AN: I'm not sure where to take this. I don't like it that much, as I orginally intended to take it much, much further but never got around to it. I may write another chapter soon, but this'll probably never happen! If you can spare the time, please feel free to review this as I am extremely interested in your opinions.

Kind regards,

Georgia.

The Hotel Mars

In rapid succession he had lost his job, his girlfriend and his hair. Deprived of the standard four walls and a roof over his head, he found himself sprawled on the pavement outside a Chinese restaurant with his hat missing and a breeze where his left trouser leg used to be. One of the lenses in his glasses had also disappeared. People were skirting around him –yes, their avoiding him was certain- spinning by like a herd of heavily suited bankers and barristers, a gaggle of Christians, except they were all more likely to be illegal themselves. The sun assaulted the pavement from a high, and unfair, position, slicing between the awning of the restaurant and the open air. The pavement sparkled.

At that moment, his only encouragement was the dull, persistent thump of pain between his ears. With each jolt, his head seemed to split and sew itself back together in the briefest flutter of time. This pain, it seemed, would continue unless he found himself the means of relieving it. The most obvious course of action would be to find himself something to drink, as if his headache didn’t leave him comatose, his thirst most definitely would. Moreover, any mention of a headache in his past, richly furnished, life would have earned him the phrase: “Have you had enough to drink, today?” Something to drink was a must –though he’d prefer something non-alcoholic.

Somebody must have done this to him. Somebody had left him here, stranded, like a cat floating down the Thames on a tire. Somebody had lined his throat with sawdust and tapped his body until no trace of moisture could be found. He suspected everything and everyone. He threw the immigrants and dealers constantly spinning past him a critical eye: the journalist, the single mother complete with bawling, snot-nosed baby, the doctor. Who could have the competence to cause him such discomfort? A woman who must have had three hundred solid pounds of chocolate fudge sundae packed under her blue and white sausage skin rolled past his extended legs, Sainsbury’s bags swinging loosely at a sharp angle from her cumbersome hips. She warbled something incomprehensible as she met his eyes in a fleeting glimpse, before throwing him a look of polite indignation and proceeding up the high street with her head bouncing slightly on a thick, fleshy pivot.

Her face flashed into his consciousness. That notorious sharp chin, her narcotic eyes and her viscous streak a mile wide; she had done this to him.

His ex-wife, ex-lover, ex-receiver of his past sweet nothings, his darling Samantha. She had discarded him, casting him out and onto the dark and disorderly streets like the dog she believed him to be. His belongings –clothes, toothbrush and shaving kit- remained there with her in his former, now tainted, home. Cars pulled up against his curb, engines clicking, before pulling abruptly away, leaving in their wake a monumental plume of car fumes and cigarette butts (which, contrary to popular belief, do not biodegrade). Her face was like a cattle rod. She poked and branded, always the clever one, until he fled from the area for fear of reacting hastily. Her curt little pokes ground him down to the bone. The little “Have you brushed your hair today, Jerry? You look like nothing more than a lousy bum on the streets” pokes. Well now he truly looked like a bum, and for all intents and purposes, his was a bum. Every little thing he did, whether it was sitting up straight or slamming his head against the unyielding wall, was a public spectacle. He was a performance for all of the social fat cats and professional smart arses- a good one at that.

“Fully air-conditioned for your pleasure” read the neon yellow scrawl above his sunburned right ear. He shifted to a slightly more vertical position, his right hand brushing against a brown paper bag containing a bottle of cider. This, he decided, was why his wallet was empty saving a crumpled five pound note and a piece of paper he’d found inside a fortune cookie from the week before’s Chinese takeaway. Considering maybe going into the restaurant at his back and requesting a glass of tap water, he slowly got to his feet. Heart thumping at the unexpected exercise, he waited a moment for the blood to return to the rest of his body from his head and for his headache to lessen back into a dull roar. The area where his left trouser leg used to be fluttered irritatingly around his inner thigh. Unused to such contact and unused to his hairy limb being on public display, he reached for his cider bottle and clapped it to his hip defensively. Once again he cast his critical eye out over his subjects, watching for the slightest sign of amusement at his misery. He looked ridiculous.

He floated through the double doors and into an up-lighted, air-conditioned mirage of happiness. The air around him was not only kept at a comfortable temperature, but also showered him in smells that were, in themselves, good enough to eat. He devoured each separate fragrance with his nose, starting with the Won Tun Soup. A cat figurine pawed at the air on the counter at the far end of the room whilst all possible culinary sounds were blotted out by original 90’s classics.

“Sir, no! Sir, no!” shrieked an oriental waitress in her twenties, freezing with a used glass in mid-air.

“Sir, away! Frighten customers! Bring bad smell! Bad smell!” At this point, each and every face in the room was directed his way, chopsticks poised. What does a chopstick in the eye feel like? The waitress had, by this time, placed the glass on a table in order to begin gesturing erratically.

“Sir, out! Attend to every need but out! Shut door behind you.”

He retreated and did as he was told, gazing ruefully through the windows of the restaurant. He watched as the waitress scuttled to the entrance of what was presumably the kitchen. She began to converse animatedly with the man wearing an apron with a meat cleaver in each hand. The meat cleaver man glanced over to the window at the waitress’ rapid hand gesture, before nodding and stepping into the kitchen. The waitress cast a watchful eye at the restaurant’s doors and waited with her hands in her pockets. Soon after, the meat cleaver man returned, having discarded his cleavers in favour of a sealed take-away box and a Coca-Cola brand drink container, which he gave to the waitress. She, armed with a broom, approached the doors and hurriedly handed him the box and drink. The door was shut behind her in a flurry of snarls and sighs and nothing more was said.

His name was Jerry; as in Mungo Jerry, Ben & Jerry’s and Tom & Jerry. Trousers aside, his jacket seemed in relatively good condition still. Wanting at least some degree of privacy in which to consume his rapidly cooling meal of noodles, one unloved spare rib and tap water, he danced and swayed his hazy way across the street, having followed the advise of the green man. He stumbled into the waiting embrace of a large oak tree and took a seat on a dry patch of grass. The effects of being so close to the constant onslaught of traffic had caused the tree to lose its aesthetic appeal, but its many bumps and occasional boughs offered a cool place in which to subject the sun to a stalemate.