We’re charging down the motorway in a tour bus that looks like a huge, black whale. An armour-plated whale, if there is such a thing. The few vehicles on the badly-maintained road, they get out of our way. Fast. We’re not slowing down for anything, even potholes. We hit bomb craters and structural fissures, and we scud out of them like a shark breaching some shitty, tarmac ocean. We’ve got the goons in the back. They love it. They say it feels like flying.
“Enjoy it while you can!” Calamari snaps. And then he turns to me with a look that could boil water. “Irregulars. Fucking ‘Brownshirts’. They call themselves police, but they’re little more than thugs. I wouldn’t bother getting to know them. They won’t be around for very long.”
I’m not used to conversing with Calamari. He makes me nervous.
“Why are they here?” is all I can think to say.
“Just a little extra business,” he says warily. “Why the sudden interest?”
“I’m nosey,” I answer.
“Then you should consider becoming a spy,” he hisses, and then snarls when I him ask what the pay’s like. It’s a double bluff on my part. I’m wondering if he knows about my deal with Calamine.
Night falls and I’m lying in a tiny bunk, wondering what kind of organisation I’m a part of. We’re a curious mix of military, secret police and thugs. This isn’t usual. Why would a man with an army at his command send out a team of civilian yobs?
Well, all will become clear – or, at least, clearer – later. Now, respect the frailties of an old man, will you, and stop the recorder. This ageing carcass requires the bathroom.
“A day off?” I can’t believe it.
“Time off for good behaviour,” says Elton. He’s been drafted in as message boy.
“Where’s Calamari?” I ask.
“We’re to pick ’im up from Chiquita’s on Dirtygirl Street. It’s easy to find, ‘e says. It’s situated directly opposite a massive mobile telephone mast, an’ the hookers in the window wear radiation suits. ’E says ’e’ll be inside, ‘briefin’ female agents. Till then, you’ve got the day ter ourselves.”
So I end up nursing a beer I have no intention of drinking, in some roadside hellhole somewhere, with Elton trying to impress the goons. The atmosphere’s surprisingly convivial and he takes the opportunity to get all gynaecological about a Bulgarian exchange student he once had the pleasure of – ‘Strong jaw muscles,’ being one of the cleaner comments.
“She was a big star on the Squelchin’ scene,” he says.
“Squelching?” roars a thug. “Is that like Sploshing?”
Elton rubs his hands together, warming to the topic. “Totally, totally different, my friend. Sploshin’ involves mess: mud, paint, custard pies an’ the like. With Squelchin’, well, it’s a purely sonic form of pornography, wiv the emphasis on the sounds produced.”
I’ve mentioned Elton’s creepy voice before. Now we’re hearing his creepy thoughts.
“What’s the point in that?” sneers the thug and makes some joke about “Not seeing no ‘points’ at all”.
“The thrill comes from yer interpretation of the sounds,” Elton explains. “Yer own filthy imagination!”
“But, surely you could fake it?” I ask.
“Real aficionados can tell. Different parts of the body ’ave distinctive acoustics, which the trained ear can distinguish between.”
“Uh huh?” says I. Maybe my tone conveys more than intended.
“You’re judgin’ me!” he protests. “But it ain’t my idea. The Equal Opportunities Commission dreamt it up. They thought the porn industry discriminated against the blind and put the first tapes out as talkin’ books.”
“Interesting.” I say. “So how do you get into the industry?”
Elton thinks for a second.
“‘Ard work an’ a big resonant chamber!”
Time and drinks pass. The drinks get shorter and more potent whilst the group get shorter and more impotent. And the talk gets plain stupid.
“It’s funny,” says somebody, “but all over England scores in Languages and Maths exams fall but Chemistry grades go through the roof. It’s so they can [belch!]…It’s so they can manufacture their own drugs.”
“It’s good to see children planning ahead,” says another.
“Damn right,” agrees a third. “But I wouldn’t want my kids doing it. No way. No kid of mine’s gonna earn more than his father.”
We decide to hit the town or, more accurately, nose around the crack dens on our isolated stretch of road. We fail to find any amenable women so we move on. We check out the local landmark, the great, grey, steel-girdered remnants of a bridge and note that it’s been hit by an aircraft: an airship, we reckon from the billowing fabric. A mangled propeller creaks above our heads, spinning like a pinwheel in a nest of wreckage, and it’s decided that I should climb up into the dark shards to check for survivors. Now, I’m no fool. This isn’t about survivors. It’s a test of nerve. So I figure I’ll climb up just high enough to get a better look, shout down some juicy details (severed limbs, that sort of thing) and then shimmy down, home and dry, with a little credibility in my pocket.
So I’m shinning my way up some bit of structure; I can’t recall what exactly, but I remember it being cold to the touch and scaled with jagged rust flakes. The shitty, brown river’s squirming I don’t know how far beneath me, and I’m thinking, what the Hell am I’m doing? And then I know what I’m doing. I’m falling. And I don’t see my life before my eyes. I just see black.
I figure the World mustn’t want me in it anymore. It’s trying to suffocate me beneath an avalanche of pain. I feel like my eyes have been soaked in lemon juice and tapped back in with a mallet. There’s agony in other places, too, but the concussion’s got me, scrambling the signals to my brain, so I don’t know what does and doesn’t hurt from one minute to the next. I could cheerfully die. And, when I finally open my lead-weighted eyelids, it seems I have. I’m face to face with Jesus.
Now, if you’re familiar with me and my beliefs, you’ll know I have no problem with the Big J. I think he had some quite intelligent things to say for himself and wouldn’t recognise the corrupt, misogynist cult that was created in his name. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate his posthumous rebranding from religious firebrand to soppy proponent of castrated love. It would make him sick. That’s why I burned all his churches down.
However, that bullying piece of shit he calls his father is another kettle of fish entirely. So I figure I’ll extend the hand of friendship to Mr Christ but, if talk turns to his wanker Dad, well, I won’t be pulling any punches.
I ask what’s going on. He says nothing. I ask again, but the Risen Lord remains unobliging. He has an oversized fingerprint on his forehead. That’s unusual, I think to myself.
“Moving in your mysterious ways, are you?” I ask. But Jesus isn’t moving at all. He’s six inches high and made of plastic. And he’s attached to the wall in front of my face. So it’s a disappointing conversion back to atheism for yours truly.
I’ve woken up in bed in a white room with clean linen and clean underwear. I don’t appear to have been interfered with in any way.
Now a good practice, when waking in a strange environment, is to examine the ribcage for stolen organs. It’s wise to check that all your parts are present and correct before accepting breakfast. Lucas taught me that. It’s whilst executing these basic checks that I look down and discover a terrifying anomaly: Jesus again, staring blankly from the region of my crotch.