GOX...
Sleeps...
I sleep...
YOU ...
YOU...
Why haven't you found me?
👁️👁️
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Greg and his mate Pete conversed over the ether with the help of their computers. The text proceeded thus:
Greg: That damn GOX game is dead.
Pete: DAMN!
Greg: Every time I turn it on I get NOTHING.
Pete: Just ignore the game, Greg! You don't need it in your life anymore. I am sure the game was created just to mess with peoples minds! Drop it. Forget it!
Greg: I need a Drink...
Pete: I've got booze!
Greg: G-Juice?
Pete: In purple! The best!
Greg: Meet you in the park?
Pete: Sure! Good news. There is a fight going on downtown. The gangs are ganging up and it is going to be BIG fight! Should be fun to watch.
Greg: Sounds Good. Real GOOD! Just what I need.
Pete: Yeah. The gangs want to kill each other REAL bad!
Greg: Sounds rook, my son.
Pete: I know you have not been in town a lot not since your mother grounded you... Sorry about that mate. But so much has been going on lately it is mad! Some new gangs have been shaping up! Local lads. We call em the Fenwickers! At first they were all about getting rid of the Italians and all that... But then they started fighting each other! 🤣 So we call the new gang THE DOGS, because they are always yapping, all bark no bite as it were... Well, I lie a bit there because they do bite, like, they bite each other! To be honest with you, Greg, they are a bunch of twats. Some of them we know from school - Phil is in there somewhere.
Greg: O! That idiot!
Pete: Yeah. THAT idiot. But the rumour is Simpson is leading the whole lot of them and he started this new fight because his rat of a sidekick reported him to the pigs...
Greg: Simpson? Hell! He was a nasty sod before he left school. He wasn't afraid of no one! Who would dare to sell that devil out to the pigs? The man who did that would have to be one sucker of a fool! Let me guess. Was it Harry?
Pete: Hahah! I wish it was mate. No that wimp don't get involved with the gangs. To busy playing video games in his bedroom - Harry is worse at that sort of thing than we are! Ha! Nah! The word on the street is that the rat is Steve Mills.
Greg: No way! But I thought he was a doogi?
Pete: So did we all.
Greg: DAMN!
Pete: Doogi or no he grew up into a real nasty piece of work after leaving school, got in with the Brazilian Cartel, built himself into this kind of Hercules type of guy. He decided he had taken enough of Simpson's abuse! He managed to get a few of the cartel lads to lend themselves to his cause after that decided he was in a strong enough position to take on the DOGS. And well, here we are with a full war on the streets.
Greg: This sounds too good to miss. My Mum is getting suspicious of me. She usually slides food through the door about... twelvish. I will wait for her to do what she does and then I will head down and head over to meet you up! See you in a swan mate!
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To hell with it all it was time for Greg to get down that ladder and head off in the direction of the park.
Pete was sat on a bench beside several bottles of the good stuff... The juice in purple!
Greg stepped up:
'Got a bottle to hand me over?' he said.
Pete handed his mate a glass full of the purple liquid.
'You arrived in time,' said Pete. 'IT is about to begin...'
The fight was on:
The gangs lined up on the road standing to attention like warriors of old. The vision of them all gathered there was pure poetry written in hell by burning hand.
They came one and all, maybe about thirty of them, perhaps more, all dressed up in horrors, devils, dogs and lizards, and armed with chains, clubs and blades cut from glass or steel. These were not men. No. They had dropped the mask of humanity and donned the mask of oblivion. These were beasts firsts and men last and men none.
There would be fifteen left alive at the end of the day.
They clashed about midday:
'Knives out lads!' came the call to all and into the flaming wild aimless chaotic cauldron they all leaped! Clowns, jesters, dogs and fierce looking beasts - all of them slashing and crashing in one turbulent swirl! It was dreadfully glorious!
Eventually the blood flowed thick enough to stick and swell in the street corners, by the side of the roads, and in front of the curbs by the road - fierce streams of red.
There were screams and there were yells!
The beasts of the streets were at war! Hoorah!
The police nearby turned a blind eye to it all. Even DC Maddox knew that only a dead man would get involved with the gangs when they were armed and out in full force.
CLASH!
SLASH!
The sun set.
And then it ended.
Greg espied a stray blade on the side of the road dropped by dead fingers. The blade was small enough to hide yet large enough to cut a whole hunk of ham. He picked the deadly thing up in his trembling limbs and slotted it away into his side pocket for none to see but for him to know...
Pete was exhausted. 'Well that was great stuff,' he said.
Greg smiled and hummed but said nothing. His thoughts were deep and his words were scant.
'I like a good fight,' spoke a ropy drunken voice from behind.
Now up stepped a right old character well known in the back alleys where the beggars wallow. It was Fred, and it was from his throat the voice from behind had stemmed.
Fred wobbled up to the lads, a dirty smoke hanging on the edge of his grey dying lips, a half finished bottle almost dropping from his pale quivering fingers. He was a corpse that the source took pity on because the old man had been endowed with just enough essence to walk and talk and just about the right measure of resilience (or adrenaline if you prefer) to deny him the common sense to surrender and sleep with his ancestors.
Fred addressed the two lads directly asking them if they had enjoyed watching the fight.
'It was Great!' Pete replied heartily. 'The last time there was a fight in the streets only two men got killed. It was so disappointing I didn't think I would bother to turn up to watch something like it again. But I am glad I did not stay at home today! This battle was a REAL slaughter! A proper good show!'
'Yes. People are unusually angry these days,' Fred replied wistfully. 'I am not a doom and gloom type of guy. No sirs. Not me. I ain't that sort. But even I must admit, child of WW2 and son of a proud resistance fighter against fascistic rule, these days we are all living in right now just feel particularly BAD. Like the badness is so bad it is thick in the air and there is no space for good to slip in and warm it up. The world is almost dystopian, like something out of those old horrible books and movies folks used to consume back in the day and today. I believe in kindness. Yes sirs. I might not be kind to myself with all the smoking and all that but I do believe that there is a common good hidden away behind all the filth. I mean look at a sack of garbage for goodness sake! Bury around in garbage long enough and you will find a treasure I swear. It is the same thing with life. If you bury around in life deep enough moving with a true soul imbued by the source you will find good somewhere in it. I mean I have not found it not yet, the good that is, but I know I will one day. I know we all will.'
With the aid of his dirty cigarette Fred drank in a huge cloud of filth. When he was done killing himself Fred thought he would try playing the same deadly game with his friends. He heaved a huge black cloud out in the direction of the lads. The toxic cloud was thick enough to get the lads choking and spluttering. It was quite unpleasant.
Greg didn't know if it was confusion or ignorance that made Fred send all that poison in their direction either way he was unimpressed. In an uncontrollable rage Greg's hand leapt right into his pocket where the blade slept clean and ready to be blooded. He was going to target Fred's charcoal sick throat...
...And then Greg's conscience kicked in. Mercifully he forced his hungry hand away from the blade that lay bleating in his pocket. There were already enough dead bodies in the street. No need to add to their number...
...Not that day anyway...
After that Fred flopped on with his boring nonsense talk:
'All I ever wanted was a simple life,' he droned. 'My folks, well, they had high plans for me before and after I was born. They wanted me to be like my brothers and my sisters all high up and high - know what I mean? They wanted me to be all dandy in a nice suit, have a good job, pension, all that swallow. I said nay to that, lads. That sort of thing was not for me. Honestly. They wanted me to be like my sister and get into law. Law! Ha! What a joke! The chances of me getting involved with anything like that rank quite heftily below 0. I am an ordinary guy. I don't want any of that nonsense! No sirs. Have an of you lads ever read any of Robert Stinton in particular Three Pots and One Flower? I can tell by the looks of yea that you have not. NO matter. It is a Great book. Lots of philosophy or whatever in it. It is the kind of book that makes you think - and all good books make you think. The story is about the struggles of ordinary men born unwillingly into a harsh and horrible world and how they find a way to live, nay, I mean survive in it. In the end they find contentment and peace by just letting go - forgetting it all. Who cares? Drink and drink and be damned with it all! And well after reading that fine piece of art I was like, yeah. I am going to live life the Rob Stinton way. For sure that is the way for me. You should read that book sometime lads it is called Three Pots and One Flower. It will change your life. Let the lambs in your eyes feast from the grasses that grow on its papers - drink the words as the beasts of the fields drink the icy dewdrops in the winter mornings fair. Drink it in! Drink in the words printed on that fine stack of paper - let the words dance in your mind! Rob Stinton all the way!'
'I don't read much to be fair but maybe I will give this book a try,' Greg replied.
'Good lad,' said Fred. 'Now listen to this! I have never worked a single darn day in my whole damn life. From the day I stepped out onto the street I have begged borrowed and begged. Ha! And it his done me good! Look at me! I am living and breathing. Now I had a mate long ago called Max. He wanted to take over the world, poor soul. He managed to get himself a job in a hospital. Now he wanted to progress and be a doctor one day. He studied. He worked about in different departments and got kicked out of every one of them! Thing is he knew a lot but he liked to take things easy. You can't take things easy when you are a Doctor not really. I told Max one day, "You should be more like me. Drink up and rest down!" But he didn't listen... One day he insulted his boss, called him a lot of gross names. Max was blacklisted after that incident. It didn't matter what he did, no matter what job he applied for, he couldn't escape the gutter! Damn he even applied to be a cleaner and they told him NO! Ha! Yep! He eventually killed himself and got that all wrong as well! He jumped from a bridge high up in the sky and broke all his bones when he finally hit the water - SLAM!- a very painful death indeed. It takes talent to be that talentless. Forget that. I was never going to take life seriously like Max did. My plan all along was to just slip by, slide between the cracks of life, avoiding the very idea of talent altogether. And well my plan worked out mighty fine, because Max is in the ground and I am still up and about!'
YEAH - UP AND ABOUT - SORT OF - thought Greg.
Unbelievably Fred still had more to say:
'Any of you lads ever heard about a fiend known as the sewer man?' he said.
Greg and Pete shook their heads in unison.
The lads let Fred tell his tale. This story actually sounded interesting:
'Well he is back,' said Fred.
'From what?' said Pete.
'A long stint of silence,' Fred replied ominously. 'But he is back. The sewer man has returned. Look at that wall over there. LOOK!' The words SEWER MAN! had been painted on the wall. 'This is what has got everyone in town upset,' Fred continued. 'It is the reason why everyone is so angry lately! He is a curse - an omen for ill! No one likes the Sewer Man. Sasquatch, Mothman, Grays, bring em on! But the Sewer Man NO! No one likes the Sewer Man. WHY? Well he stinks for one and you can smell him from far away so you know when he is around. Secondly he is ugly! He also likes to sneak about... A sneaky creep indeed! They say he was a man who went mad and set himself alight while soaked in gasoline. His face is all burned up. A true horror! He lives in the sewers, hence the name. He is not violent, but he watches and he sneaks and he creeps... Everyone HATES the Sewer Man!'
'DAMN! I think I might have seen him,' said Greg. 'I was in this old house - The GOX House. You heard of it?'
'Aye. I have heard of it,' said Fred.
'I think I saw the Sewar Man looking at me through a window!'
'Then you should be careful son,' said Fred. 'If the Sewer Man has his eye on you then you have been marked for trouble! The Sewer Man is a curse! Let me tell thee, lad, he will bring you nothing but ill fortune! My advice? Keep your head down and your tongue still. Go into hiding if you can.'
Finally Fred had nothing else left to say and so the lads made their way.
It was quiet for a bit but then Pete got the talk starting again:
'Did you mean what you said then? You seen the Sewer Man?'
'I sure did mate,' Greg replied.
'Then you should stay well clear of that damn house...' said Pete.
Greg heard his mate out, and then returned to his bedroom to play more GOX...
Greg hammered in the code GOX_TLH83.
And then he typed:
Give me a clue! Anything!
GOX responded.
There was a picture on the screen.
Greg took a photo of it and examined it at length.
Finally he understood what it was.
It was a map of the GOX House.
There were two diagrams lying beside one another. The first diagram was a demonstration of the ground floor with all its rooms while the second showed the landing and everything else.
The map looked pretty normal until it didn't. There was a room beside the kitchen that Greg had not seen during his visit.
Like the game was looking at the map as well through Greg's eyes GOX responded:
Come and find me...
To Read GOX part 14 click here.
For more adventures set in the town of Fenwick check out:
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