My wife’s most often-used words as she comes back from her workout are “Pain & Torture.” I started imagining two old geezer monsters, two not-quite-human thugs called Pane & Torcher, and wrote this brief account of them getting things done. The names changed later, but the idea remained. Tentacles are a strange thing to write a short story about.
Timor and Tremor were the Unsuitables. As such, it was obvious that you needed a van for them. And preferably, a van each.
Here they were now, turning the corner just west of the pier. Into the sun and the wind that made their long grey hair glimmer and flutter. “It’s nice, that,” said one to the other. They stood a while, breathing in the early breeze. It was March but the weather was much milder; the kind of day makes people wear T-shirts to work in the morning and regret it halfway through lunchtime when it turns nippy again. The other Unsuitable just nodded his appreciation and pointed the walking stick in the general direction of the “nice”: wind, sun, waves, the flapping and flailing figure bobbed and tossed by the sea.
“Well,” said they, “He’s had it.” They looked left and right to check that nobody was walking down the small town beach. They listened for a while, their pointed ears trying to pick out engine sounds, failing, contented.
Tracksuits came off revealing huge tattooed lumps of muscle. Backpacks opened and chains spilled out with a confident, heavy clink. They brought their gear, walking sticks and muscles down onto the beach, waded into the sea and dragged the figure out by the armpits, hooked by the ends of the canes.
I saw it from the van and wished I’d taken them up on their offer. “We’ll take care of things here and meet you back at base,” said Timor. “Quite fancy a swim back,” said Tremor. “Not like the other guy.” They both chuckled, grinning a full set of silver-and-tobacco-coloured teeth.
The orders were clear, though – all comes back to the van – and I kept my ground. My hand never left the ignition button. I saw them flip the guy on his belly, as if he was a grilled mackerel. I saw where the chains went.
Timor held his end of the heavy metal web; Tremor pulled on his end as Timor stood ground. His bare feet dug deeper into the pebbles and shells. The man got raised from the beach, face down, spread between the two chain-holding Unsuitables. He yelled, spat, choked and yelled some more.
Water came out of his mouth, then more yells, then words – finally, words. Names and numbers. Timor and Tremor pulled and pulled until the last name and number and salty coughy spray ended up on the beach below the guy, in a wheeze and a whimper. The Unsuitables didn’t write any of it down. They remembered things. (That, according to some, was the problem.)
Tremor let go of his chains, turned back and gave me a cheerful, old-man wave. I turned on my hazard lights and slowly reversed the van down a ramp onto the beach boulevard. They stood there, walking sticks behind their backs, faces towards the sun, like big tattooed moai statues. I opened the tailgate and walked straight back to the driver’s seat, as instructed.
I heard chain noises and dragging noises, then bubbling noises and tentacle noises. I could smell metal pain, old engine oil pain, tar pain. Then a loud bang on the wall behind me.
“Good to go!”
The van engine revved up as we climbed up the ramp, back onto the A259.
“You buckled up back there?”
The way they laugh reminds you every time why you never put Timor or Tremor on a train.
“Yeah, well, ish. Ain’t gonna budge. Don’t you worry.”
We were off, getting the van caught on every single speed camera as we dashed back towards Portsmouth.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Photo Credit: Thomas Leth-Olsen Flickr via Compfight cc