Free Daft Wee Stories by Limmy Page A

they can feel, and that’s what makes it wrong to kill them. Wrong in the eyes of vegetarians, that is. That’s why the animals get to live and the plants have to die.
    Doug wondered if things would be different if vegetables could think and feel. Like, imagine if scientists worked out that tomatoes could count to ten. Or imagine if when a potato gets peeled, it hurts like fuck. It was a gruesome thought, but it made Doug smile. However, his smile drifted off when he wondered if vegetarians applied the same thinking to people. Specifically, if vegetarians are all right with killing something that doesn’t think and feel, what about if that thing that doesn’t think or feel is a person? You get people like that. And Doug couldn’t think of why those unthinking and unfeeling people would be exempt from judgement. After all, is vegetarianism not based in some way on the belief that human life is no more important than any other kind of life? If so, then why should human life be exempt from death, the same kind of death that befell every tomato, cucumber and carrot being scoffed by that guy at the next table?
    Doug’s smile had turned into a full-blown scowl.
    He turned his head slowly and looked at the guy once more. Looked him up and down. Looked at his
ThunderCats
T-shirt, his crossed legs, his book. Such a harmless little man. Perfectly harmless. Unless, of course, you fell beneath the required level of intelligence one must demonstrate in order to not be put to death. And who decides upon that level? The vegetarians, of course. It could be a minimum IQ they have in mind. It could be the size or shape of your head. It could maybe depend upon the book you’re reading (there’s a thought). Or maybe you were walking down the street as a slate fell off a wonky roof above and right into your skull, putting you in an apparently unthinking, unfeeling state of being. Maybe you were born like that. Maybe to the outside world you are a motionless mute, but on the inside you have a vibrant, imaginative world, where you live in your own unique way. Well, I’ve got bad news for you: here come the vegetarians, and I’m afraid you don’t matter a fuck.
    Doug stood up, nudging his seat back behind him until it tipped over and onto the floor. He didn’t bother picking it up, he just headed for the door. He couldn’t bear another minute breathing the same air as these people.
    And as he walked out, he remembered a wee fact he once heard.
    Hitler was a vegetarian.
    As he glanced back at them all, as he saw them all sitting at their tables – their desks – deciding which lives should live and which should end, that fact didn’t surprise him.
    No. It didn’t surprise him at all.

NOTHING HAPPENS
    Johnny and Paula were lying on the couch, watching the telly.
Coronation Street
. Johnny wasn’t into it. He usually was, but something tuned him out, something had crossed his mind. He looked at himself, then Paula. He looked at the pair of them lying on the couch doing nothing. Then he looked at their empty dinner plates on the table. Then he looked at the wallpaper. Then he looked back to the telly.
    â€˜I’ve just noticed something,’ said Johnny.
    â€˜What?’ asked Paula.
    â€˜Something about this,’ he said, pointing at the screen.
    â€˜Something about what?
Coronation Street
?’
    â€˜No,’ said Johnny. ‘Well, aye, but not just
Coronation Street
. All these things. Soap operas. Well, not just soap operas, programmes in general. Programmes with stories, I mean, not things like the news and the weather and that, I mean stuff like
Coronation Street
.’
    â€˜What the fuck are you talking about?’ asked Paula, not really interested in finding out. But he told her anyway.
    He noticed that in all these programmes, soap operas, dramas, films, anything with a story, something always happens. You never get nothing happening. You never get