Terms & Conditions by Robert Glancy Read Free Book Online

the disgusting scuttling memories before they escaped again. That was how it felt.
    My brain filed the returning memories, like the lawyer I was, defining in detail my relationships with everyone around me, and the love and obligations that bound us all together. Hysteria rocked my body, memories burst like the hot gush of saliva before vomit, and the first thing I recalled was brutally simple, all the hatred built to a screech, and at its highest pitch rose one word –
Oscar
.

CONDITION 2
    HYPERMNESIA*
    * Vivid recall of the past.
    TERMS & CONDITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE
    Only after you achieve ultimate knowledge do you gain the final wisdom – that ignorance was bliss.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF OSCAR
    The condition of halitosis is one of stinking denial.
    Oscar’s face is like a board game in which his eyes, ears, mouth and nose compete to win the prize of ‘nastiest feature’. If I were judging, I’d say his eyes take the prize. They’re less like eyes, more like hollows left by a departing soul.
    In case you’re still unsure: I hate him.
    I remembered it all so clearly now.
    He has repugnant halitosis and was forever saying about other people, ‘Man, that guy has rank breath!’
    In fact it’s just bad-breath rebound. Oscar hasn’t sussed out that it’s his own breath wafting back at him.
    The only positive about Oscar is that he’s the one thing left that my wife and I completely agree on. (Yes, turns out I’m not a huge fan of my wife either, but I’ll come to that.)
    I remembered that my wife and I often played the Who-Hates-Oscar-The-Most game.
    I’d say: ‘If Oscar was an animal, he’d be a rattlesnake.’
    She’d trump this with: ‘Oscar is Stalin and Hitler’s lovechild.’
    I’d double-trump that with: ‘Most people are reincarnated as animals. Oscar will be reincarnated as AIDS.’
    You get the idea. I won’t write what Oscar actually is. It is simply too offensive.*
    * (Oscar is a cunt.)

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF MY FAMILY
    No need to get personal.
    Then the crux of the matter came to me. The source of my rage –
the Will
.
    My dad’s Will stated that Oscar would take over the business, then I would become partner, and finally my youngest brother, Malcolm, would too. The contract was specific and fair; we all had to work hard to earn our partnerships. It was nepotism with a legal shine.
    Unfortunately, Dad put one tiny sentence in the Will which stipulated that my election to partner would be determined ‘
at such a time as Oscar sees fit
’.
    A decade after Dad’s death, Oscar hasn’t yet
seen fit
. My life ruined by one sentence.* It will be my epitaph.
Here lies Frank. He died at such a time as Oscar saw fit
. My dad snapped me into a legal trap. I remembered vividly the day I learned of Dad’s Will: a grey lawyer reading a manila Will in a beige office. The windows had steel bars that bent outwards and the walls were piled high with red books. The significance of the moment saturated everything with symbolism as I sat in my legal jail. And Oscar, calm as can be, stretched his fat legs out like a man sunbathing.
    * I warned you about that small print.
    My youngest brother, Malcolm, had his own response. He stood, said, ‘Fuck this,’ walked out, got on a plane and never returned. Shrewd move.
    The reading of the Will was a crossroads in my life but I’m still standing in the centre of it, still undecided, still too chicken-shit to move. I’m not saying I was my father’s favourite or that he loved me the most. He was egalitarian in his love.* But just to stick to tradition andgive everything to the eldest brother was intolerable. Surely my father, even through paternal eyes, blurry with pride, must have noticed that Oscar was a power-mad twat.
    * His love was equitable and fair. His love would have stood up in a court of law. Legal love.
    Dad distributed the remaining