Dead On Arrival

Death reflected in the madman's eyes. The pale Winter moon hung lifeless in the pale Winter sky.

The madman wiped his brow. Sweat glistened on the back of his hand. The thinning hair stretched across his balding scalp clung to his damp and pallid skin. He stared at his hand. It shook. He drew it to his mouth and slowly sucked the sweat from it. It tasted salty. It tasted of fear. It tasted of salty fear.

For the hundredth time he drew the rifle up to his shoulder and took aim through the telescopic sight. His body quivered mirthlessly as his insane brain played again and again the images of his madness. A jolly laugh. A rifle crack. A child's scream. Music to the ears of the madman. JFK would pale by comparison. Lee Harvey Oswald? A nobody.

He strained his ears for telltale sounds. Nothing but the chill December wind howling down the main street. He strained his eyes for telltale sights. He'd seen few if any cars since the start of his lonely vigil atop the building. A few worshippers had left a midnight mass at a nearby church, in fact all of them had, but since then only the biting breeze and odd snippets of drunken revelry had reached his ears.

Cradling the rifle he rubbed his hands together to revive the circulation. The frail dawn sun heralded the imminent fulfillment of his fantasy. Ecstasy beyond any sexual realm he had ever experienced or dreamed. The utter sensory nirvana that would soon be his.

It started.

Sound.

Faint at first but growing more distinct as it approached his lofty perch. "The Doppler Effect." He mused in a moment of intellectual clarity. The jingle of trace bells getting louder and louder. The crack of the whip and the sound of hooves.

There.

There in the sheer sunrise flew his game.

The madman prepared himself. His beady eye squinting as he took aim. Sharp and in focus reared his prey. The white beard. The red cheeks. Bespectacled eyes tired from the night's exertions. Eyes soon to be blank and sightless.

He tracked the target. Held his breath. At last his quarry had arrived. The moment had come.

Blood and brains scattered the sky. A crimson mist trailed the target's wake as it fell to the ground, staining its destination. The madman cackled hideously and looked down at his work.

Red on red. Grey matter on white hair. The murder of Father Christmas...




He stared blankly at the monitor in front of him, cracked his fingers and recalled the fantasy. If only. The madman in his brain seethed. He shook his head. How did the reindeer hooves make that noise?

The telephone broke him out of his daydream with a start and he began to type.

"I was thinking about this piece for my blog..."

Confession #1

I'm a lazy twat.

It's been ages since I wrote anything on here. And look, I have an archive already. It's called September 2006.

Go me.

There's no particular reason for my lack of words. Tuesday the 26th of September wasn't a landmark date for me. I didn't have anything specific planned before or after. I started this blog with good intentions, the very best. You can check. Contribute regularly and frequently, I thought. Keep up the good work, as regularly and frequently as possible, I thought. Then, as ever, the days of the week conspired against me. Time itself decided to let me know who was boss. And, before I knew it, before anyone knew it, it was over three weeks later. Three Fridays had been and gone. Three weekends had welcomed me into their arms as a chair-ridden God-aunt might, only to slap me into Monday at the earliest opportunity.

Bob Geldof didn't like Mondays, did he?

Me? I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't like them, although Monday is definitely 24 hours of overblown self-importance. For starters it purports (albeit successfully) to be start the week. Monday hijacks Sunday. If Saturday (see Saturday) is The Sabbath, and The Sabbath is the last day of the week, then Sunday should take the accolade. But it doesn't really, does it? I mean the week starts on Monday. Monday has actually grown a mouth and The Bible has grown a face and Monday has laughed in the face of The Bible. The Bible mind. It has prised The FDOTW Title from Sunday's pathetic, arthritis-ridden, limp-fingered grasp, when it was asleep.

Everything starts on Monday.

Diets, giving up smoking, work. And that's why I generally let Monday off. I allow it to have its eternal moment of prestige since, as a rule, people hate Mondays and their associated blues. Bank Holiday Mondays salvage some sort of latent heroism, but anywhere that isn't shut, or doesn't close early on them, is busy. That's if you're not spending half of them in bed anyway.

None of the rest of the days of the week like Monday either.

Tuesday is a shit day. It's really shit, I mean it, honestly, I'm not even kidding. Look it up if you don't believe me. Under: shit. The Russian language uses the name "second" for Tuesday. How rubbish is that? It's like the onset of the decimal week. Monday begets Tuesday, that's how shit Tuesday is, it couldn't get any shitter. What did you ever do on a Tuesday? You won't be able to remember. I promise. And don't try to claim that Shrove Tuesday is anything other than a pathetic effort by Tuesday's PR People to attempt to re-brand it as something other than eternally dull. You want a pancake? Have one. Don't wait.

Tuesday's only saving grace is that it isn't Monday.

Wednesday squats in the middle of the week like a female sheep. Laughing at its equidistance from weekends past and future. Wednesdays don't have to do anything, which makes them the smuggest day. They've got the most letters and they know it. None of them make sense. Two of them don't even have to be there. Wednesday is like an anagram of itself with two less letters. It's the fulcrum of the week. Whenever anyone tries to gauge weekly time it invariably revolves around Wednesday, without mentioning Wednesday. That's why Wednesday's smugness is largely negated by its anonymity. It's the worst day of the week to have a birthday.

Ash Wednesday isn't even worth mentioning. Whoops.

Thursday is the most boring day of the week.

Friday is the best day of the week. Fact. Thank Crunchie, Thank Goodness, Thank Fuck. Everyone looks forward to Friday (insert Robinson Crusoe joke here). And it's not even the fact that people look forward to it. They enjoy it while it lasts and rue its passing. Unlike the universally hated Monday, Friday carries off this worship with measured aplomb. The rest of the week aspires to be Friday. It doesn't pretend to be something it isn't, it's the climax of the week. Always has been. You want a long weekend? It starts on Friday. You want POETS Day? Every Friday. You want Good Friday? Have it.

Jesus died on a Friday and it's still called Good. That's how cool Friday is.

Saturday would be the best day of the week were it not for the fact that it only really exists, along with Sunday, as The Weekend. And Friday is better anyway. Saturday is The Sabbath, not Sunday. But Saturday has more than one identity crisis. Saturday wants to be Friday. It wants to be the day that everyone looks forward to. Sure people look forward to Saturday, but they also take it for granted. And it will never be Friday. If The Weekend had a day in between Saturday and Sunday - I'll call it Skipday for the sake of argument - then Saturday might be onto something.

It doesn't though.

Saturdays have a buddy. A partner in crime. They're both thick as thieves but Saturday bosses Sunday. It seeps into it and steals some of its hours. And Sunday doesn't do anything about it because Sunday is a pussy. Sunday, like Tuesday, suffers from being too close to Monday. It believes its own press. Sunday is The Day of Rest.

Lazy twat.