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so we drank, joked and laughed, escaping the
world outside the comfort blanket of the pub. At 3 pm we were
joined by the company of Gary the bar man, a student of life
from Birmingham who had just finished his shift. Gary ordered
and downed his pint as though he had heard a rumour from the
brewery that lager was about to be taken off the market and
he wanted to make the most of it while he could.
Despite the fact we were all grown adults our
minds never seemed to realise that there was a life outside
these English establishments and when I suggested that we
all came round to my place that evening with a few cans to
save money, the change was welcomed with open arms.
JULY 1ST 1997
HUNTINGTON ROAD,
YORK, 7 pm
Gary was the first to arrive carrying eight
cans of Skol while I sat drinking South African Chenin Blanc
(wine was my evening alternative to lager) and due to the
after effects of the lunch time session we sat merrily chatting
about the things men chat about when half cut, women we had
screwed. Half an hour later Andy and Nicole appeared with
a bottle of vodka and a litre of Coke and the present conversation
stopped. The glasses were brought out and we drank into the
night.
The only problem with drinking at home with
a group of friends is that after a while you want something
more, some people go for drugs, we weren’t like that, so when
Nicole spotted the the board on my desk, we were all drunk
enough to be willing and the room candles were lit.
At first nothing happened as we placed our our
fingers on the upturned wine glass and revolved it around
the board asking in a drunken slur if ‘anyone was there?’
And then it decided to have a mind of its own as the glass
moved from letter to letter spelling out the message; ‘Welcome
back.’ Those two words still have a frightening effect on
me to this day.
Then it turned to Nicole claiming to be a long dead relative,
something Nicole found very emotional, and after tears were
born it switched to Gary. According to ‘it’ Gary’s life would
be very short, we were all sobering up at a high speed. At
this point Andy seemed to have drifted into a trance and then
the immortal words drifted from the board that brought memories
flooding back from my age of innocence; ‘KILL.’
The board was promtly put away, despite the
amount of drink we had consumed we didn’t need this kind of
shit and we retired to the kitchen to cook chilli. Andy still
didn’t seem his normal self although we put this down to vodkas
and Coke. When we returned to the living room a frightening
experience encountered us, the board was back on the table
complete with glass on top of It. As we glanced at each other
our appetite faded and chilli vanished from our minds.
JULY 2ND 1997
HUNTINGTON ROAD, 9 am
I don’t suffer from hangovers normally but today
I had one, physically and personally, I’d little recollection
of the previous nights antics but what I saw was not pretty.
Andy was sprawled across the kitchen floor as if he was waiting
for the coffin and hearse to arrive, Nicole and Gary were
on the settee hugging each other as though they had just romantically
met and spent their first night together. Something was wrong,
very wrong.
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