| Report This story |
Share With A Friend |
| Other Works [Books] [Stories] [Articles] [Poetry] [News] [Reviews] [Press Releases] |
| |
It was a dilapidated battered moped with a string bag hanging off the handlebars with a warm-looking fish inside warm and drying out and not looking too fit for eating unless you had just come out of a bar where you’d had a few cheap nasty but fortifying brandies and were hungry enough to eat just about anything maybe not even cooked properly on a grill but just heated up by the hot sun hanging off your moped outside the bar with the tarmac bubbling and melting and the heat hitting you so bad that you wanted to go back inside the bar and take another drink or two and just sit there and sweat and smoke a couple of cigarettes and maybe have an argument about paint or wine or priests or goats or anything not to have to go back out into the sun and feel it press you into the ground and not let you breathe and the only good thing about it was that your fish was getting cooked without using any charcoal and by the time you were really hungry you could eat it and sit by the road and wash it down with a bottle of red wine in the shade of a tree and you wouldn’t care if the sun was shining or if it was dark or if it was raining and then you could take a bit of a siesta for two hours before kicking your moped into life and going into the village to park under the jacaranda trees and spit on the pavement and fart and all the men on the benches you’ve known for ever and ever and they like warmed-up fish and brandy and you talk about the estrangeiros with their funny clothes who are always carrying too much and are always in a hurry to do nothing much but drink big glasses of beer which get too warm too quick in the heat but they can’t adapt their habits and they pick tentatively at the snails but they think they have to try them because it is the done thing to do to eat as the locals eat even if they can’t drink as the locals drink but have to have big glasses of beer and always sit outside in the sun going red and burning and being too hot like the fish in the string bag which stinks like hell but you eat it anyway and don’t have to hold your nose because loads of other things stink like shit and you’re used to the stink of shit and rubbish and hot fish and bubbling tarmac which doesn’t actually smell too bad only it sticks to your shoes and makes oily marks on the tiles when you get home if you get home and don’t end up sleeping in a ditch by the side of the road because you’ve had too much to drink and can’t drive your moped and you wake up sometimes still wearing your crash-hat and you’ve pissed your trousers because you’ve slept so deeply and didn’t know you needed to piss but at least you haven’t shit yourself well only once or twice and it didn’t seem so bad no worse anyway than anyone else or the stink of anything else stinking in the hot sun like the dead dogs in the road that nobody moves that get picked at by the crows until they get flattened by the cars and the lorries until there’s nothing left to smell bad anyway so you sit in the café stinking of piss and shit with stains on your trousers and your crash-hat on the table and a coffee and a brandy with the estrangeiros picking at their snails with toothpicks trying not to cringe washing it down with big glasses of warm beer and wearing shorts and the women with big white pink legs and sunglasses on their hair scared to go to the toilet because it stinks of piss and shit on the walls and on the floor and an overflowing bin full of shitty paper where you add your bit in the ladies because the gents was occupied and they stand back horrified when you come out and they’re waiting and you’ve left a big turd in the pan and shitty stains on the seat and they come out looking white and pink and soiled and want to go home and eat fish but not fish warmed up by the sun but only cool fish from the refrigerator cooked nicely on the gas and scrubbed toilets and no snails not really and not even good cheap wine but expensive not much better wine that has a good label on the bottle and costs more so it’s better and it goes with good gas-cooked fish not sun-warmed string bag fish cooked on the handlebars which goes with unlabelled wine better which isn’t a lot worse tasting than the expensive wine with nice labels and you slam your empty brandy glass on the table and shout and the bartender serves you first even if you do stink of piss and shit well he’s used to the smell of piss and shit and warmed-up fish and you’ve known his father since you were a boy and him since he was a baby and he stank of piss and shit and nobody cared then and even the estrangeiros stank of piss and shit when they were babies but now they’re scared to eat snails and go to the toilet so why did they come here anyway because it’s too hot and they’re too hot even in their shorts and their beer gets warm because they want big glasses and the church bells toll which they think is great and they look up at the tower to watch but they don’t know that this is a funeral and the bartender closes the shutters on the street side and they’re left half in darkness and you go out with the old shit piss stinkers who are your old friends and walk on the sticky tarmac behind the hearse down to the cemetery and bury another old friend in the hot sun with the priest all black and sweating but no more than all of you and you walk slowly back up the hill to your brandy and your crash-hat and the shutters are open again and the sunlight shines on the sunglasses on the hair of the big white-legged lady who didn’t like the smell of your shit and doesn’t like the look of your face because you haven’t washed for three days or is it four because you haven’t made it home yet and might not make it home again tonight and would screw her face up even more if she knew that the snails that she was picking at were plucked from the grass by you with your dirty shitty hands a few days before and you sold them to the bartender and got drunk that day and were getting drunk again so you might not get home but sleep in a ditch and piss yourself and pick more snails when you woke up with your dirty shitty hands to sell them to the bar and get drunk again and never get home again until you did get home and your wife would shout and scream at you so you wanted to go out and get drunk and pick snails and scare pink foreign ladies and eat warmed up fish and sleep in a good ditch and not go home again when you could be with your friends drinking brandy and arguing about priests and goats and wine and then going to funerals until one day the bells would be tolling for you
PLEASE REVIEW
|
| Other Works [Books] [Stories] [Articles] [Poetry] [News] [Reviews] [Press Releases] |
| Reader Reviews for Hot string bag fish |
| |
|
Review this Story - What do you think of "Hot string bag fish?"
(1-lowest, 10-highest) |
|
|
|
| Other Works [Books] [Stories] [Articles] [Poetry] [News] [Reviews] [Press Releases] |
