Good evening. It’s Wednesday night, and that means it’s time for another Song Title Short Story.
November Spawned A Monster – Morrissey
“Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday dear me. Happy Birthday to me.” Stephen sang to himself as he blew out the one candle on his Star Wars birthday cake. Turning Twenty-one should be a momentous occasion, but not for Stephen. He lived alone in a one bedroom flat that was actually the converted garage of his parents’ house. He hadn’t spoken to his parents for three weeks – they’d banished him from the house after catching him masturbating in their bedroom while wearing his mother’s bra. Shame kept him from apologising. Shame and the fact that it had been during a dinner party to celebrate his mother’s own birthday.
Stephen ate the whole cake himself until the point that he felt sick. He kept going until he was forced to rush to the toilet and regurgitate it all into the bowl. Wiping his mouth, he flushed the toilet and cleaned his teeth to get rid of the nasty acidic taste in his mouth. Satisfied, he went back to the cake and finished it off. He sat watching Netflix and reading the two birthday cards he’d received – one from his parents, and one from Aunty Jemima, his dad’s sister who lived in America. He’d never met her, but from what his dad always said, she was very much like him. His sisters hadn’t sent him anything for his birthday this year – but they’d always hated him. He didn’t know why, and they’d never actually told him. When you have two twins, they tend to stick together, Stephen found. Even though they were five years younger and he was their older brother, they showed him no respect at all.
After a Family Guy marathon, Stephen went to bed. He wore his new Chewbacca onesie and felt all warm and cosy underneath his Star Wars duvet cover. Just before he fell into a deep sleep, he saw a young girl wearing a Princess Leia slave outfit, blowing kisses to him from a distance. He didn’t know where she was, or who, but he knew he wanted to see her again.
He woke up the next morning with a damp patch on the crotch of his onesie. Feeling rested, Stephen got up and made himself some breakfast. Coco Pops with warm milk – his favourite. It was Saturday, and he had to go to work. For five hours every Saturday, he collected trolleys at the local supermarket. It put money in his pocket and kept him out of trouble, so he was happy to do it. Never mind that it was a condition of him living rent-free in his parents’ garage. So he got dressed, put his coat on, because it was November and very cold, and walked down the road to work.
He was busy working – collecting trolleys that had been abandoned at the far reaches of the car park – when two teenagers started picking on him. They stole his woolly hat and threw it into a hedge, then started kicking his legs. He tried to ignore them and get on with his task, but they wouldn’t relent. One of them tried to yank his high-visibility waistcoat, and succeeded in ripping it. Stephen screamed at them to leave him alone.
“Just piss off, will you?!” He yelled.
“Piss off, will you?!” they mimicked him mockingly.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” Stephen screamed.
“Because it’s fun,” one of them laughed.
Stephen lost his temper and ran at them with a train of five trolleys. They dived out of the way and roared with laughter as Stephen crashed into a glass trolley bay. As he lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, broken glass around him, and blood seeping from cuts on his face, the two teenagers decided enough was enough and scarpered. Stephen was dazed, so when he saw the face of the supermarket manager looming over him with a concerned expression, he shouted at him to ‘get lost’. It was only when he was being helped up that he realised and apologised profusely.
“I’m so sorry, Mr Edwards. There were two kids and they were picking on me. I lost it for a minute.”
“It’s okay, Stephen. Bill saw it all on the cameras.”
Mr Edwards took Stephen to his office and had his secretary order a taxi to the hospital for him. While he waited, he had a cup of hot chocolate to get warm. He winced with the pain, as he could feel pieces of glass sticking into his skin as he opened his mouth to drink. The taxi eventually came, and Stephen went off to the hospital alone. He was met at the Emergency Room by his dad, who gave him an awkward embrace. After he was relieved of the unwanted glass, and stitched up, his dad took him home. Stephen thanked his dad and was pleasantly surprised to find a pile of new porno magazines on the kitchen table.
“Rather that than in our bedroom, hey son.” There was a rueful smile on his face as he left Stephen alone with his reading material.
He was leafing through one of the magazines, when he came across (no pun intended) a Polaroid picture of a girl he thought familiar. He racked his brain, and then it hit him – it was the girl from the corner shop. Then, it hit him like a thunderbolt and he dropped the magazine. She was the girl from his dream. In the Princess Leia outfit. He picked up the picture off the floor and stared at it. He turned it over in his hands and saw writing on the back – ‘maybe you’d like me instead of the other girls? Leia xx.’ Stephen swallowed hard. Even though he felt woozy from the painkillers, he grabbed his coat and rushed off to the corner shop. He was out of breath by the time he got there and burst into the shop. There she was, behind the counter, an innocent look on her face. Stephen went up to her and stammered, through heavy breaths.
“How. Did. You. Know?”
“Know what?” She answered innocently.
“About my dream. About Princess Leia in the bikini.” Stephen flung the picture onto the counter.
She picked it up and smiled at him. She held up a hand as if to say ‘wait there’, and walked through the door at the back. She was gone no more than a minute when she returned. She placed a card on the counter – her driving licence. Stephen looked at it, dumbstruck. Her name was actually Leia!!
Before they could take their conversation any further, old Mr Johnson poked his head from behind some shelving and barked at Leia.
“Those beans won’t stack themselves, you know!”
Leia blushed and hurriedly picked up her driving licence off the counter. She took a pen out of her trouser pocket and wrote a number on the frame of the Polaroid, followed by xx. She handed it back to Stephen with a wink and brushed past him to put some tins of beans on a shelf. Stephen turned beetroot red with embarrassment and rushed out of the shop.
Specs, Rugs & Sausage Rolls 