AURORAE - 'Hotel Novel' second chapter

Now I come to think of it I think this part of the story was written first. Different narrative mode, different characters, but same setting. This one's a bit all over the place, but nevertheless, here it is. There really only a tenuous sense of continuity going on at this point. Later chapters will probably be more focused, though I can't guarantee they'll have even the slightest bit to do with these two segments. Continuity be damned!

AURORAE

The year is waning. Here in the grass the pilgrims are waiting.
A warm night and the glow of distant galaxies. The hotel has shut up for the night. Everyone is out here on the small expanse of grass outside the hotel staff block, waiting for a visitation.
The time has come to trust the forecasted aurora borealis to guide their passage through the dark with dim yet colourful light. This may be Scotland; yet the lights did pass through this sky last night; and there is every chance they may do so again very soon.
Although on this night, the alien hues that yesterday cast spectral contours across the curtain containing the remnants of this world are going to be the ficklest of mistresses.
On this night, the ionosphere sleeps. Out in the void there is only a silent opaqueness, communicating the impenetrable and impossible violence of wide-open space. Out there surely are astronauts; human or inhuman: just floating around. The canvas of the darkening sky is deepest blue, inviting distance; togetherness and estrangement.
In act one, a man climbs up a tree and discovers he can’t get back down again very easily. In this we have the beginnings of something; a situation. There may also be a greater challenge.
That was the afternoon. Now that the sunlight has slipped away, the rest of the travellers lie on the grass with arms and legs akimbo, eyes fixed on the sky and heads together. Seven of them this time, apart from John the night porter who is now back on duty and is probably either cleaning the toilets, drunk or asleep by now.
The time is 11:11; a number signifying great mystical portent. Or nothing at all. The rest of us are awake and wait for the ghost colours to return; to haze the gloaming with transformative streaks.
In act two, it might be also be pertinent for someone to throw some rocks at the man up the tree. It is in this predicament that the central figure begins to learn some life lessons. This scenario, however, is not easily applicable to all situations.
Perhaps there is a repetition in this waiting to be blessed by the gentle caresses of the northern lights. Indeed, any conversation held in stellar shade between the Earth’s magnetic field and the present solar winds must feel like something that must have happened before. An ancient reinterpretation of some almost-forgotten creation myth, from days long eclipsed; the bears and hunters dancing across the chasm. Goya and Dali bare-knuckle fighting.
Perhaps, in the ritual of the colours subdividing, spiralling and crashing into pieces, there are subtle iterations of an ancestral truth to be divined. A secret music; hidden in the grooves of a record.
Perhaps a question will be asked; or an offer made, to be rejected or accepted. Or perhaps not.
Perhaps the birds read those colours that danced across the sky like illuminated Braille. Somewhere, in another corner of the world, emperor penguins might also have been watching the display, like small children held rapt by a firework display. A celebration of things past, and things yet to be.
Big L the dishwasher gets up from the grass; exhibiting an uncharacteristic level of excitement. Big L isn’t normally one for alarum or sudden movements; luckily for him, the front of the hotel is within a couple of minutes’ walk from here, and in plain sight, so running isn’t usually required in such a situation.
Big L waves his hands in front of his face in a pantomime of alarm. ‘Oh my god,‘ he announces. ‘Look at Javier!’
Babs is already up and looking by this point. She has been snuggled up in a duvet in the inappropriate setting of the outside with Anonymous Belgian Guy, and no-one’s quite sure what either of them are up to at all.
The lights might have drawn subversive messages that night; scrawls in neon graffiti describing acts arcane and unknown to humanity. Three entire busloads of German guests at the hotel came out of their rooms and gathered in the car park to watch; creating the impression that they were waiting patiently for some extraterrestrial mothership to arrive and lift them up and away from such a dreary locale, and away to some distant and foreign world.
‘What the fuck’s he doing?’ Babs says; eyes rapt in wonderment at the developing situation over by the front of the hotel.
‘Hang on…’ Big L runs a little bit away from the rest of them and over towards the hotel. A moment later he comes bounding back out of the gloom, an insane patina of mirth on his still-sweaty face.
‘Oh, you guys, this is insane. He’s wearing a balaclava! Don’t think it’s even got any eyeholes in it! I was right, man, he’s a terrorist!’
The impression you could have gleaned from these cascading visions of the previous night would perhaps only have been matched by the tagged sigils of renegade artists unknown in the abandoned areas of train stations; supernatural messages magicked discreetly into the corners of everyday life.
You don’t see this sort of thing in the villages though. You might see that sort of thing.


‘What are you saying?’
Czeslaw the angry Polish housekeeper is now up and at‘em. By this point in the story, he is already becoming known as the Angry Bed Man. He is bald with hairy nostrils, which are often more communicative than him. ‘He is doing what?’
‘Hiding round the side of the front entrance. Wearing a balaclava. I told you before, didn’t I? He’s Basque Liberation front. The Highlands branch!’
‘This is not true. He come from Madrid. That kind, always from Madrid.’
‘Chas, he is! that’s where he’s from!’
Waclaw wrinkles the many hairs in his nose. ‘I think, this is a nonsense. Is not terrorist. Is just strange. You know, Spanish, is always strange. In my country, we have saying - ’
‘Ah’m no interested in your sayings, Coleslaw! Look, you know Celine?’
‘Celine. She is from France, yes?’
‘Aye, Celine! Well, she said, he told her he was Basque liberation front, and she can speak about ten languages. So whatever one he speaks, she can understand him.’
‘Aye,’ Melinda the commis chef says. ‘She says he’s a total freak! Says he came up to her and just like announced, “you will be mine, yes?” And does this big leer, big grin, man!’
‘He’s gone round the side of the hotel.’ Big L continues. ‘Plus, he’s giggling, man. D’You hear him?’
That last night, it was a lot as if someone had been shaking the farthest-off parts of the universe until the forces that powered it broke, loosing thin shards of splintering galaxy to tumble untethered into the upper atmosphere of the planet. The Perseid meteor shower of a few years back was also a little like this; only a smidgeon less apocalyptic. No gods visit small highland villages; only meteor showers. And then, only by accident.
Heavenly portents. The time isn’t 11:11 any more. A silence descends, to be punctuated by a high-pitched cackling sound.
‘Fuckin’ hell!’ Babs cries out. ‘He sounds like an Ewok!’
‘Is he stoned?’ Melinda whispers.
‘No, dinnae think so,’ Big L counters, ‘think he’s just being Javier, man. Cannae speak English, disnae want tae speak English, disnae stop acting like a fucking nutcase any time. Melinda, remember that time he threatened you with a knife?
‘Aye, that was brilliant, man!’ Melinda laughs. ‘He just kept shouting out, SANDWICH!’
‘Aye, sandwich. Only word he knows.’
By now, Czeslaw - or Chas, or Coleslaw, or whatever he‘s actually called - is looking decidedly pensive.
‘But what is this, in balaclava? He is doing what? Is no one in hotel! Is nothing there!’
‘Barry the entertainer!’ Big L is by this point in paroxysms of excitement. ‘He’s there! He’s out the front of the hotel. He’ll be putting his gear away? His amps, and that? Mind, he plays on Monday nights. You know? Singer? For the guests? Strummy guitar-y? You know, the singy songy? You have guitar in Poland, yes?’
Big L often goes into baby-talk when attempting to reason with Czeslaw. Czeslaw is not someone for whom the phrase ‘understanding’ was invented. He possesses a philosophic bent that borders on the baffling - whatever subject you might raise with him in conversation almost always inevitably concludes with him giving you a long lecture on the types of potato soup he and his family apparently consume with great enthusiasm back in Poland. I refuse to believe that everyone in Poland is as myopically obsessed with potatoes - or soup - as Czeslaw is.
‘So what’s Javier doing exactly?’
Melinda is uninterested. She has be up at about half-five in the morning, so this perhaps is understandable.
‘I think he’s going to go and jump Barry. Scare him, likes. Barry’ll be fucking frightened, man. He’s no used to Spanish terrorists leapin’ out at him at this time of night.’
‘Don’t think anyone still up in the hotel,’ Babs murmurs; head now back beneath the grassy duvet with Anonymous Belgian Guy. ‘Bar’s been dead since nine. Early depart in the morning, so all the oldies went off to bed early. Think Barry was playing mostly to staff, and that Joanna on the bar.’
‘She’s weird, man.’ Big L frowns. ‘Her and that other Russian bird. Did you see the suitcases she brought with her?
Aye, all clothes,’ Melinda says, in caustic dismissive mode. ‘Then, her and that other one spent the entire afternoon playing dress-up in the room. Just screeching and laughing all the time. Getting thirsels ready for the local fishermen the night, I’ll wager. Mair nutcases.’
‘Are you sure they’re not fake Russian lesbians?’ Big L asks; sounding cautiously optimistic.
‘They cannae be!’ Melinda shouts back. ‘They’re from Slovakia! That disnae count. It’s no even IN Russia. You cannae be fake Russian lesbians and come from Slovakia. That’s a whole different thing.’
‘Aye, Slovakia is definitely cheating.’
‘That wee bell-end Bozek, you think he’s their pimp?’
‘Got to be. He thinks he’s the king, that one. Wearing that wee waistcoat man, did you see it? Comes into the restaurant dressed like he’s going into a ballroom. I wis half expecting him to be doing the bolero!’
‘Czeslaw now rouses himself from the grass; with a macho Polish grunt that draws everyone’s attention. ‘You are talking, but come! We must see. This Madrid man. We go, come! I tell you, is no terrorist! You Scottish, I think you are crazy.’
The rest of them get up and run off in the direction of the hotel; eager to witness any potential comedy terrorist atrocity perpetuated by a very small Spanish man of indeterminate motivation, in a balaclava, at quarter past eleven on a long and still-Scottish night.
You stay where you are.


Moments or hours pass. The sky turns, and no lights come. An offer must be made at some point.
The girl leans over you as you’re lying on the grass. It’s still light enough that you can make out some of her features; a slyly curling smirk that, when swathed in darkness, gives off an impression of being rather more accepting than condemning. Dusk has kinder words to speak than dawn; it is tired and ready to go to sleep. Whereas dawn blinks agitated into the morning light, regretting the loss of the night just passed.
‘See you? I recognize you.’ she says.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No, I know you. You’ve been here before.’
‘Er, I don‘t think so.’
‘No, I definitely remember you. Last season. I saw you going up the hill once. You must remember that.’
There is also often a hill; that, if mentioned once, must be climbed to the top and returned from.
Electrons and protons colliding with atoms and molecules. Sometimes in these conditions, strange colours can occur; colours on no spectrum the human eye can ever detect; or see.
In act three, it is sometimes necessary to get the man down from the tree; or the hill. Only then can he be seen to have accomplished something great.
‘You’ve been here before.’
I haven’t.
But someone has.

THE STRANGE NOISE OF TURBULENCE IN THE SEA - a novel segment

Okay, so in the wake of one novel here comes a bit of another. The only difference in this instance is that this one isn't 100 percent finished. In fact, this bit here is really the only bit of it that is. The idea is that I'm going to try and write new lumps of this every day and let it evolve in a more broken-up, non-linear way. This chapter is surprisingly linear, so hopefully makes perfect sense on its own. It may equally work as a short story. It's either going to be called 'The Strange Noise Of Turbulence In The Sea' or 'Hotel Novel.' Okay, that last one is only a floating nebulous working title. Like you couldn't guess that yourself...

Neil went to let himself into the flat but found the front door locked. He was a bit pissed off seeing as how he had left the hotel twenty-odd minutes ago only now to discover there was no-one in. And, seeing as how there were three people living there with only two keys allocated to them - an impenetrable piece of hotel politics he had yet to fathom - it was necessary to go all the way back to the hotel in order to find Donny and get a key off of him. This meant another dull march through the expected vistas of the village.
Going down the front and along the high street - such as it was - Neil spotted old Henry coming out of the newsagent. The doddering old bastard was temporarily curtailed in his activities by some American tourists who, while also coming out of the newsagents, decided to do that typical American tourist thing of stopping dead where they were to take in the view and - being vaguely obese as some Americans often were - get in everybody’s way.
Old Henry became trapped like a tragic woodlouse somewhere between the Americans, the postcard stand and some further individuals coming out of the shop. He put his head down and waited patiently for something to happen.
Nothing happened. The tourists seemed to be enraptured by the mountainous sight to be seen on such a clear and balmy day out across the water.
‘Scuse me pal,’ a voice familiar to Neil sounded from back in the shop. ’Would y’mind movin yir erse a wee bit so the rest ay us can get oot ay here? Ah ken it’s a village an aw, but no all ay us are oan holiday, y’ken!’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, madam.’ the largest and most ebullient of the Americans responded. ‘I am truly sorry. I was just admiring that magnificent view out there across the bay!’
‘It’s no a bay,’ old Henry announced, beginning to move his small yet lumbering frame back into action. ‘It’s a fuckin’ pier. Get yir facts straight.’
Grinning like a loon at the local drama, the lead American and his presumed brood backed off to allow the others passage. ‘Boy, you sure do got some colourful characters here!’ the American said to the woman coming out of the shop, as old Henry turned and made a beeline for the pub, his usual port of call on an afternoon.
Marian emerged from the shop doorway. She was fiddling with her purse and grimacing into the light. ‘Aye, an a bet you’ve no been doon the Captain’s Arms at closing time yet either,’ she barked at the tourists. ‘Gie that a go the night, pal, an you’ll see characters so colourful you’ll wish ye were colourblind.’
The Americans chortled at Marian’s turn of phrase and slowly began to drift off in the direction of the nearest tartan-adorned gift-shop. Thankfully for them, there was one immediately next to the newsagent, so they didn’t have to go far. Such are the advantages of villages.
All the time this eventful non-event was going on, in Neil’s head there was still the idea of her; Jasmine-something. As she had been that night. The girl he had talked to for two hours, yet so foolishly had failed to confirm either her name, her email, or a whole lot else.
This had of course been the Captain’s Arms. Usually the haunt of ugly old shites like Henry, hotel flotsam, sloshed fishermen and the legendary gang of glammed-up harpies from the supermarket. On this rare night, Neil had found himself at first far too bored to even progress on to a second pint. Unperturbed by the initially sombre atmosphere, Donny managed to work his way through about seven beers before last orders; and on the momentous occasion of what the DJ suspiciously referred to as ‘disco-time’ lurching into the lounge area at about nine, Donny had taken this as a sign for him to start slow-dancing with the pub’s golden retriever; fairly atypical behaviour even for him. Somehow, Monday night had turned into Funday night.
Jasmine. Although of course that hadn’t even really been her name. Might it have been Jessamine? Was that even a name?
She had been perched next to him at the right-hand side of the bar; by far the best place from whence to observe the sordid occurrences involving disco-time, and the dancing and karaoke spectaculars that regularly went on of a night. What she had been doing there at all was something of a mystery to Neil; she had been on her own - attractive, demure, impeccably dressed and unfailingly polite - despite being surrounded, to an almost meancing extent, by the cream of Scotland’s worst alcoholic degenerates. Despite all of this, and despite Neil’s usual self-imagined lack of tact and charisma, they had talked.
He had found out after a time that she was from some unpronounceable suburb of Paris. She also knew an unbelievably vast amount about movies - although these had mainly all been French movies, so such a potential deal-clincher had left Neil a little bit lost on many points; although, reassuringly, they did come to agree after a fashion that most movies were ultimately a bit crap, and so rarely reflected anything that ever happened in the real world. She also kept touching his shoulder affectionately and grabbing onto his wrist while she laughed; not something Neil was used to by any stretch, but also still no guarantee of anything other than that she was European, and perhaps just a little more tactile than the average village girls who weren’t always exceptionally drunk. Neil expected more people would interrupt them, or stare and make snide remarks, but weirdly this never happened for those too-short two hours. Then closing time had rolled around and they had gone their separate ways; his mystery woman declaring she would be ‘around’ for a few more weeks - but despite having had hardly anything to drink, Neil struggled to recall the exact details of her location and placement in the village as anything other than frustratingly vague.
But all this would surely come to nothing. Knowing Neil’s usual luck, the girl would not turn out to be any kind of a local. The locals were always the ugly and psychologically unbalanced ones - hence their inevitably electing to come to the village in the first instance, get jobs in the supermarket and stay for indefinite years on end. Neil often wondered if any of the locals had ever not been ugly and psychologically unbalanced; or if such a constitution was perhaps something they were duty-bound to pick up on the way in; like some sort of area-specific witches’ curse.



Neil tried to focus his mind on the short journey ahead to the hotel and back to the flat, but got distracted by Marian surging out of the newsagents. She gave Neil a brusque nod.
‘Awright, Neil. How’d you go this morning? It wis the restaurant you were in?’
‘Aye. No that bad, all things considering.’ Neil answered, briefly reviewing the morning’s exciting goings-on. ‘Went quite smoothly. Pretty much done by eight. Did get some miserable bastards moaning about the toast again though.’
Marian gave a conspiratorial smirk. ‘Table twenty-two?’
‘Aye. You got it.’
‘Been here aw week. Typical soor-faced cunts. Wurnae happy aboot the steak last night either. Some people jist go oan holiday tae complain. Dinnae have tae tell you that, though, Neil. You’re a seasoned veteran.’
Neil took the remark as a compliment; of what sort he was not sure. ‘Aye. I suppose so, Marian. Are you on the night?’
Marian spread her hands in supplication. When am ah no? But is anybody gonnae gie me a night off? Never. Isnae in His list o’ immediate priorities. I tell you, Neil, Ah’ve jist aboot had it wi’ this place! Anyway, ah’m wasting your break-time, I’ll see you later. Ah’m off tae see what Hubby wants, for this stupid party thing. Mair responsibilities…’
Marian disappeared up the high street at her typical rushed pace. Realising he had become distracted in his progress back to the hotel, Neil resumed his normal route down the high street, up the dingy back-alley leading across the park, past the leisure centre and back to the hotel. There were no further dramas on the route; unless you counted the old drunk standing next to the mobile cinema and swaying, with a look of fixed concentration on his face; as if he was seeing some ghost-movie projected out of the van and onto his eyes alone.
Neil got to the hotel, slipped in the back door and went down several dreary hallways lit by questionably dim bulbs until he reached the back of the main kitchen.
Inside and at the dishwash area, Donny was bent drastically over the big back sink where he seemed to be attempting to give the plug-hole some form of brutal sexual attention it certainly had not asked for. The hot tap was on full burst and steam billowed everywhere.
‘Donny man, what the hell are you doing in there?’
Donny’s sweat-flecked brow emerged stressed from the sink. ‘This fucker’s bunged again! I telt that Vladimir no tae pour oil doon it, but he disnae hear you!
‘Have you got the plunger?’
‘Bugger that, Neil, I’m usin’ ma fingers. Always best that way.’
‘That’s what you tell all the girls, though!’
‘Aye, ye ken that’s the truth. Never mind that though, what aboot you and that Belgian bird?’
Neil felt a pang of nostalgia; even though it had been only two hours, three nights ago. He had barely been thinking about anything else since.
‘She wisnae Belgian, Donny. That was the other one. Mind? The one who looked a bit like Amy Winehouse?’
‘Oh aye, ah mind - the minger!’
‘She wisnae a minger, Donny. Your understanding of women classifies them into two distinct camps, neither of which are especially accurate.’
‘Aye. Mingers and swingers!’ He shook his head and boggled his eyes by way of explanation. ‘There’s nae need for any other form of classification! If they’re mingers, you gie them a wide berth! If they’re swingers, though…’ Donny made a disturbing and perhaps inappropriate fist which he proceeded to pump in a manner Charles Atlas might have considered employing had he, at some point in his no-doubt estimable life, been a over-excitable Glaswegian ned washing dishes in a highland hotel kitchen.
‘Then, WHA-HEEYY!’ Donny continued, confirming the maths of his equation with a heroic and now double-fisted pose. ‘Oaf ya go! Mingers oot, swingers in! Come OOONN!!! I telt ya, Neil, learn the rules! Git them in yir noggin! They’ll set you in gid stead fir the rest ay yir miserable, self-pityin’ life. Huv ya no phoned her yet?’
Neil produced a huffy snort of irritation. ‘Look, I huvnae got time for your weird mind, Donny. I need the keys.’
Donny broke from his bodybuilding poses to pull a questioning frown. ‘Is Graham no in?’
‘Naw, he isnae! Mind he went away the other night? Off to Dingwall to see a man about a car? Don’t think he kens where he’s going half the time. Took his key with him. Come on, I cannae hang around here on my off-day, watching you getting creative with your fingers.’
Donny now looked slightly disappointed. He peered back into the still-steaming sink unit.
‘Aw look, man,’ he declared, excited. ‘It’s goin’ doon the plughole. At last… But aw this weird slime’s comin’ oot an aw. Now that is whit ah wid call minging.’
A threatening lump of a heap with wild ginger hair and an expression that suggested consistent and sustained periods of heavy drug use leaned out of through the arch that led into the main part of the kitchen. ‘Haw, fannybaws! Stop arsing aboot wi’ that sink and wash some pots ya skiving’ bastard!’
This was Mark the head chef; whose appearance and general demeanour was that of a wine-starved derelict but who in all actuality could sometimes be quite a decent bloke. Although only sometimes.
‘As for yir mysterious slime there,’ Mark continued, gazing down at his underling on sink duty, ‘That’ll be that Vladimir. He’s been spunking his freaky Polish load in there when nobody’s been lookin. I myself reserve ma ain spunk fur the main course. Or a wee bit o’ garnish fur the starters. Nuthin like a wee bit o’ extra special bonus flavourin’ fur those miserable English bastards.’
‘My dad’s English, Mark.’ Neil deadpanned, reluctantly joining in on the hilarity. ‘I’ll have you arrested for bigotry.’
‘And what in hell’s name are you doing here, Neil?’ Mark continued. ‘Have you come to witness the world’s fastest pot-monkey break his own record of only wan pot washed per hour? The people fae the Guinness Book ae Records are comin’ doon here soon wi’ thir stopwatches, Donny, ma boy, so you’d better get a shifty oan, ya big speed-machine, ye!’
Looking browbeaten by his boss’s overbearing verbal assault, Donny pulled his key from his pocket, chucked it to Neil and bent back over the sink, his attention gone from making bizarre wrestling poses and back to the far-more-persuasive lumps of bacon burned so lovingly onto several metal trays by the new breakfast chef.
There was a moment’s quiet punctuated only by the incessant drone of the extractor fans. Still leaning into the pot-wash area, Mark gave Neil a cheeky thumbs-up, before skelping the bent-over Donny on the arse with one of his ever-present kitchen cloths.
Donny’s reaction sent several washed trays clattering onto the floor. He spun around in a combination of alarm and confusion, his face now completely red.
‘Fuck’s sake, man! That’s no a joke! That wis painful! Away back tae yir paperwork, ya fuckin’ bully!’
Mark cackled like a oversized camp schoolboy. ‘Oh, you love it, big boy! I’d ask you to chase me at this point, but that widnae be very responsible o’ me in a kitchen, noo, wid it? Health and safety, an aw that.’
Sighing a sigh of despair turned all the way up to eleven, Neil glowered at the cavorting pair of lunatics in their steamy cavern of ineptitude for a few more seconds before turning and leaving.
Maybe, if I see her again, he thought, as he made his way back down the ill-lit staff corridor that lead out of the hotel and back into so-temporary freedom, I could introduce her to my friends.
Then again, I could always just punch her, scream at her and vomit in her face. That’d probably put me in with a better chance. Round here, that’s first base. Arse-skelping is only second.