Don't Marry a Man from Carse, William Bagenal [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

DON'T MARRY A MAN FROM CARSE
William Bagenal 2008

There was a Scottish man from Carse,

Who walked over broken glass,

He liked a drink, which made a big stink,

'it's nowat hess folt- ets ars'.

Now at the King and Crown,

the only pub surviving in Carse there was a dilemma.


Most of the towns income came from offshore natural gas and a small plastics firm. Tourism wasn't that big. It was too grey and everyone looked too miserable to warrant recurring visitations. The Town was in dire need of a cash hit.


The only way to make any serious money, Stewart had decided, was to waver low costing beverages to the locals at his, the only pub in town. The township needed to raise these funds so desperately in order to repair the old bridge along the only coastal road out of Carse.


Stewarts clever idea worked well in the beginning. The local men, women and even childrens' spirits were raised, twice for the price in a happy hour that lasted all afternoon every day. There was even some laughter.


Slowly and sadly, however, the beast that was Carse began shape-shifting. Shortly after the bartender, Stewart Loccal, had hatched his devious plan, he had added an extra bit too as he was cleverer than them. He began adding a thinning agent with a 20/80% - esoter/water mixture to the bottles and barrels to bulk out supplies. However, things began to go drastically wrong.


Esoter is an industrial dye, much like the colour of an exact in between of red wine and beer. Unbeknown to Stewart, It was more perfect a choice as a mixing agent than simply being the right colour. It contained a catalyst that caused its' molecular structure to alter slightly and imitate (to a certain extent) the structural properties of the substance to which it was added . It had also been banned by the government and discontinued 15 years previously. Sadly, not one single Carsian read the paper or followed events in the world. They still refused to forgive England, Wales, Ireland or the rest of Scotland (including all the little islands -the only one of which i know the name is Orkney from that fish pate i used to buy) for systematically trying to cease their existence by attacking and, in one instance, bombing the coastal bridge. The Carsians were just as unforgiving towards all other nations for not assisting them in their plight.


Stewart woke in a sweat. what had he done. he had been so foolish. He had no idea. how could he have known? No-one had ever been brave enough to consume esoter on a regular basis. It hadn't even been tested on lab animals. His recurring dream kept him awake often. He was now trapped in Carse with a grafting population cursed with a terrible affliction. The esoter coursing through their veins had begun to imitate the very structural properties of themselves. not only was Carse populated with desperately sad, isolated folk, it was populated with desperately sad isolated folk with another same sadder, isolated and more constrained version of them growing out of their back. What's more, their bodies began demanding esoter and their addiction lead them daily to the large trough Stewart had been forced to place outside the pub and fill with the diluted agent. They must have looked in with such saddening suspicion. Such horrible jealousy, longing after Stewarts' un-burgeoning, unburdened body that moved around so freely.


Stewarts dream was frighteningly vivid and relevant. In it, he was slowly smothered and suffocated by a writhing mass of lonely and sorrowful doppelgangers. Starved of esotel, as the supplies in his metal lock up shed had began to dwindle, the poor cursed souls had resorted to gathering around the empty trough like penguins. His nightmare was becoming the truth.


As Stewart looked upon them through the lounge window, he started to feel haunted at the expressions. Despair on the front face, inadequate dysfunction on the rear. It was all becoming crushingly painful for Stewart. His pain was fevered by the sight of Mary Antol, the woman Loccal had always secretly loved. He had not only missed the boat when she became engaged, he had now horribly deformed and saddened her.


He needed to escape immediately to one of those small tranquil Scottish Isles for a life of reclusion and fishing. At 3am on the 4th day of no longer being able to meet the requirements of the townsfolk addiction, he woke from and returned in wakefullness back into his nightmare, he had had enough. He visited the lock up for the last time. Using the chord he had brought, began fastening the empty blue plastic barrels that once housed the dunn coloured hate chemical. He remembered back to his childhood days in Falkirk. He had had to produce a raft out of similar equipment for a challenge on sports day at school. His team hadn't won the competition, but he had thoroughly inspected the cleverer teams vessel that had. This time he was going to be successful.


After the work was complete and he was satisfied with all the forced decisions and changes that had been made to his initial blueprint, he stepped aside and wandered inside the empty Crown. He took a deep breath and then approached the bar. Reaching under it, he fumbled for his favourite Single Malt and began pouring.


After waking his face early from the sticky surface of the bar, Stewart left never to return. All was calm. The sea was pleasantly desolate. the gulls mewed overhead and now and then he would recognise a boat on the far horizon. He stroked his soft beard and took some solace in his freedom from the mutants.


Stewart spent the rest of his years making elaborate trinkets from shells and forming interesting sculptures from driftwood, depicting his story for airplanes to see.

Publication Date: 12-10-2008

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