Vurt by Jeff Noon

Author:Jeff Noon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Published: 2014-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

MY FIRST WORDS

I’d come down from Pleasureville two, or maybe three o’clock in the afternoon. I’d attended the sickbed of my best and worst friend. I’d cut some hair. Cut two people in half. You know, just one of those days. Now I was tired, so tired and I just wanted to sleep, even though I knew we should be moving on, out of there, because the cops have got your number, Scribble, and you’re maybe on a death list. Murdoch’s list.

So guess what, Murdoch? You’re on mine.

All this added up and I shouldn’t even have been thinking about lying down on that couch, fully clothed. My eyes closing, heavy with the world, thinking about how this story started; Mandy coming out of that all-night Vurt-U-Want, dodging dogs and cops.

Christ! I was playing it back already.

I got up suddenly, startling Karli, who was playing with Twinkle. ‘Fetch me some paper, kidder,’ I said, whilst searching my pockets for a pen. I had some debris from the trip in there, and I placed them all out on the table top. My birthday card. The Tapewormer feather that Beetle had given me. The fool card. Put that down as well. Took a long stare down at the collection.

My mind was like a stranger.

Twinkle put an old school exercise book down on the table, and then reached for the birthday card. ‘Aw! Scribb! You got a birthday card! Who’s it off. Let’s see—’

I caught her with a hard slap to the face.

Shit…

She backed off, holding her cheek, her eyes dribbling.

Oh Christ…shouldn’t have done that…what was happening to me…

‘Mister Scribble…’ Twinkle’s voice.

Did my best to ignore what I’d just done, picked up the pen, opened the book, and then scribbled down some words, the first I had written in weeks. And I remember thinking, that if I ever get out of this with body and soul still connected, well then I was going to tell the whole story, and this is how it would start:

Mandy came out of the all-night Vurt-U-Want, clutching a bag of goodies.

Okay, so this is twenty years later, and I’m only just getting round to it.

I closed the book, put down the pen, picked up the birthday card, read Desdemona’s message, put down the card, picked up the feather, and the tarot card. I was moving like some cheap made-in-Taiwan robo.

I went back to the couch, lay down, the feather in one hand, fool’s card in the other. Twinkle’s voice, ‘Mister Scribble…’

I didn’t look.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Going in.’

I took one last look at the fool’s card; the young man stepping it lightly towards the abyss, all his world wrapped up in a shoulder sack, his dog snapping at his heels, trying to stop his fall. I’m getting the picture, dead Suze. Cheers for the card. So you thought that I was a fool? Very well. I’ll act like one. I’ll be what you wanted, Suze.

‘Can I come? Can I?’ pleaded Twinkle.

‘This is private,’ I said to her, and then sucked the feather in real deep, down to the shaft.

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