Everything that's in my head

Chapter 2

‘I’m telling you’, said JC waving a yellow, nicotined finger around the room and at no one in particular,
‘They are using a JCB to dig a tunnel under the Atlantic, surfacing in Hollywood and kidnapping certain movie stars and bringing them back to England…….


‘Via the tunnel’ someone said, gently steering the bearded JC through his story. ‘Via the newly built tunnel and making them perform in hit West End shows. Have you ever wondered why so many of them are here? Your Cruise's, Pachino's, De Niro's, they are all at it.’

JC finished speaking with the studied air of a well-thought out theory succinctly put, pulled hard on a Lambert and Butler and flicked the ash onto the pitted, Lino floor.

‘They call me JC, I’m an American’ said JC proudly, in an altogether unconvincing American accent.

‘And another thing’

His voice trailed off and was drowned in his unkempt beard. He eventually lapsed into a silence that hung awkwardly in the small, airless room until Brian helpfully came to his rescue.

‘I tried to kill my brother’, he said beaming at everyone present.

‘With an axe’.

His eyes rolled around his head as if searching for the words with which he could continue his story and he too fell silent, lips pursed, down loading the necessary information with which he could continue but would never come.

A faint gust of wind tugged at the yellowing curtain and a welcome breeze eddied around the room. A light aircraft whined its way across a cloudless sky and disappeared over the horizon, its pilot squeezing every last ounce of power from its feeble engine.
Another awkward silence descended and everyone present took a drag on their respective fags.

‘Mind the washing machine’, said JC, presently.

‘It’s haunted.’

To the left of the smoking room, across the communal area full of battered, wine-red armchairs, lay a corridor badly in need of a coat of paint.
The first room on the right was not designed for comfort. No chair to sit on or in. No table to write on or share supper over. No pictures to gaze at and certainly no mirror. It had windows that only opened wide enough to prevent suffocation and on one wall the sooty evidence of a brief and recent fire. In perfect symmetry to its surroundings, precisely 55 inches between the windows and the door lay a bed: fastened to the floor with titanium screws and with a mattress so squeaky that even the tiniest of movements would herald a concerto of springs. Its blanket smelling of sick and Dettol was an insipid, pale blue that lent the only colour to another wise colourless room.
Somebody lies on the bed, silent and inert. Not so much a human as a switched off computer. For all his inactivity, he might have been part of what little furniture there was had it not been for his quietly beating heart.

A beetle scuttles from one side of the interior to the other. It is caught deftly with a swift, scooping movement as it reaches the halfway point and brought up to eye level to be inspected. Its antennae move frenziedly, right and left, in a vain attempt to identify its unknown assailant.

When it started its early morning walk, it had watched the blanket for signs of any movement but after nothing had stirred for some time, it felt satisfied that all was clear and it was safe to proceed. Now events had taken an unexpected turn for the worse and it was feeling scared and vulnerable. A large form had emerged from under the pale blue blanket and had risen as high as a skyscraper above the unfortunate insect. The next thing it knew, it was being hoisted into the air where it could see, agonisingly, its home, now a tiny speck on the distant skirting board.

One wing is lifted up and inspected, which would have been humiliating had it not been terrifying. Then the other wing is prized away and finally both antennae are tugged and then released.
The beetle did what it had to in such situations and secretes a thick oily, unpleasant liquid from its anus. There is a distant chuckle, and then it’s being lowered to the ground, sullied but otherwise unharmed. Reaching ground level, it seizes its chance and bolts for the relative safety of the bed and once under the protection of its metal frame catches its breath, bewildered by events and its near death experience.

It daren’t risk a dash across bare Lino; it wouldn’t stand a chance, much better, albeit inconvenient, to wait for night fall and take his chances then. It spies a bread crumb to the left of an upright and tiptoes on six legs towards it. It was going to be a long wait.

Presently, the door swings open and a pair of black shoes enters. They walk to the end of the bed and pause, as if uncertain what where to walk next. A clear plastic bag is placed on the floor containing a newspaper, packet of Marlboro, a writing pad, pen and a mobile phone.
A quivering voice is heard.
‘Kiss me’.
‘No way’, comes the reply.

And there is silence.