Waiting for Godalming

“To see if he’s a wrong’un?” Icarus pushed open the door to the saloon bar. Joh

The Three Gables was a proper drinking man’s pub. No theme nights or foppish fancies here. It was your honest to goodness, down to Earth, spit and gob, drinking man’s pub. And you don’t see many of those around any more. It served proper flat ale in proper dirty glasses. Had proper full ashtrays and a proper foul-mouthed barmaid with an enormous bosom and a taste for group sex with Jehovah’s witnesses (well, they do keep knocking at your door when you’re taking a bath). There was proper unswept lino on the floor and proper unmopped vomit in the gents. There was a proper one man band called Joh

The atmosphere was fugged throughout with proper cigarette smoke.

It was all right and proper and the way a pub should be.

“I hate it here,” said Joh

“What can I buy you?” asked Icarus Smith, making his way through the proper crowd of early evening drinkers to the bar.

“Hold on, don’t lose me.”

Icarus returned to assist the small man to a quiet corner table.

“Look after all this stuff,” said Icarus, placing the boxes of tablets and the papers and the spectremeter down on the bench seat next to Joh

“A short for me,” said Joh

And so off Icarus went. Presently he returned in the company of a vodka bottle and two glasses.

“Blimey, I’ll bet that cost you a few bob,” said Joh

“An understanding exists between myself and the big-bosomed barmaid,” said Icarus.

Presently still, the bottle was uncorked, glasses filled and glasses drained away. Icarus opened one of the boxes of tablets.

He placed a tablet on his palm and rolled it all about. It didn’t look all that much. Just a little white pill. There was nothing about it that said BEWARE.

“What will I see, when I take it?” he asked Joh

“The truth,” said the small man. “And you won’t like it one little bit.”

“And are you seeing the truth? Now, at this moment?”

Joh

Icarus lifted the tablet to his mouth.

But then he paused. Did he really truly want to know this truth, whatever it was? Did he really want to take some strange drug, whose unknown effects would be with him for ever? Did he, Icarus Smith, really really truly truly want to change the world? Yes, he’d had the dream. Yes, he was the relocator. Yes, he felt that he was on some mission that seemed almost divine.

But he was a lad of eighteen. His whole life stretched before him. He had already got himself into something rather dangerous. Would it not perhaps be better just to cut and run while he still had the chance?

“It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?” said Joh

“Far too much,” said Icarus Smith. “And that is not the way that I do business. So let’s leave it to fate. It either goes in, or it doesn’t.”

“Eh?”

Icarus tilted back his head, closed his eyes and opened his mouth. And then he flipped the tablet high into the air.

The tablet spun into the fug of cigarette smoke, caught a fleeting beam of sunlight when it reached its apogee, became a tiny star hung in a foul-smelling Heaven and then fell back to Earth.

To vanish down the throat of Icarus Smith.

“Fate has it then,” said Joh

Icarus gagged and reached for his glass and swallowed down some vodka.

“There’s no going back now, lad,” said Joh

Icarus wiped at his mouth. Sweat was already coming to his brow. The thought “Oh God, what have I done?” was crying very loudly in his head.

“Don’t panic,” said Joh

Icarus clutched at his head. There was something going on in there. Something decidedly odd. There was a rushing noise in his ears now. And a queer sensation, as if parts of his brain were being tightened, or bolted up, or realigned in some way.

“Tuned in,” said Joh

The double vision was really kicking in now. Icarus pinched at his eyes. “I can’t see.” He shook his head from side to side. “I’m going blind.”

“It will clear, lad. It will clear.”

Icarus suddenly jerked bolt upright, his eyes widened and he stared at Joh

“My God,” said Icarus Smith. “Joh

“Well, thank you very much.”

“But you are. You’re beautiful. You glow. You’ve got a golden aura all around you.”

Icarus glanced at the bar. And just as it is when you do some really good acid, it was as if he was now seeing everything the way it really was, for the first time ever.

The only difference was, that Icarus really was seeing it.

He gawped at the people standing at the bar. Talking, drinking, smoking, swearing. Just ordinary people. Normal people. But Icarus could really see them. Really see them. He could see, not just the people, but what they really were. The very essence of the people. What made the people people.

Some were evidently good people. They veritably shone. Like Joh

And it wasn’t just the people. The bar itself looked different too. The colours were heightened. Cleaner. Crisper. Everything was more defined. More clarified.

“Wow,” went Icarus Smith. “And I do mean, Wow.”

“Like it?” said Joh

“It’s incredible. See that big bloke over in the corner? He’s lying to that chap with the moustache. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can actually see that he’s lying. I can, I don’t know, perceive it somehow.”

“Doors of perception,” said Joh

Icarus took up his glass for a swig. “Urgh,” he said, gaping at the vodka. “This stuff’s been watered down. You can actually see, my God, you can actually see the water in it.”

“I was too polite to mention that,” said Joh

Icarus looked the midget up and down. “You’re a really good person, man,” he said.

“No, please,” said Joh

“Yeah, but man oh man oh man.” Icarus whistled. “This is some trip.”

“It is for now,” said Joh

“You mean this effect will wear off?”

“No, but you’ve only seen the good side of it so far. And no, hold on, now you’re going to see the other side. I don’t want you to look just yet, but someone has just come into the bar.”