GUY ADAMS
The World House
To Diana Adams, with infinite thanks and love, for passing her passion for story onto her son and being unwavering in her support.
CHAPTER ONE
They had threatened to break his legs if he didn't find them the money owed. It wasn't an inventive threat but the best never are. What's the point of intimidation if it's not easily imagined? You want the recipient to get their head around the concepts on offer, to feel the sensation of bones splintering inside their legs like shattered lead in a dropped pencil. With a great threat the pain starts the minute you finish talking.
For Miles Caulfield it had done its job, his every thought filled by men with lump hammers and an eagerness to use them. Perhaps that's what had happened? He couldn't be sure. His body felt distant, something important he owned but hadn't seen in a while, like a childhood memento stashed in the attic.
It was dark, with a smell so familiar as to have been beneath his notice for a moment: the muskiness of old things. Was he in the shop then, rather than his flat above? Perhaps they had dragged him down here amongst the junk and cobwebs to check his till. To work their way through his shelves and display cabinets for something of worth. If so they needn't have bothered; the sign outside promised "the antique and collectable" but he would hardly be receiving leg-breakers at his door if any of it was valuable. It was a shop dedicated to the battered and broken, the discarded and worthless. He now realised that included the owner. Probably it always had.
So he was surrounded by the smell of old things but there was something not quite right about it. He had spent countless hours sitting amongst his own stock, flipping through a newspaper or completing a crossword. The sorts of pursuits one might involve oneself in when not distracted by the intrusion of customers. It didn't smell like this. This was real age, the sort of dust that might contain fragments of God. He tried to move again but his body was so remote to him that the simple act of twitching a limb was telekinesis. They must have done one hell of a job on him.
"They'll kill you, you know," Jeremy had said as they sat on the wooden bench teasing the ducks with the steaming contents of their takeaway containers. "It won't be quick either, I've seen enough movies, they'll make an example of you. Probably cut your dick off and stick it in your mouth."
Miles, a hunk of meat and bread turning to mush in his mouth, put the rest of his burger down and swallowed reluctantly. "Thanks for that."
"Just saying." Jeremy mixed a slurry of ketchup and mayonnaise with a pinch of fries and popped them in his mouth. "That's the kind of thing these people do."
"We're talking about Gordon Fry not Tony Soprano."
"Just think of me when you're gagging on your own bell-end."
"Fuck's sake" Miles dumped his food in the bin and lit a cigarette to fumigate his mouth.
Jeremy gave him a dirty look, wafting the smoke away from his face. "I'm eating here, do you mind?"
Miles felt a tickle in his nostrils. In the absence of any other physical sensation he fixated on it. The feeling spread, like leaking oil, from his sinuses to his face. His cheek began to prickle against the wool of a carpet. That settled it, he definitely wasn't in the shop. His floor was bare boards, all the better to wipe up after the tourists dripped their ice creams and trailed their muddy footprints. The dust bristled in his nostrils like static. He sneezed.
"Bless you," Jeremy said, working his way through the contents of Miles' shelves. "We've known each other long enough for me to be honest, haven't we?"
Miles shrugged. "Apparently."
"This really is all crap, isn't it?" Jeremy picked up a tatty looking child's doll, one of its eyelids fluttering at him while the other stayed in place over its sun-damaged blind eye. "You have an entire shop filled with rubbish nobody wants."
"Some of it's collectable."
"Jesus, Miles, but no, it really isn't. You'd have more chance learning how to shit money than make it from this stuff."
"Remind me why we're friends again?" Miles asked.
"Because I'll always tell you the truth." Jeremy smiled, making the doll wave its chipped hand at Miles.
"Nobody's ever been friends for that. I know I haven't got any good stock, OK? If I did, I wouldn't be in this situation. All the good stuff went ages ago."
Jeremy shoved the doll back on a shelf, causing a few items to tumble to the floor.
"Careful!" Miles shouted. "It may be crap but it's all I've got."
He walked over to pick the items up, ducking beneath the arms of a shop-window dummy who modelled a German steel helmet on her flaking bald head.
"Sorry." Jeremy, contrite at last, stooped down to help. "This is quite nice," he said, holding up a rectangular wooden box. "Where's it from?"
Miles, still angry at his friend, pointed at the Chinese writing burned into the pale wood. "Sweden, where do you think?"
Jeremy rolled his eyes. "No need to be sarcastic. Knowing you it's from one of the takeaways in town. How much do you want for it?"
"I don't want your money," Miles snapped, snatching the box off him. "I still have some pride left."
"That's all you'll have soon. Much use it'll be."
Miles sat down on the floor, energy deflated, his arms filled with worthless junk. "About as much as the rest of this shite, I imagine."
Jeremy sat down next to him. "I'd lend you the money if I had it, you know that."
"Then you'd be an idiot." Miles dropped the stock, the box falling into his lap. "I'd only gamble it away."
"Really?" Jeremy looked at him. "Even now, with the threat of a pair of broken legs or worse you'd blow it all if I gave it to you?"
Miles turned the box over in his hands. "In a heartbeat."
He promised himself it was the dust in his eyes making them water, not the memory of that conversation. Inch by inch his nerves were reporting in. His left thumb twitched. A spasm trickled along his arm. Immediately he tried duplicating the sensation. For a moment it was beyond him, but then he began to flex the muscle in the ball of his thumb. He would have grinned were his mouth not so numb. Soon his whole hand was twitching at the end of the wrist. There was hope yet.
"You haven't given up?" Fry had asked as Miles stepped into the bar. He gestured to the barmaid to pour him another glass of wine but didn't offer Miles a drink. "I fucking hope not, there's no fun or profit for that matter in my debtors just offering their necks up for the noose. Where's the sport in that, eh?"
"I need more time," Miles replied, inching towards the barstool next to Fry but not quite daring to sit on it.
"Oh Christ," Fry sighed, scooping peanuts from a ramekin on the bar, "you're going to be a fucking clich." He popped the nuts into his mouth, slapping his fingers together to knock away the salt. "Please, save me from the 'more time' conversation. I really haven't the energy for it. It's been a long day. I just want to work my way through this wine and then find some blonde cunt to treat like shit for a few hours. Is that so much to ask?"
Miles opened his mouth to speak but Fry held up a finger to stop him. Miles watched the bar lighting bounce off the grains of salt stuck to Fry's manicured nail. He had the ludicrous notion of licking them off.
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