Art Pact 131

Punch-drunk and still feeling the last blow that hit him firmly in the stomach, Rostra stumbled from one wall to the other, making great progress frmo side-to-side but poor progress towards the road. The two brick guards to either side of him helpfully prevented him from veering off into the distance north or the far south, but each time they corrected his direction they did so with little grace and scant gentleness, pushing their rough baked surfaces into the softness of Rostra's hands and nudging his head violently where it sloshed one way or another at the end of his floppy neck. He remonstrated with them, but they remined silent against all his accusations, simply standing in place unflinchingly - so tall and wide that they stretched all the way from the bar to the main street, their skin tough and red so that he wondered where they had been born.

It may have been some time later - indeed, it was an hour, although Rostra had no way of knowing this - he finally stumbled out from between the two watchful guardians who had constrained his drunkard's walk, and out into the glaring neon of main street. He threw up his hands in shock, as if he had not been walking towards the lights for the last sixty minutes; as if the lights had been waiting, in the dark, lurking so that they could pounce upon his poor unsuspecting eyes; as if he had been in the dark all his life and only now was he being introduced to the concept of illumination.

"Jesus!" he said. "I'm sorry, for god's sake close the curtains! For god's sake, Margie!"

He let his left hand drop slowly, then when his eyes did not burn out instantly, he let his right hand move degree by degree towards his chest, so that pedestrians passing by on the other side of the street saw him as a sort of blood-spattered human statue (and those that did pass by all did so on the other side of the street, for his appearance was so disturbing that foot traffic on the same side of the street crossed over, giving him as much clearance as was humanly possible).

"Move along," he yelled at them. "Move along, nothing to see here!"

The thought of him as a policeman made him burst out laughing, a mad laughter that drew even more attention. He yelled again, then realised that the more attention he drew the more likely it was that a real cop would make an appearance. He waved the crowd away, tried to turn left, turned left twice more so that he was facing right from his original direction, then began to weave along the curb.

"Hey!" called a woman from the opposite curb. "Hey! Hey, get off the road you idiot!"

He waved back, just at the moment that another illuminated assault on his senses began. Two bright white lights rushed at him, accompanied by a furious blaring noise. He weaved one way then the other, but the lights followed him, and finally he just threw up his hands again. The lights squealed in addition to the siren, but their rushing stopped. The squeal cut out, and an irate voice shouted at him from behind the two blinding suns, something he thought should be more profound than it actually was, an angry god calling down curses upon him. He waited for forgiveness but it was not forthcoming - eventually, like all gods, the voice behind the light simply got bored with waiting and climbed back into its chariot, steering the two stars around Rostra until there was nothing but darkness and two huge purple blurs in his eyes.

"Ah, who needs you!" he bawled at the two red dots that followed the god into oblivion. "You weren't there when I needed you, were you? Who was there? No-one! No-one but Jones and his fucking goons! Sons-of-bitches."

The rage was gone as soon as it came, and Rostra wobbled back onto the pavement again. He fumbled in his pocket for his wallet, but it was gone. Of course, one of them would have taken it. Not Jones - it would have been beneath him. But one of the lesser thugs perhaps. A cold wave hit him, as though he'd been splashed with a bucket of water. My keys! He clapped his hands to his thighs. Nothing. The panic sobered him in an instant. He flapped at his jacket, at his back pockets, at the edges of his jacket where the lining sometimes admitted the contents of his pockets.

"Fuck. Fuck, balls, fuck."

To his amazement, although his keys were gone his ancient mobile was still in the inside pocket of his suit. Too old and worthless to steal, although he was surprised that nobody had thought to smash it, or to take his SIM. The battery had fallen out, but it had done that at least once a day for the last year, so he pushed it back into place and powered the phone up.

Beep beep, said the phone. 3 MESSAGES.

He stabbed at the buttons with his thumb. Churlishly, however, the phone refused to let him get at his messages without first entering his PIN, and he typed it twice incorrectly (once by putting in his bank PIN, then by remembering the right PIN but fumbling the last two digits), before finally getting it right. He ignored the messages, instead tripping through his address book until he found the number for Margie's mobile. It rang and rang.

"Come on Margie," he said urgently. "Come on, come on..."

But there was no answer.

He turned again, trying to orient himself and determine which was the quickest way to get to Margie's place. He tried to run, but before he'd gone more than four steps his legs twisted under him, his feet knotting themselves into a lumpy shackle that sent him to the pavement. His phone clattered down just out of his reach.

"Margie," he whispered. "Run. Run."