The Gang, part two
And that's when I had the blackout. Bang. Nothing left but shreds of bits of images: a pigeon, a half eaten burger, Darth Vader's helmet with a knife through its nose. What the fuck was that?
The next thing I remember: we all woke up in a hotel room, kind of like that terrible, plotless movie with the bearded guy. Except there was no tiger and we were all dressed. Thank Grud we were, since we were all piled up on the same bed. I knew the place. It was the Jury's Inn hotel on Parnell Street.
Parnell Street is an interesting place. It's where the Celtic Tiger stopped, leaving that part of Dublin in the 80s. North of there, the ghosts of the Commitments are still playing. Scary thought, really. Along that invisible frontier is a row of Asian places, Chinatown-like, with restaurants that no gweilo dares enter.
We all sat - comfortably apart from each other - looking at the emptiness on the walls, lost and hungover (hey, that's the name of the bloody film !). The Jury's Inn was the place where those of us who'd been hired from abroad had stayed in when we moved over. Whatever had happened to us, it was tied to GOA.
"Do you think She did something to us?" said Jon, wide-eyed. He'd spent ten minutes on the phone ordering food from the room service. I was hoping the room wasn't on my credit card.
The mention of Her plunged everybody back in a thoughtful silence. She was our boss, our Slaver Goddess, our N+Infinite. She resided in a towering French palace, where She presided on endless minions meetings and ordered Her agents to spread chaos, fear and incompetence all over Her realm. Once a year, she crossed the seas to allow us to bask in Her glory. Everybody thought this was a Christmas party, but we in GOA knew the truth.
Dermot was the least faithful - or fearful - of us all. "I don't think She has anything to do with what happened to us. Ghi..."
"Shut up !" I said. "Don't say Her name. You know what happens when somebody says her fucking name!" I was bathed in cold sweat. What was the room service doing? I badly needed coffee if I wanted to recover any pretense of thinking capacity. I resolved to have a shower to help with my nerves while the others watched TV. Somebody had put Barney on, probably in an attempt to clear their brains of any scary questions. Barney does that to you.
After showers, food and two hours of children TV, everyone felt slightly better. It was still early and we decided that we should go to work together - just in case something whacky happened again. Nobody could remember much about the night, and we just hoped we hadn't killed anybody.
In the lift, I fished in my rucksack for my mobile phone and saw I had a voicemail message. The voice on it was strange and far away. The message was stranger, and far out.
"You have lost time. Stand by for instructions if you want it back. Watch your Facebook inbox."
My surprise must have been obvious, because Jonathan asked : "Did you get the message, too?"
"What?"
"Yeah, we all got the same message about lost time and Facebook while you were in the shower. Spooky, heh?"
This is a little experiment initiated by my friend Cyril Pasteau. There will be a part three as soon as we find a writer for it.
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by Eric Nieudan
