Five-Oh-Six-Three (Part One)

©2012 David Jasmin-Green

The rain was coming down thick and fast when Blain gradually began to emerge from a deep, tranquil slumber. Just lately, first thing in the morning he felt like a pre-Pentium chip computer taking its sweet time to boot up.

Beside the downpour that he was for some reason exposed to (he hadn't woken with raindrops splattering his face since his manic student days) he had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't first thing in the morning at all. And oddly enough, despite the rain he felt all snug and relaxed. He felt like he was unhurriedly emerging from a drunken stupor on a Sunday morning after a blisteringly hard week, a morning on which he had nothing important to get out of bed for, the sort of morning that inevitably dawned after a particularly riotous night before.

“Shit, I'm bloody soaked,” he mumbled as the rain conspired to wash away the final dregs of his cosiness. “What time is it? What day is it? And where am I - North Wales? Chipping Campden? Hades? Come to think of it, who am I? I seem to have mislaid an unusual amount of important details. That's what Thunderbird wine does for you, I guess – it's a wonder I have any brain cells left. I need coffee, gallons of it. Hang on a minute, I don't believe I've supped Thunderbird wine for forty odd years.....

Blain. Why does that name sound so alien? Mr. John Blain. No, it's Peter, I'm sure it's Peter. Or George. Clarence? Susan? Shit, what is this, a word association test? Pugh, Pugh, Barney, McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub – it's neither of those fuckers either, is it?”

Blain spoke a little louder in order to hear himself over the drumbeat of raindrops in the large puddle that he was lying in, which was when he became aware of the strangeness of his voice – it sounded as if it didn't belong to him, it sounded like he was hearing it for the very first time. “Blain doesn't sound at all right,” he continued. “Whatever happened to my Christian name? How could I mislay such an important part of me? What's happened to my sodding memory?”

'This is unreal,' he thought a little while later, still lying inertly in the puddle and feeling almost as comfortable as a fish might feel in a placid, predator free pond. Which, he guessed, was rather a stupid thing to do whether or not he felt comfortable, because he wasn't a carp or a bloody haddock. Well, the last time he looked in the mirror he wasn't.

“No, it's more than unreal, it's impossible. How could anyone fall asleep in a cold, foul smelling puddle? Especially me, because I'm a light sleeper, always have been, always will be. I can't sleep unless the conditions are just right; I can't drift off unless it's pitch dark and I'm pleasantly warm, not too hot and not too cold, just like Mother Bear's porridge. And my mind has to be at rest, which it certainly isn't right now - it was a moment ago, but I must have still been half asleep then.

I've never been able to nod off in an armchair like my missus does when she's watching those mindless frigging soaps she wastes so much time on no matter how content I feel or how pissed I managed to get the night before. I hope to God I didn't get plastered last night - I hope I didn't wander off to heavens knows where and get up to who knows what, but I suspect I might have done just that.”

He lifted his head, opened his weary eyes for the first time and surveyed the bleak, slightly undulating, treeless, thoroughly unfamiliar landscape around him, but the rain was falling so hard that even when he shielded his eyes he struggled to pick out anything of any consequence apart from an endless expanse of mud and puddles. “Oh, bugger! Where the hell am I?”

“Questions, questions, questions,” a powerful bass voice said from somewhere behind him.

“Your voice is bass in tone, stranger,” Blain mumbled, “as opposed to the fishy type of bass. Shit, why am I obsessed with fish all of a sudden?”

“You know what tickles me?” the voice continued. “You have no idea how close to the truth you wandered during your idle mental musings.” Blain sat up and turned around, and it was only then that he realised he was naked. The rain was pelting his exposed skin with unreasonable fury, and though he covered his eyes as best as he could with his filthy hands he struggled to see the long, low, dark creature that slowly but surely slithered through the mud towards him. “Don't you know that curiosity killed the cat?” the thing said. “If I were you I'd seriously consider quietening my thoughts. Noisy thoughts tend to have the same effect as painting yourself from head to toe in Maple syrup and ringing a dinner gong in a place like this. I'd eat you myself, my boy, but I'm absolutely stuffed.”

“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” Blain said, feeling less fear than common sense told him he ought to feel as the large, potentially dangerous snake reared its muscular, oddly misshapen neck and peered at him with huge, unblinking grey-blue eyes. The creature was a good ten metres long, maybe considerably more, and its middle was as thick as a beer barrel. “I suppose I'm having another bad dream,” Blain said, “unless some comedian slipped a little something in my drink last night for a bloody laugh. Even if I am dreaming, snakey, I'm, er, unclothed - I don't suppose you have a spare pair of boxer shorts I could borrow. Or a rain mac. Or maybe a rain mac and a canoe.”

“I'm afraid not,” the snake replied as a large pustule on its olive green forehead burst, releasing a river of blood and pus that quickly dispersed in the rainwater dripping off its uneven scaly hide, which was a mass of boils, jagged slashes and open sores. “Sorry.” The thing was as ugly as sin, Blain reflected. It was malformed and unsightly, it was horrible, it was disgusting. Oh, and it could talk – it could bloody well talk, and he was answering it as if holding a conversation with an enormous serpent while sitting stark bollock naked in a sea of mud during a heavy rainstorm was the most natural thing in the world.

“My name is Fathom, Fathom Confucius Watermelon,” the snake said. “I'm pretty sure that I had a more usual, ordinary name once upon a time, but sadly it escapes me. My old name has been unavailable to my memory for longer than I can say, but that doesn't worry me any more; it belongs to another place and another time, and it's meaningless here. As for what I am, I have about as much idea as you, my friend. Obviously I'm a serpent type thing, but as you can see I'm no common or garden snake, I'm of no recognisable species, and sadly I'm rather deformed. Maybe my resemblance to anything that ever slithered on Earth is purely coincidental and I'm something else entirely, I don't really know. Once I was a man like you, Blain – I'm sure of that - but I recall worryingly little about my long passed human existence. But that's all water under the bridge now. Oh, and unfortunately you're not dreaming; I'm sorry to burst that tiny yet crucially important bubble of hope for you.”

“Oh,” Blain grunted.

“You, I gather from your crumpled, disorganised mishmash of thoughts, are Blain, but for reasons that you're unable to grasp you can't recall your first name. Never mind, a new name will dawn on you soon and you'll drop that ridiculous Blain label as if it was red hot. Blain, Blain, Blain..... No, it doesn't suit you at all. 'Blain' repeated thrice sounds a little better than a single 'Blain', but it's still not good, it still doesn't fit you at all comfortably. In my humble opinion you're more like a Cattus Cogwheel Cantaloupe, a Be-bop Bob Bedevilled, a Persephone Intercontinental Missile Slinkybob Doe Strangler, or maybe a Rastus Tart-faced Extreme Sports Calender Model.....

I'm sorry to be the bearer of more bad tidings, my naked friend, but apart from adopting a new name, sooner or later a new form will begin to take over your unwilling mind and body no matter how hard you struggle to maintain your familiar, no doubt comfortable autonomy. Sometimes metamorphosis happens very quickly, sometimes depressingly slowly, and the surprise at the culmination of that frightening process is all part of the fun, I guess. At the moment you're entirely human, which means that you're green and fresh - it means that you were only delivered here a short time ago. All will be revealed in good time, I promise. Well, a few things will be revealed, but far from all, so I ignore that ridiculous promise, I have no idea why I made it.”

“Where are we?” Blain said as he rose to his feet, the monstrous python watching his every move. “And what have I been doing to myself? I don't like it here, I don't like it at all. I want to go home, wherever home is, because for the life of me I can't remember. ”

“We're in Hell, you total nutmeg,” Fathom replied. “I thought you would have gathered that by now. Silly you..... Surely you're not as daft as you look, Blain; surely you realise that for reasons beyond your control the 'going home' option fails to appear on your agenda. Haven't you checked your diary recently? Oh, and try not to worry too much about your forgetfulness – we all suffer from that to one degree or another.”

“But isn't hell supposed to be a fiery lake full of burning brimstone? Where are the demons and the legions of the damned - on a fucking tea break? Where are the hordes of tormented souls screaming for mercy as Satan's imps plunge pitchforks into their tortured flesh, impassively pluck out their finger and toenails with red hot tongs and gouge out their eyes with desert spoons or sharpened sticks or whatever imps use to gouge eyes out with? Where are the tax collectors and traffic wardens, the bent coppers, the two-faced, lying bastard politicians and all the rest of the world's tainted human detritus? Where are the spits where drug pedlars, rapists, paedophiles and serial killers are slow-roasted for all eternity?” Fathom sighed a big old sigh as if he was sick of telling the same old story over and over again to a never-ending selection of insufferable idiots.

“Walk this way, Mr. Blain,” he said, lowering his huge, wedge shaped head and sliding effortlessly through the puddles in the familiar side to side motion of all serpents. “Let's see if we can get you out of this rain for a while. It doesn't bother me any more, I'm used to it, but you, on the other hand, are obviously uncomfortable. Maybe the constant pitter-patter of rain on your skull has already begun to addle your brain.

Hell, my friend, is not all fire and brimstone. Hell has a myriad of faces, and the only thing they have in common is their ugliness. It has too many departments to count, regions and sub regions one within another, or so I've gathered during my long incarceration here, but that may be misinformation rather than fact; Old Horny, I've heard, loves the art of deception. There are an astounding variety of punishments on the menu here depending, I suppose, upon the nature of your offence or offences back on good old planet Earth. This particular department is referred to as Zone Nine-Oh-Six-Three - don't ask why, because I haven't got a clue, but I guess all systems, even diabolical ones, have to be accurately numbered and catalogued for administrative purposes. We, the convict population, generally refer to our unpleasant prison as Mudworld. The damned rain never stops falling here and the sky is always a deep, depressing iron grey, so you'll never see a sliver of blue sky or bask in the sunshine again - but I shouldn't let that worry you too much, because we get by. Somehow.....

Be careful now, the ground's rising and it's rather slippery if you happen to be a clumsy biped. We don't want you to tumble and hurt yourself, do we? Just over the brow of yonder hillock is a deep valley where we'll find the entrance of a sizeable cave, a cosy hideaway where various shit-kickers, miscreants, reprobates, freaks, weirdos and other undesirable gather to find refuge from the relentless wetness of this bleak, ever saturated wilderness. The proprietors have tarted the place up rather nicely in the circumstances, and I think you'll like it. Or maybe not. We'll see, hmm?”

“I can't see a bloody thing,” Blain said, “so I'll just keep my head down and follow your scabrous tail. I suppose I have to trust you, Fathom, or whatever your name is. I suppose I don't have any other choice.”

“I suppose not,” Fathom said. “Trust in meee, just in meeeee,” he sang softly and, it should be stressed, rather sarcastically.