The Tale of a Worthy Albeit Slightly Flatulent Young Man

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The Tale of a Thoroughly Despicable Man

OR

“Whoever is lazy regarding his work is also a brother to the master of destruction"

(Proverbs 19:15)

Dear Ned,

Having read your column for decades, I’ve come to realize you’re the only person who could possibly help me. But even that is in doubt as I feel I’m really beyond help so it’s safe to say that you are my first and last port of call. Let me come straight to the point. I am in trouble and it’s all my own doing. My wife of ten plus years has left me, and now I’ve no-one to take care of me. I’m eight weeks into single living and it’s been a disaster. My house is a mess, I don’t want to cook, and there’s no-one to do the garden, go shopping and pay the bills. It’s all the stuff she used to do, and I won’t lie to you, dear Ned, when I say that I miss her. Frankly, my life at present sucks. I’ve even had to wheel the garbage out to the curb, a chore I’d never, in my worst nightmares, imagined doing. And how did it come to this? I hear you ask. Well, I’d better start from the beginning.

I must admit to you, dear Ned, that I’ve always been a kind of a lazy person. Even as a child I shirked whenever I could. I was the eldest and I used to pay my siblings to do my share of the chores, and I used to quite like watching them do it. I enjoyed seeing both the little ones climbing up on a rickety chair to reach the sink to do the dishes, only to crash from the chair that indeed was very rickety a little while later, then watching them struggle with the vacuum cleaner which was far too unwieldy and heavy for their little hands, and the absolute best thing was paying them out of their own pocket money which I had fished out of their very own piggy bank previously. I used to replace the money with tin beer tops to make up the volume, and I used to shake the piggie to show them how their nest was growing, and then I’d give them their own money back, and you can just imagine, dear Ned, how happy they were about it. It really warmed my heart. I never did tell them what I’d done; even now, I haven’t mentioned it when recently the twins came over to visit me, bringing me home cooked meals and feeling sorry for me. They sat here listening to my woes and they were so emotional they even did the dishes and vacuumed the house, and it really brought back some memories. Especially when they looked for a chair to do the dishes, - (They’re both stunted in growth, which is something I feel might somewhat be related to me, again, as I used to steal their sandwiches at school, leaving them just the crusts. On the few occasions the poor dears questioned me, I had told them some dreadful lies about crows and rats getting into their lunch bags, or else I blamed our parents for being poor and preferring to feed only me as the eldest; I tell you, Ned, a better person would by now be dreadfully ashamed of themselves, but I am not that good, so I’m just telling you this as it is.) - I was so reminded of the good times we’d had together when they used to climb the rickety chair only to crash in a few wobbly moments, usually breaking some dishes in the process and thus earning themselves the wrath of our parents. I never did tell them how I sawed a little wood off one leg just to make the entertainment worthwhile, and you know, dear Ned, I probably never told them because of them being so inherently good - even if I had owned up, they would have forgiven me cause that’s the sort of folks they are. Not me though; I am made of quite a different cloth, one might say.

Anyhow, time marched on. After I left school, my parents, as all parents do, expected me to get a job and earn my own way. This expectation, however, did not sit well with me. The very idea! All I wanted to do with my time was nothing. Not a thing - well, I’m exaggerating just a little. There was one slash two activities I’d always enjoyed. I’ve always liked baking; a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and as long as the twins cleaned up, mucking around the oven had mostly been fun. The other thing I enjoyed doing was mushroom picking in the forest behind our house. It was mostly damp in there, with many different types of mushrooms growing under every nook and cranny, even in plain sight; it really took no effort at all and you had yourself a basket in no time, and so I really quite enjoyed a quiet afternoon stroll. It afforded me the opportunity to think.

It was during such a stroll that I came up with a plan which would get me off work. I started to fake illnesses. There was always something wrong with me. I faked everything; fevers, headaches, migraines, upset stomachs, creaky joints, arthritis, gout, deafness, lumbago, vertigo, blurred vision, mental health issues, visits to the doctors, visits to ER (I just sat there dozing for hours but without registering), you name it, it went down. I really learned a lot from sitting around the hospital; I picked up some new ailments and presentation symptoms for various diseases and disorders; it really was very educational, not to mention fun. But the best thing was when I started to fake injuries. I got myself a couple of plasters which I put on my right arm and my left leg simultaneously, having faked a fall during an ice storm. I don’t mind telling you, Ned, but it was a stroke of genius; it rendered me useless for nigh six months. I prefer to think of this time as the golden years; my parents left me largely alone (what with them working extra hours to keep me while I recuperated) and the twins bent themselves backwards to make my home life bearable. I really can’t remember a more enjoyable time in all my born days.

But all good things must come to an end. My parents, bless their little cotton socks, went and died unexpectedly. Would you ever credit it, Ned, but they expired, together, way before their time! Of what? I hear you ask. Well, it’s the darndest thing. Just went to bed one night, and never woke up the next day. The autopsy showed poisoned mushrooms did them in. Good thing the twins and I never ate that pie. Anyway, it was very sad, of course, for everyone involved but there was a silver lining. Their life insurance was hefty and got paid out to me without any hassle. I was now in possession of a considerable amount of money which I was to administer for the benefit of myself and the twins, of whom I was in charge as they were underage. Of course, the poor things trusted my judgement implicitly, so when I suggested they’d give up their education in order to go to work (well, somebody had to, I wouldn’t dream of using up the nest egg for them to lay about in school), they readily agreed and went off to work on a cruise ship the very next summer. This arrangement worked out well for all of us but for one thing. There was no-one at home to do the heavy lifting. It was up to me to do everything; even to feed the dog, would you believe, dear Ned? So, once again, I was obliged to go roaming the woods in search of a solution, a something which I hadn’t done since our parents died cause of the trauma, of course. But here I was, picking up toadstools left, front and centre, racking my brains, until finally I came up with a winner. I resolved to get married! A wife in the home would solve all my problems.

Having made up my mind, I set to it with gusto. As I am not the type to go out gallivanting, I decided on a more targeted approach; I researched a number of likely places where a young, sprightly housewife might be found, and I settled on a church in our area. As luck would have it, the very next day a special service dedicated to Our Dear Departed Pets was to be held, and all members of the public, regardless of their religion or creed, were invited. How fortuitous albeit sad, I thought, that my dog had died after his dinner just a few hours ago, so I certainly was in need of such a service. Not being a religious man, I initially had to read up on the plot of the whole thing, such as what went on during prayers and why et cetera, et cetera but as new to this palaver as I was, I was fairly confident I could pull it off so I presented myself at the morning service where I spied a cluster of homely young things, any one of which would suit my purpose just fine. There was one in particular that caught my fancy; she was a sturdy type with muscular arms and large hands, and a proper sense of order; she was the first one to take up the dishwashing in the vestry kitchen after the morning tea gathering of the present faithful had concluded. So I struck up a conversation from the side, careful not to be in her way, and as she bustled to and fro we chatted amiably about all sorts of topics, so I felt I got to know her sufficiently well to ask her out, to which she readily agreed.

I will not bore you, dear Ned, with all the details of our courtship; needless to say, it was swift. Mabel was very impressed with my ancestral home and my largely fictitious prospects in terms of a career; what can I say, I lied like a trooper to get her to the altar, which I did inside the summer, and by the time she realized what she had got herself into, it was too late.

So as time went on, we lived quite happily, just the two of us, in my parents’ house. The twins globetrotted to their hearts’ content from one summer till the next, and you know what, dear Ned, they never even asked about the nest egg, which was very befitting the situation because by the time my wife left, there was bugger all left of it. And where did it all go? I hear you ask. Well, Ned, I’m ashamed to say, but it went on postage, mainly. I know, I know, unbelievable, right? It’s a story in itself, so here it is.

After I got married, things were quite good, for a while. It was the honeymoon period, as they say, good and proper, but it came to an abrupt end one day when my wife asked me about a job. Do I have one? Where’s my income coming from? Why do I never leave the house, and so on and so forth. I had no ready answer for that; she ambushed me right after a successful coitus so I wasn’t thinking clearly, so I just blurted out that I was a writer! I don’t know why I said that; I had never written so much as an email, let alone a novel! But that is what I foolishly told her; I told her I wrote novels out of my attic and that was the reason why she was never allowed in there. Of course, I didn’t tell her that’s where I kept my nest egg and all my medical paperwork she didn’t need to know about; it was none of her business, right? So anyhow, she accepted my answer and, being a simple country girl who only liked to read recipes, she didn’t even ask to see proof. I told her the manuscripts were locked up in the attic, and the publisher didn’t like anyone to know anything about the books beforehand, it was all top secret before publication, but the main thing was there was the money, the advance, and that was all she needed to worry about. So, for the moment, I was in the clear. She went back to her kitchen to cook dinner, and I went to my attic to do I don’t know what.

Of course, as time went on there were a few hiccups; she asked, on a few occasions, when my books were coming out as she would have liked to brag to her church buddies, but I insisted she kept quiet about it to everybody, saying the sci-fi trilogy was taking a long time and the publisher was wanting a lot of rewrites. Six years into me laying this nonsense on her, even she, simple as she was, started to have doubts, so I had to up the ante. Hence the postage. I began to mail hefty ‘manuscripts’ to a fictitious publisher, which really was a set up in a neighbouring town comprising a post box and some out-of-date phone books wrapped in butcher paper, which I couriered over there. Course, as you can imagine, dear Ned, it cost me a pretty penny over time; the expenses really piled up and it was draining my nest egg as I also had to give Mabel some funds every quarter, when I pretended I got more ‘advances’ from my ‘publisher.’ It really pained me to give over my money and I was sick over it, just sick, dear Ned, what with her working for the church office full-time we didn’t really need any extras, and I worried that she would just fritter it all away on alms and the disableds as Mabel was wont to do, so eventually I came up with a plan. Truth be known, I didn’t actually come up with anything new; I only reprised the piggy bank trick I used to play on the twins; I told Mabel I’d started this rainy day account (in case we lost the house or she were unable to work), where we would put all my advances to save up for such an event, and bless the Lord, if such a disaster were to never occur, we would build a new chapel out of which she, Mabel, could do a lot of good, in the future. Way, way in the future.

You can only guess, dear Ned, how happy that cretin Mabel was with that idea. She really was something, Ned, I do truly miss her. Still, even with the money just going around from one account to another, I was losing quite a bit with the mailing. We live in such a small town that the courier actually had to do a roundtrip from the very place I was mailing my ‘manuscripts’ to, so it cost twice as much. Quite silly, obviously, but Mabel insisted on handing over the manuscripts to the poor sod herself simply because he was on disability and Mabel approved of giving such folk work and with it a sense of purpose and better self-esteem. Well, no-one’s perfect, Ned, she had her quirks.

Anyhoo, even though I went about the lies systematically and conscientiously, year after year, eventually disaster did strike. It happened just before Mabel left. It was coming up to my birthday and Mabel got it in her head to surprise me with a surprise present. She knew me very well by then and had noticed, over the years, that I didn’t much like to do anything around the house as I was usually busy ‘writing’ in the attic. She actually called my writing ‘authoring’, bless the innocent little lamb, and she was very much looking forward to me becoming a published author at some point in the near future, or anytime really, she hoped, year after year, a hope which I certainly nurtured and encouraged in my own measured way.

So, this year, for my birthday, she got it into her stubborn little noggin that she would air out my attic, do a proper clean out of the used papers and pencil shavings and rubber eraser stubs, not to mention the chewing gums stuck to the underside of my writing desk and all the other rubbish I told her about that apparently a writer incurred in the process of writing, pardon me ‘authoring’, that she liked to hear about, over the years. Of course, it was to be a surprise so she said nothing of it to me, and as you can imagine, dear Ned, that’s where it all went wrong. I get out of the bath and she’s standing there, bent over a bunch of out-of-date phone books and a half-done Eiffel Tower puzzle, a puzzled look on her bovine dial. Well, I need not describe here, dear Ned, in overmuch detail the scene that followed; as you would expect, she raved and ranted and threatened to expose me, going on like a lunatic until I could no longer stand it, so I fled. I was out of there double quick, and with such a headache I hardly knew what I was doing but eventually found myself in the woods with a basket in my hand, thinking things through.

Well, as expected, the fresh air cleared my head, and when I entered my home some hours later, I went straight for the oven and turned it on. I’m gonna make it up to you, I said to Mabel who sat sobbing, hunched over, at the kitchen table. At this, she didn’t even look up, just sat there, head down, sobbing into her apron. So I knew I had to take it up a notch, and I did. By the time the pie went in the oven, Mabel was back at her sink, washing the dishes, dry-eyed and beaming as the morning sun. We had made up. Course, it took some persuading, but I was making the pie from scratch, even took a fresh roll of Mabel’s best puff pastry out of the freezer, so while I waited for it to thaw, I had plenty of time to plead my case. I laid some dreadful lies on the poor dear, about the publisher being unreasonable with the timeline, about my integrity as a professional writer, about the stress which had recently caused me to develop a writer’s block and how desperate I was to appease everybody, and how horribly unhappy I’d been all this time with all that pressure upon me. I said all this while I worked on the pie; the powerful aroma of the sautéing onions heightened my emotions, and I began to weep. At this instance, Mabel could hold out no longer; I had observed, while I was chopping up the mushrooms, that Mabel had stopped snivelling, and was paying attention, good and proper now. I could tell she was wavering, she was starting to see my point of view, so I went in for the jugular.

I told her in no uncertain terms that the pressure she was putting me under with her interminable enquiries about unimportant petty details of when and how, and her subsequent uncalled-for meddling in my literary affairs into which she, frankly, had no business to interject herself, really messed with my health. It was really her fault that I began the subterfuge of the phone book mailouts, just to get some peace!

Well, as you can imagine, dear Ned, poor Mabel really lost the plot here. She threw herself upon my neck, and began to cry afresh, hugging me, kissing me and begging my forgiveness. She swore she would never interfere ever again, never set foot in the attic unless invited, and would completely understand if she never received such an invitation. What could I do, dear Ned, but console the poor thing, which I did with some fervour and imagination! I don’t mind saying this to you, Ned, man to man, but we had us a wild make-out session right there on the kitchen counter, and I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much. Course, there had to be a fly in the ointment – the onions had burned to a crisp while I was busy attending to my wife, but it was a small price to pay. Cut a long story short, my birthday turned out to be delightful.

After dinner - (during which I stuck to the salad as I had recently put on weight and was now adhering to a meal plan while Mabel ate two helpings of my delicious mushroom pie – it’s a special recipe of mine and the trick is in the gravy; you mix a little red wine with half a gallon (give or take) of cough medicine – any which one you can get over the counter - with a bottle of brandy, yes, you heard me, brandy, lace it with a Xanax, chuck in a Valium or three, and job done) - we made plans for our upcoming summer break, contemplating a visit to the twins’ current cruise ship or perhaps a walking tour in some likely woods not too far away from home, and then Mabel went to bed. I tell you, Ned, it really quite easily was the best evening for us as a married couple, ever. I felt I could have proposed to her all over again.

And now, dear Ned, it is with a heavy heart that I come to the nub of the story, so to speak. The very next day, would you believe, my Mabel left me. It as simple as saying that I woke up and she did not. Words cannot express, dear Ned, et cetera, et cetera. My only consolation is that even though I’ve lost my nearest and dearest, she left me well provided for. Who would have thought the church had such a comprehensive life policy? I knew she had a generous pension scheme, which, incidentally, has now rolled over to me but, you have to believe me, my dear Ned, when I tell you that I had no idea the death benefit would be so generous, let alone pay out so quickly. But enough of my grief; it is, after all, a private matter. All I need to know now, Ned, is your thoughts are on the position I’m in. Seriously, what do you think I should do? I could not possibly get married again, so soon, and I’m still at heart a very lazy man. The twins won’t be in town forever – they only came for the cremation, but I managed to string them along these last eight weeks on the strength of my sorrow; however, they’ve exhausted their annual leave now so they will be departing with the next tide, and I’ll be here alone.

I await your advice.

Sincerely,

Avery Slyman

Ned’s reply:

Dear Avery Slyman,

You, sir, are a thoroughly despicable man. How, on earth, did you get away with it for so long? Fancy impersonating a writer! Calling yourself a published author!! Falsifying publisher correspondence!!! It’s nothing short of an outrage!!!! You have really crossed a line here, Avery Slyman, and therefore I have nothing to say to you.

Sincerely,

Ned

P. S. BTW, as a writer, you stink. Your turn of phrase is very strange and totally unappealing. Do us all a favour and never be heard from again.

Respectfully,

Ned

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All events described herein are imaginary, including settings and characters. Any similarity to real persons, entities, or companies is purely coincidental and not intended to represent real living persons. Real brand names, company names, snippets of song lyrics, names of public personalities or real people may be employed for credibility because they are part of our culture and everyday lives. The author and the publisher assume no responsibility for factual errors, inaccuracies or omissions, and how this work is interpreted by its readers.

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