Fearful Symmetry

Candles cast monstrous shadows across a room which already seemed bent out of shape; walls leaning in towards me as if making an angry point, a ceiling which seemed to change direction with the flickering of the half light and everything at odd angles. It was an expressionist nightmare and I was sitting in the middle of it, inside a painted house which hung, framed in the cottage of Professor Tom Devine and all I could think of was why Devine was admitting to many of the sinister machinations of his church and football team which before we could only suspect.

The answer was simple of course which is probably why it didn’t come to me immediately. He was obviously feeling secure enough in his company to show a little bit of bravado and not the usual wine fuelled, Protestant conspiracy bravado we usually see when he’s wheeled out by BBC Scotland at any opportunity to bleat about sectarianism being nothing more than anti-Catholic behaviour. He didn’t know or didn’t care that I was trapped inside his hellish painting, looking out and hearing everything he said. Didn’t care is my guess since it’s not as if I’m not consistently on-side with his message and the only times I put a spanner in the works of his, Kearneys and Lawwell’s big plans are either by accident or through the manipulation of my innocent actions by dastards like Souness and Donald Findlay.

But how to get out of here, how to remove myself from this strange place? That is what I wondered now as outside, Nevin stoked the fire while Devine knocked the top off his fourth bottle of the evening and considered phoning Gillian Bowditch and getting her down here to lift her pretty dresses for him to maul the meat underneath while forcing Nevin to watch and learn. Bowditch cackled at the suggestion and said she’d be there in three hours after she’d finished her latest assault on the indigenous people of Scotland for the Sunday Times Scottish edition. It makes me wonder, how a once respected institution such as the Times could fetch up in the gutter, pursuing a tribal agenda and attacking the majority of the people who make up the country and yet still be bought by those very same people and then I remembered the Celtic Syndrome; how all it takes is one Celtic Minded person to achieve power and then it’s farewell to impartiality and hello an organisation full of Celtic fans. This bothered me and not for the obvious illiberal reasons but because I foolishly came out as once being a Rangers fan doing myself no favours as it stops me from gaining a foothold within the BBC which has been my dream since I witnessed the wonderful way they kick around Rangers with impunity.

Bowditch arrived and was topless, straddling Devine before Nevin had even hung up her coat. Time moved differently inside the picture and three hours seemed like minutes to me as I sat in the candle light and endured Nevin’s screams as he was forced to observe how to take a line of coke from the tits of a screeching slattern while removing her underskirts, stockings and boots without spilling your drink. Then I heard footsteps from behind me as if someone was coming down a flight of stairs. Of course, I hadn’t even thought about exploring the rest of the house – lack of imagination, you see? I stood up, startled and backed towards the darkest corner in an attempt to hide myself in the gloom. The footsteps continued down the stairs as I crouched and willed myself invisible from whatever horror walked through the door. A stair creaked under the weight of the mysterious presence coming my way and then the steps halted and a door opened with a groan; slowly as if it hadn’t moved in a hundred years, dust falling from it as a gentle breeze blew down the stairs and into the room sending the candle flames into a dance that threw monstrous black shapes across undulating walls. I was losing my mind, surely I would wake up soon and this would all be a dream – for pity’s sake, who ends up trapped in a painting, worried to death by an encroaching phantom while a Dickensian monster gallops an obscene bigoted harpy in front of a sobbing man/boy from Easterhouse?

But this was no dream and as the door swung open a dark shape entered the room bringing with it, not light or illumination but only more darkness, shadows reaching out from his feet and remaining forever on the floor as if painted there. The figure walked to the window and grunted in amusement at the vile scene outside and then turned to me and said, ‘Hello Spiers, you should’ve come upstairs, we’ve been waiting for you’ and I gazed into the eyes of the tiger, lights burning in its eyes and recognised the only person I know who could be comfortable living in such a hellish place. It was Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter.