0800 Hours [slash]

0800 Hours: Recording #015

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"0800, seventy-nine days since the alleged coup d'état down in England. Probably. Well, Aoife that worked in the bank told me that they tried. I don't think it was very successful, to be honest, but there's not really that many of us left to begin with. Anyway, we're in the Co-Op stocking up on stuff to take on our Great Adventure, and Cye is – oi! Wake up, you lazy git! Are you actually sleeping in a shopping trolley? For fuck's sake."

A low yawn accompanies the tired screech of wheels on a trolley.

"You know Cam, this wouldn't fucking happen if you didn't insist on starting every day at eight am. Why do you do this? I'm genuinely curious. How masochistic do you have to be before you start inflicting this kind of suffering on yourself on a regular basis?"

"Literally fuck off, I'm a farmer, eight's a lie in for me."

"You are truly a freak."

"You're so witty. How much d'you reckon we should bring? You said like, ten days tops but I'm thinking if we're trying to get you smuggled in then we'll probably need to barter, and I don't know what to –"

"Alcohol."

"What?"

"Bring alcohol, and preferably a lot of it. When I was travelling with the others, our most valuable trade was alcohol and medical products."

"The others?"

The metal trolley rattles violently, followed by a dull thud as trainers hit the ground.

"I told you. They got evacuated. I did not. Obviously."

"Oh... Oh. Fuck Cye, sorry, I didn't mean to –"

"Cameron?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut the fuck up."

The words are hard but the voice is sweet, and their exchange dwindles as the metal clanging of cans and rustling of cardboard takes over.

"Here Cye, how much should we take? I mean, we don't know how long we could be stranded out here for. And what if it rains? I mean, of course it'll rain, we're in Scotland. Should we bring my dad's tent? My mam and dad used to go camping a lot before I was born, so we've got this big double tent that I don't really understand how to set up. It'll be pretty cold though. Hey, what kind of alcohol do you like? I never really drank much before the, y'know, apocalypse happened, and since then I've been kinda preoccupied with–"

"Do you have some sort of nervous compulsion, or...?"

A sharp bark of laughter.

"Just trying to fill the silence!"

"You really don't have to bother.

"Duly noted."

A smile spills into the speaker's voice, yellow paint on the black canvas of their lives.

"Cye...?"

The name sounds lecherous on their tongue, even with the metallic mask of tins being thrown into the trolley.

"... What?"

"Shame they don't have any mangosteen, eh? I hope the folks at Beith are happy with just alcohol – you never know when these city slickers are gonna come out with some obscure, infeasible demand, y'know?"

"Ok, first of all Beith is hardly a city, before all this they only had one set of traffic lights in the whole village and two, mangosteen is not an infeasible demand; it's not my fault that you're a boring fuck and your favourite fruit's a bloody apple."

A manic howl cascades around the room, echoing back to the microphone.

"Oh my God, I found your berserk button. Fucking mangosteens of all things. I'm so sorry that we don't have your fancy exotic fruits here, my dear Cye. Forgive us for not having the extensive à la carte you're used to down in Glasgow. We're more of the table d'hôte sort up here."

"I'm not from Glasgow, you complete tit. Do I sound Glaswegian to you?"

"You sound fucking offended. Where are you from then? Not gonna lie, all you English speakers sound the same to me. I can just about differentiate between west coast and east coast accents, and beyond that I'm scuppered."

"What do you mean 'English speakers'?"

"You're an Anglophone monolingual, right? An 'English speaker'."

"And you're not?"

"Obviously not, ew. Look how far north we are. Didn't you notice all the bilingual Gaelic signs literally everywhere? Look, that poster over there literally says biadh-pheatan  on it!"

"You're bilingual?"

"Pick up your chin, Cye, you don't know what's been on that floor. No need to look so surprised."

"But... but you're an idiot."

An indignant squawk.

"Oi! Which one of us is bilingual again? Hm? Bet you can't speak a lick of Gaelic, can you? City kids, you're all the same."

"Aon dhà trì ceithir còig, bitch. My cousins went to a Gaelic school."

"Oh, you can count to five, you've officially reached the mental capacity of a one year old child. Too bad you're pronouncing 'Gaelic' totally incorrectly."

A can hits the floor and rolls away quietly, unnoticed.

"How am I pronouncing it in wrong? Literally how else would you pronounce it?"

"Gay-lick is Irish, Gah-lick is Scottish. They're two different and often unintelligible languages. We'd actually call it Gàidhlig though, if you want to expand your rather exhaustive vocabulary of my mother tongue."

"..."

"What? Stunned into silence? Unable to comprehend that beyond my charm and good looks, I'm actually pretty intelligent?"

"... Your English is so good."

"Hah! There aren't any monolingual Gaelic speakers now, you eejit. Literally everyone who speakers Gaelic up here can speak English as well. How else would we communicate with the rest of Scotland? Or watch TV. Or do any of the other things we did before everyone started dropping dead like flies."

"Say something else in Gaelic."

"No."

"C'mon. Cam. C'mon."

"I'm not a performing monkey! And put some more of they canned peaches in the trolley because that shit is divine."

"Please say something in Gaelic. I need to verify that you're not just fucking with me."

"I'll say something really fucking rude in a minute if you don't leave it alone. Hurry it up with the trolley too – it looks like it's gonna rain and we've still got to walk back and get the tent and stuff."

"It wouldn't take this long if you let me get a decent sleep, you know. Eight am, Jesus. I hate you."

A trolley screeches in protest as a teenager clumsily throws their weight upon it and propels themselves up the aisle bubbling with laughter that dies away into a small, secretive huffing as the whirring wheels of the trolley grow louder.

"Tha gaol agamsa ort fhèin, dickhead." 

Click.