As I brushed along the streets of fire I overheard a young boy describing to his company tales of drink and recklessness and vodka martinis. I was drawn to him – how could a lad of his youth possibly be possible of experiencing such restricted activity. I was not in his position when I was about nine or ten years old – was it something that I had missed on, something that many other men of his age had been through. I suspect not, I had to learn about him and maybe I could learn from him. By the time I had realised this, the young boy was at the other end of the street so I turned round and chased after him.
"Young boy," I panted as I tapped him on his shoulder after an exhausting run, "How have you experienced such activities at such a tender age?" The young lad told me of his early days watching tall men play pool in numerous pool halls, flitting from one to the other when the management caught on to his young presence. It wasn’t long until he became a familiar face around such establishments and he soon became a small boy playing pool with the tall men. Due to his months of study, he became something of a prodigy and the tall men respected him. Very soon the management came to respect him too and they allowed him to stay as long as he went straight home after closing hours. For three years he worked his way up in the estimation of the pool community until his name became a myth throughout the countrywide pool network – could there really be an eight year old shark?
Very soon he started taking chances with the management of the various clubs in the town. He got drinks bought for him, sometimes he managed to obtain a roach or a bag from a younger man, Peter Wothers who had taken a shine to this little chap. He befriended the barmaids with his youthful gaze and they lent him cash from the tills so that he could buy his school books. What they didn’t realise is that this money was going straight to Peter Wothers who used it to buy the boy drinks and feed their drug habit. Or maybe they did realise, the boy wasn’t too sure. He was given a key to one pool dive, Pool Monkeys on St Francis’ Road, by setting up a gambling ring which the management there thrived upon.
With this key he persuaded a couple of thugs to go in and raid the tills. He knew the code to the safe but by obtaining six handgranades from an old army friend which he passed on to the thugs, he avoided suspicion. Why would such a devoted customer want to drive the club to ruin? Especially as the gambling ring didn’t just throw up profit for the management. Of course, the boy had similar rings in plenty of other dives so that this little minor inconvenience really quite paid off. Then things started to get a little jaded.
The heroin addiction was spiralling out of control, fuelled by countless drinking binges, some of them lasting whole weeks and his young body simply couldn’t cope. One evening, Peter and he decided they needed a night away from the dark recesses of a pool club and found a massage parlour down in the old town. After a 10hr sex and booze session with Heidi Klum and her trained chimps, the boy was picked up by a passing policeman who found him lying in a gutter, dressed only in a fur coat soaked by a pool of whisky and vomit. Peter went missing but returned a month later sobered by his contraction of HIV.
This was the first time the young boy had ever come across the notion of the termination of life, except when Old Joseph "Rack ‘em up" Conrad had turned against him one fateful evening. But he was dragged away and the consequences never came back to haunt him. Now his closest friend was knocking on the doors of death – his closest friend, probably his only true friend. This enraged him – it went against everything he believed in - in God, in justice, in truth, in breeding – he picked up a pool cue and thrust it through one of the TVs in the poolroom. He proceeded to destroy every screen in the bar and no-one tried to stop him - they knew he was completely out of control and if he didn’t vent his anger at the world this time it would only build up in him and one day, one terrible day, he might destroy more than televisions.
He sat down and vowed never to drink again. He promised this was the beginning of a long period of impotence – well, at least until he was 14 and he could accept the consequences. It was too early for him to father a baby and even earlier for him to die. He emptied his cash deposit and put it into a savings account, claiming it was a from a wealthy inheritance. But the temptation of the production of money couldn’t escape him and he carried on his gambling rings, quietly raking in the cash. He stayed sober for at least six months and he occasionally went to school to learn about the trials of life from a more traditional perspective.
Due to his inability to keep off the drink he was attending AA meetings and was undergoing hypnotic therapy to take his mind off the deep magnetic force towards the bottle. He made many friends of his own age at school and pretty soon had a gambling ring going in the playground. He sold drugs to his classmates but never took any himself. He said it made him a better dealer for it. When I met him he was on his way to his dealer to stock up a bit. I went along with him, I couldn’t let this boy go, I knew there was much to learn from him.
On our way to the dealer, the boy’s company, Ted told me about himself. His story was far more subdued than his friend’s and he had only really met him at school a couple of months before. He described himself as the right hand man and generally dealt with the financial side of the business. He had never really experimented with drugs but apparently got a great herbal high from alternative medicines. He started sharing from Mouse’s (as Ted referred to him, the boy himself had not revealed his name to me himself) hip flask and soon developed a taste for liquor.
We reached the dealer’s apartment and I was ordered to wait outside – the guy didn’t appreciate strangers. After ten minutes, the boys returned with a full McDonalds takeaway bag and announced they were going to go back to their HQ to stash it. Their headquarters was a ruined house, quite possibly the home of a number of tramps too by the look of it. They found their loose floorboard and started to empty the merchandise below the floor. It turned out that they weren’t sure if they had checked out the coke to see if it was any good, an oversight most regretted by Mouse.
Ted whipped out a knife and pierced the bag. He drew up a line on a newspaper lying around and snorted it up. Mouse lightly dabbed a finger and tasted the grains he had picked up. Ted assured us that it was good shit and offered me a line. I’ve never pretended to be any kind of dope connoisseur but I figured that I’d regret holding back – if I wanted to learn about Mouse how could I if I didn’t fully experience a night with the legend?
It knocked me back. The room started spinning and I had to lean back to stop myself collapsing. But the boys were off so I couldn’t hang around. I got up and steadied myself, the initial effects wearing off as I got used to them. I followed them, silently listening to their conversation not wanting to join in for fear of saying something foolish. These little kids had more resistance to this stuff than I, a 20yr old had.
We ended up at a bar – an Irish bar unsurprisingly specialising in fine malt whiskeys. The boys shook hands with the landlord and hugged the barmaids hello before getting a large introductory drink each. One more was poured for me when my new friendship with the boys was discovered. Not that I needed it or anything, but I knocked the drink back with the boys and sat down at the bar. The talk was nothing unusual, your usual barroom banter – sport, sex, drink – it became more than apparent that the notion that they were two pre-teenage lads had simply passed everyone by. Mouse had experienced more life than most of the men in there and Ted knew all about it – currently emulating it.
As last orders were announced and pretty much ignored, I found myself being led into a back room. The light was switched on and the room presented itself to me. I was less confused by the bright orange walls than the four donkeys sleeping on the floor. There were only the three of us now so when Ted clicked his nimble fingers only three of them woke and stood up. I was motioned to sit on the greatest of the three steeds who I was informed was called Clover. With another click of his fingers, the orange walls turned into a beach and I found I had an ice cream in my hand.
It was a glorious day, the sun was blazing on the people lounging around. Children ran around with suncream coated across their shoulders, men paraded around red raw, browned topless girls sat, smugly smiling at the approving glances they were receiving, wrinkled grannies in bikinis sat with their jersey clad husbands talking about the good old days or something and we rode through them, taking it all in. Ted and Mouse started singing Scarborough Fair as windmills flew around our heads and birds produced grain in far off fields.
We reached the end of the prom where we found a man dressed as a king sitting in a photo booth. He greeted us and introduced himself to me as King Wolfson from a place far far away. I wouldn’t know it if he told me where so there was no point. I pointed out that he could have avoided all the time wasted in explaining himself by just telling me the name of his kingdom. He pointed out a chicken with an unusually large pritstick. I was so impressed I forgot what we were talking about.
After he chopped my head off with a horseshoe I leapt off Clover and picked up my detached head. I decided that I’d bury it in the sand as this was a place of perfection which I would never tire of seeing. After the burial I got back on my donkey and procured a slice of ham from a passing locksmith. I offered it to King Wolfson but he was busy borrowing the pritstick from the chicken in order to glue his beard back on. A duck lent me a couple of slices of bread as long as it could keep the crust and I fed myself on the sandwich. It was one of the best ham sandwiches I’d ever had but then I hadn’t eaten pheasant before. The boys were eating a KFC meal so I left them to it.
With a nudge, Clover walked away from the photo booth and we passed by a Welsh male voice choir who were singing Cliff Richard songs at the top of their voices. I asked them if they would sing Mistletoe and Wine but they suggested that it wasn’t particularly seasonal. I argued that it was very seasonal but they had already started on Bachelor Boy. I walked on. As we trudged along the pier I completely forgot where I was and Clover strode on over the end.
Under the pier there were a number of mermaids sitting around a table talking about shopping for stationary but when they saw me, they put down their drinks and came over to chat. They spoke to me of tales long and dark – of underwater cities that no man had ever been let into, of mayors of such cities with gowns of coral who ruled fairly, of heroes I had never heard of and heroics I could barely imagine. Clover and I swam with them to the gates of a certain underwater city but I was not allowed in by the gatekeeper. Clover was however and he was very eager to take a look around. I said it was OK and the mermaids went in to show him around.
One mermaid stayed behind with me and she showed me what the true meaning of love is using the medium of dried flowers. She told me that she didn’t truly love me because she could never love a human. She assured me that there was someone in my dry world that did truly love me and a few humans too. I felt warm and I felt safe. But I was very wet so I kissed the mermaid goodbye and swam to the shore.
With that thought in my heart, I traversed the beach and winked at the topless sunbathers who looked away or disgusted. I found an empty deckchair and sat down on it, exhausted. As I watched the people go by I thought of dragonflies and suitcases and how different people have peculiar tastes but my thoughts were interrupted by a headless chicken who was dancing a Russian dance in order to win over the heart of a pigeon. She was glancing infrequently at him, unimpressed. I compared myself to the chicken but realised we had little in common. Except that we’d both lost our heads.
About this time I figured that maybe my friends were wondering where I was and so I went back to where I had left them, hoping that King Wolfson had gone away. But no such luck for he was still there, beard now attached, with Ted and Mouse who had finished their KFC and were now drilling a hole into a packet of ink cartridges. When they had passed through the plastic they were surprised to find themselves covered in blue ink as the cartridges exploded. They were even more surprised to see me.
They asked me where I’d been and why had I come back. I explained that the Isaac Newton Trust was established by Trinity College in 1988 to help with education at the University of Cambridge and its constituent Colleges. They agreed that if that was true, it was probably better for me to come back because it would have angered the mermaids so much they might have boiled me in axle grease. They were annoyed that I’d lost Clover though and said that a horse was needed if I wanted to get back home.
I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to go home but when I found out that at 8:23, King Wolfson was set to become possessed by the spirit of Lord Melchet, evil ruler of the darklands and could quite possibly massacre every one in sight, I figured that home would be better. But where was I supposed to get a horse from. I walked around the beach aimlessly, asking old ladies and red men where I could find a horse seller. Rumour had it that there was a peculiar vendor on Mill Street so I ran over there.
When I found Mad Frankie Fatwa’s horse shop I was a little disappointed to find out that Frankie wasn’t particularly peculiar, in fact he was quite normal. He was trying to chat me up but I could forgive him for that. He said that he had plenty of horses but none of them were for sale because he had had a mass order from an evil lord who needed them for a bonfire. It then suddenly struck me that Clover wasn’t actually a horse but was a donkey. Frankie didn’t have any donkeys because he sold horses, not donkeys, but there was a guy on the beach who did donkey rides who might be able to lend me one.
It was getting on for 8:00 so I legged it back over to the beach. As Armageddon was approaching, the donkey ride guy had flown away to Marbella so that he could die happy but luckily he had left his donkeys behind. I climbed over the fence and picked out the healthiest looking donkey. After considerable encouragement, the donkey, who told me its name was Detroit Motorcity, leapt over the fence and galloped across the beach to the photo booth. King Wolfson was telling Mouse and Ted that lips were designed so that they could open and close at will so that the ingestion of food was possible.
I introduced everyone to Detroit and then we decided it was about time we made a move. We said goodbye to King Wolfson and trotted over to the beach. I took a long last look at the inhabitants – the red men, the old grannies, the topless girls and a tear came to my eye when I realised that they were all destined to die. I remembered that I would be OK and felt a bit better.
We got back to the room with the orange walls and climbed off our steeds. We walked back into the bar and had a couple of cocktails. The clock on the wall read 8:23 and I thought about the massacre that was happening in that other world. Then suddenly the door to the orange room burst open and King Wolfson presented himself, sitting atop Clover who had a red glint in his eye.
He jumped off the donkey and after scratching his left eye he killed us all. As my soul rose out of my body I watched the possessed man walk out of the bar and with a click of his fingers he blew up the street and then the town and then the country and then the world. Just before he blew up the universe, Ted woke up from his deathbed and stabbed King Wolfson in the back with a pool cue. They both collapsed and died.