Chapter Two

He had made them a promise, he reminded himself as he wiped yesterday's coughed-up lager from the screen. A promise via Facebook status update. The most sacred kind of promise that there is. The people were expecting a story, and a story they would damn well get.

With no small effort, he hauled his squealing frame to its feet. His cold bones railed anew as he set them to pacing the length of the room, in what he naïvely imagined to be a straight line.

"A story," he mumbled, pausing to push the ancient, skin-bound tome of secrets back under the bed with one beslippered foot. "But where to begin?"

With the book safely back in its place, he began his pacing in earnest; casting his eye around for inspiration.

"A good story needs mystery. Intrigue." He stopped dead in his tracks by the mantelpiece; his eyes, so sharp all of a sudden, were locked upon the single framed photograph that rested there. His face a mask of sorrow tinged with guilt, he turned the offending picture to face the wall. "It needs suspense."

A sharp rapping on the door interrupted his reverie. Scowling, he negotiated the minefield of debris littering the territory that lay between the fireplace and the doorway, and threw back the handle to reveal a pizza delivery man dressed in an eye patch, a clearly fake moustache, and nothing from the waist down. Unable to remember having ordered pizza, he seized the steaming box anyway, offered a greasy handful of coins and pocket lint to the man, and shooed him off of the doorstep, impatiently spurning his proffered elaborate handshake and knowing wink. Slamming the door, he drew a slice from the box, and sighed.

"But how am I to be expected to find inspiration in these conditions? Oh, if only anything ever happened in this wretched little backwater!"

For the second time that evening, he found his efforts interrupted by a tapping on the door. In a raging fit of despair, he charged, pizza in hand, to confront the culprit.

"If it's more money you're after, then tough luck! I'm stony broke 'til the premium lager sponsorship funding comes thr..." He trailed off as the door swung open and he gazed out, into the night.

A hot slick of molten cheese slid from the surface of the pizza, onto his foot. He did not move.