Night Trip

  "…READING BOOKS RATHER THAN WATCHING DVDS…"

  The doorway had no door. Beyond, the thin, dim, carpeted hallway exposed three other doorways. The one at the far end looked like the entrance to a kitchen; the one in the left wall, about halfway down, gave upon a flight of stairs heading up; directly opposite this was the other doorway.

  I moved down the hallway slowly, like Indiana Jones going down some secret, subterranean corridor in fear of booby traps. In other people’s homes, I always feel like a trespasser.

  I reached the stairs, but instead of heading left and going up, I turned to the other doorway and gazed inside. I now think it was because I could smell the outside world, and I wanted it.

  The room beyond appeared to be a small living room. It looked simple and quaint enough, typical of a million such places in the country. No modern equipment, though. Leisure seemed a case of reading books rather than watching DVDS. In the far wall of this room was another door, and it was open. I couldn’t see anything but darkness beyond, but I could hear a low purr, as if from a lion lying content in the sun after a gazelle buffet.

  I approached the doorway.

  A small garden lay beyond, intimidated by high walls of chipped, crumbling brick. Someone had tried to paint the walls green in years past, but most of the paint had flaked off in great chunks, leaving just a few pieces, some big and some small, clinging on for life. A paved path cut down one side of the garden; the rest of the area was overgrown grass.

  There was a shed near the bottom, and in the back wall an iron gate that probably let you out into the world. Down there, illuminated by the pale light from the shed’s single bulb, was Axe-wielder, smoking a pipe and sitting astride the thing that was the cause of the purring noise I’d been drawn by. It filled the path like a roadblock.

  It was a Honda Goldwing. A mammoth bike, with two seats, and a big stock windshield. It even had a Harrigan trailer, in matching green, that looked like a tiny windowless car missing a front set of wheels. Or was it a fat bubble of snot snorted out the bike’s exhaust pipe? Engine size: 1800cc. A bike so big it had a reverse gear. This thing could probably bat aside most cars on the road like toys.

  Axe-wielder saw me looking at his bike. He patted it. A ring on his finger struck metal with a hollow thunk that the eerie darkness turned into a belch of thunder from a distant storm. It made me realize just how quiet the bike was purring now. Nothing but a heartbeat, like a hunting creature.

  “Yep, this is my darling. If I had to choose a way to go, it would be with her. Bet you thought that way about your girl a few hours ago. Guess maybe you weren’t supposed to be with her. Wasn’t meant to be, lad.”

  I just kept looking at the bike.

  Axe-wielder snorted somewhat derisively. It was as if he’d seen naivety in me and didn’t like it. “I had a girlfriend once," Axe-wielder said, waving me closer. I went closer but still kept my distance. This guy was a Hells Angel, he’d been drinking, and he carried an axe strapped to his back. He laughed suddenly. “Once. He he. Makes it sound like I’ve only ever had the one. Nay, had my share of the lasses. Just don’t go in for the relationship lark, that’s all.” As he drew on his pipe, I just nodded. Let him talk, I figured.

  “Bunch of years ago now. I was twenty-five and new on the biking scene. Where’d you meet yours? Sometimes the location of the first meet decides whether it will last or not. You know, I shagged this bird once and - whoa, he he. That makes it sound like I only shagged her once. Take that with the first one I said and that means I’ve only ever had sex once. Noooo. No, I was shagging her in bed, me on top. So lazy, just the hips moving, you know? When you want sex for sex’s sake, like maybe because you don’t know if it’ll be the last one ever or not. Car crashes come right out the blue, and all that, and you might end up lying paralysed in a bed and thinking you shoulda had that last shag. And I looked at the digital clock, and it said 11.58. - it was morning, a morning shag, which I don’t really like too much. Need a swallow first.

  “Anyway, I decided to try to shoot my load in this bird before the clock struck twelve. So I was pumping away. Clock hit 11.59 and I sped up. She was moaning like some bomb survivor. Anyway, clock turned, I didn’t shoot my load, and all of a sudden my energy was gone. I went limp. Actually bullshitted her by saying it was the missing Dutch courage, the lack of beer, sort of reverse brewer’s droop. It was as if mission failure had occurred. So what point was there to carrying on shagging? For pleasure? No, too much effort, too many muscles. A spliff in front of the TV is so better and so easier.

  “Shit, I went off on one there. Wild tangent. Wow. Purpose, that’s my point. Everything should be done for a purpose. Everything of merit we do, it’s done for a purpose. I dumped that girl because we met in the post office, and that’s just not the stuff of fairytales. A post office.” He grinned at me, like a man about to play a trick, or chalk a win. Or send a school of paranoia fish through my head.

  “It was in a record shop,” I said despite my fears. “Sounds like something out of a romantic film, I know. We both wanted the same CD and it was the last copy. I got there first, but as I was reading the cover, I sensed her standing behind me. We got talking about it. She said if I let her have it, she’d drive me home in her car and play it on the CD player for me. So we did and we got chatting.”

  "When did you first fuck her?”

  Unnerved, I laughed. It was involuntary. But Axe-wielder took no offence. In fact, he grinned.

  “Yeah, blunt, aren’t I? He he. Guys, they chase women like dogs chase balls. Women don’t, really, they just kinda let things come to them, let men happen to them. That’s why they don’t rush the sex. To them, it’s that same ball, but they don’t need to chase it. It’s rolling towards them, slowly, and all they have to do is wait.”

  Here Axe-wielder dropped his pipe and had to bend to find it. As he bent, I was partly relieved and party disconcerted. He had given me time to think, but he had also shown me that axe. It lay there on his back, almost itching to smash someone’s skull. I wondered how age might have mellowed this once brash man. Then I wondered if instead it was in his later years that he’d become an axe-wielding, biker gang member.

  He sat upright with a grunt. He spat on his pipe, cleaned the end on his bomber jacket, and stuck it back in his mouth.

  “What was I saying? Yeah, men. They chase women, and when they get that ball, they’ve proved they can. Catching the ball after that becomes all about fun. But that first time, it’s more about the chase and the mission. The ego. You follow me?”

  In the darkness, I clearly saw his eyes fixed on me. I didn’t know how to answer. I just waited.

  “Your girl’s lost to you, just as she was in that shop with that CD, before you hit it off with her. You’da got a slapped face if you’d grabbed her ass right there in the shop. No problem later, though. Follow me? Lost to you again, so what you have in your mind is not rage or whatever about the cheating, sod that. It’s fear of the chase again. The adrenaline rush has turned to a fear rush because now the target is harder. Fear and anger go hand in hand, sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between them. Sometimes, though, both feel good.”

  He paused. He seemed to think as he stared into his pipe, prodding the tobacco with his finger.

  “Those two in there, they’re not as philosophical as me. Too quick off the mark. Don’t even know this girl of yours, or you, and already they’re telling you to kill her. That’s not your purpose, I bet. Or I could be wrong. How do I know? It’s down to you, I guess. What do you want to do? I think you should look at it this way… If you plan to be with her again sometime in the future, how will that work if she’s dead? Why toss away a broken TV when you can store it and hope it will be fixed one day? Why?”

  Now there was an uncomfortable pause. I looked at the moon, bathed in sunlight but half-obscured by the Earth’s shadow. I wondered who had invented the name Earth. It sounded a bit lame, like having a brand of car called Car. Sa
me with Space. Couldn’t anyone be bothered to name it? Even seas and mountain ranges had names, real names.

  He spoke again. "The wrongs in this world need to be fixed by people who have the ability. Sometimes, you have to do what's not right to make all right in the end. But it's got to be the right action. You'll know that feeling. It maybe feels like déjà vu and telepathy and that feeling you get that someone's watching you - all those feelings rolled into one and molded and kneaded a bit. You put a knife in your hand and stand over your girl, and that feeling will either come or it won't. If it doesn't come and all you feel is normal shit as you prepare to strike - as normal as a guy feels when he's about to kill someone - then I guess that ain't the right thing to do. But a guy doesn't just threaten a woman with a knife, change his mind and go back to how things were. So my advice to you is this, if you don't already have that feeling I'm talking about - a feeling I have right now, and always have had since my own realization - well, if you don't have it, then you'd better do some serious research and find out for sure what your plan of action is. Or else."

  Axe-wielder stroked his bike's gas tank, like a man remembering fond times.

  "Mass-death will end this planet," he said quickly, as if continuing the subject, although this seemed to me like a whole new one. "We had Russians to worry about first. Now it's terrorists. This all plays on my mind, sometimes. I just don't know my place in the great scheme of things, sometimes. Need to get a purpose in life, see." He paused. "You know, I sometimes think of the world after another world war, with me as a sole survivor. The thought of a lonely existence in the post-war world, being able to do as I wished, where I wished, thrills me. I imagine that I’d take my bike and drive to some vast royal palace, clear out all the dead bodies and the debris, and set myself up home. I’d go to some home improvement store in a big truck and get the very best furniture for my vast back yard. I’d learn to fly, first in a little thing, then working up to one of those big planes that the military uses to transport tanks and Jeeps, so I could fly to Japan and load it up with the best new technology around. I’d visit all the nice and nasty places of the world, and set up cameras to record it all so I could watch live from home, see if there were any earthquakes or other survivors. I’d go to AREA 51 and see what all the fuss was about, see if it’s really aliens they’re working with down there. I’d check out Auschwitz and 10 Downing Street – that tiny-looking house, it's like Dr. Who's Tardis, eh? Bigger inside, a freak of physics. And I’d wreck things, just for the fascinating spectacle. I’d line bombs all around the base of the Sears Tower, just to watch it fall. I’d race two heavy locomotives towards each other. I’d bust a dam. I’d watch an aircraft carrier sink to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I’d do a parachute jump, and watch as the plane plummeted into a London suburb. And I’d visit the houses of all the famous people I like, all those film stars I want to fuck, and I’d keep their heads, maybe on a shelf."

  I didn't know how to react. I just nodded.

  “You believe in Fate?” he replied immediately. "Not destiny, that's some crap about achieving greatness, about the struggle for it. I mean Fate, which is your end, the end of the line for a man. Knowing that end isn't as scary as you might think. See it ten years from now, you got yourself a charmed life for the next ten years, because nothing upsets the celestial applecart - that's one of the Psiren's words of wisdom, that saying."

  I looked at him. This was not one of those questions you answered heartily when the asker was a guy like Axe-wielder. Instead, you waited until you knew his position on the subject, so you could shape your answer correctly, safely. You didn’t just say your bit and hope that, if he disagreed, then he was the kind to do so with gallantry. Because he might prefer to disembowel you instead. Especially if he carried a blunt axe strapped to his back. So, the question: did I believe in fate?

  “How do you mean?” I finally said, after deciding that pure silence could be as bad a response as the wrong response. Plus, the truth was, I just didn't fucking know. Who can possibly know what's true and what's not out of all the equations and theories and bullshit that geniuses and lunatics have dreamed up since the dawn of man? I only found out a few weeks back that rainbows are actually circular

  “That feeling I was talking about," Axe-wielder answered. "Everyone on this earth has a purpose. I do. You do. Every little bit of your body - heart, prostate, organelles, everything - has a purpose, a job. Like workers in a factory, all pulling together to make that factory run. Or your body. So what would be the point if you didn’t have a Fate? Imagine a factory where the workers didn’t produce anything at the end of it all...”

  I could just about keep up with him. Just about.

  “It’s all about knowing your Fate, though. Most people never learn it, so they flit and drift, having fun, paying bills, that shit. To most, life is a doctor’s waiting room. You read the posters on the walls, you turn your mobile onto silent, pretending you’ve turned it off as the signs say. Because we don’t read about people dying in hospitals because some guy somewhere in the building was getting text messages off his bird telling him to get some more milk, and his phone messed with the machinery. You do these things, and you think you’re living life and that this event or that event is all just part of that life, but all you’re really doing is killing time until the important bit comes along. The stuff after you die. The next phase. Right now, or when you last paid your council tax, last shagged your bird, last got a promotion… that was all just waiting room fidgeting and killing time. Dr. God will see you now, Mr… Sorry, what’s your surname?”

  Yeah, and here’s my address and a photo of my cat, too. I tried to think of a way to avoid answering that question, all the time fully aware of the axe strapped to the man’s back.

  "Best of all, though," he continued, "if a man realizes his Fate early enough, he can plan ahead and improvise and make sure he goes out on his own terms. Ain't impossible for some paedophile beaten to death in a public toilet to twist his logic and justify his murder - it gets a wild animal put in jail, and a child molester off the streets, and a word of warning out to others who might try things with kids, you know?"

  “Do you have a Fate?” I said quickly, hoping he’d bite, and he did.

  “I have that Fate-feeling-thing in every inch of my body. I knew my Fate when I agreed to the mission. I said yes, and I knew it was the end of the line for me. But hell, life shouldn’t be taken too much to heart, because we don’t survive it. I knew it was game over, but that was okay. Because I’d felt it. Felt it inside me. Like something gave way in my chest. But I also felt elated, like a lottery winner or something. I knew I was going on to better things. It is to be my reward for my loyalty. Maybe Hitler's demoted to a mouse now or a spider, and he deserved that for blowing his chance as a man. Not me. I'm going ever up that ladder, and who knows what's next after homo sapiens sapiens, eh?”

  “What do you mean?” Out here in the dark, in this strange village with this strange man and his mammoth bike, I had that dream feeling again. But if I was dreaming, then this time I wanted to wake up back home, before we’d begun on this trip; this time I’d tell her blunt, straight out that we were not going anywhere near the Peak District or that village, and certainly not near an axe-wielder on a bike or near a train station and a gay pride march in -

  I felt my brain reach out for a moment. A kind of lurch, as if it had extended a mental hand and grabbed hold of something. But before I knew what it was - a picture, a truth, a theory - it was gone and the mental fingers retreated back into my head with a snap of my eyelids, like a pair of windows closing.

  “You got a toilet?” I croaked, remembering the reason I’d come anywhere near this yard in the first place.

  Axe-wielder nodded. He pointed back inside, the way I’d come, then up. Just as Surfer-dude had. “Don’t piss on it,” he said as I headed for the door. “Don’t want the guys with magnifying glasses thinking I peed my pants at the end. That’s no way to go get your Fa
te.”