CHECKING HIS SPAM ON THE WAP by Doogie Howsar

DNM FICTION

EDITED BY A.MICHAEL

I’m not giving him an introduction because lately we have been slagging each other off. Me in DNM Fiction paper pamphlets and he on creative writing forums. All I will say is that this is his flash story and he is the author. Ah what the frig...the original and best, here he is, buckle your braces, you either love him or loathe him, marmite thru & thru, as odd and as zany as a bathtub full of cut seagulls on the back of a 3-wheeled travelling freak show circus carnival thingy....Mr D dot Howsar.

him

“She wants me back home to mop her brow? Don’t talk wet.”
me

That’s my friend Markus speaking. I’m on my mobile talking to his girlfriend, who is giving birth. She has called me because she knows I am with him. She is well into the labour wails in her kitchen at home. There is no time for an ambulance. Thank heavens her mom is there with her, but unsurprisingly she really wants Markus there with her too.
him

“Nothing I can do,” Markus mouths at me, shrugging his shoulders. “Tell her I’m on the WAP.”
me

I tell her three or four times. She repeats the word ‘what’ with increasing volume until the last one is a full-blown shriek. I find myself explaining what the WAP is, even though I don’t know. I heard of it a couple of years ago. It was something to do with the early internet on a cell phone, so far as I knew.
her

“WAP? What WAP? What’s a WAP?” she yells at me.
him

“Checking my spam,” Markus whispers in my other ear. “Tell her I’ve got a pile of spam to check.”
me

I tell her.
her

“SPAM!?” she shouts at me, and I have to hold the phone away from my ear before I lose my hearing. “SPAM!?”
me

I know that spam is junk electronic mail. I thought everyone knew that. Online Viagra cheap Viagra Special Erection Pack Viagra. “Yeah, you know....” I say. “He’s checking his spam on the WAP.”
him

Markus shakes his head, busy on his new phone. I don’t know what’s annoying him, the fact that his girlfriend is giving birth, the fact that I am acting as go-between, or whether it’s something to do with the spam on his WAP. I think it’s me. Does he want me to hang up or what? I can’t hang up. Instead, I thrust my phone at him.

him

He takes it and launches it over someone’s roof. “How many times?” he seethes. “I am on the f**king WAP!”
omg!

I’m speechless. He just threw my phone away. I’ve always wanted to throw a phone as far as I could, and he just did – mine.
me, angry

“It’s the birth of your first son,” I put to him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
him

He doesn’t look up from the screen, but his voice becomes all apologetic. “I don’t do placentas.”
finito

© Doogie Howsar MMX
Selected Stories