Acid Bubbles (39 page)

Sirens could be heard in the distance. I had to act with speed. I'd killed the man, and he'd been a man without scruples who would have killed me. That, however, doesn't stand up in court without evidence. We were Nazi twins with our perfect white teeth and no dental records. I swapped his wristwatch for my own Omega. This was inscribed with my name. I don't know if I bought it or if it was a present. The watch might be returning to its original owner. I didn't know if it was a gift from the late John Smith. It certainly wasn't from my parents. I thought the fire might not consume everything, so I emptied my wallet of some money and put it in his jacket pocket. I took his wallet and at the last minute noticed his monogrammed cufflinks.

As I was pulling these from his shirt sleeves I noticed he was wearing a monogrammed gold ring. Was this man branded everywhere? The gold may have melted if the fire was hot enough, but I was taking no chances. It was very tight on his finger and I was running out of time. I hacked off his finger with a sharp-edged piece of the broken porcelain. I worked away for long seconds cracking the bone and cutting through flesh. During this time parts the ceiling started to fall into the room. Dave Hartley Sparrow was not dead. A loud groaning was coming from his mouth, and he was staring from one eye.

It took me a long grizzly minute to remove the gold ring. I placed the finger where it belonged next to his hand to give the impression falling debris had severed it. Pungent fumes were now filling the room coming down black and acrid from above. I grabbed Dave Hartley Sparrow by the feet, and holding him like a wheelbarrow dragged him along the corridor towards the back door. No human voices could be heard coming from the pub, only the sound of the Osmonds singing “Let Me In”, and the roaring of the inferno in the bar.

As I pulled him towards the fresh air the black fumes became lower and lower. The ceiling at the pub end of the corridor started to collapse. A huge piece of furniture came crashing through into the corridor only inches away from Dave's head. It was a large Chatwood office safe. This coming from upstairs and not behind the bar must have contained all of Billy's fiddle money. There was a hysterical laugh coming from me at the thought of being crushed to death by the profit from all that water. Water was what we needed right now, and lots of it!

I pulled Dave into the middle of the back yard well away from the pub. I didn't know what to do with him. He was conscious but not in any state to move. I went over to open the large back gate. It was locked with a padlock and two chains with more locks. If the pub collapsed it would fill that back yard with burning rubble. I didn't like Dave Hartley Sparrow but I couldn't leave him lying in the middle of that yard. I was pondering if I could put him in the farthest corner and cover him with something. It would be impossible to lift him over the eight foot high gate with steel spikes on the top.

“Look out, Peter, for God's sake look out!” a voice shouted in the dark.

Numbed by the fumes from the fire, and the fierce battle I had just survived, this was an illusion, a hallucination coming from outside The Cauldron. This voice had come out of the cool beyond the inferno. Two seconds of numbness passed by. I could not imagine what I was hearing. A woman's voice shouting for somebody called Peter to “look out”.

“For God's sake, Peter, look behind you!” the female voice shouted.

I turned to see Hartley Sparrow still lying on his back. His fierce grip would never leave his beloved Millicent behind in the flames. He was pointing her at me, unwavering in his aim. It was sawn-off shotgun with a wide spread. He couldn't miss in that small yard. Both barrels were fired at once. The noise was terrible and the pain must have been only for a second before death.

Over the top of the gate, to my surprise, I could see my mother's pale, frightened face. I didn't know it at the time but she was standing on the bonnet of the Land Rover. I could see two smoking barrels above the gate next to her horror stricken face. She hadn't waited to see if Millicent was going to fire, she'd come to help after Jane's frantic requests to save me. They had arrived during the evacuation to be informed by a local policeman who was the first man on the scene that everybody was out of the pub, and remarkably nobody was trapped in the inferno. My sister knew I was somewhere inside and insisted to my mother the showdown would be at the back out of sight in the pub's yard. They were in the process of looking over the locked gates when I dragged the semi-conscious Double-Barrelled Dave out into that small enclosed area. My luck, for once in my life, was in.

I think he was dying, but he wanted to take me with him. I don't know to this day if his beloved shotgun was loaded. It may have contained the empty cases from the two shots fired at John Smith. With his one good arm I don't see how he could have reloaded it, though he'd managed it before. I never went over to look, and I never ever told my mother that I thought it wasn't loaded. She'd brought along something heavier than her four ten used for rats and minicab drivers. With her that night she carried one of my father's double-barrelled shotguns. This was hefty twelve-bore with the equally hefty cartridges.

“Stand clear. We're going to ram the gate and knock it down.” My mother shouted this and then disappeared.

A few seconds later there was a loud splintering of wood as large back gates broke free from their hinges and crashed inwards almost filling the yard. I had to stand well back in the corner behind the mutilated Dave until the gates had fallen. They only just missed me and fell hard on top of the gunman's corpse. I staggered out of that terrible sixty hours towards the Land Rover and was pulled safely into the back by the loving hands of my lioness mother.

My sister accelerated away into the night, back to the farm where I would be hidden. We nearly didn't make it as my sister had to swerve up onto the pavement to avoid a police car and the following fire engine. It was a close shave! As we raced back to the farm they didn't know they were carrying a man who would die, and later were both delighted to find out that as a dead man I would have to start a new honest life.

John Smith's immolated body was examined, and from the evidence it was decided that Peter Robert Jackson had been the fires only victim.

My family were not delighted to discover they would have to attend my funeral and grieve. They were supported by my aunties who were never told the truth. Gossip was Beattie's middle name though she always claimed it was passing on news and information. George was horrified to discover the truth. He was amazed by my mother, proud of my sister, and tolerant of me. We still speak today but only of the present.

After the pub had collapsed it filled the yard with the tons of hot rubble. Days later the mutilated body of Dave Hartley Sparrow was dug out of the pile of bricks and burnt wood. It was a grisly surprise for the JCB driver. He'd chopped the corpse's head off with the digger bucket. Some people have no luck even when they're dead! Police managed to identify him, and with the wounds to both victims it was decided they had died at each other's hand in a local drugs war that claimed three other victims of known gangs that same day.

It had all happened during the last and most legendary crazy Monday quiz night in the heat of The Cauldron.

You never think the police are going to visit. I wasn't aware policemen existed in the other universe. The four policemen were all dressed in white uniforms bedecked with gold braid. They carried nothing offensive with them apart from their very large ornate hats. I answered the door to our little house tucked away in the most idyllic side street in the universe. Another three months had passed and I was now working, tinkering with old vintage cars. In this place you could pursue any career you desired. I don't know how the pay scales worked or how the greater economy functioned, but everything ran like clockwork. A perfect universe to live, and with my only love four months pregnant I was in rapture.

“Mr Paul Redondo, would you mind taking a stroll down to the courts tomorrow? A Lylybel has accused you.” The officer was nothing but polite. I could even sense the calmness of his heartbeat. He was not here to push me to the floor and force handcuffs around my wrists. This was a volunteer police force, people doing it to be helpful. The uniform made it a pleasant task by looking so smart in the sunlight. He didn't even suggest a time in which to appear. “Take a stroll down tomorrow.”

Jennifer was standing behind me and I could feel her heartbeat speed up. I could also feel the heartbeat inside her respond to the tension.

“Paul, I think I've broken the rules! You're in trouble because I've not completed my education,” Jennifer said. We were face-to-face, and her lovely eyes had lost their brilliance, that unforgettable glint. She emanated an aura of sadness.

“What do you mean, ‘broken the rules'?” I asked.

“I don't know, Paul, I just think I have.” She took my hand, pulling me back through the house towards the sunshine in the back garden. It was obvious she didn't want to think about anything that could spoil this. I could feel her dread and nervousness passing right through me. Outside of my own education this was the first time in this universe I'd felt anything sinister creeping in to the bright beauty.

She held me very tightly all through the following night. The next day I dressed as normal in my tweed suit. Putting on a smarter tie was my only concession to the court appearance. Jennifer came with me, never leaving my side, never letting go of my hand. The courthouse from the outside looked like a Victorian junior school. We entered into a large hall through colourfully glazed double swing doors. The stained glass panels illuminated the hall with a thousand brilliant colours. I was shocked to see the inside. Unlike the outside it was elaborate in the extreme. Every surface was covered in gold leaf or some rich colour. The fabrics covering the chairs were so vivid they were hard to look at. Topping this all on a high podium was a large gold and purple throne. At once I assumed this is where the judge or the adjudicator would be positioned for the hearing.

The room was empty, echoing with our movements. Fine dust hung in the air illuminated by the shafts of sunlight through the high stained- glass windows at the far end of the room. Nobody else was there, so this must be the wrong day. Some kind of sick joke was being played on us, but the only problem was that in this perfect universe nobody played sick jokes. I could sense footsteps coming towards me from under the ground. Whoever was coming was walking along a subterranean corridor, walking at speed, with very light footsteps.

A hatchway in the floor next to the throne was thrust open. Out of it, in all his fine judicial clothes, stepped the judge. Similar to a knight of the realm in all this finery, this man was all velvet and ermine, with a more than generous powdered wig topping his head. From where we were sitting he appeared to be very tall and slim, almost gaunt for his height. He slipped the wig off letting his mass of flowing locks tumble out. I was shocked to see the judge and our accuser was one and the same, Hysandrabopel of the Lylybel, the creature I had teased with the name pixie.

“All rise, and face the search for truth and justice,” pixie said, banging her gavel with sharp insistence against the side of the throne as she spoke.

We rose together holding hands. Through her hand I could feel Jennifer thinking,
No… Not now!

“Would the accused please remain standing for the charges to be made?” pixie said. The voice was full of the echoes of officialdom. There was no fun in this pixie today. No frog uniforms, no little fireman, all business. Jennifer didn't move, and neither did I. Were we both accused of crimes against whatever the state consisted of in this place? Jennifer pulled my hand to capture my attention, then to my astonishment pushed me down into my seat. She was the accused, the committer of a crime.

“Jennifer Alicia… you have failed to finish your education. You have failed to educate Paul Redondo about all his failings in life. And worst of all, you subverted the purpose of bringing him to this universe,” pixie said. This little speech was delivered with a grave voice.

Jennifer started to cry and I could smell the salt in the tears. I could gauge how much water was in each one. I could feel the misery oozing out of her tear ducts with every drop that ran across her cheeks. I moved to stand up and say something. Jennifer pushed me down making it quite clear in action and sentiment alone that I was not to stand.

“I fell in love with him! Is that a crime?” Jennifer said.

“You will both be punished. He will have to go, and hell won't be good enough!” the pixie said. Then she indicated that we should sit and listen to what she was going to say. We were not to interrupt, and at the end of it her judgement would be final, and without appeal. No jury of our peers, no defence lawyers, only the ringmaster of all my memories, the access memory bringing a verdict. She outlined very clearly what was supposed to happen.

“I knew all the things you'd done wrong before you got here. It was decided we would send you to the darkness. The slimy fools in that grisly place couldn't kill you. I couldn't believe you could survive so much pain. Afterwards it was decided that you would fall in love with this place, and if not this place with the woman who was so perfect for you she would be irresistible. With this you would stay in this universe forever. Time, sustenance and cancer treatments in the other world would cease. One day this universe would fade away because in the other world you would be dead. We were going to keep you trapped here until you died for your crimes.” I didn't mind this. Three thousand days here were only one day in my dull universe. Being here was the best punishment in the world!

Pixie continued. “The educational package with all the acid bubbles torturing you, I put together, having a little bit of fun at your expense. Then to my annoyance, you started to get better. You kept leaving, and using this place for holidays. Jennifer wasn't a very good junior adjudicator. The stupid girl fell in love with you and that was a bonus for me because I could sense you were deeply in love with her. Like a big stupid fish on the hook. The problem I now have is she's carrying the child of someone who shouldn't exist in this universe. This is very serious. The Grand Council don't like it one bit.”

I moved to stand and say something. Jennifer held me down, and I could feel her saying “NO” to me, or was it to what she knew was coming?

Pixie had paused because she could sense I was going to stand. In her gravest voice she continued. “You may think this trial is some kind of game, and Jennifer is pretending to love you. Feel her heartbeat through your hand, feel the sensations you share together in your mind, remember all that has gone before. Yes, she's in love with you, and her punishment is that if she wants to stay with you she will lose the child. You've murdered one child already, so do you want to murder another?”

She looked at me then as if waiting for an answer. I hesitated for less than a fraction of a second.

“No, I'll do anything to protect my child,” I said. Jennifer next to me let out a sob. She knew the sentence.

The pixie explained that Jennifer would never be allowed to educate again. She would be the only sad person in this beautiful universe. Her only joy the child, who would live and become a new part of the parallel world. The child would be special, a child in a hundred billion, half of this world and half from somewhere alien and grey. My fate would be simple. They couldn't kill me with sensation and they couldn't burn me to death with the truth. They would separate me from my greatest love, and in my world I would suffer nothing but deep depressing sorrow.

“You can't do this! I wasn't that bad! Bob was the one who was crazed. I tried to help the girl!” I pleaded. It was to no avail, the pixie was having none of it.

“Jennifer Alicia didn't finish her education because she didn't finish yours! Now I will!” The pixie said. The note was doom laden as she said it, and before the words stopped echoing around the enormous room I could hear a rumbling sound coming from four different directions. It sounded at first like a train coming, then wooden wheels on floorboards, and after a few moments I recognised the sound of that iron road of truth coming towards me.

In seconds I was standing in a box formed by four perfect, unblemished mirrors. I could see hundreds of myself. I was everywhere in my tweed suit and smart tie. Jennifer appeared in one of the mirrors standing next to me. She clutched me very tightly not wanting to let me go, and in failing to release her grip started to melt like a hot candle, and in a final moment when the heat got too much her whole body collapsed in on itself.

In another mirror Jennifer was standing alone with tears rolling down her face. They may have been tears of joy because she was holding a young child with blonde hair and, in this universe, perfect teeth. I don't think they were tears of joy. The sadness coming from her eyes told another story. The child in her arms gave great consolation, but the truth remained she'd lost her greatest love. I knew instinctively a new great love would form between a mother and a child who would remain forever fatherless.

The mirrors had told me two truths but nothing about myself. Then Bob appeared in one of the mirrors, after which he started to come into view at random in a hundred mirrors, in a thousand mirrors, and finally I was feeling suffocated by him; he was all around me in every mirror. There was nothing in the mirrors but a million pictures of Bob Wilson. I didn't get it at all because I didn't understand what the mirrors were trying to say. Then I could see Bob putting on sunglasses. These glasses were aviator style with mirrored chromed lenses. He stared at me from every mirror, and an infinite sea of reflections looked in on me. His head was getting larger and larger until the lens of one eye filled all four mirrors, his face dominating an infinite amount of space in that mirrored universe.

Then I could see truth reflected in his sunglasses. The crazy drunk, the rapist driven by testosterone, the man insanely raving, and the man who'd drank a bottle of cheap wine topping up too much beer was ME!

I was the one who got jealous when the girl decided she wanted some love for a short while to fill her empty cold life. The horror of this struck me. In my rage I'd hefted the fire at Bob not the other way around. The man who isn't called Peter Robert Jackson threw a paraffin stove at his best friend Bob in a drunken testosterone-fuelled rage. The outcome was a young heroin addicted prostitute burning to death on a bed far to lavish for her meagre basement flat. The other thing that came from the mirrors was a cold rank cowardice when I ran. I was more afraid of being in trouble than trying to help.

The cowardice was hidden in a sea of LSD, and finally the memory of that night was just another bad trip. By this time I was deep in the clutches of Lenny and too afraid to admit to myself what I'd done. This is the moment I started to enjoy the fruits of my drug dealing, this was the point where I started down the road of debauchery finally slipping into the clutches of Harry the Pocket and John Smith. From lifting that paraffin fire above my head to wielding a shovel to bury Raymond Nice on a Thursday night just thirty-six hours before I woke up with amnesia was one small step for a disgusting rank coward.

This amnesia was retrogressive. From the moment I threw that fire and started to run, things in my life went from bad to worse. Or terrible to appalling! I suppose after I'd buried the suffocated Raymond Nice in the small wood on the old farm I could stand myself no longer. John Smith was carrying out a master plan I'd outlined in the pub, suggested as a joke whilst a little bit drunk. This psychopath was carrying it out to the letter. He was going to get rid of all the opposition and I was going to help him. I'd never discussed how I was going to help him, so I suppose he thought my amnesia was an act, some part of the twisted plan. Finally crazed on LSD John Smith thought I was going to eliminate him and take the prize, everything!

All this information was flooding into my head from my sad reflection in those chromed glasses. I wanted him to go away, and I wanted me to go away!

The amnesia wasn't an act. My mind had rejected all the horrors I perpetrated after that drunken night in The Cauldron. The last innocent memory I possessed was when we marched out to become men. So this was the moment I'd returned to. My mind desperately wanted to stand in the moment before we became something entirely different from the men we hoped we would be. Bob may have become a man, but he was hidebound by his incredibly tough father's insistence on silence. I think holding in the horror I put him through killed him in the end. I buried it for forty years until cancer was killing me. At this point I was allowed into a parallel universe to let it all out, and pay for it!

At this moment I'm being suffocated by mirrors of intense power. I can feel Bob breathing, so tactile the sensations. I can see the spectrum of light in the reflections. I am still in a parallel universe without leaving. If I'm imagining this why is it so beautiful? Is all this some other force bringing me to justice? And I do know that this universe is not coming from inside me. I can sense every molecule of movement in this glorious place, and I know I cannot generate so much inside this average head.