Mysterious Stranger

He was naked, all pretence gone now and no need for the adornments of mortals. As he walked towards where we lay, he lifted his hand and dragging his fingernails along the wall he smiled and whispered, ‘I’m a man of wealth and taste,’ and then he burst out laughing which curiously, was the first time I’d witnessed such a thing – usually he was in a rage, flailing out at anyone within reach, usually the Scottish press.

‘So it was all for nothing,’ he continued. ‘Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve achieved, all that effort and what did it gain you? We will lift the league trophy this season and the next and all the rest after that because you’ll be in here and your club will be confined to the history books which we will be writing and years from now people will wonder how such an insidious club could have been allowed to exist for so long and up and down Byres Road, middle class liberals will shake my hand and thank me for my part in it and when they do, little will they know just whose hand they are shaking.’ He smiled and for the first time I noticed fangs. ‘They will quite literally, have sympathy for the devil and isn’t that just the biggest joke of them all? Isn’t that just a peach?’

I looked to my side at Donald Findlay and saw the glistening trace of a single tear that had run down the side of his face, disappearing into his whiskers. I turned and looked towards Souness and his furrowed brow, probably thinking there was still some hope, some way out of this but it was hopeless, Lawwell was right. Rangers had to keep winning year on year to prevent the powers of darkness from achieving their aims and I, Graham Spiers had campaigned to stop them, I had actually strived to keep the forces of good from preventing hell on earth. I thought about this and cursed the day I’d ever shared a flat with Matt McGlone and allowed him to turn me from a semi-talented journalist with potential into a raving Rangers hating lunatic and as I cursed inwardly, Lawwell walked towards the corner of the dungeon where there sat an old gramophone player, dusty and anachronistic as all of the many grotesques I’d met over the last three years. As Lawwell placed the needle on a record and the plaintive airs of the Albinoni Adagio swept through the room, I thought of them all: Cosgrove in his bat suit, the Traynor munching on bones, tragic Purcell, port sodden Tom Devine and his retinue of sluts, King Bastard, proud Richard Gough aboard the Nautilus, poor old Stuart McCall, the Ally McCoist robot army, wily old Walter Smith in his underwater lair, Phil McGillivan and mad Joe O’Rourke hiding in their cannibal cave, Wendy Alexander covered in dust and cobwebs at Satis House, and many more. I thought of them all and wondered how could I have encountered such madness in three short years and as I thought it, Lawwell placed one burning hand on my forehead as if he’d just read my thoughts and he sighed.

‘In a little while,’ he said. ‘You will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever - for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!’

‘Strange that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities.’

‘Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him…’

‘You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.’

‘It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!’

The music ended, the record player needle jumping, refusing to leave the vinyl, the static crackling from the speaker. I understood what Lawwell had said and closed my eyes, a smile on my own face now. I opened my eyes one last time and Findlay, Souness and Albertz were turned towards me; a silent Greek chorus of accusing faces. Lawwell stood in front of me and whispered, ‘It was all you, Spiers. It was always all you,’ and as he smiled for the last time I noticed something climb onto his shoulder, something un-noticed by the devil himself; it was a cricket.

The End.

The Nature of My Game

After all I have been through in the last three years, all the blood and madness, mayhem and intrigue, secrets and lies; for it all to end like this, with a whimper is the cruellest joke of them all. And yet here I am, deep beneath Hampden in new dungeons dug out of the earth by Stewart Regan on the orders of his dark master who has long since forsaken the depths of Parkhead for a new power base. Years ago, when it was suggested that an English Premiership team had approached him to be their CEO, Peter Lawwell had refused point blank, stating that he had unfinished business here. Well he’s almost finished now. Rangers are nearly done: docked ten points by a grateful SFA, in administration and closing in on liquidation much to the delight of a Scottish media who have been reporting it with undisguised glee and now, after an ambush during the game against Kilmarnock, I’m manacled to a slab beside Donald Findlay, Graeme Souness and Jorg Albertz. For Lawwell to have us all at his mercy is not only a miracle but spells doom for Rangers as with this little team gone, who will be left to thwart his evil plans? Craig Whyte turned out to be a fool or a demon – we’re not sure which yet but it doesn’t matter because Ibrox is in flames and there’s no money left to put it out.

So why am I included in this band of merry men who have fought so valiantly the past three seasons to ensure that not only did Rangers win the league but that Lawwell’s more insane plots came to nothing? Because I’m the magnet that holds them all together – the weirdness magnet, Cosgrove had called me and it’s true, it all happens around me; I am the centre of this grotesque little universe. Or at least I thought I was until Lawwell walked into the dungeon where we lay and said, ‘Please allow me to introduce myself.’

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

I got a call yesterday from the office of Peter Lawwell offering me a job and to get down to Hampden right away. Thankfully, I’d taken leave of my hideaway in Ayrshire and was back in my west end flat so it was a short drive to Lawwell’s office so when I got there I could still hear the same whipping noise I’d heard in the background of the telephone call – it was Lawwell administering a sound thrashing to Stewart Regan and Vincent Lunny, both chained to a wall and stripped to the waist. Lawwell saw me, stopped and approached me, blood dripping from his horsewhip as Regan and Lunny sobbed behind him.
‘I have a job for you, squirt,’ said Lawwell. Immediately I began to imagine what the great power in Scottish football had pulled out of a hat for me; could it be a column in the Scotsman? Going back to the Herald? Shoogly Linklater apologising for sacking me and inviting me back to the Times?
‘You’re going to be a Celtic steward at Tynecastle tonight,’ said Lawwell, interrupting my fantasies.

Well this was disappointing, I was thinking as I put on my hi-vis vest and skip cap and gathered with my new colleagues in front of the Celtic fans as they began to fill the Celtic end at Tynecastle with their impressive tribal chanting and lusty praise of a murdering Irish terrorist organisation. We were here on the insistence of Lawwell who is allowed to do anything he likes these days since Celtic annexed the SFA at the beginning of the season and his attitude seems to be having a trickle down effect with the Celtic fans now thinking they can do what they like without fear of reprisals or punishment. You see, with a hand picked mob of Celtic fans as stewards, no Celtic thug in the crowd was going to be reported or identified especially as Lothians and Borders Police in an astonishing demonstration of moral and actual cowardice, refused to take action after their bloody nose at the hands of the children of the Green Brigade the last time. The scene was set then for the biggest display of sectarian, bigoted and offensive chanting of the season and the Celtic fans didn’t let us down; you’ll never hear of it though since it wasn’t Rangers fans so the media aren’t interested.

They didn’t stop with their songs though and it wasn’t long before the Hearts ball boys and girls were removed from their positions in front of the Celtic fans after a constant barrage of missiles had rained down on their tiny heads. I looked around at my colleagues in their official Celtic stewards uniforms and remarkably, they had joined in, one of them chasing after a retreating ball girl and aiming a kick at her arse. My gaze turned to the police in the distance as they waded into the Hearts fans, knocking heads and making arrests because the Hearts support had the temerity to question why the police weren’t doing anything about the visiting fans. Then I strained to see what was going on in my old stomping ground of the press box but my eyes must have been playing tricks as I’m sure I saw every journalist to a man, sitting up there wearing ear muffs and blinkers. On second thoughts, there was nothing unusual about that when Celtic were playing. What was strange was that there were no BBC Scotland staff there at all – they must all have been back at Pacific Quay playing Rangers Rumours Scrabble where the winner gets to make up random lies about Rangers owner Craig Whyte and stick it in Reporting Scotland as the main headline.

Not that I saw much of it as I seemed to be the only Celtic Steward watching the crowd and not the game, but the match ended four nil to Celtic after Willie Collum remembered that the Green Brigade know the names and schools of his children and disallowed a perfectly good Hearts goal, the reasoning being that new SFA advice passed down by Lawwell is that for a goal against Celtic to stand, it must absolutely burst the net and be so far beyond doubt that even Vincent Lunny with a pistol against his temple couldn’t refuse it. Celtic buoyed by this madness then went on to score four goals as their fans laid waste to the Tynecastle seating before assaulting anyone on their trains home who dared ask them not to sing insulting songs about an Irish Republican gang who enjoyed murdering women and children.

So this is what Scottish football has become without me? It makes me so angry to witness this. So angry to witness this without being allowed to be a part of it – who’s to say that I couldn’t cover up the vile behaviour of Lawwell, Celtic and their fans just as well as the donkeys in the press? Just as effectively as the annexed SFA? I must get back into journalism, I must find myself a newspaper, I must make myself relevant again.

That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

The grass crunched under my feet as I sprinted across fields crusted with frost; through pools of fog and sliding on my arse across some ice as I lost my footing and shrieked when for one horrible moment I thought I might go over on an ankle and be left lying in the middle of the moors, bathed in moonlight, at the mercy of Jim Delahunt. 

I had known it was his time of the month to turn as it was nearing a full moon and he’d begun again to let dribbling Celtic Minded lunatics onto Radio Clyde to yabber uninterrupted about Craig Whyte and the Rangers tax case. Of course Keevins was in his element and beamed at Delahunt even although he’d lost a finger to him only last month, and occasionally droned on himself in an adenoidal perpetuation of all the exaggerations, lies and subterfuge surrounding the sworn enemies of the Radio Clyde Super Scoreboard. Then Delahunt sprouted hair from his nose and choked back a growl as his finger nails stretched into talons, his gums drew back to reveal yellowing fangs and his shirt split to reveal a Celtic training top underneath. By this time of course I was out of the studio and heading for Ayrshire in my Mini Cooper. I should thank Radio Clyde for throwing me a bone when I’m alone, miserable, out of work and unemployable but I’ll swim in blood first before I let them fool me into sitting through Jim Delahunt turning into a werewolf again.

I’d become more cautious since the nasty fright I got after a razor mouthed creature had burst out of Joan McAlpine’s belly at Parkhead and I spent a sleepless couple of days in the air ducts under Celtic Park, playing tig with a ginger haired xenomorph while Graeme Souness tried to toast it with a flame thrower before Lawwell could recapture it and use it for his own nefarious purpose. I might talk about it one day and tell how the face hugger had been meant for me but crashed into poor old Joan’s house by accident or how the alien ripped out of McAlpine and grew at a terrible rate into a slevvering monster with two mouths until eventually we couldn't tell it apart from Joan herself but it’ll have to wait because the way things turned out, there was nothing funny about it – the whole episode was too traumatic to recount just yet and if it hadn’t been for Catriona Shearer appearing in an industrial exo-skeleton and telling the acid drooling McAlpine beast to ‘get away from her, bitch’ before kicking her ginger arse out an air duct then I might not have been around to appear on Radio Clyde to lay into the Rangers and further expose myself as a narcissistic fantasist with a wobbly take on reality. At least I have a nice middle class accent which makes proles like Keevins believe I know what I’m talking about when I mince on about something I have no idea about: usually finance, football, social science and sex with women.

Back to the moors though, I shouldn’t have worried about Delahunt coming for me as the moors were full enough with sheep, wee Jim’s favourite snack and I won’t tell you what he liked to do with them before tearing them apart. Well, okay, I will. ‘Fuck them and eat them,’ is what he told me, shame faced after the last full moon had passed and we could all relax again in the studio.

Luck was on my side on the moors with the fog lying low on the ground, the cloudless sky letting the moon burn so bright the frozen grass glistened like silver and allowing the perfect view of Delahunt casting glittering shadows as he stumbled across a bus load of Aberdeen fans that had stopped on its way back from a game to let the boys try and pull some of the local talent. If I had all the luck then the Aberdonians had none as Delahunt shredded them until a police wildlife patrol came along and sedated him and noting his Celtic top, hushed it up and instructed the passing BBC Scotland camera crew not to show the footage and to report the violence as being ‘football supporters’ instead of a black nosed, hairy arsed Celtic fan. The BBC Scotland crew, led by Chris McLaughlin just looked in bewilderment at the cops as if to say, do you really think that’s not what we’d have done anyway? Then they left to find a decent filter as they had to film Chris Daly later on and couldn’t risk any more cracked camera lenses. ‘Lisping prick,’ I heard one of them say as they left. ‘The cunt’s costing us a fortune we could be spending on more arty shots of rain soaked social deprivation with Ibrox Stadium in the background’ and then they took off, leaving me watching from a fog bank and wondering how I was going to get back to Ayrshire from here.