Acid Bubbles (18 page)

She couldn't hold the whole weight of an Irish wolfhound, so I concluded the bit you could see was the only bit that weighed anything. It was still guarding the bag. This diligence would catch the unwary, those foolish enough to open it would discover the full wolfhound, and this is where I stress the word “wolf”!

“How am I going to get into the bag if the hound's in there?” I asked.

After I said this I took a big long refreshing drink of glorious beer with my head back, my eyes closed. When I opened them to put the beer glass back on the table I was standing in the blackness once again. Just to reassure myself I looked up. Above me were three things, not including the sky of course. One of them was smiling at me and he was an Irish wolfhound. The other was also smiling at me with a little bit of an ironic twist to the corner of her mouth. The sort of look that says, “We caught you there didn't we”? Finally I was still definitely in the pub yard because above both of them silhouetted against the blue sky I could see the pub sign, “The Old Vaporous Loco”.

Inside, the Lylybel who I called pixie was already waiting dressed in the finest God knows what. She was dancing around making a strange little skipping arm waving dance. During this performance it looked as if the pixie weighed almost nothing. This must be impossible, I thought, as she was wearing an enormous backpack. It was a canvas device similar to a very old hiker's backpack. However, the canvas appeared to be of a very fine lightweight quality. The bag itself was colossal. It was the size of a small car hitched up high on the back of this delicate and now wondrously strong creature.

As always she pre-empted my question. I was going to ask what was in the bag. My little friend had already realised this and told me it was an antidote to the bubbles. I was just about to ask if it was full of water when she mentioned this was a different antidote, one that would work in a different way, and was sometimes a little bit more effective. This would have me back to normal with a little less suffering. I noticed she didn't say without suffering, just a little less. The pixie could be such a liar.

She produced from nowhere, or hidden back pockets in her clothes, the two familiar devices. The ornate silver cup and the blowing ring, which of course wasn't a key. Or was it the key? This time the ornate vessel in which the bubbles lived, I suppose I can use that word, was quite small, much smaller than I'd seen before, and I was wondering if the key would fit into it. Of course when I saw the key I realised it would. This too was tiny, so I was expecting a myriad of small bubbles, and that's exactly what I didn't get.

Pixie didn't take a breath. She dipped the tiny device into the silver pot, held it up in front of her face, pursed her lips, and at this point the giant haversack started to get very slightly smaller, not smaller by a large amount, but very slightly smaller. The draft, because it was nothing more coming from her lips started to produce a bubble, not a stream of bubbles, just a single tiny almost black bubble. It looked horrific, nightmarish. The bubble continued to expand as the enormous backpack became a little smaller. It was still a massive backpack, but by now the bubble was coloured light grey and enormous, the size of an elephant. It wobbled around on the end of the blowing device looking for the world like a bouncy castle version of this creature.

“Go on then! Go on then! Pop it! Pop it!“ pixie demanded. She'd disappeared entirely behind the colossal bubble, and there was no sign of the vessel, or the key. Through the translucent glow of this very light grey bubble, I could see the pixie was now wearing what appeared to be an early Boy Scout uniform complete with shorts, hairy socks, brogues and an enormously stupid large brimmed Scout hat. She removed this monstrous headgear and threw it at the bubble. It bounced off the grey blob flopping to the floor. She then told me the only way I could pop this one was to run at it going full pelt. She informed me not to run at it “half arsed”. Some pixie!

So, I ran at the bubble on full power. I was doing fifteen miles an hour when I hit it producing a big wet pop!

To me it sounded like I'd dived below the surface of a pool, the stunning rush of a quieter sound, full of strange ghost echoes.

Pixie heard a big pop and laughed so much she almost burst!

In my hand I held a fresh packet of non-filter cigarettes, and a half bottle of whisky rested in my pocket. I was standing in a hospital corridor. I scanned this way and that looking for somebody official with who I could enquire as to the whereabouts of one Leonard Stubbington. This was his unused birth certificate name, to everyone else in the outside world this particular Leonard was known as the more immediate Lenny the Helmet, famous for his continuous carrying of a crash helmet, and that's the story he told his mother.

Lenny was on the trauma ward having had a bizarre accident a few days earlier. He'd spent the first few days in intensive care. Lenny was in luck. They weren't too bothered about head trauma or anything considered sinister by the neural consultants. The biggest worry for the doctors were blood clots coming from the many broken bones in his legs and the possibility of bone marrow leaking into his system causing heart problems. He was pretty bashed about after suffering a nasty accident riding his much loved Lambretta 225 cc SX scooter. This had not survived the brutal impact. Lenny had not been told of its sad demise. I knew the big greasy dork would be mortified at the loss of his loved one.

I didn't know the details of the accident, however, I wouldn't have to wait long to find out from the man himself. That was if I could find him in this maze of corridors, small rooms, and signposting that was useless for finding anything you were looking for, or for that matter anything you weren't! They consisted entirely of numbers and acronyms. After a quarter of an hour of looking around, I had at last located my quarry in a small side ward with three other patients, all of them young, all of them in traction, and all of them motorcyclists. Most of them would return to 2 two wheels, Lenny included.

“Hey, hi, man, cool to see you. I'm doing just great, fantastic, amazing!” Lenny said, as high as a kite on painkillers. All this was said in a slurred and difficult to understand voice. I suggested I return tomorrow but he would have none of it and wanted to tell me all about it, how he'd come to find that sometimes fluffy clouds are solid. This had me mystified, and I asked him what he meant by solid clouds. At this Lenny laughed like a drain. “Man, the mist, it was solid, solid as a rock, and I tried to ride through it!” Lenny managed. After this he slurred out an explanation as to the circumstances of his accident. He took the long route round, and the whole tale carried on for about an hour before I could make out exactly what he was saying. It was like this:

Lenny was doing a drug deal and he dealt nearly exclusively in acid, an occupation which I apparently knew all about. Or course I only knew about this from my experiences after I woke up disorientated and clueless in August 1973. It was in the two days after awakening I discovered I was teamed up with Lenny in his business. I knew something about this partnership, not the whole story, and only little snippets I'd heard. Now I was getting the story in blur vision from the man himself on the day, though four decades too late.

It was a winter's day, typical in its greyness, with a damp low light that did nothing to relieve the dullness of the daytime. In his usual fashion Lenny had been hanging around at home (God knows where that was, or what it was like). A phone call had awakened the slumbering Lenny who was taking his afternoon nap sleeping off lunch, if that's what you'd call his daily beer with fish and chips habit. Somebody in the next town wanted some stuff, a grand's worth of stuff. This was a good call for Lenny. So, a little worse for wear, or in fact a lot worse for wear, he stumbled down the stairs to his motor scooter.

In the early days he wasn't the most careful drug dealer usually keeping most of the stash somewhere in his house. The location of Lenny's place remained a mystery to me, but I'm quite sure that a good police squad would have sniffed it out in no time. His usual
modus operandi
for the movement of acid was to use some part of his motor scooter for concealment, a fuel proof tube inside the fuel tank, or hidden in part of the frame where he'd made access during the many modifications to his beloved machine. On this day the size of the deal and the speed in which he needed to get there, along with his rather drunken state were not the best arbiters of good fortune for our jolly dealer.

Lenny concealed the acid tabs in two places. When I say concealed this was barely the case. He had far too many tabs on him, so when his normal hiding places were all full he had some tabs left over. These he stuck in the lining of his famous crash helmet. He went on to tell me he was starting to get big time paranoid about being watched, but he was drunk and the fear of being caught by a surveillance squad had diminished in inverse proportions to the alcohol consumed.

Another thing against Lenny in this endeavour was his velocity as he ripped along on one hell of a rate, speed being of the essence. It wasn't so important that he had to rush and attract attention. Rightly or wrongly, Lenny had the throttle pulled right back and at times after leaving town was touching eighty miles an hour which he informed me was flat out even from a 225. Then, he added, once clear of the town he really started to enjoy the ride, though the after effects of the booze were starting to make him sweat. Lenny was suffering a big flop sweat, wet all over.

Halfway into his forty-mile trip to the nearby city Lenny ripped through a small country crossroads, the beginning of the end? This was the moment the unfortunate circumstances of his near future began to unfold. Two bored officers in their police car had seen him travelling at great speed, well above all the local limit. To break the boredom they set off in hot pursuit. Lenny noticed the police about three miles down the road when the siren blasted from fifty feet behind his scooter. The noise grabbed his dulled attention. The only way he could shake them off was to enter the maze of little country lanes. He knew these well from the days when he used to go fishing on a regular basis with his old man. This group of lanes led to all the best fishing rivers and ponds. He knew them like the back of his hand and his fervent hope was the policemen didn't go fishing with their fathers, if they had fathers.

He went on to say that for a few miles he was thinking if he could get far enough ahead he'd ditch the stuff, or hide in a patch of woodland he knew and let them pass. They were on him and he couldn't seem to shake them off no matter what he did. Salvation came into view when he spotted a path running alongside the railway track. The path was an access route to some railway work huts, and at a glance it appeared to continue past the huts and off into the countryside. Beyond the work hut the track was a single strip of dirt, impossible for the pursuing police car. All this time the Triumph 2.5 pi squad car was on his tail. The roads were too narrow for the police to pass and stop him. They were waiting for the right moment.

The only thing he could do was make a last-minute dive onto the track. With a lot of wild leaning and a bit of luck our fugitive was on the path and away with the police car overshooting the turn. The officer in charge brought the car to a halt with a screech of tyres. Throwing the car into reverse the driver made the moves to follow him down the badly made road.

Lenny shot past the hut and sure enough the road beyond was only a single track. His luck was in the track had posts to stop wide vehicles going beyond the hut. He was away and the police wouldn't catch him. He didn't think they'd seen his number plate either. This was the old black and white type, or in his case silver aluminium with very little paint. This item was always kept in a dirty condition, so the plate was difficult to read from only ten feet away. He'd figured they wouldn't know who he was, and if by a fluke they caught him he wouldn't be carrying the stuff!

“Man, I was bricking it. I thought they got me. I thought they'd find the acid, so I got out of sight down that track and started looking for hiding places. Found a good spot under some railway signalling equipment to hide it temporary, like. The trouble was…” Lenny continued.

Yes, the trouble was Lenny hadn't got rid of all the drugs, and in his frantic efforts to lose the police tail he was sweating like a pig and strangest thing was happening. He was starting to enjoy the whole experience. “It was fantastic! Like a brilliant war movie where you know the hero will shoot all the Germans or the Jap's or whatever.” He explained to me he was so excited by the chase that he decided to see if he could find a police car and spook them by doing the same trick again. By now he was really enjoying the day, he was magnificent! Not Lenny the Helmet, but now Lenny the fucking invincible!

After some effort turning the scooter around on the narrow track he headed back the other way to find the police car. After reversing back to the main road the policemen were in the process of leaving in the direction they'd come from. Lenny shot out of the track over the level crossing and off in the other direction. The two policemen in the car heard it, saw him, and decided to chase him down. This time they would catch the slippery bastard.

Lenny was more than a brilliant scooterist… he was a TT rider, a world-beating star on two wheels, uncatchable. All his fear had gone, and they were nowhere near him because it had taken them far too long to turn round on the narrow road. They were greatly disadvantaged by the big man's pure speed, agility and fearlessness. He sensed the police car would not catch him, not even get near. He was invincible. Also in his favour was the coming of evening with mist lifting up from the damp fields in strange swirling blobs that drifted across the road making visibility difficult.

He was having no problems seeing today. He had thousand mile eyes, vision of an eagle, and unstoppable pace. The mist was starting to look like objects, elephants, cows, and even small buildings, and Lenny was just drifting through them. He hit them at speed and they would fly apart in clouds of coloured light making a sound like metal tubes falling on a concrete floor. He was enjoying every minute of this. Lenny forgot about the police car in pursuit and aimed at the blobs of transforming mist. This was the ride of a lifetime, he was in the groove, and for some reason it was incredible!

The policemen realised the big oaf with the long greasy hair hanging out from under his helmet was going nowhere special, and he no longer tried to evade them. Their quarry took a left turn, and they knew the small country road was only field access with provision for a few farmhouses. The road looped back onto the country lane they were on, so they didn't follow Lenny. They continued on past the junction to where he would rejoin the road. The officers were taking a chance he'd turn left and ride straight into their roadblock. One officer would wait by the car, the other hidden in the bushes fifty yards up the road, so when their prey was stopped by the police car the other could rush up from behind to make the arrest.

Our hero of the day, the wonderful Lenny, was pulling the throttle nearly through the backstop such was his velocity. Now his skill level was beyond the impossible. He was Godlike, especially the way he and his machine cut through these strange spectres, bursting them with coloured light and sounds so high pitched they bounced inside his head. He rounded another curve and in front of him were three or four more clouds of mist. It was getting thicker, more interesting. The first cloud in his way looked like a very low-flying aircraft painted blue, a very light blue. It was travelling backwards. How he knew the direction of travel was backwards he had no idea. He cut through it like a knife through butter.

Other creatures exploded with noise and light as he drove through them. Hippos exploded, giant spiders fell apart, Lenny was in ecstasy at the power he held in the hands gripping the bars. Then there was this strange Chinese creature in the road, black and white. A very large giant panda was sitting in the road. Lenny pulled the throttle as hard as he could desperate for the sensations invading this body would bring, he ploughed through the stupid black and white creature.

Lenny hit the panda right in its stomach. It was made of metal, hard steel, it was a Triumph 2.5pi. This didn't burst apart in a bright flash of light. No, Lenny's legs burst apart with a horrible crunching sound, and it was the last thing he remembered until he found himself lying in the road. He was transfixed looking up at a blue flashing light on the roof of an ambulance. By this time he was on morphine, feeling good, and passed out again.

“I was high as a kite, man, the acid inside my helmet, I'd forgotten the acid inside my helmet, and all that sweating, it had soaked into my head. Man, I could've died from the acid alone, but, man, wow!” Lenny mumbled.

In his traction he couldn't move much, both legs stretched out in metal cages with pins through them holding bones together. He had drips, tubes and wires running in and out of him almost everywhere, but he still managed to lean over suggesting a little bit of business. Lenny was whispering to me and I knew all about it. I was his right-hand man doing a bit of running for him and doing a lot of dealing for myself. Lenny had a private contact in another city who‘d send over a runner, it all worked smoothly. With John Smith's stuff we'd make a bigger margin.

Lenny carried on telling me how he was now dealing with Smiggy and they were doing all right. We were all doing all right, making deals, and polluting the stupid of other towns. Making lots of money and not caring a toss for the dope heads. At this Lenny looked at all the tubes and laughed.

“Looks like I'm one of the stupid now! Mate, can you take over for me for a while? Someone's got to keep the thing running. Anything happens to you, I'd do the same for you, man.” So that's how deep I was in all this, and I suppose this was why I was given the opportunity to look into this part of my past. I find this bubble darkly funny even though it illustrates my lack of care for others and only my care for making money. Sod them, they're only acidheads was my attitude!