WillPatching.com

It wasn’t a very big explosion, but it brought my head up with a bang all of its own. I was scrabbling on the floor fumbling to plug in my brand new computer when BOOM! The noise made me jump and my skull cracked hard against the underside of the desk. At first I thought concussion probably explained what happened next.

I surfaced from scrabbling round on my hands and knees, and tried to clear the stars in my eyes before I realized they were actually floating all around me. Worse still was the apparition with bad teeth, grinning at me.

“Hi Josh. How’s your head?”

Let me tell you, at this stage I was thinking I should make my way to the medical room to see the company nurse. Believe me, I am not prone to hallucinations - at least not since I gave up puffing on a joint during my misspent youth - but older and wiser I know far better than to believe my own eyes.

Yet, there he was, all three foot nothing of him, draped over my pristine screen and keyboard as if he was in an armchair, swinging his feet and nonchalantly flicking fag ash all over my desk. Clearly the company non-smoking policy has little impact with shabby dwarf holograms.

I say hologram because he was there, yet wasn’t all there if you see what I mean. He sort of shimmered and when I tried to focus on him he seemed to be hovering just above the computer. Maybe the geniuses from the Virtual Reality Research Department had been at my new PC and set me up. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Cat got your tongue? Or did that bang on your head knock you truly sensible?” His eyes sparkled and he laughed the dirtiest sounding chuckle I’d heard in my life.

“What?” I rubbed my head and grimaced at him.

“Well, it couldn’t knock you senseless - you’ve been that all your life!” He guffawed another wave of filthy sound over me. Flecks of spittle sprayed into the air before landing on the front of his grubby overcoat.

“OK. So tell me what’s going on - I take it you’re here from Don and the boys to show how clever they are in VRR.” The head of the Virtual Reality Research team thought he had a great sense of humor, which was true if you happened to be an eight year old with a mental age of three and an IQ of less.

He belched fermented curry and stale alcohol fumes over me before responding. “Nah, they aren’t imaginative enough to come up with something as impressive as me.” He proudly jabbed himself in the chest with his thumb. Then he scratched his backside.

I must admit, a hologram that smells as convincing as this would be very impressive indeed, but I knew it was well beyond anything our company could currently create. As I pondered this I reached out to touch one of the stars still drifting over my desk. That crooked yellow smile again. “Don’t touch them - they bite!”

“Yeah, right.” However, I did pull my hand away. I’ve never been big on risk.

My head was throbbing and I felt a little queasy - a situation hardly helped by the recent blast of malodorous gas emanating from his mouth. I sat down as he weighed me up critically. His eyes crinkled as smoke swirled from the cigarette now tucked in the corner of his mouth. He pulled a hip flask from inside his coat and took a long pull.

I sighed. “So if you aren’t Don’s latest practical joke, who and what are you then?”

“I’m what you would have called your Fairy Godmother, mate!” He patted the top of my VDU. “In the new PC world there are no gender defined role limitations you know. Just call me CD Ron!” He laughed loudly at his own puerile puns. Luckily I have one of those swivel chairs on wheels which allowed me to maneuver myself from downwind of another noxious blast of decomposing vindaloo.

Now, call me old-fashioned but Fairy Godmothers are surely supposed to be lovely chubby old grandmotherly types with soothing tones and ruddy smiley faces. The figure lounging before me was an unlikely looking fairy, full stop.

As his chuckling subsided I decided to try some sarcasm of my own. “Great…” I paused as he dropped his dog-end into my coffee cup and immediately started to roll himself another cigarette. “Just my luck. A drunken wannabe Fairy Godmother that smokes like a chimney and dresses like a dirty old man.” I slid some vitriol into my voice as I added, “So tell me Seedy Ron, what did I do to deserve this?”

He squinted at me again and I saw something in his eyes that was most ungodmotherly. It disappeared so quickly I wasn’t totally sure I’d seen it, and his eyes twinkled at me as he replied.

“I didn’t have you down as the vindictive type Josh. Bit uncalled for that, especially as I’m here to help.” He paused to light up. “Now, although I don’t do wishes,” he jabbed his cigarette toward me in emphasis, “I do do requests. Think of me as your friendly spiv. The guy that can get you stuff you’ve always wanted. Yeah, that’s me!”

He beamed at me. Idly I watched a floating star drift toward me. This was all so unbelievably weird, but I tried to relax and decided to humor him. Or was it really Don? Whatever.

I reached out and prodded the star. And immediately regretted it. It bit me.

Howling with pain I tried to shake it off the end of my finger. “Get it off me!” I saw that malevolent look in his eye again. “Please!” I yelped.

Seedy Ron clicked his fingers and all the stars popped, like bubbles blown by a child, as shrill giggles bounced around me and then gradually faded. I inspected my bloody digit. “What the hell was that?”

“That my lad, was one of my gigglebites! I’ve got billions of ‘em.” I thought he was about to wet himself as he doubled over with mirth. “That’ll teach you to be rude to your Fairy Godmother, Josh. Now, down to business. C’mon. I ain’t got all day. So, wodger want then? Just the one thing mind. Give us a clue.”

He looked at me quizzically as I cradled my throbbing hand. I realized he really wanted to know what I had to say. He seemed to mishear as I mumbled, “Oh, hell.”

“Ah. Something beginning with ‘L’. Mmm.” He pretended to think. “I know. Loadsa lolly.” He picked up the lottery ticket I’d tucked under the mouse mat and eyed my frayed collar mischievously. “Not doing too well in the old financial stakes are we Josh? Student loans, mortgage and car payments… Fancy a few million in yer bank account son?”

Greed is one of those vices I cannot be accused off. In fact I’ve made a career out of impoverishment, although financial dyslexia rather than ideology has been the main reason. He saw me hesitate, and I got the feeling he knew just what I wanted.

“So, what else begins with L then, Josh?”

I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, twenty-nine years old and blushing like a pubescent schoolboy whose voice had just broken while singing a solo on a televised ‘Songs of Praise’ Christmas special. My ears were on fire. How could I be embarrassed talking to this shabby figment of my imagination about my truly wholesome desires? Well, mostly wholesome. OK. Sometimes wholesome.

“Let’s try ‘Lusty’. Or ‘Lascivious’. Or maybe ‘Luscious’?”

He could read my mind.

“Lovely, leggy Linda. In lace. Mmm. Shall I go on?” He leered at me and I felt like the dirty old man he was. That filthy laugh rattled over me and I cringed at my own shoddy human nature.

“So, you think you need some help in the old love stakes, sunshine. Want your Uncle Ron to sort it?”

At this stage I am ashamed to say there is nothing more I would have wanted than to believe this sorry manifestation could magically perform a Cupid on Linda for me. You see she has been a source of spectacularly vivid dreams for the six months that she’s worked here, but I think she doesn’t even like me.

Worse, I know she barely notices me.

“Oh, Josh, don’t think that.”

Startled, I looked up at Seedy, and decided I needed professional help. Months of fixating on Linda, a social life that isn’t, and a massive crack on the head. Combined with too many burger-fueled late nights in the office, it had finally led to this: conversing with a thought reading midget claiming to be able to fulfill my heart’s desire.

How sad is that?

But the conversation I had heard round the coffee machine yesterday did exist. My supposed friends, listening to Don, snickering behind my back. They hadn’t seen me but I heard them. ” - Josh is the archetypal nerd alright, but without the talent!” And she was there. Laughing, no doubt.

“No, I don’t think so Seedy. She isn’t for me.”

“That’s your problem old son, you give up too easily.” Now the shabby dwarf was parodying my father. I groaned and held my head in my hands, immediately regretting it as I set my finger throbbing again. Boy, do I know how to do miserable.

“If you hadn’t scurried off to lick your wounds and sulk you would have heard a certain young beauty sticking up for you.”

“Are you serious?” Suddenly my head had stopped thumping and any remaining throbbing signals from my hand lost their way to the pain receptors in my brain.

“Her exact words were: You lot are just jealous, you know he’s the brightest guy here, and I think he’s very cute.” He winked at me. “Girl’s got no sense of course. Must be her protective mothering instinct. Hardly sounds like a job for your Fairy Godmother though, does it?” He gave me another glimpse of rotten yellow teeth before swilling from his hip flask again.

“Bit of a waste of a request really, I s’pose Josh. Shame, as I’m off now.” He paused, then glanced slyly at me. “But don’t lose this though my old cocker. It’s the winner.” He dropped the lottery ticket onto my desk amid another shower of ash, winked at me and disappeared in a farewell burst of chuckling halitosis.

I was suddenly feeling a whole lot better. My face cracked into a huge grin as I brushed the ash off my machine and thought about Seedy. Who knows? Maybe we get the Fairy Godmother we deserve.