Credit to @phyripo for the header image.
Oh look, I’ve finally finished another fic inspired by a Pogues song! This time it’s NedRo, based on ‘Haunting’ and the tone is rather… different compared to my other fics. Whilst most stories in the series are rather angst-filled (though there are happier ones scattered in there to mix things up) this one’s… well, I don’t want to say funny, more stupid and terrible. And most of it’s in verse. Because I hate myself. This took months to write and I’m so glad that it’s finally finished and I get to share this monstrosity with everyone.
I’m sorry.
Also Ned's name in this is Siemen. Blame Phyripo. Also thanks to her, @peteradnan and @tikola-nesla for reading extracts of this terrible thing and letting me ramble.
It’s probably better to read it on AO3
Siemen – Netherlands
Isabel – Belgium
Luca – Luxembourg
Alin - Romania
“Sit down on that stool hear the cant of a fool,
And a strange tale I'll impart to ye…”
“Opa, will you tell me a bedtime story?”
A big fat ‘no’ wasn’t going to be an acceptable answer here, was it?
The last thing Siemen wanted to do was read anyone a bedtime story, but two pairs of bright green eyes were staring right back at him in the gloom of their shared room and he knew he could spend an hour arguing with a pair of screaming children, or he could just tell them a damn story. At least this way, he could be downstairs with a glass of wine in ten minutes.
Isabel and Luca’s room was a mess of toys and clothes and Siemen wasn’t sure he’d ever seen two people with so many possessions. When he was a child, he had a few toys and books and a little bike. That was all. How did they even have time to play with all these toys? Especially since he’d never seen Luca play with anything except an iPad and that one plastic cash register.
Okay, maybe he was a little proud of Luca for that one. Especially when the kid short-changed a teddy bear for being rude to him.
He stared down at his grandchildren in despair. They… really wanted a story, didn’t they? Was there not something they could watch instead?
No, a story was always the best thing to send a child to sleep with. That was what his daughter insisted when she caught him letting the children watch Watership Down until they fell asleep (the TV show, not the film – he wasn’t a monster).
“Okay,” he said, voice cracking, “what book do you want?”
“Can’t you tell us a story from when you were young?” asked Isabel. “You’re so old! You must have interesting stories, right?”
It was illegal to dropkick a small child out the window, right?
“What did you do when you were little?” asked Luca.
“Respected my elders.” A fat lie but oh well. It was a lie his family told him to get him to behave. It didn’t work but they could sleep easily.
“Did you have TV?”
“Yes but only a few channels,” he sighed, “and it was small and grainy.” And if anyone knocked the aerial then the image was fucked and he’d miss the end of Floris in the time it took to fix it.
“So what did you do when you weren’t watching TV?” asked Isabel.
“Rode my bike.” He smiled, remembering the long summer days wasted cycling by the beach in the sun, maybe taking a picnic with him and spending hours just looking at the sea.
If he was being honest, he had to ride his bike everywhere, because he grew up in the countryside and everything was stupidly far away.
It was how he discovered-
That’s it!
“What about a story a friend of mine wrote?” he offered. Anything to stop them asking questions about his personal life. Even his wife – God rest her soul – could only recall approximately 5 facts about his life. And that was before the dementia set in.
The kids perked up.
“Well, he wrote poems,” Siemen clarified, “but story poems.”
Luca’s face lit up. “Ooh, like Dr Seuss?”
No, nothing like Dr Seuss. “Oh, sure. Like that.”
Leaving an excited pair of grandkids to their chatter, Siemen hauled himself up to shuffle into his room. He always tried to keep everything as organised as possible, a habit that now served him well in his old age. For example, he knew – under his bed – was a battered old suitcase where he kept old mementos regarding a certain someone.
There were two books in the suitcase, one a heavy scrapbook containing preserved leaves and twigs, the other was a notebook on the verge of falling apart.
The unpublished poems of Alin Radacanu, his final volume.
Hand written by Siemen Morgens, upon the poet’s insistence.
Most of these could only be described as ‘sexually menacing’ and certainly not appropriate for adult human beings, let alone children. There was one though…
When he hobbled back to the bedroom, Luca had climbed on the bunk bed to fight Isabel. Again. It was almost perfect, like Alin had planned to have his poem read aloud – for the first time – to a pair of fighting kids.
He snarled and began with a growl.
“Sit down ya wee bastard,
I’ve a tale of disaster,
And romance all to tell ye,
About a young man,
His name was Siemen,
And a strangely attractive ol’ tree.”
The kids jumped, Luca falling off the ladder and Isabel looking at him in utter confusion.
“Dr Seuss never swore in his books.”
He would if he ever met Alin. “I said it was like Dr Seuss, but not entirely. Now, if you promise to not tell your mother about the bad words, I would like to continue, please.”
The kids nodded, eyes sparkling at the thought of hearing ‘bad words’ with cool Opa Siemen. And keeping a secret from mum.
“One night, a cold night,
A night full of fright,
He set off on his little old bike,
Off to a party,
His attire classy,
As the rain it speared like a pike.
If a journey could kill,
Oh, this man hated hills,
He much preferred land to be flat,
He was a Dutchman,
So hills he would ban,
If he had the power to do that.”
“Why don’t you just get a taxi?” asked Isabel.
“It was the 1960s and I lived in the countryside. We didn’t have taxis like those fancy fuckers in Amsterdam. Also I was poor.”
Luca laughed at him.
“You shut your bitch mouth.”
“The rain was too much,
The trip dangerous, as such,
And the hill a steep torrent of mud,
So this man turned around,
For shelter was bound,
Before he got knee-deep in sludge.
At the foot of the hill,
Trapped in a chill,
Our hero sat, sulks by a tree,
But lo and behold,
Gnarly and bold,
This tree was in fact me.
Now a prankster I am,
And I can’t spare a damn,
So as slick and as sly as an oyst-
-er, I bent down to his ear,
And in words loud and clear,
I simply said to him: moist."
“Your friend isn’t very good,” Luca commented.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Well, no.”
“Then shut up.”
“He was up like a cat,
Or poker to the back,
And let out a terrible shriek,
His face deathly white,
Oh, what a horrible fright!
Simply too fearful to speak.
When nobody was seen,
Except for this tree,
This young man decided to run,
Away from ground haunted,
By ghosts he was taunted,
I, the living tree, he did shun.”
“Your friend… is a tree?” Isabel raised an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
“Mum was right; you’re a senile old bastard.”
“I swear to you it’s tr- I’m a what?”
Isabel shrugged. “Her words, not mine.”
Siemen glared at her for a long moment. “Can I continue?”
They nodded.
“Good.”
“Back on his bike,
Almost flew into a dyke,
In his haste to get away from me,
Shaken and shook,
Without a backwards look,
At me, the twisted old tree.
For weeks, I, alone,
Just stood and bemoaned,
The loss of a potential new friend,
I want him back now,
My soul he will plow,
Will my loneliness ever just end?
Then one silent night,
A strange speck of light,
This man had come back to me,
Though he was scared,
My power he feared,
A new friendship, could this possibly be?”
Luca raised an eyebrow. “You went back to the scary old tree?”
Siemen shrugged. There was a time where he’d been less sensible, almost reckless. And maybe he just wanted to prove to himself that ghosts weren’t real because, dammit Siemen, you weren’t raised to be such a gullible fool.
“If you had found out ghosts were real, would you not want to find out more?”
“Ghosts aren’t real, though.”
“Well, you are wrong. Very wrong. Wrong and stupid.”
Luca began to cry. Because that is what happens when you call a seven-year-old stupid, Siemen.
“Wait, no, I didn’t mean it!” he hissed, “please don’t tell your mother.”
“Give me €20.”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
Luca cried harder.
The little fu- “Fine! Here!” He – incredibly reluctantly – opened his wallet and fished out a twenty.
He already knew that smug smile on Isabel’s face meant bad news.
“You’ll have to pay me to not snitch too,” she said slyly. Why did his daughter have to go and have 2 kids?
With a growl, he handed over another twenty. “Can I continue my story now?”
“Sure thing, Opa!”
“He kealt at my root,
His glare was acute,
And demanded to know what I was,
Malevolent spirit,
A vision too vivid,
Or was he a cruel laughter’s cause.
I spoke to him gentle,
A voice thin and fragmental,
I begged him to hear my sad tale,
I meant him no harm,
No need for alarm,
I am but a man, cursed and frail,
Though his eyes showed his fear,
Siemen’s ‘yes’ was sincere,
He wanted to know tragedy,
This blight called my life,
My well-deserved strife,
The price of noxious vanity,
Alin the annoying,
A poet so trying,
A genius hated by all,
Though his rhyme was sublime,
And looks so divine,
He was regarded as quite the arsehole.
He made a bet with the devil,
Their power was level,
And he simply won’t ever die,
He put a gun to his head,
And in one shot was dead,
In blood did that idiot lie."
“This moron killed himself to prove he was immortal?” exclaimed Isabel.
“Well how else do you prove it?”
Isabel thought for a moment, then scowled when she couldn’t come up with a reply. Ha! That’s what Siemen thought!
"The devil punished this poet,
Eternal life? He’d bestow it,
Let this man live his mistakes,
Trapped in a tree,
Trickle of time oversee,
Alone in a silent heartache.
Well now I have Siemen,
Promised to be my friend,
He’d come back to visit again,
And the next day he came,
My heart was aflame,
This feeling spread like a bloodstain."
“Eugh,” Luca pulled a face. “A tree fell in love with you?”
“A tree that used to be a man, mind you.”
“It’s still weird. I mean, you couldn’t fall in love with a tree back, right?”
Siemen fell silent. His grandchildren looked at him in horror.
“Well it’s more about personality, you see.”
“And what kind of personality did Alin have?” asked Isabel.
“A horrible one.” They both raised their eyebrows. “Not really. Well, he was very strange, but I couldn’t help liking him. He was funny, and witty. And, well, I don’t know.” He could feel a blush creeping onto his face, and wanted to punch every single one of his blood vessels. “I just found him charming.”
Luca stared at him for a good minute. “Wait, are you saying this actually happened?”
“Of course.”
“You’re senile.”
“Sinterklaas isn’t real.”
Five minutes of crying, and a €30 bribe later, Siemen turned back to Alin’s poem.
“Our friendship, it grew,
To the town’s harsh ado,
Their tongues, like me, were thorny,
Though we broke the taboo,
Our hearts painted rouge,
The truth was he made me so-“
Sieman stopped. Why, Alin? “Oh no, that’s a bit too rude.” As were the next few verses, it seemed. And this was supposed to be one of the cleaner poems.
“We sat in the sun and he told me poems,” he explained, in the hopes of distracting his grandchildren from the prospect of something with a rude word in it, because holy fuck did children love rude words and he couldn’t have them asking their mother what ‘horny’ meant. “We talked about our lives and grew closer. He had a lot of interesting stories, though I’m not sure just how many were actually true.”
He desperately scanned the poem for something that was’t complete and utter filth, vaguely remembering just how disgusted he felt hearing it from Alin’s voice all those years ago.
Ah! Here we go!
“Our cruel reputation,
Across this flat nation,
The madman who French-kissed a tree,
I go naked in winter,
His lip has a splinter!
And his step-child a family of bees!”
Well, it was cleaner than the last seven verses. Isabel still looked disgusted though. He couldn’t blame her. It took him a week to get that splinter out. And that was just the one he got on his lip.
“Our time was a blast,
But it could never last,
He was a human and I just a tree,
I had stood here for years,
Cried cold, lonely tears,
What I wanted was my soul’s release.
What I ask of you dear,
I make this quite clear,
To go set me free at last,
Take your little axe,
Plunge it into my back,
And chop me up quite fast.
I know you will miss me,
With ice where you kissed me,
But the only way to break my cruel curse,
Is to chop me down,
My spirit set down,
Your axe shall be my own nurse.
I’m ready to die,
My soul has run dry,
And my bark has grown dark and inky,
So cut down this tree,
And let me be free,
In fact, I’ll find it quite- God fucking dammit Alin!”
“He’ll find it quite what?” asked Isabel.
“…Stinky?”
“That’s not the word! We’re not idiots!”
Siemen had had quite enough at this point. “It is the word now shut up and go to sleep!” And he left the kids to their protesting, turning off the light and creaking downstairs to find that wine bottle. After locking up the unpublished poems of Alin Radacanu somewhere innocent eyes couldn't find them, of course.