Vinyl Destination

by Millard, Adam

  Geoff, the other doorman, became intrigued by their discussion. “What’s she got on you, Bazza?” he asked, grinning. Clarence couldn’t help but notice the massive gaps where his teeth should’ve been.

  “Erm, well, let’s just let her in, G. She doesn’t look like the type to, er, cause any trouble…” And with that he stepped aside, leaving a massive, Barry-shaped hole in the club’s entrance.

  “Thank you very much,” Marcia said, smiling as she passed through. It was the kind of smile that suggested she was either quite pleased with herself or had just broke wind. “Oh, he’s with me,” she thought to add, realising the blockade had resumed, leaving Clarence stranded outside.

  “He doesn’t look like he should be with you,” Barry replied. “Got a bit of an arsehole look about him, if you ask me.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact he’s with me,” Marcia said. “Front page, Bazza? Uncensored and in high definition.”

  Once again, Barry stepped aside. “Come on, G, let the man through…”

  Clarence walked coolly between the doormen. For a moment, he felt like a slice of soft cheese between two thick wedges of double-hard bastard.

  Once they were inside and out of earshot, Clarence pulled Marcia aside. “What exactly did you threaten him with, anyway?”

  Marcia leaned in so that he would hear her over the blaring music. “Old Bazza out there is actually Bertha on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “Aaaah,” Clarence replied, “eeeugh…”

  If there was one thing he’d learnt in school, it was that it takes all sorts. Unfortunately, those sorts were usually the kind that ended up in jail, institutions, or, apparently, working the door of Knickers Nightclub.

  24

  “You can’t be serious,” Ted said, watching his father change clothes. “You can’t leave the house looking like that, not while you’re monochrome – it’ll freak people out!”

  Undaunted by his son's criticisms, not-quite-Bill awkwardly pulled on an old pair of striped drainpipes. “Have you seen me, son?” he said. “You think I’m just gonna sit around here, waiting until whatever weirdness is happening to me wears off? I look like Elvis Presley, the King. It doesn’t matter if I’m in black and white. People won’t even notice that. They’ll be too busy gawping at Elvis feckin’ Presley. The lads down at the domino club are gonna be jealous as sin.”

  “Why, is it their lifelong ambition to be stripped of all colour, too? Look, Dad, I know this is all a bit, well… impossible, but what we need is someone who can figure out what’s happening to you, someone who can help.”

  “I don’t need any bloody help!” not-quite-Bill snapped. “What I need is a little less conversation, and a little more action, please.”

  “See, that’s not right,” Ted said. “You’ve been dropping silly Elvis lines for the last half hour. If you go outside, how long will it be before you start looking for the ghetto, or burning houses, stealing cars, stealing liquor from ol’ fruit jars?”

  “Don’t be silly,” not-quite-Bill said, standing up. “I wouldn’t have a clue how to hotwire a car.” He gestured to his clothes. “How do I look?”

  “Like something that just fell out of Shakin’ Stevens’ arsehole,” Ted replied. Harsh, yes, but niceties didn’t seem to be getting through to his father right about now. “And what about Mum? Huh? While you’re off gallivanting as black-and-white Elvis, what do you think she’ll be doing? I’ll tell you what. She’ll be worried sick that you’re off looking for a Priscilla to settle down with.”

  “Your mother knows I would never cheat on her,” not-quite-Bill said.

  “Yeah, but you’re not you, Dad,” Ted reminded him. If it sounded preposterous, it did because it was. “You’re black-and-white Elvis. You look better than most of the geezers in Bellbrook put together. You go walking down High Street like that, you’ll have ladies throwing their knickers at you left, right and centre.”

  “I thought you were trying to convince me not to go…” Not-quite-Bill tapped his son playfully on the arm. “Eh? Eh?”

  “Dad, now is not the time for…” He trailed off here, lacking the necessary words. “Wait! You’re getting… Dad, take a look in the mirror, quick!”

  “Don’t tell me I’m mutating into Cliff Richard all of a sudden – I couldn’t live with myself!”

  “The mirror, quickly!”

  Not-quite-Bill made for the vanity on the other side of the room, cautiously edging around the side of the bed. It was, Ted thought, just how the actual Elvis would have negotiated it, all knee jerks and pelvic thrusts.

  His father regarded his reflection with a look of utter confusion upon his face.

  “I’m… I’ve been coloured in!”

  “Not just that,” Ted said, noticing the change in his father’s hair. “Your quiff’s gotten bigger, too. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say you’ve begun the transformation into late 60s Elvis by this point.”

  Only that was impossible, wasn’t it? In the grand scheme of things, people just don’t go from black and white to colour (or black and white in the first place), and they certainly don’t age a decade or two in the space of a few minutes.

  Not that it bothered not-quite-Bill, who was still turning this way and that before the mirror, as if his biggest concern was whether his pants made his bum look big. “At least I’ve got some colour back in my cheeks,” he said, admiring his bone structure. “These trousers are a bit tighter, though.” He popped the top button. “Might need to find something a little less constricting…”

  Ted didn’t have a clue what to say, other than: Off you go, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, and be sure to pop into the hospital on the way back from the domino club to get that little Elvis thing checked out…

  Singing and jiving while he swapped his trousers, it was almost as if not-quite-Bill believed what was happening was perfectly normal. “Ah well, bless my soul, what’s wrong with me? I’m itching like a man on a fuzzy tree…” He trailed off, laughing. “Funny lyrics, really. I mean, what’s a fuzzy tree? Don’t know why I wrote 'em like that…”

  “Because you didn’t,” Ted reminded him. “You’re not Elvis Presley, Dad. The King is dead, kaput, no more, extinct. Something’s happened, something terrible and weird and never in a million years right. You either need a doctor or a priest, and pronto!”

  “Wasn’t he a Red Indian?” not-quite-Bill said. “I once played a half-breed Indian. Flaming Star, that picture was called.” He smiled to himself, lost in the fond remembrance. It was all Ted could do not to slap the poor man.

  “You weren’t in any films, Dad. You’ve never played a Red Indian. You’ve ordered one from the takeaway, but that’s about it.”

  Not-quite-Bill pulled on a glittery jacket he didn't know he had, looking every bit like the host of some inane game-show.

  “Look, son, you’re obviously jealous of me, and rightly so, but if you could just step aside so I can get my thang on, that’d be great.”

  Am I going to step aside? Ted thought. He’d never stood up to his father before in all his life, and yet it still felt wrong somehow, even though he’d never been more clearly in the right.

  “I can’t let you leave the house like this,” Ted said, trying to make himself look larger by standing up on his tiptoes.

  “Then I’m afraid you’ve left me no choice,” not-quite-Bill replied, putting up his dukes. “Did you ever see me in Kid Galahad?”

  Ted shook his head. “No, but I saw you in your boxers the other day, pissing up the shed.”

  “I played a boxer,” his father continued, “Walter Gulick was my name. I was in that one with Charles Bronson!”

  “The criminal?” Ted asked, still unsure of what his father had in store for him. “Look, Dad, I don’t want to fight you.”

  “Of course you don’t. Nobody wants to fight Elvis, but sometimes… Elvis has to fight people. It’s the Scots-Irish-German-Cherokee-French-Norman in me.” Without warning, he threw a swift jab, coming w
ithin an inch of his son’s nose.

  Realising he’d been left with few options, Ted cocked back and railed not-quite-Bill square in the jaw, sending him flying head over heels. His father landed on the bed, bounced, and came to a rest on its opposite side as an upside-down pair of trousers.

  At the evening’s onset, all he’d wanted was a nice plate of fish-fingers, some mash, a few episodes of Heartbeat, and an early night with his paperback copy of Fifty Shades of Taupe (though he usually never read more than a page or two at a time; it was very erotic). Now, both of his parents were unconscious (one of them having been possessed by Elvis), he had an early start in the morning, his head was pounding (a stress migraine, his doctor would call it), and he hadn’t seen a single fucking fish-finger all night.

  “Talk about a shitstorm…” Ted mumbled, wishing the ground would just open up and swallow him whole before things took another turn (was it even possible?) for the worse.

  25

  It hovered through the darkness, drifting upon the fish-and-chips flavoured breeze, trying hard not to think about the bastards down below, as they were only making it angrier by the minute.

  “Most ancient beings get unearthed by Tony Robinson and the Time Team,” it fumed, “but not me. I get a bunch of obnoxious Day-Glo Derricks, pissing and cursing and just generally showing no reverence at all. Where’s the justice in that?”

  Time to take things up a notch, it thought.

  Just then, the Pit-Dweller heard… something… far off in the distance. It was awful, like a herd of stampeding bison in a giant steel drum tossed over a cliff, with a pack of howling wolves chasing after it for good measure.

  Music, said a voice inside its head.

  “If that’s music,” the Pit-Dweller countered, “then I’m the Earl of Titbottom.”

  Only it was music, or at least what passed for it these godforsaken days. If you listened really carefully, stripped away whatever it was making all that shrill racket, and reduced the whole thing to a 4/4 time signature, then you just might catch something that could perhaps be considered musical underneath it all, but then of course your eardrums would’ve imploded by the time you got that far.

  Changing course, the Pit-Dweller floated off in the direction of the din, knowing that wherever there was music, there were people, and wherever there were people, there were souls.

  26

  “That’s him over there,” Lee said, pointing to the VIP area, demarcated by the flimsy rope segregating it from the rest of the club.

  “Wait,” Alfie said, stumbling as he spilled his drink onto his Crocs. “I thought he was in a chair…”

  “H-he is,” Calvin said. “Th-that’s the g-guy from Sc-Scrubs. N-next t-to him.”

  Sure enough, seated beside the guy from Scrubs was Professor Stephen Hawking. To Alfie, he didn’t look like one of the greatest minds on the planet, but he was in the VIP area of Knickers for a reason…

  “And just how the hell are we supposed to get to him?” Alfie asked, surveying the security on detail. It looked like the Chicago Bears were having a dress-down day. “I mean, maybe we could just tell your mum he wasn’t here, that there was some kind of wheelchair pile-up in the lobby, and he had to be rushed to the hospital.”

  “Have you seen the reporters everywhere?” Lee asked, unconvinced. “He’ll be plastered all over tomorrow morning’s tabloids, especially if Tara Reid keeps doing that to him.” He pointed across the room, to where a drunken blonde was writhing in the professor’s lap like she needed the money.

  “Remind me again,” Alfie said, unable to tear his eyes away from the lap dancing woman. “Who is she? She comes across as quite intelligent.”

  “O-only o-one of the g-greatest actresses of our g-generation,” Calvin lied, sounding a bit like the chorus to a well-known song by The Who. “G-got one of th-those r-raspy voices, l-like she’s b-been deep-throating r-r-razorblades.”

  “Hawking doesn’t seem too interested,” Lee remarked. Moments later, the professor shoved Tara Reid off of him using the power of his mind alone.

  “GET OFF OF ME YOU WHORE!” he boomed in his robotic voice, cranked up to maximum volume so everyone in the club could hear. “AND F-Y-I. SHARKNADO WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.”

  Totally unfazed, Tara Reid picked herself up from the champagne-soaked floor, licked her bare arms (every little bit helps) and trotted off to the other side of the VIP area, where Michael J. Fox sat twitching in a corner.

  “We’re never going to get in there,” Alfie moaned. “You’re just gonna have to tell your mum the truth: that we nearly managed to get an autograph, only to find a wall of large, angry-looking men standing between us and the prof.”

  “Then we’ll wait,” Lee said, taking a seat. When the chair groaned beneath him, he instantly leapt back up. The short, plump lady presently occupying it had looked like a cushion – an easy mistake. “We’ll wait over there, then,” Lee said, embarrassed. “He can’t stay in there all night, after all. When he comes out, we pounce.”

  “Pouncing on the disabled,” Alfie said, crunching the plastic cup in his hand. “I have to say, even for a gang of thugs like us, that’s a new low.”

  27

  Clarence Jameson didn’t usually drink (but… when in Rome), which explained why he was sprawled out on the floor at one end of the bar, mumbling nervously about saucer-men from the planet Fzzxthuxx. An individual of dubious sex stood directly over him, failing to notice the pathetic man cowering between his/her fishnets.

  “Clarence!” Marcia called. I turn my back for ten minutes, she thought, pushing her way through the sea of soused revellers in search of her inebriated photographer.

  “Marcia!” Clarence cried, crawling out from underneath the man/woman, “I think the aliens are coming!” Luckily, he/she didn’t seem to notice him emerging from behind him/her, as he/she was too busy applying make-up to a face already laden with half a stone of caked-on cosmetics.

  “What the hell have you been drinking?” Marcia demanded. Simultaneously stabilising Clarence and keeping the raving lunatic at arm’s length was no small feat, yet somehow she managed. “You smell like a urinal cake!”

  “I figured it out,” Clarence said, slurring his words so much that, for a moment, Marcia thought he was speaking Swahili. “The big bang… it wasn’t an earthquake—”

  “If I wanted to find out about The Big Bang,” Marcia said, “I’d ask the guy in the wheelchair over there.”

  “No, you daft bint,” Clarence chided. “Honestly, you lesbians… no, that big shakeup earlier; it wasn’t an earthquake.” He leaned in close, as if the information he were about to divulge might place him on the FBI’s most wanted list. “It was the aliens!”

  “Aliens?” Marcia snorted, trying not to laugh. His stupid, drunken face made it nearly impossible to resist.

  “S’right,” he said, nodding. “What we heard earlier was a sonic boom. You see, the alililiens, they would have to break through our atmosphere, wouldn’t they?”

  Marcia didn’t know what was worse, the fact that she was standing in a nightclub with Clarence Jameson, or that what he was saying – in a ridiculously slow and incoherent manner – almost sounded feasible. “Yeah, but wouldn’t there have been reports?” she pointed out. “Blurry mobile phone videos, CCTV footage from somebody’s dashboard, the usual YouTube crap?”

  Clarence looked at her as if she’d just told him the meaning of life. “There’s still time for all that,” he said. “I’m just looking at the facts. (1) There are no cracks in the ground, which means it was either the lamest earthquake ever or it was really far underground, (2) It didn’t sound like a quake. In fact, it sounded more like something letting off from a great altitude, and (3) Do you think they’ll let me have another cherry vodka? They’re bloody lovely…”

  Marcia shook her head. “I need you in tip-top condition,” she said, though she doubted that he’d ever been in such a state, even sober. She was just about to say something to that effect when she
noticed the camera that had previously been hanging around his neck was no longer there.

  “Clarence, where the fuck is your camera?”

  Panic washed over him as frantically patted himself down. “Shit! I had it! It was…” He turned, pointed over to the man in the wig and stilettos. And there between her legs – dangling by its strap from his indeterminate genitalia – was the camera.

  “Could be worse,” Marcia said.

  Clarence sighed. “Shit, was I just under… her?” He looked like the kind of girl you might take home to mother, that is if your mother used to have a penis and wore an estrogen patch.

  “Go and get your camera back, apologise profusely to the… to it, and then get your arse back here. The sooner we get our interview with Hawking, the sooner we can fuck off.”

  She watched as Clarence made his way through the crowd of revellers, hemmed in on either side by giant speakers blaring some truly god-awful shit. Within her skull, she swore she could almost hear the brain cells dying one by one.

  “Well, if it isn’t Marcia Martin,” came a not-too-friendly voice from behind her. “I didn’t think you newspaper broads were allowed out this late. What’s the matter? Shit the bed? Scared of a little earthquake?”

  Sharon Conker had one of those faces; pretty, but in desperate need of a few well-placed head-butts. “Hey Sharon,” Marcia said, feigning warmth as she turned around. “I caught your report earlier; have you seen Marilyn Monroe around? I’ve always wanted to meet her…”

  The cameraman behind Sharon began to protest, but instantly ceased when she spun around and gave him the stink eye. “There’s no need to film this bit, Clive. I don’t think our viewers need to see Miss Martin – it is still Miss, isn’t it? Of course it is, just look at you…”

  Just then, a nearby scuffle distracted the insufferable reporter. “Looks like some guy taking a peek up RuPaul’s skirt!” she squealed excitedly. “I hope you're getting this, Clive.”

  The cameraman shouldered his rig and began to shoot as ordered, but the fight was over just as quickly as it started. Clarence got away with some minor scratches and his camera, while the tranny wilted down onto his/her barstool after three orgasms and a memory that would last a lifetime.