Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

And I tried to run. But where could I run, for they were all about me? And I cried out for help and I cried out for Andy and I all but poo-pooed myself.

And then the blighters came at me. From all directions, horrible monsters, decaying and rotten. And I could smell them, that stench of the grave, that evil foetor of death.

And my cries turned to screaming and I sought to peace-make with my maker.

And as the monstrous foetid fingers clawed all about me, I saw the light. Another light and a bright one, too. And I heard the noise that came with it.

I was aware of sweeping arcs of light, swishing down from the sky. And that noise, that deafening noise – not the wingbeats of angels, as I had reasonably supposed, but the thrashing of helicopter blades.

And then there were men – living men, I supposed – in black uniforms that had that Special Ops look about them, as if they must surely be the SAS, or the Firearms Response Team. And down they came upon lines from the helicopters, and they had guns and they fired these guns.

And there was the light and the copter sounds and the noises of gunfire and hideous things and I sank down and cowered on my knees.

And then someone thrust some kind of hood over my head and things went rather dark.

And then someone hit me hard on the head.

And things went utterly black.

Now, you know that feeling you get when you awaken in a bed that is not your own, with absolutely no recollection of how you came to be in it?

No?

Well, how about that one when you awaken to find yourself in a secret underground research establishment that the British Government denies all knowledge of?

No?

Well, I must confess that this one came as a shock to me. Not that my surroundings weren’t plush – comfortable, they were. Plush and comfortable and elegant too, and very ‘with it’ when it came to the furnishings, which were rendered in the style known as contemporary.

The bed I awoke upon was circular. Circular? I ask you. Where would you buy circular sheets? But this bed did have circular sheets and they appeared to be of silk. Not that I was a connoisseur of silk; I wasn’t. We had sheets at home, and our sheets were cotton, but these sheets were silk. And I knew this because I had beheld silk, for Toby had brought into school a pair of pink silk French knickers that his father had won in the war. And we’d all had a good feel of those!

Beyond the parameters of the circular bed was a similarly circular room, its walls painted orange, this orangyness relieved at intervals by wall lights of the semicircular persuasion, which cast a soft ambient light in an ever upwards direction.

There was a rug, which was circular, and a chair, which was a sphere with a cut-out section for you to plonk almost all of yourself into.

And there was a door that was not circular. And there were no windows at all to speak of. Or even to whisper about.

And it was the lack of windows that upset me. The room I was happy enough with – the room was, in itself, quite splendid. Because it was plush and comfortable and elegant.

But the lack of windows was worrying. That lack of windows signalled that there was a certain untowardness about this room. That this was an outré and anomalous room.

And one that I probably should not be in.

And so I sought to escape.

And as there were no windows to climb out of, I made a stab at leaving by the doorway, but sadly to no avail as the door, it transpired, was locked.

I would have given that door a kicking if it hadn’t been for the fact that my feet were bare. As, in fact, was all of the rest of me. Bare-naked-lady, I was, apart from the bit about being a lady. So I retreated to the circular bed, wrapped a circular sheet about my nakedness, stuck a thumb into my mouth and gave that thumb a good old sulky suck.

And I had a fair old grump going and quite a bit of rising fear also when the door opened to admit a beefy-looking fellow bearing a cloth-covered tray.

And at the sight of this tray I panicked.

Because it looked to be one of those trays that they have in psychiatric hospitals. The ones that always have a hypodermic upon them, covered by a cloth.

And when they stick you with that hypo, you’re in trouble.

And so I panicked. And I did a little bit of rueing-the-day also. I rued the day that I had sent off my money to America in the hope of receiving the course in Dimac, the deadliest martial art known to man. And had not received it by return of post. It was quite a complex piece of rueing-the-day, but it served me well enough at the time.

The beefy-looking fellow placed the tray upon a cylindrical bedside table that had somehow escaped my notice, whipped away the cloth and said, ‘Your breakfast, sir.’

‘Phew,’ I said, ‘breakfast.’

‘Breakfast indeed, sir,’ said he. ‘Were you expecting something else?’

I shook my head and said, ‘No, nothing else.’

‘Well, that’s just sweet, isn’t it?’ said the beefy-looking fellow. ‘So eat up your breakfast like a nice gentleman, or I will be forced to stick you with my hypodermic.’

And with that said, he left the room.

And I tucked into my breakfast.

It was a ‘Full Welsh’, which was new to me but didn’t make it any the less delicious. And by the time I was done with it and was wiping my mouth on the cloth provided, the door opened once more and this time in walked Elvis.

Elvis?

I looked up with surprise at Elvis.

And Elvis smiled down at me.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Elvis. It’s you.’

‘It is not me,’ said Elvis. ‘It’s me.’

‘Can I go home, please?’ I said and got all upset.

Elvis sat down upon the circular bed and he smiled some more at me. And it really was Elvis. That was a stone-cold certain, the quiff and the sideburns, the killer cheekbones, the lip curl and that something. That something Elvis had.

‘I am not Elvis,’ said Elvis, kindly. ‘My name is Doctor Darren McMahon. I’m Irish/Liverpudlian.’

‘Scouse Elvis?’ said I.

And the doctor nodded. ‘If you like.’

‘But you are Elvis,’ I said. ‘No one looks like Elvis. Elvis is a one-off. There is only one King of rock ’n’ roll.’

‘I hate to disillusion you,’ said Scouse Elvis. Because it did have to be said that he did have a Liverpool accent. ‘But Elvis is not a one-off. Elvis was, in fact, part of a six-off. But only the two of us survived.’

‘You are the twin brother of Elvis?’ I asked. ‘But I thought he died at birth.’

‘You are not listening quite as carefully as you should be,’ said Scouse Elvis. ‘But we will speak of such matters at length. How are you feeling? How is your head?’

And then I recalled how I had been bonked on the head.

‘My head’s fine, as it happens,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t ache at all.’

‘Excellent,’ said the Scouse One. ‘I had the beefy-looking fellow give you a shot of painkiller with his hypo before you woke up.’

‘Urgh!’ said I. And I felt all violated. As I probably should have done anyway, waking up in a strange bed, naked and everything.

‘We’re all professionals here,’ said Dr McMahon (?). ‘You have nothing to worry about.’

‘I suspect I have a great deal to worry about,’ I said. And then another thought struck me. One that really should have struck me earlier. ‘Andy?’ I said. ‘What happened to my brother, Andy?’

‘There was only you,’ said Dr Elvis (I felt happier with this). ‘When we purged the area, you were the only resident.’

‘Purged?’ I said. ‘Resident?’ I said. ‘And where is here?’ I also said. Also.

‘One thing at a time,’ said Dr Elvis (yes, I was very happy with this description because, looking him up and down, although he was Elvis, he was dressed as a doctor – white coat, stethoscope in top pocket, that sort of thing).