Chapter Fourteen
"If you're going to have an Alien moment and shoot something out of your stomach, or any other orifice for that matter, then kindly turn your head."
He stares at me as if I'm something from space, or one of the bad guys from Star Trek. "You look like you're about to empty your guts of something. I'm just warning you not to empty it over me. Vomit and denim is not a good look."
I have no idea where I'm going - in my defence, this place has changed a hell of a lot but if my memory's not deceiving me, there's a reasonable B 'n' B 2,483 steps from the station gates. At least, there was. So he's wandering along behind me like a puppy dog without the eyes, staring at my face long enough for me to notice that I'm almost counting out loud. I hold my lips still, nod my head a little like I was singing a song and carry on my own sweet way. Evidently, he has no idea where he is, let alone where I'm taking him, and in all fairness, i quite like the feeling of power that gives me. A little bit of a buzz, one could say.
The place has had the guttering changed from black to white, to match the rest of the street's plastic facade; aside from that and the foot and a half long flower bed overgrown with weeds which were once fuschias and daffodils, little has changed. The sign on the front door announces vacancies with a manifest promise of fleas and poor service from Basil Fawlty incarnate. My 'companion' makes to peer through the window, but the curtain of grime stops him from taking in the moth-eaten furniture inside. I know it's still there. I can already tell. The sofa, facing the TV, four steps from the door, which leads into a hallway with a broken grandfather-clock from when one of the regulars had a dispute on the landing. The stairs still have the same old dent in from his fall on the step third from bottom. Upstairs will be three doors, leading to matchbox sized bedroom with the scarcest amount of furniture - it would be minimalism if it wasn't so soul-destroying.
I push open the door with the smallest amount of contact, and walk on in.
He stares at me as if I'm something from space, or one of the bad guys from Star Trek. "You look like you're about to empty your guts of something. I'm just warning you not to empty it over me. Vomit and denim is not a good look."
I have no idea where I'm going - in my defence, this place has changed a hell of a lot but if my memory's not deceiving me, there's a reasonable B 'n' B 2,483 steps from the station gates. At least, there was. So he's wandering along behind me like a puppy dog without the eyes, staring at my face long enough for me to notice that I'm almost counting out loud. I hold my lips still, nod my head a little like I was singing a song and carry on my own sweet way. Evidently, he has no idea where he is, let alone where I'm taking him, and in all fairness, i quite like the feeling of power that gives me. A little bit of a buzz, one could say.
The place has had the guttering changed from black to white, to match the rest of the street's plastic facade; aside from that and the foot and a half long flower bed overgrown with weeds which were once fuschias and daffodils, little has changed. The sign on the front door announces vacancies with a manifest promise of fleas and poor service from Basil Fawlty incarnate. My 'companion' makes to peer through the window, but the curtain of grime stops him from taking in the moth-eaten furniture inside. I know it's still there. I can already tell. The sofa, facing the TV, four steps from the door, which leads into a hallway with a broken grandfather-clock from when one of the regulars had a dispute on the landing. The stairs still have the same old dent in from his fall on the step third from bottom. Upstairs will be three doors, leading to matchbox sized bedroom with the scarcest amount of furniture - it would be minimalism if it wasn't so soul-destroying.
I push open the door with the smallest amount of contact, and walk on in.
posted by Gutterflower at 4:18 PM
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