Welcome to Rotterdam
Out-riders from the coming storm wince Ted Berry’s skin.
‘Man, oh man?’
And he wakes.
As dawn slowly begins to peel back her veil from mainland Europe.
‘What? Eh?’
He’s a long way from home.
The damp smell of water meeting water colours the air and, as the cold drips of rain kiss the small of his back and slip between his buttocks, tickling his anus, he realises . . .
‘Fuckinhell?’
. . he’s naked.
He reaches behind to his arse cheeks.
‘Fuckinhell! Fuckinhell! Fuckinhell!’
Smooth soft skin, downy hair.
But no pain and no stretching.
No sign of illegal entry.
He rolls over onto his back but his turn is stopped halfway by the boat’s rail.
‘Where the fuck?’
He watches the sky.
And awaits Clarity.
‘Man, oh man.’
She’s taking her time.
Berry watches twisting wisps of black vapour curling away from the approaching beard of a cloud. They close in - a posse of rabbi chins rumbling and ah-mumbling across the sky, shuffling, bumping-and-ah-bumbling.
Spitting with grim purpose.
Towards the end of the world.
Berry closes his eyes.
There’s an ache in the yolk.
Chemical.
The whole world is throbbing and vibrating.
He looks over the side of the boat.
‘Shit the fuckin BED!’
And Clarity arrives on horseback - white stallions race along the side of the boat’s hull then drown in the ocean expanse behind.
‘FUCK!’
The throbbing is the full throttle rattle of the trawler’s massive engines, pistons big as buckets, slapping up and down.
At some point during the night, he’d crawled the last few feet to the very tip of the bow, and locked his arms around the rail.
He jerks up onto his palms and slips across the deck.
‘Agh?’
He jerks his hands up to his face – they’re dripping red, as if he’d just harpooned a whale.
Blood.
Cold blood drips into the downy knot of his pubic hair.
Breath leaves him, locking out sound.
But inside, he screams.
There’s blood across his chest and belly, at his feet and between his legs and up his back and arms and across his shoulders and in his hair, a pool, all around.
A bloodbath.
But cold now.
Coagulating.
The rain showering him clean.
He rises, slips in blood and falls back against the rail – he cracks the crown of his head.
Just what he needed.
‘Owwwwww! Man! Fuck’s sakes!’
He rubs the wound.
‘Fuck’s sakes!’ he shouts.
He grabs at the vibrating rail.
The staccato rain drops are fattening out into a death metal storm, stinging his skin.
He rubs his jaw.
It’s not broken.
Tears scratch at his eyes.
‘Fuck!’ he sobs. ‘Me!’
He leans against the rail and looks up to the wheelhouse.
‘Ah Mr Berry, you are awake.’
‘Aaaagh!’
Berry trips back into the vaginal safety of the V point of the rail as Kirrin slices her way through the North Sea.
‘AAAAGH!’
‘I have been waiting for you.’
The storm drummer is up on his stool, hammering away against the heavens.
‘Gaah?’
Ladies and gentleman, put your hands together for . . . The Bloodbath.
But it’s not his blood.
‘How do I look?’
It’s Steyn’s.
‘What?’
The boat’s jib hangs seven feet above the South African like a meat hook in an abattoir, guts hang down across his chest and curl in his lap like fresh sausages.
But he’d been on his travels.
The human small intestine is 21 feet long.
Enough for him to get from where the winch dropped him, up to the wheelhouse to fire the engine - and back.
Almost.
But he’d ran out of guts five feet short of his goal - an unconcious Ted Berry.
‘How do I look?’ he asks again.
His face is dead.
‘Not good.’
Steyn’s mouth aches into what might be a smile.
But there’s not enough energy left for the nerves.
He looks pleased with himself.
‘They teach you in The Army, they teach you that a gut wound hurts the most.’
He looks down at his meat.
‘Onthaal aan Rotterdam. You killed me Mr Berry. You killed me.’
‘Kristia? St? I…? Ehm? I?’
Berry looks into Steyn’s white face.
‘I didn’t mean it!’
Steyn’s eyes are open, but there’s nothing there.
The rain runs into them.
‘Kristiaan?’
Berry inhales.
Maybe he was dead already.
The rain is furious now, the death metal drummer about to kick his kit off the stage and dive into the crowd.
‘Wedge!’
Berry rises up firmly to his feet, fighting the forward thrust of the boat.
He leans up the deck and grabs the rail and pulls himself towards the relative sanctuary of the wheelhouse.
Berry passes the pervert’s corpse sitting beneath the wheelhouse window and unconciously follows where his stare leads.
Steyn’s eyes are amused, locked on some joke on the horizon.
‘FUCKINHELL!!’
Land is speeding up towards the bow.
Hard, crusty land.
Fast.
Too fast to do anything about.
A stretch of beige capped by green.
Welcome to Rotterdam.
Berry falls into the wheelhouse just as the bow bites into the sand and Mother Nature applies her laws.
He’s thrown hard into the ship’s wheel and onto the floor as Kirrin’s keel argues with solid earth.
Grinding.
Splintering.
Tearing.
Her engine sounds like a team of drunken workmen digging up a road, wild and free.
Free from the water.
The boat smashes forward.
Into the dry land.
She grinds up a thin strip of sand, a gap in the sea of rocks – the only stretch of sand anywhere nearby.
The ocean’s equivalent of a safety net.
Thwop-thwop.
Crunch
The propellor finds something solid and the blades smash and shear themselves off into shrapnel.
Kirrin’s engine still turns.
Screams in mindless anger.
Against no resistance.
The boat tilts to the left before becoming embedded in the sand.
Her engines howl on.
Ted Berry is curled up in a naked bloody ball under the ship’s wheel. The rain still raking down hard on the wooden roof like ball bearings. The crazed drummer banging on his cymbals – settling now into a violent consistent rhythm, the rest of his kit toppled across the stage.
Berry raises his head and does his second inventory of this new day.
Everything is in order.
‘Wedge?’ he screams over the din of the engine and the rain.
‘Wedge?’
He pulls down on the bloodstained chrome lever above his head and the boat is put out of her misery.
‘Dumb fuck,’ he whispers. ‘Coulda done that earlier.’
He stands up and heads out of the wheelhouse.
There’s a length of Steyn’s gut curled out of the wheelhouse like a hose.
The front of the boat has ripped o
pen, spilling brown lumps of cannabis resin into the North Sea.
Four hundred quid a go.
They float in the water.
Kirrin remains upright but lists badly to starboard.
Steyn has detached from his guts and floats face down in the sea.
‘Wedge?’
Berry heads to the net store, the rip in the boat hasn’t quite reached that far.
‘Oh fuck mate, no, no,’ he whispers. ‘Jay?’
He puts his hands to the rim of the lid.
And heaves.
He peers in.
Winces.
Expecting to find nothing but paste, human paste. Pâté – a word always dressed for a party - that was his best friend.
There’s a shape in the corner.
It could just be meat.
He reaches in and pulls on it.
‘Man, oh man.’
It’s not wet.
‘Wedge?’
And it’s firmly human, seemingly intact.
Berry pulls it towards him, the list in the boat working in his favour.
He heaves.
‘Wedge?’
The top half of the boy is on the deck in the rain.
Berry closes his eyes and pulls, convinced Wedge at least hasn’t got any legs.
‘FUCKINHELL!’
He pulls his best friend onto the deck.
Opens his eyes.
Wedge stares back at him, eyes open like spinning plates – the rain running into them.
Spaced.
He blinks.
Alive.
‘Y’fuckin cunt! I thought y’were dead!’
‘Dead?’ he whispers, he points up - at nothing. ‘Was just playin.’
Berry resists the urge to punch him to death.
‘Playin? Fuckin PLAYIN?’
A bored couple in their mid-forties sip coffee at a seaside cafe.
‘What time do we have to be there?’ she asks.
‘Margaret, you keep bloody askin. Just relax.’
‘I don’t want to be late.’
‘We won’t be late!’
He checks his watch – 8.30.
‘The ferry’s not til ten.’
Margaret fishes through her handbag and pulls out a handkerchief.
The rain harangues the window pane.
‘Bucketing down still. It’s a bloody heatwave at home.’
The swingers party in the small town last night had been a bit of a let down. Everyone had been even older than they were – where was the younger crowd they’d been promised?
They don’t exist. It’s a game for bored, wrinkly old fucks.
Outside, a teenage boy leads his mentally disabled friend through the driving rain – both dressed in oversized fisherman’s illuminous orange overalls.
They’d be an odd sight in the Dutch town of Ouddorp – were anyone looking.
Wedge mutters away like an old man in an institution.
‘Fuck me,’ Berry holds Wedge’s massive napper in his hands and looks into his eyes.
‘Are y’alright?’
Wedge starts to sob.
‘Come on Jay, we’ve got to get home.’
He puts his arm around him and pulls him towards the car park at the side of the café.
The rain patters against their waterproof suits as they go.
There are four cars parked – one with a yellow reg – P101 FRT. And a white circle with the letters GB written in black, pasted to the boot.
‘English! Fuckin right!’
There’s a small strip of public park beside the Tarmac, Berry stops near a bench.
‘Wedge? Wedge? Jay mate?’ Berry says. ‘I’m gonna leave y’here for a sec. Okay?’
Wedge’s eyes are open, tears running down his face joining the rain.
Something’s broken.
‘Jesus fuckin Christ Jay. Are you ok?’
Wedge focuses.
Berry wrestles back tears of his own.
He moves the hair away from Wedge’s forehead.
‘You’re gonna be fine. I won’t let anybody hurt ya. Never. Y’me best mate. Sit down here.’
Wedge sits like an old woman, moving the Bowie knife around in his hands.
Berry tries to take it away.
Wedge panics.
‘Okay, okay. Just wait here. Okay?’
Berry slips behind the car and presses the button on the boot.
‘Fuck.’
It’s locked.
He goes back to the bench.
‘Jay. Listen to me. I need the knife.’
Vacancy.
‘Fuck’s sakes.’
Berry looks around.
And tears a twig from a bush.
He pushes it into Wedge’s hand and pulls out the knife.
‘Good lad.’
Berry looks down at his friend.
‘Jesus fuckin Christ.’
He walks back to the car boot and puts the knife into the lock.
Whacks it with the heel of his hand.
Nothing.
‘Fuck’s sakes!’
He kicks at the shaft. It snaps off, embedding the blade in the lock. He twists it.
Presses it.
Pop.
‘Yes!’
The boot opens.
He looks inside.
There are two bags, one open.
A rubber gimp mask stares up at him like a black Zippy off Rainbow.
‘What the fuck?’
Berry looks around, against the heavy rain.
He reaches inside and pulls it out.
‘Fuck,’ he says, throwing it under the front of the car parked behind.
‘Off!’
The other bag is open too.
More rubber.
A blue and white fetish stewardess outfit.
It needs a wash.
There’s man stains all over it.
Maybe the swingers’ evening hadn’t been such a waste afterall.
‘Sick fucks.’
He throws it under the car.
And crosses the road.
‘Quick. Come on Jay.’
They head back across the road, rain whacking hard against their oversized fisherman’s outfits.
He lifts Wedge’s leg and guides him into the boot.
‘Lie down mate.’
Berry looks up.
The man and woman are rising from their table.
Wedge is still sitting up, like a man road testing his coffin.
Berry pushes his head down and jumps in after him, closes the lid.
Wedge reaches out.
Starts to sob, gently.
And Berry gathers him in his arms.
Hugs him.
‘It’s alright Jay, it’s alright,’ he whispers. ‘Everything’s gonna be alright.’
Wedge’s tears stream across Berry’s wrist.
‘Shh Jay. Shh.’
He rocks him.
‘Shhh.’
The door opens and the car’s springs bounce, the other door rocks and closes.
The engine starts.
‘Bez? Where we goin Bez?’
Too loud.
Berry puts his hand over his mouth.
‘What time’s it?’ says a woman, muffled through the back seat.
‘For God’s sake Margaret, I told you! The ferry port’s only ten minutes away!’
Wedge’s breath is hardening, lungs like fossils.
‘Jay,’ Berry whispers. ‘It won’t be long. Just breathe. Breathe.’
There’s the sound of traffic and a horn.
Slow moving.
A queue.
Bdumf.
The front wheels rumble onto metal.
‘What’s that smell?’ the woman says.
‘What smell?’
‘Stinks of bloody fish.’
Metal grinds against concrete as the car rises up the ferry’s heavy steel ramp.
‘Man, oh man.’
Berry nips his eyes shut.
‘Please don’t check the boot. Please don’t check the fuckin boot.’
Some time later
All the best stories have legs, some just run and run and run.
For decades, the best of them.
Just think JFK.
The paper’s newest staff reporter hobbles down the steps to the pavement on his crutches and pauses under the heavy Sunday Sorted clock.
He rests, out of breath, in his brand sparkling new suit.
Hugo Boss.
The best on the shelf.
He balances on a crutch, pulls out his silver box, selects a cigarette and lights it.
An SS billboard promotes a ‘colour special’ about the newspaper’s near neighbours - Prince Charles and Princess Diana - celebrating their second son’s first birthday.
‘Happy Birthday Harry,’ Rick Delaney says. ‘Old bean.’
Princess Diana, the longest running story of them all.
Death, even, couldn’t stop her.
Delaney starts to move his bolted-together body.
A gang of women protest outside.
The building could be a public school, or a concentration camp.
Misogynist bastards - screams a placard.
Nazis - reads another.
‘Lesbians,’ Delaney says. ‘Thank God nobody listens to you.’
Delaney lights his cigarette, moving his head just an inch too far.
‘Ooo-yah!’
He sighs, sets off up the road, towards the dying embers of Fleet Street - almost snuffed out by the dullards; bankers and lawyers.
His head remains attached to his neck with the help of a black metal brace. Only a few more weeks, the doctor tells him, and the torn muscles and tendons will fuse into place and his head and body will, again, become one.
‘Ooo-yah!’
The news desk secretary comes out of the lobby and wiggles her arse up the path to the wine bar, Delaney pursues as best he can – limping up the road towards a pub called The Progress.
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