A Nobody with No Body

When I was growing up in Edenvale, my greatest ambition was to make the front page of the Edenvale News.

I once joined a litter cleanup along the river that ran through town, just because I knew that The Edenvale News had sent a photographer to cover it. And it worked, sort of.

When the paper came out, there it was: my very skinny leg, lurking in the background. I pointed it out to “That’s me! That’s my leg!” only to be met with scepticism. “Nah, your legs are definitely skinnier than that.”

This is why I mostly don’t like people.

So then I started to scheme. What grand thing could I do to get myself on the front page?

Back then, Edenvale had this weird obsession with the Guinness Book of World Records. It was a thing. Every year, someone would make the world’s biggest pancake or some shit, and a guy from Guinness would turn up, hand them a little certificate, and boom, front page of the Edenvale News.

I thought, that’s the way to get onto the front page. I’d make it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

How hard could it be?

I started researching. Some were world records nobody wanted. Like, the shortest person in the world, who signs up for that? Or the guy who’d been struck by lightning the most times, seven, I think.

Imagine that relationship with God.

“Fuck you, God.”

Zap.

Knock, knock.

Guinness Book of Records. Here’s your certificate.

Others, I thought I might be able to crack, like most socks put on one leg in a minute or most candles extinguished with a single fart. I actually tried that one. Adjusted my diet and everything. Very unpleasant and harder than you think.

And then there was Paul Siebert.

Paul Siebert looked exactly like Alfred E. Neuman, you know, the guy on every cover of Mad Magazine. His superpower? He genuinely didn’t give a fuck. People say they don’t give a fuck. Paul didn’t give a fuck, like really didn’t give any fucks.

I thought he was the coolest human alive.

He had the simplest plan.

“Dude, it’s easy. The woman next door has a dachshund called Colin. We kidnap him. She puts out a reward. We’ll ‘find’ him. Boom. Your picture’s on the front page of the Edenvale News.”

While I was thinking about this, do you know who got their photograph on the front page of the Edenvale News? The guy who found an unidentified severed head in a plastic bag in a stormwater drain.

A nobody with no body.

I thought, why couldn’t that have been me? Not the headless guy, but the guy pointing to the spot in the drain, on the front page of The Edenvale News.

After that, the neighbourhood kids became obsessed with stormwater drains.

Stormwater drains? What even are those? We had to know.

The way in was through the inlets at the end of the street, where the rainwater poured in. The bravest went first. But soon, every kid in the neighbourhood was squeezing through, all hoping to be the one to find the next severed head.

There was one narrow as hell section where you had to crawl on all fours. But then, it opened up into these larger chambers, maybe where the roads intersected or something.

Those chambers became forts.

More and more kids started wriggling through the drains, and naturally, the older boys, Craig in particular, began organising us into ranks. Craig, of course, was the captain. It was all based on age. I was one of the younger ones, so I didn’t even get a rank, just a private. The lowest of the low.

And quickly, it all turned very Lord of the Flies.

Soon, we had to be attacking other forts, and the older boys started bullying the younger ones. It got unpleasant fast.

The only person who, of course, never got involved in any of this shit was Paul Siebert.

Unlike me, he was actively trying to stay off the front page of the Edenvale News.

So I started hanging out with him instead.

He spent most of his time smoking in an empty lot. There was this old, abandoned water pipe, massive, rusted, half-buried in the ground, surrounded by veld. He’d sit inside it with his feet propped up against the side, smoking without a care in the world.

I never smoked, but I’d sit there anyway. We’d talk for hours, mostly about what we’d do to the bullies once we ruled the world.

One day, the neighbour whose house backed onto the veldt stuck his head over the wall and said, “I know what you’re up to—smoking cigarettes, you kids are gonna start a fire, blah blah blah.”

Paul Siebert told him to fuck off.

The guy left. Came back with his BB pellet gun. Started shooting at us.

The next day, Paul Siebert went back and burned the veldt down.

Legend.

A few days later, I was walking home when I saw Craig on his bike, pedalling as if his life depended on it. I panicked.

Shit. He’s coming for me.

But he sped right past me.

Whew.

Turns out, there’d been a flash flood. Two kids were trapped in the stormwater drains.

All I could think was,

“Thank God that could’ve been me.”

Now it was a full-blown drama, fire department, sirens, people yelling. “Where are the kids? How do we get them out?”

Eventually, they got them out. Unharmed

Next day, those two kids were on the front page of the Edenvale News.

And all I could think was,

Fuck. That could’ve been me.