SPOILED 2 - part two

(I gotta get outta this place. Fuck, I gotta get out.)

Reece tap-tap-tapped his foot against the wall.

(Gotta get outta here.)

He lay belly-up on the dorm bed, the balls of his feet resting, tapping, against the brickwork. His body wouldn’t settle, nor his mind, and he didn’t really want them to. Now was not the time for rest.

He had to think. Had to scheme.

Taptaptaptap.

(I can’t stay here. I can’t stick around any longer. Need to find a way outta these fucking dorms. And soon.)

A dull thump came back at him through the wall.

‘Quit your fuckin’ tapping, Reece! You’re driving us nuts!’ came the muffled voice of the guy in the adjoining dorm. It wasn’t the first time.

Well, fuck that guy. Fuck all these idiots around here; the other fat lads and the guards, AND that stupid, smiling, top-of-the-morning-to-ya doctor.

And most of all, fuck Reece’s last roommate. Using that kid for his last escape plan had proven to be a bust. The naive little dipshit had gone and gotten himself killed. Well, kinda. Reece had buttered up the doe-eyed twerp, spent months gaining his trust, sent him off to scout a way out, only for the idiot to get caught.

So much wasted time.

‘Fuckin… stupid motherfucker…,’ Reece sighed, thinking back on it.

They’d questioned Reece over the incident too, but he was good at this. He’d been slipping his way out of blame his whole life. His gift of the gab had served him well over the years, and in this case it’d managed to loosen the noose around his own neck, but the ex-roomie hadn’t been so lucky. They took the runt away, dispatched him like so many fattened lads before, dragging him off to wherever the hell they disposed of the unwanted doughboys. Never to be seen again.

And all of that meant back to the drawing board for Reece.

‘God-fuckin-damnit!’

He’d only just gotten away with it by the skin of his teeth. But he knew from here on, the arsehole guards who worked here were gonna be watching him like a hawk. As well as that goddamned beardy doctor. Just the way he looked at Reece, the way the smile slipped, the hardening tone of his usual lullaby voice, Reece knew he’d run out of good will with the Doc. He could sense that the noose would soon be re-tightening. So for now he had to be on best behaviour. Eat up. Eat some more. Get nice and plump like they tell you to. Put on more and more weight along with the other stupid fucks around here…

Taptaptaptap.

‘Seriously! Dude! Shut the fuck up with your fuckin’ tapping!’

Reece had to get out of these dorms. Schoomzing up to old Nightingale was out of the question. That card had long been played, and wasted. But if he could just get to Mr Swan.

If he could just make it to -

The dorm door was unbolted and pushed open, causing the usual whack against the wall.

‘New playmate for you,’ the bulky guard at the threshold stated flatly.

And with that he thrust into the room an averagely built - if stuffed-looking - blonde youth with scruffy curls and weedy limbs. He looked as terrified as every new arrival, pretty much. Must have been a new shipment of them.

‘W-Where are you going?’ the noob twisted to look back to the guard who was already closing the door and bolting it shut. ‘Wait…! Come back!’ He then proceeded to look for a door handle, then beat his palms against it. ‘There’s been a mistake! I don’t… I don’t belong here!’

Reece rolled his eyes, having seen all this a hundred times before.

‘Come back!’ the lad wailed at the door in an American accent.

These little lost lambs. It was always the same. All confused and ‘What am I doing here?’ and ‘What is this place?’ And that was to say nothing about the forced feedings. And the weight gain.

Reece just looked at him with unsympathetic eyes. He’d been starting to get used to having the dorm room to himself, as a matter of fact.

The lad remained at the door looking confused for a few moments, before turning and taking in the bland windowless room.

‘What is this place?’ he asked.

Reece saw the innocence in those big blue eyes. He saw the naivety.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he sat upright on the bed, took his feet from the wall and swung them over the side to face this newbie, ‘you were just minding your own business somewhere, and you blacked out, then you woke up in The Lab with the Doc breathing all over you?’

The new kid just gaped back in response for a little bit. ‘H-How did you know that…?’

Reece stood up.

‘What’d they feed ya?’ he asked with a smirk. ‘For me it was chip shop curry. Fucking mountains of it. Never wanna taste the stuff again now. I used to love it, as well, from my local ChipLand. Now I can’t even stand the thought of it.’

In fact, upon his arrival here, Reece had spat in Dr Nightingale’s face. Probably hadn’t set himself up for the best start, in hindsight.

The blonde looked down at the bump protruding from his studenty t-shirt.

‘They made me… eat so much…,’ he mumbled. ‘W-Why would they do that…?’

Little lost lamb indeed.

But this might be good for Reece. Maybe…

‘What’s yer name, fella?’ he asked of his new tear-stained roommate.

‘Lucas,’ the kid sniffed. He was tenderly patting at the recent expansion they’d forced onto his midriff.

‘Lucas…,’ Reece echoed, noting that stupidly angelic face, the curly locks, the butter-wouldn’t-melt expression. Reece’s own butter had melted long ago, if he’d even had any to begin with.

‘I’m Reece,’ he said.

Little Lucas looked on the verge of fresh tears.

‘I don’t… know where we are… I don’t know… why I’m here…’

‘None of us, do, really,’ Reece explained. ‘We don’t know where ‘here’ is. There’s a whole load of us lads, they keep us locked in these dorms. When we’re not eating, that is.’

Lucas just sniffed. His bottom lip was going again.

‘Listen,’ Reece continued, his mind now turning things over, ‘it’s not so bad, after the first session.’

‘I don’t understand…,’ Lucas responded, having probably uttered that sentence for the hundredth time today. ‘I just… wanna go home…’

Reece’s thoughts were crystallising. This new lamb they’d lumped him with, so sweet and innocent, he might be perfect…

He might be a lifeline.

Reece padded closer and clapped a fattened arm around Lucas’s back.

‘Well, it’s a good job they put you in with me then, pal,’ he smiled.

‘Y-Yeah…?’ Lucas sniffed again.

Oh, this one was perfect, alright.

‘Yep. Cos we both want the same thing. We both want out.’

That wasn’t strictly true.

‘And I know this place like the back of my hand,’ Reece kept it up.

That wasn’t strictly true either.

‘R-Really…?’ Lucas clung to the words, just as Reece hoped he would.

‘Oh yeah,’ Reece carried on breezily. ‘I’m just the man you need to help get you out of here.’

‘I need to get out…,’ Lucas said. ‘I need to go home…’

‘Course you do. Course you do. We’re gonna help each other, buddy,’ Reece replied silkily. ‘You just stick with me, yeah?’

(Just stick to me like glue. Do everything I say.)

‘Y-Yeah… Okay… Thank you, Reece,’ Lucas’s lip quivered.

‘Ahh, no big deal. You just got lucky, getting landed here with me.’

(Lucky, that’s one word for it. You’re gonna do what I want, dance to the beat of my drum and get me into The Palace), Reece thought. (I’ll use you any means necessary. You, my new blonde mate, are completely disposable.)

****

Somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean, the cabin cruiser known as ‘Juicy Julie’ bobbed and weaved, bearing South West. Thus far her voyage had been favoured with calm waters and mild-tempered skies displaying the undiluted brilliance of the stars each night.

Manni Dey stood behind Arthur Sweet, who was holding the wheel steady, casually slugging from a bottle of Coors, peering into the oceanic darkness ahead. Manni pressed the curve of his swollen roid gut into Sweet’s back and kissed the big man’s crown.

‘Okay, when’s your birthday?’ he asked.

‘April 28th.’

‘That makes you a… Taurus, right? Figures. Stubborn as a bull.’

‘When’s yours, then? I bet you’re one of them sexy Scorpios.’

‘November 16th - I am, actually. That’s impressive, haha.’

Arthur pursed his lips and zigzagged his brows in pride.

‘See, I ain’t over the hill just yet, sunshine.’

And Manni laid a hand on Arthur’s massive bare belly, exposed as it was through his unbuttoned shirt, and kissed him, before swigging his beer.

It was stupid really. How only now Sweet and Dey were having the Getting-To-Know-You conversation while ‘Julie’ cruised along on autopilot, weaving through the open seas on this cool summer night. But the truth of it was that the two former detectives hadn’t really known each other all that long. Not truly. They’d worked together in finding Ben, butting heads more than anything, then by the time the partnership had turned romantic all hell had broken loose. More recently their time on the Isle of Man had been largely spent decompressing, then prepping for this present voyage. Put simply, there’d been little time for learning the finer details of one another. Not until now. Both agreed it was ridiculous, but here it was. Manni was finding the whole thing pretty enjoyable, all told.

‘Alright, I got one for ya,’ Arthur told him, slugging his Coors and pawing contently at his partner’s enormous pectoral.

‘Shoot.’

‘What’s Manni short for?’

Dey blinked. Then blinked some more, probably about fives times. He opened his mouth, only for nothing to come at first.

‘Are… Are you fucking kidding me…?’ He laughed but couldn’t decide if this was funny or not.

Sweet evidently could, and chuckled in that way that bounced his extremely bulbous gut up and down. ‘It never came up!’ he smiled, wiping some beer froth from his moustache, one hand on the wheel.

‘But… What the fuck?’ It was funny, Dey decided. But still utterly absurd. ‘I can’t believe in all this time you haven’t even known my actual name!’

‘We was too busy dealing with the case,’ Sweet pulled a face a picture of innocence.

‘Manish.’ Manni shook his head in disbelief. ‘It’s Hindi for The God of The Mind.’

‘Blimey…’

‘Honestly, Sweet, what are you fucking like? Haha.’

Arthur took more beer to his lips and chugged, stifling a burp and patting his fat hand over Manni’s which still lay across the upper hemisphere of Sweet’s belly. He shrugged and said, ‘I know now, dunni? Sorry, handsome.’

Manni couldn’t help but continue to grin, feeling the warmth of the older man’s hand over his, and the silver bodyhair under it.

‘Okay, my turn again.’ He swigged. ‘How old are you?’

‘54 now. I was 53 when we started off together.’

‘Wait... so you had a birthday while we were working the Ben case…’ Manni realised out loud in response.

Sweet just nodded plainly and took more beer. ‘Don’t matter much.’

‘Fuck, Arthur, you should have said…’

‘You was on one of your “dates” with old Lord Porky.’

Part of finding Ben had meant placing Manni undercover, meeting with the corrupt politician Lord Fenton in order to extract clues.

Arthur went on, ‘I know you’re 38 cos you told me the day we first met.’

Dey didn’t reply for a moment. He looked to his partner, curious.

‘You remembered.’

‘Course I did,’ Arthur said, tapping the side of his grey hair. ‘Elephants never forget.’

‘Ha!’ Manni laughed but actually… he was touched.

The big man reached across and kissed him, his glasses bumping into the bridge of Dey’s nose in a way that had become sweetly familiar by now. He took a fresh bottle and popped the cap off with the nearby opener.

‘See? I’m not always crap.’

‘Okay, middle name?’ Manni asked.

‘Graham. You?’

‘Lakhwinder. It’s, uh, my father’s name.’

‘Does that have a meaning and all?’

‘You know…,’ Manni had to think for a minute. He downed the last of his bottle and joined Sweet in a fresh one. ‘I don’t actually know, haha.’

‘Brothers and sisters?’

Dey had come to enjoy the way Sweet pronounced words like ‘brothers’ (‘bruvvers’). He let his hand slide absently down the older man’s stretched abdomen, basking in the warm curve of it.

‘Just me,’ he replied, ‘but I’ve got a ton of cousins - in the UK and back in India. You?’

‘A sister, Linda,’ Sweet answered. ‘She lives in Italy with her husband who’s a bit of a wheeler dealer knob. She had the common sense to fuck off and leave home when we was still young. I stayed behind like a chump while me old dad drank himself to death.’

‘Shit… I’m sorry, Arthur.’

‘Don’t be. I turned out alright in the end, didn’t I?’

Manni leaned forward and kissed him, softer this time, and longer. He felt Sweet kiss back, his chubby chops and ‘tache smushing against Dey’s chiselled face. Manni had a sense not to probe this subject further; that it might be a box Arthur were disinclined to open. Maybe in time, but not now.

He held the big man’s cheek a moment longer.

‘I reckon so, just about.’

Sweet chuckled gruffly. ‘Haha, cheers, lad. And what about you? Your Mum and Dad must be worrying sick about you. We’ve been off the grid for a bit now, ain’t we?’

This quietened Manni. He stopped to swig more beer, swilling it in his mouth before swallowing. He looked out across the bow, the endless darkness beyond. Nothing but ebon murk ahead, some stars now blotted by midnight clouds.

‘I don’t know. I mean, maybe? I guess they probably are worried. But it’s… difficult, or, I don’t know, complicated….’

‘Always is with families,’ Arthur agreed.

‘Me and my parents are a bit… distant, to be honest,’ Dey admitted.

‘They don’t know about you liking old fat blokes? Summing like that?’ Sweet curled his podgy hand under and around Dey’s pec some more.

‘Or just liking blokes at all.’ Manni didn’t know why that had been difficult to say. He didn’t think he’d ever actually said it aloud before.

(Huh…)

‘I understand.’ Arthur kissed him again, with a renewed little knock from his glasses. ‘When we get back, why don’t you give ‘em a call? Don’t have to go into detail or nothing. Just let ‘em know you’re okay, at least?’

Manni swigged some more, thought, nodded slowly. It wasn’t a fun subject for him. He supposed this was his box.

‘It’s just-‘

KKKKKRRRRRRREEEEEAAAAAAKKKKKKKHHHHHHH!

‘Julie’ lurched violently to one side. Dey fell into Sweet, clasping at his fat for stability but Arthur was tumbling backwards onto his massive arse, beer everywhere.

‘What the f-‘

KKKKKKRRRRRAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!

The boat was turning onto its side, the floor curling up to become the wall. Manni scrambled and slid, Arthur practically rolled across the cabin. Neither could reach the wheel.

‘Fuck is happening?!’ Dey shouted.

The horrific sound of crunching and tearing and crashing continued, rending the air in a twisted melody.

‘I dunno!’ Sweet yelled back, struggling to right himself, grasping at a wall only to find in his horror that it was the ceiling. ‘Musta hit some rocks!’

And then suddenly there they were; huge monstrous stalactites pushing up through what had become a churning cacophony of waves outside. Beyond them was land, emerging out of the gloom and approaching fast.

Sweet reached with all his might for the wheel which was spinning itself into a blur.

‘It’s no use!’ Manni hollered. ‘Arthur, we’re capsizing!’

‘Fuck! Shit! Bollocks!’

Dey threw himself into the cruiser’s interior while it rotated around him, grabbing for bags, life jackets, waterproof backpack, anything.

‘We’re taking on water!’ he shouted back to the helm, the deep briny Atlantic pouring itself into ‘Julie’, crashing and swilling around Manni’s legs, then waist. He looked back and Sweet was still trying to wrestle with the wheel, even though it was above his head.

‘It’s no use!’ Dey cried again. ‘Abandon fucking ship!’

‘Ohhhh… FUUUCCKK!’ roared Arthur.

Manni tumbled his way back to the helm, half walking on the ceiling, half treading water. He thrust a life jacket into Sweet’s hands, hooked a massive bicep under his partner’s arm and made for the door. The mechanism was jammed, and Dey had to try and kick it down through the resistance of the incoming tide. More rocks battered and barraged ‘Julie’, throwing her this way and that, the sea now up to her occupants’ collarbones.

‘Fucking… COME ON!’ Manni bellowed, and with one last enraged kick the door flew outwards, letting whipping winds and yet more water in.

‘I’m right here, lad!’ Arthur tightened his grip and followed Manni into an awkward one-armed swim outside.

‘We need more clearance!’ Dey shouted, even though the big man was right behind him. The crashing of the midnight waves was disorienting. He gripped Arthur and the bag and his own life jacket as tight as a vice and kicked his legs into a powerful swim, checking Sweet was okay.

Arthur may have been a large fellow, but he still knew how to swim. They were clearing the rocks, at least, and before them some kind of port was coming into view through the night’s veil. Here the waves were slightly less violent.

‘Okay…,’ Manni puffed. ‘I think it’s safe to tread water for a bit and put these on…’ And he began the process of slipping into his life jacket. ‘You need a hand?’

Arthur shook his head. He was breathing like he’d run a marathon, but at least his jacket was now on and he could bob with each swell and surge of the ocean in more safety. ‘I’m okay… lad…’

Mani grabbed him by the hand, letting his fingers interlock with Sweet’s chipolatas, and the two of them looked back:

‘Juicy Julie’ had become nothing short of a wreckage. A twisted hunk of bent metal and cracked hull, her windows shattered. She was sinking.

‘Come on,’ Dey told Sweet, and kicked back into a swim, aiming for the port or the docks or whatever it was ahead.

‘’Juicy Julie’…,’ Arthur muttered, paddling as best he could. The life jacket didn’t really fit him, per se, but he’d managed to make it work.

‘Always hated that name…,’ Manni grimaced, working his legs hard against the current.

There were breakers, gangways, mooring posts ahead; it was all coalescing into view now. No lights or movement, but maybe that was a good thing. The two men must have swam for 50 meters or so, the sea calming itself incrementally with their progress.

Eventually there were railings to grip, which fed along to a seaweed-strewn ladder, and Dey held it fast, catching his breath, before climbing.

‘Careful, it’s slippery,’ he called back.

Above, the night sky chose to open up. Spots of rain turned to spackles, and soon to downpour. Not that it mattered much; Arthur and Manni were soaked to the skin already.

Dey pulled himself unsteadily up, onto creaking wooden planking, and turned back. ‘Are you okay? You got it?’

‘I got it…,’ Arthur huffed, following suit with a heaving chest, his grey hair plastered in ungainly streaks down his forehead. Miraculously his glasses remained exactly where they always sat, balanced on the bridge of his nose.

Manni let a hand rest on Sweet’s wide back, still catching each breath uneasily. Sweet tilted his head back and let the rain fall onto his great big body, drawing in as much air as he could.

‘Fuck…,’ he panted. ‘Fuckin… ‘ell…’

‘I know…,’ was all Dey could think to add. Breathe now. Comprehend massive fuck-up momentarily.

‘Fuck…,’ Arthur repeated. ‘Look…’

He pointed a fat hand back to where they must have been: A set of sharp, craggy rocks pointing upward to stab the heavens, and among them, what remained of ‘Julie’, now slowly sinking down, pulled into the depths of the Atlantic…

Their only way home. Gone.