Light.

“H… help me…”

Huh?

“nngggghh…..OW!”

Oh shit, I’m hurt… badly. I don’t remember what…

“NNGGGGGHHHH!!!”

FUCK!!!! Pain. What the fuck happened to me?? Where am I for that matter? Was it a crash? No, I wasn’t in the car, I’m sure of that. I must have fallen off something… or something fell on me. Oh Jesus, where am I?

“NNGGGGHHH!”

Ok, ok… calm down H. You need to open your eyes… You need to call for help… You need medical attention. An ambulance. Just open your eyes and look for some help.

*blink*

I can’t open… eyes… cmon… eyes!!

*blink* *blink*

C’mon eyes….OPEN FOR FUCK SAKE!!

*blink* *blink*

Huh? What was that? Is it a bed?

*blink* *blink* *blink*

A dirty old bed?

Yes. It’s a rotten looking old bed, the mattress is threadbare, with the rusty springs showing through… that picture on the wall… have I seen that somewhere before? It seems vaguely familiar… there’s fuck all light in here… Where am I?

Get up…

“NNNNGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

WHAT!!??? I can’t move… I’m… I’m tied down… what’s going on?

There’s rope around my arms, I’m tied to a fucking chair. There’s tape around my mouth… Oh fuck… Think H, where the fuck were you earlier? You left the house around 10 but why? Why? WHY? You went out to… to… Drop your niece home, that’s right! Danielle had stayed over in our place last night, you were meant to drop her home earlier but she wanted to stay and go trick or treating with the boys. You were driving her home and something happened…

“NNNNGGGGGGHHHHH!!”

OH FUCK H, This is crazy shit… What happened? You were driving her home… and the car… the car fucking broke down. I remember. That stupid heap of shit broke down. We were in the middle of fucking nowhere, too… What happened? We walked… walked where? The hotel. We went into that dodgy looking hotel to use their phone. I remember I asked the person behind reception. The woman at reception. Christ she was fucking hideous looking. She handed me the phone. I rang my sister, told her what happened. She was mightily pissed off, I remember. So was the missus. I rang her next and got a right fucking earful:

“I told you to get that fucking car seen to. That engine light has been glowing for three fucking weeks now. Christ almighty H, you’re an absolute disaster! Well, I can’t pick you up because I’m after having a few drinks now, and neither can daddy because he’s fucking flutered. You may ring your sister back and see if she can collect ye. Goodbye.”

I remember ringing the sister back and asking if there was any way she could get us picked up, but she said no. Her husband was out on the piss too, and with her two babies in bed, she couldn’t leave the house. I was going to ring a taxi, wasn’t I? The woman at reception… she said something… she was listening… I remember now. She heard what happened and offered us a room for dirt cheap. She told me that one of the guests, despite having paid in full, had left unexpectedly, and she would let us stay in his room for just €10. She was so freaky looking, I remember feeling uneasy… she was almost too eager to help out. Although a taxi  was going to cost me at least €50, wasn’t it? I rang the sister and the missus again and told them we were going to stay.

“RRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!”

Jesus, I can’t move at all… That picture on the wall. That eerie looking windmill. It’s the same picture that was in our room. Maybe I’m still in our room? Oh no. WHERE’S DANIELLE??? Oh shit, I hope she’s ok… I can’t see shit in here, there’s something on the floor over there… Looks like uh, a mattress? No. It’s not big enough to be a mattress. Is it a bag of some sort…? I can’t make out… There’s a round piece with a…

OH…

MY…

GOD…

IT’S A FUCKING BODY!!!!

GET OUT H!! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE NOW!!!

“NNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

“NNNNNNNNGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!”

“NNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

My arms won’t move. Oh no. Oh no. Oh nooooo!! Oh god, if that’s Danielle… It better not be her… It can’t be… Oh shit, what kind of place is this? I can’t believe what’s going on. I can’t believe it. This has to be a fucking dream… it has to be…

“NNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!”

“NNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!”

It’s no use… I’m trapped. Oh God I’m going to die here… please don’t let me die here… How did this happen? The windmill… There was something about that windmill, but what? I can remember sending Danielle off to bed. The room only had single bed. A picture of a windmill was above it. Just like here. I had to sleep on a musty sofa. I remember going down to the bar, I couldn’t sleep on that piece of shit, not without a few drinks in me… In the bar I ordered a couple of whiskies. The man behind the bar wasn’t using any measures, just pouring the shots in. Large shots too, I recall. I remember I went through a fucking maze of doorways to find the bathroom. When I got there it was worse than anything I’d ever seen. Pools of piss on the floor. Flickering UV striplights. No catch on the cubicle door. Holes in the cubicle walls. No toilet roll. No hand towel. Graffitti scrawled everywhere. I remember reading one message in particular. A small, ominous message carved into the cublicle door:

“If the windmill catch your eye, see thyself before you die…”

I can remember leaving the toilets. I couldn’t find my way back to the bar. I was trying to retrace my steps… Left, then right, right again, then take the third door, then… left? Or was it it Left then right then left? All the hallways looked the same… The place was much bigger than it appeared to be and I was completely lost. I walked through doorway after doorway, but couldn”t find my way back to the bar. I remember going down the small steps and then around the corner…

Then I saw it…

The windmill.

It was there the end of the hallway… A six-foot model windmill. I momentarily thought about what I had just read in the toilet but curiousity got the better of me and I slowly approached it to get a closer look… There was something very strange about it, I remember thinking  what was a model windmill doing in the hallway of a hotel?  It had lots of windows and inside I could see there were figurines inside. It was like a doll house. In looked in one window and saw a miniature man staring at a mirror. I was somewhat taken aback by the fearful look on his face. It was really fucking strange. In another I saw a man cowering under the covers of a bed, he too look horrified. I was feeling really unsettled by the figurines, but the freakiness of it all just roused my curiousity even more… Another window revealed a man with large dog-like ears and tail. Another showed a woman seemingly bound to a bed. The next window showed a little boy with his hands over his ears and in the next one I saw a woman clutching a baby. I looked into another window and saw a man in hiding with a camera.

There was only on window left at the very bottom of the windmill. I had to get down on my hands and knees to see through. I could just about make out a miniature man sitting on a chair.  I could see there was another figurine in the room… lying on the floor. I leaned in closer. I could now see that that figurine on the floor had it’s eyes closed and that there was a third figure in the room, standing behind the man in the chair, but I couldn’t make out what it was doing. I leaned in closer still and saw…

Light.

“H… help me…”

Huh?

*blink* *blink*

Wait a second… I’ve been here already…

OH SHIT!!

WHO’S BEHIND ME???!!!

“It’s time to go…

…Uncle H”

I could hear the blade being unsheathed, and through a mixture of fear and disbelief,  I froze… completely.

I clenched my eyes as the blade came down swiftly…

I felt the release.

I was…free?

My arms fell loosely down by my side. The blade came down sharply again and suddenly my legs were free too…

I stood up.

What the hell?

Somehow… I’m back…

back in the hallway? But how?

The windmill… It’s right in front of me… I can see the little figurines…

Quickly, I get to my feet and turn around…

OH GOD, NOOO!!!!!!

Have you noticed how quiet it has been?

That nobody’s mentioned it for ages?

I’s almost eerie don’t you think?

After a year and a half of constant noise and clamour there’s suddenly nothing…

Not a peep…

So is that it then?

Is Maddy finally gone?

< GO BACK TO PART II

Stag weekends. Don’t you just love ‘em? A good friend of mine is tying the knot later this year and we went to Dublin for his stag party was last weekend. Don’t ask me how we ended up going to Dublin for the stag. Considering that we all live in the commuter belt, it’s not exactly “away” for the weekend; we could (should) have been lapping it up in Riga or dropping out in Amsterdam. Shit, we could have at least travelled down the country for a couple of nights…

…Actually, fuck that shit…  Dublin was okay, I guess.

We hit the bottle fairly hard on Friday night and anything that happened after 11pm has now been locked into the ‘black hole’ segment of my memory. Saturday morning hurt so bad, the damned sunlight was piercing a hole right through my brain. The lads all went straight to the pub, but I, having learnt my lessons in the past, said there was no way I was drinking again until I consumed something that qualified as food. So while the boys were getting the drinks in, I decided to sneak off for a quick bite to eat.

Walking had become a bit of a challenge to my poisoned body, so I thanked the holy lord when I saw that there was a quiet little cafe next door to the pub. I stumbled in the door and made my way down to the back, away from the windows and that awful sunlight. I saw a vacant table beside the toilet. Perfect. There had been an awful lot of gurgling going on inside me that morning and this usually meant that an anal eruption was imminent. I’d fucking swear that laxatives are one of Swithwick’s main ingredients.

As I took my seat, yet another degenerate staggered in the door. This guy looked even worse than I did. With blood all over his angered face and a torn shirt, he hurriedly made his way down towards me and the paranoid side of my brain began to wonder if we were involved in some sort of altercation the previous night? Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case, as he walked right past me and sat down beside a woman at the table next to mine. Okay, so I’m a bit of a nosey cunt, but when he started to mutter something in her ear, I listened carefully to try and hear what he was saying:

“…I got attacked for being a pervert…”

????

Fuck this, I said to myself. I’m going to join the lads. The food can wait.

So I returned to the pub and we proceeded to spend the next five or six hours drinking… heavily. At this point, everyone started to realise that if we didn’t eat soon, we wouldn’t last another hour. It was around 5 o’clock when we all bailed from the pub and began wandering around looking for a good restaurant. With the state we were in, we agreed that the nearest place with some proper food would suffice, so our search didn’t take long. I have to say, that as we all piled in the door, the manager of the restaurant didn’t look at all happy to see us. Not that I can blame him really. Whilst we weren’t rowdy, obnoxious or loud, there was no denying that we were all very, very drunk.

The waitress took our order as soon as we sat down, and our meals were all served very promptly. I suspect the staff were told to get us in and out as fast as was humanly possible, and they were certainly doing their best to accomplish that. After the meal, I ordered a large coffee to try and perk myself up a bit, this all-day drinking lark isn’t as easy as it used to be. As I drank down my coffee, I immediately felt my stomach cramping.

‘Oh shit…’, I muttered, ‘…here it comes!’

I really should have known better, especially since my stomach was groaning and gurgling earlier in the day. You see, for me, coffee acts as a dangerous catalyst in my digestive system. Like throwing a cylinder of gas on a bonfire, I knew I had only a matter of seconds between the first few creaks and the fiery, or in this case, shitty explosion.

I fucking legged it to the jacks.

I’m not exagerrating when I say that I was undoing my trousers as I crossed the restaurant, for every fraction of a second was vital now. Please God, let there be a cubicle free, I thought. Otherwise I’ll have to do it in the sink, and fuck me, that’s gonna be messy. As I burst through the men’s room door I was relieved to see that there was no-one else in there. I swiftly locked myself into the nearest cubicle, got my trousers down the rest of the way and flung my arse down onto the seat just in the nick of time. What happened next was, I’ll admit, unnaturally disgusting. It was an evacuation that the White House Chief of Security would be proud of. The words “Flag of Japan” sprung to mind and, in the relief of it all, I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a little laugh. All was not well, however, when I discovered that the flush mechanism for my chosen cubicle was not working. Jesus, I can’t leave it like that, I thought, it’s an awful sight. Then I thought about it again and said to myself, fuck it. It’s their fault that the toilet’s not working, not mine.

So, guilt free, I cleaned myself up and made my way back to the table.

The lads were all looking in better shape now, with food in their bellies and hot beverages to take that drunken edge off. When I sat back down, I advised the lads not to use the toilet, explaining what I had just been through down there. Needless to say, they weren’t in any hurry to go after hearing that story. The waitress then returned to our table to ask if we would like some dessert, and the few of us that felt they could fit it in gave the waitress their orders. At this stage, the staff still didn’t seem to know about the mess in the toilet, so when one of the lads asked for chocolate mousse, I just couldn’t help myself…

“I’m sorry sir, but we’re all out of chocolate mousse”, the waitress explained.

Athough she had no idea what I was talking about, the stifled laughter from the lads was all too apparent when I replied:

“Actually miss, if you look very carefully…

…I’m sure you’ll find there’s been a fresh delivery!”

Oh yes… I am the King of Class.

CONTINUE TO PART IV>

…why I dropped out of college last time.