LONDON
Jack thought about the trap his house
was now. It was the only place on earth he could be found easily. He was right
not to be going back there. Here at an airport hotel he was safely hidden away.
But on the other hand, there was unfinished business he was neglecting. He
couldn’t escape the feeling that he needed to go back one last time.
The woman behind the counter revolved
round from the mail slots and erupted in pleasure at seeing him. There was a
quiet reserve in this practised politeness but false though it was, it was
spellbinding. Her hair was very dark and sleek, cut halfway down her neck and
keeping close to the contours of her head; her eyes were overlarge and
adorable. Jack met her smile and she brightened further. “May I help you sir?”
“Yes please. I want to have a room
and I’ve just come into a very large sum of money.”
The receptionist tilted her head to
the right. “Of course.”
There was more hard cash right now at
the very edge of his grasp than he had ever felt beneath his fingertips. It was
time to begin spending it. The hotel was the most expensive he could get with
easy access to the airport. The lobby alone was vast and open and deliciously
hot after the streets outside and his long walk; there was so much space and
beauty. It was gorgeous. He was led up to his room near the top of the building
by a young porter. He took it as slowly as he could, allowing the objects
around him to take on a different form in his perceptions. This wasn’t reality
anymore, they were phantasmal images from his dreams and his imaginings made
into something he could reach out and touch.
He couldn’t reconcile with it, even
with it surrounding him. As he had been told of the inheritance it had felt
separate from where he was standing. It had been as though he were watching
another person’s life through thick glass. But here, now; it should have been
different; and it was; it was something else entirely. There were sensations
here that he had never felt, as though unused parts of his brain were opening
up and becoming active for the first time. It was a vision: all of this, so
unlike anything that had come before. It wasn’t just the sensation of walking
through wealth and beauty, that could be experienced in the Tate Gallery; but the realisation that all of this was to be a
part of the rest of his life. Everything was different now and would be for
every single day that followed.
When he was finally left alone he
stood for minute after minute, just looking. His rooms were magnificent. He lay
out on the enormous bed; he ran water into the vast old-fashioned stand-alone
bathtub and lay beneath the surface of the bubbles, holding his breath until he
couldn’t do it anymore. Finally hungry, he ordered platefuls of food through
room service, then he got drunk on white wine, collapsing with his back against
the bed to watch a film on the vast but cleverly concealed television set.
It was the dark horror of Event
Horizon, a tale of space explorers making contact with the horrors of Hell.
Lying there amidst all that wealth, barely conscious from the drink, its lurid
and disturbing images took hold of him and gripped his mind in a way they never
could have otherwise. The film was a rapid strobe of deliciously gratuitous
violence. It was a creation designed for a separate level of consciousness.
This was his life now: this wealth; this
pleasure; this beauty.
But the horror was part of it too.
That was for sure.
The horror was part of it too.
When the film finished he lay in the
dark staring upwards for a long time. Finally he sat up on the edge of his bed
and reached for the light.
It was no good. The nagging in the
back of his mind was insistent. He couldn’t just forget about it: the unfinished
business back at his flat. He was leaving the country in the morning. This was
his last chance to go back before he left. He picked up the phone and dialled.
“Reception. Can I help you?”
“Hi. This is Jack Catholic in room
801.”
“Yes Mr Catholic.”
“I have a flight in the morning but I
want to pop back to my flat beforehand. I was wondering if I could get a
slightly earlier wake-up call.”
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