By way of introduction: I signed up for a 14-day quarantine writing challenge. The first days of which was to write a thing with the first line "I was lying before, the truth is..." I set myself an hour and just typed and typed for that hour. Here's the result
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I was lying before, the truth is boring isn’t it? The truth
is so much more boring. Nothing interesting happened in the truth, there’s no
winners when it comes to telling the truth. “Oh well done, you’ve told the most
truth, here have a trophy.” If anything history has proven that liars often get
further. Now I’m not saying all liars are dicks. That’s not the case. JRR
Tolkein wasn’t a dick was he? But then he wasn’t entirely truthful in his
writing either. Or maybe he was a dick. Maybe he was one of those people like
Churchill who we think was all good because he did a lot of good things but
then it turns out he was actually a bit of a dick too. I wonder if he was a
dick.
SANDRA, MAKE A NOTE TO FIND OUT IF JRR TOLKEIN WAS A DICK!
THANKS LOVE.
I don’t even have a secretary called Sandra. She’s called
Lucy.
Not true either. I don’t have a secretary or a PA. And that
intercom I pushed…just a tape recorder. But admit it, I seemed more interesting
when you thought I had a PA called Sandra. I don’t think I’ve ever even met a
Sandra. Not knowingly. I met an Eileen once at the supermarket but she was like
20. I assume she just forgot her name tag that day and had to borrow one from
an older colleague. Now that’s interesting. She sounds interesting. What
happened there? But it’s not true. Nothing I’ve told you so far really
happened.
And if you thought the opening line “I was lying before the
truth is…” was gonna make me tell you the truth. You’re wrong! That line just
came to me off the top of my head as a good opening, thought it up all by
myself while I was out cleaning the Porsche. And you should know, I’m not going
to tell you the truth. Not one thing contained in the following text really occurred.
It is entirely bullshit.
Hello. You’re still here. That’s interesting isn’t it? Why
are you still here? I’ve told you nothing you could possibly read below will be
the truth and yet you’re still here. Unless you’re not still here. I kinda hope
you stopped reading otherwise when I said “you’re still here” just now that
would be true. And now there’s a truth in here. Oh fuck. If you’re still
reading it then there must be something true in here. You’d better not be
reading it still? Are you? Are you? Go away! Stop reading it! Stop it! You’re
making my head hurt!
Right lets assume for a moment that nobody is reading this,
but also if you are you need to take a good long look at yourself in the
mirror. Go on do it now. I’ll wait.
Done it?
No you haven’t. Now you’ve lied to me and I’ve lied to you
and yet we’re all still here. What do you expect to find? What are you hoping
for? Are you more interested in lies than the truth? I can do lies. Lies are
easy. Erm…I did not just eat all six packs from a six pack of six packs of
Jaffa Cakes. See anyone can lie. I actually really like Billy Rae Cyrus. Lie.
Easy right? Perhaps you’re hoping that my lies may reveal some truth? Do you
now think for example that I am the type of person who would eat six packs from
a six pack of six packs of jaffa cakes? I told you I did not do that just now,
but I could have done it hours ago, or maybe it was a four pack. Who is to know?
I could really like Billy Rae Cyrus for all you know. Unless you’re the one
person in the world who loves Billy Rae Cyrus you can’t prove me wrong.
So why are you interested? Why are you interested in reading
this if I am not going to tell you the truth? The most frustrating lie any of
us have been told is that old one “the truth’s stranger than fiction.” Is it
bollocks! I didn’t masturbate through the whole of the Human Centipede trilogy only
to see ‘based on a true story’ and that’s the strangest thing I can think of.
(Work out which bits of that sentence definitely had to happen to count it as a
lie).
Is the truth really stranger than fiction? Sure it’s more
confusing but that’s not the same as being stranger?
When I was a girl, we were living in a small house right
near the very northern most part of mainland Wales. A small cottage on a farm.
You can picture it right – even though, as I say, it definitely wasn’t real? On
that farm we had some chickens (ee-eye-ee-eye-oh) and every morning we’d wake
up and have eggs for breakfast. Fresh eggs from the farm. I think I was about 6
when I realised that eggs came from a chickens bum, 7 when I realised they
weren’t chicken poo and 8 when I realised they had baby chickens inside them
(sort of), and so in this tiny Welsh farming village I became the only vegan.
This is back before vegans were everywhere. I think understanding the food
chain was fine for some of the older farmers but for me growing up it really
shocked and sickened me. I vowed from that day that I would never again eat any
animal product. My parents were still working the farm of course and this was
not a problem. Each to their own I said. I wasn’t going to do anything drastic.
You do you mum and dad, I’ll do me. And so I grew up knowing my parents did
this for a living. Killing animals. Artificially impregnating animals and
taking their milk. And just generally being kinda mean to animals. All the time
I ate my kale like a good little girl and complained when we were out of Soya
milk. (If I spotted it, I know my mum put cows milk in my tea when she couldn’t
be bothered (is tea vegan? I should know but I don’t. Maybe I should have
researched it before I started this lie, but I didn’t because when I totally
off my own back came up with the idea of writing this, I thought I should
disconnect my writing machine from the internet so I did. I haven’t checked
Twitter once)).
Since we’re doing bits in brackets here: (would now be a
good time to point out that Jaffa Cakes are not vegan? You didn’t spot that.
You’re lying too now if you said you did. We’re both lying. What a madcap world
this is).
When I grew up, around the age of 13, my parents made
another attempt to get me started working on the farm. You know the best form
of a lie? Jokes. Jokes are all lies. None of them really happened. Doctor Who
never showed up at anyones front door. The chicken had no reason to cross the
road. In fact, I began to experiment down on the farm. I set up reasons why a
chicken might cross the road and monitored the results. I got some grain. Put
it the other side of the main road outside the farm and guess what, it didn’t
cross right in front of a truck that ultimately didn’t crush it to death. So
maybe grain isn’t why the chicken crossed the road.
Next I set up a to-scale film set and dressed another chicken
up like that fella from Pride and Prejudice (obviously I didn’t dunk that chicken
in a pond to make it’s shirt wet, almost drowning it, that would be cruel) and
got a hen the other side of the main road. Again, no articulated lorry splashed
that chickens brains all across the road, and you can rest assured that had any
blood landed on my face I wouldn’t have licked it off. So maybe sex appeal wasn’t
why chickens crossed the road.
Final chicken experiment, and this is a bit of a weird one,
especially for a vegan such as myself. I set up a small frying pan, took some
eggs and printed a recipe for an omelette. I wanted to test if the chickens
motivations were to save it’s young or if chickens were all bastards who
deserved to be made into Thai Green Curry after all. I’m sad to report that on
this occasion the chicken did not cross the road. Which is lucky. Because had
the chicken in fact crossed the road, it could have knocked a motorcyclist off
his bike and sent limbs flying all over the road, which I would have had to
dispose of or make into a stew or something and I didn’t want that. My parents
would definitely have sensed something was up if my cooking contained meat. I
don’t know if I could succeed at pulling that off. “Oh, well as it’s your
wedding anniversary, I thought I would do a special dish just for you. Well
maybe I’ll just have a little bit…beef actually.” I don’t know if I could have
pulled off that innocence. I’m not that much of an actor. (Did you believe I
had a secretary at the start? I’m interested).
Now those are the only jokes I would experiment with. I
certainly wouldn’t try to, say, get a sheep pregnant with kangaroo DNA to find
out what happens if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo? (Actually there’s a
thought: that monsters still out there. I wonder if it killed again. If you’re
thinking of moving to north Wales don’t get too attached to your cat that’s all
I’m saying).
My parents were happy for me to stay at the farm for ever
and ever and ever. But I wanted to move on. I went to the big city: Aberystwyth.
While there I applied my chicken psychological experiments to a somewhat larger
animal. My parents paid for me to have a dedicated team of psychiatrists on
which I could experiment in the hope of learning how psychiatrists’ worked. I
can tell you this about psychiatrists: 9 in every 17 of them will cross the
road for a chicken dressed as Colin Firth. I later retried the idea with a
chicken dressed as the fella from Poldark. The results were disappointing but
nobody was hurt. The chicken was inhumanely destroyed. NOT with a miniature scythe.
In the end all of my psychiatrists let me go home. Which is
odd because I was the one in charge of that situation. How does that work? Why
did they let me go? That doesn’t make any sense. Did I eat jaffa cakes? No I
didn’t. I didn’t not eat jaffa cakes. I didn’t not not eat vegan jaffa…fuck.
Sorry.
What was the question again?
The most frustrating lie is that truth is stranger than
fiction.
The best jokes are all lies.
SANDRA!!
Lies.
I was lying before, the truth is…The psychiatrists DID let
me go. But I didn’t want to. That’s how it works. Worked. I didn’t choose to
leave. I wanted to stay. I’d made the psychiatrists my friends. In fact one
right ugly bloke who worked there chose to spend a long weekend as my guest (if
you know what I mean, wink wink nudge nudge) in my non-padded office from which
I ran operations. But eventually I was forced to leave against my will. I don’t
think the psychiatrists wanted me to stay. My practical experiments with Freud’s
more oedipal theories were getting a little boring and mundane for them. They
wanted to see my fly the nest, like a chicken motivated by grain or the chance
to save it’s young from an omelette. It was easy for some of them to see me go.
Others found it harder on account of the fact they had suicided themselves with
a scythe that someone else must have left on display in a very obvious place like
on top of someone else’s tongue, so they found it hard to see anything. I could
barely look them in the eyes because I didn’t take their eyes with me.
From that day, I roamed around Wales but I never once went
back to visit the farm where my parents had raised me and fed me unborn baby
animals. It never occurred to me how cruel the world was. And how awful the
truth can sometimes be. I know for a fact that my parents both lived long and
happy lives and as their animals remained forever in their farm, trapped,
unable to escape across the land and roam free. I also know that the threshing
machine was always kept clean the way my father liked it.
Aaaand now you’re backing away. I told you you should have
earlier. I don’t know why. I already told you. Nothing I will reveal about
myself here is true. But if you come back tomorrow, I’ll tell you a lovely
story about the adult man I have living on the ground floor or upstairs of my
house. And maybe, if you’re very lucky, I’ll explain where I got the kangaroo seaman.
My story tomorrow will definitely reveal that. I hope my lies haven’t
entertained you.
JRR Tolkien was definitely a dick. I hope I offended someone
with that bit.
I was lying before, the truth is the most frustrating lie is
“this is a lie.”
________________________
Dan Vine
Suspect. Charged.
_
____________________
DCI
Richard Stewart
Inverness Constabulary
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