some time later

Some years later, somewhere beyond rainbows and the rotted mouldy leather jacket that died and was dumped in a wheelie bin in the back brick alleys of Manchester. Lloyd travelled north, to a city of hard stone, edifices and stairs. He never got comfortable, never found out about the chinks in his fantasies, his brain idling daydreams.


Semester 18.

Leaving, leaving the weekly group via London Rd, Lloyd dawdled into reverie, interspersed with the habitual in roughly the same place, just before the crossing. The crossing that talked if you could find it blind, and anyway. Croaky robotic accent near the pink bottle cap that Lloyd observed, noted mentally and somewhat superstitiously each time he passed. Sometimes he would have to pause, search it out, locate it until he could move on. It had been there now for months, on the desire path that cut through the crescent of city parkland. Only existing, only just in his gaze, his habit of its observation. But back to the habitual before the crossing. A Mayfair kingsize, lit by the streetscape junction box coated with posters. Today it was a poster for the independent film >>Savage Cabin,<< a large female screaming eye with a silhouette of a log cabin crafted into the reflection of the pupil. Lloyd flicked his gaze from the poster to the denim clad vulva of the oncoming passer-by, and exhaled, and wondered almost aloud. The boots of the vulva (he hadn’t seen her yet) made a nice sound in his squishy brain parts. When he looked at her face, met her eyes at that point arranged by both passers, she seemed to laugh eyefully. Lloyd slumped on curtly coughing. Resolving himself, he decided that he might go see the film at the Picturehouse.

After 183 minutes Lloyd entered the Picturehouse, paddled around a little near a notice board examining the grotty red carpet, examining his shoes and others, examining start times, examining posters with their familiar rebuses and five star reassurances. Deciding to see the film, he bought his ticket from the garish kiosk, the attendant slid it to him across the counter, her fingers were pretty, nails painted in bruise colours, her smile crept upon him later, he didn’t remember seeing her eyes.

The film itself went like this: Two teen pot smoking lovers mauled by a salivating (possibly rabid) moose, extremities bitten off and into by huge incisors, then eventually, after some camera trickery, the pair are carried crucified, one per antler dripping their respective death oozes. Witness to the moose attack a young geek is suffocated, drugged and dragged into darkness by a hick-billy. A lithe terrified female whilst in the process of an escape from an unseen pursuer, somehow slams a seemingly sharp car door upon her head, thereby carving off a chunk of cranium, a finality of grey slop plops into forest mud. A pre-tortured (I only heard the latter screams) youth cuts off his crippled vice held hand with a light weight hacksaw, when he hears the semi-toothless goon (skinny and redolent of Spike) approach, the youth escapes down a series of tunnels scraping frantic stump on manky wood walls, impaling earth, eventually he emerges into moonlight and panting frenzy, and then disappears with a verdant rustle. Our young geek awakes, strapped down with barbed wire upon a grimy, soaked and quite stylish dentist chair, eyes and mouth held wide open via an elaborate mechanism, (lots of close up panicked eye gapery) a hick-billy approaches with a three pin plug made of power drills for our young geek’s forced sockets, a great deal of corporeal and mechanical screams follow, along with a lot of slorp and glurp red wetness.
For Lloyd this was the end of the film he drifted off into the repetitive, into a painful sleep, into images of slender hands pinpointed with dark purple nail polish exploring his pockets, into being unable to walk or move up steps of soggy red carpet.
>>…over.<<
>>Guh!<<
>>Film’s over sir, you have to leave now.<<
>>Oh, yes, yes, sorry<<
Lloyd exited the theatre, a little groggy and newly born into the outside, traffic, wind and shouts, all slightly wrong. Walking past the poster for >>In the Oblivion of our Metamorphoses<< a new Lemmy Caution film, he stuffed hands into pockets and refamiliarised himself with the litter within. A crushed and empty fag packet along with its hymenal cellophane, a bus ticket and a ball of silver paper. The bus ticket would be useful, it would get him home and to V****.
>>Ahh V**** Lloyd lullabyed.<<