Spring cleaning, I found this old oddity that never really went anywhere.

The grey, square table was as smooth as taut testicle skin ready for the tattooist’s needle, polished with window cleaner and lined with smeary arcs near the edges.  Angel was curled foetal with his eyes shut on the splitting red bench, leant into the divide lined with fake plants and crumbly pebbles.  The little old woman on the other side was studiously ignoring him as she tipped whiskey into her coffee.  Sat opposite, Warren picked up Angel’s strawberry shake and spat into it, stirred gently with the curly straw and set it back. 

Between spits, Warren was talking, but Angel was as attentive as a maskbeneath his ill-bleached hair.

 
“I’ll tell you how I had the balls to do it.  Lemme tell you about Sheila.  See, Sheila had this real shitty boyfriend and they lived in a real shitty house on real shitty money.  Well, she was in this public toilet one morning – y;know, the kind that all sorts use, and you know it, and it was time for her to take her contraceptive pill. So, she takes this pill out of the packet, and it’s the last one in there, and then she drops it.  And she’s looking at this pill in the toilet and thinking ‘fuck’, cause, y’know, she’s got no more and if she goes home she her boyfriend could knock her up.  She don’t wanna get pregnant, so she weighs it up, reaches down between her thighs and fishes it up, puts it in her mouth and swallows it real quick not thinking.”

 
Angel stirred in his stupor, eyes milky.  “So… what?”

 
Warren reached across to stir the milkshake again.  “If you’re scared enough, you can do fucking anything.”

 
Mitchell came up the diner behind Warren and dropped onto the end of the seat next to Angel.  The teen jerked violently and batted at the air near his new neighbour.  “Fuck off, dick.  It’s room for one and I ain’t rolled out yet….  Fucking dick…  Not the boss of me…”

 
Tipping the milkshake to peer inside, Mitchell glared at Warren.  “Seriously, what the hell?  What the fuck have you been letting him have?  It’s noon, for Christ’s sake.”

 
“Hey, he was like this when I got here.”  Warren rubbed his beard into a gangly shoulder.  “Lucky twat.”

 
Angel’s head cracked back on the plastic and he slumped sideways.  “Not the boss of me…”

 
Mitchell shoved him off, watching his face fall into the fake plants.  “It’s not exactly like he can catch the bus now, is it?  How’s he getting home?”

 
“You’ve got a car, haven’t ya?”

 
His nostril slid up as if it were on a hook and line.  “Cheers.  Mug here’ll pick up the mess, as per usual.  I’m telling you now though: if he drowns in his own sick because I’m trying to get vomit off my seats, it’s going to be your fault.”

 
“I think I can accept that responsibility.”  Warren took out his bacci tin and flattened out a strip of paper, balancing a pinch of tobacco in the middle and ignoring the waitress.  “It’s not eating, y’know.”

 
Tapping a picture of a black coffee on the menu without looking at it or the waitress, Mitchell sat back in the bench.  “What’s not eating?”

 
“What do you think’s not eating?” Warren spat, sliding the menu across with his middle finger and landing it on a full English breakfast for the waitress’s pad.  “The bird.  The bird’s not eating.”

 
Mitchell glanced to the black and torn nail just as it withdrew to continue rolling.  “What do you want with all that?”

 
A shrug and a seamlessly smooth grin as Warren sat back, arms splayed, cigarette poised between his fingers.  “I live a life consisting primarily of drugs and alcohol.  I spend a solid hour a day sitting on the toilet:  I get hungry.” 

 
The oldest of the trio folded the menu back down and stood it beside Angel’s knee.  “What’re you feeding it?”

 
“Well I didn’t have any shrimp so I made it something out of tuna and fish food.  Put some sweetcorn in there as well so it’s got something to chew.  And the dye.  I put plenty of that in. I covered the whole bottom of the bath but it’s just standing there in it.”  He picked up the menu and threw it at Angel, who didn’t notice.  “It shit on the bathmat.”

 
“Why didn’t you take it out?  I told you, didn’t I?”  Mitchell put the menu back as his coffee was placed near him.  “The floor we can mop, but that mat’ll stain.  Thanks a lot, you bastard.  I told you to wait ‘til I got back before you took the bloody thing.”

 
“Well I didn’t know how long you’d be gone, did I?”  Warren unwrapped his cutlery from the papery serviette, swearing when he dipped the corner in the fluorescent bean slime.  “So, how was Carol?”

 
Pulling a fistful of long sugar sachets out of his pocket, Mitchell started tearing the perforated tops off.  “Fat.  Got even fatter whilst I was there.”

 
“She is pregnant, you know,” Warren reminded, stirring wet mushrooms into the yolk of his quivering egg.  The yellow was pale and uneven.  “Reckon it’s yours?”

 
Eight empty sachets were lined up neurotically next to the child’s-size cup and saucer.  “Nah.  I shot my balls off years ago, remember?”

 
“Oh yeah.”  Warren leant forward on his elbows, chewing loudly as he thought back to when Mitchell got fucked on acid for the first time and found the nail gun.  “We thought you were just beating off at first, then you started screaming about this giant spider being on your nuts.  Made a helluva mess.  Couldn’t keep you sat down afterwards.  I think you’d’ve kept one if you hadn’t stood up.”

 
“Yeah, well, didn’t do me any real harm.”  Mitchell sipped his coffee slowly, staring down his nose at his swimming reflection.  His nose looked huge.  He sucked his teeth and felt the sugar grains roll and scrape across the enamel.  “How’d you get it out?  Manage it on your own?”

 
“No – took him with me,” Warren replied around a mouthful of mixed lunch, nodding to Angel.  As an afterthought, he tucked his rollie behind his ear, knife still in his hand.  He got egg on the tips of his hair.  “He was right good.  Sort of looped the rope on this big pole and lassoed it.  Made a helluvalot of screeching.  I thought it’d stop once we shoved the bag over his head but it didn’t shut up until we were in the car.  Scratched the crap out of arms.  Ugly fucker.”

 
Mitchell swallowed enough of his coffee to see the mound of discoloured sugar at the bottom, its orange head peeking up from the black water.  “How big was the group?”

 
“Thirty, or around about.   I don’t think they’ll really miss one.  Had to leg it out because of the security cameras, but we took the plates off the car.  Hopefully it’ll be sorted and we can put it back next week.”  Warren ate it silence for a few minutes, getting rid of a sausage and a rasher of anaemic bacon in the time.  “Why can’t we just dye it?  It’s be a lot easier than trying to get it to eat tuna and food colouring.”

 
Thumping his elbows on the table and glancing at the dusty spinning fan, Mitchell spoke with wide eyes.  “Because that’s not the genius of the plan.  They go pink because of their food, right?  So, by dying the food blue, it’ll turn blue naturally.  The keepers’ll try and wash it off but it won’t come off, and they’ll be stuck with one blue flamingo amongst thirty other pink ones.  That’s what makes it brilliant.”  He sat back and shook his head before downing the rest of his coffee and the first of the slowly descending slush of sugar.

 
“I still think it’ll be easier to just dye it,” Warren mumbled, hunching low over his plate. 

 
Mitchell snorted and starting scooping out the sugar with his finger, running the tip over the top of his bottom teeth to slide it off onto his tongue.  “I’d like to see you hold it down to do that, with its wings and legs all over the place.”

 
…

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