THE UNDERGROUND

Cecilia’s new apartment was fine. Fourth floor with a balcony, over looking grass and trees. Plenty of room for her piano, plenty of room for her possessions. Features to be grabbed at in central London - her parents would have approved of these qualities. And they would have been euphoric at the proximity of the Bank of England, a mere twenty minutes walk away. The financial heart of England that sang a sweet song to those with the ears to hear, that  shone like a lighthouse and guided marked souls to security in a land of fearful and threatening shadows.

Yes, the grand fat old lady who commanded a thriving respect from millions of aspiring wannabe miniature fat old ladies. Cecilia pictured a huge cellulite dimpled monster, her folds of slack flesh laying flaccidly over the land, warming and soothing and admonishing  and scolding her acolytes. She imagined her parents in the centre of an adoring mob, bobbing  and swaying, offering cultured ululations and doffing their metaphorical caps at their daughters’ great luck. Yes indeed, such a living space that suggested their daughter was finally bowing at the true shrine. The temple of wealth, power and position. However she knew they would have been outraged at the gangs of skinny ant like Bangladeshi kids terrorizing the grass, squealing and yelling almost directly below the balcony. The mandatory permanent reek of stale urine in the creaky lift would have appalled them and the sight of a burnt out wreck of an abandoned car at the back of the flats would have sent them scurrying to the protection of their lavishly decorated grand apartment. The thought filled her with spiteful pleasure.

The sudden sharp ringing of the phone jolted her into the present. “Where, the bloody hell is it,” she mumbled, looking around for the cordless handset and then spotting it whispered to herself,  “come here you little bastard,” as she plucked it from beneath a cushion. It was Samantha who wanted to know what she was doing at home when she should have been on her way for a meeting. A very important meeting, Samantha reminded her. 

“This is your big opportunity don’t get cold feet now.”

But Cecilia was getting cold feet.  “Yes, I know,” she whispered in reply to Samantha’s urgings.

“It’s just a little er… frightening…  I mean Alistair Green was a friend of my father’s and…,” her  voice tailed off.

Yes, it was a big step for her - that much she acknowledged.

But it was what accompanied it she dreaded.

“Cecilia, I know but this is business and just think of all the other people he can introduce you to. Think of him as a… er… a gateway… er… the golden arches of McDonalds through which you can stride towards wide open meadows of opportunity,” urged Samantha remembering Cecilia’s love of burgers.

“And besides I know how you feel about your father and though I don’t like to say it… this is a way of… you know… getting back at him.”

The words galvanized Cecilia.

Muttering “I’ll call you later,” she slammed down the phone and scooped up her lipstick, keys and mobile phone.  As she was about to step over the threshold of the door she turned and took a last look to make sure she had not forgotten anything. In the moment it took her eyes to sweep the room she heard it again.

“Ssssss… sssss… ssssss,”

“Oh no,” she groaned, “please… leave me alone” as she watched an ethereal shadow curl upwards, with the languid motion of cigarette smoke, from between the gaps in the floorboards and evaporate into nothingness. Across her mind swept an image of wolves at dusk emerging at the edge of a cold, dark and  lonely forest.  With a shiver she slammed the door behind her, charged down the corridor and hurtled down the four flights of stairs. 

“It must work, it must work, it must work, it must work, it must work,” she chanted to herself as she charged down the narrow alley at the bottom of the stairs.

Further chanting, “I’m going to be normal, I’m going to be normal, I will be normal, I will be normal, I will be normal,” forced the hissing whispers and swirling formless shape to the back of her mind.

The meeting with Green had totemic significance for Cecilia.   It would help her shatter the chains of her parents expectations and turn the unpleasant reality of her life into something closer to her dreams  of freedom from her past. It was a new start. But as she slowed down from her hurried and panicked run and began her descent into the butcher tiled grime of  Chancery Lane underground station the leering hissing forced its way back.

“Sssss… sssss… ssssss.” 

“You’re a piece of ssssssshit.”

“Sssss… sssss… ssssss.”

“Sssshit… you’re a piece of it.”

“Get off me, leave me alone,” she shouted aloud at the faceless hood at her right shoulder.

Her legs buckled, she crumpled and tumbled down the stairs.  As she came to a halt her head thumped against the floor and at the precise moment of impact, instead of feeling the hard surface of the cold and wet concrete, her father’s massive leathery and gnarled hand came into view striking her with a clattering blow.  The child Cecilia was sent flying across the tan coloured collectors Persian rug that she had mistakenly trodden on. She screamed at the sudden shock of the blow and her anguished  howls deepened even further as she saw  the jug full of sunlight she had been taking to her brothers darkened sick room turn somersaults through the air.

“Why you piece of s….,”

A passenger emerging from the underground, instinctively launched him self towards her. But she scrambled to her feet pushed him away and rushed into the smoky sub light of  the underground. Clutching the side of the escalator she fixed her gaze on the moving treads as she fought to regain control.  As she reached the bottom a train thundered onto the platform and she launched into another run . Bounding through the closing doors she collapsed into a seat quickly glancing at the three passengers opposite.  They stared at her and slowly started their conversation again. The hissing surged back.Time slowed down until the invisible parameters demarcating the passage of a second pushed outward into minutes, seeming hours and an infinity.  The echoing conversation became nonsensical, words elongated into meaningless sounds. 

Three tiny ice-cold spots appeared on her forehead and with excruciating slowness developed into needles of ice cold sweat.  Birds pecked deep inside her stomach and it felt like her whole life had been lived fleeing across subterranean concourses in order to whoosh around dark and dirty tunnels in harshly lit thundering carriages where every tiny physical imperfection was subject to critical and damning scrutiny by total strangers.

And of course it had.

As the train thundered through the soot encrusted tunnels Cecilia clamped her arms tightly across her chest and with an other worldly haunting stare fixed her eyes upon her juddering reflection in the window opposite in a bid to keep the hissing mocking voices at bay. 

One of the passengers saw a beautiful little zombie.  Deep brown eyes, dark skin, finely chiseled features, sharp eyebrows and a tight little mouth.  The intensity of her

stare was clearly disquieting and whispered of rigidity and hinted at madness too.  But her unrelenting gaze hid a state of frozen fear.  The whispering had taken shape and an invisible fiercesome wraith curled itself around her with diabolical satisfaction. Its advance had been sounded by the silent howl of the wolves that arose from an abyss so deep within her that that she believed somewhere in the unplumbed depths of her mind a door had opened to a hellish region.

A chorus of hideous shrieks filled her mind.  Each voice was distinct and individual but in unison  produced such an intense cacophonous din she felt like being simultaneously lacerated with millions of red-hot pins. She needed to move to break the spell. But she was powerless, frozen, trapped by the screeching of hell’s choir and the wraith’s voice.

‘Sssssss… sssssss… ssssshit... you’re a piece of shit.” 

The train thundered into the station and one of the passengers rising to get off accidentally  stubbed her foot.  She could move. Spinning her head around she recognized her stop and bolted out of the door towards the stairs.  As she emerged from the underground the voices lost their hold.  She was relieved to see the unremitting gray of a typical London sky, happy to hear the familiar monotonous drone of the ubiquitous London traffic. The sight of crushed drink cans at the tube entrance the fluttering pages of a discarded newspaper, alcohol soaked beggars and a cheap suited salesman babbling into a mobile phone brought to her a soothing sense of  wasteland like familiarity.

The mundane and harsh reality had a bulldozer effect on the malignant shapes casting them aside like a powerful wind scattering leaves across open land, sending them tossing and turning into an anonymous and featureless distance. 

“It’s the past, it can’t hurt me, it’s not real,” she told herself.

Opposite stood the glittering façade of the Ritz, all welcoming warmth, rosy lights and gilded opulence that spoke of striving material ambition, financial success and achievement. With the sense of relief of a drowning man rescued from storm tossed seas, Samantha’s promptings echoing through her mind and her own bolstering. Cecilia darted through the traffic and paused before the Ritz’s revolving door to regain her composure.  Thrusting her chin up she strode into the hotel with all the confidence and poise of one who had been brought up surrounded by gold thread embroidered tablecloths, dazzling diamonds, feather filled sofas, seemingly limitless credit accounts and the company of those who mattered, those who could shape things, those who could carve out destinies.

And of course she had.Glancing at her watch she realized she was twenty minutes late.  With an intake of breath she stepped into the lift to suite 990. 

“Please don’t cave in,” she said to herself rapping on the door.

Green opened the door and recognizing her from the photograph a huge smile spread across his pockmarked face revealing stained and yellowed teeth.

“My… Cecilia… it’s been such a long time. How long is it? You must have been sweet thirteen when I last saw you?  You don’t know how nice it is to see you again.

I was so surprised to see your picture that’s why I had to contact youSo lovely.  Please come in… don’t be shy”

Cecilia felt her insides slowly turning to ice. But she stepped into the room. She didn’t know what else to do.

Pointing towards an adjoining bedroom Green said:“Please, put your coat and bag in there. You can undress in there too.”

“Sssss…sssss…ssssss”

Steve Bell has been writing for several years in India. He has spent several years living there. He has written in the UK as a journalist and spent much time researching on the dark side of life in London's King Cross.

Email: Steve Bell

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