Acid Bubbles

by Paul H. Round

  I could swear the dog rolled his eyes as if to say, “What an eejit”! However, he seemed to understand I didn’t want to take it from him. A brief glimpse of his huge teeth, plus the immutable fact that he was enormous, with intense watchful eyes was enough to discourage anyone but the most foolhardy. He knew I wouldn’t dare try. I knew I was never going to!

  We continued our walk and existed as one reacting with every molecule in the woodland. In many ways it was more. The sensation of vastness running through my body gave me a perception of a great endless forest. Endless and timeless was better description of the vast arena of dappled shade filled with wonderful aromas, and populated with the most vivid strange creatures you could ever imagine, or never imagine. For my human sensibilities this was almost an overload, too much colour and movement saturating every sense in my body.

  The dog slept in the long grass with his head resting on his front legs. Both were crossed over the briefcase.

  I fell out of the dream and into the real world where I was sick, broken, very tired and vomiting. Despite the horrors of the real world I was entranced by the last moments in the other universe.

  In these last moments I’d fallen asleep with Jennifer held tight in my arms, so tired after she’d shown me a bit more about nature.

  Chapter 20 – In a daze with my head trapped in 1973.

  I was back in my 1973 post-amnesia headless chicken period. And I was going to waste more time looking around my own flat for the particularly cunning place I’d hidden £10,000 and a large amount of acid. I didn’t have any idea what the acid looked like, but I knew what money looked like so that’s where I focused my efforts. After I’d arrived at my flat, the first job was to firmly close the door, wedging it with a large sofa. This made it difficult to search the sofa, but I was past caring. My investigation of the sofa started with a kitchen knife, slashing it apart. Tattered material was everywhere, along with bits of foam, and when the sofa was quite dead my spirits were in a pretty similar state. There was nothing in there. That’s a lie. There was one 50p piece, a 5p coin and an old biro. Perhaps I could give the 50p to John Smith as a down payment? Or poke him in the eye with the Biro?

  I spent the next hour engaged in a frantic search of my flat discovering along the way all types of interesting electronic equipment, small amounts of money tucked away in drawers, nothing significant just a few pounds here and there, an amazing selection of clothes including things I would never consider wearing; but obviously did! I looked absolutely everywhere, even under the fridge, not knowing this is where I’d stashed father’s nest egg. The only thing I turned up was a small bag containing about two dozen very tiny white pills. I didn’t know what these were. If it was acid how could I test them? And they certainly weren’t the several thousand tabs John Smith insisted I possessed. I flushed them down the toilet.

  Even though it was raining outside on this August Sunday afternoon it was quite warm. I was wringing wet from head to foot with sweat. Whether this was from the effort of turning over my flat, or through pure fear I couldn’t guess. I was certain my lack of “the stuff” would lead to a bludgeoning by John Smith, or the malevolent smile of the black-eyed Millicent. If I was going to visit Samantha’s house, I would have to change into something fresh. After my sexual wrestling match with Vicky I discovered I had a key, one of the only positives from our post ‘lovemaking’ conversation. If nobody was there I could let myself in and search in peace. I was beginning to believe this was the obvious hiding place, perhaps inside the pool table where I’d played cosy games, who knows?

  I was standing in the shower beneath a jet of very hot water trying to get my thoughts together and despairing because, looking around the bathroom, I realised I could have placed the money behind the tiling, or slipped it under some object that appeared to be immobile. The more I looked round the bathroom, the more I realised that if I’d hidden everything with great cunning, short of knocking the flat into a thousand pieces, I would never find it.

  I wondered if Samantha knew more than I originally thought about the lost goods. But then if she didn’t, going in and saying, “Hi, Sam, do you know where I have hidden all the money and the dangerous drugs?” didn’t seem the best course of action.

  I was slipping on some nice clothes and listening to songs I’d never heard playing on the radio. It was obvious being top of the Pops didn’t rely on musical quality. It relied on something mysterious. Most I had never heard before, and some like Clive Dunn and Ray Stevens I never wanted to hear again, or perhaps hearing them again would be a good option. It would mean I would still be alive!

  *

  Why was I going round on Sunday afternoon? Of course! I was visiting the house to see if I could catch up with my fiancée, Vicky, the girl I didn’t like too much. She seemed to like me, and I wondered if it was because I was giving her a low rent version of a jet set life style. Or it might have been something else, something I had been but now definitely wasn’t. As I arrived I could see there were no cars in the driveway so it was obvious everybody was out on a Sunday trip – the golf club, some old aunty, who knew? I would be able to conduct a careful search at my leisure, it was important not to disturb anything that could arouse suspicion.

  Using my key I let myself in, slipped off my handmade shoes to protect the light coloured carpets, I didn’t want to leave wet footprints all over the house. The starting place, I decided, would be the games room with its little bar, pool table, and dartboard. The bar seemed an obvious place, and going on a hunch of reverse psychology perhaps the obvious was where I should look. I started with the fastidious search through all the nooks and crannies of the elaborate construction of bricks, wood and apparently old pieces of ceramic drainpipe, all illuminated by a smaller ersatz version of the light hanging above the pool table. Perhaps the whole setup looked better after a few drinks.

  The pool table was another matter. It was a full-sized version constructed from a very heavy hardwood. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, real quality. I couldn’t destroy this. The damn thing weighed an enormous amount and was extremely difficult to move. Its complexity to dismantle convinced me this wouldn’t be where I’d have hidden the money.

  Ten thousand pounds in five pound notes is 2000 notes, quite a large bundle. Had I split it up into smaller amounts, spreading the risk so to speak, or would it be in one big fat pile? I investigated behind the radiators which were covered in ornate grilled box-type structures, a good possibility when it came to hiding money in a hurry: I came across four copies of Playboy magazine. I searched the whole room applying a twisted logic. Where would I hide things quickly, but safe? This thought kept running through my head as I move urgently from room to room, looking into drawers, searching beneath objects, looking around in the back of wardrobes, all this time vigilant not disturbing anything, while at the same time desperately wanting to rip the whole place apart!

  In Vicky’s room I noticed large amount of cuddly toys, teddy bears, rabbits, strange non- world creatures, all kinds of large stuffed animals. Was I responsible for giving Vicky one of these monstrosities, and did any of them have zippers at the back like a large hot water bottle case? One by one of these creatures were carefully probed to see if deep in all that fluff there was something substantial. I was paying special attention to a rather large frog which proved to be completely vacant when I heard footfalls on the stairs. Somebody was in the house. Should I pretend to be sleeping on the bed, resting my eyes?

  I’d dragged the cuddly toys down from the dresser in the order. Now I had to put them all back in seconds. It was a panicked rush. Vicky put her head round the door, eyes open wide in surprise, and taken aback by me holding two of her largest teddy bears, one under each arm. How do you explain this one? I took a dive off the high board asking, “Which one of these did I get you first?”

  Vicky looked at me for some while. I thought I’d said something wrong, but after what seemed an age she responded, “Capt Snuggles.” She was pointing at the
chubby brown bear under my right arm, the one with the zip, the one I hadn’t yet got round to giving an internal examination. So I threw him back on the bed and placed the other on the dresser. Vicky was still giving me a perplexed look.

  “What’s wrong with you, Peter? Yesterday afternoon you paid me no attention, and now you’re positively weird,” Vicky enquired.

  I was very fazed not noticing Vicky was wearing the strangest white outfit including pink socks with little bobbles of fluff at the back. It was almost as if I’d never seen an outfit like this before with its white pleated skirt, and very stretchy top, revealing a slim braless torso and small firm breasts. I suppose I was staring her up and down like some kind of moron before the final click inside my brain notched it all together. She was wearing tennis gear. She played tennis. I knew I hated tennis, in fact I was very poor at all ball games apart from the ones played on flat surfaces indoors. So I wasn’t going to be talking tennis with her. What did we have in common?

  I didn’t know what Vicky expected of me. I wondered if we had any meaningful conversations at all. For all I knew we might have a totally silent, hot sex-only relationship. I had to do something. I couldn’t ask her questions like some police interrogation. I moved forwards taking her in my arms and kissed her with hot passion that was mostly fakery. She wasn’t my thing. I had no mental desire for this girl, and she only inspired my base animal lust because of her lithe physical beauty. She was responding to my faked desire by pulling at my clothes, tugging her tennis outfit from her body, all the time demanding I make love to her, or something like. “Fuck me hard until I come. Go on, Peter, make me suffer!”

  We made enthusiastic and at times very noisy love, she screamed, she clawed, she swore like a trooper. I cannot lie. I enjoyed most of the performance, but that’s what it was from me, a performance. I experienced intense physical pleasure, and my gasps of ecstasy weren’t all faked. However throughout I was thinking of someone else. Something seemed perversely criminal in the way I was thinking of Samantha and using Vicky’s body to satiate my carnal lust for the very woman who’d given birth to her. Thinking of Samantha made me a better lover, so this was a strange form of proxy lovemaking and it should be illegal. Or should screwing your girlfriend’s mother be illegal?

  Vicky went off to take a shower. I went straight to Captain Snuggles ripping into his soft underbelly. I discovered he was very wealthy for a bear containing a sum of money that had me gasping for breath! Inside he was guarding a pair of five pound notes and nothing more unless, of course, you include a plastic bag with about 500 pills inside, all very tiny innocent white pills. I even thought about slipping one in my mouth to try it for content, not that I knew what to expect during an acid trip.

  The number of pills wasn’t sufficient to satisfy the demands of the businessmen, and I came to the conclusion they were probably a side issue, a little private percentage for me, not the real deal. Perhaps I ought to slip Vicky one? Oh, I already had! I don’t know why I had this thought, but somehow her presence irritated me. I needed to search.

  She was coming back from the shower, very naked, quite lovely, in the same sense as a nude in the National Gallery can be quite lovely. I knew I was seeing her to gain access to the house, and one of its hidden treasures. I just wanted her to go so I could continue my room to room search, possibly a fruitless task, but I couldn’t rest until I’d covered every possibility, even the garage. They didn’t park their cars in the garage, so it could be the usual mess of million items, providing me with a nice hiding place. The garage could be the breakthrough!

  Vicky announced she was leaving. She’d been playing tennis with some friends at an undercover tennis court, one that I had a membership for. I was a member? She’d come home to get changed before meeting her parents over at her grandmother’s house. I couldn’t even ask where grandma lived, because for all I knew I might be the apple of the old lady’s eye. God, this amnesia was awful. Rushing downstairs Vicky asked if I’d be round later. I had no idea so I vaguely said, “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be so bloody enthusiastic! What the hell has got in to you? You’re like some kind of mental case,” she said.

  “I’m just not feeling my old self at the moment, must be a little bit tired. Do you mind if I rest here?” I was pointing at the bed. She tossed her shoulders back, threw me a puzzled look and went downstairs shouting back, “Suit yourself!”

  I was left to search the rest of the house including sticking my head up in the loft. The roof space revealed nothing of any significance, a few reminders of Vicky’s childhood, old rocking horses, toys, dolls and all manner of board games. Nothing I could give to Harry or John. Of course I did come across a large amount of money, so much money it could’ve solved all my problems. The unfortunate thing was, though the money was in large denominations I don’t think I could interest Harry in a hotel on Park Lane.

  Only Samantha’s room remained. Would I have left anything with the lovely Sam? I was starting to search the room with the same fevered correctness I’d given the rest of the property. My unreliable gut instincts were telling me what I was looking for was in this house. Now I suspecting the integral garage but had to satisfy my curiosity and finish my room to room search.

  This room felt right, this place was giving me strong vibes, but of what? I’d completed a thorough search of the en suite bathroom and the lavish wardrobe system in the dressing room… nothing! It was down to the last room, the master bedroom, a place where nothing was ever hidden, or, with luck, everything.

  I started searching in the top drawer of the dresser next to the bed, not the small bedside tables. This was a much larger unit standing next to the en suite doorway. It contained Samantha’s underwear arranged with almost military precision drawer by drawer from top to bottom. The top contained nothing but beautifully manufactured diaphanous knickers in all their variety. In the next drawer down were more knickers, still of the same fine quality but more for everyday wear.

  The two drawers below were arranged with very neat dividers, these containing bras, everything arranged in a similar system. Top for the bedroom, bottom the street. The fifth and bottom drawer of the dresser contained suspenders and boxes of stockings. I gave it a quick rummage, pulled the drawer physically out of its rails to look into the empty space below, nothing. I fed it back into the rails with trembling fingers driven by such strange desires. I closed it shutting the vision of stockings and suspenders away from my hungry eyes. Such provocative contents sent messages to my brain flashing into life desires driven by pure instinct.

  I asked myself would a large bungle of money be in there, and I think the answer was no. Despite this I started the careful examination at the top drawer. I was now concentrating intently, careful not to disturb the neatly laid out lingerie. I wanted to leave no trace of my rifling through Samantha’s beautiful gossamer-thin lace objects of desire. The whole drawer had an intoxicating subtle smell to it. Just the faintest hint of her perfume and I was soaking it in. My concentration drifted away from the desperate search for the hidden money. Now I was trying to recall lost memories, emotions brought alive by heady scent. Without thinking my body moved into a kneeling position in front of the draw. My whole being was soaking in the aroma. By now I was resting my face on the top layer of knickers. My mind was searching for lost ecstasy, driving me to bury my face very gently in the erotic contents.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Vicky shouted. She’d returned for a forgotten handbag!

  Chapter 21 – Right here right now, sweet aromas, sometimes.

  It was the perfume. A subtle aroma Samantha had caressed onto her soft skin all those years ago. For the first time in decades it was in my nostrils once again. Years disappeared as if they’d never happened. I was back with my head buried in that drawer in 1973. I opened my eyes in hope only to discover a different reality. I was lying in a very bright room, with lots of flowers, flowing curtains, and a flat-screen television. This was certainl
y not the 1970s. This was the cancerous now, but the perfume was in the now as well, not from the past. This beguiling aroma was here and now, and in those few moments of absolute concentration absorbing the scent I’d forgotten all the other painful constraints on my modern life.

  The nurse was a very large lady in a crisp and new looking uniform, it was tight, giving the impression she’d been measured for it before she went on a diet of meat pies. This well proportioned nurse however, was the unlikely source of the wonderful aroma. I didn’t want to ask her the name of the perfume, something I’d never known. I wanted it to remain a mystery, a magical essence that transported me to moments in life I’d enjoyed with a great passion. To give a product name to this magical aroma would diminish it, like knowing the answer to all the magic tricks, spoiling the show.

  The aroma was pure magic. I was not adverse to a bit of scheming in order to prolong the moment. I complained about being uncomfortable in the bed, encouraging the nurse to rearrange me. I did this two or three times before this lovely woman started to get slightly irritated by my constant demands. I apologised explaining my wasted body was now so thin I found it difficult to remain comfortable. She didn’t seem to mind, and proceeded with great care to try and get me just so. For a few moments I was.

  I was just so, soaking in decades old sensations and memories evoked by the perfume. Why hadn’t I realised back then I was so much in love with Samantha. I was too young, too wealthy, disgustingly randy and a miserable bastard. The realization I’d been in love seeped into my soul over the years and now it was all too late, but happy on this day to remember the merest hint of days long gone. I speculated if Samantha had loved me at all. I do not know. She may only have enjoyed a very interesting sex life with me, nothing more. Her husband was busy in business and too tired at night, or they’d been married for too long for the fire of passion to burn so brightly. I might have just been the latest handy new flame.