The Concerns I Have About Dave Delaney

This was a story I wrote for a contest a few months back, it's probably one of my favourite pieces to date...

I have serious concerns about my housemate Dave...

 

 

For one I'm not even completely sure it's his real name as I have overheard him on numerous occasions answer the phone ‘Hallo Glenn Cardboard?’  He has also been known to use the only slightly more preposterous nom de plume, ­­President Mbossa.  Dave, or Glenn or whatever the hell his name is, claims to be an artist although I've not really seen much of his artwork.  He just seems to spend the majority of his time slouching on the sofa (foot in mouth biting his toenails) in front of daytime TV.  Occasionally he would attempt poorly ironic domestic experiments such as seeing whether you can spread raspberry preserve on a CD to see if it will still play; it wont.

 

(Note to self: Dave owes me 12.99 for one Best of The Jam CD).

 

I asked him the other day how his seemingly non-existent artwork was coming along.  He just fixed me with a curious smile and said, 'Cant you tell?'

What the f**k does that mean? Seriously.

That said, he did once show me a video that he'd made for an art exhibition.  He'd videoed himself sleeping and then videoed himself watching the video of him sleeping.  Not content with that, he’d then videoed himself watching himself, watching the video of himself asleep and then videoed himself again, asleep, whilst the video of him watching himself, watching the video of him sleeping, played in the background. Then, naturally, he videoed that.

The day before the art exhibition, he deleted it and showed the Judges two hours of static.  He won second place.

 

He also makes things up, I mean, all the time.  For instance, he has a plainly non-existent girlfriend whom he refers to as Strawbs.  He can be found on the phone to her most days, but curiously nobody ever hears the phone ring.  In fact, once halfway through a conversation with her, his phone actually started to ring. To my utter amazement, he continued to talk to her, loudly, over the top of a polyphonic version of the Imperial March from Star Wars.  He has, so far, claimed to have been heavily involved in toppling the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been spied on by the Vatican, wrote the Starship anthem We Built This City in conjunction with Bernie Taupin, oh and apparently he also invented hair. Sometime ago, he told my friends during evening drinks at our place that he was ex-Special Forces.  He stated that any everyday household object could be turned into a deadly weapon.  Imagine our surprise when Wendy, who had just come back from going for a wee, was suddenly set upon by Dave wielding a box of blueberry Pop-Tarts.  He exploded from behind the couch and caught her under the chin with a sweeping uppercut that lifted the poor girl clean off her feet and put her though our teak veneered display cabinet.  He knelt beside her inert form and tapped the box with a finger and said, 'See? Out cold - BAM! Now that's pretty impressive considering that we are dealing with nothing but 75 by 115mm of rectangular frosted pastry here...’

Of course, what he hadn't told us was that he'd deftly slipped a house brick into the box when we weren't looking, but that's Dave for you, forever overeager to prove a point.

 

I'd been thinking about asking Dave to leave for a while.  Perhaps he could find another place where fellow umm artists could appreciate him, say a commune or at a push, a secure unit.  I tried to broach the subject the other morning while Dave was preparing breakfast, or rather while he was poking some sausages and eggs in a pan with a fork and doing voiceovers for them:

 

Egg: Crikey, it’s hot in here isn’t it!

One sausage to the other: F**k me, a talking egg!

 

He didn’t seem to be listening. When breakfast was served, I was almost not surprised to find two badly forked sausages on my plate and little else.

'Dave', I said wearily, 'what happened to my eggs?'

He made great show of examining my plate and then the floor and then the stove. 'The little beggers!' he exclaimed.  We followed the tell-tale trail of grease to find one on the patio, one in the long garden grass and one on the window sill. 'They must have tried to escape... damn that laughing cow!’  He slammed a fist into his palm ala Burt Ward.  I left him to exact revenge on the said eggs with a hammer and wandered up to my room.

 

Now call me ungrateful if you will but there are 'surprises' and there are surprises.  I stood, stock still in the doorway of my bedroom, my heart pounding and my fingers fluttering agitatedly at my sides. I saw red... well, I say red, to be quite honest it was green...lots of green.  My room, from top to bottom, ceiling and walls to shag-pile carpet, was green.  The carpet crunched underfoot as I stepped inside.  I traced a finger along my book case.  My favourite novels had been melted into a block of matt vinyl lime, The 5 People You Meet in Heaven, Sophie's World, The Raw Shark Texts, Of Mice and Men, The Lord of the Flies, The Wasp Factory and so on.  My Playstation 3, my TV, my iPod, my bed, my favourite copy of FHM (the Terra Patrick special)... my f*****g girlie mags!  All painstakingly hand-painted in shades of green and stuck together.  And... oh dear God, surely not... surely not...

Alfred.

I moved towards Alfred's cage, my heart thumping now... surely... surely not...

The bars, emerald.  The little water bottle jade replete with malachite speckled drinking tube.  The little house sea green with a British Racing green roof.  The straw, grassy.

And there he was, little eyes twitching madly, the faintest trembling of an emerald whisker: Alfred A Hamster.  His fur was spray-painted into patchy Forest Green spikes and he was stuck fast by his little claws to the rungs of the little wheel he used to love to jog along.  He gave me a sidelong look, an expression halfway between desperation and hamster-frenzy.  Then he squeaked and I knew what had to be done.

 

Dave Delaney must die.

 

Something snapped.  I'm pretty sure I heard it, kind of a high pitched pling inside my head like a guy trying to land an 1800lb marlin with a monofilament line, you know the sort.

I think Alfred heard it too, in spite of the fact that his little ears had been hermetically sealed with green paint.

 

I could hear whistling coming from down the hallway and followed the sound, pausing at the door.  Dave was about my size and build and he was an artist so I'm pretty sure that I could have kicked his a*s.  I lingered at his door listening to him whistling a slightly off key version of Eagle Eye Cherry's Save Tonight, one of my favourite songs, funnily enough.  I licked my lips nervously, mindful of the last time I had sneaked up on Dave, it wasn’t pretty.

He had been going through his whole Life is Art phase and I made the mistake of walking into his room one Sunday afternoon when I thought he was out.  I shivered at the thought.  Dave was stood at the foot of his bed; the quilt was covered in Polaroids of himself, all pretty much the same: either grinning with two thumbs up or pointing a finger and winking.  Above the bed, he had made a banner that said Dave is Great!

Ahh, if only that had been the pinnacle of weirdness...  Dave was wearing a stocking on his head that mashed his features into that of a would-be armed bank robber.  He was naked save for a pair of striped football socks that he had pulled up over his knees and had something clasped in front of him... at his groin.

'Hello mate', he said in his usual chipper manner.

'Dave... what the f**k?'

Dave appeared to be having sex with a rubber glove that he had filled with two tins of Jam Roly-Poly.  'Not bad am I!' He said nodding towards the banner with a lopsided grin and still quite happily thrusting away. 'I tried blancmange but it doesn’t quite have the right consistency.'

'What?'

He stopped then and stared down at the pudding filled marigold glove. 'You don’t think it’s likely that I could catch something from this do you?'

'Erm...'

'Don’t want to end up with Spotted Dick, do I? Hahaha!'  He began thrusting away again.

I left him to it and went outside to throw up about a completely unrelated matter.

 

I gripped the door handle, gritted my teeth and drew a deep breath.  I thought of Alfred Hamster and his bug-eyed helplessness and of Wendy and her broken jaw and all the other oddities that seemed to have segregated us from the rest of humanity; I kicked open the door...

 

 

'And then what', she said.

I gave a faint shrug. 'He wasn’t there.'

'I see... and what was in that room?' She continued tapping her pad with a pen.

I shrugged again and scratched at my chin. 'Nothing, the room was empty, just a few boxes.'

She smiled pleasantly. 'And... what does that tell you?'

I chewed my lip and stared down at my fingernails, picking away at the paint flecks and congealed pudding. 'That Dave... wasn’t real?'

I started to feel bad for Wendy...

Doctor Thorpe smiled and laid down her pen. 'Ok, good! I think we’ve covered some really valuable ground here Glenn, I think that’s enough for today. Same time tomorrow?'

I shrugged. 'Sure.'

 

In Memory of Alfred A Hampster: 4 Feb 2003 - 10 July 2007

 

Author's Note

If you're wondering how on Earth I came up with this... the Contest stated that I had to incorporate the following aspects into the story:
i) Someone biting his toenails.
ii) A Hampster is painted green.
iii) A Box of PopTarts is used as a weapon.
iv) Pudding in a rubber glove.
v) Three fried eggs go missing.
I have nothing more to say about that haha!!

Reviews

[Kemari Blue]

You had me laughing so much through this, and the Fight Club style ending ala Chuck Palahniuk was awesome. I snorted when I read the part about the three eggs trying to escape. Would you hate me very much if I said this is one of my favorite reads ever? I lurve it. Not just love, I lurvvvvee it. I pirate love it.


Egg: Crikey, it�s hot in here isn�t it!
One sausage to the other: F**k me, a talking egg!

Brilliant. Brilliant in a crazy, maniacal way of course. You have such a twisted mind, I wonder if we were separated at birth.

Also, kudos on reviewing your own work. I might have to take a cue from you my friend.

xox,
KeMari

[Raef C. Boylan]

Aww, I wanted him to be real (as long as he never becomes my housemate).
Great write; I like the narrative voice you've written this in, and the bizarre ways in which Dave makes his point. I think The Young Ones missed out a character from the house lol.

Thanks for posting this.
Congratulations on winning the 'Make Me Laugh' contest.
[the talking fried breakfast and escapee eggs were what got me, I think...everyone has a friend who's close to this crazy]

[Fantasyfairy]

WTF!!! That was the craziest, and funniest thing I have ever read You had me enothralled all the way through, though the end sucked! I really wanted him to kick Dave's as for what he did to ALfred, and then I find out Dave wasn't real??? It was HIM??? I loved it, freaky, but great. Well written too. XX

[JP thinks the WC is apt..]

Pardon the expletives but this was f*****g spectacular. I'd like to bestow some more constructive thoughts upon it but that's all I can manage right now. Thoroughly enjoyable!

[Cavol Forbes]

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! This is probably my favorite piece I've read on this site. I dunno how you came up with some of the weird s**t Dave Delaney pulled off. Kind of a Fight Club ending bit funnier along the way. I don't really have any suggestions on improvement which is rare except maybe that since the narrator told the story with such conviction, that he may not be further along enough in his therapy to have accepted the fact that Dave doesn't exist. Maybe have the therapist say it instead.

[J. Araujo]

hhaha funny story funny indeed that note to self part was hilarious!

[Florian]

I thought this piece was great. It was hilarious though the surprise ending could have had an even better bang, like Glenn kills Dave or something. i don't know. Well, i did like it. i think I'll make this one a finalist in my contest.

[Gandré]

superb story, thank you for entering my contest. I will make it a finalist.

[Chantal-lise Mirman]

Note to self:
explore the practical aspects of multiple personality disorder, ie developing a reviewer identity.

I only just discovered this gem in the wee hours of the morning and I can't stop laughing! How lovely to have a "friend" who acts out all the random thoughts you have and can be blamed for the disastrous consequences! Although I was a bit concerned for Alfred...

But I did that thing I do when I don't like the way a book or movie has ended, and had to literally lie down and dream up a continuation or alterntive ending to make things right! So in my version, a neighboring vet tech just back from cleaning up an oil spill in Alaska got to Alfred just in time and was able to remove the offensive paint....

I did NOT see the twist coming. You get me every time! And I'm looking for it by now...

And I can just picture your somewhat abashed expression at the following:

I chewed my lip and stared down at my fingernails, picking away at the paint flecks and congealed pudding. �That Dave wasn�t real?�

Really, really a GREAT story! A favorite!

[Holly Marsh]

HA! Love it!

I loved the "Fight Club"-esque ending.

You had me really convinced- I really thought everything in your room had been spray painted green.

Great piece!

[Spiritscript]

Howie,Oh my God! Hilarious!!! You're an awesome writer. Your humor is a great stress releiver. AND, they way you did your own review... LMAO!!!PS: You should tell this stuff in the mental wards! LOL