We were in the front room watching television, eating din dins when Dad turned to me and said, 'You think you can beat me to shit, don't you?'

'Reckon so,' I replied.

Dad started choking on the baby potatoes he'd been chewing nice and easy till I said my bit. I watched his face blow up like a new trend but Mum had to destroy the whole scene by leaping from her chair and thumping Dad on his back. She thumped him hard but good. Thumped him like he was a kipper or seventh day Adventist. Dad's face, after eight/nine/good ’n’ hearty whacks eventually settled to its standard shape, size and colour. When his breathing returned to normal (as normal as it was going to get for a fat bastard like Dad) he pointed a quivering, grease slick finger at me and said, 'All the crap, Jesus for H, all the crap I go through for you, working every hour God sends and you think, I don't bloody believe this, Joan can you, I can't believe, he really, you really think you can beat me to shit?'

'Reckon so,' I said again. I threw in a shoulder shrug for good measure.

'Well,' Dad said with an almighty splutter of potato bits and cauliflower chunks, 'we'll see how tough you are. Just cause your dick swings doesn't mean you're a man.'

'Whatever,' I said, picking up my plate and heading for the tranquility of my bedroom.

In my room I masturbated joyfully into a sock. I'd tried masturbating bitterly a couple of times like the wizened white dudes we were forever reading about in English, but what can I say? Just wasn't in me boss.

A week or two later, I'd say a week at best Dad came home with a friend. The friend. Oh what a friend! Thick, black rimmed glasses, nasty dandruff all over his fading black tee-shirt. I had to cover my mouth with both hands to stop myself creasing at this gimp. Couldn't though, Dad saw. Dad said, 'Stop laughing,' then conspiratorially and sly he turned to his weedy, pathetic chum and said, 'that's him.' Dad's friend stubbed his chunky glasses up his bumpy nose ridge before replying in a wheezy stutter; 'Heeeee's ooowgreegrown h-gh-h-kasn't ke-he?'

'Has at that,' Dad said with disgust, 'believes he's a big man, reckons he can beat me to shit.'

That was too much. My laughter exploded.

'See what I mean, what I was telling you? No respect, absolutely none. That's why I brought you here, teach him a lesson.'

That stopped me laughing but quick. What here? This four-eyed stuttering fool was going to teach me a lesson. This I had to see. I pulled a kung-fu pose circa Bruce Lee 1970.

'Here not in here,' Mum clamored desperately from her chair.

'How about an arm wrestle?' Dad's friend suggested lightly.

'Fine whatever,' I said, not caring his stutter had completely disappeared like the careers of television funny men Russ Abbot and Bernard Manning.

'In for it now,' Dad said.

'Yeah whatever.'

Mum got up from her chair and stood behind me security guard style while Dad cleared the front room table. Cleared it eagerly and quickly like a little kid clearing space for playtime. While Dad dashed TV guides and remote controls all over the shop I rotated my shoulders and popped loud clicks from my neck before settling down on the sofa. I yawned like I was bored out of my tits, but man, I felt good, confident. No way this fool here was going to beat me in an arm-wrestle. I mean, come on, biggest muscle on him was his Adam's apple. I rolled up my sleeves and shot Dad's mate the I-eat-nails-and- piss-rust-stare. I held the stare. He blinked then gulped. Heheheheh, this should be fun.

The front room was getting hot, so I turned to Mum and declared sweetly, 'It ain't half hot Mum, be a dear and turn the heating down. That's a good sweetheart.' Mum didn't budge one bit and after grunting my disapproval I focused my attention on Dad's sorry looking pal. Our hands met over the table and clenched. My hand was much bigger.

'What happens if I win?' I asked.

'You won't.'

'Says you. But say I do, what do I get?'

'Everything,' Dad's friend replied with nasal sniff. He took his glasses off with his left hand. His eyes were yellow. The watery yellow of someone who smoked way too much.

'And if I win,' he said absently, 'I get a new suit.'

'A new suit?'

'A new suit,' he repeated, before adding with a barely concealed sneer, 'and a belt buckle.'

The only suit I owned was a Church suit, and if he won, groovy, he was welcome to it. Fact I was tempted to let my man win so he could take the damn thing off my hands. Suit was all manners of embarrassing. Way too small for me, especially round the crotch area.

'Okay,' I said. 'If you win you can keep the suit, just about your size anyway son,' I smirked.

Dad's friend smiled while I regained my composure. He kept smiling. His smile revealed his teeth; they were long and pointy like Dracula's. His breath stank like no ones business too, like he'd been eating nothing but itty-bitty rabbit poo going on twenty-seven plus years. The stench made my eyes water. I sunk my sweating elbow the table. Time to teach this fool here a lesson.

'Well boy, don't you want to know what you're up against?' Dad said with a wide ass grin.

'Couldn't give two Walthamstow shits,' I proclaimed haughtily.

'You should, this here is Satan.'

'Saturn, the hell name is that?' I queried.

'No, Satan, as in the Devil.'

Funny goings on right there, ah heh-ah hah. I closed my eyes and laughed long and hard. In the time it took me stop laughing and open my eyes Dad's friend had undergone a transformation more pronounced than anything The Transformers-robots in disguise-were capable of. I farted. Then I gulped painful and slow like I was swallowing a cup full of drawing pins, then I farted again. Sitting opposite me was the one 'nundred percent, number one contender for the throne of heaven, the Devil his own self, and he grinned. What a grin! Stuck in the gaps of his pointy teeth was the spittle slick head of an eyeless hyena. Then the Devil phut-spat the head out and it soared through the air before hitting the wall with a loud kersmack, dislodging some pictures and DVDs.

'Bloody watch it Gregory,' Mum snapped.

'Sorry luv,' the Devil replied.

Knock me down and paint yellow. The Devil sounded like a character right out of Eastenders, proper Cockney. I looked at the Devil nee Gregory. His skin was all-raw n' glistening like frying intestines. The Devil flexed his right claw nonchalantly and the bones in my right hand splintered.

'Yeeouch,' I howled.

'Hey,' I babbled through tears, but before my babbling could get further, Mum, after returning the DVDs to the shelf and arranging the pictures on the wall-making sure they aligned to whatever the damn Feng-shui crap she had going-glided in front of me cheerfully as you please and held up a dripping man suit.

Dripping man suit!

Geezus Christ.

The dripping man suit was the skin Dad's friend had been wearing seconds ago and holding it up so I could see and smell it, dear old Mum twittered happily, 'What he wears when he walks abroad.' She laughed long and loud like a chubby kid slowly pulling the legs off a spider. I noticed Mum was wearing the Devil's glasses and seeing her wearing his glasses made her laugh sound a thousand, no, scratch that, a million times worse. What was startling was the fact the glasses had a set of staring human eyes stuck on them, right where the lenses should be, so Mum was looking at me with a different set of eyes in front of her own pair of eyes. How messed up is that? Real messed up. Then she folded the flesh suit over her arms in the exact same way she folded up kitchen towels and man suit juice dripped to the floor and stunk up the whole front room like beef Bisto. I was thinking, flipping hell I'm in the shit now boys, when Dad announced.

'You see, you can see for yourself, that Satan here or Greg as we like to call him,' Dad paused theatrically and placed a friendly hand on the Devil's massive raw right shoulder, 'has worn that suit right out, so I told him all about you boy. How you think you can beat me to shit, being such a big man. Should be a snug fit, don't you think?' Dad giggled stupidly and I felt like head butting him. The git.

I found myself staring at the Devil: he was still grinning. Smoke was pouring from his broad grin, actually pouring from his grin like he had 6x8 = 48 chimneys in his gullet. Flip me sideways! The smoke unfurling from his maw had teeth and eyes and coiled fleshy things that may well have been the beginning of ears or bum cheeks. Then the smoke stood up from the Devil's hideous maw and determinedly scampered over to Mum. The smoke started kissing her, kissing her in a dirty way. As the smoke slipped Mum a vaporous tongue, Mum moaned. She moaned long and hard and she looked messed up, wide open.

I could smell some undercover wildness drifting from Mum's writhing body, fresh shiny wildness that made me 'orny and harder than double science for my Mum. 'Kin hell, what a time to get an erecta-cocky! And then the smoke drifted away from Mum and starting twirling like it was listening to Coolio. Within the smoke I could see a torso forming, first it was the goldish green color of a dragonfly's abdomen but it gradually got darker. I could also make out the sly beginning of hands and matted dark dreads like mine, and I knew, don't ask me how, but I just knew a'ight, that when the smoke was done spinning, my parents-God bless em- would have a spanking new son. One that looked exactly like me, walked like me, talked like me, but a nicer, more subservient version of me. Do the dishes and ironing without complaining me. Masturbate bitterly and feel guilty about it me.

'Not so tough now, are you?' Dad said with a satisfied clap of his hands.

And boy was he ever right.

Didn't stop me beating the Devil though. Thrashed him but good.

Heh.

What can I say?

I got the stuff. Know what I'm saying?

-----------------------------------

Morgan Omtoye has a story published in Staple New Writing
and a story accepted for publication by The London
Magazine. He taught English in China for a year and fights
zombies in his free time. See issue 53 of LITRO for more of his
stories. Central illustration by Faith Connell. Faith Connell was
seven years old when she released her shadow.
Twenty years later it returned with its lover, a warm blooded
child snowman. High jinx ensued.

‘Dad’s Friend’ © Morgan Omotoye, 2007. LITRO is published
every other Friday and distributed for free near to London
Underground stations, and in bookshops, bars and elsewhere
around the UK and beyond. To get in touch please email
litro.fiction@gmail.com or visit www.litro.co.uk.