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.I rode the high train, I rode the rickety rail, I rode the funicular track, bumbling forward on stilts or, at best, struts, between the huge building-like redoubts of Dockland. And—there—the hotel, hulking from behind a towering corner, was also disguised, since daylight played fast and loose with its erstwhile state of being a misaligned black tenement block during the dark arc of ONSET.
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.The Night Land. The Dark Dock. Call it what we will.
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.You see, nobody who stayed at that hotel could dare leave their room curtains open after ONSET. And, indeed, this was the last train I rode (talk about brinkmanship!), barely on time, barely beating the sun down, barely able, even, to reach the ramshackle raft of a platform... Or, perhaps, the platform reached pleadingly out to us.
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."Us?" you ask. Yes, I was most certainly accompanied on my journey by something or someone masquerading as you, or was it really you?
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.Well, the whole weekend was to be a piss-up, wasn't it? A lost weekend. A weekend that was so small it became its own end. Yet, given the time, it was to be a gathering of like-minded souls who would, on the surface, discuss humanity's nether side, ponder its various expression by word or image, dissect the precarious methods of catering for so many dark minds, listen to long lists of lucky numbers (or so we hoped), toss ideas amid the smoke and fizz, space out, spice up, laugh, tease, wonder, dream, maybe cry, maybe not...
.
.The thing with whom I eventually arrived—after struggling with shapeless luggage from the trackside raft along a pavement quay towards the now gloomier windows and walls of the hotel—was not as like-minded as the others I was due to meet turned out to be, if that little explosion of words does not in itself prove to you that I am unable to string meanings together meaningfully without having a bout of clumsiness caused by self-referential angst. Few, in this short life of ours, are like-minded. Even fewer have minds at all. As far as you were concerned, you were the thing that accompanied me, you were, at most, a nodding acquaintance, single-mindedly attempting to fill pretend thoughts with real thoughts. And nod you did well, vacantly agreeing with myriad comments darting about in their attempts to find vertical transport other than the latent, late lifts.
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.When I arrived, what fun! What sound! What smoke-ridden belches of unintentional bad habits plagued me with their nicotine claws! At ten pounds a pint, sobriety was assured, but for the kindly intervention of a dozen hopefuls displaying their new wares. Dirty dancing, however, was not an option, even though the dazzling lights of a continuous loop winked up at me, blinding you with a curious display of cross-eyed crassness and ambiguous breakfast promises.
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.Setting down, laying the rules, I found myself ensconced once more within the cosmopolitan hotel, where needs were often swallowed by their very foreignness. Smiles floated continuously between the like-minded folk I speak of so often. Conversations, half-finished twelve months ago, sprang up again and coursed towards eventual completion. Strange how words and faces, heard and seen through the miracles of self-induced drunkenness, can remain familiar for so long. But then, you wouldn't know about miracles. Would you?
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."I'm in there7 I said, pointing over the shoulder of the casual browser, darting hither and thither between tentacle-rich artwork and the regulated, segregated displays of wisdom and ecstasy on sale for the meagre exchange of money. For truly, as the man Machen was fond of commenting, ecstasy is the purist pursuit.
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.There was an air of expectation about the place, crawling the sumptuous walls like the dribbling remains of yesterday's condensation. Eyes were wide, mouths hung open in a constant readiness for chit or chat. And you, walking with me, sensed little of the wonder I felt. An alien emotion to you, winding its way as it did between your shallow ribs and the cast iron alibis of your skull.
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.I felt secure, sure, within the confines of a hundred curtain-windowed walls, even though you were continually at my side. But security is surely a product of the surroundings, and when the Knowledge did not lend itself to finding this place, how safe should I have felt? Could I have seen a message in the twinkling eyes of a driver heading the opposite way?
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.Of course. But I chose to find my way back on my own... And you came with me.
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.The monolithic monstrosities around the hotel reflected the sunrise a thousand ways, making it as artificial and lifeless as them. Glass and steel taunted individuality, blending into each other. Height and width seemed not to matter, dimension swallowed here by the five-day superficiality of the working week. Weekends, however short and lost, were deader than ever. Save this one. You were with me, and you saw. The charged expressions, the hearty handshakes, the laughter and possible crying, all self-contained within the flashy exterior of the building's interior. Ale flowed from bottles, without the trendy split of lime, or the smell of a raised voice in sight.
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.And the waters shimmered with the movement of buried monsters. Shimmied, too, like the secret dancing you and I shared in our room. Or did I dream it? Did I dream, indeed, our showers shared, to optimise the warmth? But, I'd only judge reality for what it was towards the weekend's end, when piss came back up at us, and seeped out like yellow tears.
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.Amid the booze and dark banter, part of the weekend's events, as you know, had been given over ostensibly to a filming of the MIRRACLES commercial. The Dark Dock's only hotel was its very expensive, if, to my mind, unimaginative backdrop. The Executive Producer, St. John Jones, with big red beard, was implicated somehow with the Board of MIRRACLES Ltd. He was someone who didn't hit it off with Cork King—the actual Director of the film and erstwhile gaffer in Circus Boy—presumably the Board's second choice for this position. You see, Cork had bloodshot eyes from too much late-night cooking to optimise the breakfasts. And the backroom technicians were a pretty nondescript bunch—what else would you expect, them being part-time writers? Whatever else they might have been, the actors were not nondescript. There was Tamara Lebanon—you know, the ex-beauty queen. She was playing a vampire in the commercial, wearing false fangs. Then, sleepy-eyed Greta Brothers—you'd know her, too, of course. I was going to describe her as a "bit long in the tooth" but, being on the subject of vampires, I would not stoop that low. Gravina Willows, too. Her hair was just as long and billowy as when she was young—now it's shiny silver grey. Oh yes, one couldn't forget Frank Defil. The old trooper himself. He had a bit part—if they were not all bit parts in commercials. Still, Frank was a character actor. What else could he be, with a face like that. The cameo king, that's Frank Defil. He took a fancy to you, if his glances in your direction were anything to go by. You had to steer clear of him—more than once, didn't you? He must have thought your neck was nice and long—just what a thespian needed those days.
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.A whole two sessions had been set aside for filming at the hotel. We had the scripts already in our possession, so all of us were more
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.or less primed. St. John Jones had been on the blower to everybody most of the previous week, checking this and that, reading out esoteric series of bingo numbers in the guise of speech. As far as Tamara Lebanon was concerned, change bingo for bimbo, and you just might latch on to where she was coming from. She gave out a whole earful about St. John Jones on the first morning: "Bleeding Bloke!" The voice was too shrieky for an actress. Perhaps that was why she ended up playing a vampire in a TV commercial.
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."It's money, duckie—can't ignore grease from a goose like that,' you said. Your voice was mellow and so over-the-top it was difficult to understand why you were not asked to play leads in big-buster movies. Yet your reply was ignored because, almost in overlap, there piped up Frank Defil with a comment that I still cannot quite believe anyone would make: "You know, vampire ladies often swallow their lovers whole into those orifices which are not unfamiliar to regular blood-flow."
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.I blushed. Did I blush! Luckily, someone else had swept into the studio with a curt comment or two about the pay one received those days for TV commercials. St. John Jones and Cork King were following behind, talking about serious matters and causing an almost religious hush to ensue broken only by...
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."Something's ablow!"
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.If that was an attempt at ice-breaking, I quickly forgot who made it. There was no time for small talk, at the best of times. And if the would-be ice-breaker had meant that someone or other had farted, he or she was dead right. There was a heady stench which became decidedly carnal. Perhaps it had been there all the time, but I hadn't noticed it. I put it down to the damp weather and the huge old coat that Frank DefiI had flung on a claw-hanger.
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.Anyway, all was forgotten in the heat of filming. Time for St. John Jones to take a backseat. Not a done thing for a Producer to interfere with a Director. And keen Corky King indeed went about his business with a degree of enthusiasm and despotism it was hard to imagine even a top Hollywood exponent employing in his heyday. All that type of thing had gone with the wind, as it were. Or it should have done. Still, I had to give Corky his credit—he did know how to handle a Commercial and the type of actor attracted to such an art form.
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.Tamara Lebanon had no sooner plugged in the vampire teeth than she was doing a straight run-through, even with some of the other props missing. One of the nondescript backroom johnnies got a rocket for that little omission, that was for sure. Anyway, she had to wear the teeth from the outset to get used to their bulk in the mouth while talking. And they were indeed the most evil snappers ever seen—in and out of make-believe. So damn long, her mouth seemed propped open with whalebone. The tips came over the bottom lip like tusks. The stuff of nightmares. But hopefully the typical backbiting of tempestuous actors would soon make the whole thing more down-to-earth...
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.But it turned out to be an actual nightmare, not just the stuff of one. How could I have pretended otherwise? St. John Jones' bushy beard was capable of hiding a veritable lattice of fangs. Cork King— well he seemed scared stiff of cameras. No wonder he took a career which entailed directing operations from behind cameras. He treated you as so young, it was as if you'd not been born! Tamara Lebanon— well, her teeth weren't everything. She had men for breakfast, it was said.
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.And there was at least one backroom johnnie missing that very morning, although it was hard to tell. And Frank Defil, he spent most of the time chortling to himself about his name being a variant of Devil.
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.Well, you did want to know more about these matters, didn't you? MIRRACLES. I was going to tell you all about them, wasn't I? Stage mis-spells that could make God do card tricks and audiences rise from their graves clapping and laughing. Sweeties for dear sweet-necked children. Breakfasts of fishes and loaves which could assuage your fast-food fractures without actually filling you with anything at all. A scalding-hot sprinkler-system that made fires lukewarm. A new brand of vanity-mirror, one that could prettify the person reflected in it—all the rage since people in general were becoming uglier and uglier (and actors needed them most, didn't they—being such vain creatures). Which? One. None. Or all these things.
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.But not a what-was-it, was it? More a whodunnit. And to whom?
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.Of course, at least something capable of leaving red lip-prints had to be responsible for literally sucking a body inside out. Leaving the odd clue, like a single strand of silver hair floating in the rugose rubble that had once been, no doubt, the missing backroom johnnie. There was many a vanity mirror shattered in the hotel that morning, and by lunch they had been repaired with black insulating tape so that the remains looked like the stitched together façade of a kite creature or two dimensional war-torn Dome.
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.At breakfast, with those elegant and dubious actors and actresses and film types hugging each other over their surreal cereal, I expected a sort of Scooby Doo ending. I could imagine you standing there in mute witness, while Gravina swung her hair haughtily and protested that we did protest too much. And St. John Jones, bearded engima that he was, could surely hide all manner of expressions— along with as many teeth as he really wanted—beneath that huge old grizzle of his. And Lebanon—well, what can I say? You saw the shine in her eyes, didn't you? As she looked? As she stared? Ever eager to go pub crawling, even after ONSET.
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.But there was little mention of the backroom johnnie's extrapolated corpse, and by the time breakfast was served (Tamara Lebanon insisted upon a rare steak, and I saw that she still had her teeth in) the crew was ready to begin afresh.
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.Frank Defil, cameo king and leechy lech that he was, breezed through the room and left the stench of his coat behind. Perhaps he had just risen from the depths of the dock, for he dripped and slithered rather than walked. The hotel staff seemed to miss this— like he, or indeed all of us, was invisible. But the smell remained, and when Cork King rubbed his eyes and denounced the travesty that was breakfast, we all stood as one. Ready to make some more MIRRACLES, of course.
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.The sun was out again. Wasted here, for sure, because no amount of heat could warm up the cool façades of those steel and glass dinosaurs. Yet, in this place where life should feel amplified, I felt reduced. You knew what was happening, I think, for you looked at me with pity in your eyes. But you also saw to it that I did not simply stand and watch, as though by dragging me into the filming—placing me in harm's way, as it turned out—you could enliven me again.
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.Defil watched you, the old bastard...
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.And so did someone else: a man nobody had noticed before, with big round face, scrubby grey beard and bifocal glasses that reflected the ineffectual sun as the mouth below took a guilty drag.
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.Crowds gathered to watch the filming. Cork became agitated, because of the steam continuously rising from Tamara's barelyconcealed body. St. John Jones took her to one side and tried to persuade her to reveal a nipple—it would boost the impact of the advertisement, he said, and draw attention to the still mysterious product we were selling that day. But Tamara shook her head vehemently, and everyone was surprised when her wig took flight and sailed away towards the empty, perhaps never-to-be built, Millennium Dome.
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.Like a shag taken affright, the hairy thing twisted through the air. Tamara, now bald as a coot club, screamed. The teeth successfully lacerated her lower jaw, inside and out, and a stream of blood sprang forth. Cork King shouted in some form of imagined ecstasy, and set the cameras rolling. The MIRRACLES network would, perhaps, have objected, but the horror filmed on the Dark Dock that day would go on to win awards for make-up and scare the bejesus out of God-fearing American kiddies as they strove diligently not to let in the babysitter.
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.The crowds began to applaud.
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.When I turned, you were gone. Silvery windows stared out blankly at the chaos on the dock, and while Cork continued to film, Tamara hacked away—at anyone approaching her—with talons, which, I was sure, had never been that long at breakfast. Her head had taken on a ridged aspect, the bone bubbling and breaking through, and her guttural scream of displeasure had changed into one of invitation. Gravina Willows, unfortunately, got too close. Tamara managed to hook a claw in her long silvery hair, and it was adios muchachos. I never knew there was so much blood in a throat.
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.Curiously, Cork's red eyes had brightened and cleared in this onslaught of utter redness.
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.I looked around for you, my erstwhile companion, but nobody else seemed to miss you. There was somebody floating facedown in the dock, but I think it was the sleeping Greta Brothers, head lolling as the tides of excitement washed over her. No lucky numbers here. No hands raised in supplication to the great gods of chance. I wondered then whether you had really been here at all. I tried to recall what you looked like but your face was vague, like a showering neighbour viewed through frosted glass.
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.The dream that interspersed Greta's fitful sleep was of a fitful waking that told her that she was you and that you, as you later told me, was her. Sleepy eyes are often frosted over like a mirror of MIRRACLES, as intangible as the undead things reflected in them would become.
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.And, on reflection, dreams, like empty breakfasts, are often very filling. The crowd were climbing the stairs in a disorderly fashion, not exactly following the herd nor imbroiled in a recipe for disaster called mass hysteria, but, rather, attempting to jump the queue without cracking their inherent civilised veneer. One among them was yourself, clad only in what you happened to be wearing on the beach just before being alerted as to the imminent filming by MIRRACLES INC. of the Millennium Dome: on the horizon just beyond the Dark Dock's redoubts. Coming closer, you saw that it wielded an imposing façade, official-looking nameplates, battlements and black glass windows, the surrounding low-slung unthatcherised shanties (where lived the ordinary folk of London) accentuating the Dome's majesty, not so much as an architectural wonder of the world (for, with a different context of place and culture, it would have appeared rather Fifties Utility) but more as a beetling, black-eyed giant of ONSET time.
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.Strange what dreams of a first impression could gull one into believing. The façade was not only imposing, but also impossible. Not tenable. A land-locked, yet wind-shifted, tenement of kite-like appearance and over-ambitious leanings towards mobility. Attenuated in certain angles of sunlight. Yet essentially bulky. Benign, at some moments, brutal, at others.
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.You wondered if you should submit yourself to the wayward roof and walls. After all, you weren't awake and could no longer depend on the forces of law and reality to protect you. Dream denizens tended to jerry-build, even at the best of times. Hereabouts, boom or bust, the construction industry was run on a shoe-string. The workers didn't even wear safety helmets as they lugged hods for drunken brickies. Some of the high-rise wire-sculptors, even now, clambered at the top of the tall building whilst grappling with all manner of tangled aerials and chimney-pulleys. It didn't fill you with the greatest confidence to witness office-workers dropping showers of paperwork (presumably inadvertently) from some of the windows.
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.You tugged at your bikini strap to see if you were still seemly and joined the increasingly mobbish crowd as they widened the end of the upward queue. Some were harnessed together, with more fulsome straps than your dock beachwear could possibly boast. Others were even bound like mummies, a few in matching twos, but many in various permutations of size and gender. Incredibly, as much as a dozen people had ravelled bandages around themselves into the shape of a single abominable mountaineer, rather clumsily squeezing through the front entrance, amid rips and farts.
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.You shrugged. This particular entity was seemingly stuck. You'd never get in now. The bargain offered was probably more of a rip-off, in any event. After all, only cripples and the local unemployed were usually allowed a helping hand with their love-making. Mere dreamers in full control of their faculties, like you, were intended to make do with the privacy of the so-called dock-beach huts: those bivouacs with ill-woven wire windows which needed to be replaced after each incoming tidal swell through the Thames Barrier.
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.You placed the palms of your hand upon your own briefly clad bottom and ambled back towards the hotel, where you hoped to wake. You thought you heard the arrival of the New Millennium Giant, not exactly gliding in your wake but, rather, shambling—if shambling was even possible whilst also being in a tearing hurry— amid the waddling flurry of makeshift bric a brac. You knew most of the Dark Dock was built on sand and subsidised sex, in any event.
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.They dragged Greta Brothers from the dock, where, it appeared, she believed she had been spending a seaside holiday, judging by the bikini which barely clung to her amazing rootin-tootin charms. Tamara Lebanon scowled since her own figure was decidedly second rate by comparison. Greta had evidently been underrated in the saucy stakes because nobody had previously been able to keep awake in her vicinity. Cork King dragged the mewling Tamara back into the hotel, because, after all, she was the best bust of a bad bunch.
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.I stayed behind, mulling things over. I sat on the hard wharf and cried, because you had gone from my life. Even your dreamboat figure was fading. I cradled your head in my arms. I picked a long silver hair from your mouth. Evidently, you now slept a deep deep sleep beyond any you had ever managed in erstwhile waking existence. The mother and father of all stupors. The fishes-and-loaves of unbroken fastness. If I woke you now, I'd wake the whole world. Shatter the mirror of utmost complacency. And I feared I'd find myself out-staring my own stares from a bi-faecal face, hugely round and sown with tussocky grey. Something was ablow. A defiled devil.
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.With steadicam sure-footedness (talk about brinkmanship!) I found my way from the dead heart of London. Amid mutant Machen-like fragments of life, the rickety rail, as it threaded impending ONSET, sang a different funicular song on the way out, not one of architectural enigma and good times to come, but a mourning of every mixed-up, unrecognised face staring from every broken mirror there ever was. Memories of breakfast were long gone, empty, drained into the shimmering silvery dock. Perhaps, one day, they would become a part of the Millennial, perennial monster living there. The further the train dragged me from the Dark Dock of the past weekend, the more uneven, disturbed and vertically challenged I became. I felt like one of those high-wire wannabes, perching precariously on the impossible summits of the Dome's structural supports, running along stanchions and cables as though height and gravity were personal demons they felt it necessary to exorcise. I wished briefly for the companionship of bandages you had seen, longed for mummy.
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.I cursed the shambolic MIRRACLES. Those actors and actresses and film folk were all very questionable, and the backroom johnnies had barely made it to dinner. So many wasted meals inside the black, cool heart of that hotel. A menu of despair.
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