"Blakey on Tour - Part 9"

(An ongoing story in. Part one here)

I do love knickers.

Soon as I sees a pair – even ones still wrapped up and hanging off a shelf in a togs shop – I can't help but thinking about what goes inside em. You're meant to, ain't you? Fellers is programmed since caveman times to get a hard-on at the sight of knickers and bras and that, and to want to pull them off and shag her. And I don't reckon I'm being sexist or whatever neither – it's just the way men is built. If it weren't, and blokes didn't give a toss about knickers, none of us would ever have been borned. I wouldn't be here now, picking up a pair of them in the hall of a cordoned-off house in a shite street in a forgotten part of Mangel, glancing up to see if Jock were looking at us so I could have a quick sniff. Jock wouldn't be there, going up the stair and not looking at us and thereby allowing us that crafty sniff. Not even Rocky Balboa would exist, and none of the fights he'd been involved in over the years would ever have took place. And where would we all be then? Where would Ivan Drago be, for example? Heavyweight World Champion, like as not, cos Rocky were the only one capable of getting past him.

'Erm, Jock?' I says, looking at the knickers.

He ignored us, carrying on up the stair, all but his boots and the bottoms of his dirty jeans now visible to the naked peeper.

'Jock,' I says again, louder.

'Och... what?'

'It's just these here knickers. There's summat up with em.'

His boots and jeans stopped a moment, then trudged down a few steps. 'I'm on an eradicating mission here. Do youse think I've got time to sniff knickers?'

'Nah, I weren't—'

'Put them in yis poacket and sniff em later, ye wee fuckin' pervert.'

'Jock, these knickers is fresh. Like someone's just took em off, know what I mean? And it's defo a bird.'

Jock let that swirl around his swede for a bit, then gripped his stake even tighter and went on up, saying, 'Youse perform a thorough search at groond level. Reet?'

'But Jock,' I says, pocketing the knickers, 'when I says fresh, I mean they'm still warm. Ain't vampires meant to be dead? Deadfolk ain't warm, Jock.'

'Warm knickers are a classic sign o' vampire activity. In fact, it's yis female vampire oan heat, which means, erm... they're oan the cusp of spawning new vampires. We've no time to squander here, Royston.'

He were gone now. I could hear his feet on the landing floorboards, creaking and cautious. I shrugged and started performing a thorough search at groond level. I mean ground level. It's amazing how I picks up foreign lingo without even trying. I swear I'm a fucking natural. I went through a door.

It were the living room and no one were in it. You could tell someone had been there though, and not so long back. Fag smoke lingered in the air and the telly were still warm when I touched it. It were odd, this whole set-up with the police cordon and the telly and the knickers, and I might have been curious on a normal day. But this day I seemed to be traipsing around after a Scottish vampire eradicator on a mission, and it were making us well nervous. Truth be telled, I quite fancied clearing off and leaving him to it. I know I said all that about vampires swiping my Little Royston and me getting revenge for him, but it just didn't seem so likely now, in the cold dark of night. I mean, come on, fucking vampires? Vampires is from fairytales, ain't they? Nah, I had to be realistic and accept that the evil witch had snatched him and took him to her house in the woods. I had some ideas about that, actually, and I were tossing them over as I went through the kitchen, headed for the door Jock had forced. Then I opened the fridge, out of habit like, and there it were.

The thing I most wanted at that moment, although I never knowed it until now.

As pies went, it were a fucking beautiful one. From the outside you couldn't tell if he were a sweet one or a not sweet one, and that is the landmark of a fine pie, in my opinion. It's all about surprise, see – you bite into one and you dunno if you'll be getting dinner or pud. I picked it up and had a nibble. While I were still trying to work things out, prolonging the mystery and thereby my enjoyment of the pie, someone stepped up behind and bit us on the neck.

I put the pie careful back in the fridge and stuck me paws in the air, wondering if that's what you're meant to do when you gets bit by a vampire. Actually I weren't wondering it at all, just doing it. I plain hadn't ever considered this as a thing that might happen in my life, and I didn't have a response for it. So hands up it were. 'I surrender,' I says. 'And that.'

I could smell it. The vampire, I'm on about. It were defo a she, not an it, and quite a nice she and all going by that smell. Not only were it a fragrance I knowed and loved, it were the one from the knickers just now... meaning this one here were like as not naked, or at least not wearing no knickers. I felt meself stirring.

'Any last requests before I suck the life out of your cholesterol-clogged veins?' she purrs into me ear. I could smell fags on her breath. It struck us as a mite odd, that did, but I suppose it weren't. Just cos a bird turns into a vampire, don't mean she has to give up the finer things in life, like fags.

'Well, have you?' she says all quiet

'Have I what?'

'Last requests.'

'Well, I'd quite like to know if you're wearing knickers or no,' I says. 'Or perhaps yer starkers? It's that, ennit?'

'Do you realise how close you are to oblivion?'

I thought about it. 'Not very close at all, I don't reckon.'

'What?'

'I'm pretty sure it's in Scotland.'

'I could destroy you in a split second,' she whispers. 'But I might not. I might give you a chance to carry on living your pathetic life, even though my entire being yearns to consume you, and Nature herself begs for you to be culled.'

I weren't sure what she were on about, and to be honest my thoughts was drifting back to the pie, which were still right there in front of us, its aroma overpowering all others by now and begging us to consume it with my entire soul, or summat. It got so chronic that me guts was whinging about it and moaning like I hadn't ate fuck all that day, which I had. Half a dozen eggs, I'd had that morning, plus a few ripe snags and half a bag of crisps I'd found under me pillow. And then I realised that it weren't complaining of hunger at all, but summat else entirely. Them fucking snags, like as not. I knowed I should have left em. But they looked alright once I'd scraped the growth off.

'Oh my God, what is that...? Eeeuurgh...'

'Yeah, soz about that,' I says. I'd just farted. As in a rancid one, reflecting the state of my insides just then. I always tries not to do that in front of birds cos it affects the way they think of you, I once heard. One whiff and they'll forever smell that fart when they ganders your mug or harks your voice, apparently, and I didn't want that. Not when I ain't even shagged em yet. 'Look,' I says, turning about to face her. 'Is there any way you could try to eradicate that smell from your swede? Only... hold up a min...'

'Swede? Oh... bleurgh..'

She bent over and started upchucking, right there on the expensive-looking kitchen lino. But that weren't my primary concern. More interesting just then were the fact she didn't look to me like a vampire. I mean, do vampires have short little stubby gnashers where they're meant to have big long sharp ones? Plus she had not only knickers on but a complete sets of togs. Mind you, could be she weren't wearing nothing under them jeans. Like as not she were, mind you. A man can tell. I felt meself stirring no longer. On top of all that, she looked familiar. And I ain't just saying that.

'Erm,' I says, trying to find the words so she didn't reckon I were chatting her up. Cos I weren't. I got high standards and I don't chat up puking birds. Not unless they're truly exceptional, with big tits and blonde hair and an alright face. 'Do I know you?' I says, choosing me words delicate. 'I mean, do you come here often? No, no... I meant...'

I stopped there cos Jock burst into the kitchen, stake held aloft and the intense look of a Scottish vampire eradicator on his face.

(Come back tomorrow for more...)