"Blakey on Tour - Part 17"

(An ongoing story. Part one here)

I couldn't even recall falling akip. But I must have, cos I woke up and the sky were shining bright onto the lids of me peepers, turning my dreams red. Which they already was, in a way.

You'll not fall off your chair in shock if I tells you they contained vampires, my dreams did. Two of em, massive hairy ones the size of blocks of flats, with their swedes like hot air balloons up in the clouds and holding huge swords the length and breadth of buses, only flat and sharp and made of shiny metal. But they weren't after us normal folk on the ground, these vampires weren't. They was hacking away at each other, fighting an epic battle that had the whole town out on the street and watching. Every time a sword swished through the sky over our heads it made a noise like a fighter jet, and when they struck blades it sent off sparks of lightning that made the rest of the sky go dark for that moment. One of them lightning bolts forked downwards and hit the Igor Statue, smashing it into little bits. I laughed at that cos I fucking hated that statue. 'Are the stars in the sky just pinholes in the curtain of night?' said someone who were stood next to us.

I looked and it were Igor. Not the statue but the actual one. A bloke who looked like the feller in the statue anyhow, only flesh and blood and face turned up to the dark sky. He looked at us and smiled, and his teeth at the front was long and pointy and covered in blood. He started clacking em against the lower ones. The sound were more like bits of wood knocking together than an actual clacking, and I couldn't bear it. I went to punch him in the face, but my hand passed through his swede.

I opened my eyes.

'Shite,' I says, realising that I'd fallen akip arse-wise on the bed, like them foreigners in their poxy bedsit rooms. 'Shite,' I says again, cos although the dream had finished, the wooden fang clacking were continuing, ramming into me ears and through me guts and doing me fucking swede in.

'Open the door, Royston,' someone were shouting out there in the corridor, making matters even worser. 'Royston, if you don't open up I'll have to—'

'Fuck off,' I'm shouting back at him, covering me lugs. Cos I thought it might be Igor. You know how dreams can fuck with your swede even after you wakes up from em? It were like that. I knowed it weren't Igor and that there hadn't been no giant vampires fighting over town, but it didn't make us feel no better. 'Go on an' fuck off,' I yells again. 'I got enough on me plate with this fucking clackin'.'

The clacking stopped and things fell silent. It were like everyone had harked what I'd said there about having enough on me plate and felt guilty about it, leaving poor Blakey on his lonesome and fucking off to sit in the corner, tail between bollocks. I opened me peepers and let paws fall from ears, feeling the weight took off me shoulders, which was aching a bit still from the exertions of yesterday. Then the door shattered and a massive bloke came charging through it, crashing into my table and knocking the telly off, the cunt.

I got up to tell him so, outrage getting the better of the fact he were about seven foot tall, twenty-five stone and had a short crop of curly hair so ginger it were like someone had upended a tin of baked beans swede-wise on him. That's why they called him Bean, I think. Either that or his brain were the size of one. Which were possible, being as I'd never heard him say actual words. Only grunts and squealing sounds, like a pig. He smelled like one and all.

'Now now, Royston, let's not start all that handbags stuff again. You brought this on your own head, remember? You understand that, don't you, Royston?'

That weren't Bean grunting and squealing and me translating for you, like I been doing with Jock. It were the one who'd followed him in, picking his way careful through the rough edges of my door, which were now fucked. 'Brown,' he says, pointing at my wardrobe and nodding to the doorway. Bean grunted and started heaving the wardrobe. It were one of them old ones and it weighed a fucking ton, being hewn of granite or summat like they used to make em in olden times. Part of it were blocking my view from the window and I'd been wanting it shifted for yonks, but it seemed to be nailed to the floor or summat. Saying that, Bean got it across the room and positioned in front of the doorway in about ten seconds. He rubbed his paws together and looked at his master, panting only a bit.

His master chucked him a toffee, which he unwrapped and swallowed whole.

Remember I mentioned about wankers from the council reckoning they'm Lord Shit, and that I'd tell you about one of em in a bit? Allow me to introduce the cunt. He were the master feller here, and his name were Dobson, although that ain't what I called him. He had a first name and all like as not but I never called him that neither. All I knowed were he were the spitting fucking wossname of his old man, a stumpy little cunt I used to go to school with and who no one ever called by his given name, not even the teachers. He had a special name, one he'd earned all on his todd, the fucking little pervert.

And that's what I liked to call his son.

'Well, fuck my old boots,' I says, laying it on with a nice smile, 'if it ain't Showers. How's you doing, Showers?'

He were looking at my carpet, which I understood to be in the axminster style, toeing at a fag butt that were there. No expression came to his face, same as always, but you could see a little muscle in his jaw pumping in and out. Which were unusual, cos he had quite a fat face otherwise. 'Purple,' he says.

I rubbed me chin, trying to recall what purple meant. Then it came to us, and I straight away started casting about for summat to protect meself with. But Bean were quick off the block for a big lad. He got us by the thigh, wrapping his fingers around it like it were a little girl's arm, and yanked. I'd got a grip of the headboard and held on tight for the first couple of yanks, but he did the third one two-handed and I heard the wood splinter. Fourth one and I came free, headboard and all. He swung us round onto the deck, where I landed on me side and rolled into the fucked telly. I tried getting up but he got a boot on me back and pushed us down again, then sat on us.

'You know I don't like that, don't you, that name you just called me?' says the other one, crouching down beside us, knees popping and polyester strides crackling with static. 'Can you hear me, Royston? You know I can't abide being called that, don't you?'

'Mmmm,' I says, meaning aye but not sounding much like it, I do admit. Mind you, I had a mouthful of carpet just then. Actually it were velvet or summat, cos I still had the headboard and it were under my face.

'Good,' says Showers, breathing his Polo breath all over me. 'Cos if I ever hear you use that word again to refer to me – if I even suspect that you've been thinking it in the private chaos that is your brain - you know what I'll do, don't you?'

'Mmmm.'

'That's right, it'll be the red for you. Do you know what red means, Royston?'

'Mmmo.'

'No, you don't. And you don't wanna know either.'

Showers got up from his crouch, having to use my table for support cos of his weedy pins. I couldn't see him do it but I could hear it. I knowed every sound in that room. He walked to the bed.

'What's that?' he says, pausing halfway. 'Did I just hear you call me that word in your head?'

Ah, fuck...

'I believe I did hear it. Did you hear it, Bean?'

The big one who were sat atop me shifted slightly, suggesting a shrug of his shoulders, which I gotta say was massive, almost as wide as mine was not so long back. I'd been meaning to get down the gym of late, as it happens.

'No, I suppose not. But you wouldn't hear it, would you, Bean? See, you've not got the education I've got, have you? Are you hearing this, Royston? I'm explaining what it's all about, what it comes down to in the end. Remember how you fucked around at school, eh? Remember how you picked on people who worked hard to scale heights just because you were jealous of that achievement, cos you were too lazy to make a go of it yourself? I keep saying it to you, Royston: a person reapeth that which he soweth. And here you are, reaping your harvest of madness. Bean? Give him blue.'

'Mmmo...'

But Bean had my trolleys down and arse cheeks bared before I could do a thing about it. I fought to get from under him but he were about five stone too much for us, and the more I struggled, the more velvet I tasted. All the while I could feel him moving his arms around, getting himself ready. I heard Show... I mean Dobson murmuring to him, helping him get it out like as not and ready to stick in us. Maybe they was talking about the best angle to use so he could do the most damage. Then I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my arse and I knowed it were happening all over again, that I were in an endless cycle of getting fucked and I couldn't get out of it, no matter how hard I tried. He shot the lot of it inside us, then pulled the syringe out and dropped it on the carpet next to my face.

I heard Dobson chuck him a toffee.


(Come back tomorrow for more...)