East of Ealing

28

“Fe… fi… fo… fum.” The bloated barman awoke giddily from another bout of barbiturate-induced slumber and rattled the window-panes of his hospital prison. The door beneath him opened and his Promethean tormentor entered the barman-crowded room, hypodermic at the ready. Neville eyed her with absolute loathing. “I smell the blood of an Englishman.”

“We are not going to be naughty again, are we?”

“Be he alive or be he dead.”

“Roly-poly, please, sir.”

“I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”

“I shall have to fetch doctor, then.”

“No!” Neville drew in his breath, filled his cheeks, and blew a great blast at the clinical harpy. The midget fought at the gale, but lost her footing and fluttered away through the doorway and out into the corridor. “At last,” said Neville to the ceiling against which his face had been compressed so uncomfortably for so very long. “At long long last.” He raised a fist the size of a cement sack and clenched and unclenched the fingers. The sap was beginning to rise and a great inner strength was rising with it. The power was surging, driving through his veins; unstoppable and titanic.

At last he realized the truth: his consuming disability had been nothing more than the painful and grotesque prelude to what was to come. The time for the settling of scores was fast approaching. The power of the great Old Ones. The gods of his pagan ancestry born in the dawn of the light when the world was full of wonder. The power had returned and it had returned to him. The last of the line.

A broad tight-lipped smile arced up upon the barman’s face. His fingers flexed, and beneath the surgical gown huge muscles rolled about his body, porpoises swimming in a sack. The Herculean barman pressed his hands to the ceiling of his most private ward. With a splinter of plastic-cladding, his hands rose, tightening to fists and forcing upwards, unstoppably. Neville rose with them, pouring forth from his prison, rising upon a floodtide of superhuman energy. The barman’s head and shoulders passed through the ceiling and a low choked cry rose from his throat.

He was ill-prepared for the sight which met his gaze. He had supposed himself to be in the private wing of the Cottage Hospital. The view from the window tending to support this well enough. But not a bit of it. The hospital room and its window view were nothing but a sham, hiding a grim reality. The tiny room was little more than a box, set in some great empty warehouse of a place. It spread away, dimly-lit, acre upon acre of concrete flooring and absolutely nothing. The window view, now seen from above, was a mish-mash of laser lines projected on to a screen. It was a hologram.

“Fe… fi… fo,” said Neville, as he perused his stark surroundings. Where was he? He felt like a jack-in-the-box in an empty toy factory. “Curiouser and curiouser!” Standing erect and kicking aside the make-believe walls of the movie-set hospital room, he stood upon a soundstage vaster by far than any ever envisaged by the now legendary Cecil B himself.

Neville drew in his breath and watched in pride as his great chest rose beneath the gown. This was the dream come true, surely? The impossible dream realized. His gods had at long last decided to smile upon him. He must have performed for them some great service without even realizing it. A million glorious thoughts poured into the barman’s head. He would seek out that Trevor Alvy who had bullied him at school; and parade up and down the beach come summer with his shirt actually off. No more heavy sweaters to disguise his bony physique, no more cutting jibes about his round shoulders. He would get a tan. And kick sand in people’s faces. Yes, he would definitely do that. He would eject drunks from the bar without having to resort to the sneaky knobkerry from behind. Neville threw himself into a pose, displaying muscles in places where Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t even have places. Conan who? He was quids in here and no mistake. “Oh joy, oh bliss.” Things were happening about Neville’s groin regions which, out of common decency, he did not even dare to dwell upon. The bulging barman paused for a moment or two’s reflection. For one thing, it was impossible for him to gauge exactly how high he might be. If the hospital room was life-size, he must surely top the twenty-foot mark. That was no laughing matter. Giants, no matter how well hung they might be, were never exactly the most popular fellows in town. In fact, the more well hung they were, the worse their lot. There was always some would be “David” about, with a catapult and poor eyesight.

Neville erased such thoughts from his brain with difficulty. If this thing had been done to him, then it had been done with a purpose. There was no accident or casual element of chance evident here. This was something else, something very very special. And he would have to find out the purpose. And to do that, he would first have to make his escape from this great cold dark room at the very hurry-up. Before the chill began to shrink anything. Upon those tireless, finely-muscled legs that Charles Atlas had promised to a dozen generations of sickly youth, Neville took flight and sped away with great leaps and bounds, seeking the exit.