My German Pen Friend

Siegen. Twinned with... HELL

Note: all you are about to read is true. I swear it on the remaining follicles of my head.

My local hamlet Morley is twinned with Siegen in Germany. That means that every year, a few aldermen and burghers get to shake hands for the local papers and presumably enjoy some beardy small-talk about differing traffic regulations.

Also, some of the local kids get to visit each other – ostensibly to learn a little about each other’s culture, but as likely as not just get away from home for a couple of weeks for excitement’s sake, far from parental controls in a foreign country.

I don’t really recall how I got mixed up in such larrikins but there was a brief fad of having foreign pen pals and subtly taking the piss out of them by sending them nonsense letters. Although they might have been playing the prank in reverse – my Thai pen friend claimed to be “Nalenuk Santikal – nickname Jeab” and also claimed to have “eyes color black.” Were they taking the piss? We’ll never know.

Anyway, by some labyrinthine process I found myself on the exchange program. In the first year, he came to our house and demonstrated a little bit of oddness within minutes. Claiming to be a “black belt in yudo”, he challenged me to a wrestle in my back garden to establish our social hierarchy. Despite his black belt, he was a weedy little get who weighed approximately 5 stone and so I established myself as the dominant male of the group by simply tripping him up.

The rest of his stay in England was relatively quiet other than him getting a clip round the ear from my dad for crushing crabs to death on Filey Brigg and throwing a book at me in a huff at a friend’s house. And having a piss against an office window in the middle of Bradford. An office window that belonged, in fact, to the headquarters of West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police.

But the following year, I travelled to Germany. And…. oh. My. God.

On the first day, things looked promising. His mum was like totally MILF and had a pleasingly open way with her body, displaying acres of thigh as she sat spread-legged on the sofa, whispering dirty German nothings to me, which her son translated for me as “ask your friend if he would like a drink of cold tea made from granules.” I’m sure there was more to it than that though.

He stepdad, Udo, was even cooler. Head to toe denim… smoking a roll-up… straggly, shoulder-length hair… blue Lennon-style shades and driving…. a morthfucking orange Capri. With monster truck tyres. I shit you not.

But after a day or two of getting-to-know-the-folks, he and I were alone together in the house when he announced that he wanted a shower. But he accompanied this announcement with a strange request.

“Paul,” he said, motioning to a chair that sat next to the bathroom door, “please stay here and look out for zer monsters vile I am in zer showers.” I blinked.

“Sorry… what?”

“Zer monsters. Zey might come to get me in zer shower.” I agreed, assuming that perhaps this was a German cultural joke I didn’t quite get for some reason and not wishing to annoy my host. Satisfied that I was going to do his bidding, he disappeared into the shower.

After a minute or two further deliberation I thought ‘well fuck this’ and went off to look through his mum’s knicker drawer. Moments later he burst into the room, red-faced and spraying me with spittle as he shouted.

“PAUL! YOU LEFT ME! ZER COULD HAFF BEEN ZER MONSTERS!!”

This was the first inkling I had of just how strange and off-kilter this blonde, stonewash-dungaree-wearing boy really was. The following day we took to a couple of bikes to cycle around town. He on his 48 speed, drop-hangy racing bike, me on a wrought-iron piece of Edwardiana that required the Thighs of Yeboah to pedal. Naturally, he would stop every now and again and wait for me to catch up – red-faced, dripping sweat from every pore and this close to embolism. Then he would humourously note my lack of speed (“Oh Paul… you are so slow!”) and whizz off again.

One time however, he dismounted. We were next to a wall that ran alongside some industrial units on the edge of town. On the other side of the wall was a drop down to some skips. Happily, he launched himself over the wall and into one of the skips. From above it looked like it was just full of cardboard boxes, so I leapt down next to the skip.

Somewhere within, his muffled voice could be heard with its typically punctilious phrasing. “Come on, Paul – you must find me.” I was about to climb in gamely when I noticed that the boxes were meat boxes. Every second one was smeared with blood and mince fat, and bits of greasy plastic wrapping were flapping amid the gore.

I never found him, but waited till he tired of the game instead.

Odd, eh? But almost nothing compared to his bedroom-cum-charnel-house. For one wall of his room was his “trophy wall”. Like the great white hunters of old, Michael stalked wildlife, claimed its life and mounted his kills for all to see. For on his wall were any number of small cardboard ‘shields’. And to these shields were affixed insects, tiny fishes, bits of sparrow and sundry such delights, pinned there with cocktail sticks.

One day as we ambled through the streets, he happened across a dead sparrow. With a cry of delight, he fell upon the avian carcass and lovingly removed its legs and wings with his penknife to add to his ghoulish collection. And, as seemed only fair, gave me a wing and a leg too.

Dankë!

Now, I’m not Raj Persaud, but to me that kind of shit spells only one thing: serial killer. For the entire fortnight, I slept with one eye open, watching the shadows creep up the wall, an icy chill clutching my heart and only the prospect of further study of his mother’s liberated attitude to underwear keeping me sane.

If you’re out there reading this, Michael please accept my apologies for never quite being able to pronounce your name to your satisfaction. Tell your stepdad he’s a righteous, stone-cold dude. And most of all, tell your mum to… err.. shave a bit more. And give her my number.