Blakey on Tour - Part 25

(An ongoing story. Part one here)


I blames it on them fucking strides.

If I'd have been wearing my own strides, instead of Jock's manky ones that was about ten times too big for us around the middle, I'd have got away. I'd have scrambled clear and gained the stairs, where I would have got on me feet again and started looking at this situation. I'd have asked meself who this cunt were who'd just pinged my head, and I'd have found the answer to be the one from the kitchen last night who'd been chopping squid. I'd have noted the short length of pipe he were clutching, the one that had just opened my scalp up a bit over the right ear. Then I'd have laughed in his fucking face and waded in, annihilating the fucker with me bare paws. But I weren't able to do none of that, cos I were wearing Jock's strides.

Which fell down a bit and got caught up around my ankles.

'Get the fuck off us, you fuckin' arse bandits,' I were shouting, trying to hoik them up again as Squid and his mate got a foot each and dragged us into a room off the main hall. Then I clocked the looks in their eyes and the bad atmosphere of the new room I were in, and I left off the strides and started kicking out at their faces.

'You not fight,' says the non-Squid one. It were the other from yesterday, the one who'd slit my throat in the kitchen and looked just like the corpse from the hearse. He adjusted his grip on my foot, planted his own behind my knee and twisted sideways. Hard.

'Aaarrrggh,' I says. Cos Corpse were busting me fucking pin here. 'Aaa—'

I hadn't noticed the other one let go, but he had. He came behind us and taped up my cakehole, cutting short my yell of pain there.

'You not scream also. Scream is for woman. Not even boy scream. Only weak boy who must be slaughter. I slaughter you. Here, in this place of dark and unhappy.'

I suddenly recalled that my other pin were free now, and swung it at him. He fielded it on the arse cheek, then planted his other foot on that ankle and pushed my legs wide. I felt my pelvis go but I didn't know what to do. I hadn't come across this type of fighting before. It were like I were an Action Man and he were trying to pull us apart, and I couldn't do a fucking thing about it. Then I recalled that my hands was free and that Squid were behind us somewhere. I craned my neck round and saw his ankle not two foot away. I reached for it. I were gonna reel it in and bite a chunk out of it, then he'd start screaming like weak boy who must be slaughter, or whatever, and his mate would have to let go me pins and help him. But it didn't happen like that. How it happened, right, is that he slipped a fucking manacle around my wrist.

Manacles was another thing I hadn't ever come across before. I'd seen many a handcuff, mind you, and the clamp of this were wider than that and not so smooth around the edges, meaning it stung like Billy-o when he pulled the chain taut. He slipped one around the other wrist. It's around that time I noticed what Corpse had done to my ankles.

He'd manacled them and all.

'This is way must be,' he says, pulling up the slack on that side. 'You have fuck with family. When man fuck with family, he must be chain. Like wild boar.'

He leaned back. Squid were leaning back and all, meaning I were yanked taut meself now like a fucking hammock. Corpse looped the chain around a hook in the wall and let go, clenching and unclenching his paws. Squid must have done same behind us cos I were more of less swinging in the air now, two Egyptian cunts stood either side of us and me wrists and ankles knacking like you'd not believe. And I couldn't even complain about it cos of the gaffer tape.

'Now you shut face and listen,' says Corpse, out of breath now. At least there were that. 'In one minute I remove tape from mouth, and you say where is father. You say nothing else and make no shout. Only where is father. If you not do this, you die. Like wild boar.'

There were a bed to the side of him. It weren't square, but long and oblong like normal beds. Fuck knows who'd started that square bed rumour. I think it were you, weren't it? What a fucking stupid thing to suggest. Who the fuck sleeps in square beds? Anyhow, Corpse reached down behind this normal shaped one and pulled summat out. It were wrapped in a faded orange towel with oil stains on it. He pulled the towel off and held the thing out before him.

Straight away I took a dislike to it.

'This special knife,' he says, twisting it and flashing around the scant light in there.

'Don't tell us - it's for cuttin' up wild boar,' I might have said if my gob weren't taped shut.

'Is special knife for cutting human. In my country, we kill the human like this...'

He held the knife in two hands and lunged forwards, going down on one knee and driving the blade forwards and down. If some poor cunt had been there in front of him, their solar plexus would have been feeling it just now. For a bit. Then they would have carked it. He got on his feet again.

'But you,' he says, 'you we not kill. You tell us where is father and you walk away with only the cut and bruise. You not tell, we kill. We kill you like wild boar.'

He came over and whipped the gaffer tape off my face, taking a few hundred bristles and some skin with it.

'First off,' I says, gulping for puff and ignoring the pain, 'first off, right... you let us go now and say a proper soz to us, I won't bear no grudge against you. You know what a grudge is? Means when you got a grudge with someone about summat. And I ain't got one with you pair o'... fellers. I knows yer only Egyptians, see, and that you dunno the rules of the road yet. See, you gotta understand who's who in this town, who's a community pillar and who's a... a... barmy old dosser or summat. And Royston Blake is the latter o' them two. Erm, latter means the first one, right?'

They looked at each other, seeming a bit confused by that one. Mind you, they barely fucking spoke English, did they? Then Corpse nodded at Squid, who taped my mouth up again.

'I see you not cut,' says the latter. Or the former. I don't fucking know, do I? Corpse, anyhow, pointing at my tadger with his big knife. Jock's trousers was gathered around my knees and I were a bit exposed, I now realised. 'I see you have foreskin. But is better without, yes?'

'Mmmmmph,' I says. 'Fnngg mmmp mmmmmph.'

'You hear man, Myko?' he says to Squid. 'Man say he like to be cut. He not want foreskin. Is better without, yes?'

'Yes,' says Squid, rubbing his paws together, like as not thinking about what kind of national dish he could make out of my endpiece.

'OK, you hold, I cut. Yes?'

'Yes.' Squid came forward, reaching out for us. I thought he were gonna grab us, which were bad enough, then I noticed the pair of pliers he were holding.

'Mmmmmmmmmmmppphhh.'

He lunged. The pliers snapped shut as he made a play for my tadger, but I were rocking the hammock a bit now and managed to turn my loinage away from him and keep it like so, anchoring meself with a hip to the carpet. Mind you, Corpse were on that side with his knife.

'You let Myko pull,' he says. 'If not pull, can be accident. Man have accident, is hard for him in life. You let Myko pull now, yes? With plier.'

I weren't really listening to him. I were in my head, trying to get the opening bit of "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor started. But I couldn't hear them guitar sounds, no matter how hard I harked. 'Mmph,' I says, trying to do em meself. ' Mmph mmph mmph. Mmph mmph...'

Corpse turned away and reached into his back pocket.

Fucking hell, I thought – it's only gone and worked. Not like I'd pictured it, mind. I'd been aiming to rile meself into a feat of superhuman strength, smashing them manacles and killing these two fuckers dead like Ivan Drago done to Apollo Creed (rest him in peace). But the music seemed to have done the trick on its todd, knocking the Egyptians back and make em change their ways. Then I noticed the mobile blower Corpse were holding, and the bleeping sound it had been making.

'Yes?' he says into it. 'Who is? No, you. Who you is?'

I could hear someone shouting at him from the other end. Fuck knowed who it were, and how long they'd keep it up for and thereby help us to keep my tadger in one piece a bit longer, but I couldn't fret over that. I had to seize the fucking moment. I had to grasp this opportunity that providence had bestowed upon us and bust meself free from the chains.

I pulled arms down and legs up, using my rock hard abs to tug the hooks out of the walls, or whatever them chains was tethered to. I thought about Rocky Balboa. I thought about him in the Rocky films and also the Rambo ones, where's he's up against it and looking like there's no hope... and yet he still comes out on top, no matter who or what is stood before him. Also "Over the Top", where Rocky's an arm-wrestling truck driver. For some reason I found that one the most inspiring of all, and I pictured meself in a massive arm wrestling contest against the wall hook, the two of us locked in an epic struggle between good and evil. I were on the side of good, just to clarify.

But evil won.

I didn't have it in us.

Squid hovered over us, pliers at the ready.

'OK,' barks Corpse, still on the blower. 'But this not end. There will be more. I swear on blood of wild boar, there will be more.' Then he comes over to us and bends down, grim-faced and looking like an evil surgeon who's got more than a circumcision lined up for us. He puts the blower to my ear.

'When they unchains you, which they will do anon, I wants you out of that place flamin' pronto,' the voice blares at us.

The Egyptians was blaring at each other and all, but I couldn't hear that. (And it were in foreign anyhow.) All I harked were Nathan the barman's irate tones coming down the line, scorching fuck out of my ear drum.

'And I wants you straight down here, right? I says right?'

'Mmmph,' I says.


(Come back tomorrow for more...)