'Some bright morning, the sun will shine again,
some bright morning, start all over again …'
J. J. Cale
Inspired by the 1980s British TV Show, Now get out of that!
and with some brief tributes to the late, great Terry Pratchett
who died shortly after this story was completed in 2015
Really In Paradise, I hope!
Hold On!
Jantallian
1
Dawn light filtered slowly through the ragged curtains of the hotel room and crept across the floor to touch the face of the sleeping man on the bed next to the window.
Slim Sherman shook his head groggily without opening his eyes. There were no sounds at all. No birds. No wind. No clattering of Jonesy getting breakfast in the kitchen, no irritable shifting from the top bunk and no cheerful chatter from Andy. Something was wrong. Either that or he had such a monumental hangover it was making him deaf all of a sudden.
He forced one eye open and immediately wished he hadn't. The wan dawn light seemed unbearably bright and he had to blink several times before being able to focus on where he was. The window was in the wrong position. Or the bed was. Was this some joke of Jess and Andy's – shifting the furniture around overnight? He wouldn't put it past them! But the bed felt wrong too. And he was certain the curtains had been in better condition last time he saw them. He stifled a groan as he rolled over with a great effort and peered round the rest of the room.
There was another bed, jammed up in the corner, with a figure sprawled out on it, for all the world as if he had knocked himself out on the wall behind. A black hat hung from the bed-nob. Jess, then.
Slim managed to struggle up onto one elbow and looked again. The Texan had obviously got as far as removing his boots before he hit the sack, but he was still wearing his jacket, which was rucked up round his shoulders in what looked like a very uncomfortable fashion. He was snoring. And he was lying on his gun-belt. Painful, Slim thought, he'll be sorry in the morning! But it was morning. And Jess never, ever, lay on his gun – not unless someone had slugged him first and, in that case, the gun would have gone. Slim wrestled a bit with this problem before giving it up.
He considered for a moment hauling himself out of bed and shifting the younger man into a more comfortable position, but then the snoring got to him. If Jess could snore like that, there couldn't be much wrong! Slim felt around for one of his own boots to chuck at the offending sleeper, but failed to locate them as they were still on his feet. He rolled over irritably and pulled the pillow over his head instead. Seconds later he was fast asleep again.
Jess woke in a rush of adrenaline, struggling furiously against whatever was binding his arms. The violent movement precipitated him off the bed and he fell heavily onto the uncarpeted floor, landing on his gun. This momentarily winded him and the painful impact brought him to his senses. He shrugged his arms back into the restricting jacket, at the same time automatically checking both his wallet and his gun. Clearly nobody had jumped him, despite the feeling he had that he had been slugged hard across the back of the neck. He hauled himself painfully up using the bed as support. Every inch of his body ached, the way it had when that twister had picked him up, dumped him in the debris and flung a barn door on top of him for good measure. Through narrowed eyes, he took in the totally unfamiliar surroundings.
It was obviously a hotel room of sorts, but not in Laramie, he was absolutely sure. The bedding had never been particularly clean, even before he had contribute most of the dust adhering to his clothes and person. The furnishings showed unmistakable signs of fight-damage, which he hoped he had not caused if it was going to cost him. The window was poorly curtained and the light dimmed by the grimy window-pane behind. He limped across and peered out, but the dirt was so thick he could see nothing beyond a blurred outline of the street below, which might have been anywhere. He'd sure like to know what they put in the whiskey around here, wherever the hell 'here' was. It was like some God-awful laudanum dream!
Jess shuddered and turned back to the room, surveying the other bed and its occupant. The sleeping figure's head was buried under the pillow. Whoever it was still had his boots on and Jess recognised the spurs which were currently doing considerable damage to the sheet the sleeper had tried to hitch over himself. Slim then – the darned fool must have collapsed without bothering to pull them off.
Jonesy's job to do the mother-hen act! Jess grumbled to himself, as he struggled to remove the offending footwear without doing more damage to the bedding or Slim. In the end, he resorted to a savage yank, which had positive results but no apparent effect on the sleeper. Some kind of worry was niggling at the back of Jess's reluctant and woolly mind: Never known Slim have a hangover so bad you could pull his leg off and not wake him!
He wandered over the wash-stand, but the water jug was empty. Foiled of a satisfying way of waking his unsuspecting victim, he stumbled back to the bed, shedding his jacket as he went. He gave a half-hearted tug at his shirt and decided against any attempt to get it over his aching head, nearly knocked himself out on the wall as he collapsed again, and just managed to pull out his gun and shove it under his pillow, before stupefying sleep overwhelmed him once more.
CTRRTTC
They should not have woken so soon.
CTRRTTC
The sunlight continued to crawl sluggishly across the room, raising the temperature of the dusty atmosphere to that of a warming oven and causing its reluctant inhabitants to stir uneasily. The air became thick and unpleasant to breath. It didn't smell too good either.
Slim cracked open an eye even more cautiously than last time. The daylight had not improved things. In addition to all the drawbacks he had identified before, there was a distinct aroma of boots, dust, sweaty clothes and … cigarette smoke.
"Will you pack that in!" He reached, successfully this time, for a boot and hurled it across the room, spur and all. "You'll set the place on fire!"
"Might improve it some!" Jess retorted, fending off the flying boot with the ease of long practice, and taking a defiant drag at the remains of his cigarette. "What a no-account hole to choose to spend the night in!"
"Yeah, that's the last time I take your advice!"
"My advice? You're the one who's always right!"
They glared at each other in bewilderment and mutual recrimination.
"Where the hell are we, anyway?" Jess demanded.
"I thought you knew?"
"Me? I was only followin' instructions. Your instructions."
"But my instructions were to … to … ?" Slim's statement tailed off into an uncertain question. He struggled to think and then decided it was about time Jess used his brain too. "Look, you tell me what I told you."
"Y' never tell me anythin'," Jess protested, quite unjustifiably. "I'm just along to make sure you don't get yourself shot up, as usual."
"Who's shooting at us? I don't see anyone. Do you?"
"No. And I don't hear anythin' either." Experience and expertise were finally beginning to resurface in Jess's befuddled mind and he didn't like the results at all. "By the sun, it must be mid-mornin'. D'you ever hear a town so quiet?"
Slim listened. After a minute or two, he agreed reluctantly. "No. Did you?"
"Yeah, once. Passed through a little place that had just had a visit from a Comanche raidin' party. It was this quiet. Dead quiet!" They looked at each other bleakly, neither wanting to develop this thought any further.
Slim sat up cautiously and swung his legs off the bed.
"Here, this is yours!" The boot came flying back across the room and he caught it automatically. Standing up to put it on was another matter and, after a couple of wobbly attempts, he sat back down, feeling uncharacteristically shaken. "I don't feel too good," he admitted honestly. "How about you?" He was watching closely the slow deliberation with which Jess had bent and picked up his jacket from the floor and retrieved his own boots. It was quite unlike the fluid grace with which he usually moved.
"Nothin' a pint of black coffee wouldn't cure!" Jess growled.
O no! How could I forget what it takes to get him started in the morning! Slim prayed fervently that somewhere close at hand would be the requisite remedy, otherwise his life was going to be hell for the next couple of hours. In an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, he teased "Never seen you with a hangover like this before."
"It ain't a hangover," Jess stated categorically. He waved an arm at the bare room. "No empties!"
"What then? Something obviously happened, even if neither of us can remember what."
"I feel like I've been run over by a stage," Jess admitted with unusual candour. "An' it was goin' hell for leather."
"Me too. Or more likely the stage was going flat out and we got off without it stopping."
"Done that off a train once, if you remember - but not voluntarily."
"Yeah – some trouble with a woman, wasn't it? But why can't we remember anything about this?"
Jess shrugged, pushing the unsolvable problem to the back of his mind until he could do something about it. "C'm on. Let's get that coffee." He slapped his hat on, fished out his gun from under the pillow and walked cautiously across the room, the floor of which seemed disinclined to stay where it was put. He seized the door handle. The door was locked. And the key was not on the inside.
CTRRTTC
Hmm. Interesting. Unexpected even.
Your function is to observe. Not comment.
I mean the ion-filters are reacting badly to that smoke.
Keep the dark one occupied and he won't have time to create any more.
CTRRTTC
After several minutes of fruitless bickering along the lines of "Where did you put the key? I thought you had it? You must have dropped it! Have you looked everywhere?" and so on, they were forced to draw the conclusion that there was no key – or if there was, they were certainly not in possession of it.
Jess's immediate reaction was to try to break the door down by shoulder-charging it. As this had absolutely no effect, apart from inflicting considerable pain on his already aching body, he proceeded to reduce the only chair in the room to matchwood in short order by using it to belabour the recalcitrant door. After watching his performance for some minutes, Slim said tentatively: "Jess, maybe it opens inwards?"
"Oh yeah …" Jess had the grace to look sheepish. He turned the handle again and pulled. Nothing happened. "Now what? Window?"
The window refused to budge. They could not open it a single inch. Slim took a firm hold on Jess to prevent him launching another bodily attack on the glass. "We're on the second floor, remember? If you go through that, you'll break your neck!"
"I'll sure as hell break somethin' if we don't get out of here soon!" Jess snarled.
Slim turned visibly pale beneath his tan. The thought of being cooped up with a caffeine-deprived Jess on adrenaline overload, in a small room from which he could not escape, did not bear contemplating. Jess was constitutionally allergic to having his freedom restricted and had been known to bend iron bars and other people's arms in his pursuit of open-plan accommodation. Right now he was prowling up and down the room like a demented mountain lion and was probably about as open to reason.
With quite unjustified optimism, Slim said: "There's got to be another exit."
"There has?" Jess stared at him. "Have y' gone out of your mind? Are y' goin' to use the wardrobe door and find open country behind?" He proceeded to slam back the door in question with quite unnecessary force. There was no country.
"Can we pick the door lock?" Slim asked hastily, to divert him.
Jess pulled out his boot-knife and advanced on the door with a determined expression. He squatted down and was about to insert the knife into the key-hole when something stopped him. He stayed quite still for a count of ten, then he said in a strangled voice: "Well, I'll be damned! Have a look at this, Slim."
Slim looked. There was no doubt about it – the lock did not exist. Where there should have been a hole right through the door with some form of locking mechanism, there was only what appeared to be a solid plate of metal.
"I hate prisons!" Jess lunged across the room, seized the wash-stand and hurled it bodily at the window. It bounced. The window remained intact. "Very interesting," he remarked between gritted teeth. He turned to Slim. "Feel your knife! In fact, try cuttin' an artery, why don't y'?" His own blade hovered dangerously close above his wrist.
"What?" Slim wondered if Jess had finally crossed the border which separates the endearingly reckless from the distinctly insane.
"Feel it!" Jess brandished his own knife in a no uncertain manner.
Slim hastily complied. When he did so, an expression which combined confusion and enlightenment in equal measure crossed his face. "It's blunt."
"Yeah – so is mine."
"But I sharpened it only yesterday morning! At least, I think it was yesterday?"
"Has either one of us ever carried a blunt knife?" The question was laden with contempt, for no one in their right mind would venture out of the house with sub-standard equipment. Then, in less than the blink of an eye, Jess's gun was in his hand. "And I bet if I was to try it, this gun wouldn't fire either."
"Don't!" Slim grabbed Jess's wrist and forced the gun-barrel towards the floor. "This is a small room, huh? Just the two of us? Things are acting up in a very peculiar way? AND YOU WANT TO FIRE A GUN!" he yelled, trying to force some common sense into the angry Texan's head.
"Just sayin'!" Jess growled. "No sense in wastin' bullets, even supposin' it does work. Anyway, I fell on it when I woke up – should've blown my knee off."
"I think you're right – it won't fire." Slim tried to steady his heart and breathing, which never reacted very well in extremely confined spaces to Jess's lightning performance with a gun. "But just put it away, will you? I can think better if you're not waving it around."
"I do not wave guns!" Jess's professional pride was at stake here, but he could also see that Slim, as usual, had the right of it. He slumped on the bed, holstering his useless gun. Just the very action alone made him feel as if someone had amputated something off him without bothering with anaesthetic. Forcing his mind away from this deprivation, he summed up their situation: "We're in a place we don't know, with no memories of how we got here or what we're doin', locked doors that have no lock, windows that don't break and weapons that won't work. You're the thinker – you tell me what it's all about!"
Slim slumped next to him. After a few moments of deep thought, he said cautiously, "It doesn't seem real."
"The door was real enough," Jess assured him, rubbing his aching shoulder.
"But not the way everything is reacting. Whatever we do has the opposite effect to what we expect. As if our normal knowledge and experience are of no use here."
"Or something is makin' very sure they aren't," Jess suggested. "Either that or we're both goin' mad!"
Slim forebode to tell him this was exactly what he had feared only a few moments ago. "We're not mad. And we are going to get out of here!"
"Fine! What do you suggest? Dig up the floor-boards? Gouge through the walls? If everything is as solid as the door and those windows, we don't stand a chance."
"If down and sideways won't work," Slim speculated, "what about up?"
They both raised their eyes to the ceiling. High above their heads was a trap-door.