A TALE OF TWO VESTS (filthy)

A Story by Charlie Skinner

Shards of autumnal sunshine illuminated Ivan's 'Water o' Leith' walk - it was a day for a man with the artist's eye. The new camera felt like a weapon in his hand as he screwed in the zoom lens. A bulb exploded in his head; he could see himself up on the podium accepting his award - Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year. A rustling and scrunching of leaves up ahead hijacked his focus from such abstract musings and, although a way off, he could see that the cause of this disturbance was an extremely tall lassie kicking at the fallen foliage with the ferocity of a difficult child. He felt flurries of flicker-finger playing on his gut. Was this a nutter? He tried to pay her no heed, avoid eye contact, totally ignore the fact that she was getting ever closer, staring straight at him, tall like a freak, getting closer, so close he could make out her face with features dominated by the inane grin of the idiot. She caught him with her mocking gaze, working the circle she had formed with her thumb and finger with the index finger of her other hand, sliding it in and out, saying nothing - large breasts straining under a grubby vest and open jeans unzipped to her knicker-less crotch saying it all.
It was all he could do to keep moving, she had started laughing; a horror film cackle capable of spurring far braver men than Ivan into seeking safety but he did not run. Sure she was mental, sure she had unnerved him, but never, ever, in his wildest fantasies would he have imagined a fanny could be so, so hairy. Shook up as he was, he couldn’t run from that.
So he fast-walked towards the sound of a waterfall feeling he had survived an ordeal, like an ancient Greek hero. But it didn’t take long to blow the wind from his sails; standing at the top of the falls was the second filthy vest of the day and this one concealed no tantalising tits, no, this one stretched over the obese gut of a fat b*****d. And not just any fat b*****d, the gigantic boil sprouting out his forehead flagged up his identity like a Belisha beacon, standing there, right in front of him, was BILEY COGIE.
Biley Cogie, a mythical creature up there with the Boogy Man and the cloven-hoofed, Horned One, yet here he was, real as a rock. If you wandered too far from home you knew what to expect, all the kids knew. Ivan could see he had one with him captured in a canvas bag, a small one, surely a baby who had crawled through a left open garden gate.
Biley hooked his thumb under the elastic of his joggy bottoms and pulled downwards, his long c**k uncoiled and slipped into the neck of the bag as if it had a mind of its own. The muscles in his screwed up face relaxed and his boil began to visibly pulsate. Ivan realised that this happened every time he pissed for Scotland. He also realised that the squeals and whimpers coming from the bag could be from no child, no, this was a bag of puppies. Biley proceeded to swing the bag windmill fashion, aiming the trail of leaking piss so that it splattered into Ivan’s face. With a ‘weeeee’ he let go, the bag flew through the air, landed in the grip of the waterfall, where it sank, out of sight. He took a couple of steps towards Ivan, stretched out his muscular, tattooed arm, pinched his cheek and, in a surprisingly high pitched voice, said, ‘chubby cheeky.’ In a flash his mood darkened, he rushed Ivan, belly-barged him to the ground, then, satisfied, went on his way.
Brave Ulysses had fallen at the first battle, the waterfall ogre had defeated him without even trying, but, at least, spitting out dirt and wiping piss from his face, Ivan could squeeze himself back into his skin and feel fortunate that Biley had left him alive.
Perhaps, though, it was time to quit the quest; even if a fish gnawing otter surfaced right in front of him and he managed to capture it in photographic perfection, he knew, that that particular image could not compare to the one that would blaze in his mind that night as he crawled between the covers and closed his eyes.