Vinyl Destination

by Millard, Adam

  Standing there in his overalls, with his bright blue safety helmet still perched atop his bald pate, the man looked completely vacant. It was as if somebody had picked him up while he was sleeping, dropped him on the street, slapped him in the face and run off, as quickly as possible, into the night.

  Memories were vague and fuzzy at best. He could just about recall the mighty cleaning the cats had given him, right after he’d settled down in front of the telly with a steak-and-kidney pie and a Nebuchadnezzar of cheap cider, but that was about it.

  Maybe I’m pissed, a slurred voice said inside his muddled head.

  But he’d barely even touched the cider, which, incidentally, was what the brewers had apparently been going for when they’d decided to make it damn near impossible to stomach.

  So he couldn’t be drunk, but this did nothing to alleviate his fears in the slightest. Something else had led him to stand up from his comfortable armchair, ignore the final three minutes of a particularly complex Murder She Wrote, and head outside, where he now found himself, motionless and feeling rather queasy.

  Suddenly, an idea that was not his own lit up his befuddled brain. “I’m a construction worker,” he mumbled to himself. “What I need to do is find myself a copper, a Native American chap, a cowboy, a GI, and a man dressed in all black leather.”

  It made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and yet he was bloody going to do it, even if it took him all night.

  A cab swerved around him as he stepped out into the street – where had that come from? – hopping the kerb on its opposite side before crashing into a telephone pole.

  Kavannah didn’t care. If the driver was dead, well, he shouldn’t have swerved. Didn’t they teach these people anything in driving school?

  The driver, rightly irate, climbed out of the wreck and unleashed a torrent of rude words – what exactly was a cum-jangler, anyway? – at the dazed idiot stumbling around in the road. Kavannah, not one to be perturbed, turned to the livid bastard and said:

  “Mate, if you’ll pipe down just a second, I’ve got a question to ask.”

  “Pipe dow… he wants me to pipe down. You’re lucky I didn’t go over you, you daft prick! Go on, then.”

  Kavannah cleared his throat, straightened his helmet and asked, in all seriousness:

  “Where’s the closest YMCA?”

  18

  It was around 9pm by the time Edith Butcher finally managed to get the house back in order. Bill had been cursing for the entire duration, moving things from one place to another, hissing through his gums as the search for his missing dentures continued. It had taken less time to find Josef Fritzl’s basement, Ted thought. They were all about ready to give up when his father finally dragged the cooker out.

  “Gacha, ya liffle bashardsh!”

  “Have you found them, dear?” Edith asked, placing a framed photograph of Penn and Teller back onto the mantelpiece. Quite why they kept a framed photo of the illusionist duo had always been mystery, and Ted had never asked.

  Bill gave his teeth the most cursory of blows before immediately stuffing them back into his mouth. He smiled bright and wide, revealing what appeared to be a mouse dropping between his top incisors. Though Ted had never actually seen one before, he could only suppose that this was what they called a shit-eating grin.

  It was shortly after that when Bill really lost his marbles. One minute he’d been flicking through the TV channels, searching for something that didn’t have Ant and Dec on it, and the next he was up, swinging his hips, using Edith’s knitting needles to play air guitar. At first, Ted and Edith sat watching, assuming that the man was suffering a simple stroke, but after a few minutes, it became clear that something had gone horribly wrong.

  “Dad, you’re going to give yourself a hernia….”

  Ted lunged out of the way as his father leapt across the room, dislocating one hip and causing the other to make a not-so-reassuring sound – like a twig snapped underfoot, or one of Kate Moss’s toes.

  “Son, I can’t… I can’t help it. Shit, my knee’s busted, and I think I’ve just… yep, I can feel it running down my leg.”

  “Bill, just sit down for a minute,” Edith said, patting the cushion beside her nonchalantly. “Remember what the doctor said about sudden movements?”

  “The doctor doesn’t know what he’s on about,” Bill said, lowering himself down into his own armchair. “Oh, deary me, I’ve never felt such pain.”

  Ted watched his father from a safe distance, and he couldn’t help but notice something else odd about him. Seated in the armchair, with lord only knew dribbling down his shins, was what appeared to be a total stranger. It still bore the face of his father, but it was slimmer somehow, and definitely different. His top lip quivered, lopsided, as if he might sneeze at any moment, and the wrinkles that had previously made up about ninety percent of his face had all but vanished.

  “And just what are you gawping at?” the stranger asked, that tremulous lip lifting ever higher, as if someone had fish-hooked it and was now giving a jolly good tug.

  Ted didn’t answer; he was simply too shocked to speak. Instead, he tapped his passing mother (carrying a sewing kit now, for some reason) on the shoulder.

  “Hm?” she said.

  “Mum, look at Dad, will you, and tell me if you see anything strange.”

  “Why, I don’t need to look at him to tell you that,” she said, unpacking bits and bobs and laying them out on the kitchen table, where she always did her crochet, macramé, knitting, stitching, embroidery, doily-making, cheese-cosy sewing, and knicker-elastic repairs. “I’m afraid he hasn’t been the same since that nice lady down at the newsagents told him there would be no more Railway Weekly. Knocked him about something rotten, that did. Didn’t it, Bil—”

  She screamed as her gaze fell upon the intruder, seated right where Bill had been only moments before. He was even wearing Bill’s dungarees, which could only mean one thing: someone had broken in, killed Bill, disposed of the naked body, climbed into his clothes – which were ill-fitting, to say the least – and plonked himself down in front of the telly.

  “Who the hell are you?” Edith gasped, grabbing the nearest thing that could be utilised as a weapon, which just so happened to be a ball of crimson wool. The man in the armchair had the knitting needles, however, clicking them together to a familiar beat. Was that Heartbreak Hotel?

  “What are you going on about, woman,” the stranger said. “Have we got another gas leak?”

  “B-bill?” she managed, just before fainting. Ted caught her before she hit the floor, but not before the oak table met her head about halfway down.

  “What’s the matter with her?” the stranger mumbled, looking stranger every second. He’d begun to take on a dull hue, as if all the colour were being drained from his body. Even his clothing was turning monochrome, like an old, faded picture.

  “Dad, I think something… odd might be happening to you,” Ted said, laying his mother’s unconscious form upon the sofa. “You’ve gone all black and white on us.” He went off in search of a mirror – well, anything with a reflective surface – and handed him a stainless steel ladle from the kitchen.

  Gazing at his own alien likeness, Bill wore the expression of a lost man, confused and terrified, yet oddly intrigued. “I look alright for an old fella,” Ted’s father finally said. “A little bit on the drab side perhaps, but…”

  “Look at your lip!” Ted shouted. “That’s not even your face. You’ve been bloody well possessed, that’s what. Why else would you thrash about like that, nearly rupturing your spleen? There’s a demon inside you, Dad, and his name is fucking Elvis. Elvis Aaron Presley.”

  Bill glanced at the face in the ladle once again, and though its concavity distorted his countenance, there could be no mistaking the reflection: he was looking at the King of rock and roll himself.

  “Holy shit! I am Elvis!” Bill cried, suddenly leaping up with twice-renewed vigour. He swung his broken hips left, swung his broke
n hips right, nearly toppling the mail stand in the process. “Is this real? Am I dreaming?”

  Ted shrugged. Unless his mother had laced their sausages with LSD, a dream was the only sensible explanation. But whose dream was it, then?

  “I feel so damned young,” not-quite-Bill said. “So… so… what’s the word?”

  “Freakish?” Ted offered.

  “Virile,” his father countered, “like I could impregnate a woman with just a look and one of these!” He thrust his groin lewdly forward. Ted was thankful his father was wearing dungarees; regular jeans would have been around his ankles by now.

  “Mum will be pleased to hear that when she comes round,” Ted said. “Dad, we need to get you to a hospital, or something. I think… something really bad is happening to you. This black-and-white thing isn’t normal, and you’ve lost nearly five stone in five minutes, which also can’t be right…”

  “Pfft, hospital schmospital,” Bill said. “I haven’t felt this alive since The Andrews Sisters invited me back to their hotel room in 1957.”

  “That never happened, Dad,” Ted said, crouching beside his unconscious mother. A snail-trail of drool glistened down her cheek. I should check she hasn’t swallowed her tongue, he thought. He was just about to pry her mouth open when she suddenly sat bolt upright, mumbling incoherently as she tried to get up.

  “Mum, it’s okay. Everything’s fine. Just relax—”

  “I had a terrible nightmare,” she gasped, lips quivering and eyes bulging from their sockets. “Your father… he… he was in his chair, only it wasn’t him. It sounded like him, but it was… and I know this is going to sound silly… it was Elvis Presley.” Here she took a deep breath and made the sign of the cross.

  “Uh-huh,” not-quite-Bill said, butting his black-and-white head into the conversation. “Ma’am, do you have any idea how absurd that sounds?”

  Edith screamed, and as her eyes rolled back into her head, Ted gently lowered her back onto the couch.

  “Was that really necessary?” he asked, turning to find his father gone. Footfalls on the stairs (two at a time, the lithe bastard) told Ted that this night, this strange, terrible night, was about to get much worse. Standing up, his knees audibly protesting beneath him, he couldn’t help but pray in vain that this was somehow just a dream after all.

  19

  “The hills are aliiiiiiiiive, with the sound of muuuuuuuusiiiiiic…” sang the nun, barrelling down Frederick Street.

  Those queuing outside Knickers Nightclub turned to see what all the fuss was about. There were predictable mumblings about mad nuns and crystal meth as the woman – “off her tits, she is; that’s what happens when religious folk drink cider” – launched into a somersault, snagging her habit on a Vauxhall Vectra’s wheel-trim. The crowd lining the footpath all cheered, encouraging the nun to get up and have another crack at it.

  And she probably would have, had a number 59 bus not come along at that exact moment and…

  “…shame,” one of the spectators said.

  “I hope she was a real nun,” another one said. “Otherwise, she’ll probably be going…” he trailed off, jabbing a thumb down at the pavement.

  “Sewers?” a confused woman asked.

  From there, the conversation escalated into a debate whether priests, nuns, vicars and popes got preferential treatment in heaven – sort of like a VIP area, but without the free champagne and dancing girls.

  “We’re not gonna get in,” Alfie whispered. They’d almost reached the velvet rope, not to mention the two gargantuan bastards blocking their way. “I’m not even wearing proper shoes.”

  "Shit," Lee replied, glancing down at Alfie’s feet. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? And why are you wearing Crocs in the first place?”

  “I didn’t know we were going to Knickers! I knew this was a bad idea all along…”

  “Pity you didn’t know Crocs were a bad idea,” Lee snorted.

  “C-crocs, for f-fu-fuck’s sake,” Calvin thought to add. “They’re f-for s-simpletons and f-five year olds.”

  “Thanks,” Alfie replied, “but that doesn’t help us get into Knickers, does it? There’s no way Fee-Fi and Fo-Fum are going to let us in. This is stupid anyway. I don’t even know who most of these so-called celebrities are.”

  “Well, Michael J. Fox was big in the eighties,” Lee said, “but his career’s been a bit… shaky lately. Marilyn Manson, she’s just some Yank who wears a lot of black and swears a lot. Tara Reid – yeah, I’m not sure about that one either – but that guy from Scrubs is in there. Everyone knows him. And then there’s Stephen Hawking, who has something to do with space, I think. My mother fancies him. In fact…” He produced a small, black book from his pocket. “…I’m on a bit of a mission. She says if I get Hawking’s autograph, she’ll buy me a bottle of whiskey and a quarter ounce of something green and fragrant, and I’m not talking about parsley.”

  “Are you t-talking about t-thyme?” Calvin asked.

  “I thought he was in a wheelchair,” Alfie said, as the queue edged ever-so-slightly forward.

  “So?” Lee said, tucking the autograph book away. “Doesn’t mean he’s totally lazy. I mean, how much energy does it take to write your name on a piece of paper, anyway?”

  The young couple in front of them, who had spent the last ten minutes probing each other’s mouths for foreign objects with their tongues, were admitted to the club. The giants blocking the door stepped aside, parting like a pair of thick, ugly curtains. Once the slobbering lovers crossed the threshold, the blockade resumed, and it was the boys’ turn to be scrutinized.

  “You lads gonna be trouble?” Fee-Fi grunted. He sounded, Alfie thought, like a knackered transit on its last legs.

  The boys exchanged nervous glances. Surely one of them would have to say something. When no one else stepped up to the plate, Alfie finally answered, “Not at all. Lee’s dad’s in the police, ain’t he, Lee?”

  Lee nodded. It was an impulse response; his father worked at the dirty magazine shop down the subway. “That’s right,” he lied. “My old man’s a copper, and I’m already signed up to join m’self. Got a truncheon test next week to see how hard I can hit.”

  The doormen shared a conspiratorial glance, one that said: we don’t for a minute believe you, but since you had the balls to concoct such a ridiculous story, we just might let you in anyway, and if you mess up, we’ll be the first to jump on you, beat you to within an inch of your life, and drag your sorry asses back out into the street, where you’ll spend the remainder of the evening, broken, lying in a puddle of your own piss and vomit.

  “Hang on. Barry, look,” Fo-Fum said, pointing at Alfie’s feet. “He’s wearing bloody Crocs…”

  Barry – Fee-Fi – looked down at them with disdain. “We have a strict policy against Crocs,” he said. “In fact, any footwear with holes in it. Move along, boys.”

  “B-but h-he’s got n-needs,” Calvin said, stepping forward. “We all h-have. I’ve g-got a st-stutter, and Alfie’s g-got something wrong w-with his f-feet that means he can only w-wear shoes that allow th-them to b-breathe. If you d-don’t let us in b-because w-we’re mental, th-then you’re g-going to be in a l-lot of t-trouble. W-we’re here to see one of our k-kind. Y-you might have h-heard of h-him; a science-y guy? Goes b-by the name of P-Professor H-Hawking?”

  What the hell are you playing at? Alfie thought, though he had to admit it was just crazy enough to possibly work.

  Fee-Fi grimaced as if he’d been whacked in the nuts with the hardcover edition of A Brief History of Time; Fo-Fum simply stood there, scratching his head. The folks in line behind them continued to mutter amongst themselves, and meanwhile a paramedic had arrived on scene to collect what was left of the singing nun. Eventually, Fo-Fum said:

  “Alright, but if I catch any of you cunts whacking off over Tara Reid in there, I’m gonna show you what a steel-toed boot feels like – up your arse.”

  With that he stepped aside, and Fee-Fi followed suit.


  “Thanks,” Lee said, stepping past them.

  “Ta,” Alfie muttered, trying his damnedest not to make eye contact.

  “R-really ap-appreciate it, g-guys,” Calvin said. When they were out of earshot, Fee-Fi turned to Fo-Fum and said:

  “Why’s it always the stutterers that talk the most?”

  20

  It was cold, damp, and windy in the cemetery, and, Sonja thought, full of people she didn’t want to be around. The fact that they were all safely dead already did little to calm her jangled nerves.

  Where was Leroy? He’d specifically told her to meet him in the cemetery. She didn’t like this, not one bit. Had he lost his mind completely? Was he finally going to kill her this time, burying her in a hole he’d spent the past hour digging? He’d sounded different on the phone, as if he’d been sucking helium. Perhaps he’d gotten stoned out of his gourd and decided to dismiss her permanently.

  Sonja walked along the rows, reading names chiselled into the headstones: HERE LIES ALBERT MOSS – A NICE MAN, BUT YOU WOULDN’T TRUST HIM WITH YOUR KIDS… JUDITH MOSS – LOVING WIFE TO ALBERT AND EXTREMELY FORGIVING… MICHAEL CAIN – OVERDOSED ON VIAGRA, HIS WIFE TOOK IT VERY HARD… JEANETTE MACINTOSH – ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE, THE OTHER STILL MISSING…

  Off in the distance, an owl hooted in that ominous way they tend to reserve for cemeteries, haunted houses, and woods utilised by masked maniacs. Sonja was inclined to turn around and run for the road, where the worst she’d have to worry about was the occasional surly punter. She was about to do just that when, somewhere behind her, a shrill cry pierced the night.

  “HEE-HEEEE!!!”

  That, Sonja thought, was definitely not an owl. Whirling around to face whatever it was, she knocked over an old, shoddy gravestone that read: HERE LIES WILLIAM CURDISH – RAPIST, MURDERER, LIAR AND DOWNRIGHT SCOUNDREL. HE WILL BE DEARLY MISSED.