on air

One thing that really winds her up is me talking about the illu. She just can’t get her head around it, reckons things happen naturally.

We’d had a fair few drinks but the night was old. Got talking about God and the devil for some reason and I was sipping on a nice, cold Peroni by the oven when she stood over me with her arms folded into her chest and told me this crap about the devil being in each and every one of us. When I said, ‘and God’ (she knows I believe in one of sorts), she said, ‘oh God,’ (like she was going to puke)  ‘that’s crap. It’s the devil in you, Piers. He’s inside you but you, you just don’t see it. You think what you’re doing’s good… but it’s not really… is it?’ She’s Romanian going on Irish, so there was no minxing.

Just the day before, she told me I was a narcissist, which is a problem because she’s a doctor of psychology.

I suddenly started thinking. I thought about being on the dole, scrabbling bits of money together to pay bills and buy fags. I thought about the last few years, my status as a failed writer constantly recalling the beauty of insignificance. I thought about what Nicola said about me being a self-fulfilling prophecy, a ridiculous joke, then I cast my mind back to something my sister had said about my way of life. ‘You’re not a bad person’, she’d said.  I waited for the ‘but’ but it never came.

So we dropped the subject and plumped on some Breaking Bad, but just two series and six episodes in, we started taking turns in dropping off so we sloped off to bed in a daze.

Next morning, I went into town to sign on and my man there was very strange. He’s normally a real tough guy but this time he told me I didn’t need to sign on any more, just come in whenever I wanted, to say hello and suchlike. My benefits wouldn’t be affected, he reckoned, waving me away with ‘thank you, master’ in his faux Liverpudlian accent.

I had to see my GP next and I knew it would feel just like The Kill List but I had to go along with it in a funny sort of way, having spotted a row of hardened, protruding white nodules running symmetrically along the inside of my lower gum. I needed to know what it was.

He, the GP, was weird too, just told me it was nothing to worry about, not cancer for sure, but then he started going on about how well I looked, how I’d changed so much for the better since he last saw me, said I seemed ‘powerful’ and waffled on about the prodigal son from the bible. I asked him if he’d seen The Kill List and then everything went funny, like I was on air.

On the way into town, everyone I passed seemed to have some secret connection with me. They smiled at me and it became extremely uncomfortable when I went for a coffee and drifted outside for a fag because two twenty-something nubile girls began to flirt with me for some reason. I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying, almost at me but certainly to eachother, and I went into what I can only describe as a daze. In the end, I resigned to think about fruit machines and the Daily Mail and suchlike.

As I saw Poundland (filter tips and conditioner) across the road, I wandered out and an Argos van jumped in front of me. A bloke then came up to me (in the middle of the road) and said, pantingish, that he’d just been blown out by an actor and needed someone to stand in for him.

It was just up the road so we went off and arrived at this place I’d never recognized before, a huge lump of chapel slap bang opposite the King’s Head, where I used to take drugs and drink Coca Cola (with ice and lemon) as a teenager.

The bloke gave me some lines to get familiar with so I sat in a corner. It was a load of guff about local businesses and how the community continues to thrive and I felt like having a laugh.

I blabbed the words he gave me in front of the cameras and went to leave. The bloke said he’d be in touch for payment and I told him not to worry because it would affect my benefits and he said ‘oh, you won’t be needing them for much longer’ with a titter. This debonair older man had a tattoo of a horse on his neck, with an inscription, ‘Forgive Me’. Weird as hell.

When I got back home, I went to my mailbox and there was a cheque for £6,660 from some debt recovery company. I called them up and they told me it was from an anonymous source that left an instruction for me to ‘enjoy’. I called Nicola and we went out for a drink to get a handle on things. She said things were certainly looking up for me.

Whilst at the pub, we went for a fag and two estate agent type blokes were out there as well. One of them looked over at me, whispered something to his pal, who looked over and said, ‘yeah, that’s him’ under his breath. I asked who they thought I was but they just smiled gormlessly with drinks held at their large tummies. I’m sure I heard Nicola titter.

We most certainly did have the most amazing sex that night. It has to be said that Nicola gives the sort of head you lay awake dreaming about. It’s like a worshipping ritual for her, reminds me of foie gras. Bloody incredible.

I had a nightmare that night, too. I was tied to my bed and there was this bloke standing over me, I think it was a bloke, saying all these things about what he was going to do to me if I didn’t do what he wanted me to do. I asked why he wanted me to do all these things but it just went round and round in circles and then I got confused.

This morning, I got up and a courier delivered a DVD, so I played it and it was me in that chapel, only they’d done this nutty mix with loads of clubby visuals going on in the background. What a bunch of twats. It was totally Satanic!

They’d done Gregorian chanting over the tacky guff I read, which was accompanied by a stupid echo, and then they zoomed in on my face and superimposed it onto some lava lamp type of effect, very mystical like at the beginning of ‘Tales of the Unexpected’.

I droned on about parking strategies in the suburban setting and how consumer confidence in local authorities coupled with business had put the town and county in an enviable position. There was a note from the bloke, Gerald, saying I’d saved the day and he’d be in touch.

I got a call from him as I was about to write a little ditty about us being like trees that move about instead of staying put and he asked me to meet him at the council offices. I asked what for and he said something about a very good opportunity for me.

When I got there, I was shown up to a meeting room where I found a load of old men in suits. They clapped for about a minute when I walked in, had these gormless grins on their faces like penguins. They were dressed funny, too, loads of chains and shit round their necks dangling over their chests.

I think it was the mayor came up to me and said thank you for coming so I asked him why I was there. Everyone laughed at that, which again I found really rather creepy. They just looked at me and then the mayor said something about me being chosen from birth. I asked chosen for what and he said great things and I expected everyone to laugh but they all stayed silent.

I told him I wasn’t interested in whatever it was they wanted from me and tried to leave but a big security bloke put himself in front of the door. I asked him to get out of the way but he just stood there.

The mayor then gave me a key with an address on the fob and told me I was free to stay there as long as I liked, that it wasn’t a pressing issue but perhaps I should think about changing my mind over the next few days. I’m sure his pupils went vertically oblong when I looked at him.

The big bloke opened the door for me and everyone just stood there like lemmings so I walked out. I was convinced they were going to chase after me but all I could hear was loud laughter on the way down, a strange cackling and giggling ensemble. I got on the phone to the girlfriend and we met up.

She wanted to go and see the house so we went along and it was this massive drum up by the old private school. We sat in the car on the road and just looked at it for a while, then she said we should at least go and have a look.

I told her there was no way I was going in there and she asked why so I told her there are places we just don’t go and she laughed her tits off. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Piers,’ she said.

In the end, we knocked. There was a light on in the hallway so it seemed more appropriate. A beautiful Asian woman answered the door and addressed me as Mr Piers, said she’d been expecting me, that she was one of my staff.

Nicola gently pushed me inside with her little finger and the first thing I noticed was the heat. It was like a furnace in there. My mind went fuzzy and I was taken up to bed.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been here now.  I can only seem to remember how I got here, which is replayed every morning when I get up, but I don’t know what’s happened and it doesn’t look like it’ll end well. Gerald says Nicola’s fine.