Grantisocial Behavior

BY KIRKLAND CICCONE

Even though she was well into her seventies with the frailties old age brings, Beatrice Barker still knew what it was to hate people around her. Hatred. It was the coal that kept her own personal fire raging, a powerful incentive to outlive everyone Beatrice deemed inferior for whatever pedantic reason she could come up with. It really didn’t matter where her odium was directed.

It was just there.

Beatrice was your typical old age pensioner. Indeed, her very look was that of your grandmother or any other old elderly neighbour except with a more poisonous disposition. Think Humpty Dumpty with a bad attitude and that would sum up Mrs. Barker precisely. She was unmarried (“I’m not a wife, I have a life”) and loathed children. In fact, Beatrice loathed everything and everyone. Even her neighbors had grown to detest her due to her considerable interference into their lives.

Here is a useful example to underline why everyone hated Beatrice Barker: Single mothers claiming extra benefits they perhaps weren’t entitled to by law would find themselves reported to the fraud squad by a “concerned citizen.” Teenagers having parties or being generally noisy would find their festivities cut short by a blitzkrieg of policemen who would later claim they received a call from a “concerned citizen” about drug taking and underage drinking taking place at the party.

That alone earned Beatrice an unflattering nickname. “The Bitch of Birch Boulevard” came in reference to the name of the street where all the neighbours resided. Even the police hated Beatrice but that particular abhorrence was a mere speck of dust next to the mountain of bitterness Mrs. Barker carried around inside her frail bone-rattling body. She was a human bag and her bones really did rattle around inside her like pool balls in a pool table pocket.

So imagine the deep shock the police felt when they received a frantic telephone call on a cold Wednesday night from their archenemy. It was the kind of cold night that sent the street gangs indoors with their drink and guns and drugs. It was bitter cold, like Beatrice herself.

The night the frenzied call took place, the operator thought she was going to have to squander more police resources by sending a squad to another party that happened to be a few doors away from where Beatrice lived. But the operator was secretly pleased to announce to her associates, “Someone has vandalised the Bitch of Birch Boulevard’s walls. Who wants to go and pay her a visit?”

Volunteers were slow in coming forward, of course, but eventually some did. The bizarre vandalism had seemingly appeared as if by magic and kept returning no matter how many times Beatrice tried to scrub, paint or blast it away. It was in massive bloody red letters, a full can of cheap spray paint from the local supermarket and it seemed to mock those that read it with a strange meaning held within.

The police went out, took notes, then left and the incident was quietly filed away.

Then they were called out again a few nights later. The police weren’t at Beatrice’s home to investigate more vandalism, in this instance they had to investigate an alleged assault on a minor. A 12-year-old boy had been on his bicycle when he claimed the Bitch of Birch Boulevard leapt out from some green bushes and “went crazy” at him with a mop.

The boy denied any involvement in the spray painting; he didn’t even know what the message meant. He knew what it said but he didn’t understand the meaning.

“Liar!” Beatrice screeched when the police went to her lair. “Lying little liar!”

The vandalism that had begun a month ago with just one word, one small word, garishly painted over the antiseptic white walls of Beatrice’s son’s tenement house started up again with a vengeance.

The first word was: THERE.

Then it happened again shortly after the first word.

Beatrice noticed the second word after she hobbled down to her front door from a hot bath to verbally abuse her postman for soaking her mail in the. The first word and a second together adorned the wall despite desperate scrubbings. The postman just shook his head and walked away as Beatrice foamed at the mouth.

The wall now said: THERE IS.

Beatrice audibly choked next to the bemused postman, who was swiftly silenced by a cry of, “Did you do that? Is it you? Answer me, you working-class bum!”

Beatrice soon noticed a pattern emerging. It seemed that the seemingly random words were slowly merging into a cohesive sentence; a solid configuration of words that assembled a sentence. It was always in the same red paint. Sprayed and splattered against her outside wall.

The third word was: NO.

THERE IS NO

Of course Beatrice tried to find out who was doing this to her but it wasn’t easy.

She purchased a video camera to trap the filthy vandal and yet no person showed up on it despite a new word appearing the next morning.

Days became weeks and weeks became months. During the time between the first and last magical words appearing a new American president had come into power (despite smears from his rival) and a former teen-queen movie actress had run over three people in her new Porsche.

But this mattered nothing to Beatrice Barker, the Bitch of Birch Boulevard, because all that mattered was the message.

Then one late night as Beatrice awoke to the faint sound of paint spraying, she could no longer take the misery and telephoned the authorities with a strangled scream of barely contained fury and terror. Beatrice had finally read the full message and she didn’t understand it one bit. Whatever could it mean? What?

When the police arrived at the scene of the crime, they were finally able to read the whole sentence in the red dripping paint against the white canvas of the wall.

It was a message which meant nothing to the police.

It said: THERE IS NO MYSTERY HERE NANCY DREW.

“What the hell does that mean?” one police officer asked.

“Damned if I know,” the other police officer replied.

Beatrice died that night through a combination of fear and stress. Now that she was gone, there was nobody in Birch Boulevard to report the loud parties of the teenagers and many were thrown to celebrate Beatrice’s death. Nobody did discover who was spraying the strange message and nobody ever would.

Kirkland Ciccone is a spoken word performer who regularly tours Scotland putting on one man shows on whatever subject he likes. He is currently preparing some gigs including In Bed With Kirkland Ciccone (in April 2008) and A Secret History Of Falkirk (November 2008) and is also recording an album of little stories called Help The Poor (released in Aug 2008) and will tour. His work can be heard on his official MySpace and every now and then he writes the odd story. Grantisocial Behaviour is very odd indeed. Kirkland also works as a regional A&R for One Little Indian Records.