Episode 8

The Oozing - Part 5

After an assault in his quarters, Sweaty will have to face the morning after the night before. Miss Raymond, his employer's agent, has tried it on with him and he has returned the compliment by oozing his pus over her. Will he still have a job after that?

Sweaty turned over in bed. The morning sun warming his face. As he opened his eyes, he saw Dianne Fraser sitting next to him, stroking his brow. He blinked. When he opened his eyes again, she was at the door, beckoning him to join her. Getting out of bed, he saw her vanish into the corridor. He followed the grown-up version of his first love as she danced through the servants' quarters and into the main lobby of the hotel. From the lobby, she headed into the hotel's restaurant. Sweaty had not been into the restaurant before, and the impact of its sumptuous decor, in black, gold and deep red, would have knocked him out if it had not been for the sight of Dianne. She was lying on her back on the lid of the shiny black grand piano that sat in the centre of the restaurant. With her head at the keyboard end, one leg lying on the lid and another resting over the side, Dianne looked like something from the movies.

"Sing to me." she said, seductively.

Sweaty sat down at the piano. He had been unable to take his eyes off Dianne when he entered the room, but was now unable to see her, since the music stand obscured his view of her. Eager to please the lovely Miss Fraser, now she was giving him her attentions again, he started tapping out the intro to the song "Blue Moon Of Kentucky".

"Make it about me." came Dianne's voice through the soundboard.

And so Sweaty recalling his salad days, sang to the girl he first loved:

The Outlook, The Outlook,
The Outlook, what a great delight.
You gave me a job, you gave me a bed,
Though I'm suffering from a pain in the head,
Outlook, you sure got it right.

I said the Outlook hotel's where I'm staying,
Cos my baby's come back to me,
Yes the Outlook hotel's where I'm praying,
She'll love me forever for me.

Well it was on that fateful day,
A long time away,
She told me to drop dead-i-o,
But The Outlook hotel's brought her back to me,
I sure hope that she'll never go.

Oh yeah, The Outlook...
I said The Outlook...
Is looking bright. Tonight!

The last part of his song was sung as an Elvis-like grand finale. At the end Sweaty leapt off the piano stool to receive the rapturous applause from the subject of his song. Nothing. Dianne was not even in the room any more. As he looked around the room, he was struck by the throbbing in his head and the possibility that he'd hallucinated the presence of his childhood sweetheart. The second of these was the most painful. For a brief moment, he had allowed himself to hope for love again. As Miss Raymond's performance the previous night had demonstrated, love can get quite messy. Luckily, the only thing Sweaty had cause to regret from this performance was the collection of bum notes he'd hit as he started playing - he could excuse these, since he was concussed, had not played the piano in weeks, and had aching wrists from the previous day's sanding.

Wandering out of the restaurant, Sweaty decided to take a look at his previous day's handiwork before getting some breakfast and getting on with the job. Standing and looking at decorating work is as important a task as preparation. Without intensive viewing, how can one decide what to do next? As he rounded the corner, he spotted that something was amiss. Where there should have been neat, smooth, sanded wood, he saw splashes of turquoise paint. Someone had attacked his paintwork. He would have to sand it again. As he moved round to get a better view, the childish mess formed some sort of message.

"I'LL HAVE YOU"

Sweaty's first thought was to wonder why anyone would want to do this to his paintwork. Sure, it had not been a perfect preparation job, but it was good enough for his purposes. Next, he wondered who might have done it. Settling on the conclusion that it must have been some local vandals, Sweaty went inside to get his mobile phone. He locked the hotel on the way out, intending to call the police and tell them about the incident while he walked to the local shop to get some breakfast. He was about to punch in the number for directory enquiries, to find the number of the local station, when he heard a car approaching.

It was a police car coming up the drive of the hotel. A couple of hours later, Sweaty was regretting the exchange he had with the officers in the car:

"Gary Spotter?", asked the driver of the car.
"That's me, how did you know?" he replied.
"We've been asked to come here regarding the incident last night." said the other officer.
"Oh good. I'm glad you've come. It's saved me a job."
"You mean you admit your involvement?" asked the driver, an amazed look on his face.
"Absolutely, it took a lot out of me as well. It's a mess." said Sweaty, glad that the police were taking this vandalism incident so seriously. "My wrists are aching terribly this morning."
"Did you not think of Miss Raymond's feelings while you were doing it?", asked the other officer, incredulously.
"Why should I have? I mean, she asked me to do it. I just wanted to get it done properly, but she kept interfering." Sweaty's irritation as Miss Raymond's constant phone calls showed in his outburst.
"Perhaps we should discuss this down at the station." said the driver of the police car. "Hop in, we can go there now."

And off they went.

Later as Miss Raymond's allegations that he'd indecently assaulted her were presented to him, Sweaty regretted being so forthcoming with the police. He honestly believed that he'd been reporting a vandalism incident, they believed he was confessing to the assault charge. Two things became clear to Sweaty. Miss Raymond had written the message on the top of his freshly sanded wood, knowing that it would be a source of maximum irritation to him. Miss Raymond had also then reported a twisted version of the previous night's incident to the police, mixing in details from the actual harassment she'd told him about in the hotel's kitchen the previous night. Sweaty was in deep trouble and didn't know where to turn.

As he sat on the floor of his holding cell, staring at the patterns in the concrete, the sound of a mop and bucket echoed along the corridor. Sweaty was desperate for a friend at this point. He needed someone to talk to. There were no other people in the cells, since the local police station in a winter-resort location is usually quiet in the summer.

"Hiya.", he said to the cleaner, without looking up from the floor of his cell.
"Hello." she replied.

Looking up, at what seemed a familiar voice, Sweaty was shocked. The cleaner looked like Dianne. It couldn't be Dianne. He assumed that he was hallucinating again. He just stared back.

"You're not very talkative, Gary. Aren't you pleased to see me?" she said.
"But... you can't be...", he stammered.
"I am. I do this for a living now. It's a long story." she said. "What are you in here for?"
"They've got me on an indecent assault charge, but I'm innocent." Sweaty whispered, still unsure who, or what he was talking to.
"Of course you are.", said Dianne, obviously humouring him. "I can tell you're not pleased to see me. Would it help if I apologised about how I treated you?"

Somehow this incarnation of Dianne Fraser seemed more believable than the one from the morning. The years had been less kind to this nineteen year old. The hands were chapped, the face seemed paler, and her hair, one of her finest features, was tied back messily. This was no fantasy. Glad of a friend, any friend, in this most bizarre situation, Sweaty started talking. He explained the events of the past few hours and realised, as he was explaining things, how deeply in trouble he was.

"So you're saying that this assault was really made by some one-armed man named Stumpy?", said Dianne.
"Basically, yes."
"You're going to have trouble proving that. Especially if they use DNA evidence from your... oozing."
"Yes again."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know. I need to think about it."

Dianne made her excuses a few minutes later, explaining that she really had to get to work on the staff toilets. She promised to return after work, leaving Sweaty to sit and ponder. He had to decide how he was going to get the police to release him; he needed to get his story straight. In addition, he was troubled how the pretty, intelligent girl he'd known had only managed to become a cleaner. She had seemed to have so much more potential, so much more ambition. A cleaner is probably the last thing he would have expected her to become, somehow, it seemed beneath her. Perhaps he had just selectively remembered what she was really like, or perhaps she'd really fouled up. Either way, he wanted to know.

Will Sweaty get close to Dianne again? Will Miss Raymond have her revenge? Will Dianne prove to be another hallucination? Why is she only cleaning toilets in a police station? Find out in the next exciting story - The Phewgitive.

30 December 2001
Ashley Frieze