotten cheats. Surely they were angry too? It couldn’t just be him. Twice he steeled himself to walk up to the latest queue jumper to have it out with them. He shuffled with a building energy, but then he deflated as he saw how it would go. He saw the outline of his avatar leaving the queue and getting nowhere with his elder and his better, but the worst of it would be losing his place in the queue. For him there would be punishment for his perceived queue jumping, of that he was certain. No one would speak up for him. No one would come to his aid. No one would make sure that he got a fair deal.

He counted off the served customers, but unlike counting sheep it did not relax him. He watched so intently that time slowed and the likelihood of him ever being served seemed so remote that it wasn’t even a dream anymore. His hope was evaporating in the relentless and merciless rays of the midday sun.

Nonetheless, he eventually neared the head of the queue and from here he could see the ice cream oozing from the machine in circles that rose to a beautiful and enticing tip. A magical unicorn’s horn of the cold creamy delight. He was close to tears at the prospect of exchanging his coinage for a magnificent ninety nine and his fists clenched more tightly as the tension of anticipation built within him.

Then, quite suddenly, he was next in line and his chest felt fit to burst. The joy threatened to explode from him. This was it! He’d made it! He watched all the more closely as the ice cream before his poured out of the glorious machine and rode up from the cone, held aloft like a triumphant Olympic torch.

PFTTT!

As the last whisp of cloud like ice cream exited the machine a jet of air blew spots of ice cream hither and thither. In the humidity of the terribly hot Summer’s day, it melted in mid-air and became a lacklustre spatter of glutinous rain drops.

“No!” he gasped, for he knew with a crushing certainty what this meant.

Frozen to the spot, he watched in a weird and detached slow motion as the ice cream man resigned himself casually to what this tragic ice cream machine fart meant.

“Sorry kid,” he said shrugging down at the sad and forlorn figure of the crestfallen child, “all gone.”

Then he callously slammed the window shut, got in the driver’s seat and drove away. 

Just like that. 

All gone.

Except it wasn’t all gone. He’d seen the tray of flakes and there was one left. He could at least have had a flake and maybe even a cone. Something for all that waiting.

But he’d ended up with nothing.

Even to this day, that memory made him feel sad and then angry. It was like the sadness was a necessary downward curve he had to travel before he smashed into a rich seam of ever present anger.

Well, he was angry right now.

He’d show them.

But how?

What could he actually do?

He was as small, weak and powerless as he had ever been. He’d grown up and gravitated to a way of life that isolated him in every way imaginable. He’d heard the whispers and seen the looks. Writing wasn’t a proper job, and it turned out that he wasn’t even a proper writer. Not according to whoever judged his stories he wasn’t. The faceless judge never gave him a fair deal. He had dedicated himself, and he had worked tirelessly, and then he waited and he waited, but never was there his richly deserved reward. Not even a token flake, or a cone gone soft, malleable and unappetising.

A big, big part of the problem was the audience. Often he’d get feedback on his use of language. The feedback would really be a tiresome and ridiculous complaint. He was doing it wrong. He couldn’t use those words like that. 

These silly people acted were as though language were a solid and unmoveable lump, not the living and evolving beast that promised delight after delight. The writer knew that these same people were queue jumpers and flat earthers and that they would scream blue murder at the very mention of Charles Darwin.

He had responded gently at the first of these comments, thinking that this was the best way to treat the terminally feeble minded.

I’m English and this is how we speak and write.

The American antagonist would never acknowledge this simple and irrefutable fact, let alone respect it. This annoyed him. Unfortunately, his annoyance quickly became apparent in his responses.

You use American English. The clue is right there! English! American English is the result of a useless and ignorant do-gooder “fixing” something that ain’t broke, and doing it really, really badly. Taking the U out of colour doesn’t mean you’ve invented a new language that is so much better than all the pre-existing and perfectly good languages. The level of arrogance necessary to believe this is only rivalled by your gigantic levels of ignorance, you stupid, stupid twit!

His reply had been removed by an administrator and he’d received a sharply worded email. Just one more instance of that nature and he was out. Apparently there was no need for that sort of thing.

Education. 

There was no need for education. 

That was what he was having to deal with. That was the world he had had inflicted upon him. He couldn’t even resort to the persuasive charm of good old English sarcasm. Add sarcasm to an American and what you got was an ugly explosion that was hellishly awful to clean up. They really were a messy, awkward and annoyingly arrogant race, were the Yanks.

Well, he’d waited and waited and tried and tried again. A hundred times now, and still he hadn’t arrived at the front of the queue. He’d read the winners’ efforts, of course he had. But they were all so…

…American. Even the writers who might not have been from American had sold their writing souls to the American-English devil. They’d rewrite Shakespeare next, if they hadn’t already of course.

What could he do though?

How could he go about at least evening the score?

There had to be something he could do from the small desk at the foot of his bed in his tiny terrace house in the middle of a constantly avoided and semi-derelict town called Crewe. He stroked his chin in a higher form of thought. He contemplated and contemplated until a wee saying swam to the fore. A wonderful parable intent on conveying a useful dollop of wisdom upon the writer. Not for the first time, the writer thought that thought itself was a very underrated and underutilised pastime. The Americans would be so much more palatable if they engaged their brains before blurting and vomiting their damaged and bastardised words, polluting the world and the page as they lumbered around betwixt oversized and too frequent mealtimes.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

As the saying’s wisdom did its work and sank its knowledge teeth into his beleaguered brain, the writer was a little bit sick in his mouth, his imagination had provided him with a very graphic set of images of him prostituting himself to writing, adopting Americanisms and pandering to that audience. But as he swallowed back this hideously acidic imagery, he saw it! He didn’t have to resort to such a low and dirty tactic!

No, he had a better idea.

He’d become a judge!