In fact, perhaps the drink he has here, at (the location marker chimes) THE OLD BELL INN, GREAT ECCLESTON will be his last. When it opens, that is, and someone comes to take his order. One last drink here while he waits for the Exxtris to swoop back over and pick him up, lesson learned.
Yes, he nods to himself, this will definitely be the last time.
*
In the darkness the doctor drives home, pinching finger and thumb into the corners of his eyes to keep them open. The road in front is illuminated harshly, his headlights two bright nets catching hare, pheasant, and leaves knocked along by the night wind. He is caught between the desire to get home quickly and the fear he will clip something, his bonnet tossing the corpse out into the road ahead where it will die in the spotlight of his full beams. He has never enjoyed theatre.
The doctor feels his foot ease on the accelerator (decision made) and wonders what he would give to have someone go into his brain and slice out every death scene he has ever witnessed. Sometimes he thinks he would give an entire limb. Put him under general and let them cut it off and take it away in exchange for a fresh, clean mind. It wouldn’t be so bad, living without an arm or a leg.
He switches on the radio and turns the knob, seeking Christmas music. He isn’t cynical about these things, not like other men his age. Hearing these songs takes him back to Christmas mornings with his mother, with his own children. A smell of gravy, cloves, pine needles, yards of wrapping paper crinkling underfoot. Eventually he settles on one station playing that god-awful Chris de Burgh song that secretly, he has always loved. He sings along trying to focus on the lyrics, trying not to think about other things.
If he’d known Mrs Cooper was dying he wouldn’t have taken the call. He would have rung for an ambulance and gone back to bed, nestled close to his wife and waited for Christmas morning. Instead he rose, made coffee and crept outside to the car, passing the dark Christmas tree in the hall (how gloomy it looked without the lights on). Driving out to the Cooper house in the dark, he walked in to find her lying on the kitchen floor in a puddle of urine, using the last air in her lungs to recite a recipe for lemon cake.
And now he pinches sleep from his eyes and heads home to his wife, who will wake as he comes into the bedroom and ask him – that switched-off, sleep-rumpled look in her eyes – if Mrs Cooper is alright. And he will have to tell her, at three am on Christmas morning, the first she will be spending without her children, that the old woman is dead.
He can’t face that. Not without a drink in him. Not without a moment to himself away from the liquid dark of this endless road. And like that, a fairy light blinks on somewhere in his brain. He feels his hand go to the indicator, his right foot move to the brake to slow and take the next turning, instead of following the road home. A few minutes later his headlights catch new prey: a sign, decked in holly for the season and reading The Old Bell Inn, Food Served All Day. Thank god for Susan and her spare key.
*
He should be the most interesting man in the galaxy. Not only because he’s a traveller from the other side of the universe, but because of his species’ impressive, frenzied appetite for survival. This is why, of course, he worries that if you stripped away the adaptations there would be nothing to him. That he would be small and boring and easily forgotten in the too-large universe.
The blind man is feeling glum and he needs a drink badly. So when there is a sound from across the room, a scraping like metal against metal, he brightens, thinking that perhaps the bar is finally opening. In the next moment he feels his defences go up, becomes aware of his sub-mind reading the air for signs of danger. An awareness flickers into life somewhere and he knows before he knows that he is about to come face to face with his first ever human.
Oh fuck, he thinks. I’m on fucking Earth.
*
The door is stiffer than the doctor expected and on the sixth try of the key he loses his nerve, which is – things being the way they are – the exact moment the lock gives. He stumbles forward and finds himself standing in the dark doorway of the pub.
He clears his throat, straightens his collar for no one in particular and makes for the bar. No going back now that he’s inside. He will have his little whisky, leave a few coins on the bar and drive home. By that time, the image of Mrs Cooper might have faded just enough for him to sleep.
Of course, two steps from the bar his skin prickles and he realises he is not alone. There at the end, just visible in the dark, a man sits, hunching forward. The doctor freezes, straightens his collar again.
“I’m not breaking in,” he says for some reason. “I’m a friend of Susan’s.”
The man says nothing, simply shifts on his bar stool a little. He seems an odd-looking fellow, something indistinct about him.
“I’m just having one, then heading home. Are you a friend of the family?”
The other man looks up then and smiles very broadly. The doctor is relieved. He’s just an old drunk, an uncle or distant cousin visiting for the season. There seems a look of sadness about him, like he has lost something, which is perhaps why he has been left to his own devices down here while Susan and her husband sleep upstairs.
The doctor flicks on the lights behind the bar, pours his whisky and raises his glass in the direction of the drunk. He has found himself glad, in an unexpected way, that he isn’t alone.
*
His shift adaptation kicked in. It must have, seeing how the human hasn’t screamed yet. How long it will last, the blind man doesn’t know. What will happen when the shift fails, he doesn’t know. In a worst case scenario, the Exxtris turns up while the human is still here (what were they thinking, dropping him on Earth?). He tries to focus on finding a solution but all he can think of is how annoying it is that he shifted without even realising. How helpless he feels when his sub-mind does these things before even asking him.
The human is talking to him, in an annoying way, and the blind man wonders whether he should eat him, and wonders when the Exxtris will be back, and wonders where the fucking fuck his eyes are.
*
In the toilet, the doctor pisses and smells espresso. The stench of un-metabolised coffee wafting from the hot stream turns his stomach, and makes him feel scared and alone all of a sudden. Mrs Cooper is dead and he has broken into a pub and is sitting with an old drunk who may well be brain-damaged. Why did he come here when he could have gone home to his wife? He thinks about how much he loves her, how when she lets him be the little spoon his buttocks fit so neatly into the warm nook of her lap that he forgets where he ends and she begins. If he had only followed the road straight, he could have been lying there with her now.
He zips up and washes his hands three times. Back at the bar he will throw down a ten-pound note and leave, and he will speed home to his wife’s warm lap. They will spend Christmas together, open a bottle of good champagne, Skype the children in London and Beijing. Celebrate the fact that, after all these years, it’s just the two of them again, more in love than ever. At bedtime, she might even lift her nightgown over her head, pull him towards her so they can lie naked together. Skin on skin, mouths locked, hands exploring one another’s soft places with the shyness of teenagers. At the thought of that, he feels his penis tick to the side like a needle on a Geiger counter.
*
In the bar the blind man is growing increasingly desperate. Desperate for a drink, desperate for a sign that he has not been left on Earth for good, blind and helpless, a slave to his own unconscious systems. Things being the way they are, of course, at the very moment he is about to get up and go out the door, something tingles at the back of his skull.
It’s the familiar bing bong of the comms system, a message from the Exxtris. They’re back to pick him up and yes – they have his eyes. They want to know if he has sobered up, learnt his lesson, if he’ll pay for the damage done to the arboretum. The relief floods through him like a hit of Drunksteam. He messages them back (YES YES YES!) and clicks off.
He will change, he knows that now. He will stop drinking, stop showing off. Start having conversations with people about real, important issues like politics and religion, and whether or not it is ethically sound to breed crested pajibets in such a way that their engorged endocrinal sacs prevent them from walking. There it is; he will become a campaigner for insect rights. He will be noble, beloved of the common people.
But will it still be enough? What if he gets back on board the Exxtris to find – despite all their chiding – that they still expect the same old jester? What if he is not enough without a new show, a new impression to keep them entertained?
When the human comes back into the room, the blind man’s conviction fails him. He has realised – half relieved, half disappointed – that the solution is right in front of him, or at least in the same room.
As the doctor walks to the bar, tapping the bells on the Christmas wreath, humming Chris de Burgh and pulling out a crisp ten-pound note, the blind man messages the Exxtris for a second time.
MAKE THAT TWO FOR TRANSPORT, reads the transmission. I’VE GOT YOU ALL A PRESENT.
Yes, he thinks. This will really wow them.
Florence Vincent was born in London in 1988. She has lived in Edinburgh on and off since 2010, when she moved to the city for a Creative Writing Masters.
These days she spends her time working on her first novel, watching sci-fi box sets and compiling Chris de Burgh playlists.
