I'm Too Sexy. A flash fiction piece

[AlexTrough]

Two boys lay in neighbouring beds in the cancer ward of a children's hospital, staring at the ceiling. One boy was Alex. He was thirteen. The other was Ian, who was fourteen. The moon shone through the windows and reflected off their chemo-bald heads. Both of the boys wore blue hospital overalls. Both were gaunt.

'I can't believe I have cancer,' said Alex, turning to look at Ian. 'My life sucks.'

Ian looked at Alex and nodded. 'Mine, too. I should be dead in around three weeks' time. Now I'll never get to finger a girl. How long have you got?'

'Any day now. I was hoping to get well enough to go on Britain's Got Talent so that I could use my chemo for sympathy, but that's down the shitter.'

The boys went back to staring at the ceiling. After a few seconds of silence, Ian sat up and said, 'There must be something we can do in our last days. There simply must be.'

Another few seconds of silence ensued as the boys tried to come up with some ideas. It was Alex whose brain sparked into life first. When it did, he sat bolt upright, raised his hand, and said, 'I've got it.'

'What?' said Ian, staring hard at Alex. 'Tell me. What have you thought of?'

Alex gave Ian a wry smile. 'Have you ever heard of Right Said Fred?'

'No. What's that?'

'Some fag band my dad likes. My point is, the guys in that band are both bold, like us. We could start a tribute band.'

Ian let out a yelp. 'Yes! I love singing. It would give our last days purpose and amuse our families before they have to grieve us.'
Alex's smile grew larger. 'Exactly. Who needs chemo wigs now? Not us, Ian. Not us.'

The chemotherapy the boys had undergone had weakened them, so they both felt to need to sink their heads into their pillows. 'Let's get some rest now,' said Alex. 'We can start rehearsing tomorrow.'

'I can't fucking wait,' said Ian.

Bright and early the next morning, Alex awoke. He picked up a plastic cup from his bedside table and threw it at Ian's head. Ian woke up.
'Are you ready to start rehearsing?' asked Alex.

Ian nodded. Alex said, 'Right, I'll sing the song first because you don't know it. Then we can go through it together.'

Alex proceeded to sing the Right Said Fred song 'I'm Too Sexy'. When he finished, they both sang it together. They went through the song several times so that Ian could learn it off by heart, all the while trying to perfect their vocals. During the umpteenth attempt, a female nurse walked past.

'You're not too sexy for anything, you tumour-ridden twats,' said the nurse, furrowing her brow. 'Now pipe down. Some patients are trying to sleep.'

Alex gave the nurse a cold hard stare. 'You can't stop us from living our dream.'

Alex's bald head made him look like a bouncer, albeit a gaunt one. The nurse began to feel intimidated. She swallowed hard. 'Fine,' she said. 'But keep it down a little.' Then she walked away.

Alex turned to Ian. 'Our bald heads make us look like right hard bastards. She won't mess with us again.'

'Too fucking right,' said Ian, nodding.

The boys continued singing.

After hours of practise over several days, the time had come for Ian and Alex to perform the song for their families and the other kids on the ward. They arranged the time and date of their performance, and their families duly turned up. Ian and Alex mustered enough energy to stand on their beds so that everyone on the ward could see them.

In the front row, so to speak, were Alex's parents, Peter and Tracy, and Ian's mother, Joan. Ian's father had died several years earlier after falling from a helicopter.

'Are you ready, guys?' said Alex. 'We've been rehearsing for days.'

'Go on, son,' said Peter. 'I love Right Said Fred.'

Ian and Alex looked at each other. 'Okay,' said Alex. 'Shit just got real.'

'I'll count us in,' said Ian. 'One, two, one, two, three, four.'

The boys sang. Their vocals were pitch perfect. The hairs on the necks of their parents stood. Peter got a semi. If the boys' deaths weren't imminent, they could have got a recording contract. They were that good.

Halfway through the song, blood began to trickle from Alex's nose. Tracy was the first to notice. She gasped and stood, but Peter held her back. He put his mouth to her ear and whispered, 'Let them finish. They're both gonna die soon anyway, so let them go how they want to go.'

Tracy sat down. Joan put her hand on Tracy's and mouthed, 'It's okay.'

The boys were still singing. Alex knew his nose was bleeding, but he wasn't stopping. He and Ian had put too much time and effort into their routine to stop. Ian noticed the blood, but the fire he saw in Alex's eyes let him know that they had to continue. They had to finish what they had started.

They did finish. Alex collapsed to the floor. His parents ran to him. Alex was dead.

Several days later, the rain pelted Ian's head as he sat in a wheelchair beside Alex's open grave. The funeral was drawing to a close. All that was left for the priest to say was the 'ashes to ashes' bit. When he did that bit, he closed his red book and left the mourners to throw soil onto the coffin.

'Shame you can't sing now,' said Ian to Alex's coffin as he threw a handful of soil. 'You could have sung 'Living in a Box'. Ian chuckled to himself. The chuckle turned into a cough. Everything went dark. As he slipped to his own death, Ian had visions of himself and Alex, standing on their beds, singing 'I'm Too Sexy'.

[checkoutgirl]

This is top stuff.

[elnombre]

Agreed.

[ndrwkrtn]

That cheered me up no end, thank you

[Fry]

Amazing

[swordfish_bhoona]

awww that was lovely. is it bad that i was in stitches most of the way through

[weekender]

That was fucking amazing.  I want to read more Flash Fiction!

[Beagle 2]

Neil Burgess took another greedy glug of vodka, his face remaining fixed in grim determination. He was way past wincing at the taste.

Tonight was the night he was going to do it, for sure. He just wanted to find the right words. To leave those left behind with a message that would help them understand. A piece of wisdom that would endure, and be of comfort. Something to make people understand.

He reflected upon his life. In many ways a well-lived one. Not for him the grim treadmill of the chutney factory as his father had wished. He had followed his heart and made a living doing what he loved. Regular work. Two words an actor doesn't hear very often.

He punched the keys on his laptop bitterly and opened up his IMDB page. A short film in 1999. A Chestnut vendor in Micawber. Male Paramedic #1 in Waking the Dead. A removals man in Life Begins. Yes, there had been those dizzying, intoxicating showbiz highs.

But nobody remembered those except him. Pedestrians never pointed and catcalled at him 'hey, it's that cunt off of Waking the Dead!'. First dates never went all weird because potential girlfriends recognised him from Micawber. He never had to make a humiliating personal appearance at Loughborough University for wankered students to get their picture taken with him dressed as Paramedic #1. If only.

Scribbling a few furious words onto the back of an envelope, he hurled the vodka against the wall, swiftly replacing one bottle with another. This was it. Glugging even more furiously than before, he downed the Power Cleaner Limescale and Shine in one, letting out a long belch, that turned to a gurgle, that turned to silence. 

The coroner said he had the cleanest set of intestines in the morgue. It was a joke of course, they had turned to soup.

The envelope read simply: 'Bang. And the dirt is gone'.