Chapter 3: Let Me Introduce Myself… (Part 3)

Let Me Introduce Myself…

– Part Three –

I’d been working at Hell Pizza for nine months prior to the outbreak, after a long stint on the unemployment benefit where all I did was laze around at home, play online computer games, go to the gym and drink copious amounts of alcohol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the guys at Hell were complete knob jockeys, but Nigel my boss is at least mildly entertaining.

He gets explained in-depth later on in the book, so I won’t go in to details here. Let’s just say that he keeps things… interesting.

My folks lead extremely exciting lives. They met at a Sci-Fi convention in Las Vegas forty years ago, and if you believe what they say it was love at first sight. They have the photo of when they first met hanging up on the hallway wall. It’s totally cliché but Dad was dressed as Darth Maul, and Mum was dressed as one of those aliens that had tails growing out of their head – fucking weird if you ask me.

You would be forgiven if you were at my old house in Milford, and thought you saw the same photo on display in the living room. They actually got married in the same outfits a year later in… You guessed it, Las Vegas.

My dad was an American named Jethro Death, he was tall and bone thin, and he was given the nickname “Lamp Post” as he was growing up, because of his funny combination of height, weight and intellect.

He was some kind of big shot lawyer in the states, but is now a average to middling Tax Accountant who enjoyed Sci-Fi movies, Magic the Gathering, model trains, Star Wars action figures, this weird board-game called Warhammer that I just don’t get at all, and Celine Dion.

The last meaningful conversation I had with my father was when he asked me if I could record the Star Trek Marathon on Sky TV for him, while he escaped to Hawaii with my mother.

My mothers name was Shirley Harris, and she was this weird mix of nerd and Westie. That’s a slang term for Bogan, which I guess is a slang word for Petrol-head or something. I never really understood it, apart from that they lived in West Auckland – except sometimes they didn’t, like with mum. Confusing right?

She was a kiwi, who also enjoyed all things Sci-Fi and geeky that my father was in to. She was of average height, slightly overweight and of average intelligence. I guess you could call her somewhat attractive, but I definitely wouldn’t go there, even if she wasn’t my mother.

She was unemployed, but spent the majority of her time split between bars mixing drinks and playing on the pokies, the bowling alley mixing drinks and playing on the pokies, or actually just playing ten-pin. Her favourite movie was Star Wars: episode IV, and she listened to Black Sabbath, Slayer and ACDC to name a few bands.

My relationship with my parents was… silent. They pretended that I didn’t exist, and I let them. My fondest memory of my parents was coming home one night after going to a school party, where I ended up getting tied to the underside of a trampoline with bungee cords, while kids jumped on it for two  long, painful, and humiliating hours.

I pulled out my house keys, hands shaking, face all bloody and bruised and found that they wouldn’t work. Turns out my olds had “forgotten” that I’d gone out, and had changed the fucking locks on me! Pricks!!!