Chapter Thirty-Five

Escape Safely

He was sure he was in the right place; doing the right thing; caught within the unsnapped jaws of a deadly trap.

Drum had told Atoll about the coming queen’s parade and how it wasn’t a real queen, but the cycle display team were rehearsing as if for a royal performance in the post parade slot they had been booked into.

Uke and Mando had moved into the ill Professor’s old room. Drum was continually in the doorway of Atoll’s room but hardly ever entered. There had been a barrier that rose out of nowhere and lodged in place without reason. It felt like they were playing a trick that never reached a culmination. He was sure he could hear Uke and Mando talking through the walls and pipes of the old building.

He unconsciously auditioned Uke and Mando for a remake of the Shining that certain recesses of the hotel were collaborating with him on.

The day came and the parade followed fairly close behind. It was early by any standards and twirly by genuine parade cheering aficionados. The elderly, dog walkers and the early morning weird attended but had no real interest or extendable attention span for the, what turned out to be a small entourage. It was like the parade had been cancelled and they didn’t tell anyone and they were still remaining tight lipped about it.

Atoll was letting it wash over him; leaving the oddness of it unchallenged. He’d been asked to man the front desk while the team were off performing at the parade’s climax.

He was toying with the thought proposition of would he rather be a weak and feeble Picasso or a zombie full of energy and zest… It was one of those: ‘the winner is obvious, but let’s dig and dig to see if any hidden concepts arose’. There were no bookings and Atoll felt like a cross between a spare part and a spy trying to access information regarding the hotel and its occupants and managers and feeling in the dark; searching in the documents, for a viable exit strategy. Any exit strategy was an antidote to the dragging feeling of long term persistence within the hotel of mad cyclists.

He went outside to get a little practice on the Mountain/BMX hybrid Drum had chosen for him when he noticed a person looking at it…he assumed it was part of the parade because locals knew not to look at the hotel bikes in such a lascivious manner. But the figure looked up and all perceived lasciviousness turned to demonic target lock-on…he turned rapidly, already in an accelerated run…his life was in jeopardy…his fight systems fighting with his flight systems to get the Don Quixote out of there and seek protection from the sanctuarious harbour of L’Hôtel des Cyclistes Fous.

A dreamlike Sybil-but-not-Sybil caught him by the desk and explained that he needed to run so it would scan as a local psychopest chasing a guest around the hotel; a minor kerfuffle-cum-romp episode of over inflated passion. Just for two or three minutes, she said, that should meet their needs before alarms were raised, and the corpse of what really happened would not be desecrated too deeply by conclusions post mortem.

‘I have to chase you for realism’s sake.’

‘You owe realism nothing.’ Atoll said, running.

‘What?’

‘What did realism ever do for you?’ Atoll puffed turning a corner and skidding; noting that his balance was pretty up there.

‘Is this code, or dumb platitude? Realism is the objective of every living beast.’

‘I don’t see myself as a beast,’ Atoll countered, although on reflection, he truly did.

‘Are you losing it?’

He thought about it, as inappropriate and intrusive question as it was, and the answer was ‘yes’, but he didn’t want to lose leverage by admitting defeat.

‘If you want a future worth painting in oils you’d better bow down to the gods of Realism and be authentic. Without realism we will remain in this Mickey Mouse convention till the end of Time.’

‘Time will never end…’

‘No but our allotment of it will.’

‘BFT is missing,’ Sybil said as though it was something vital and precarious that could lead to disastrous and fatal conclusions.

‘BFT, BFT, BFT… No…’

‘Botface’s Torso.’

‘Oh shit! The marriage is off?’

‘No, no, the marriage is on, it is just we need to put a little more fucking effort into it,’ Sybil shouted, frustrated at Atoll’s inadequate understating of the dire nature of things…and she never swore.

He thought about it and she was right…realism had a certain draw to it that whatever the alternative was didn’t even try to compete with. Realism, neorealism, plastic realism they all showed a promise that unreality just could not match. And for that reason I am in…he thought on repeat so as not to instantly forget.

‘Mickey Mouse convention’…it was a harsh assessment…yet probably true….and the code of it, while taking time to sink in, was beginning to float… He needed to leave and regroup. After code deciphering that stretched over a few days and nights it became apparent Sybil’s instructions were correct, he needed to get to a Bobvylan Cage and open his worm mails to coordinate with history as it was unfolding. He’d been duped; this was like a holding area, a mild seductive quarantine. Luckily Sybil had taken things into her own hands and rumbled the scheme.

Sybil detailed how, if he kept running from an imaginary entity they system, after she’d gone, they would assume she was still in pursuit. This would allow her to get back to the stub and lace herself back up in quarantine before problematics started to feature in report updates.

By the time he’d slipped his moorings at the Hotel of Mad Cyclists, he’d panic-run the length of all the corridors; pell-melled the steps on all the staircases in all directions and vainly sought master-key fumbling sanctuary in practically every room, from the inexorable monster that threatened the unhinging of his soul through the darkness of his flailing shadow…and thought he’d done a pretty good job.

Uke and Mando came to play some goodbye chords, and offer trip-cake for the journey. They were ‘goodbyes’ as in, ‘au revoir’: ‘I hope you get some decent luggage at the mall and enjoy the cycle lanes’, but they were not contemplating the possibility that it was ‘goodbye forever’. They were working on tune-bursts for his return, expected to be somewhere between nightfall and the last cake service.

Drum was busy banging on to some guest about the local rainfall and its effects on the road-lining trees, as opposed to the trees and bushes in the park areas. Her lack of presence eased his lack of intended return.

As he contemplated his flight path Atoll was hit by a sense of freedom that if it were sunshine would have burned a hole in his mind. There did not seem to be a rush because forces that operated on his side would still be working on infiltrating the Meon Sea bus timetable. Under code authenticity obfuscation Sybil had told him, as they crashed down the main stairwell three steps at a time, that his best way back to the stub; to pick up the trail of the missing Botface’s Torso, was via the bus route from the Meon Sea promenade…but he must get on the right bus and the ins and outs of that had not been finalised. So, Atoll decided to do some strolling, wheeling the hotel bicycle… The rank bicycle had been given to a local charity that had cut it into pieces and made an avant grade (sic) statue of something that resembled something else and that was that…the idea of disassembling the artwork to reassemble the rank bike was more absurd than the artwork itself.

He passed a cafe and noticed, sitting inside, the sad and slumped figure of the ill Professor. Realising its potential as an informative waymarker, rather than an oblivious coincidence, he entered the café and sat at a table adjacent. He stared more and more intently until the ill Professor reacted.

‘What the fu…’ he started, but recognition stopped his flow.

‘Ill Professor, sir.’

‘I have lost them, they are lost…perdida…perduta…lost, lost, lost…’ he sobbed. The Professor loosened up and unburdened… ‘I am bereaved by the loss of my dead ones.’

‘You abandoned them, Professor…fucked off and left them,’ Atoll said…and he never swore.

‘I thought I was leaving them in good hands, kind hands… Hands of a gentle persuasion…mani gentili…manos amables…huh huh hhhh,’ he sobbed further.

‘Where did you—‘

‘Yours,’ the Professor shouted, turning on the twist of a pivot, ‘I left them in your hands…calloused and treacherous, malignant paws of Satan’s webbed feet, blood stained, unmoisturised…’

His assessment seemed harsh, over the top even, but it also landed in the accusatorial believability ballpark (ABB).

It was as though the professor was a priest and Atoll was seeking confessional embarrassment; he wanted to move to a more secluded booth at the back of the café, but the Professor had become a lump of something intransigent, solid and immovable. The sobbing had stopped but the damp excretions could have caused steam clouds in the right circumstances.

Atoll had to acknowledge his guilt but tried to disguise the poisonous shame that was encroaching on his wellbeing. 

‘I am going back there now. I left a copy in Meon-on-Sea…’

‘No such place.’

‘Sorry, Meon Sea…’

‘Oh, okay.’

‘Well, irrespective, I will retrieve a copy and make sure it endures until the final account… we are not lost just not yet found…’

The Professor seemed buoyed up by Atoll’s spiel and went to say…Blessed is the…but was just too far gone down the free-falling chute of great sadness… ‘…rising of the bold red Sun…’ Atoll completed, ineptly.

‘Blood…’

‘Blood.’

‘I must go. I give you my solemn pledge that the virus will spread to those who need it, for the sake of Humanity,’ Atoll said, sounding authoritative, especially as his certainty levels on delivery were down in the fantasy department still being dreamed up and pencilled in.

With much pushing, walking and rationed spurts of peddling and freewheeling, Atoll completed the distance, entering the Meon Sea domain, barely saddle sore through calloused buttocks.

There was a bus pulling away from the promenade bus stop, which counted as one; his strategy for choosing the right bus was the four/four system he’d been developing en route… Atoll parked the Mountain/BMX hybrid, awkwardly and with a furtiveness that fitted the offence. They’d lost a rank bike and gained a specialist pushbike.

He’d never have the patience to wait for the forty-fourth bus to arrive, it could be days, which would leave him open to predators. He was playing with ideas revolving around getting on the fourth bus when the next bus, the number 44, pulled in to the stop. He didn’t quickly jump on it like he felt he should, but it waited…it seemed to give him just enough time to consider all the options. 

‘Is this the right bus, for me?’ Atoll asked the robodriver, ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’ came the seemingly incongruous reply.

The code fitted…this was the work of the choir and their associates… Atoll smiled as he climbed aboard and took a seat… It was a sanctuary on wheels that would take him out of there.