Inelegant Rescue- FORFEIT!

Inelegant Rescue-FORFEIT!

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Precursor

I can’t really remember what happened before the main story in any detail – all I’ve got is:-

• A Portacabin – possibly located in the countryside(?) north of Great Western Ave near Hanger Lane/Park Royal

• Yourself and Rob and an old lady whom I get the feeling is related to Rob and lives in the Portacabin

• A garage owned by a bloke called Paul who has red hair and owns or manages a garage near the portacabin

note

if you are reading this and amazingly your name is not Tina then I've probably published it online as is and you need to know this story is addressed to her.

Main story

chapter 1

The three of us are walking across the deserted garage yard when Rob says

“lets go to Europe”

And wham! We’re there!

In the dream Europe is a featureless flat white plain with several large office block type buildings scattered around, we are walking amongst them. Rob says “I’m going to Russia” I turn and look at you both and you are now dressed for the Russian winter - Rob in one of those Politburo outfits, you know, black fur hat, dark calf length heavy overcoat, white silk scarf and you look stunning (and very sexy sophisticated!) in a long, flowing, possibly wolf-fur coat, matching hat and boots, (the fur is long and silver grey - ranging from almost white to almost black) dark tight trousers (ski pants?) and white polo neck. I am taken aback at this transformation, I start to raise objections but too late - you’ve both gone!!

I chase after you, I can’t see you but I seem to know where to go. Several people are running along with me - the chap in front says “Hurry we’re going to be late”

I say “Wait I don’t have my passport!”

The chap says “That’s ok you can travel on my ticket” and he hands a small blue marbled pebble to the woman in the kiosk that has just appeared in the wall of the huge building that has also just appeared.

The building has now transformed into a hotel and I am standing at its extremely high class entrance. The two doormen walk to the door handles on the huge entrance doors and with a flourish each opens one of the doors. The more imposing of the two says “This way ladies and gentlemen.” and we all troop in. I am desperately looking for you and Rob. I am feeling both lost and confused – you are no where to be seen.

The doors open onto a huge atrium the main feature of which is a massive sweeping staircase that connects the eight or so levels, each level is two balconies, one on either side of the central space, there are sixteen altogether, the balconies on my left are connected by the staircase.

We are led to the lift by the imposing footman who presses some buttons on the wall by the staircase. The lift doors open and we all enter. The footman steps in, presses more buttons and the elevator takes us to the top balcony.

The whole atrium is done out as a tea room, the floors are white marble, the walls black, detail work is gold (balustrades etc) altogether there are maybe a thousand people in the place, most are sitting at the tables arranged on the balconies and across the ground floor enjoying tea and cake, all are in evening dress except my new companions (ordinary attire) and possibly myself (I didn’t notice what I was wearing).

My new companions have disappeared and I am alone at the top of the stairs. I am looking everywhere for you two but no luck. Then I am attacked, my assailant is huge and massively strong, his hands are around my throat and I am being strangled. I struggle but without any noticeable effect – nobody pays any attention.

A knife appears as if by magic in the side of my attacker’s neck, he backs away from me clutches his own neck but does not fall. I stare at him in astonishment and I am somehow aware that I am trying to wake up. The footman walks up to the injured man and looks at the knife, he pulls it from the man’s neck, examines it, and slowly looks around, obviously searching for something, his gaze settles on the opposite balcony. I follow his gaze and finally see you and Rob.

You are sitting at one of the tables staring at me, in your hand is an identical knife, you are using it to cut your cake, you turn your head, look down at your cake and complete the slice, then you look up at Rob, who is standing and hand him your cake knife, he takes it and adopts a throwing stance – he obviously threw the first knife.

Everybody is now looking at the footman who takes a deep breath and calls out

“Inelegant Rescue - FORFEIT!”

There is a gasp from the crowd and people start to rise to their feet. The footman turns to my attacker and says “Yours is the weapon of choice! Sir!”

My attacker takes the knife from him and says “this will do nicely my good man”.

“What weapon do I get?”

“Whatever you can find sir, good luck” the footman backs away from me. I looked around desperately – nothing. My attacker smiles and steps towards me, I step back and fall down the first flight of stairs, my attacker leaps after me. There is then a confused sequence of me falling down flights of stairs and somehow dodging the knife, all the time desperately trying to wake up. Everyone in the atrium is now excitedly following the fight yelling and cheering as I become more cut, bruised and frightened. Eventually I am on the ground floor, somehow still standing, backing away from my nemesis. People are shouting and gesticulating, urging on my assailant. I continue to back away, and then I notice an area of calm - a woman sitting alone at one of the tables. I move towards her noticing for some reason that she is quite good looking, nothing special, but, there you go.

She is wearing a stunning evening dress, understated, simple, black, her dark hair is done up and topped with a black pill box hat, she is sipping tea. I stop by her and raise my open hand to my attacker, my palm touches his nose and he freezes.he is absolutely still - like a statue.

Silence falls on the crowd.

Amazingly I take all this in my stride, turn to the woman and say “excuse me ma’am”

I take my hand away from my attackers face “I took the liberty of borrowing your hat pin”

I remove the hat pin from between the fingers of my hand and wipe away the eye gore with the napkin that was on the woman’s table. “Allow me to replace it” and I take her hat of her head, skewer it (the hat) with the pin and hand it back to her. She takes it from me and moves her head from side to side, her hair cascades around her face and she is suddenly drop dead sexy beautiful. My attacker falls to floor – dead.

The woman looks down at the body at her feet and says “I feel faint would you escort me to my room sir?” I offer her my arm and she guides me to the large double doors opposite the staircase - footmen open the doors and we step through into her bedroom!

“Perhaps I can offer you some refreshment” she says and somehow steps out of her dress, pushes me onto the bed and climbs astride me and I’m not kidding I start to slightly wake up, causing the dream to go very blurred. I desperately try to get back into the dream – somehow succeeding but too late! We are both on our feet again, facing one another. She looks me up and down says “you can’t go out like that!” goes to the wardrobe and brings me a suit and shirt. As I get dressed she walks to the fire place (still naked) reaches up and takes down the crossed rapiers mounted on the wall over the mantelpiece. Holding one by the handle and the other towards me handle first she says

“You killed my father prepare to defend yourself!".

I grab hold of the offered sword and immediately lunge forwards skewering her through the top of her chest and pinning her to wall in front of the fireplace. The door bursts open and the footman walks into the room. He inspects the corpse then faces the crowd that has assembled in the doorway

“Duo death indelecto!” he calls out.

There is tumultuous applause and you and Rob step forward.

You raise an eyebrow, look at the woman and say to me “had a good time then I see”

To which I reply “not really” looking at the woman’s corpse still attached to the wall “to stuck up for my liking”.

I wake up.

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chapter 2

Real natural skin tones
PART 1
The room was distinctively decorated - the walls painted in predominantly red earth tones with strange lava lamp style motifs in contrasting natural skin tones. The furniture was obviously homemade, but manufactured and painted to a high almost professional standard. The strange forms reflected the motifs and colours of the walls.
“Looks like someone takes their d.i.y seriously” I said
“That’s not the half it” the CSO replied
“Detective sergeant Lindsay sir” the man held out his hand and I shook it.
I reasoned that I must be some sort of senior police officer or possibly consultant. Forensics technicians in the full regalia of their trade including face masks were carefully scraping paint samples from the walls and furniture into plastic evidence bags.
The CSO handed me a face mask, foot coverings and latex gloves, “if you could follow me” he led me outside the apartment and to the stair well, we descended the stairs. After three flights we had reached the entrance lobby, I was led to the open door at its rear and down a further flight to the basement.
The basement was filled with the usual paraphernalia found in the basement of a large apartment building. A bank of fuse boxes and electricity meters, a row of washing machines and dryers, a large central heating and hot water boiler, plain brick walls and concrete floor.
Sergeant Lindsay gestured towards the wall on the right. At first I couldn’t see it, and then it leapt out at me, a rectangular section of the wall protruded about a metre from the rest of the wall. As we walked towards it I could see that it was a concealed door. It had been elaborately constructed from the usual MDF but faced with thin slabs of real brick and running on some sort of arrangement of pistons and rollers, when closed it would have not been detectable to even a close examination.
Before entering the concealed room we both put on the clean room gear, then DS Lindsay leading, we stepped through. The room was maybe 11 metres by 7 – about 1/3 rd the apartment blocks ground footprint. Arranged against the far wall were three banks of six upright freezers stacked two high – eighteen in all. The door of the lower middle fridge in the far right bank was open, inside it was crammed with full freezer bags, it was not possible to determine their contents. The wall on the right was hidden behind storage racks that extended about 3 metres into the room. The racks where crammed with 5 litre plastic paint canisters. I began to get a very bad feeling.
We weren’t alone in the room – half a dozen more technicians in their all-whites were detail examining the various items of machinery that occupied the rest of the space together with several long work benches. I waved at the larger pieces of machinery and asked what I was looking at.
“That’s a commercial catering meat grinder, that’s a similar scale food liquidiser, that is a paint mixer and that is a severed human foot” DS Lindsay replied. I moved to where I could see the foot.
“How many bodies have we got here?”
DS Lindsay called out to one of techs “got an estimate yet?” the tech consulted his clipboard and replied “well going on the number of left feet in that fridge (indicating the open one) and that (pointing at the foot on the workbench) 43”
DS Lindsay turned to me and said “we believe all this was set up by the guy who had the apartment upstairs – he’s the manager of the local diy superstore. One of the tenants found that door open when he came down here to do his laundry he saw the foot and called us” My bad feeling got even worse.
“Sir” another of the techs called out and stepped away from the wall between the first two banks of freezers. As we watched a section of the wall moved into the room, you could here the hum of electric motors.
Brilliant light streamed into the already brightly lit room “God! How bright is the light in there?” the DS exclaimed.
I could here the pad, pad, pad of animal steps then a panting “all right boy I’ll open the door” my neighbour from the next flat opened the door to our building, letting his dog into the garden – I could hear them through my flats door. I stretched in my bed and flipped my mobile phone 6:50am “Jesus 2 and half hours sleep.” I got out of bed and went into the kitchen – got the coffee started came back into the main room, switched on the computer and the heater, then got back into bed. I could hear the coffee machine doing its thing and the computer with its 6 cooling fans sounded like a hovercraft taking off.
Eventually I judged the room had warmed sufficiently to warrant getting out of bed long term. Having fixed myself a coffee I sat down at my computer and began typing-
Real natural skin tones
Another almost sleepless night. Another disturbing dream. As I type I wonder what tonight has in store for me. Another round of fitful wakefulness? More of same dreaming weirdness. I wonder if my decision to write my dreams down will get me any where. I wonder what is through the second concealed door.
I wonder if I really want to know.

PART 2
The end of another truly crap day at the end of another truly crap week at the end of another truly crap month – unemployment sucks – big time. Sitting here I wonder if the electricity will hold out long enough to write this or will I have to scrape pennies together and go out to the paypoint to recharge the meter – being broke sucks - big time. I consider another round of toast but the loaf has to last through tomorrow – so, last nights dream.
I lie under the covers wondering where the rent for next month is going to come from, where I’m going to find the money for the bailiffs, what the f*ck I’m going to do. But several sleepless night are catching up on me and I’m feeling very drowsy, the bed is getting warm and my thoughts are getting sluggish and as I drift I realise it’s all just been a reality and soon the dreams will start.
DS Lindsay stood motionless, hand raised, signalling silence. ‘You hear something?’ the DS shook his head and pulled out his handgun – a Sig Sauer
P226 complete with ‘tactical illuminator’. I couldn’t help commenting ‘let me guess - you’ve got the laser sights as well’
Lindsay started moving slowly towards the open door and the blinding light. I patted down my pockets and found – much to my surprise a holstered firearm. It proved to be a well worn Wilson Combat 1911 with custom handgrips and safety –optimalised for left handed use the custom holster sported extra pouches for 3 more magazines and of course a – a tactical illuminator. With unpractised awkwardness Lindsay held his weapon to his sighting eye and setting his body at the regulation 45 degrees attempted to enter the bright room like a detective in an American cop series – I was kind of hoping he’d trip or stub a toe. The forensic techs were openly smirking. I re-holstered the 1911 and continued patting down my clothing, finding what I was looking for I put on the sun glasses and walking past Lindsay still playing USA cop I walked into the newly revealed room.
The room was entirely white, the illumination coming from maybe 50 5ft florescent tubes mounted on the ceiling – it looked like a dope-dealer’s grow room, apart from the walls. The walls of the room where floor to ceiling dry wipe boards covered in mathematical equations, chemical formulae and what looked like magic symbology, you know, real Harry Potter stuff.
‘Clear?’ Lindsay was still playing USA cop ‘yes Lindsay the room is … clearish’
‘Clearish, Is that a real word?’
‘Just get your arse in here’ Lindsay entered the room weapon at the ready ‘and for gods sake put that bloody thing away before someone gets hurt - and get the techs in here, I want to know what this is’
Looking a bit sheepish Lindsay holstered his weapon and walked up to the object at the centre of the room.
‘What the f*ck is this?’
Standing in the centre of the room was a human figure -naked and obviously male covered completely in what appeared to be flesh coloured textured paint –like an artificial skin except considering what the paint was probably made from maybe second natural skin would be a better description. I walked up to the figure, standing face to face with it. I could here the forensic techs entering the room.
The eyes had been painted over, the faint bulge of the cornea just visible through the textured paint, I moved closer, then the eyes blinked, flecks of paint breaking from them, for an instant I saw black bottomless pupils then a flash then…..motorway. MOTORWAY? Wtf.

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chapter 3

Pink paint Zombie Rob
I seem to be disembodied - I can move freely, walls and other objects aren’t obstacles, but I can’t speak and I obviously can’t be seen - you and Rob are completely unaware of me.
You are both sitting in the front of a van traveling north up the M1 towards York, Rob is driving and you are operating the radio, settling on a news channel.
The announcer is saying that the last survivors of the Viking invasion of NE England have barricaded themselves in fortress York and are surrounded by tens of thousands of baying, feral lager louts. Police causalities have reached four figures and a complete breakdown of law and order has occurred.
Army units are being recalled from the USA and there is concern in Whitehall that the mob of feral yobos may march on London - in which case the country could be faced with an even worse civil order situation than that in the United States.
Pakistan has trashed both the English football and cricket teams and Cornwall is facing its 54th day of torrential rain. Finally the announcer tells of someone called Jordan who has lost a breast implant in a night club in Milan and a tabloid newspaper is offering a 25000 euro reward for the missing sillycone. The van veers to the side of the motorway and continues along the hard shoulder.
‘Rumble strip!’ shouts Rob and the van immediately starts vibrating alarmingly. ‘What are you doing!’ you exclaim as the van pulls to a stop, raising your head you look out of the van window and an expression of horrified puzzlement covers your face. My point of view swings round and I am confronted by a bizarre scene. The motorway is covered in skin pink paint that seems to have a life of its own. The paint is coming from a dozen or so 5litre containers that have fallen out of the rear of a transit van about 365metres (400yds) ahead.
Standing in the middle of the paint by the open doors of the van is a single paint covered figure. Unlike all the other paint covered people this person is completely stationary. The others are all moving north or south along the motorway. On the opposite side of the motorway the paint is moving like a tidal wave engulfing the stationary stream of refugee filled cars that has slowly been crawling down the southbound carriage of the M1 way since the chaos up north started. Thousands of pink-paint-zombies are now heading towards both London and York.
I somehow move to a new vantage point, I am looking down from a height of maybe 90metres (100yds). The northbound carriageway towards York is almost deserted apart from the two vans; the southbound carriageway is stuffed with stationary vehicles, the refugee stream from York. Behind the northernmost van are the paint spill and the single stationary figure. The paint has somehow crossed the central divide and is moving towards both the north and south horizons. Tendrils of paint are moving from this and the primary spill towards your van. As I watch you and Rob climb out of the van and onto its roof. Once there you and Rob stand at bay but to no avail the paint engulfs the van and yourselves.
Pink Paint Zombie Rob climbs down and joins the stream of pink zombies moving towards London.
What happens to you is far more interesting, as the paint moves over you; you grab your moonstone pendant and hold it to your forehead, the pendant begins to glow pinkly: you are now covered in the paint. You arch your back and an unearthly scream issue from your mouth, you throw yourself forwards onto all fours and your now pink fur coat billows into impossible geometries. I zoom down for a closer look as your form morphs into a topologist’s nightmare, then there is pink explosion and YOU ARE GONE! In your place is huge silver-grey furred wolf!
Tina wolf surveys her surroundings with an almost tangible, regal gaze and jumps down to the northbound M1 tarmac. With a huge majesty you walk towards the only immobile pink person. As you move forward the paint retreats from you until you are walking in a circle of clear tarmac maybe 3 metres (10ft) across. Eventually the only paint near you is the paint on the stationary figure - which you begin tear of with your teeth - slowly revealing the original human. As you tear I zoom closer to the two of you - circling around so that I’m zooming in towards the back of the pink figures head - at what seems to be a thousand kilometers an hour! - then WHAM! I’m back in my own head in my own body and a giant wolf is staring up at me and I’m surrounded by pink zombies and paint. Whatever my job is (police consultant?) I’m definitely not getting paid enough.
The wolf pulls at my sleeve and pulls me towards the motorway embankment.
I stumble along trying to work out what the hell is going on. We clamber up the embankment side and then into a large field of rapeseed. The sneezing starts – I am deeply allergic to this vile plant and unfortunately in the European Union farmers are paid vast fortunes to grow the sodding stuff. A few squirts of antihistamine nasal spray and I am backing in control of myself. Apart from the streaming eyes of course. You have been sitting patiently watching all this, growling slightly. Now that you have my undivided attention not to mention rising fear you rest your belly on the ground and raise your paws to your forehead. There is a repetition of the demented geometries and topologies you had demonstrated earlier and then you are Human again. As you raise yourself back to your feet I catch a glimpse of naked flesh beneath your fur coat.
‘Stop staring’ you snarl and I hastily turn away
‘OK you can turn round now’ I cautiously turn to face you, keeping my hand close to the Wilson Combat 1911.
‘Right explain yourself’ the look on face and the tone of your voice leaves me in no doubt that whatever I say next had better be good.
‘I don’t know what you mean’ you look exasperated.
‘First you turn up out of nowhere and screw up our covert infiltration of the Russia – I mean what the hell where you thinking – you kill the boss, screw his daughter then kill her! - all in public!! Now I’m trying to rescue my people from your countrymen and what happens - who do I find right in my way – you!’
I am at a loss for words, nothing seems to make sense, my world is spinning, then I am lying in my bed and there is a scrabbling at my door – it’s the neighbours’ dog again, I reach out grab my phone, flip and check the screen, 6:50 am. One day I’m going to get to sleep till the sodding alarm goes off - but what the hell - I’ve got an interview to prepare for and I’ll be weekending at yours next week – maybe I’ll get some answers then.
to be continued
© 2009 C N Bytheway-Platt. All rights reserved.