7. The Horvát Twins. The Croc-Pit. Wet dreams.

7. The Horvát Twins. The Croc-Pit. Wet dreams.  
 

Read Part 6: Prize conker, the son of a Norwegian ferry captain. Escape plan. 

 

There have been rumours of escape attempts, of course, some even who have lived to tell the tale, sporting a broken leg like Jorkorski, or bruises on the bum like Finkelstein, the marks quite as large as both of his buttocks, and earning him, upon their dramatic unveiling down at the Pig and Anchor, several pints of the finest ale as he comically re-enacted landing on his arse, using a stool and the dartboard as props. 

    But, up until this point, there has been no confirmed message from the other side, no one who could honestly be said to have got out. Not unless you counted the Horvát twins, bright effervescent boys, both of them, and mainstays of the O____ United football team, famous, despite their very best efforts, double training every Wednesday night, for never having won a single game in their three full years of competition. 

    The twins had made it to the top of the wall ok, spikes ingeniously attached to their elbows and knees. It was their descent down the other side, in double quick time, one on top of the other, both landing on their heads, which was the death of them.

    “And now Antonio wishes to follow in their footsteps. No I won’t let it happen.”

    Flicking the sign hanging in the door over from Open to Closed Kuper steps outside. It is a blustery day, the branches on the sycamore trees shaking themselves at the sky. Somewhere in the distance a gramophone is playing loudly. 

    Non, je ne regrette rien. 

    Following the curve of the road around, past the other terraces, most of them their curtains closed shut, window boxes empty, he comes to the seafront. Here the boardwalk, except for the tall man in the top hat who is always there, strangely singing songs of his own devising, is empty. 

    Kuper squints his eyes, puts a hand up to his forehead. 

    After Medieval World of Adventures, the gates of which are locked, a heavy metal chain threaded through them, stands the hulk of the library ship, a decommissioned fishing trawler converted to house books, but long abandoned now, the funding having dried up a number of years before despite a campaign by a group of local hippies to keep it going. Only arrogant spiky gulls patrol its decks, their beaks opening and snapping shut like the pincers of a crab. 

    Heading back inland, gotta keep going, you are always nearer by not keeping still, Kuper moves swiftly through the streets, passing the grand façade of The Majestic Hotel, the row of fishermen’s cottages, tiny rundown buildings with paint peeling from every surface, rented out mostly to the Chinese cockle pickers, twenty of them jammed in each bedroom, so it is rumoured, like winkles in a shell and heads deeper into town, stopping only when a wall adorned with posters catches his eye. 

     Mrs. Pamela De Luca and her magical tambourine, performing Top Hits from Puccini’s many fine operas.

    Le Pétomane, a man who could make music with his anus alone, ‘Beethoven’s 1812 Overture like you’ve never heard it before!’

    Harlequin the Magician and his gorgeous assistant, Fanny le Boulet. ‘See Fanny disappear before your eyes! You won’t believe what you have seen. Or not seen!’

    A grand concert! Several bands with the name of gods, Zeus, Thor, and so on, performing ‘with thunder’ down at the Electric Ballroom, ‘for all you headbangers young and old!’

    And so this is real life, thinks Kuper. I regret all the things I did not do and reaching out to touch one of the tattered posters he makes a pledge. 

    “Moving forward I will be more like Charlie Chaplin. Or Godzilla! I will jape and roll. I will roar as I crash through the street. Watch out you mortals!”

    He slaps his hand hard against his forehead three times, a merry timpani, sings out, “This is me!”

    And he is considering getting his willy out there and then, like on the Willy Airing Day he has always been too fearful to take part in, watching only from his upstairs bedroom window a pair of opera glasses clamped to his eyes, mouth open, but when he steps away from the posters, spins around, squints his eyes and puts a hand back up to his forehead, he realises he has no idea where he is and a miraculous fear overtakes him.

   

The street is narrow, barely wider than the length of one of the crocodiles brave punters, young muscular men usually from the military academy in C____, can wrestle with down at Medieval World of Adventures’ Croc-Pit; ‘double your money if you get it on its back but watch out for those jaws! They more than sting!’

    Many of the houses here have windows that are boarded up, broken or cling by just a sliver of wood to rotting frames. 

    Behind these blind dark eyes there could be anything! 

    Gangs of wiry-armed tooled-up thieves cooking up their next plan. Circles of drug users, whacked out of their brains, ready to do anything for their next fix. Buxom, scantily clad, ladies who would entice you in with a flash of a stocking and low-cut negligée and then two weeks later you would wake up without a kidney, an eye, or worse. 

    Didn’t young Ivanovs come around to find his arse had gone and have to have it replaced with two rubber cushions? Drop him from a high building, it was said, and he would bounce like a ball.  

     At the end of the road Kuper spies a shady pale-skinned youth with narrow eyes and matching lips. As Kuper watches the youth strikes a match threateningly on the sole of his shoe, brings the match up to his mouth, extinguishes it with a fizz. Then another youth appears behind him and then another. They cluster close together like feeding cows. 

    Or crows.

    Kuper realises he must have strayed into the Boondocks, recalling a term the locals use for the warren of streets that forms the most north-easterly, and most rundown, section of the town. 

    Here the hookers, the spivs, the grifters and other sundry petty thieves hang out, most conspicuously in Gin Alley, whose disreputable reputation spreads far further than the borders of the town of O____.

    “Oi mate!”

    The match eating youth has started towards him, hips narrow, legs circling out like a pair of compasses. 

    “Hang on a minute there mate!”

    The youth’s smile is both welcoming and menacing, the features like those of the man Kuper had once seen in an X rated video and whose image has since returned to him in many a nightmare. 

    “If you could just give me a minute…”

    But Kuper has already turned on his heel and is running. 

    Running. 

 

It is five minutes later and Kuper is still running, his arms and legs wildly spinning, when he crashes headlong into the back of a gargantuan figure.

    "No, don't take me!" he screams as he bounces down onto the floor, bashes both his elbows, his teeth ringing with pain. "I am nothing. No one. A spider in a tub of ointment. The curly penis of a pig!”

    "It is I," says the figure turning and bending down low to lift him up. "Antonio. Now what is all this fuss about? Who is going to take you and where? Lord knows it might be a blessing if you are removed from this deathly pit of a place. Just imagine! You cheeks parting and a fart escaping. Wish it good tidings on its journey and may it find much happiness.”

    Kuper points with a finger towards the Boondocks, tries to describe the boy and his gang and fails, because in his description they are only boys, malnourished runts obsessed with thick-thighed foreign football players, shiny fast cars they would never own. 

    Larger penises. 

    As big as possible. 

    “You have to save me,” he says finally. “Or at least don’t leave me. Anything could happen.”

    Antonio raises himself to his full height while at the same time seeming to diminish, guilty perhaps with the guilt that all escapees have in relation to those they leave behind. 

    "I have already told you. I am getting out. A baby needs its father and I need Claudette. She comes to me in my dreams as a mermaid calling. I see her face and then I wake up in agony, my cock ready to explode. Already exploded! You…”

    Antonio falters, for how can he not be aware of the little man crumbling before him, the lips trembling, tears leaking from the eyes?

    “It is tonight!” he says finally and then he kneels down, places his hands one of each of Kuper’s shoulders. 

    “But I need your help. That is what I was returning to ask you. What do you think? Will you help me? The truth of the matter is that I can't do it without you. You are a vital cog in the machine. For me to return to Claudette I need you, more than I have ever needed anyone before.”

    “Oh my goodness,” thinks Kuper. “What am I going to do? I can’t let him go, even if I have to break his legs to make him stay. But how is it to be done?”
 

Image from Pixabay 

 

Read Part 8: The Gunpowder Plot. Gargantua. A midnight flit.