Jim's Subway part 11: Strangers in the streets

Jim couldn't sleep at the end of that day.  He felt that he needed some air, and so decided to take a walk.

  Maybe it wasn't a good idea to go out.  Jim didn't know Fenwick at all.

  But he decided to take the risk.  

  He needed to clear his mind so much.

  But he dare not use the door to his room - good gosh no!  That was far too risky.  He couldn't risk a second helping of Mr Rits!

  So he decided to use the bathroom window instead.

  The window was a good enough size for him to slip through, and he was on the bottom floor so there was hardly no distance to fall.  So the window worked a treat!

  Before he knew it Jim was out on the streets of the Walled City of Fenwick!

  He drank it all in.

  What a sight!

  The roads and the pavements were constructed out of grey cobbles.  The buildings were built out of red sandstone.  Many of the buildings had strange dimensions, some of them going up high, or rearing off sideways into nothingness.   And only a few of the buildings he saw actually had doors or windows.  There were lots of walls as well, like the brainchild of the city of Fenwick was trying to hem in all the streets and alleyways for some reason, like they were trying to keep you imprisoned at very turn.

  But what struck him most, what surprised and chilled him, was the emptiness of Fenwick, the quiet...

  There was literally nobody to see!

  And when a character did appear, sauntering near the end of some ally or twist in the street, they were darkly dressed, sullen and unapproachable.  They would offer Jim nothing more than a peculiarly angry look; it was like they had seen him before and disliked him from some unpleasant preferably forgotten memory.   

  But the weirdest thing about Fenwick, at least from Jim's point of view, was that Jim felt that he had visited the city before!  The streets just felt oddly familiar to him...   It was a strange sensation or feeling that he had as he walked between the sandstone walls.  There was something about the streets that he felt he recognised.  
  He eventually reached the farthest corner of the city he could get to, and behold the feet of the great steel wall that protected the entrance into the city.  The only way in was by way of train, and beside the train track there were no other roads or paths into the city.  Every other region of the city was secured by cliffs that slide into dark misty pits.

  Castle Fenwick was standing to the right of him, leering down from the Great Fenwick Hill where its ancestors had constructed it in the days of William of Normandy; its ancient bulk cast a shadow over the eastern quadrant of the city.  Its redundant defence towers and rickety buttresses and dilapidated balconies secured a grim charm of the old dark days when men killed each other legally and on mass to the whims of their masters.  There was a darkness and a brooding in the walls of the castle.  The edifice held dominion over the Fenwick skyline.  It had a menace about it.  It fastened the city together, from gate to steel wall, like a vast and fearsome padlock welded by insane giants intent on locking the city from the rest of the world forever.

  Jim's next turn was the cathedral.

  The vast hall beyond the front door was cool and silent.

  There was a tranquility within the building that could not be found on the grey cobbles without.

  He walked from one length of the hall to the other.  

  Like the rest of Fenwick the cathedral had a feeling of familiarity about it.

  Jim felt like he had been inside the place before, maybe he had visited as a child...

  Or maybe he was just dreaming?

   

  Outside of the cathedral front door was a rickety old dustbin lying on its side.  Jim stood it back up and taking a few steps back, stopped to look at the old thing.  It as rusting badly.  It didn't have a lid anymore.  He wondered at how old it was.  How long had it stood there, or how long had it been lying down.  How many people had walked by it and ignored its presence.  Had the bin been used at in years?  From the inside it was totally empty.  He wondered who made the thing, was it a personal creation by a talented and passionate artist?  Had patient hands forged the thing for a special task, to store or hide or banish the work f a lifetime?  Or was it just produced by a machine, thrown out alongside a thousand other identical twins to be stacked away on some shady street corner, to be stuffed and used and forgotten.  Did anyone ever think about that bin?  Was Jim the first person to think about it in the last ten years?  It had a year written on its underside, 1992, so quite old.  Made in china.  So the bin was a traveller then?  What kind of a journey brought the bin all the way to murky misty Fenwick?  It had travelled so many leagues, seen more of the world than most people ever do in their lifetime.  it was a proud bin, standing in its rust like a defiant soldier - covered in mud.  It had travelled it had escaped battles, you could see the dents and the scratches on its body, and it bore those scars with pride.  It was a beautiful bin.  Jim loved it.  He wanted to take it home and treasure it but Jim knew he could not do that, for to take that lonely forgotten bin would be an act of theft, and although he might find a decent home for that bin a deed of such kindness would see him locked in a prison.  He would be put in a catch - that would be his lot.  Locked up wot the lads.  What an awful nightmare that would be.  Jim couldn't think about it any longer and so he tuned around and walked away, leaving the bin all alone on the side of the pavement, standing broken yet defiant in the shadow of the cathedral.

Jim needed to sit down.

  The local pub, The Short Tailed Fox, was open to him, and so he pressed on inside hoping to secure himself half a pint (all he could afford) of the old hair of the dog.

  Very close to the bar, just about ready to leave a table, was a large blocky-built gentleman with huge shoulders, mighty ape like arms and massive shoes at the end of his tree-trunk legs.  But his head (now that was a thing!) was as small as a quaint polished stone on a beach - with beady eyes and soft features like those belonging to a church mouse, his strange small head hang there on its beefy frame like a cantaloupe balancing between two mighty oaks.

  This great block of a man introduced himself as Ted:

  'Alright mate!  The names Ted,' he said, and he forcibly grabbed and started shaking Jim's hand.  'We've met before haven't we?' he said.

  Jim looked at the giant man directly and slowly shook his head.  'I am sure we have not,' he said.  

  Definitely not was the real answer speaking insideJim's head: Jim would have certainly remembered such a disproportionate man as Ted if they had met before in the past.  

  'Well okay.  It doesn't matter anyway.  All that matters right now is that I have an offer for you.  Are you interested?'

 'Well it depends on what it is.'

  'I have got this television back home and it's yours for five hundred pounds,' said Ted.  'You heard me right!  Don't look so surprised.  For five hundred pounds it's yours.  This television is the latest model.  Let me tell you it is brilliant!  High res, definition.  The best colours and graphics pf the modern era.  It will play all your video games and all that sort of thing, you can even stream to relatives.  It connects to a satellite in space so you can even stream to your relatives abroad.  The only problem is the TV doesn't have a screen.  But if you can live with a television missing a screen you won't find anything else better for such a beautiful price.  O yes!  Did i forget to mention it has ALL of the channels?'

  Jim told Ted that he wasn't interested in buying a television.  

  When ted heard this he looked confused, even slightly perplexed.

  He took his hat off to scratch his head. 'You won't find a deal like this anywhere else,' he said.

  Jim agreed with the man whole heartedly, and then told him again that he wasn't interested in buying a television at that moment, besides he didn't have five hundred pounds on him anywhere.  In fact he owed about that much to his landlord.

  'Well if you change your mind you will find me in my shop, just at the end of the street.  You can't miss the place, it has a stuffed elephant sticking out of the roof!'

  'Sounds like an interesting place I will visit one day,' said Jim.

  'See to it that you do, and bring much moneys with you.  What's the point in money if you are not going to spend it hey?  All that investing malarkey?  Fiddlesticks to that nonsense!  If you are going to invest then throw your pension into my shop.  You won't regret it!  And if you are interested in a screenless TV with all the channels let me know.  My offer for five hundred stands for the rest of the week.  But after that the price is going back up to seven.  So don't mess around young Jim and nab yourself a deal while you can!'

  Jim asked Ted if he always was so jolly and optimistic, was a mental disorder?

  'No it's just the tap water,' Ted replied.  'You should try it some time.  The water flows from the deep well of Fenwick.  It's wonderful and make you feel great.  It also helps that I was dropped in my head after three months of age.  Well that's enough fun for me.  I better return to my shop.  Who knows what opportunities I am missing to nab another mans pension!  Work work work!  That's the life of an honest trader!'

  'Well you don't want to miss a possible business deal hey?'

  Ted heard this and laughed and replied:

  'Well you know what they say here in Fenwick, young Jim.  A badger in the bag is worth two dogs in a boat!  Good day to you, my friend.  And good luck!'

  And with that Ted was off, and Jim felt it was time to be doing the same thing himself.

  'I better get back to the Rits,' he said.  

  

Jim was gaining on the hotel, in fact there was only one last street left for him to navigate, when a man suddenly jumped him from behind an old disused telephone box.

  Jim couldn't believe it but the man was actually armed with the most untraditional weapon he had ever seen, it was in fact a Albini-Braendlin rifle, he had read about the weapon before in old-school textbook adventure stories.  

  In fact the man rather had the look of an old adventurer - he had like this vintage turn fo the century safari explorer costume, and he was wearing a large leopard skin hat.  'I mean you now harm,' said the man.  'This is just the way I greet new people.  I am Belgium, you see.  I am descended from a long line of great hunters.  It was a source of great embarrassment to the family when my father decided to take up a career as an elephant inseminator for a local zoo.  My Grandfather, you see, used to track wild animals in the Congo region of Africa, and in an effort to amend our families recently dilapidated reputation I have chosen to follow my grandfathers ways and maintain the hunter tradition of our family.  But it is difficult work.  As you can see one most remain constantly on guard.  That is why I walk around the city holding a gun.  I man never knows when a lion or a bear might be loose in the streets.'

  The rifle welding stranger introduced himself as the renown Belgium explorer Hugo Bergerac Devereux, a man Jim had, funnily enough, never heard of before.

  Jim told the man his name was simply Jim.

  'Most people just call me Huey for short,' said the Belgium hunter.  'So Jim please feel free to call me Huey.  I will not take offence.  No indeed not.  Any man woman or child will find it a very hard task to offend me.  I have lived for ten years in the Congo.  I have used snake pits as latrines, drank from fetid lagoons and licked the backs of poisonous toads to increase my threshold to infectious diseases.  My immunity levels are so off the charts that I allowed venomous snakes to bite me just to prove a point to the few fools that dare to travel with me on my adventures.  I have also fought in the war.  So I do not take offence too many things.  I know how hard the lash is when life decides to bear down on you.  I have been whipped by storms and beaten by wild beasts.  Tell me Jim:  Have you ever spoken to a man who was hunted by twelve head hunters, frisked and frolicked by poisoned spears, fed head first into a crocodiles gullet, and almost physically rearranged toe to head by a silver back guerrilla?  Well you do now Jim, because I am that man.  After the incident with the guerrilla, having fallen into a cage at a zoo as a ten year old boy very little in life affects me anymore.  So sir, hear me now and believe me when I tell you that nothing offends me anymore least of all demeaning names like Huey.'

  'Okay I will do, thanks Huey.  So how did you fall into a guerrilla cage?'

  'Well I was young and foolish,' Huey returned.  'I was merely ten at the time, a tender age even for a hardy soul hardened by hardships, like me.  I could see the animal was clearly agitated about something, maybe it hadn't been fed, so I took it upon myself to calm the hair brute.  I climbed the cage using my strength and wits.  I thought I might tame the beast by singing it the same lullaby songs my mother used to send me to sleep.  It didn't work and I was almost killed.'

  'How did you survive?'

  'I don't know, I passed out.  But my mother told me the warden shot the brute dead.  Fine animal.  Sad it had to be killed for my sake.  And all i wanted to do was sing it a gentle song.'

  'That is a sad story,' Jim replied.  'You just wanted to care for the animal.  Love it, like your mother loved you.'

  After Jim had said this Huey's eyes became inflamed, and he smacked Jim round the face, almost knocking the man to the ground.  'I like you Jim but never speak of such things ever again,' said the great Belgium hunter.  'All talk about my mother is out of bounds.  If you really want to know how to offend me, and trust me Jim you really don't, then speak of my Mother.  We had a strained relationship.  The memory of it alone turns me to anger!'

  'Okay I will never speak of it again,' said Jim.  

 Huey gave Jim a hand up.

  Jim brushed himself down.  'I only wish you said something about it earlier,' he said.  'All you had to do was tell me that you found talking about your mother upsetting.'

  Within a second Jim was back on the ground again.

  After that second smack Jim decided it was better not to say much when in Belgium man's company.

  Huey listen Jim up from the ground one last time and announced that he was leaving, and that he had important business to attend concerning his next trip to Africa.

  'When we meet again I will hopefully have more news about my next expedition to the Congo,' he said.  'Good luck to you, Jim.'  And he shook Jim's hand briskly with his great hairy brown hand and then stalked away.  And yes he stalked, not walked: go fourth through the streets like a man hunting a wild beast (possibly a guerrilla?).

  Jim meanwhile finished his walk, and climbed back up through his bathroom window.  It was time to have some sleep.

(All spelling errors and grammatical mistakes are intentional - the author 😆)

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