The Dream Of A Black Beetle

s that Smithers?" I asked my companion, indicating the cricketer at the crease.

"Yes, it is. Why d'ya ask?" he replied, screwing his monocle deep into his eye.

"Well he seems a bit off colour" an understatement "changed in fact".

My companion again examined Smithers through his monocle. "Well" he conceded at last "he does seem to have changed into a beetle overnight. It's improved his game though!" as the beetle headed man hit a six off the spin. Multi- faceted eyes sparkling in the Sun and cruel looking mandibles clamping together in glee.

"Perhaps he should see a doctor" I suggested "Get an ointment or somesuch".

"I'll suggest it to him over tea. My is that the time, you best be off or you'll miss your train." he was right of course and I hurried away to find a taxi to take me to the station.

Maidenhead to Paddington is normally quite a depressing journey by train, passing as it does through Slough. Towering blocks of mouldering flats, miles of graffiti stained walls, litter, dirt and groups of sullen youths. This trip .. this trip was different, a glorious long remembered journey. One of the great train journeys of all time.

An absolute vision. That's the only way I can describe the sight. A woman, not really beautiful but compelling. Overawing and what a sense of style. She got on at Taplow, just as it had got dark, and she approached my carriage through the gathering gloom. A whole empty carriage and she sat opposite me. O happy day.

She smiled revealing pearly white, sharp teeth, an exquisite smile, but were her canines supposed to be that long?

She swayed closer giving off a succulent rosy perfume and then latched onto my throat like a leech. Sucking, tearing and pulling. Blood running down her dress, smearing her hands and face a healthy crimson.

"Where are you going?" she purred.

"Norwich" said I, unable to do much.

"What a coincidence, that is my destination as well." A coincidence my foot, she just wanted to suck me dry, and I was in her thrall, I felt rather weak.

She put her arm around my shoulder and steered me through the teeming hordes of commuters and tourists at Paddington. I must have been delirious because I could have sworn a small brown bear in a duffel coat came up and offered me a marmalade sandwich. I had no time to take up its kind offer however, the vampire whirled me through the station and into the underground.

I tried feebly to signal for help but the porters just backed away, pointing two fingers in our direction. A rabbi came up and tried to wrest me away from her diabolical grip, but she struck him down. He went spinning to land in a heap beside an old blues player wearing a crown. 'O Pretty Woman' wafted after us as we strolled through the tunnels.

"I just lurve train journeys" she exclaimed as we boarded the tube. It was crowded but we got seats.

We looked like any other young couple, sitting hand in hand, but my hand was gripped by a vice of hard muscle. I started imagining things, or was I. A whirling confusion was addling my brain.

I felt my neck but there were no bite marks, nobody looked at her in a strange way, no-one was warding off the evil eye. Perhaps all she was, was a girl I'd picked up on the train to Paddington? I must be going mad, paranoid delusions. Nothing like this happens for real. Smithers hadn't really grown a beetle's head overnight. This beautiful girl sitting next to me was no blood-sucking vampire, who wanted to drain me white and leave me a mere husk.

Then why did she cast no reflection in the trains window. No it can't be true, vampires are creatures of legend. They don't really exist, I'm just having a little trouble distinguishing reality from the strange illusions my brain is throwing up.

Liverpool Street was a picture of normality, bustling crowds, screaming kids and lost tourists. I felt control returning to me. I had it under control, but I could feel my madness welling up inside me, impatient to be free.

I smiled at the ticket collector, trying not to gaze at the hissing snake whispering in his ear. A green iridescent band about his neck. It wasn't really there. Control! Force it back. To lose control is to become an animal. Bring back my sanity!

We boarded the train and I queued up to buy some drinks and a couple of packets of crisps. A few drinks would calm my worried nerves. I didn't want my psychosis interfering with an enjoyable weekend with my friends.

We settled down in a secluded first class carriage, it was empty apart from us and an old gentleman reading The Time. A colonel I guessed, he looked the type.

I leaned back drinking from a can of bitter. I could feel its subtle influence as it penetrated slowly through my body. Relaxing I cast my gaze upon the Colonel and almost brought up my last mouthful of beer. A bloody streak had appeared down his face. Straight down the centre. Something back and shiny was struggling, trying to get out. The head peeled back like a banana skin revealing the chitinous mandibles and maliciously multi-faceted eyes of a great beetle. It coughed and turned to the crossword, while nibbling at fragments of the Colonel's face.

The vampire sitting opposite me smile revealing her pearl white ivory canines. She licked her lips, I screamed, reality! There was no reality. My mind had finally snapped and the chaos launched itself from my subconscious.

I started to gibber as the vampire leaned over me. The train rushed into a long tunnel, the lights flickered and then died. No bloodty tearing at my neck. No hideous slurping, lapping up of my life force. I stared into the dark. I heard nothing, felt nothing, smelt nothing. It was as if I was floating in one of those isolation tanks. Alone in the whole world.

The lights flashed on. The Colonel was back to normal, his old wrinkled face crinkled up, solving the puzzles. And the vampire? The vampire was sitting back in her seat, a cricket stump through her heart. Mouth open, gums pulled back from the normal teeth. A silent scream. Blood was caked in a dried mass around the stake.

The blood was dried, I looked at my watch, a whole our had passed since we boarded! But we'd only been in the tunnel for a few moments.

Or was it eternity, what had I done in my lunacy? Staked a beautiful young girl who would have come to Norwich with me, a man she had only just met. Or had I really put an end to the evil immortality of a vampire. My brain whirled, was I crazy or an even worse thought. If I was sane, all this madness was real.

The carriage was suddenly full of life. A gathering of society. Ladies in evening dresses with mink stoles drapped lazily over an arm. Men in their dinner jackets smoking cigars, a butler, maids and a short, fat man, with a peculiar moustache.

"Moisewers eat Madarms" 'ee said with a phony French acŠnt, "Zare 'as been a murder! Won of you iz ze killa." Gasps of horror from the gathered party, each eyed the other suspiciously. Was it the funny little man with the squint. They all suspected him it was obvious.

"I was me" I cried "it has to be me, I'm the only one who could have done" anguish in my voice.

"We, wonce more I zay. I nose who iz ze killa an I shall reveal im or 'er. O'ever it may be!" the fat guy said.

"But I've just confessed! Arrest me! Question me!" No notice was taken of me. No one saw me, no one heard me. Another figment of my fevered imagination.

"Everee won of you 'as ze motive an' ze opportunity. You monsewer Cushion" he indicated the man with the squint, you 'ave argued with Lady Carjack an' threatened to kill 'er. An' you are an avid er how you say ... cricketeer.

Madmodsell Blunt you were being blackmailed by ze deceased over your incestuous affair with ze gardener, your grandfather, Madum Whalebone-Corset ze deceased 'ad peenched your 'usband and left you penniless. You all 'ave ze motive but only und of you killed her. An' I will now reveal ze murderer, an' I will be available later for ze autographs, curtain calls, birthday parties and bar mtizvahs".

A burst of applause.

"Ze murderer is!" he brought himself up to his full height "Ze murderer is you!" he pointed directly at me, a short stubby finger. He had seen me, I sat down as everything swirled about my eyes. Everybody, all the party stared at me, aghast.

"Him, o' pooh. I thought it would be someone spectacular. Not some oick!"

"What a disappointment, I mean who wants to know about working class murders?"

"They're just not interesting my dear. I hear next week a Mr Holmes is going to solve a murder for us. That ones bound to be spot on, not like this council house one this Frenchman dished up!"

"Belgian Madum" everything went black. I came too slowly, unwilling to leave the protective darkness. Scared to see what my mind, my own subconscious would throw out now to torture me. Finally however I could no longer keep my eyes closed, they sprang open, I was ready to scream. But nothing immediately leapt out a me. The train sped on, Northwards across a flat featureless plain of black stinking ooze. Strange birds hopped through it, feeding on the bright crabs, but there was nothing else, as far as the eye could see, just the mud and slime.

I was alone, I got up and strode down the carriage, the last thing I needed at the moment was solitude. Company was what I craved. The typical British Rail traveller, silent and taciturn. A blessing for my state of mind, but not solitude, it was too introspective and I knew I'd crack if I started to look inside.

I sat down near a group of itinerant Irish businessmen and soothed myself in their gentle brogue and liberal quantities of home-brewed poteen. The black bogs had given way to rolling wheat fields, rustics could be seen walking home. A scampering dog at their heels and a scythe over the shoulder. O what an idyll. O to be born English.

A pity about the Comanches, it did spoil the scene somewhat. The doors at the end of the carriage burst open and a masked Mexican entered.

"Eh Gringos, we keel you all eef you don't geeve us ze dollars" he reeked of garlic, but his six-shooters were steady and trained on us. The Irishmen blustered and managed to bribe him with alcohol.

He approached me, spurs rattling, ear-ring flashing

"Come on meester cough up, eets for a good cause. We collect for scitzophrenia research. Now be a good chap and put this comfortable jacket on."

The leering grin of a Mexican dissolved slowly into a spectacled face of a doctor, he was holding out a jacket with peculiar straps.

"You've come to take me away? hehe" I sang.

"That's right, we're coming to take you away! hoho."

"I'm not really mad you know? I worked it out"

"Do go on" he said smoothly "Tell me about your childhood."

"My childhood, well it's more interesting than the birds and the bees that's for sure. Anyway I'm not mad, it was the green cheese I had for supper last night. A bit of the Moon which fell down to Earth on a night when all the cats mewed."

"When was this"

"A week last Wednesday." It was all perfectly logical, while I said it, but I couldn't stop myself, "I think I killed someone with a cricket stump, but I don't remember doing it. A Frenchman said I did it."

"He's Belgian actually, or so his wallet revealed. You killed them all, ripped them all with a broken Directors can. They're still picking up the bits of Colonel Table-Lamp from here to Diss. And I doubt we'll manage to get this lot to a stomach pump in time to save them" he indicated the Irishmen who were being wheeled away by ambulance staff. All of them vomiting and wheezing through hideously swollen faces. "I don't suppose you've seen the ticket collector on the journey."

"No, why do you ask?"

"Probably a coincidence but we found a rapper with a ticket punch rammed up his nose."

"O! No wasn't me, all I've seen today is The King of the Blues."

"Enough of this, we better get you to some where safe and warm. Put this on!"

I acquiesced and was soon snug in the tight fitting jacket. He led me out of the train. A horde of yelling people. They cried for my blood. A pack of reported clicked, flashed and hummed.

And I. I suddenly felt at ease, everything relaxed. I felt the layers of flesh over my chitinous head peel off. I shook the gore from my myriad eyes.

The reporters ran shrieking for the bar. Strong men fainted, women screamed. I burst through my straps and my weak earthly flesh, spread my wings and flew off into the starry sky. Forever to fly with incandescent eyes glittering with glee. No bounds and no mental fetters to keep me on earth.