Acid Bubbles

by Paul H. Round

  She’d given me the address of my house suggesting I’d be a fool to hide anything there. I couldn’t even find my own house, a big pile of bricks in a street. How in God’s name was I going to find anything I was hiding? Sadly, I agreed with my sister. I doubted I’d be foolish enough to hide drugs and money in my own house. I may have been rather cunning, so I had to go there and think out of the box, not looking for the obvious but the devious.

  My sister had keys for both my places and even this puzzled me slightly, I don’t know why she supported me. Had Jane helped me out more than I thought during the last two years, helping me hide stuff, keeping the law away from me, even earning herself a bit? I doubted the latter. However I knew she was doing things to keep me safe and I knew somewhere deep inside I didn’t deserve it. Perhaps my sister was nobler with her family values than I was.

  “I’ll give you a lift.”

  “You have your bike… here?”

  She smiled. “Yes, little brother.”

  I had a lift, I had the address and it wasn’t in Shit Street.

  I was!

  Chapter 16 – Trapped in paranoid daze, 1973.

  I was terrified of my sister’s riding at the best of times and she knew it! Jane was hammering the 750 cc Triumph Trident motorcycle along at breakneck speeds towards town. She managed to look over her shoulder a couple of times and give me her famous maniacal fast bike grin. When she wasn’t doing that I was being whipped to death by long hair hanging out from the bottom of her helmet. Mind you it was a different torture from the light rain stinging my eyes. I didn’t have a helmet and feared my skull would at any moment be smeared across the greasy, damp tarmac flashing by beneath my feet. I could scream and protest all I liked but she wasn’t going to slow down. Was this punishment for the things she’d had to endure on my behalf during the last two years? Now was her chance to make me suffer for a while. Unless we crashed!

  We arrived at my terrace house in minutes. The whole journey of terror seemed like hours of holding my breath, and wishing not to die by plunging to the tarmac from that vibrating monster. I think in retrospect she didn’t want to be involved. The speed limited her involvement in my seedy affairs. We pulled up and as soon as I’d been able to get my stiff body off the pillion she revved up, shot away and didn’t look back. It was as if she was helping the devil. If she didn’t look at the beast it wouldn’t bite her.

  I squelched up the pathway, my American-style baseball boots saturated after the motorbike ride. This footwear was now as uncomfortable as the slippery handmade leather. I walked through all twelve feet of garden to approach the front door. It was locked which was a big relief. I expected it to be unlocked, broken off the hinges, or carrying some form of grim message. This could be painted graffiti, a note or a big hole blown by a shotgun, but I didn’t care as long as it wasn’t the last option. The door was unmarked and locked. Then I started to wonder if somebody had locked it from the inside. Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to me that an adversary could be waiting in the shadows.

  I entered slowly, my eyes peering ineffectively into the gloom. Inside I cannot say it was anything like I remembered because of course I can’t. I was in the dark afraid to use the lights for fear of being watched. I waited for my eyes to adapt to the gloom and found myself looking in to the lounge at the same time glancing through a door leading to the back room and the kitchen beyond. It was all very tastefully decorated for a small space. I was wondering if I’d actually paid a designer do this for me. It didn’t seem my style at all.

  Each shadow was a muted grey, the sky outside coloured the same in a continuous light rain. In my paranoia I recalled John stepped from the shadows in the gymnasium. I could see forms and dangerous shapes in every dark shadow. Was he going to step out from the gloom now? I thought being my old friend he might have a key. This thought alone had sent shivers up my back.

  I was thinking of picking up an ornamental object to use as a weapon. Nothing seemed to come to hand until I saw a pool cue. This was the pool cue used to thrash Mike on the green baize when I wasn’t thrashing the lovely Sam in the marital bed, or perhaps I planted a few balls with Sam on the pool table! The cue was the two-piece type, so the obvious choice was the handle which I hefted by the thin end to make a weapon. It’s effectiveness as a weapon would be very much reduced if Dave was in the room with his dark-eyed friend Millicent. I crept around my own house, scared of my own shadow, thinking every moment could be my last.

  The house after careful inspection appeared to be completely empty of anything harmful. I moved back to the front door locking and bolting it. I wasn’t sure it was completely empty of harmful substances, especially if the police found them. This was what I was here for, finding the stash before anybody else got their hands on it. Knowing I didn’t have a lot of time I rushed at it starting with the basics. All the drawers, every little nook and cranny, all the difficult spaces in the kitchen, the pots, pans, the ice box in the refrigerator.

  These are places everybody searches, and to find the stuff I would have to force myself to start thinking outside the box. Was it hidden in the house? Could it possibly be in the back garden if that’s what you could call the bleak concrete enclosure at the back of the house? And so it continued for around two hours. All I had to show for my efforts was a jumbled mess. Everything strewn around looked like other people’s stuff. I didn’t recognise anything.

  I was upstairs sitting morosely on the slashed mattress of the double bed looking out into the grey street through a small opening in the blinds. I was pondering my childhood. What went wrong to get me to this place? As far as I was concerned I had gone from awkward adolescent and arrived in this dark place in the last forty-eight hours. Gazing at nothing in particular I was consumed by fatigue brought on by my mangled thoughts.

  My eye was drawn to the alleyway off to the left, attracted by a small puff of smoke. It rose up through the grey drizzle that filled the afternoon. What a joy England is in the summer. From behind the blinds (another nosy neighbour) I watched these traces of white smoke until I got a glimpse of the cigarette smoker glancing around the corner to take a swift look up and down the street. A face not unlike a small weasel, it took no effort to recognise the well-known rodent, Smiggy!

  Did he expect me to leave the house with bulging pockets, filled with drugs and money? No, to my mind he was making sure I didn’t run. Moments later this idea had transformed itself. I was starting to believe Double-Barrelled Dave and this little weasel had already robbed me with the knowledge that I’d be in the shit and they’d get away with quite a haul. They needed a victim to satisfy Harry’s lust for revenge. Me!

  At that moment I realised if they knew I was seeing my girlfriend’s mother, there’d been following and closely watching me for some time. For some reason Dave assumed I was getting married or was engaged to Vicky. Perhaps I was, I didn’t know! Then, of course, there was a thing with the baby doll which still had me confused. Was I sleeping with her or was she taunting John Smith because he wouldn’t? I couldn’t see John being worried about Harry if he wanted to share her bed. I shuddered at this remembering the thought that perhaps we’d all shared a bed.

  I’d been in Smiggy’s company on the last night I could remember. Did he know something about the events of that night and now used them to influence me? A nice way of saying blackmail I suppose. The last thing the weasel organised was me going off to lose my virginity with some girl at a small party. What dubious angle could he get on that?

  Now I’m not a hard case by any means but you could handle Smiggy with a broken arm, so for a moment I thought about collaring the little git to make him talk. Twist his arm until he fessed up. That wouldn’t work of course because it would get straight back, and I was more afraid of John Smith than anybody, or was it Harry I was more afraid of, or Hartley Sparrow? I was afraid of my own shadow and paranoia was painting a dark picture. I was in a panic and I didn’t have a clue about anything. In fact I didn’t have any id
ea if I was a hard case or not. I now carried the bulked physique of somebody who could handle themselves, but if I’d had the brute aggression it no longer existed.

  Where to next? Then it struck me. Go to my flat. Perhaps it’s there. No, I won’t have hidden anything there for the same reasons as I wouldn’t hide anything in my house, though I still wasn’t certain. How crafty could I be? Then it struck me that I spent a lot of time at my girlfriend’s house. This might be the best place to hide £10,000 and 6000 tabs, whatever they looked like. I was in total ignorance of what form my product came in, or what it looked like, so how was I going to find the stuff?

  It was another three miles back to the edge of town where my flat was located perilously close to Sam’s house. I couldn’t think of that house as anything to do with Vicky, or her father Mike. Everything seemed so familiar in their home, even if only remembered by instinct. At that moment base instinct took over and I knew my main enemy wasn’t Harry, but the fearsome John Smith. I had a feeling he’d be smiling as he twisted my arm until it broke, or laughing as he carried out grim tortures with pliers on parts of my body… Instincts cannot be ignored!

  I slipped out of the rear door into the rain, closing it as quietly as the proverbial mouse. I was even more careful locking the door with the utmost care not to make the slightest of noises. Though why it mattered I do not know. My watcher was out front fifty yards away in a fairly busy town centre with traffic noise close by. Smiggy would need uncanny hearing ability to detect anything. I could have nailed the door shut!

  Even at that distance I was equally careful with the big gate to the back. This was a hefty metal framework with tongue and groove wood screw to it, a secure gate you couldn’t see through. I opened it the smallest amount and looked out into the dismal alleyway.

  Millicent was looking straight back at me from very close quarters. She didn’t seem to be very malevolent keeping quiet on this occasion. The owner of this very short hunting weapon was smiling. I looked the other way, into a face carrying a brighter smile – John Smith’s!

  David Hartley Sparrow stood his ground and lowered Millicent before slipping her inside his raincoat. He wouldn’t want his favourite girl to get wet. It might spoil her looks. John Smith, however, strolled over to within a couple of feet. I was about to dive backwards through the gate and slam it, or wince in terror as he started the beatings. None of this happened because I was frozen in the very bright gaze of the magnetic John. He was smiling as he put his arm around my shoulders, all matey, pals together again.

  “Not found it yet? Or are you leading us on a bit of a wild goose chase? Remind me. Didn’t you know we’re following you? I’m following you,” John Smith whispered into my ear. He looked along the alleyway, all the while judging the distance to Dave, lowering his voice even further.

  “You know I don’t care a fuck about them anymore. I just want to have my end, and be friends again. You’ve got something planned you crafty bastard?” John was barely audible.

  He used the hand on the arm draped over my shoulder to pinch my cheek very playfully. In fact so playfully it brought tears to my eyes. He was still smiling.

  “Where’re we going next? Do you want a lift?” he asked.

  I lied and told him I was going to my flat to see if I could remember what I’d done with everything. He again leaned in close making a tut tutting sound with his tongue as if to say I was being foolish.

  “You only have to remember my bit, that’s all,” John said. He seemed to think my denial was part of a master plan I was playing out like a method actor. Perhaps he thought I was stalling until the right time came along?

  John Smith’s chauffeuring service had reduced the surveillance numbers down to one. He wouldn’t have Dave and Smiggy in his car. When Dave got stroppy about this I thought John was going to get out of the car and hand out a beating. He didn’t seem the least bit worried about Millicent hidden beneath Dave’s raincoat. John Smith owned a viciousness of spirit you could feel in a visceral sense even through his lustrous smile.

  During the car journey John referred to the other two as halfwits. This was the first time I’d heard him refer to them like that. Then again I’d only met him for the first time that morning. He assured me he wasn’t jealous of me and Baby Doll. He laughed like a drain after he said this. The other thing that occurred to me was perhaps Baby Doll wanted rid of Harry, sickened by his constant voyeurism, insisting she work out naked at all times so he could satisfy his own form of sexual perversion. Was she forming a partnership of some kind with the malicious John? Then again, perhaps I was being paranoid.

  John dropped me off in the road outside the flats, and bade me farewell like an old friend before driving away. The sound of his car disappeared into the distance until quiet came when it was several streets away. He wasn’t watching me. Was he was watching the other two pretending to be following me as his cover? More paranoia set in. John Smith’s confidence was so high I started to believe he knew everything, and everybody else was living in a fog of ignorance, all the time John machinating for his own gain.

  He seemed so confident about everything, including me. Had John Smith drugged me as part of some twisted scheme I’d invented, or had I drugged myself? This would explain why I couldn’t remember anything. To make any sense of this I would have to write all the known facts down like they do on the blackboard in detective shows. I had the sensation of being on a very steep hill covered in ice wearing very slippery shoes and with seismic shifts the gradient was getting steeper and steeper. I couldn’t turn round, I had to go on, but every moment I was more out of control.

  Soon I would be in freefall plunging towards what?

  Chapter 17 – Right here right now, Holocaust versus Hysandrabopel.

  They, the nurses at the hospital, were supposed to be saving my life by killing the cancer that had spread beyond the initial tumour. They fought back with the toxic nausea of chemotherapy, burning its way through my veins, destroying the cancer cells, destroying my immunity, and destroying pretty much everything, even the will to live at times. The desire to live, however, is far stronger than most of us suppose. In the bar discussion at the pub over a few drinks, people always say, “I don’t know if I could go on!” Such platitudes are good for the pub, but when push comes to shove it just comes down to only two questions!

  Do I want to fight on? Do I want to give up? The decision made after you’ve addressed those questions a lot of people believe can make a big difference to your recovery. I’m not so sure. However being positive seems to work even if you’re kidding yourself.

  For me, I think I turned the corner when I started to remind myself of Rachel’s horrific stories, all given to me in those days after Bob’s funeral. I wasn’t only fighting with chemicals. I was using toxic thought against cancer‘s darkness, against what was trying to possess me. I was going to assist the chemotherapy and fight blackness with even blacker thoughts!

  Rachel had so many dreadful stories to tell that midnight crept upon us. I had to sleep in the spare room. She had me awake at first light with a cup of tea. Half an hour later the brandy bottle was open and the stories continued until the dramatic climax.

  I was listening to Rachel’s harsh history for something like thirty hours. I understood any suffering I had had in this life was not suffering in the real sense. My suffering was beginning to look like a minor irritation compared to her teenage years of terror and death. In our modern society no one was going to put a bullet in the back of my head after terrifying me for several hours, or after killing all my family in front of me, or beating grandparents to death in front of their grandchildren. Political dogma was not going to degrade people with nakedness in the bleak cold, not in my part of the modern world at least.

  So I focused on the horror of other people’s lives, which made mine seem lightweight, and these thoughts kept me in the here and now, and not drifting off into a parallel universe I craved like a drug addict. Given the opportunity I’d overdos
e and I’d never come back.

  I was living in a conundrum where on the one hand I was trying to avoid slipping back into incredible sensual beauty, and one short breath later was begging for it to enrapture me. Such conflict, I wanted to be in the world full of sheer joyful sensation, and at the same time I wanted to be in the world of the living, the world where I could go down the pub, come out to find it raining, this real world, wonderful despite its minor irritations.

  *

  Mr Wilson is where I’ll start. He didn’t know Rachel before the war and he never met Rachel in the camps. The meeting was under the eyes of an American doctor, in a field hospital, somewhere in southern Poland towards the end of the Holocaust. World War II was drawing to its final battle in Berlin, and they’d found each other.

  Abraham Wysklowsi had been married for a short while. His wife had been expecting his child, and in the first hour after they’d arrived into terrible cold squalor of the camp both disappeared, snatched away by the forces of evil, never to be seen again. They’d survive so long, and this was late in the war with the Nazis in full retreat. This was the heartbreaking, bleak, cold January 1945 start to his battle for survival in that terror camp.

  Abraham had survived, even against his own feelings of guilt after his wife had perished. At times his survival instinct was weak in the face of his inevitable doom. Dying a quick death could be a bonus. He was an academic and accountant. He was put to work counting gold, jewels, glasses, belongings, making accounts, grim accounts for the Third Reich who loved order, their order. He was surviving day-to-day with constant hunger. His luck was much stronger than others. They wanted him alive and working, so he was fed a little food to keep him alive at his desk. Deeply depressed, with suicide a constant in his mind, the days dragged by.