THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Two - Part Two

Ninety seconds earlier, Henry Court opened his eyes inside the brightly lit toilet-come-shower room feeling everything that Clare had felt on waking except a lot worse. He was eighty two, and though at thirty seven Clare was starting to worry about how old she was getting, she was still little more than a girl in the scheme of things. Let her wait until she’d had two heart attacks and a pacemaker fitted; maybe a new hip; and she’d start to get a feeling for true age.

He was still sitting on the toilet, head tilted back onto the cistern, trousers pooled without dignity around his ankles. He got tired nowadays like he’d never in his younger life imagined he could, but this was something far far beyond that. It was like the visits he’d had to make to the chiropractor (Lillian, his late wife’s, orders) when his back started to play up enough that he moaned almost constantly about it. The beautiful but surely underskilled students who had been let loose on him had had zero restraint when it came to twisting his limbs and torso into unnatural and painful positions. All his body felt pummelled and his mind did too. It was difficult to bring his thoughts back into order but he did finally begin to; managed to lift his head and reassess his current location.

The toilet bowl beneath him was absent of both urine and faeces. Henry still had what Lillian had called his hairy slugworm in his gnarly fingers. He didn’t have the faintest hint of a clue about what had happened to him unless it was a stroke or some other worse new trick that God had decided to play on his ageing body, but somewhere in the middle of it his spasming arm had completed the work he’s been building to within his bolted little private chamber. The spermy slug trails were glistening on the front of his shirt, on top of his skinny thighs and pooled around the base of the slugworm itself where his hand continued to grip it.

When Henry saw this the shame flushed his cheeks as it always did. Ordinarily he would have snatched at the toilet paper roll on the wall and swiped it away as soon as the embers inside his body died down but though he tried to do so, the aches in his muscles failed him and his sticky hand slumped back down next to the slugworm as it curled back up to sleep.

He lay against the cistern. Better to stay there for a while longer until he could get his strength up again. Just rest. There was no hurry to move.

A hammering came on the door. “Henry! Are you alright in there?”

Henry came awake in a flash the way he used to as a younger man when he’d pressed the snooze button twice too many times and was now going to be late for work. He came awake so fast it pained him in his chest and in his neck.

“Henry! Can you hear me?”

It was that damn woman! Not the wife – not this time – the pretty blond who ran this den of urban racket: always smiling and helpful but in the same condescending way they all had if they were under fifty five; like it could never happen to them. She was nice enough, nicer than most, but why couldn’t she just be quiet now and let him sleep?

“Henry, are you okay? I heard you call out?”

He didn’t remember doing that. He didn’t remember much of anything.

“Open the door Henry. Can you speak to me?”

No, he did remember. He cocked forward, head dropping between his legs then he flipped back up, recalling what he’d done. Again. The printout he’d made from the internet was still in his hand. Seeing the picture again, thinking about his spunkworm and the shame of it: his face coloured even more. He clenched his hand, crumpling the centre of the A4 sheet.

“I’m alright,” he said. “There’s no need to worry. I’m fine.”

He was terrified that she’d use some special landlady trick to open the door, bolt or no. She’d see him there with his trousers down and the slug trails all over everywhere and she’d know exactly what he’d been doing.

And what he’d been looking at while he’d been doing it.

“I’m fine,” he repeated. “Really. Thank you Clare. I’m perfectly alright.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I heard—”

“I’m fine.”

He reached for his trousers and pulled them up as best he could with the internet picture still in his hand, not caring for now that there were still slug trails on his pasty over-thin legs. His trousers would mop them up and he could wash them himself when Clare was out so that she didn’t catch him. He was a careful man and it was possible to keep things private as long as you were always careful.

She didn’t say anything else; must have gone away. He washed the silvery trails off his hands and wet a tissue to pad at those on his shirt. It looked like he’d had an accident of incontinence now more than it looked like evidence of his shame. She’d find that easier to believe than anything else anyway. All the young ones looked down on the people of his generation now. They couldn’t help it. And hadn’t he been just the same – so sure that he would be immune to the curse of time; that he would escape it somehow while everyone around him succumbed... including his wife?

His body still ached as he unlocked the door but it had subsided enough to move freely, if stiffly. He held the printout behind his back in case Clare was still close. If she were going to be behind him as he made his way back upstairs then he’d simply switch it to the front.

When he opened the door she was standing right outside; right there in front of him, her arms folded, and he felt the veins in his forehead and cheeks flood with extra blood as he realised that he was not going to be able to keep the paper hidden. She obviously knew his secret already.