The DeNNis (Part 2)

The DeNNis sat up in bed, wiped his eyes, yawned, looked at the mousetrap in the corner of the bedroom. Success! A little mite had been caught overnight. That was the third one. He wondered how many more? Mice never came on their lonesome. He hoped he wasn’t in for a dozen or more or so. What if they were baby rats, with a tubby mother lurking nearby somewhere?

He didn’t worry about a vermin problem. He was currently encountering a moment of peace after a medley of pleasant dreams, in which he’d been juggling a strange variety of objects on a rooftop with a squad of cheerleaders. He’d left the heating on, so he felt clammy. The blankets were warm and cozy. His pjs clung to his forearms via a cool film of perspiration, he pulled them up to his elbows absent-mindedly. Reeling himself back into the present, he considered the morning ritual looming before him, swinging his feet over the edge of the mattress to don his slippers and face the day.

He prided himself on facing the days. Each was difficult and brought with it its own set of unique challenges.

Breakfast was the first skirmish, consisting of ‘facedown museli’ in ice-cold skimmed milk. He called it facedown museli because he knew a fitness freak triathlete friend who collapsed in it and died. When your number is punched, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, The DeNNis always thought. He ought to know, he punched enough tickets.

A combination of fruit would require dicing to be added to the cereal. Blueberries and raspberries mainly, thin slices of banana and finally some sprinkled flame raisins. Topped with brown sugar. Enough to sweeten the dish, but not enough to rot the teeth. He’d eat it at the breakfast bar with an electronic version of The Telegraph newspaper, and aromatic percolated coffee, thinking he was the business. He usually thought he was the business when perched at the granite breakfast bar.

He’d skip a bath this morning, as the bath was for ‘tying’ young dumb and dozy daft homosexual mongoloid victims to for funny bloodsport games later in the evening.

‘Tying’ was the only applicable word, because he always used his work tie for the job. Rather comically he opted for jolly bright colours and cartoon characters, if he could find them. Looney tunes (putting it bluntly), teddy bears, Garfield and Snoopy featured from Temu. The last things some people ever saw on Earth. This light-hearted aspect of fashion reflected the only natural jovial streak in his personality: The only time The DeNNis brightened up was when a poor homeless gent was strapped to his boiling hot water tap.

He usually sat there then, staring at them quizzically..

Oddly, none of them ever screamed at this stage. A percentage of them thought it was a practical joke. He didn’t know any decent jokes apart from an overlong one about Camilla Parker Bowles, Queen of The United Kingdom, featuring a flattened Corgi, and he’d forgotten how to tell it. Last time he’d tried recounting it to Fiona in the works canteen, unrehearsed, he’d tripped over the punch-line and bitten his tongue. Ever since, he’d started biting his tongue on purpose to snap himself awake when feeling drowsy.

Pro Plus was famed for drowsiness, but referred to as ‘wired’ tackle, he’d heard about kids snorting it on the streets, along with Codeine and Pregabalin and Paracetamol. He reckoned one could make a fairly lethal DIY dose of synthetic white uppers with mixed-up products like those.

On the subject of stimulants, he had problems with simple coffee, substituting it for hot chocolate instead, until, that was, he heard the news that there was just as much caffeine content in hot chocolate as there was in coffee. So he relaxed, after a hard day in the office, being a working stiff, with an Ovaltine. This is before what he genuinely considered the real work began. The real work, in truth, of casually pulling unsuspecting gay individuals on street corners in the evening, of calmly luring them back to his bathtub, and of deliberately poisoning them.

It was a double-issue kind of poison, as they shared perfectly legal LSD chocolate together before he surreptitiously added tranquilizer to the cocktails. He remained firm friends with his victims right up until the very end. Dosed up, they frequently confessed to him more or less everything from their short but eventful lives. One particular overawed gent had proposed to him, in a state of Radox-infused mental disarray. Rather than be honest, The DeNNis had pretended to be married. Not a civil partnership, but a regular marriage with a woman.

What breed of happily-married council clerk keeps butt-naked drugged out rent boys tied to the hot water tap in the bathroom in the broad expansive light of day with the blinds wide open and birdsong very merily chirping on outside?

The DeNNis does, that’s who.

And why does The DeNNis do that, you might ask?

Well, because he’s The DeNNis, that's why.