“Well, what about that full check you talked about,” Josh asked. “Could that find something?”
“Maybe,” Robbie agreed, “but it can take hours. It’s up to you. I’m free all day, like I said, so I’m happy to do it if you want to wait. Or I can show you what to do and you can take it away, or you can leave it here and pick it up later. It’s up to you.”
“I’m not doing anything – I can wait.”
“OK,” Robbie agreed and set the scan up for a full, deep investigation of the machine. After a minute or two of flashing information on the screen, the computer claimed that the full scan would take at least four hours.
“So… four hours. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” Josh replied. “What have you got?”
Robbie thought for a moment. “There’s the PS5,” he said.
Josh screwed his face up. “I’m no good at that sort of thing,” he answered. “I’m the kind of loser who always gets shot first.”
Robbie nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “Beyond that, we’ve got TV with all the trimmings or the games room.”
“Games room? You have a games room?”
“Well, technically it’s the garage,” Robbie said. “Only, the car doesn’t fit in it because the boiler’s in there, just inside the door – which is really bad planning, by the way! But it means the car sits outside, so it was just a dumping ground for shit. Until my dad and I cleared it out a year or two ago and turned it into what we call the games room.”
“What kind of games?”
“Not much, to be fair. There’s a dartboard, a mini-bowling lane and the pool table.”
“Pool sounds good,” Josh answered.
Robbie blinked. “Bullshit,” he said. “I’ve seen you at pool. Fuck, I’ve played you at pool! You’re fucking useless! No offence!”
“Plenty taken,” Josh said, smirking. “But, have you ever wondered why I’m so shit at pool?”
“I assumed it was because you’re shit at pool,” Robbie said.
“Good guess,” Josh came back, “but quite wrong. I’m actually pretty decent at it, but no-one wants to play the good players because no-one likes having their arse handed to them on a plate. So I play like a dick and people play against me and win and they feel good and I just laugh at them. Inside, I mean.”
“Seriously? You’re really good?”
“No,” Josh answered. “I’m fucking fantastic.”
Robbie’s face showed that he did not believe this at all.
“OK,” Josh said. “You know Isabelle? Isabelle Conroy?”
“Yeah,” Robbie said. Robbie had always been fairly good at pool, and his skill had increased massively since the games room had been set up. But Isabelle was, by some distance, the best pool player he’d ever had kick his arse. Isabelle kicked everyone’s arse at pool. She claimed to play at a professional level. Robbie didn’t know about that, but he could almost believe it.
“You know she doesn’t play any more, right?”
Robbie nodded. It was weird, he knew. Isabelle had kicked the arse of everyone she met, always paying up front (so you felt bad turning her down) and generally lording it (or ladying it, perhaps) over everyone else.
Then, suddenly, about a month ago, she had stopped playing completely and wouldn’t tell anyone why. Even players who offered to pay up got turned down and anyone stupid enough to try and push the point got turned down in a very nasty way.
“Do you know why she doesn’t play any more,” Josh asked. Robbie shook his head. “It’s because I finally had enough of her being the ultimate bitch, going on about being a fucking professional and all that shit. So I paid up, played her and kicked her arse into next week.”
“And it wasn’t a fluke?”
“Nope. I’m known for being shit at pool, right? So she wouldn’t play at first until I agreed to play best of five – her idea. She made me promise not to sulk off when she when. When she won! Like it was fucking preordained!”
“Yeah,” Robbie agreed. “She’s a dick for being a winner so often.” Robbie had played Isabelle a few times and had only pulled off a single victory against her.
“So we played and I didn’t hold back like usual. The first game, she maybe thought I was just getting lucky, but in the end we didn’t get to five games or anything like it, because I won 3-0.”
Robbie gaped. “Seriously?”
“Yep,” Josh said. “By the end, she was so pissed off, she almost snapped the cue! Then, when I sank the black for the third game, she threw the chalk at me, called me a ‘complete fucking cheating wanker’, slapped me across the face, spat at me and stormed off.”
“Nice. Such a good loser,” Robbie said, sarcastically.
“Yeah. The spit was a bit much, but the rest was just funny. She had this fire in her eyes. It made her look like some sort of demon or something. She glared at me! Glared! Standing over me, trying to intimidate me! And I just looked at her and said ‘I win’ and she just fucking lost it! Honestly, it was so funny! When she left, I just laughed!”
“And no-one saw you do this?”
“No – it was pretty late and the match was on that night. I missed the match – not that we won anyway – but it was well worth it!”
Robbie nodded his agreement. “Alright,” he said. “Pool. You’re on. And if you’re dicking me around, I’m gonna break the cue on your arse!”
Josh smiled and the two of them headed to the gara…games room.
“So, how come you’re so good – if you really are that good,” Robbie asked.
“I play snooker over at Joe’s, you know it?”
Robbie shrugged. “Kinda,” he replied. “I mean, I’ve heard about Joe’s Snooker Emporium, but I’ve never been inside.”
“Emporium,” Josh sniggered. “My arse! There are precisely six full-sized tables and a few pictures of 80’s snooker legends stuck on the wall and that’s about it. A couple of the pictures are signed, though, I guess. Steve Davis, Cliff Thorburn, Willie Thorne, maybe a couple of others. Nigel Bond is signed too, I think.
“Anyway, I play League there a couple of nights a week. Snooker is just grown up pool. Bigger tables, more balls, harder shots. Trust me, you get good at snooker and pool is just a walk in the park.”
“You play League?” The two of them had entered the games room and Robbie headed to the pool table to rack up.
“Yeah. I’m doing alright this year. Well, better than last year. I finished third-bottom last year – it was not a good year! I’m top six this year, though. I’ve got a slim chance of winning the League, but it’s very slim! Still, I beat Steve Hargreaves – he’s top at the moment – that’s kept me in it. Sadly, I’m the only person to have beaten Steve in the last couple of months, so I probably won’t catch him.”
“But still – top six isn’t bad. Unless there’s only six of you in the League,” Robbie laughed.
“Fuck you,” Josh smiled back. “Twenty-four, actually.”
Robbie whistled. “That is good,” he said, finishing racking up the balls. “Or, at least, it sounds good!”
“So, how do we decide who breaks,” Josh asked.
“Darts? Three darts – highest total chooses who breaks?”
“OK,” Josh said, wrinkling his nose a little. “I mean, I don’t play darts, but whatever.”
“It’s alright,” Robbie said, “neither do I. Much.” So saying, he picked up three darts, went to the end of the oche and threw them. A treble-twenty, a twenty and one that just slipped the wrong side of the wire into the treble-five gave him a total of 85.
Josh grimaced. “I’m fucked,” he said and threw his own darts with even less hope than expectation. Amazingly, all three scored points, but no trebles and his highest scoring dart only a single nineteen left him some way adrift.
“I win,” Robbie said. “But that was maybe a bit unfair! I’ve played the darts a bit, although 85 is probably my best ever score! So you can break if you want.”
Josh nodded, chalked up his cue and struck the cue ball hard. A few seconds later, when all the balls had come to rest, Robbie knew he was in trouble. One of the yellows had gone, so Josh was already one up and, whilst he wasn’t on the best line for a second, the shot wasn’t massively complicated. “Now I’m fucked,” he laughed.
The use of that word stirred something in the back of Robbie’s mind. An animalistic feeling that he’d forgotten existed, despite it being part of his very core for the past few days. My crystal, he thought. He looked over at the “trophy cabinet”, which was really a couple of shelves with a few knick-knacks on them. There, on the middle shelf, was a purple devil-shaped crystal, right where he had left it.
And, next to it, was the horse-shaped crystal belonging to his sister and, next to them his mother’s flower and his father’s bee.
Oh, fuck, Robbie thought to himself. I’d forgotten that!
The Ross family still had very little understanding of the power of the crystals they had been given. That they lowered inhibitions and resulted in huge amounts of sex was indisputable, as was the fact that they worked on other people (one huge night with Bill was enough to convince them of that!) However, they still didn’t know how powerful the crystals might be.
It was Mike who had fucked up first – and (allegedly) by accident. Since they had no chains for the crystals, they had generally been left in the main room but by some “accident”, Mike had left his in his jeans pocket when he went to work.
He had, he claimed, had to fight off attention from several co-workers of various genders, ages and marital status who had all been in a very flirtatious mood all that day. Whilst Mike claimed not to have taken advantage of this (actually, quite true), it had made for an interesting day, if one that had resulted in a huge case of blue-balls that Mike had emptied enthusiastically into the mouths of his wife and children almost before he’d closed the front door that night.
Leave a Reply