All stories

His arm was trapped, a ripped sail had wrapped around his wrist pinning him to the rail. The rain pounded his body, numb with shock. The boat jolted again, as the prow sank further under water. His free arm searched his pockets desperately for his Swiss Army Knife, until at last he found it and frantically cut himself free. He dragged himself up towards the emergency raft, using the slippery cold rail as a ladder. Desperately, he fumbled at the clasps before finally freeing them and the raft dropped over board inflating as it fell. He clambered over the rail and plunged into the water. It was icy cold and his breath was instantly snatched away. He reached for the rafts trailing rope and dragged himself in, zipping up the door before collapsing into a semi-conscious slumber.

He woke suddenly, a gentle bump on the bottom of the raft and a strange sensation he couldn’t quite explain. He looked outside and it was pitch black. A starless moonless night. He suddenly realised what the sensation was; he was no longer floating. He had reached land, somehow, and somewhere. He grabbed the emergency torch and shone the light out. As far as he could see there seemed to be a grey and white marble floor. But, it pulsed, slowly as if the marble veins were somehow alive. It was unlike anything he had seen before and strangely beautiful.

He cautiously stepped overboard as the first rays of dawn began to glow in the sky, casting a grey half-light across the floor, adding to the strangeness. It seemed whatever he was on, stretched for about 20 meters in all directions. It was slightly domed with the raft alighting almost perfectly in the middle. At the edge and running around the entire floor was a tangle of thick purple bushes, a moat of life before the sea. He approached cautiously and saw along the floor of the bushes, hundreds of fish and fish-bones. Some were dying or dead and others wriggled and jumped their last moments. As he watched one of the branches of the bush arched down and wrapped around a fish, as soon as it touched, it seemed to drain the fish, sucking in the skin and flesh until just bones remained.

Suddenly the floor shook violently and he stumbled back. The floor he realised was slowly sinking and he ran back to the raft. Just in time he reached the raft as the water rushed back and soon he was left floating, once more alone.

Then silently the shape rose again and this time he saw it, in all its majestic beauty. The floor he had been on was the roof of the head and a long body rose slowly out of the water, an endless wall of pulsing grey and white. Then it began to fall a beautiful marble-etched beast plunging back into the water and sending a huge wave that rocked the raft and sent it and him spinning. By the time they stopped, the beast had gone, leaving nothing but a memory of awe and majesty.

Roly ached in his bed. His legs were tree trunks and the rods of iron in his back clanked as each beat of his heart pumped despair. Bloody ballet dancers.

His wife coughed behind him, then set down a cup of tea. He continued to gaze through the net curtains at the listless clouds.

She said, ‘I’m sorry, honey. But it sounded so mad!’

He said nothing. What kind of marriage is it when not even the wife is on your side when you announce plans for the world’s first No Hand Car Wash?

Everybody laughed, but they came all the same. Came to watch a man lying on a skateboard using the thick hair of his calves to lather up the sides of a Nissan Micra. Came to snigger as he pulled on the slipper socks with individual toes in order to get up into the most creviced of door handles. They were probably taking bets on him falling off the diving boards he’d rigged to get at the roof.

‘But you were right,’ his wife said. ‘I counted eight today.’

Roly’s heart beat another ache. ‘More ballet dancers?’

‘Chinese acrobats. It’s their low overheads – they go into a human pyramid to get to the roof.’

Roly groaned. Bloody Lord Melville and his bloody Rolls. He’d swept into the car wash then attracted Roly’s attention with an imperious “you there”. There was some guff about Lord Toffy McToff draining his moat to have the world’s first moat parked Rolls, and then the tale of another chinless aristo having paid to have his leatherwork re-stitched with only fishbones for needles.

In a breathy voice, he’d said, ‘The world’s first foot washed Rolls!’

Then things really went mad.

‘And for such an exclusive service I want an exclusive price. Shall we say ten thousand pounds?’

After Roly picked the bits of himself up from the floor he picked up his bucket.

Oh God, the thought of it. The man looking at the bucket in Roly’s hand and then taking Roly’s eyes with his to the sign that said Roly’s No Hand Car Wash. It took Roly two nights of work with his trusty swiss army knife to rig up a pulley system to get his foamy shammies to the roof of the car. The buttock clenching he had to go through to get the tops of the wax bottles.

But he did it! He washed that beast of a car with only his feet and his legs, and now this. Bed. For a fortnight, as acrobats and yoga teachers limboed under the gap in the market he’d left.

‘Maybe this parcel will cheer you up,’ Roly’s wife said. She came around the bed and then to Roly’s horror slipped a garish red box from the staid brown packaging. She was smiling at him, and there was a strange glint to her eyes.

‘Sweetie,’ she said. ‘You don’t have anything to worry about in that department, believe me.’ She took his hand and squeezed gently. ‘But…if you feel you that you want to use something like this’ – and here she glanced at the box – ‘to increase length by twenty five percent, and girth by fifteen, well, I will not stand in your way why don’t you get started now you can use it while you lie here recovering how about that?’

It was the fastest she’d ever whipped back the covers or tugged down his pyjama bottoms.

Roly smiled to himself, thinking of the ballerinas again. So what if they could polish alloys while their spare foot was buffing the roof. Let them try and keep up with this latest big idea.

She walked in and I swear to God every eye in the place was on her from the word go. She walked in that way that all women who know they’re beautiful walk; eyes down, peering up through lashes, face impassive but for the hint of a smirk at the jaws she can hear hitting the tables.

I pulled back her chair, took her coat. She slipped into her seat like water pouring into a glass, smiling at the nobody she was with, waiting for him to hand her the wine list. Every man in the room was wishing he could be that nobody, waiting for her to breathe him, finally, into existence.

She ordered the pinot, the fish. Sauce pooled around the potatoes in a moat that she dipped morsels into. She removed fish from the bone effortlessly, never taking her eyes from the nobody, talking a little and smiling, politely at first, then for real after the first glass. I had to hand it to her; she knew exactly what she was doing. She had the whole room following her every move, all the time seeing nothing.

From behind the bar I watched those elegant white fingers dip into the jacket hanging over the chair behind her. She slipped a handful of keys and a Swiss army knife into her bag. She laughed demurely, then stood up to visit the ladies.

I found her in the car park, striding up and down, pushing the button on the keyfob to see which lights came on. She flushed when she saw me and I saw her mind working frantically as she stepped towards me.

She stopped, her face inches in front of mine, breath coiling against my cheek. She’d been caught and she knew it. She had one last trick to play out. The question was, would I let her play it on me?

“It’s cold” she said in a sultry voice that belied the temperature. She leaned in. My hands reach out, gripping her freezing shoulders. Her hands clutched my sides and our lips were inches, fractions of inches apart.

It pays, I thought, to be vigilant sometimes, and leaned in to reap my reward.

Only then she cried out, her voice high and helpless and beautiful in the night air.

“Christopher! Help!”

Suddenly the nobody was there, grabbing my lapels. I held up my hands, desperately trying to think of something to say, but she beat me to it.

“Christopher! I came out of the ladies and he was in the car park pressing the keys to see which car they belonged to. I...I think he stole them! I came out to persuade him to come inside and he grabbed me. Christopher, thank God you were here!”

Christopher’s fist landed on my nose. I staggered, fell and heard the clatter of a handful of silver keys and a Swiss army knife falling out of my jacket onto the concrete. I watched Christopher drape his coat over her bare beautiful shoulders, her face turned to his, a picture of distressed innocence.

And as he turned away to lead her inside, she gave me a cat-like grin and a slow, seductive wink.