Peanut Butter Skittles

My mum bought the family a bandit. A real-life fruit machine, like. She bought it from the guy around the pool hall – Glen, his name was; he sold it to her off the back of a white transit van, rolling it into the living room on a pump truck.

“Make sure you refill it often with plenty of coins,” he advised her. “So as it doesn’t refuse the pay out.”

My mum skipped lively to the bank for the slummy, exchanging 50 squid. The jackpot was weird, it didn’t make any sense to any of us at the time, but it was only 5p a play. All the kids hit it together, it was a laugh, theatrical and musical, although it never paid out apart from a couple of quid here and there.

One day, myself and my little brother rinsed the jackpot. It paid out in peanut butter skittles. 30 of them, large and chewy and gelid and nutty. That night, we ate them together in bed, and went to the maddest dream imaginable. We dreamt that we were flying through industrial estates on a different planet, and having the time of our lives as we so did. I would motion for him to look at a particular awning, or a particular workshop façade, and he would acknowledge it with amazement. Or he would point out an automation or mechanisation…and I would just look on in wonder like him. We had the time of our lives…but lizards spoiled the fun. Lizards!

“How dare you pair invade our premises,” the lizards said. “This world belongs to us and but us alone.”

We woke in fear, together, but remembered the majesty of the astral plain we’d shared. It was special, it was fun, it was unrivalled. We’d both united far beyond the common bonds of brotherhood; we’d become something singular in the dream state.

I had four peanut butter skittles left the next morning, and I gave him two.

“That’s for tonight,” I said to him. “So we can fly in our sleeps again.”

Our mum caught me giving them to him, and demanded that I stop dealing drugs in my own family. Dealing drugs! she thought. She’d been wondering about our mood ever since the morning.

“Mum, I would never deal to my younger brother!” I argued. “What do you take me for? These are just peanut butter skittles from the bandit.”

“Why the f**k would it pay out candy, for God sakes?” she replied.

“I don’t know, it just does, and it gives us nice dreams…”

My mum played the bandit from there on in. She rinsed the jackpot and ate all 30 peanut butter skittles to herself. That night she was visited by a lizard. It said to her, “Tell your sons to stop frequenting my domain. And you are certainly not welcome yourself before you ask.”

She didn’t get to see any industrial estates on remote planets. Rather, she ordered that the bandit be collected by Glen, and taken back to the pool hall.

Unbeknownst to me, my little brother had fiddled with the back of it before it was whisked away. He had 300 peanut butter skittles to share with me. Our mum was too old to share in the drama of the astral plain, experience had made her hair go white with fear, but we were young and bold, with brave searching in our hearts. So we enjoyed our industrial estates, saying 'Howd'ya do?' to the lizards. With our peanut butter skittles.