UNTITLED STATES OF WHATEVER
BY
BARRY J. WATSON
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PROLOGUE
Dear Sir Or Madam,
Will you read my novel? It took me months to write, and I’d appreciate it were you to take a look. It’s a dirty story, about a dirty man, and his clinging wife doesn’t understand, this is partially because his clinging wife is horrible and vile, and also because she doesn’t exist. It’s 70 pages, give or take a few, and I’ll be writing more in a week or five. If you really enjoy this you can have the rights, it could make you millions (of enemies) overnight. If you must return it, you can send it here.
The dirty man is not, against expectations called Lear, but is in fact called Oliver Stout. Also, the fact that the story is dirty depends on the readers’ interpretation. Right now, Oliver is sleeping in his bed, not expecting the day, week or any other cliché length of time to be different from any other day, week or cliché length of time. Oliver is approximately 17 years old, it’s possible to tell this by the way he is sleeping, it’s also possible to tell that he is, indeed male. Alas, even if the man sleeping were cruel and murderous, it would be difficult to describe someone to sleep in a cruel and murderous way. The man is probably not cruel and murderous, he may be peaceful, ironic or perhaps insane, but none of these characteristics are shown through his sleeping. Though one thing that can be identified by the way Oliver sleeps is that he is a very, very, loud snorer. So loud that his parents, (Oliver still lives in the same house as his parents, but you wouldn’t expect anything less from a 17-year-old boy living in Islington) would often sleep downstairs on the sofa bed. This may not seem very loud, but the fact that the Stouts lived in a four-floored house, and that Oliver slept in the loft above the fourth floor was cause for concern. He slept in a cute manner, providing you were deaf and obsolete from his rhinoceros-like grunts, though, being a 17-year-old boy living in Islington, it was a safe bet that he wasn’t actually a cute boy. His room was dark, which made it difficult to describe anything in his bedroom, which was situated in the loft. But it was one of those lofts that were big enough to contain a bedroom within it, it was not the kind of cramped loft that would be found in two-floored houses that would be regularly found in Somerset.
In a short while, our hero of the time, Oliver Stout will wake up, though he doesn’t know this yet, as he’s too busy sleeping to worry about the pressures of waking up. What seems safe to say is that he will wake up in a way reminiscent of how he woke up the previous day, but, as I was not watching him sleep the previous day, I could not warn you before time how this would carry through. But yes, enjoy the events of Oliver Stout like never before. Welcome to Untitled States Of Whatever, enjoy the ride, for one day we may die.
Up Yours Sincerely,
Barry J. Watson
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CHAPTER ONE
Oliver Stout lay there calmly in the dark night. Although, night would be the wrong word, as it was nearing mid-morning, but due to Islington’s habit to be dark in the mornings during the winter months it was dark, and a dark night sounds more reasonable than a dark day. So he lay there calmly in the dark night, his rhinoceros-like growls were becoming a minimum, and his slight movement suggested that his slumber was to be nearing an end. He noticed this fact as well, and his mouth grimaced at the idea of another day starting, despite it technically starting several hours before. A few minutes later, his body admitted to himself that he was officially awake and would have to consider doing something about this state.
First, he reached for his mobile phone; this was however, as a means of finding out the time. Oliver wasn’t a fan of technology, and this was he reason for not having a clock on his bedside table. The mobile phone was used as his clock, and not used as a mobile phone. Oliver detested mobile phones, his phone was especially horribly, it made loud clingy noises when it was turned on, and repeated this effect when it was being turned off to remind Oliver that it was still on, but not for long. In the brief time that his mobile phone witnessed being turned on, it would give out a bright green light, which was, the phone assumed, comforting to the user. Whilst he reached for his phone, his hand collapsed onto the hard surface of the bedside table several times before his hand achieved the success of finding the phone. This hurt his hand, but his body pretended it was still asleep and decided not to notice. He lifted his phone and pushed the red button, which strangely turned it on, in Oliver’s view, the green light was completely worthless. His phone gave out an orgasmic sigh and flashed brightly, Oliver clenched his eyes away from the horrid green shade of whatever. He peaked at the corner of the phone that emitted the GMT based time. After he realised it was “06:49” he decided to turn off the phone (which released another orgasm, which suggested it’s femininity) and then pondered for a while.
Pondering on whether he should bother getting up, he considered that getting up would only increase his chances of something bad happening, but, he had gotten up approximately 6300 times and redeemed it as an inevitable conflict. He then made a bet against himself that he couldn’t get up within one minute. Oliver is very competitive and refused to lose the bet, and so got up very quickly and ran to the stairs outside of the loft and his bedroom. Oliver decided that this would be the start of his predictable morning schedule. On the fourth floor of his house (or rather, his parent’s house) there was a bathroom, or rather, there was a toilet surrounded by four walls and partnered with a sink. Oliver, being seventeen, hadn’t quite realised why the sink was there, but naturally used the toilet in a way most would expect. Oliver almost felt proud that his schedule was going perfectly to plan and decided to continue by going to the ground floor. The stairs competed with Oliver, daring him to walk down them without holding himself against the wall or rail. However, he was not competitive enough to do dares and stumbled slowly downstairs.
The ground floor was the worst floor for Oliver, he tended to find that this was the floor where he was most likely to see his parents. His father liked to use the lighting on this floor, Oliver detested that. He also detested that his father thought he was being considerate to leave the lights on before he left for work in the morning. Oliver clenched his eyes, and screamed at the floor. His pupils should have been immune to travelling from a dark loft to Ikea within a brief moment of time by now, but they simply weren’t. Oliver tended to scream natural curse words at the carpet, as the carpet was held responsible due to being the only thing he could look at comfortably. He was lying on the floor by this time, threatening to fall asleep, but also torturing his eyes to agree with his body to wake up.
After a brief while, or what Americans would class as 33 minutes, he decided to stand up and approach the kitchen. Upon approaching the cupboard, he slammed the door after realising that this was the wrong cupboard according to his schedule. Angrily, Oliver walked to the opposite side of the kitchen and took a bowl out and placed it cautiously on the unit. He then returned to the wrong cupboard, opened it and took some cereal out. He thusly poured the cereal into the bowl and returned once again, to the wrong cupboard and replaced the cereal. The reason for this order of cupboards was that, if he closed the wrong cupboard with his right hand, his left hand was directly over the fridge handle, where he would earn his milk. Somehow, his body saw this as an extreme time and labour saving technique and so poured the milk into his bowl of cereal and replaced the milk inside the fridge, utterly content with saving the time he did from opening the fridge whilst closing the wrong cupboard.
Once he had completed the difficult task of retrieving a spoon from a drawer beneath the cupboard where the bowls were kept (and after noting that his body would save energy by getting the spoon at the same time as the bowl the following morning) he wandered back into the front room where the lights and sofas were placed. He positioned himself on the sofa in a way you would expect someone to when they were carrying a bowl full of milk and cereal whilst being tired and also promising to themselves to not spill it. He achieved this task (as he had done every day for the past 3 years) and begun eating his cereal. Describing the way someone eats their breakfast is not a fascinating task to describe and produced very little character, and so leaving it out would provide more entertainment than were the description included. However, halfway through consuming his normal cereal, it occurred to Oliver that a hair was in it. The fact that he had somehow managed to lose an eyelash (or perhaps an eyebrow) in a bowl of cereal that he had only been in contact with for little less over a minute frustrated him to the Nth degree and he could only consider throwing the bowl at the floor at this point. He did also realise that this was a silly thing to do, but he only realised this upon carrying the act through, so there was little he could now do. His house had several bowls, and with only three members now living in the house, Oliver didn’t redeem this as a complete travesty and assumed that his mother would clean it up by the time he got back home from school.
He was experiencing the final year of his 2 years long A-levels at school, he was studying Further Mathematics, Geography and Greek. He had, purely chosen these subjects as a means of appearing smart, knowing that, if he had to fail his A-levels, it would be best to fail them in something that sounded good.
Oliver decided to carry out his normal routine of removing his clothes that he wore at night and un-removing his clothes that he wore at school. Just as he began leaving the house, he got a strange, sensual feeling. A very strange, sensual feeling actually. It was weird that he got this feeling, but for some reason he did, and this feeling made him smile about life that little bit more, but it also made him grimace. He somehow realised that today was Saturday, and that there was no need to continue his journey. However, this meant that his previous rushed actions had been wasted, as he could have spent them sleeping, or generally not having his eyes mutilated by bright lights. He decided to go back to bed and sleep in, however, it was now nearing a time that American would state as 09:00 and was perhaps too late to go back to bed for Oliver, he was not one for lay-ins, despite the fact that he desperately needed them every day. But, he lay in his bed regardless. Coincidentally, walking up four floors of stairs made him rather tired, which helped in his falling asleep, and so, he did.
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CHAPTER TWO
Whilst Oliver slept like a sloppy 17-year-old would, his mother awoke in a state that would be far less entertaining to view. Siân Stout gave birth to Oliver 17 years and several months before this point in time, and has considered herself to be responsible for him since. Siân was rather proud of her son, though also insisted that he would have to gain a job as soon as he had passed his A-levels (which was more of an incentive for Oliver to fail them), she was looked upon as a caring mother, and coped with having him at such a young age quite well. She didn’t lead him to a spoilt life but was kind and lenient enough to be the kind of mother that wasn’t hated by their spawn. However, all these compliments have been made without taking in the consideration that Siân is of course, Welsh. As far as Welsh mothers go, she was great, but, well, that was the problem. She had shed a lot of her accent, and was generally allowed to fit into Islington, but well, y’know, she was Welsh. Being Welsh had plus points for her, it made her very easy to be attracted to her English husband, Steve. Steve had been in a relationship before, which resorted in two daughters, though he did not ever marry the mother of these daughters. This made it very easy for him to have an affair with Siân whilst his partner slaved over his daughters for him. I’ll converse about those three women later.
Steve and Siân Stout both, automatically received lots of ‘S.S.’ based insults, which led to them not naming their son as Simon or Stuart, or in a more horrible case Stewart. They were a happy couple, despite Steve being 7 years older than the currently 37-year-old brunette wife. I say ‘currently’ as she was known to dye her hair on frequent occasions, this season’s colour was brunette though, and that was why her hair was as it was. The three of them had always got on suitably well until Oliver grew the horrible trait of using his instincts whilst having unfavourable instincts.
“OLIVER!” Shouted the mother Stout. Her son gave out a sly murmur, though it was naturally a loud murmur, as it had to pass down through four floors. “I suppose you expect me to clean this mess up?” She said, whilst pointing at the smashed bowl of cereal on the floor, not that pointing would make any difference.
“No.” Answered Oliver after giving it some thought “…why don’t you do it?” this was a question that prevented his mother to conjure up an answer that was either equally or more so stupid than the question and so she submitted, and cleaned up the mess herself.
A few hours later, Oliver concluded that he had slept unto his limit and so went downstairs to the badly lit lounge. The sun had his hat on, which was just as well, because it was pissing it down outside, but it was midday, so Siân saw no reason to leave the lights on, purely based on the time of day and not the lightness coming through the windows. Oliver heard his mother grumble something about cereal, he assumed that the news had just had a report about a frequent killer, but he didn’t care much. He lay on the sofa in a scruffy way, suggesting that he was wearing a string vest. Of course, he was seventeen so was instead wearing cotton shorts and t-shirt claiming that he didn’t “do” mornings. It was the weekend, and this lead him to not even consider changing into some real clothes for a couple of hours at least and so laid there watching the news, as he had the horrible habit of sitting where the remote control wasn’t, regardless of where he sat. His mother looked at him, half out of boredom and half out of disappointment of her only child turning into this.
“Don’t you get fed up of staying in this house forever and ever, Amen?” She asked promptly, but weirdly. Oliver had a look on his face that suggested that he went out during weekdays to school, which was a lot more than his mother ever went out for. Oliver was also known to not stay inside forever and ever, Amen.
“Don’t you?” Answered Oliver. His mother sighed and started to think that there would have been better ways to start a conversation with her son than to start questioning his being around. Especially considering the fact that she would terribly, awfully miss him when it came to kicking him out of the house (she needed the extra room in her house, of course). After finishing about thinking of better ways to start conversations with her sons, she whistled (badly) and went to the second floor to faff about with something that could be found of the second floor of the house.
Oliver was a very lazy character when he wanted to be, unfortunately, this was quite often. A while later, a long while, as Oliver was still being quite a teenage slob, his mother came back down to the lounge, this infuriated Oliver to go to his room and get changed. Oliver was like that. He then returned to the lounge stating that he was “going out” and that he would be back “whenever”. Naturally, his mother was confused as to where he was going, when “whenever” was, and whether he was hiding something from her. Naturally, her son was confused as to what she expected him to be going, and why she would think he was hiding something from her. Oliver was simply going out to meet a friend in a café.
The word friend was normally over-used. The person in question is female, two weeks older than Oliver (precisely, they were both born at 17:30:06), and named Cather. Oliver wasn’t exactly sure why they were friends, he can only remember it as a habit that started, and failed to end. Friends are horribly difficult to stop being friends with, as you can’t really break up with them unless they’ve done something like breaking into your house and killing your hamster, or similar like things. And as Cather was generally a nice girl, despite being flat chested, and wasn’t the kind of girl that enjoyed breaking into houses and killing small pet rodents. In fact, she wasn’t the kind of girl that would even kill small non-pet rodents; she was too easy-going for that. Their friendship stemmed a few years earlier, when they made explosive chemicals together. And I mean that in the mixing potassium and fluorine way, and not in any relationship like way. After laughing about how much fun it was to make Potassium Fluoride they accidentally began conversing with each other about horrible things they seemed to have in common, their ironic interest in economy, for example. Cather and Oliver’s first conversation was about how the economy was doing, despite both members of the conversation knowing absolutely nothing about the economy’s current situation.
Being the opposite gender from each other, some may have expected some kind of horrid romance to take place, but with Oliver finding Cather attractive in no ways whatsoever, it was just a friendship that tended to last too long. They had both now spent too much time with each other, and it was easily noticeable for people that exclaimed “You’ve been with each other for too long.” It seems likely that Cather may have been attracted to Oliver at some point, but after having spent too much time with him, she no longer had any feelings that Oliver liked to pretend she had.
What proved that they spent too much time together was the fact that they both arrived at the café at the same time, despite not even verbally agreeing to meet at the café, and never meeting at this particular café ever before in their existence as friends. Yet, they weren’t going there spontaneously, they both somehow knew they would meet there, which should have freaked both of them out, but they’d known each other for too long to allow themselves to get freaked out.
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CHAPTER THREE
Oliver opened the door of the café, whilst Cather went inside. Whilst walking to the till, Oliver made what he considered great puns with the words “café” and “Cather”. Whilst Cather was kicking him in the shin, he ordered two coffees, and one tea for Cather. They then proceeded to sit at the same table as Oliver rallied off a few more puns. He began sipping his first coffee, as Cather unravelled the Islington Independent and begun reading the most fascinating headline article about windows that were recently smashed in the area. Oliver watched her reading, he somehow found it humourous to watch her eyes wiggle from side to side at the paper. He continued sipping his first coffee, trying to figure why he was where he was. Cather was horribly similar, she shared his attempts to succeed at A-level Further Mathematics, but also studied History, but let herself down by studying Media Studies. She had fallen into the trap of believing that Media Studies was actually a useful subject and could actually get her somewhere. However, it would probably get her further than failing Greek would for Oliver.
“Any news?” Asked Oliver, wondering if anything had happened to her in the brief time they had been separated.
“Oh, lots of news.” She answered, “It’s a newspaper though, I suppose I expected it.” Oliver should have expected this answer upon his asking the question, but perhaps he wanted the answer for the comic relief.
“Anything happened with your life recently?” He rephrased.
“Oh, the usual, mother cooked food yesterday, which I masticated…” they both snorted at the innuendo, much like they did whenever they managed to fit the word “masticate” into one of their conversations, which was frequently. “What about you?” she returned.
“Well, I remembered that it was Saturday, and then allowed mother to clean up the bowl of cereal that I had thrown on the floor due to there being an eyelash of mine in it. And then, well, I came here, like.” He answered while starting to drink his first coffee, rather than the secure wary sips that had proceeded. Cather, in reply began the initial sips of her tea, while flicking another page of the newspaper. She gave out a slight snigger which prompted Oliver to add his curiousity to the conversation of snigger.
“What is it?” He asked, as expected.
“Oh, it’s this headline…” She answered, she didn’t want to tell him everything at first, this must have made her feel slightly superior.
“What does it say?” He sighed anxiously.
“‘PC Charged With Rape’ ” She snorted.
“Haha.” Laughed Oliver. “Those computers sure are becoming more human-like.” This was the reason that Oliver and Cather had ended up as friends; no-one else befriended their offending ways. They both drank their respective drinks, saying very little betwixt themselves yet there was no feeling that they weren’t talking to each other. But Oliver was yet to fathom what it was exactly that made the habit of being friends continue when they both would have rather drank and told puns with someone more likable and of a more similar gender. They both had an awkward habit of being simultaneously paced with each other, as Oliver was starting his second coffee, Cather was exactly, and I mean exactly half way through her tea. After they had finished their drinks, and spoken very little to each other, Oliver told her about “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cather” they parted ways and went to their respective homes.
This event on the whole, was weird, but it was also expected from both of them. Cather was a girl of independent means, but like most humans, welcomed some kind of socialisation amongst the hellish life that she had lived. Cather had a traumatic past, including her hat being stolen at a slightly younger age, but that’s a totally different and uninteresting story. But yes, Cather was used to being somewhat peeved and this was probably what made her accept Oliver so easily, as he was usually somewhat annoying, so they managed to fuel each other’s hunger.
“Where have you been?” Questioned Siân to his son has he toddled through the door of what he liked to call Islington Island, Oliver enjoyed alliteration of sorts.
“Jeez, I been gone for nigh on an hour, and you’re already questioning where I’ve been?”
“Son,” His mother frowned in a persuading style “I’m not used to you making much sense, but this is just ridiculous.”
“Not as ridiculous as that PC.”
“What PC?” Siân asked regrettably.
“Nevermind.” He answered in a way that suggested he was getting nowhere slowly. “I’m going to go sleep now, k?” His mother sighed and allowed him to, and that was the last she, or anyone saw of Oliver that weekend.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Oliver trampled up the several collections of stairs to his bedroom and slept. That was until a few minutes later, when the inevitable aliens decided to abduct him. It’s a somewhat weird thing to be abducted by aliens, as anyone who has experienced such a thing would tell you (if you would put up the time to listen to them and their insanities). It was also odd that out of all the people in the world, the aliens would decide to abduct a young man that lived in Islington. The mostly odd fact was that this was the exact person that you would expect to be abducted by aliens were you to have read the previous three chapters.
In a more detailed way, he lay there, with his eyes closed, attempting to convince his body to sleep, but as it was only 3pm, it seemed nigh on impossible. And, it was, it became harder when a green light began shining in his face. Oliver released a sigh, fumbled for his mobile phone and turned it off, to which the phone replied with a frustrated orgasm.
A couple of minutes later, and a red light shone towards his face, his instincts told him that it was obviously a group of aliens within a UFO, that thought they were in Australia, and were unaware of the fact that they didn’t need their shiny, blinky, red lights on. There were many dislikeable traits about Oliver, but one trait he did have was that his instincts were, 9 times out of 10, correct. The aliens were rather alien-like to Oliver; in fact they were alien-like to anyone that had failed to travel to Nghlocs, from the distant galaxy of Hasselhoff (which was not, despite rumours, related to David). The UFO, which had somehow managed to fit inside Oliver’s loft, regardless of the fact that it was the size of a giant microwave had six sides which were all rather perfect, or, if there were any imperfectives, the sides were too dark to see any. The red lights were situated on the door side of the UFO, and blinked rapidly, whilst displaying “00:00”, it’s possible that this was not so much a UFO, as something that had been wrongly identified as a video player. Oliver squinted at the UFO, which was now an identified UFO, as opposed to the normal UUFOs seen in drunken states such as Texas. Oliver reacted rather humbly to the IUFO and accepted its existence and rebellion against the majority of known laws of Physics with calmness. However, the Nghlocians were all too rather impatient, they had travelled for many a year to arrive at Islington, and had not stopped to stretch their legs, and this had made them all rather restless and full of angst. The IUFO gave out a mysterious ding that suggested hatred to all humans that could only be recreated on Earth by a mobile phone, it was with this ding that the door opened in a way not expected by a huge, dark, microwave. The door dissolved away in small squares, and in a unique order that left an imprint of one of the Nghlocians’ highest score on Tetris before that dissolved to leave the box open to all diseases. Thankfully, Nghlocians had done a worthwhile amount of research on planet Earth, and were also aware that they would be perfectly safe from all viruses, just so long as they poked their eye at the exact moment of infection, whilst screaming out the infamous phrase “Yakuoga jinxa yongba” which roughly translated to “He who doesn’t wish to die right now say ‘I’”. Unthankfully, Nghlocians had not done a worthwhile amount of research on planet Earth to learn any of the several thousand known, useful languages of which existed on the dire planet. They had instead spent the time learning the rules to Ker-plunk and how to speak Welsh.
The Nghlocians had realised that Oliver had not replied, and looked most displeased about he lack of talking, so they aimed their weapons that they had at him, and tied him to a chair with MAGIC ALIEN ROPE. Oliver was in trouble, what could he possibly do!?!??!!?
And in a bound, he was free!