An Autobiography - Part One

Twenty-seven days later and the electric went off, so we drank the wine that the waiter recommended. It was a fruity little number, with a subtle undercurrent, which added somewhat to it’s encumbrance. Jack said that it conveyed the whole atmosphere of the place in it’s bouquet, yet disillusioned you with it’s intoxicating fullness of body. It served him as a reminder of just why we were here, without it, he would have lost his way within the first few minutes of our arrival.

Armed with a couple of bottles, and the all important cork remover, we decided to explore the darkness, for we were in need of some light entertainment. Stumbling over the bodies, which still littered the floor (the going was heavy, but Jack was courageous enough to pull them from our path and piled them to one side), we made our way towards the head waiter’s enclave. We found him sitting there, shiftily scribbling on his order pad.
“Add these to our bill, garcon.” Jack was slick, you had to give him credit for that.
The head waiter looked up, “Fuck off” he grunted, and continued scribbling.
Not one to be outdone, Jack looked down at him, “Actually, we are starting to feel hungry, how about we order the . . .”
“OK!” the head waiter spluttered, “that’s another three bottles of Chateau Boileau du Narcejac onto your bill. Now go and piss off, I’m busy” he snarled back at us. A look of mirthless amusement shone from Jack’s eyes in response to this victory.

I suggested the washroom to my partner, and he nodded in agreement. We approached the wood grained door, our apprehension starting to get the better of us. The symbol on the door shone, even in this near darkness. It was a tarnished bronze colour and the surface of it seemed to bubble and boil from some deep chemical reaction that was taking place between the metal and the darkness. It felt like an age before we got within reach of the shining brass-like oblong hand panel which was fixed to the door by six round headed screws. The detail was exceptional, we had to stop and wonder at the level of technological achievement behind it all. We stood there breathless and windswept, deciding to finish the remainder of the bottle of wine we opened on our journey over here. I saw Jack’s hand move slowly inside his pocket.
“I’ll toss you for it” he said coyly.
I looked hard, into his deep blue eyes, a wry smile drifting across his glistening lips.
“Heads” I called.
The smile vanished. Jack pulled on his lucky coin; it was an old piece of metal he found on the second day of our arrival here. It had saved our lives numerous times in the past weeks. His hand came up, out of his pocket, and he launched the coin into the air. It seemed to sail majestically through the air currents and warm updrafts. Time slowed, as it always did at this point, and so while we waited for the outcome I opened another bottle of wine. We spoke about how we had laughed before coming here, how easy it was going to be, and how easy it was going to be to get back again. But in reality it hadn’t been. Not at all. Twenty-seven god-awful days later, and we were still here.



A faint whistling brought us from our reverie. The coin was returning from it’s flight, a slightly different shape as always. It headed straight for Jack’s hand. He deftly caught it, and as quick as lightning, he shoved it straight back into his pocket.
“Yes” he said, “two of them”.
“About bloody time” I replied.
We smiled a desperate smile at each other, and as one, we pushed open the door. The brass panel was cold and slimy to the touch, but we were suitably rewarded. In that split second, a blinding white light emerged from the doorway and time folded upon itself. We were only allowed a brief glimpse of the brown-white enamelled receptacles hanging from the walls, before we were picked up by time and space. With a sickening ‘THWAP’, and excellent visuals, we were taken through all sorts of differing space-time conflicts back to where we had originally started our journey from, twenty-seven days ago.

We sat in the middle of the operations centre, proud of our achievements, and supping the last from the bottle of wine.
“I told you it was going to be easy” Jack said, slapping me on my back,
“Easy, yes, but you said nothing about the music”

I can still here Jack laughing to this very day.