Glasgow Student Short Story Prize 2009

Judged by A.L. Kennedy
Edited by Elisabeth Ingram, Rebecca CF Bradburd and Jose Velazquez

Discomfort Food

My Dad was different from most. It took me a while to realise this though. Every person thinks their childhood was normal, and every one of them is wrong.

    In most respects he was everything a father should be. Kept me fed, clothed and sheltered. Cared for me and probably loved me, though I’ve no way of knowing. But there was one failing he had that set him apart from other dads. He made me eat everything I killed.

    On the surface it doesn’t seem so bad. Most would even call it a good idea, and the thinking behind it isn’t difficult to understand. It would teach me value for life, respect for the wilderness and things like that. It might even lead to some heartfelt bonding if we went hunting or fishing together. Not a bad way to be raised, if you lived in the countryside.

    Except we didn’t live in the countryside. We lived in the city, deep within its rumbling heart. And let me tell you something. As far as I can tell, nothing that lives in the city tastes good.

    I’m probably coming across badly. Just to be clear, I wasn’t one of those children that threw stones at birds or set fire to dogs. But every one of us ends up killing something or other in the course of our lives. Dull, boring kills that weigh on no ones conscience.

    The earliest memory I have is being no older than three, playing about in the apartment we lived in, when this big cockroach comes crawling up. I was bored and it was quick so I made a game of trying to squish it with my new dinosaur trainers.

    Jump. Stomp. Crunch! Clean right in the middle so it squooshes out either side of my shoe. Of course just then my dad walks in, sees what I’ve done, and quick as you like he picks up the front and back of the bug and pops them in my mouth. I try and spit still twitching bits out, but my mouth is clamped shut and I’m told to chew and swallow. It feels like I’m going to vomit. It’s either sick or swallow.

    I swallow.

    “Good boy”

    And a good boy I was

    Apparently you’re meant to swallow nine spiders in your sleep through the course of your life. I’d made that by the age of 12, without the sleep. They had plenty flies for company.

    Another time I made the mistake of asking for a pet. I got three- three little fishies. Named them smart too. Dé, jà and vu. Good names for Goldfish. Then one day I get invited to a friend’s house for the weekend, so I fed my fishies up. Come back and find them, bloated, belly up and floating like round orange poo’s. And my dad standing there, waiting.

    I copied the toilet, and flushed them down my mouth whole with a large glass of water. The next day I really did flush them down the toilet. My fishies, deep fried in stomach juice till they went a deep golden brown.

    After that I had a cat named Schrodinger. And it was the most well cared for cat in the world.

    Enough digressing about my digesting, here’s the meat of the story. I had hit my moody teen phase, where the world and I didn’t get on and I hated everyone and everything in it. One day I come home from school angrier than usual, open the door and there’s my Dad, with that disappointed look in his eyes. I know what’s happened before he says. Then again he does have a dead cat in his arm.

    “He got into some chocolate” My dad says “Chocolate is poisonous to cats. I don’t eat chocolate” Never a man to mince his words, he holds Schrodinger out for me to take.

    Instead I turn and run up the stairs and he follows, still holding the cat. Up four flights I run. Finally at the top I turn around and face him. I am so angry and sad and all I can see is a limp long stretched out cat being thrust at my face. So I push it away. I push hard. Too hard. My dad, off balance and with his hands full, goes tumbling backwards.

    Looking isn’t hard. Listening is. Wet thuds and dry crunches echo in the hall forever, until finally there he lies, crumpled in an impossible position with a double jointed neck. Schrodinger is still clutched in his hand.

    I looked for a long time. Nobody came out to see about the noise. Eventually and with great effort I carried him back down home.

    Finally I had found something in the city that tasted good.