This is the second part of a longer piece of fiction set in London and entitled Dirty Old Town. I have written the first and third part of the story already but the rest is still in development. I have an idea where the character's journeys will take them and I can promise this, it will be eventful. I hope that you will join me in following the lives of the characters as they develop.
Link to part one.
Part two - King's Tunnel
“What d’you want for dinner then Terry?” asked the middle aged woman. Tired eyes looked down at him, shrill south London voice straining to be heard over the clattering of guns from the PlayStation.
“I don’t know Shel’, whatever. Chicken usually does the trick. You want chicken, kids?” Terry boomed, tickling his youngest daughter Esme as he clucked chicken noises and she giggled uncontrollably.
“Chicken, chicken, chicken,” chanted the children as Shelly shuffled back into the kitchen.
“Can’t you switch that damn machine off for 10 minutes?” she shouted from the dingy, cigarette-stain walled kitchen as she opened the cupboard and pulled out the roasting pan.
The stainless steel surface mirrored her face as she noticed the bags under her eyes had grown. Her panda eyes stared back at her. She snorted as she pulled the chicken from its plastic wrap.
No wonder with this mess of chaos to deal with.
Pale skin contrasted sharply with vivid blue eyes, like a sliver of sky slashed across an autumn panorama. Wheat coloured hair fell in waves to frame her face.
She stared at her reflection and sighed.
Whatever happened to that bombshell that used to knock ‘em dead on a Saturday night?
The tin clattered down onto the kitchen worktop before she dropped the chicken in and grabbed the spice rub and the olive oil.
Right, its fuckin Jamie Oliver time. A tone of olive oil, luverly-jubbly.
She chopped the onions like a happy slasher in a psycho movie, quick and imprecise. A few bell peppers and garlic were sliced and thrown into the roasting pan and finally she sprinkled the spice rub on top and started to massage it in and under the skin of the chicken with her calloused hands. She wacked the oven on to high and walked to the kitchen doorway. This lot were oblivious to how little time it took to make ‘mums best spicy chicken’. They were always on that bleeding PlayStation.
She stared at the scene in the living room and a smile slowly spread across her face. Her six year old son Bobby, jumped up and down on the couch chanting, “Kill him dad!”
A bunch of savages! But they’re my savages.
Esme was lying upside down with her head hanging off the end of the couch as she watched her brother and Terry with a look of intense concentration on her face.
The woman's smile faded at the sight of Terry’s eyes and the way his lip curled up as he blasted down soldier after virtual soldier.
Light flared as the torches’ switch clicked. The darkness blossomed into a halo of intensity, bright pain stinging the back of his eyes as a chin hove into view, upside-down mouth flapping with a worm of hair crawling disconcertingly across the lip-line. Dank dreary pillars swung from side to side as another slap landed on his face and sound returned from an unfathomable distance, slowly building from a hum into a patter like rain and then a screaming torrent of words, unintelligible.
SLAP!
Understanding… pain… clarity.
“Lift him up quickly,” the voice barked an order, as vomit spewed out of his mouth. “Quickly, or he’ll choke. We need this prick alive, boys.”
Rough hands grabbed at his arms. Pressure stung him like molten lava as they grasped his bruised muscles and righted him to an intense wrenching. Pain brought him back from the brink as everything swung right-side up.
Mist hung in the air, the breath of the night and the smell of the river clogged his nostrils. Blood sputtered from his lips as he tried to speak and all that came forth was a weak croaking. Moustache stormed up to him out of the gloom, face looming large from the mist shroud.
“What’s that you’re saying Carlos? I can’t hear you, son, perhaps you should speak up a bit.”
“You fuckin… spllltdhtttt” blood ran over his lips, acrid copper choked out the words as Moustache cocked a hand to his ear theatrically and bent down towards his face.
“Sorry nah, I didn’t get that either Carlos. You’re breaking up!” That high pitch fake laugh rattled around his ears as he spat a tooth and Moustache waved his arms in the air like a conductor at the royal philharmonic. “You’re falling apart here Carlos. You used to be one tough fucker. Look at you now, eh. Can’t even take a little slap”.
“D’you know where we are? Just blink if you can hear me fella, no need to speak. Once for yes, twice for no.”
Two blinks, eyes encrusted slow and heavy.
“No! Well I’ll tell you then, Carlos. We’re in the King’s tunnels. See, back in the day they used to bring condemned prisoners down here. Traitors, you know, people they didn’t want to get away. This is back when we had a king, Carlos, not a queen. Long time ago. Before your lot had weaselled their way into London’s boroughs.”
His voice echoed into silence. The arches marched in to the green distance, moss covered soldiers lining the depths of night.
“There’s only one way in and one way out”, the high pitch laugh lanced through him again. “If you try to dig there’s nothing but the Thames to your left and sixty metres of solid rock to your right, so I ask you where… you… going to run to now… Carlos?”
The voice whispered now, breath scalded the side of his face as moustache hairs tickled his ears brushing along his cheeks, those dead eyes stared baleful in the river bourne mist.
“Traitors were kept here.”
To be continued...
art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics