As she walked away from him Barry caught a few strands of her long dark hair and watched them slip through his fingers...

The music was a loud soup filling mouths, stuffing ears, so there was no room for words, and nothing to hear but the repetitive distorted drone. As if in denial people attempted communication. They tried shouting, pressing mouths to ears, hand signals, gestures. Sometimes their efforts were worthwhile. Mostly they were not. People sat beside one another around the club walls in the semi-dark and flashing lights, and they danced together, but everyone was alone, insulated by the noise. Bodies nudged for space along the bar and dance floor, looking for a place to sit, and eyeing the seats already taken.

 Barry eyed the girl he'd taken out tonight and was ready to take home as she came back and sat down beside him. His mouth brushed her cheek as he leaned close enough for her to hear. “Come on Nicky,” he said, reaching around her shoulder, pulling her to him.

“What's the rush, she yelped, laughing.”

“You're a tease. You want another drink? It's last orders.”

“Already!”

- It's about closing time.”

Nicky laughed. “I must be drunk!” She shouted above the music, “it doesn't seem that long since we came in!”

“What?” Barry frowned, leaning closer.

“The night's just flown in!”

“I can't hear you!”

“It's nothing.”

“It's time to go?” He asked, not sure if it was or not, or if that's what she'd even said. He tried to look at his watch but couldn't see the time in the dark.

An old man was watching Nicky from the bar and when Barry noticed he laughed and tried to draw Nicky's attention to him but she was distracted by a friend gesticulating from the dance floor.

Barry stood up and pushed his way through the young hard bodies. A girl screamed as a man hit another man with a bottle. A dozen people watched, fascinated, as the rest danced obliviously, futilely attempting conversation. Barry glanced back at the dance floor, nodding his head to the music as his eyes dipped along skirts and thighs. A girl was throwing up as he turned back and pushed his way up to the toilet.

For a second Nicky looked older as Barry approached their seat, her face paler in the light from the dance floor, and dark smudges evident for the first time beneath her eyes, as though a few years had been injected into her features in the minutes he'd been away.

Barry leaned in close to her, feeling the smooth softness of her skin against his lips as Nicky slipped her fingers into his shirt pocket and tugged him forwards, applying pressure to the square stitched around his heart.

“Come here you!” She snarled, forcing her tongue between his lips, and fondling him under the table.

But when he reached for her she leaned back and laughed, restraining him with an open hand.

“We've all night big boy.”

“We going?” He slurred, kissing her cheek and neck, touching her leg.

“Stop slobbering over me!”

Nicky looked across the table, smiling, as Barry looked down the long legs under the short skirt she wore. He reached a hand down, under it.

“Hey!”

“Come on,” Barry urged. But when she didn't move he sat back and reached for his drink. It was empty. When did he finish it? He stuck the bottle back on the table and surveyed the mess they'd made of things; the stained sleeves, spilled drinks, dirty glasses; the burned down crumpled cigarette ends and ash scattered across what had been a shiny table surface. “Where's Tracy?” He asked.

Nicky shrugged. “I think she's away with that boy you were talking to earlier.”

Barry couldn't remember who he'd been talking to earlier. He'd been talking to a lot of people, and dancing with a lot of girls, and they all seemed to blur into one another now, their faces melding like ingredients in a cocktail mixed inside his brain. It was hard trying to put the ones he could remember into some kind of order; the faces just didn't fit into any time sequence. Somewhere around half a dozen drinks time overtook consciousness, speeding by awareness like a crazy joyrider, kicking up dust clouds in its wake.

It was still light when they arrived some hours before, but the lighting had dimmed since then, and so had their senses, leaving Barry hot and dishevelled with his shirt creased and unbuttoned mid-way down his chest. He touched his ribs with his fingers and tried to look straight ahead but this middle aged beer bellied bald guy kept getting in his way, and no matter how far Barry leaned, left or right, there was no getting away from the fat bastard.

“What you laughing at?” Nicky asked him, swinging her handbag at his face. Barry swayed into it as he tried to sway away. “I was talking to Lisa in the toilets!” Nicky's voice was loud in his ear.

Barry cringed, rubbed his head and closed his eyes.

“She's having a party, Nicky shouted, fancy it?”

The DJ had put the room on. Things were spinning loudly. Barry's eyelids lurched open.

“You okay?”

“I'm tired, he said, leaning on his knees and rubbing his belly through his shirt; it felt bloated all of a sudden.”

“You're a young man Barry!”

“I've been out all night.”

“You drink too fast that's your trouble.”

“I can handle it.”

“You just want to handle me.”

“You're right, he said, handling her.”

Nicky shrugged him off and looked at a man slumped asleep on the couch across from them. - Look at that loser! Hey you! Nicky shouted, splashing beer at him, and laughing.

“Taxi? Barry mumbled.

“Come on then, they won't wait till we're ready!

Barry staggered onto the pavement, fist in the air, screaming,

“Taxi!”

A black cab pulled up and Barry glimpsed the driver who reminded him of his dad. They hardly had time to sit when the cab pulled away. Barry kissed and licked Nicky's neck and filled his hands with her tits and thighs, and they bit each others tongues and lips when laughter interrupted their kissing; Nicky finding the cab driver's taste in music hilarious, it was so fucking yesterday; Barry telling her to forget it, “we're here,” he mumbled, “we're here now.”

Nicky's hand slipped through a gap in the buttons of his shirt and slid across the ripples of his abdomen, a smooth palm gliding over muscle and bone, cold fingers like worms.

“Your muscles feel weird,” she giggled, drawing the flat of her hand back from his ribs and down his abdomen, into his jeans.

Barry smiled. “You rather I was soft and flabby? “

“I wouldn't be near you if you were,” she said.

His eyes closed, and when they opened again, Nicky was asleep with her head on his shoulder. He felt warm and comfortable with her tits soft against the hardness of his ribs and her hand nestled inside his fly. And he grinned dreamily as he watched the world fly by in a haze of street lights and glistening rain.

“Don't get too comfortable children!”The driver shouted, and Barry looked up to see yellow teeth unzip lips in the rear view mirror. His arm tightened around Nicky's shoulders and he pulled the warmth of her into him as the road got rougher.

Barry's head hit the window. Sticky eyelids snapped open. A young woman sat opposite him in a fold down seat, smoking, glowering. She was young but rough looking, and the road was rough and bumpy beneath them. Barry's head thumped the window again as he turned to look outside. He couldn't see far in the dark so turned back to the woman, his eyes glazed, his stomach churning.

“You bastard, she sneered, smoke twisting through her blonde hair.”

“What?”

Barry turned to his side.

Nicky wasn't there.

Rain spotted the window across from him and street lights sparkled outside in the dark. He turned to the woman and frowned.

“Where's Nicky?”

“That her name is it?”

“What?”

“You bastard.”

The woman sucked on her cigarette and glared through the rain spotted glass. Her eyes glistened red, streaking powder.

Barry looked around her head into the front compartment of the cab.

“Nicky?”

“Who you talking to?”

There was no one in the passenger seat. A black finger tapped the steering wheel to a dance beat on the radio as rain lashed the windscreen and window-wipers slashed the glass in scraping waves. Headlights cut a few feet ahead of them, but Barry couldn't see where they were going in the strips of brown bumpy track the light briefly exposed before flickering out into blackness...

“Nicky?” The woman said.

Barry fell back in his seat and looked at her, and then to his side; the seat cushion was creased from where Nicky had sat. “Did we drop her at her house?” He asked the woman, pressing his palm into the still warm absence.

“Do you miss her?” She asked.

“Who are you?”

The woman looked disgusted by him. “What is it this time Barry?”

“What is what time?”

“What is it you're on?”

“What?” He felt sick and queasy and his eyes were glazing over as the taxi bumped and swayed. “Did someone spike my drink?” He asked, catching his head in his hands.

She laughed. “Who would need to spike your drink?”

His eyes opened. The taxi seemed to be going faster than before. A wee girl sat in the seat across from him, her legs swaying inches from the floor, and tears streaming her puffy cheeks. Her bottom lip had curled and her chin was pressed against her breast bone as she fiddled with a dolls hair.

Barry stood up, almost falling on the girl as he struggled for balance.

“For Christ sake Barry!” A woman's voice snapped as he leaned between the front seats.

It was light outside and the taxi had stopped. Another car sat in front of it. The taxi driver turned to look at him. The driver was a woman. The meter clicked from 29 to 30, and Barry jolted back as they started to move again, falling groggily into his seat. The wee girl started to cry. A hand grabbed his elbow. Barry screamed and jumped into the window. The wee girl hollered and cried and kicked her feet against the partition, screaming.

“For Christ's sake Barry!” A woman beside him said, leaning awkwardly to the wee girl, her stomach swollen, “it's alright darling,” she said to the girl, “daddie's just drunk....”

“Nicky?” He asked.

The woman glared at him.

“What happened to you?” He asked, brushing his fingertips across her doughy cheeks as if trying to smooth the creases back to the cheekbones he remembered.

“What's got into you now?” She complained, batting his hand away, and leaning forwards to comfort the crying girl.

Barry touched her straggly unkempt greying hair.

“Keep your hands off me Barry.”

He was falling. He was on his back on the floor of a moving car, clasping his stomach, eyes closed, the horrible sensation of falling fluttering from his belly as he sighed, relieved to feel the cold surface at the back of him, his hands curling a paunch, fingers probing the soft bobbing flesh of his mid-section. He heaved two or three times, vomiting onto the black floor matt, his head juddering to the movement of the vehicle as his chin bounced in his own sick...

He groped his way back into the seat, looking down at the puddle between his shoes and gasping as he felt the belly in his hands. Standing unsteadily, he peered through the seats at the meter: 44 . . . . . . . . . .

45 . . .

46 . . . 

47 . . . 

48 . . .

49 . . .

50 . . .

51 . . .

52 . . .

. . . He lost his balance and fell back again, his consciousness drifting to a siren wailing somewhere in the taillights . . .

He had been kidnapped. How was he going to escape the hold they had on him? How was he going to survive? He was in a vehicle of some sort and travelling so fast jumping out wasn't an option. But he had to take things into his own hands. No one else could save him. He had to take control, wrestle the wheel from the driver, and turn things around. That's what he had to do: turn things around, turn back, turn everything back to before they'd kidnapped him.

He woke up to laughter.

A young couple sat in the fold down seats across from him.

“Look! He pissed his pants!” The girl shrieked.

Urine tickled Barry's inner thigh, spreading heat through his trousers.

“Dirty old cunt,” the young man sneered as his girlfriend wept with laughter.

72 . . .

73 . . .

74 . . .

75 . . .

76 . . .

77 . . .

78 . . .

Someone must have spiked his drink and robbed him. They'd even gone so far as to replace his wallet with an old mans; there was a photo in a bus pass. Half a dozen times Barry had awoken by himself. Was there ever anyone else here? Was he always alone? Had everything been a dream?

“This isn't a dream, this is a fucking nightmare,” he muttered to himself, wincing at how strange his own voice sounded and felt as it passed through his mouth. “Somebody spiked my drink,” he mumbled, fingering his throat as if examining his voice and the rough wrinkled texture of his skin.

“What's that?” The driver asked.

Barry couldn't hear him; he was preoccupied by the feel of plastic in his mouth, which he'd noticed when he'd spoken. The joints in his fingers shrieked as he touched the smooth teeth. And when his tongue pushed them out into his hand he sat back, startled.

“What . . .?”

The taxi hit a speed bump.

A walking stick hit the floor.

“Slow down,” Barry said, but the driver couldn't hear him for the music he was listening too.

All Barry could hear was a noise. And when he turned to the window and looked outside it was to dark to see anything but the partial ghost of his own reflection framed in the window of a speeding car; his features creased beyond recognition as though the glass was a magic mirror, distorting how things really are.

“Things aren't like this,” he mumbled, “ this isn't real. This can't happen to me.” His words were soft, muffled by gums. He looked at the false teeth lying on the floor by his feet and started to reach for them. Pain soon changed his mind, raising its many voices. He ran his hand along his head, feeling the skin and skull, the patches of thin white hair clumped to the sides. What the hell was happening? He couldn't remember much. Vague fleeting moments comprised his memory: the wee girl, the woman, the younger woman, the club . . . He'd spent a lot of money on things there, he remembered, on alcohol and other drugs, and condoms . . . he smiled, remembering a girl, a young woman . . . There was a long strand of hair on the seat beside him. He picked it up and twined it around his fingers, feeling the soft silky fibre roll across his rough wrinkled skin. Barry loosened his grip and held it in the palm of his hand, observing how it fluttered, so light and fragile in the draft of the open window. He closed it in his fist tightly, rubbing it against his cheek, inhaling the fragrance  . . .

The taxi stopped. A door opened. Cold air gushed in like water into a sinking ship. It seeped into his clothes and under his skin, denting the surface of him with goose bumps that shuddered into uncontrollable spasms. Barry turned away and closed his eyes behind moisture rinsing lids, his fists clenching the strand of hair, locking it firmly in a vice. Knuckles rapped the roof.

“Journeys end!”

“I ... can't pay you,” Barry told the driver, “ I ... I don't want to leave just yet.”

“You've goat to,” the driver said.

And something had a grip on Barry's arms and legs, pulling him ...

“Please, I ... please, don't make me leave. Don't ... don't let me go.”

“That's just the way it is. I can't drive you around forever.”