The Rise and Fall of the Great Saundini Part VIII
Welcome for the final time to one of my readings of the future, that is, my own future. Unfortunately, I can only see sadness and death in this part so I implore the squeamish to beware. Let us delve for one final time and see what can be seen…
I feel scared. Fear. Shadows are all around me laughing. The smell in the dark alley is damp and pungent of fish. I have just been told that to stay in this relatively safe area, I’d need to earn my rent by stealing. I look around at them. “Please ta meet cha lad”, this one had a long red beard, “me name’s Fagin, Fagin Fagin”. “A la Oliver Twist? You’re joking”, I tell him. “You calling my name a joke boy?”, “I’m 38!”, “Shut up!” The shout was from a man who looked mean and I noticed he had a nasty looking dog. “Let me guess” I asked, “Sikes”. “Shut up! Me name’s Dikes!” Reluctantly, I agree with him. “Look kiddo! you’re comin’ with us!”
And at that, the barking dog gnawing at my ankles, I am frogmarched by Dikes through up to a grand house just outside central London. I feel so hungry. My legs ache. “Where are we going?” I ask. “To a club my boy, a club”. “Stop calling me a boy!” “Shut up!” We sneak up to the Window. “Hey I recognise this place!” I tell him, “We’re in Chertsey, this is exactly the house which Oliver breaks into in the Dickens novel”. “Shut up!” came the predictable reply. “Now climb in boy and open the front door for me”. “Why would I do that?” I ask. He shrugs sarcastically before thrusting a gun from his pocket and clicking off the safety. “You make a convincing argument Mr Dikes” I tell him and at that I climb into the house.
It is grand, with fine pictures everywhere and a smell that reminds me of my one true love. I figure that now I’m inside I can just call the police and get rid of this man Dikes, however I realise that I haven’t finished treatment still technically so I may well end up prison myself as a result. “Hey!” I hear a sound behind me and see Dikes poking his revolver through the window. The moonlight behind him making his head a silhouette. I start walking to the door and reflect on my life. I’ve abandoned most of my principles, been a coward in the face of danger and failed in everything that I have done, why should I resist allowing my standards to slip any further? But then comes the voice, a heavenly voice in my head that tells me of unconditional love and that we always have a choice. I could hold on to my life, or compensate for a lost life by losing it to a glorious death. And yet I am scared. After all, there is never any guarantee of how I’ll be treated in the after life. I give myself a compromise that I need to learn more, and so persuade myself to go ahead with this. That’s when I stumble over a welcome mat and slap down onto the laminate floor. On getting up I see a frame, and inside the frame I see that I can’t rob this house. The picture is one of my love.
I thought that she still lived in Bristol, but it doesn’t surprise me that she has a place nearer the English National Opera in London. Adrenaline starts coursing through my arteries and smell iron. I go to the door, tears welling in my eyes and apply the chain lock, turning round in defiance. At this comes the gunshot and my stomach forces me backwards clattering into the door. I look up gasping in pain, a pain which is numbing as I start to lose blood and life. I see my love coming down the stairs in a nightie brandishing a violin fiercely. “Who’s there?” she yells aggressively before seeing me, she screams in fear and stands still there. A silence follows, the blue moonlight shimmering off her brown hair. “I thought you were dead” she tells me. I simply splutter back and my attempts to talk hurt me as I try to respond in a way that I don’t know how. I clutch my stomach and begin to see stars, but remembering a last duty I remove my love-letter from my pocket and hold it out to her. Lactic acid is eroding my arm as she finally takes it and reads:
“My dearest love, I want to say,
that I adore in every way
that this simple and cliched tripe
could never show in its bold type,
my final breath is coming now
But for your own peace, don’t ask how,
I am a casualty of earth
And no ambition has had it’s birth
In my heart and the world appauls
My only place is with St. Paul.
Please find new love and new success
Try not to grieve and obsess
And I will always watch you on high
In never-ending bliss, I die.”
“Oh, the Great Saundini”, she weeps, my eyes not open, “can you not understand? As you love me just as I am, I love you. It doesn’t matter what job you do, so long as you are you! That’s real success! I’d love you, tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Do you see Saundini? Saundini?” And then silence. I start to see my own body on the floor, blood spilling out of my gut and creating a red lava pool on the laminate floor. My love runs to the telephone and calls an ambulance, but it’s all in vain, the Great Saundini is dead. I fly through the ceiling and up into the night sky and suddenly a flash of white.
I’m back, though not for long. It’s amazing how much life is about to change, obviously based on the fact that I have had this vision of the future now in the present, the future will not turn out like this and be consigned to being an alternative reality, but rest assured, if I hadn’t written this, that is exactly how the future would have turned out! Incidentally, isn’t it weird how scientists seem to actively go about trying to recreate sci-fi futuristic horror films? In honesty it would put me off breaking laws of nature in the name of science. See 6th Sense and I-Robot and watch this space. Well done, faithful blog readers, whoever you are, if you have read this far. Thursdays blog will be the last. I’m off into the working world, a world in which not many care too much about what I write! So unless there’s much demand, I’m signing off. Ta ra til Thursday!
