The Devils Harvest: The End of All Flesh. (24 page)

I found myself standing in front of a young female, who must of just left school, who was searching through the database looking for a room.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have any single rooms available,” she commented, looking at me with a sad face as if she actually cared.

“I will take a double if there’s any left?” I said.

Her brow creased together and she returned to the screen, as if the though of me having a double room hadn’t occurred to her.

After a few minutes of her smiling, looking at the same unchanged screen, she said, “We do have a double.” She looked up at me. Then added, “All rooms are non-smoking.”

“That will be fine.”

She relaxed, as if happy I wasn’t about to make some sort of outburst. After another couple minutes of her running her thin fingers over the keyboard and looking back up at me, as if expecting me to have disappeared, she said, “That will be forty-eight pounds please.”

I tried not to look startled, as if using Travel Lodges all the time.

Swallowing some sort of remark about not wanting to buy shares in the company I simply wanted to use one room.

“If you had booked the room twenty-one days in advance, it would have only been twenty-nine pounds,” she announced.

I said nothing. She seemed to like talking, so I let her.

I handed over the money.

“Cash!” she stated looking alarmed at the money I was holding out.

“Is cash still acceptable?” I couldn’t resist asking.

She either didn’t realize I was being rude, or simply didn’t care. First she looked over her shoulder towards a door, obviously leading to some offices at the back, possibly waiting for the person who had been training her. But no one appeared. She reached for the money, and counted it slowly as if I was trying to trick her in someway. Finally she tore off a sheet of thin paper that had been spat out by the printer and handed it to me. She then turned to the small pigeonholes behind to look for the key. And considering there was only a few left remaining in their holes, she seemed a little confused as to which one was mine. After consulting the screen again she eventually did pass across the key. Then she seemed to ignore me as if I wasn’t there.

Service accomplished. Piss-off.

“Um, sorry, but which room is it? And where is it?” I had the number on the fob, but she had annoyed me, so I was being a jerk.

She started laughing. “Sorry. It’s my first night.”

“Really? It doesn’t show.” She completely missed the irony in my voice, and returned to her computer screen.

“Ground floor. Through that door there,” she said pointing to a doorway on the left. “And it’s room number thirteen.”

Strange, most hotels didn’t use the number thirteen. Even going as far as having no thirteenth floor. You stand in the elevator looking at the buttons and it has twelve then fourteen, but no thirteen.

For some reason my mind froze, thirteen.
Just coincidence
, I thought to myself.

“Thank you,” I said lamely and headed to my room.

I always like staying in hotels. The way the room smells, the unfamiliarity of it. The small packets of toiletries on the long slab of marble that makes up the bathroom sink area. And of course the mini-bar and selection of television stations to choose from, and the pay-per-view films. And the fact that you didn’t know who had stayed in it before you. A lunatic, a killer or even a one legged midget could have been lying on this very bed. A couple could have been at it like rabbits. Even an orgy of men, who had just met in the toilet in the service station.
When was the last time the sheets were changed?

The room was similar to countless others I had frequented when going on a book signing tour. It had the large bed; with it’s folded down sheets. A large out of proportion television cupboard, which looked like it holds a fifty inch television, but in reality is only a nineteen inch screen sat in a vastly empty cabinet. The long sideboard with mirror, and the curtains that no matter what way you try and pull them they don’t seem to want to cover the whole window, always leaving that annoying little gap. And the bathroom. A bath that looks large and inviting, which in reality is an illusion and is quite small – not too small – but small enough to make it uncomfy. The toilet with its seat that doesn’t go up properly with the cold lid that keeps falling down hitting you on the back.

But all things considered, I like hotels, even though I seemed to be envisioning the worst of everything. But considering my predicament I felt I had the right to whinge. There wasn’t much else I could do.

Call me Mr. Negative.

I hid my bag in the wardrobe. Then I ripped open my new underwear and tee-shirt, ready for the morning. I didn’t know how long I would be living like this, so I washed my dirty underwear out in the sink and left them hanging on the shower handles.

I then ran myself a hot steaming bath, having already emptied all of the complimentary shampoo and conditioner into the bath to make it bubbly. No matter how old you are you never out grow a good bubble bath, a feel good memory lapsed over from childhood. I didn’t keep any shampoo back, because I didn’t know if the dye in my hair would wash straight out, having never died my hair before and having not read the bottle when I did it; being a typical man and simply doing what I though was the right way of doing it.

I soaked in the bath for what felt like hours, and was. The bath was also a rarity and was the actual size it looked, allowing me to stretch right out. I kept my hair well away from the water, even thought the steam had it plastered to my head in minutes.

I ached from head to foot. My body had numerous bruises all over it but considering everything that had happened today it was understandable. But I was feeling a little better after the hot bath. I sat naked on the bed, resting up against all four cushions, having turned the heating right up to its highest level. I had made a cup of tea with the complimentary tea bags and small milk pots. The kettle seemed like it was boiling for hours, before it eventually click off, announcing it had boiled. I used all the small pots of milk there were, deciding to have one descent cup, rather than three of four weak ones.

I now turned the television on. It was coming up to ten o’clock.

But instead of the BBC, the television was still set to pay-per-view, and I had a close up view of a huge pair of tits wobbling on the screen. Nothing hardcore, this is England after all, and even though sex is everywhere, the government feels the population needs protection. Funny enough, in England you can legally have sexual intercourse from the age of sixteen, but can’t rent a soft porn movie until you’re eighteen.

No loud moaning resounded from the set; obviously the last person in this room didn’t want the neighbours knowing what they were watching.

The Italian Stallion, with the ridiculous spray tan lay on his back, the woman straddled across him, facing the wrong way – reverse cowgirl they call it. His powerful hands squeezing and twisting her large rounded, swinging breasts, which hardly bounced due to the vast amount of silicon that was inside them. They looked unnaturally large, far larger and rounder than nature could create. He was squeezing them so hard; I was half expecting them to pop, or the silicon to start dribbling out her nipples. She is what is appropriately named a
Snow White
, a porn star with pure white or blonde hair, slim body and ridiculously hefty fake breasts. The only difference between them is the location of their tattoo. One might have one on the shoulder, another on her ankle, sometimes even on the breast, making it look like a bruise on a humongous pear. This glamour model had a completely tattooed left arm sleeve, done in a Japanese style, in fiery red and sun yellow.

But this didn’t interest me; I was more concerned about what the news had to say. I flicked the channel, just as the couple was changing positions.

The Ten o’clock News was just starting, with the ten bongs of Big-Ben announcing ten exactly. The screen zoomed into the newsreader face and shoulders.

“
Hello and good evening.

“
Tonight on News at Ten we have three leading stories. First, a derailment of the London intercity 125 just outside of Bristol. Also the horrific death of a policeman, who was found savagely attacked on the outskirts of Dartmoor in South Devon. And lastly an all-out police hunt for a famous writer, now turned figurative, serial killer.”

Leading Stories

I
quickly sat up, knowing before I even turned the television on that this was what I was looking for. The good old news channels, always keeping the criminals well informed.

The presenter continued to read from the autocue that scrolled down the camera he was looking into. Trying in the process to look sad at the news he was departing.

“…
So far it’s undetermined just how many people have died, or been seriously hurt. The scene is that of total devastation. None of the carriages stayed on the track, all seemingly strewed about as if my giant hands.”

The picture changed from that of the presenter to the site of the crash. All the carriages could be seen crumpled up against each other, and some laid out on their own. It then flicked to a view from a circling helicopter. The railway line could be seen winding off into the distance. But the train lay motionless, buckled and twisted beyond belief. Five carriages were piled into each other, with another two resting on top of each other, as if they were children’s play blocks and had been knocked down by an angry child.

Rescue forces wandered about the carnage. Countless yellow tarpaulin sheets covered bodies that were sprawled about like confetti. Fires had been burning in one section; tall plumes of black greasy smoke still billowed high into the sky.

“…
Accident investigators are still trying to fathom out exactly what happened. What actually caused the train to derail? Some on scene witnesses said it looked like the train had slammed into some sort of barrier or obstacle. But as off yet nothing has been determined…”

The image flicked back from the bird’s-eye-view to ground level. The camera was panning around the front of the first pulverised section that held the engine car. It was a little difficult to pick out any detail because the reporters were being held well back behind taped police lines, and their powerful telephoto lenses were focused to there limits, while the rescue operation was still under way. No obvious object lay anywhere near the front of the train, but from the look of the front engine section, and that of those behind it, it was obvious that it had hit something, and hit it hard.

The on the scene reporter continued to parrot what the presenter had already mentioned, being that no one had yet determined what the cause of the crash was, and needing to fill some space on what was obviously a major news item.

The report filled a good five minutes, with the middle-aged reporter standing with all the chaos in the background. The flashing lights bounced off the tall metal structure of a powerful crane that was lifting twisted carriages to one side.

It soon returned to the studio. The presenter was now conversing with experts on what they believed the cause of the crash could be.

I now sat on the edge of the double bed, knowing all too well what the cause of the crash had been – me. All because I had angered him. But I wanted the story to end and go to the next, to talk about the policeman who had been attacked on Dartmoor. Exactly like my dream.

It sounded callus, not caring about the people who remained on the train and those that had died, but as I have repeatedly said, I wasn’t feeling altogether like myself lately.

The saying:
No news is good news
, is so true.

Everyday the news is filled with wars, natural disasters, murders, aviation crashes, terrorist attacks and thousands dieing from lack of food or clean water. We become hardened to it; merely figures scrolling down the television screen, we didn’t personally know them, what do we care; it’s just an anonymous face on the news. Tomorrow will bring another list of casualties to things we can’t control.

We watch a small starving child staring blankly at the camera, with his emancipated arms and legs, and out of proportion swollen stomach, as he holds up an empty plastic bowl, as flies buzz around his mouth and large sad eyes. We then simply flick over to our favourite soap opera, while taking another bite from our double cheeseburger, dripping sauce down our double chin. The image of the starving child already gone from our minds eye, already thinking about something else –
I wonder what’s for desert?

You walk past a newsagent and the selection of newspaper headlines reads like a horror transcript:
Four hundred die in Argentine mud slide. A man takes two handguns into a school, eighteen feared dead. Dozens killed in Pakistan suicide bombing. Tsunami hits Japanese coastline, thousands feared dead, tens of thousands homeless.

That’s life.

That’s death.

The world is slowly getting worse. The words the conductor said went through my mind.
Do you think He’s in control of things down here? Do you think God would let the world get into this state?

Would God let it happen,
I found myself thinking?

The train story continued, flashing back every now and then to the scene. Stating it was now
Live.
The scene alight with powerful halogen spotlights.

Many fire fighters continued to crawl over and around the wreckage, still looking for survivors or peoples remains. Countless ambulances and fire engines and police cars littered the field, a kaleidoscope of flashing lights and movement – a barrage against the senses.

I walked around the room.
Could it be coincidence that a policeman had been savagely attacked in the location I dreamed?
I knew I was clutching at straws, knew I had something to do with what happened.
Had he
, my now unwanted visitor,
done this for me?
Like his twisted idea of bringing the animated cadaver of my dead nephew to me – as he called it – a gift.