Categories > TV > Red Dwarf > Appliance
"Oh, that Rimmer."
Smug grin. Flared nostrils. Part on the left. Overly tight trousers. That Rimmer.
Yeah, yer brow furrowed as you looked at that liberal dousing of Tabasco splooge over the oniony cornflakes. A suck right from out of the bottle would deepen those furrows and widen the flare of the nostrils to the dimensions of the St. Louis arch, wouldn't it? Yes. Spread the disgust and frustration a little.
Piddling, it was. Nothing next to my frustration and disgust. You had all that time, you know. How many years were you my bunkmate, back on the stunted red one? You wasted that time, you did. While you were hanging your ironed underwear on coathangers, you would talk to me about the beauty of Napoleon, the various kinds of twentieth century telegraph poles, the undiscovered genius of Yanni, the excitement of Morris dancing, until I was ready to grab one of those coathangers, stick it up my nose, and stir my brain until the pain stopped. Instead, I would pick my nose and flick it onto your covers, or spill lager on your revision timetable. Urinate in your boots. Tell Bent Bob you were gay and fancied him, so he kissed you on the lips in the mess hall. Anything to piss you off, because lord, you pissed me off, with your neatness and stodginess and cowardice and fecking superior everyone-loves-me attitude, despite the fact that nobody loved you, not even yer mum, because you were so smegging mind-numbingly unlovable.
You had to bring all of that back with you. If I were dead, it would be hard for me to be quite so annoying as I am in life, you know. Hologrammatic farts don't smell, and toenail clippings would disappear as soon as I spit them out. From what Holly told me, holo-food tastes like sawdust, so I wouldn't be suckin' down those curries, either. But yer type of annoyance is the kind that you don't need to be tangible to express. You could annoy just by whinging in that horrible whiny nasal voice, by putting one of those fingers to yer lips and grinning a smug grin with no humor, by running past me in yer underwear just to drive home how fit you were when you died, because you had discipline, Listy and were heading /up the ziggaraut/. And once there was no Hollister to put me in the brig if I punched ya, I couldn't even do that anymore.
That - I think I could deal with, though. Yer a pain in the arse, but I lived with it. No, you had to do something even worse, even more annoying, something I couldn't blow off or ignore.
You had to /change/.
You had to show concern when I was sick. You never cared before, you bastard. You had to lead off the GELF. You had to be stripped and chained and almost branded and buggered by that self-loathing beast of yours, just so I couldn't hate you anymore, knowing how much you hated yerself. You had to tell me about the soup, and the writer, and all of those things that made you a human and not a smeghead. You had to look so smegging hurt when I burned your chest that I wrote a song for you, and worse yet, you actually stayed and listened to every last sweet strain, even thought you called it a banshee wail. Peasant.
You had to make me want you, you smeg-headed bastard, once you were dead and made of light - unkissable, unfuckable. I dream of the crew as they were alive, sometimes, and I want Kochanski back; her, solid, real, warm, sweet. But I don't want you back. The you you were when you were solid and real. I want the you you are now, as officious and pompous as you still are, but I can't have it. If you only knew, you might think this was the best prank you ever pulled. But the only one who could possibly know is Kryten, and could he really guess just from the condition of my sheets? Maybe he did, and maybe that's why he split us up when we ended up on the 'Bug. I don't care. It's easier for me, not having to wait until I hear your whiffly sleep-breath below me. It's easier to have the Cat come in, some evenings, and bring up whatever it was you did that day to piss him off, to speculate on the power of microscope we'd need to see yer brain or yer tackle. It helps. It's a palliative, though, not a cure, and I have to watch you stalk around the midsection with your hands behind you, nose in the air, groin and chest puffed out in front, still a cowardly ass, but more of a man than you were when you were alive. Good enough for a grotty bum like me.
But not enough.
I once caught myself wishing you were /dead/-dead, so I could mourn the loss of a friend and move on. I felt like shit. But you haunt me like the ghost of smegheads past, and remind me, day after day, of what I can't have.
Smegging bastard.
Smug grin. Flared nostrils. Part on the left. Overly tight trousers. That Rimmer.
Yeah, yer brow furrowed as you looked at that liberal dousing of Tabasco splooge over the oniony cornflakes. A suck right from out of the bottle would deepen those furrows and widen the flare of the nostrils to the dimensions of the St. Louis arch, wouldn't it? Yes. Spread the disgust and frustration a little.
Piddling, it was. Nothing next to my frustration and disgust. You had all that time, you know. How many years were you my bunkmate, back on the stunted red one? You wasted that time, you did. While you were hanging your ironed underwear on coathangers, you would talk to me about the beauty of Napoleon, the various kinds of twentieth century telegraph poles, the undiscovered genius of Yanni, the excitement of Morris dancing, until I was ready to grab one of those coathangers, stick it up my nose, and stir my brain until the pain stopped. Instead, I would pick my nose and flick it onto your covers, or spill lager on your revision timetable. Urinate in your boots. Tell Bent Bob you were gay and fancied him, so he kissed you on the lips in the mess hall. Anything to piss you off, because lord, you pissed me off, with your neatness and stodginess and cowardice and fecking superior everyone-loves-me attitude, despite the fact that nobody loved you, not even yer mum, because you were so smegging mind-numbingly unlovable.
You had to bring all of that back with you. If I were dead, it would be hard for me to be quite so annoying as I am in life, you know. Hologrammatic farts don't smell, and toenail clippings would disappear as soon as I spit them out. From what Holly told me, holo-food tastes like sawdust, so I wouldn't be suckin' down those curries, either. But yer type of annoyance is the kind that you don't need to be tangible to express. You could annoy just by whinging in that horrible whiny nasal voice, by putting one of those fingers to yer lips and grinning a smug grin with no humor, by running past me in yer underwear just to drive home how fit you were when you died, because you had discipline, Listy and were heading /up the ziggaraut/. And once there was no Hollister to put me in the brig if I punched ya, I couldn't even do that anymore.
That - I think I could deal with, though. Yer a pain in the arse, but I lived with it. No, you had to do something even worse, even more annoying, something I couldn't blow off or ignore.
You had to /change/.
You had to show concern when I was sick. You never cared before, you bastard. You had to lead off the GELF. You had to be stripped and chained and almost branded and buggered by that self-loathing beast of yours, just so I couldn't hate you anymore, knowing how much you hated yerself. You had to tell me about the soup, and the writer, and all of those things that made you a human and not a smeghead. You had to look so smegging hurt when I burned your chest that I wrote a song for you, and worse yet, you actually stayed and listened to every last sweet strain, even thought you called it a banshee wail. Peasant.
You had to make me want you, you smeg-headed bastard, once you were dead and made of light - unkissable, unfuckable. I dream of the crew as they were alive, sometimes, and I want Kochanski back; her, solid, real, warm, sweet. But I don't want you back. The you you were when you were solid and real. I want the you you are now, as officious and pompous as you still are, but I can't have it. If you only knew, you might think this was the best prank you ever pulled. But the only one who could possibly know is Kryten, and could he really guess just from the condition of my sheets? Maybe he did, and maybe that's why he split us up when we ended up on the 'Bug. I don't care. It's easier for me, not having to wait until I hear your whiffly sleep-breath below me. It's easier to have the Cat come in, some evenings, and bring up whatever it was you did that day to piss him off, to speculate on the power of microscope we'd need to see yer brain or yer tackle. It helps. It's a palliative, though, not a cure, and I have to watch you stalk around the midsection with your hands behind you, nose in the air, groin and chest puffed out in front, still a cowardly ass, but more of a man than you were when you were alive. Good enough for a grotty bum like me.
But not enough.
I once caught myself wishing you were /dead/-dead, so I could mourn the loss of a friend and move on. I felt like shit. But you haunt me like the ghost of smegheads past, and remind me, day after day, of what I can't have.
Smegging bastard.
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