PEACHES.

I was a courier of a mummified cat to the other side as I began the deep downward slide.

So there I was … a young man and shit had gone bad.

As you read in the last story I had lost the sweet blond gal.

I started smoking the devils lettuce at work, with some of the other guys.

This was allowed by the boss but always a bad idea.

The Boss, his name was Robbo… was a mad blazer. A huge maori guy.

Deadly, but funny… he had grabbed me off another job as detailed in the story Dodgy Deevo.

He was a very fair guy but also violent when needed…

No one in the fucking WORLD fucked with this guy.

Within a week of being on the job I did a naughty thing and sold 100$ worth of bricks off the site when no one was around.

Thinking to give Robbo the 100$ the next day at work…but I was very forgetful..

And I just blew the money on weed and pies.

A month later…

Robbo rolls over to me as Im stacking wood and says
”A guy just called wanting more bricks… I didn’t know what he was talking about until he told me he gave the money to some guy with long hair…. “

Shit…!!!!! I am suddenly covered in freezing sweat…

I told him I just forgot! But he can take it out of my pay!

I had never been so terrified, and ashamed.

Robbo: “I don’t care about the money. It’s just the cheek of it.

If you want to keep your job, we can go a few rounds… if you get a few good hits in, you can keep your job, but If I put you on your arse your out.”

ME: “Nah Im good.”

I almost RAN out of there, like a loser coward weasel.

This act began my Annus Horribilis… as you will see from the next batch of stories that come down the pipe.

So I fled home shamefaced… sat on the bean bag at home and blazed weed at mid day on a monday. I lied to my friends and told them I had been laid off as there was no more work with Robbo.

I farted about for about a week… mentally circling the drain… and grinding down to my last 20$.

I needed work for sanity and survival … and a friend told me of another Demolition job a few hours north In a town called Whangarei.

I hitchhiked up there and within 24 hours was living in the “BAT CAVE” with the “LOST BOYS”.

Yes the place was called the BAT CAVE

and Yes they literally called themselves the LOST BOYS.

I had hit the ground and bounced up into this loft where the crew lived.

Was it to be a full upward trajectory, or just the apex of another arc downward?

The Bat cave was the name of the fire hazard loft living arrangement above a shady operation called Bat Demolition. The Lost Boys were tweaked out, weed and speed smoking criminal druggies to a man; who lived in the cave and slept on stinking mattresses that lay about up there like mini turds in the toilet bowl of our loft home..

There was also a woman.

She was a skinny, brown and callous handed 45 year old pseudo Wendy mother to this crew of misfits and she bunked with us all in that festering cave at the top of the stairs.
She was trying to have a baby – no strings attached – any one who wanted to mount her and shoot her full of life creating goo was welcome. I don’t think this was ever successful; as the combination of her hard life, her advancing age and the amount of drugs being done by the studs all amounted to a firing blanks into barren soil.

I almost got up the courage to plant a seed myself – but the room never seemed dark enough nor the drugs I was on strong enough to enable me to climb onto that double bed in the corner and deliver the goods.

In the mornings she would get up first and make porridge in a big black pot and then bang the ladle on the side to wake us for breakfast.

It was nourishing enough as she threw in a few handfuls of peanuts and raisins and after downing a few cups of strong instant coffee, the Lost Boys and I climbed into or onto the various trucks and headed off to the job site.

I was on the way to the site in the cab of a long flatbed truck. The drivers name was Dave the Cranker and he, with his constant twitching and black wrap-around shades was the poster boy of paranoia. We were stopped at the lights and I noticed him sunk low in the seat and looking in the side mirror at a police car behind us. To me, and from the corner of his mouth he whispered ” If that pig gets out of his car I’m bolting and your gunna have to drive the truck to the site … cause I’m wanted.”
I just stared at him blankly and both my eyebrows went up a tiny bit…
The light went green and we rolled on.

I was assigned to pull nails out of the wood the other guys were removing from walls and ceiling of the dilapidated house.
I was partnered up with the woman from the Bat Cave who was the lead nail puller and in between her whining about not being pregnant yet, she would see ghosts coming out of the house and describe them to me. One of them I found particularly disturbing; an apparition of a middle aged man in a grey suit. He was just standing in the corner of the yard staring at the house being taken down. She told me he was an old music teacher who drank himself to death.

All the rope that I was smoking in the shed with the other workers every time we took a break was not helping to shield me from the ghosts evil gaze at my back and so I took off into the undemolished lower part of the house to search for treasure.

I wound up working in demolition for a few years off and on, and hidden treasure in the walls and floor boards is not a myth.

Every worker has a tale or six .

One I recall tells about how a guy was supposed to break a wall down but was too lazy and was avoiding the work. The boss then had taken it upon himself to sledge the wall in, and out from the first hole made tumbled a fat gangsta roll of sweet hundys in a plastic baggie.

I found treasure myself once when tearing a wall off. It was 260 dusty dollars in a brown paper envelope. Obviously some builders pay check from the late 70s when the wall was built.
The guy must have put it on the ledge and then walled over it. I made it disappear into my pocket ( all treasure is supposed to go to the boss).

Anyway… the purpose of the above paragraph was to engage your interest in the subject of pirate style treasure hunting as you follow me into the musty old house.

I searched out a few loose floorboards before turning my attention to the chimney. Taking my pry bar I levered out the boards around its base. A hollowed eyed feline face stared up at me and shocked me back a step.

I pulled more boards away and liberated the remains of a cat.

Somehow this cat in decades past had crawled under the fireplace to die and once dead the radiant heat of the fireplace being lit each night for half the year for who knows how many years, had completely mummified the poor creature.
Its fur was long gone and it had a smooth and hard yellow leathery skin the texture and hardness of a dog chew leather thing. It was curled into a letter “C” position, but its head was twisted upwards; every whisker intact and splayed, its mouth and fangs wide and yowling and all claws out and hooky.
Most amazing of all was the dried leather collar from which a silver disc hung. Inscribed on the disc and causing tears to spill from my bloodshot eyes was the word … “PEACHES”.

I was saddened that my treasure hunt had revealed nothing but a mummified feline; yet I was gladdened by the fact that my hunts treasure was found to exceed by an astonishing difference the wildest expectations of the most imaginative.

That weekend….

That weekend I was in the Van Damme mobile being driven by a young man who was equally driven. The car was a small and old Mazda 232 two door hatchback called the Van Damme Mobile for the martial arts prowess of the driver and the words JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME emblazoned across the trunk in four inch letters of black magic marker .

A typical means of transport for the dispossessed. It could get you to the party on two dollars gas and get you to the gas station on white light if by using your magic powers you could focus enough of it into the engine. The pilot of the car drove it with the precision of a short range high Powered Star Fighter. Storms, wind, headlights turned off – it did not matter. It was always piled high with garbage and scurvy lunatics. We lived out of the thing. It was our pirate ship- we plundered gas stations and parties were our pirate coves. There was not much rum but there were plenty of wenches and shouting.
The captain was sailing us to a pirate cove at this moment far to the South East.
We had to stop and get something though.

I had them stop at the demolition site. Went ashore and dug up my treasure. Wrapping it in a long purple curtain I secured it in a large plastic paint pail.
I put it into the hold of the ship telling everyone that it was not to be opened until we reached our destination.

Through mountains and forests we sailed and on dark we arrived at the party in the bush. It was full – drunken and pumping and I staggered in swaying sea dog style. I soon met a young wench who handcuffed herself to me! Had I been in a less bewildered state I may have been able to take advantage of the situation and have gotten down to some serious wenching- yet as the Egyptian errand boy and courier of Peaches to its final resting place I had responsibilities.

I got the coffin out of the car and leading a group of interested partygoers who begged me to tell them what was in the pail as I headed through the bush to the river. Someone had a flashlight and this prevented the coffin from being too seriously bashed against the trees as we blazed a trail to the river – where Peaches would be interred with enough ceremony to appease the gods.

We were nearing the river when I tripped, dragging the handcuffed wench down into a ditch with me. The coffin spilled open and the wrapped Package tumbled out. The wench got up and in stepping backwards stood on Peaches with the sickening crack of a mummified cat bursting asunder. I was shocked at the violation of the sacred relic and gently opened the shroud. The scene was illuminated by the torch bearer and it showed my beloved Peaches in many pieces. The head was still good though and staring up at us accusingly with its dark empty sockets, mouth and fangs wide and yowling in protest.

That’s when the screaming started.

I tried to grab the silver medallion on the collar, to show everyone that it was a good happy cat once and would not curse us with its wicked Egyptian magic. By reaching for peaches with the handcuffed hand I dragged the handcuffed girl close to the broken feline body and I only succeeded in grabbing a small handful of dried Peaches. Her frenzied and desperate attempts to get away caused the handful to catapult out of my hand and hit her in the face letting lose a small cloud of yucky tasting yellow powder from the main pieces of the dried Peaches. The main “bones” I guess you could call them somehow tangled in her hair and we both went down in a shaking shrieking mess. She managed to find the key, unlock herself and flee to safety. But not before she stood on my crotch..
I made a mental note to have the Pharaoh execute her later on.

The fickle party people left me there in the woods.

I lay there for a bit and when I could crawl I picked up Peaches, wrapped it in the shroud and staggered to the banks of the Nile.
I commenced the ceremony to the gentle protective goddess Bastet. To ferry sweet Peaches to the other side of the Styx and to soothe my aching balls.

When I had finished with the sacred prayers and chants I flung the shroud into the waters and watched it drift off into the darkness.

My work was done.

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The End.

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