help_dannyh_decide DannyH Here are some words I wrote. Some rough ideas not properly worked through. Please let me know if you think there's anything there worth pursuing. He hadn’t told his handler about the girls across the landing. He wouldn’t have liked it. Men coming and going at all hours, it would have made him nervous, maybe forced another move. Squalid as his new home was, he didn’t want to move again. Given the choice he would have wanted to stay inside. There was nothing for him outdoors. Anything he wanted to see would appear on the screen in front of him. There was plenty of food. The sofa was comfortable enough for a person not used to much in the way of soft furnishings. Things were perfectly adequate just where he was. Had he not been forced into this condition, had this safe and hospitable domicile not been ontologically transformed into a prison by the command of his handler, he could have been, if not quite happy, at least resigned to his stay. Brian [invented name] his handler had been emphatic on this point in a conversation they had had at 1400 hours that day. “You’re staying here until I get back. And I mean here. In this flat. Fix your arse to that sofa and don’t even think about popping out to the shops for a bar of chocolate. That’s an order as well as being the best piece of advice you’ll ever get.” Invented Brian’s obviously unfamiliar moustache, distracting as it was squatting so uncomfortably in the middle of his face, had not managed to distract Jason, as he was now to be called, from the core message of his speech. “Do you think that’s really necessary? What are the odds of me running into someone around here?” “Not slim enough and why take the chance? In any case. I have no desire to be standing over your corpse trying to explain to my superior officer that you are dead because I said you could go out unsupervised and stretch your legs for a bit.” Brian’s tone was sliding into the clipped military parody their service was prone to when they wanted to indicate seriousness and inject a note of black humour at the same time. As most of the situations they were faced with in their work see-sawed between black farce and hilarious tragedy it was a register they all recognised. “You don’t need me to tell you all this.” Brian said in a more confessional voice. “So why-“ “Procedure Jason.” Brian cut him off, “it’s all we’ve got to-“ “Hide behind?” Brian paced over to the window and looked out at the street below. A high steel fence, its brow stellated by the splayed triple knives formed by the top of the posts protected the windowless brick wall of a series of industrial units. There were no cars parked, no pedestrians, little traffic. “Hiding,” He said to the glass. “Is exactly what we’re doing. If you can think of a better plan you can submit it to me and I’ll pass it on.” Brian took the silence that followed as compliance, which it had been. For many hours after he had left it had been the man who was procedurally known as Jason’s intention to follow procedure to the letter. Now, however, as night was falling claustrophobia was slowly overcoming obedience. He needed air and movement, to understand something of his surroundings. He needed to know, if nothing else, what his escape route should be if the worst came to the worst and he was forced to make a run for it. He suspected that so-called Brian would be keeping the place under some kind of surveillance, at least for the first few days, and he would almost certainly catch a bollocking for going outside but what, in the end, could they do about it? There was not a single thing in the world left that they could take from him that was not already more valuable to them than it was to him, up to and including his life itself. Its all about the extra mile, son. Anyone can do it, but only a few ever do. Six legs. It was lying there, on its back, only a few inches away from his bare left foot. He decided he could tolerate it. As long as there was no chance of it flipping over onto its feet and shooting around the room like the others there was no need to have a problem with it. They’re all God’s creatures. Not these they aren’t. These things don’t come from here, not originally. They didn’t evolve under our sun, under the guiding hand of our God. They’re aliens. All of nature conforms to some notion of beauty but not these. You would know this for a cockroach even if you’d never seen a picture. The crooked legs, the arched back, the disgusting antannae, swivelling on their heads where the eyes should be and the speed, the supernatural speed. They come from another dimension, another reality where ugliness is like beauty is here. He had a little sympathy for the creature, lying on its back, rendered so pathetically helpless by something as simple as being turned over the wrong way. He didn’t hate the cockroach. He just felt with all his heart and soul that it should not be here, in his flat. It was in the wrong place. Perhaps his real fear was that it was him, not the cockroach that was in the wrong place, that he had stepped across into the cockroach dimension without even realising it and that all anyone in this new world would love him for were the bad things he had done. From across the hallway, he heard the door bang shut. His neighbour’s flat had disgorged another punter. He rushed over to the spyhole, not even pausing to clean his anus, in order to catch a glimpse of the departing customer. He was middle aged, although that was a guess formed by his choice of clothes and a hint of grey below the brim of his hat, the fact that he wore a hat at all. He seemed unashamed, making his way across the hall and turning left down the stairs with no hint of furtiveness, his chin up and his right arm hanging loose and relaxed by his side. Once he was gone the hallway was empty again. The door of the brothel was shut. He returned to the toilet and attempted to continue his observation of the dying insect but it was gone. He lifted his left foot, nothing, lifted his right and the cockroach dropped off the sole of his foot, landed right side up and shot into the gap between the bath and the floor. Robert Klum was sick on his feet, the floor and over part of his thighs. Wretchedness overcame him. The handler was due at 1800 and it was already past 1930. Lateness would be for a reason. It was inconceivable that he was simply stuck in traffic. If Brian did not call in to say he was making the meet then a proxy would be sent or if that proved impossible, a call would be made. That was procedure. That was how things were done. He looked up and down the street. There was no way he could make a call. The most likely reason for the lack of a phone call to him was that they had a wire into it. The time on his mobile agreed with his watch but he turned on the television just to be sure. The 24 hour news channel confirmed it but gave no clue as to why he had been abandoned by the whole of the service. The only theory he had was that they had discovered a mole and had locked the project down so as not to lead anyone to him. If that were the case his best plan would be to attempt to get as far away as possible and contact one of the senior officers on the secure line from a random payphone. Of course if the infiltration was at senior level even that course of action could be dangerous. One thing seemed certain. His location was still a secret. Otherwise a sniper would have got him by now, standing so stupidly close to the window. You had to assume they had a good shot on standby. A plan presented itself to him. He could not leave the building and he was a sitting duck in his flat but there were other places a man could go. In particular a place where a man could go and stay as long as he wanted provided he was paying good money. The thought repulsed and excited him. From there he would be able to hear across the hall if anyone came in and decide what to do from there. He could take his mobile and call the flat if he knew someone was inside. Of course they might search every flat in the building but at least he would be ready for them, possibly with enough time to put out the mayday call. Their flat might even have a way up to the roof. She answered the door in her dressing gown. Funny place to have a door. She called him “darlink.” He couldn’t help finding that charming. She sounded like a Bond girl, the KGB assassin he manages to turn over to the good by the power of his lovemaking. And he was a spy after all, wasn’t he? He asked her where she was from. She said the name of a city he didn’t recognise. “I’m sorry.” He said. “Which country?” She laughed, a strangely patronising laugh. “Russia.” She said. “How long have you lived here?” He asked. She seemed perfectly willing to waste time talking to him, totally relaxed. “In this flat? Three months.” “How long in the UK?” At this she looked suspicious and drew away from him. Of course, she would be worried about such questions. She probably had no visa. Maybe her pimp was keeping her passport, telling her he was processing her application for her. It happened. “Don’t worry.” He said with a forced smile, “I’m not from the immigration. I’m just interested.” “Why?” “I don’t know.” He said. It was true. He didn’t. He supposed he was drawing things out so that he would be able to hide out for longer in the flat but there was really no need. They were unlikely to kick him out as long as he was paying them. “I’d like to stay the night.” He said abruptly. “How much would that cost?” He saw her soften, a slow droop of the shoulder, a tilt of the head. “One hundred fifty.” She said. “We can have a lot of fun.” His penis was hard. It had been since he had first sat down. She was pretty enough and the clear availability of her, after so long out on his own made it inevitable. He would sleep with her. He had decided that as soon as he had seen her. There was no reason in the world not to, except that maybe they would come for him while he was in the act, catch him with his pants down, but it was unlikely. Unlikely they would arrive at just the wrong moment, unlikely they would break into a neighbouring flat to look for him, unlikely there was anything to worry about at all. In truth, he suspected, this whole thing was an over-reaction, a subconscious excuse to put himself in this position. It was true what they said, danger did make you horny. The most likely thing was that made-up Brian would arrive two hours late and find him gone. He would have to come out of the girls flat and all hell would break loose. They’d say he was compromised, they’d move him again. He looked out into the hallway. There was one of the same little paper traps he had outside the door to the shower. So they had the infestation too. He had somehow thought they would be free of it, that the cockroaches were unique to his flat, a symptom of his situation. Something he had brought along with him from the nasty, sordid little world he had infiltrated. “You look sad.” She said. The genuine sound of compassion in her voice surprised him. It was so easy, sometimes, to forget that people were human. “You vant a drink?” The whisky was cheap but they were mixing it with diet coke so you couldn’t really taste the difference. He’d never been much of a whiskey man anyway. He knew you were supposed to appreciate the subtle taste of a good single malt, it was one of the things which came with being a proper sophisticated adult but the truth was he liked his drinks sweet and bubbly. The only thing that offended him was the aspartame in the diet coke. It was the same with all diet drinks. The immediate taste was the same but it always faded away to something alien, metallic. “You live next door?” She said. Her English was good. She’d had an education. “Yeah, kind of.” He said. “Just looking after the place for a friend while he’s away.” That was possibly not a smart choice of lie. There was always a chance she had known the previous resident, but she let it pass. “These flats are shit.” She said. “Full of cockroaches. Full of arseholes from Algeria.” “I thought you were policeman.” “Why?” “I don’t know. The way you knock on the door, maybe. You knock like policeman, like man who is used to knocking on doors. When I hear the door I think, okay, now is a raid.” He laughed, shaking his head. “You read a lot into a knock.” “So what do you do?” “I’m a driver.” He said. It came out automatically, the way it had to, so deeply ingrained it even felt like the truth to him now. “Long distance.” “Ever been to Russia?” “No. Furthest East I’ve been is Prague” “Prague is nice.” She said. “Many many statues.” “I didn’t really see it. Just drove in and out.” 070811 ... dosquatch You're a good writer. Very nice use of atmosphere. Enough detail to make it real, but not so much that it robs the reader of his need to use his imagination. That's what makes a story engaging, after all. The reader's imagination HAS to kick in, or the story never connects. You seem to already have a good handle on this, though. This little piece feels like some part of the Jason Bourne saga. I don't know if that's what you were going for, but there ya go. 070812 ... dosquatch What did you decide? 070902 ... falling_alone keep going. you've got me. 070902 ... DannyH Thanks for taking the time to read. I feel horribly self indulgent doing this but it's very hard to know if you're on the right sort of tack. 070903 what's it to you? who go blather from