All spiders are called Eric. They brought good luck. Vanessa had told him, shaking her head at his cowardice in evading a scuttling eight-legged monster speeding across the carpet of a Friday night.
Who was Michael Tomatoes to argue? She liked her insects, did Vanessa, coo-cooing wood lice and tickling slugs.
Not that slugs counted…
They had a name though. Bob.
Byrd grinned, squirmed in his chair, a curious look in his eyes and winkle pickers on his feet. There was something sluglike about him, an oleaginous quality that made Michael want to reach for the salt.
What distracted him, though, was the horse at the bar.
‘Tell me again about your wife,’ coaxed Byrd, fidgeting.
He’d spoken of her? The memory evaded. A ruse? He couldn’t keep from staring at the black shape and its shiny hooves.
‘What’s to know?’ he replied, annoying his host. ‘I need the toilet.’
‘No you don’t.
It was the truth.
‘I, eh, need to speak to someone’
‘No you don’t. Who could you possibly know?’
Byrd was suspicious. No helping that.
The horse flicked its glossy black tail and winked.
‘There are plots afoot,’ the adjudicator announced, leaning close. ‘Concentration is of the utmost. There are those who would lead you astray, and have perhaps already, souls whose damnation is either under review or perpetually disappointing. Don’t get me wrong; it’s the system. Persons deceased must show a certain level of wrongdoing in order to remain in residence. No-one wants to be born again and have to start their evil careers from scratch, not when Hell provides a stage of unrivalled possibilities. Here wars can last centuries. Power is freely available; wealth; whatever it is you desire. Few wish it jeopardized. But…’ He gazed around at the assembled punters, none of whom seemed currently occupied with anything more terrible than beer mat rending or accidentally nudging rumps. ‘Lately…’
Michael was intrigued, not seeing the horse had moved, gaze locked, drawn into the hypnotic vacuum of Byrd’s cranial space.
‘Let me put you in the picture, Michael…’
Framed by the wall, Hell and/or Purgatory. Both, a place on the inside that was on the outside, a there that was here and an opposite identical, obverse to reverse – a whole death scenario based on life in all its complexity, beauty and filth. More graphic perhaps; or not, dependent on experience, sanity, circumstance. There and/or here to be shaped.
The challenge was to paint.
Or sculpt.
Or drench your underpants…
Twenty Two: Specimen Hotel