The Tw@trix – Chapter 3

“Ling Wong! Cider!” the wizened old man yelled from upstairs. She didn’t need to look in her phrase book for that one, it was yelled so often. Mildly annoyed that he’d woken up earlier than usual, she typed “brb” on her laptop, threw a cloth over the webcam, slipped on her dressing gown and went to the kitchen to pour some cider. She added a couple of drops of bromide to the glass of yellow fizzing liquid, the cheapest strong cider that could be bought. It was a trick her mother had taught her before she left Thailand. The price her “husband” paid for her on thai-brides.com had set her family up for life, and those couple of drops made sure she was left to her own devices.

“Ling Wong! Cider! Now!” came the call, more urgently. “I coming!” she replied, a phrase she was more used to saying under different circumstances.

Upstairs, as she entered the room, the stench made her visibly wince; after all these years it still turned her stomach. Still, he wouldn’t be around much longer…

She was about to set the glass down but bony hands snatched it from hers, spilling a bit over the stained blankets. He glugged half the glass down and belched. If she’d have seen Harry Potter, the wretched bed-ridden creature would have reminded her of Dobbie. But she hadn’t, so he didn’t.

“Laptop! Laptop!” he hissed and pointed. She passed it to him and glanced at the time on the bedside clock. ‘A few more hours until his bed-bath and dinner’ she thought (but in Thai). She returned downstairs, slipped off her gown, removed the cloth from the webcam, grabbed a few fresh ping-pong balls, and looked at her screen at the queue of users who were waiting to pay $1 per minute to watch her do her thing… She had a very healthy bank account, something the old man upstairs knew nothing about. When he finally popped his clogs she’d be free, and a tiny bit wealthier.

Upstairs, the old man logged on as ‘Alkiarse’. The adrenalin rush was nearly always too much for him. All he could do for a few minutes was smile. He knew that one day it’d be his undoing, but like so many others, he was addicted. When jacked into The Tw@trix he was a real man again, people respected him and his opinion (in his ancient cider-pickled mind, that is).

As his heart-rate slowed to near normal he started waxing lyrical about his angelic LW, and how the sun shone out of her árse bright enough to illuminate the whole of the north of England. Realising no-one was listening, he changed tack; food. That always got FriarTuck onside. Alkiarse was convinced LW worked tirelessly all day in his pocket handkerchief of a back garden; little did he know that with the pittance he gave her to buy groceries, she bought the cheapest shyte from Netto. With his failing eyesight and cider-seared taste-buds, she could feed him cat poo and call it ‘Thai stew’ and get away with it. If he only knew what was in the meat-pies she often made; shares in Pedigree Pet Foods were doing very well indeed, thank you.

As usual, FriarTuck out-did him in the food conversation, so he drained the rest of his cider and set about typing “yu is a bad mother” to Susie(form-an-orderly)Q and “yu is a beast” to BottleBlondeOfBolton. ‘They need to be told’ he thought. ‘They need to know I is better than them’. “my Lw is worth 10 of yu” he typed to random females, not realising the irony.

Silently a regular chatter morphed into an Agent, who did precisely… nothing. The old drunk’s ranting continued until many Tw@trix users decided a spell in the real world was better than him.

In the real world, if he was able to leave his bed, his stench would be able to clear a room in seconds. In The Tw@trix, his typing was able to do the same.

Alkiarse looked around for someone else to hurl abuse at. He noticed a moose staring at him. It was often there. He was never sure if it was the cider, or a glitch in The Tw@trix, so he pretended he hadn’t seen it.

He heard LW coming up the stairs, and realising the time he quickly typed his farewells to anyone who cared. They didn’t.

LW arrived with a bowl of steaming hot water and a couple of Brillo pads. Was it 4:30pm already? So soon? He hated the bed baths. The water was too hot, she was too rough, and avoided the bits he really wanted doing (and really needed doing because of the stench). Still, at least he’d get some nice meat pie afterwards.