Fiendish Freddy’s Big Top o’ Fun
It could be said of Thomas Malone, the fat, freckle-faced redhead who lived at the top of my street, that his was a short life of trouble. There was much that went against him; his pasty, portly appearance; his snotty, high-pitched harridan of a mother; the sad and lonesome perambulation to the Roman Catholic school, which none of the rest of us attended. His most noteworthy achievement in exciting our attention was his botched attempt at the skateboard component of our gang membership test, which opened and concluded with his stamping on one end of the board and precipitating the other full force into his testicles, prompting a reaction of anguish as yet unbettered by any non-fictional personage. Funny how even now I am able to see it in exquisite, multi-camera slow motion; the swirling black and yellow paint, sky-framed in its dreadful destiny, the distorted yowl of anticipated pain, the embarrassed silence daring him not to cry. And yet he still exists – must do – even though his entire existence seemed prelude to a close-up of a gravestone and a detective growling “Poor bastard. Never stood a chance.”
He did have some things going for him, as all kids on toy-starved council estates do. You’ve got your Scalextric kid, your Space Hopper kid, your Subbuteo kid; even the fateful skateboard was its owner’s major selling point. And Thomas, well, his USP was a Commodore with a cartridge slot, in those days as futuristic to us as, I dunno, Johnny Five or something. Problem was, he didn’t have many games, and those he did have were just retarded versions of things we’d already played. Somehow, though, with all the furtive resourcefulness of a teenager seeking out porn, Thomas had snapped up and stashed away a copy of Fiendish Freddy’s Big Top o’ Fun – a grotesque and mildly diverting circus minigame compilation which took on whole new dimensions of significance when hidden in the bottom drawer of a Formica computer desk.
But it was too much for us. Sneaking into his house was like a video game all in itself – the shrill mum, the antsy shushing, the screeching sirens at the slightest unsettling of the sterile atmosphere – and even on arriving in his bedroom the negotiation bonus level was a trial beyond any reward, Thomas with his fear-wide eyes locked on the door beyond your shoulder as you pleaded with him for a wee shot, just a wee shot! In all our fruitless friendship I never got further than the first level, which circumstances lent a tension equivalent to operating a launch control station at NASA; and as he fumblingly prised the cartridge out of the slot I noticed how damaged he was by the sheer bright cleanliness all around him, much more so than ever any of the rest of us had been by the dirty disrepair of our own houses. The blinding lightbulbs all one hundred watt, the walls were blank and white, the surfaces stark, symmetrical and bare. Even the very table edges were sharp where ours were round and worn. And I would be glad when we were caught, shuttled off down the narrow stairs, the door slammed tight behind us.
Poor bastard. He never stood a chance.