Jokers (standard:drama, 2494 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Mar 07 2005	Views/Reads: 3734/2450	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
In a quest for oneupmanship, how far will these practical jokers go?

It started so innocently, all those years ago, when they were six years
old, when he woke up to discover a big plastic spider on the pillow. 
Even at that age, spiders were frightening beasts to him, and he had 
been in tears for hours afterwards, much to the other boys amusement. 
Gary and Steve were childhood friends that had grown up into 34 year 
olds who were still good friends now, as then. They lived five miles 
apart in the midst of a sprawling city, Gary in a posh detached house, 
with a career woman, four years older than him, and Steve, in a bedsit, 
conducting an affair with the woman of his night school Mathematics 
teacher. He was unemployed, having had various jobs in various 
unskilled capacities, such as packing soap in a factory, and 
distributing leaflets like a poor postman, all the time being paid 
pittance. He tried to merge benefits and work, but the fear of being 
caught meant he was too afraid to try it. The government's advert 
campaign which basically said: ‘Benefit fraud, we know who you are', 
got to him. It worked. So it was either one or the other, both were 
meagre finance, but in the end, the obvious choice was work, which 
didn't pay much more than allowance, but more nonetheless. At present 
though, it was back to signing on, back to the dole queue, his job as a 
supermarket shelf-filler having been basically stolen from him by the 
person whose job he had taken. They came back to their position because 
they had more experience. So it was back to signing on for Steve, and 
also back to thinking about how he was going to get back at Gary for an 
incident which had crushed Steve's soul and left him dejected and 
depressed, a reprisal which would top what had happened to him. 

After the spider incident, Steve got his revenge when Gary stayed over
night at his parents. When Gary was fast asleep in a sleeping bag, next 
to a cupboard, Steve sneaked out of his room, got the plastic bucket 
that they used to make sand castles with, filled it with cold water, 
and struggling back to the bedroom, with such a heavy weight for a 
young boy, poured it over Gary's face, waking him instantly. Steve 
collapsed into fits of laughter, the parents were woken up, the light 
came on, and Gary never stayed the night again, but their practical 
jokes on each other continued until this day. It was case of 
one-upmanship, a kind of light-hearted revenge. When they were 24, they 
were at a local seaside resort, swimming in the sea, and enjoying the 
heat and atmosphere, when Steve obtained the keys to Gary's car, parked 
just beyond the beach. He drove it back to the hotel with all of Gary's 
gear inside. Gary was still in the sea, and later discovered his 
missing car, and a missing Steve. It was a two mile walk back to the 
hotel, and with the wind picking up, bringing with it a cold element, 
he had no choice but to walk in nothing but a pair of soaking shorts, 
through the streets to his hotel, only to find his car parked outside, 
and Steve pointing and laughing. 

Gary got his revenge for that the following night. They had been on a
lad's holiday in a beach resort with a few of Gary's work colleagues. 
Gary enlisted their help in his revenge. He gave them money to buy some 
cheap aftershave, which they did, and then asked Steve for a ‘see who 
can drink a pint the fastest' competition. Gary knew that aftershave 
would be hard to distinguish in a pint glass, as they were almost the 
same colour, a light brown. So if Steve had already had few real pints, 
and he was to be handed this one, it would very unlikely that he would 
be able to tell the difference until he tasted it. Secretly, crowded 
around in the toilets, they poured the aftershave into a pint glass, 
giggling like little schoolboys, and went back out into the bar. Steve 
took the pint without question, and the ‘competition', began. Their 
friends counted down from three, and Steve took three or four gulps 
before he realised that it wasn't lager. He never made it to the 
toilets before he was sick, and when he did, spent most of the rest of 
the night in there, while Gary, at one point, was actually on the 
floor, foetus-like, convulsed with laughter. 

So it went on, revenge for the revenge, an unending spiral of practical
jokes which had resulted so far, in this most cruel joke on Steve. He 
pictured Gary, sitting behind a desk somewhere, laughing at his 
mis-fortune. Through his disappointment, through his anger at him, he 
had managed to come up with something that topped it, and left Gary in 
a much worse situation. 

Gary worked for a compensation firm, the type that is always advertised
on Television. ‘Had an accident that wasn't your fault? No hidden 
costs. No win no fee. Call us today'. He was high up in the chain of 
command within the company, enabling him to afford many of life's 


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