An Alternate Reality or WTF

  Tim woke with an aching head to the bright lights of a strange room. ‘WTF’ he thought as he sat up in the bed.  It took him a few minutes to clear his head; the last thing he remembered was going up the alley for a piss.  ‘WTF’ he thought again as he tried to stand up.  Struggling over to the on-suite and promptly threw up in the bath, ‘wtf was I eating last night’ he said to the empty room, as the large pieces of half-digested food floated in his gastric juices.  He looked around and noticed the separate shower cubicle with some relief.

  Twenty minutes later he was clean and refreshed and left the apartment as quietly as he could, from memory he just knew that if there was a female involved she would be an arm ripper and he couldn’t face that again after the last time.  He looked at his watch but it had stopped at 1:30am which was about 15 minutes after he had left the bar.  What a night it had been, what a celebration, 5 in a row.

  He walked down the street passed the news stand and stopped in his tracks, ‘WTF’ he thought?  He slowly made his way back to the stand.  The headline screamed at him “Aberdeen Win SPL,” he pick up the paper “You gonna buy buddy” he looked at the old man and ran as fast as he could down the street to the sound of cursing.

  He collapsed against the wall and unfolded the Evening Citizen. He read the headline again, it had been on all the papers on the stall, he stared dumbfounded then read the article. “Celtic fall at the last hurdle, losing the league on the last day of the season with another defeat under the Scottish manager of the year, Ronny Deila.  Deila who had not won a game since signing his new 5 year contract was not available for comment.” Tim slid down the wall and thought ‘WTF’.

  The kind old lady helped him up and took him over to the nearby bench were they both sat.

“Are you alright son ?” she asked  “You look awful peely wally.”

Tim liked the old lady and told her of his nightmare.

 “So you’re a football fan young man, I take you’re a Celtic supporter to be so upset”

Tim nodded,

“Well not to worry, at least you won’t have those horrible people from Govan.“

What do you mean? ”  Tim wondered,

 “Well you don’t seem to know much about football young man, them’s  went to the wall for a second time mid-season owing  several million pounds to the  taxman once again.”

“That’s better, it’s nice to see a smile.”

Tim gave her a big hug as the tears ran down his face.

“How on earth could this be happening ? ” he asked, still a little shocked

  The old lady smiled “Take me for a coffee and I will explain it all to you, young man.”

  The waitress brought coffee and cake, going back to sit on her stool.

“Well son where to start, there are 4 different dimensions or realities that existed in the time, space continuum.  Privilege, Indifference, Sad and Happy, we call it PISH for short.”

‘Right enough’ Tim thought, ‘pish.’

The old lady noticed the look on Tim’s face so stopped for a minute.  The boy had to know the truth about the worlds they lived in or he would never be able to return to his own.

  The old lady continued: “This dimension that you have fallen into is of course Sad, as an example let’s look at your football team in Happy. Celtic will have not only won the league but will be Champions of Europe as they have been for the last several years.  MON is the manager and some nice spoken lad called Monti is his assistant and publicity manager.  No one bothers with football in Indifference with Celtic and Thems both struggling to survive.”

  Tim looked up ‘What ? You mean that I come from privilege?’

“Yes, young man, you do.”

  They sat in silence for a while and the old lady continued.  “We gatekeepers call it by it’s nickname ‘entitled’ because everyone there thinks they are.  Take your team again for an example, the C.E.O thought he was entitled to get his big fat bonus every year regardless of what he did.  The manager thought he was entitled to stick with tactics that should have worked; he also thought he was entitled to pick players regardless of skill or form.  The players thought they were entitled to down tools and purposely play badly to get their own back. “

  Tim just stared at her but the more she talked the more he realised that was indeed the dimension that he was from.

“The supporters were the worst; they still used hail, hail as a greeting but had long since forgotten the song and its meaning.  They thought they were entitled to win every game and win it well, conjuring up the saying ‘The Celtic way’ to describe a mythical way of playing”

  Tim put up his hand and she stopped speaking, again they sat in silence for several minutes. ‘Will I ever be able to get back to my dimension’ he said.

  The old lady looked deep into his eyes, “you are special Tim as all Tim’s are, I can put you back into any dimension you wish.”  Tim looked up and thought ‘WTF’ “I’ll have Happy if you don’t mind.”

Brian53