Flashbacks

A series of flashbacks

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Notes: This wasn’t originally a Boosh fic, it was something else so I changed the names and the situations a little bit. If you see anything in it that’s a bit wrong, or something that I’ve forgotten to change then please forgive it. Also since it wasn’t originally a Boosh fic, the character representations don’t fit in 100% with the way that our favourite boys act. And it’s also incomplete because I ran out of steam and the will to go on. It’s long. And I would call it…slightly funny?

Characters include:
Hyper Noel
Sane Julian
Loveable but a little bit ditzy Mike


Flashbacks by raynor

“…Mike, I think maybe you should think of getting a new car,” I said to him as we were standing there looking at his car.

“What do you mean you think maybe I should think of getting a new car? There’s nothing fucking wrong with this car Julian, it’s a classic! How can you not see that?!”

How could I not see it? Hmm, well let me think. Could it be something to do with the fact that the exhaust is half hanging off? The rear windows don’t open because they were letting in drafts, so Mike superglued them shut? The fact that the seat covers are so fucked that the foam comes off on your clothes when you sit down? The fact that the gear stick is so severely broken that Mike had to replace it with a small tree branch that he found because it did a better job?

“Gee, I don’t know,” I said sarcastically.

“There’s nothing wrong with this car,” Mike said adamantly. “I fucking love this car, okay? Like I said, it’s a classic.”

“Yeah, a classic piece of crap!”

“Julian if you’re gonna keep talking about Bessie in that way then you’re not getting in. You can walk. This car is a piece of English history, look at the way the silver shines through the red paint! It glimmers in sunlight.”


Flashback to 3 years ago

“I can’t believe Mike’s making us clean his car. We’re older than he is, if anything he should be cleaning our boots with his tongue,” Noel complained to me.

Mike had decided to make us clean his car since Noel had consumed a few too many McDonalds chocolate milkshakes on the way home from some random gig and had then proceeded to throw up all over the interior. I had figured that since we’d cleaned the inside and since it still smelt a bit like sick that it would be nice if we cleaned the outside for him as well.

“You were the one who was fucking sick in it, I don’t even know why I’m helping you,” I told him, noticing that he had a big sponge shaped stain on his jeans. “You’ve got a sponge shaped stain on your jeans,” I said helpfully.

“I fucking know, I can feel it. How was I supposed to know that a sponge makes jeans wet if you rest it on them?”

I rolled my eyes. I seriously don’t know how Noel managed to get through high school sometimes. “Isn’t it pretty obvious that if you put something wet on your pants then they’re going to get wet also?”

“I dunno man, the sponge looked pretty dry when I picked it up. It was just all wet in the middle. I don’t know why.”

I couldn’t be bothered to explain how sponges work again. I’d already explained it to him about seven times in the short space of time that I’d known him and he just didn’t seem to get it. There were a lot of things he didn’t understand, for example how you can make something fizzy by carbonating it, or how you can get paper from a tree, or why alcohol gets you drunk, or how come Star Wars is so much better than Star Trek. He really had problems with the last one, he seemed to think that the sun shined out of the Starship Enterprise’s ass and after many discussions about it I just added it to the list of things that Noel was never going to get. The list grew every day.

I went round to the other side of the car and started cleaning the windows. I wondered briefly how come whenever Noel fucks something up I always end up helping him out of it? Could it be because I am such an awesome fucking friend? …No. More than likely it’s the fact that I didn’t want him to fuck things up even more. Especially since the van we had had broken down completely and our only mode of transport was Mike’s shitty beaten up car.

Noel was talking at me and I was nodding and pretending to listen. I think he was talking about carrots, or something like that. I don’t know. “And I’ve done a fantastic job on this paint!” Noel said happily. That was the one thing that filtered through into my mind.

“You did what?” I asked walking around to his side of the car. My mouth dropped open. I’d never thought that people’s mouths actually did drop open when they saw something amazing or awful, but apparently they do. Go figure. Noel was sitting on the floor, smiling and looking at the car with awe. “It’s got silver bits in it, I didn’t know that! Did you?”

“You’re using a fucking scouring brush Noel! You’re scraping the paint off the car!”

“…I am?” Noel asked uncertainly. “I just thought this was some new fangled sponge that maybe had silver paint in it.”

“Didn’t you notice it was made out of WIRE?!” I shouted. I sat down on the floor next to him and looked at the scratches in the paint. “Oh fuck. Mike is gonna kill us, you know how much he loves this pile of shit.”

“Do you think that we should-”

“Shush Noel, I’m thinking! We need a way to get out of this and we need one quick. Mike’s gonna be home in about half an hour and it’s not like we can fucking repaint the car.”

“We could colour it in with nail varnish.” Noel paused when he realised I was glaring at him. “Or, you know, crayon. Or…or…um…felt tip.”

“Fuck,” I said again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” I couldn’t help but stare at the silver scratches all across Bessie’s red paintwork. “Okay,” I said after about 5 more minutes of sitting in silent astonishment. Seriously, how the hell could someone think that a scouring pad was a new type of sponge with silver paint inside it? Jesus Christ. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do.”


Just as Mike came home from college we had put the finishing touches to the paintwork…namely randomly scratching other sections of the paint off of the car in a way that could hopefully be seen as artistic. Despite what everybody had said when I chose to take an art and graphic design course in the last year of high school instead of doing metal work like all the other guys did, it had turned out that there was a bonus in it after all. It was also a bloody good job that Noel had decided to go to art school as well, otherwise the car would have looked like a pile of pants.

“You guys did an amazing job!” he said as he came into the garage. “How did you get Bessie to look that clean? I don’t think she’s ever sparkled so much.”

To his credit Noel kept silent.

“We found this new kind of car wax and we thought that you’d like it,” I said convincingly. “You know, if you don’t like the silver specks you can always just wax it off with the paint antidote.”

“Paint antidote?!” Noel muttered scathingly. “What the fuck Julian?”

“Nah,” Mike said wandering around the car. “This is amazing! Bessie really hasn’t even looked this good in her life! It’s like she’s had a whole new paint job! And these silver lines are so good! Thanks!”

I had never had the heart to tell him that Bessie’s new paint job was courtesy of a kitchen scouring pad. I don’t think I ever will.

End flashback


“…Well, it does glimmer,” I admitted.

“Besides, if I sold Bessie then we wouldn’t get to see the great paintjob that you and Noel did all those years ago for me. It still looks good.” Mike patted the hood of the car and smiled down at it like a proud parent would to their newly born child. “You’d never be able to recreate it. After all, like you said, they stopped making that silver glimmer wax and paint antidote.”

“…Huh, yeah,” I laughed nervously. “Yeah, yeah they did stop making it. But you know, on a new car I think it would be pretty easy to recreate.” All you’d need was some scouring pads and 20 minutes. “We could make our own glimmer wax using…um…nail varnish.”

Mike gave me a look that plainly said he thought I was a retard.

“Or…um…you know felt tip. Or crayon. And glitter. And…um…shiny dust.” Shiny dust?!

He shook his head at me. “Are you on crack? Come on get in the car anyway. If we don’t leave now then we’re never gonna make it to Noel’s house on time, and you know how pissed off his girlfriend will be if we get there late and then we have to go to dinner later on. She gets so wound up about things like that.”

“Yeah I suppose,” I said, climbing into the passenger seat. I shut the car door and reached for the seatbelt.

“Um…the seatbelt broke,” Mike said sheepishly. “But I made this steadfast makeshift seatbelt,” he added, gesturing towards the seatbelt buckle. A piece of rope was tied around the end of the buckle and trailed in the foot well of my side of the car.

“A rope?” I asked incredulously. “How the hell can a rope be steadfast and makeshift?! You kidding me?”

“Um no. See, all you need to do is tie it around something secure, for example, I’ve found that it works rather well if you tie it to the window winder thing.” He pointed towards the window crank on the door.

“And you’ve tried this out have you?”

“Only in theory. But it’s better to have a rope than nothing at all, right? I mean, after all, when you go abseiling down a cliff or whatever the only thing that stops you from falling over and breaking your back or your ass or whatever is a rope,” he added brightly.

“Mike if we have a crash and I’m fastened into this seat by a piece of rope that goes from the buckle to the door, don’t you see something wrong with the picture?”

“Nope,” he said starting the car and puling out of the driveway.

“How about the fact that I would be cut in half by a fucking rope?!”

“…Yeah…” he said absentmindedly, turning the radio on. “Maybe you shouldn’t wear the belt, eh?”

“Good thinking,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Fucking rope belt. Asshat.”

“Look Julian,” Mike said seriously. “There are many things that I might be. For example, I am a great kisser. I am excellent with hair styling products. I am a good runner thanks to years of running away from bigger guys than myself, and a good talker on the phone. However, being an asshat isn’t one of them.”

“I’m not disputing that you’re a good kisser, but you are an asshat. You’re promoting supposed car safety with a rope seatbelt! And I do not wish to discuss the asshat accusation any further. I will end it with saying that you are indeed an asshat and will continue to be so until further notice. Ok.”

“Firstly the asshat discussion ends here, not there. I am not an asshat. And I’m getting a new seatbelt fitted on Tuesday.” Mike looked at me out of the corner of his eye and pulled onto the main road.

“Today is Tuesday,” I said slowly. I was confused. It was Tuesday, wasn’t it? I think so. Sunday was on Sunday, yesterday was Monday and today…well it must be Tuesday.

“Yeah, the Tuesday after this one. I mean next week.”

“My god, you really are an asshat.”

“STOP SAYING ASSHAT! It’s not nice!”

I didn’t bother to say anything back. I knew he was an asshat even if he argued against it. He must be an asshat to think a rope would be a good seatbelt and wouldn’t cut stuff in half. “Stuff” being peoples fucking bodies. Then again, he’d done stupider stuff in his time.


Flashback to 2 years ago

“What we need,” I said looking at the Christmas tree, “is an absolutely massive banner. Like a big fuck off banner. One that’s so big that you don’t know which part of it to look at.”

“Where do you buy big fuck off banners? Do they make banners that say, “fuck off” on them?” Noel asked. He was sat on the floor, with a glittery bauble hanging off his ear. He was spinning another one around in his hands. He hadn’t seemed to learn from dropping two of them already that they were made out of glass and broke extremely easily. Like I’ve said before, I think he has learning disabilities.

“He doesn’t mean a banner that says “fuck off” Noel,” Mike said, his voice muffled from behind the tree. He’d dropped a candy cane from the top of the tree and had been behind the back of the tree trying to find it for about five minutes. “I found a quid!” he added.

“You can get banners that say, “fuck off Noel” on them?” Noel asked sounding confused. “Why would anyone want a “fuck off Noel” banner? Do people not like people called Noel? I don’t get it.”

“Shut up Noel,” I said, taking a deep breath. Sometimes talking to him was like talking to a kid. A kid in a 25 year olds body. “When I said, “fuck off banner” I meant like a huge banner. Like a banner so big that you wouldn’t believe it, and it makes you think ‘fuck off, that’s a fucking huge banner’.”

“Well why didn’t you just say “a fucking huge banner”?”

“Because I said, “fuck off banner!”“

“But-”

“Fuck off Noel,” I said, finally noticing that the candy cane Mike had been searching for had actually fallen partially under the couch. I thought it best not to tell him and just let him keep searching. I didn’t want him to think he’d been behind the tree for 5 minutes for no reason. I figured I’d just give it to him later and say I’d bought him a new one since he had been so distressed about losing the first one. “Anyway. What we need is a fucking huge banner,” I said, pointedly looking at Noel. “So where would we buy a fucking huge banner?”

Mike resurfaced from around the back of the tree looking dejected. “Didn’t find it,” he said dejectedly. “I don’t know where it’s gone.”

“Banner…” I repeated thoughtfully.

“You know,” Mike said looking up at me, “they sell trees in Asda.”

“…What?”

“If a place like Asda sells trees then surely they must sell banners, right?” Mike stated this like it made the most sense in the world.

“You’re saying that because somewhere sells trees then they will sell banners?” I repeated. I thought maybe I’d heard him wrong.

“Yeah, well, you know, if a place sells trees then it must sell other strange stuff as well. I mean a grocery store that sells trees? What the fuck? So then if they’re selling trees, then who’s to say that they don’t also sell banners? And maybe not just banners, maybe fuck off banners as well!”

“Fuck off Noel banners?” Noel said quietly. He laughed to himself and carried on spinning the bauble in his hands.

“Come on, I’ll get Bessie and we’ll go to Asda,” Mike said jangling his car keys. “Fun for all the family. And trees.”

So we got in the car and made our way to Asda on the premise that it sold trees and therefore might sell banners according to Mike’s logic. Noel sat in the backseat talking to himself and laughing at something out of the window with the bauble still precariously balancing on his ear. Mike looked happy at the idea of seeing trees and banners in Asda. I found myself thinking that maybe I was the only sane person out of all of us. It turned out that Asda didn’t sell fucking huge banners, fuck off banners, fuck off Noel banners, or indeed any kind of banner.

In fact, they didn’t even sell trees.

End flashback


We pulled up outside Noels house where I could see him waving psychotically to us through the front room window.

“Is he waving like a freak?” Mike asked me, having not yet looked over. He was parallel parking and since he’s never been able to do it properly he always has to concentrate really hard. You can tell when he’s concentrating because he sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and his eyes squint like maybe he’s partially blind.

“Yup,” I replied, waving back at him. He grinned at me and ran away from the living room window, probably either going to tell Sarah that we were here or rushing to open the door.

“Did he just run away?” Mike asked, still trying to park.

“Yup,” I agreed.

“He’s like a little fucking puppy,” Mike said, finally getting the car parked. “I can’t believe he does this every single time we come over. You’d have thought maybe he’d have got bored after doing it three or four hundred times.”

“Well it is Noel.”

At that moment the front door swung open and Noel was standing there wearing a pair of boxer shorts, an old grey t-shirt, a white cowboy hat and Donald Duck slippers. “What are you sitting in the car for asshats?!” He shouted. “Get in!”

“Why the fuck does everyone keep calling me an asshat today?” Mike said, sounding annoyed. “I am not a fucking asshat!”

“Like I said earlier, I beg to differ.”

“Shut up Julian,” Mike said to me, looking pissed off when I threw the rope at him.

“Shut up Julian,” I mimicked; putting on the girly voice that I know drives Mike absolutely mad.

Mike slammed the car door shut and walked into Noel’s house. I grinned to myself and slammed my own car door shut, knowing that it would make him wince. I walked into Noel’s house and shut the front door behind me just before being accosted by Noel. He threw himself onto me and started talking incessantly and so fast that I hardly knew what he was saying.

“And-there-were-these-really-fucking-big-bears-Julian-I-mean-you’ve-never-seen-anything-like-it-in-your-fucking-life-it-was-so-amazing-and-I-said-that-if-they-got-a-chance-then-they-would-eat-a-person-and-Sarah-said-I-was-being-stupid-so-I-threw-a-meat-sandwich-at-them-to-see-what-they-would-do-and-I-was-right-because-they-jumped-straight-on-it-and-then-two-bears-had-a-fight-over-who-should-get-to-eat-the-meat-and-who-would-have-to-eat-that-crap-that-that-the-zoo-people-give-them-and-then-another-bear-came-over-and-just-ate-the-fucking-sandwich-and-the-two-that-had-been-fighting-didn’t-even-get-to-eat-it-and-then-the-first-two-bears-had-a-big-fight-with-the-third-bear-and-then-they-kicked-us-out-it-was-FUCKING-THE-BEST.”

“…What?” I asked looking over to Sarah for help. She put her fingers to her temples and started to slowly rub them.

“We went to the zoo,” she repeated. “Noel said that the bears in there would eat someone if they could and I said he was being ridiculous. So to prove that he was right he went and bought a seven quid ham sandwich from the ridiculously overpriced food stalls and threw it to the bears. Then two bears started fighting over who got to eat the meat and who got to eat the bread, then this other bear came along, took the sandwich and ate it in one gulp. Then they all fought and we got banned from the zoo for feeding the animals.”

“You gave him too much sugar didn’t you?” Mike said, sitting down on the sofa.

“He drank nearly 2 litres of Pepsi, and you know what Pepsi does to him but I didn’t know he was drinking it because he hid it in a Fanta cup,” Sarah said, still rubbing her temples. “So, I’m not coming out for dinner tonight I’ll let you have a guys night out because –no offence sweetie- but if I spend any more time with a hyped up Noel I am going to go insane.”

I could appreciate what she was saying. Last time I’d had to spend a day with a hyper Noel I’m pretty sure that it started the onset of premature baldness for me. My hair is thinning gradually just thinking about it.


Flashback to 1 year ago

“Hey, hey guys!” someone shouted, running over to where Mike and me were sitting in the garden. We had pretended that we were gonna be productive and mow the lawn but had ended up sitting on the lawn drinking lager and smoking cigarettes instead.

“Is that Noel?!” Mike asked me.

I peered over at the figure but it was too far away for me to see clearly. “I don’t think so. Noel’s a bit weird but I don’t think he’d run from his house to our house wearing hotpants…well not just hotpants anyway. It’s not a complete ensemble.”

“Hey, hey guys!” The figure shouted again, coming a little bit more clearly into view.

“…It fucking IS Noel,” Mike said laughing. “Do you think he knows he forgot his pants? Do you think he knows he’s wearing spandex?!”

“Hey, hey guys!” Noel shouted, running even faster and finally coming to a halt as he managed to fall over the one bush that we have in the entire garden. “Guess what guys?! I just ran all the way here in SARAH’S DANCE PANTS!” With that he started to laugh and roll around the garden. “WOO DANCE PANTS!”

“Has he had some more of those “funny cigarettes”?” Mike asked me quietly.

I was torn in-between laughing at Noel, asking him why he didn’t have any clothes on, and putting him in the car and driving him back to his own house.

“Noel, this is a respectable neighbourhood, you can’t just go running around naked!” I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the horror of Noel in spandex. It was like watching one of those bad 80’s workout tapes where men wear workout pants that are much too short and much too tight.

“NEKKID!!!” Noel shouted, jumping up and starting to run around where me and Mike were sitting. “RING AROUND THE ROSES A POCKET FULL OF POSIES, ATISHOO ATISHOO WE ALL FALL DOWN!” He threw himself on top of me and Mike, managing to knock over our bottles of beer in the process. He cracked up laughing again. “MAN I’M SO FUCKING FUNNY! I SHOULD DO THIS EVERY DAY! SO MUCH ENERGY! SO MUCH BUZZ! I AM THE LIFE OF THE PARTY! HELL I AM THE PARTY! PAAAAAAAAAAAARTAY! NEKKID PARTAAAAAY!”

Mike’s phone started to ring from somewhere underneath Noel and he bravely reached his hand under the spandex horror to pick it up. It was Sarah asking if Noel was with us. She then apologised for his behaviour, saying that he’d eaten two entire chocolate cakes, drunken four litres of Pepsi and some blue food dye whilst she was out. When she’d got in she’d seen the destruction and his clothes, which were lying in random places around the house. His pink shirt was on the TV, his skin tight jeans were on the kitchen table and his socks were hung up on the mug rack. She said that when she’d opened the door he had run past her full pelt shouting “LET THE WORLD SEE MY SEXY BODY” and she had to watch him run down the street because there was no way she could catch up with a hyperactive man off his face on sugar.

We put some clothes back on him, which was difficult since he was still writhing around and insisting that he was the “nekkid party bus of fun” put him in the car and took him back to his house. Sarah gave Mike and me the remaining four chocolate cakes to save for her until she took them into the school she worked at for the fundraising bake sale. She said it wasn’t safe to keep them in the house. I think she was probably right.

End flashback

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