Every weekend, pre-wedding parties come to Blackpool, men and women drinking themselves to senselessness, most in fancy dress. Among them stalks the Bleak Stag. It attaches itself to groups of men, picking out those in costume where its masks will not stand out; groups where everyone is too drunk to keep count and will assume that the weird person is the bride’s brother.
He seeks to lure someone away to a fate like his own. He is empty chair at the wedding, the sobs in the speeches. Drowned in the sea while swimming drunk. Collapsed in an alley and not found till morning. Fell from scaffolding. Choked to death on a piece of seaside rock shaped like willy. Banged his head on a curb in a fight.
The Bleak Stag does not mean to be unkind. He’s long ago forgotten why he wanders among these bands of drunks, even as he longs for those congenial moments when he is welcome. For those, he is grateful. Anyone who offers a drink to the Bleak Stag is guaranteed fortune, to have many children and to be outlived by all of them.
Recommendations
On a trip to Blackpool, I got into a taxi, a random one sent by the dispatch. At the end of the ride, the driver showed me a photograph that he had taken of me the night before.
With a little context it makes more sense. The night before, I’d signed up to do a hike to the top of Blackpool’s Big One rollercoaster. At this point, it had been years since I’d been on a rollercoaster, although I often had nightmares about them. But climbing to the top of what was once England’s tallest rollercoasters seemed like fun. And that was where the taxi driver had photographed me, part of a group climbing to the top of the lift hill. The time he’d taken the photo matched with when I went up.
The problem with most coincidences is that, as weird as they are, it’s impossible to take anything from them, other than noticing that unlikely things sometimes happen.