SPOILED 2 - part one (Patreon)

‘Donuts?’

‘Check.’

‘Custard Creams?’

‘Check.’

‘Danish pastries?’

‘Check.’

‘Them Jammy-Dodger type-things they did round the shop?’

‘Yes, check. We’re good for pastries and biscuits, Christ, haha!’

‘Well, you never can be too sure. You said “stock-take the essentials”.’

‘I should’ve known you’d count Custard Creams as essential…’

‘They are!’

Sunshine sparkled in little diamonds across the waves of the harbour, here along the coast of the Isle of Man. The moored midsized cabin cruiser ‘Juicy Julie’ bobbed and rocked each time its hefty occupants padded back and forth inside.

‘Alright then, Robinson Crusoe, what about bottled water?’

‘Plenty of that, check.’

‘Bog rolls?’

‘Check. All the toiletries are good to go.’

‘Bread? Jams? Butter? You know I love a bit of toast in the morning.’

‘Roger that. Check to all of those. I’m guessing you don’t want any porridge…’

‘Reminds me too much of that crap they pumped into me mouth on The Farm. No thanks, eugh.’

‘What actually was that stuff, anyway?’

‘Ain’t got a clue, but I’m a good coupla stone heavier for it, that’s all I know.’

Arthur Sweet swigged tea from his mug in the living area of the boat and looked down at his massive belly. He’d hardly been small before their last escapade, but being force-fed like a pig at the sadistic Mr Kingfisher’s Farm a month ago had added excessive tonnage to his already spherical frame. His tastebuds hadn’t yet relinquished the squishy memory of the feed they’d poured into him.

Manni Dey peered out from the kitchenette to eye Arthur’s expanse up and down. ‘If it’s any consolation, it suits you,’ he said with a wink.

Sweet slurped again. ‘You would say that. You like fat old farts.’ Under his moustache he was smirking.

‘I like one in particular,’ countered Manni. ‘Even when he’s being a grumpy sod.’

The pair had started off partnering up as police detectives. Now, though, no longer under the employ of the Met, they’d become partners of an altogether more intimate kind, their last case having brought them closer.

‘Milk, sugar, all that? Tea? Coffee?’

‘Check, check and more check. Can’t live without tea.’

‘Damned right. What about scotch eggs?’ Arthur squeezed his bulk into the kitchenette beside his beefed-up companion. ‘Very important, they are.’

‘Check for now, but you keep eating them,’ Manni smiled, and ran a hand down Arthur’s frontal curvature. ‘We’ll have to do another supply run at this rate.’

‘You can’t deny a bloke his scotch egg…’ Sweet lowered his mug and kissed Manni firmly on the lips, letting his grey ‘tache bristle into the muscled man’s top lip.

Outside, gulls cawed in freewheel above the harbour. The sounds of the day were winding up. Morning comings and goings, sailors and tourists alike.

‘Have we got enough in the way of new clothes, do you think?’ Manni asked.

They hadn’t been left with many options after escaping The Farm, sartorially speaking, and neither man could return to London to collect their belongings. Not now there was a target painted firmly on their backs.

Put there by The Rookery.

‘I reckon so, lad,’ Arthur replied, letting his hand casually rest on Manni’s enormous deltoid. ‘I might’ve gone up an ‘X’ or two, thanks to The Farm, but managed to find enough in the old charity shop down the road since. That’ll do me.’

‘Yeah, you’re really rocking that Sexy Bumpkin look.’

Sweet danced his thick, dark eyebrows up and down, Groucho-style, with an incline of his head, letting his spectacles slide down the bridge of his nose. ‘Don’t I know it.’

Dey couldn’t help but laugh, and kissed Sweet on his huge, round, soft cheek. ‘Alright, what about… Uh, we got the SIM cards, right?’

‘Uhhh, yes,’ Arthur nodded after a moment’s thought. ‘The phones Law gave us are chargin’ out the back.’

‘Okay…,’ Manni gazed out through the kitchenette window at the mention of the farmhand insider who’d risked so much to help them. ‘You think Law’s going to be okay? Staying behind at The Farm and all that.’

Sweet sighed, expanding the globe of his torso in doing so. ‘We can only hope, lad. We can only hope. All I know is, if it weren’t for that brave soul, me and Ben would still be stuck back there as Kingfisher’s bloody playthings. Still can’t believe we got so many of the blokes he was keeping as “pigs” out of that hell hole and lived to tell the tale, to be honest.’

‘So many, but not all…,’ Manni lamented, still gazing.

‘I know,’ Arthur cupped his partner’s handsome, chiselled face with a porky hand. ‘We got Ben and a load of others out, though. That’s gotta count for something. Did the best we could.’

Heavy footsteps suddenly resounded from the open entryway at the cruiser’s bow.

‘Are my ears burning?’

A very large young gentlemen was making his way inside the cabin; it dipped several notches under his weight.

‘Ben!’ Arthur cried, setting his mug down. He lumbered over and gave Ben his warmest hug, patting the lad’s back. ‘How you doing, mate?’

‘Have I caught you guys at a bad time?’ Ben asked, noting the boxes of foodstuffs and bottles of spring water stacked all about.

‘No, not at all,’ Manni told him. ‘Just getting all prepped and ready for the voyage. You sticking around for a cuppa?’

‘Go on, then,’ Ben smiled and seated his heft onto one of the built-in sofas in the living area.

‘What you been doing with yourself?’ Arthur asked of him. ‘We ain’t seen you for a bit.’

The trio had travelled here to the Isle of Man together in ‘Juicy Julie’ following their escape from Kingfisher’s Farm, but had parted ways shortly thereafter.

‘Uh, gosh, so much. Let me think,’ Ben replied.

‘Milk, no sugar?’ Dey inquired over the rising whoosh of the kettle.

‘Perfect, cheers,’ said Ben. He’d shaven off his stubble and gotten his hair cut, and appeared all the more boyish for it. He looked well. ‘So… uh, after you guys dropped me off here, I used some of the money Law gave me to rent myself a little flat above a chip shop. It took a bit of… finagling since The Rookery did away with all my ID and everything ages ago, but I got there in the end. My landlady’s been pretty understanding, actually.

‘And then I was able to find some work helping out at the gardening centre in town. It’s nice. It’s quiet.’

Arthur took up residence in the seat opposite the young man, his gigantic buttocks filling, then overfilling it. ‘After the bloody rough ride you’ve had, I ‘spect that’s perfect.’

Ben exhaled with a small smile. ‘Yeah - Oh, thanks.’ He received his mug of tea from Manni who then sat in the remaining free seat.

‘Oh, and I’m not Ben anymore,’ Ben added. ‘Not here, anyway. I’m Thomas Moore now. At least, as far as my job and my landlady are concerned - and the bank. I’m still trying to sort all of that out. It’s a bit of a headache, honestly, but I’m getting there.’

‘Smart move,’ Manni told him. ‘Law said The Rookery don’t operate here, but it never hurts to be careful.’

‘That was my thinking,’ Ben answered, sipping from his mug.

‘It warms me old heart to see you’re doing alright, Ben, lad,’ Arthur raised his own mug and slurped. ‘God knows you been through the mill.’

‘Thanks, uh… Arthur,’ Ben spoke Sweet’s name in uncertainty. ‘Sorry, that still sounds weird when I say it. I think you’ll always be Detective Sweet to me, haha.’

‘Ahh, it’s just Mr Sweet now, lad,’ Arthur replied.

‘Sometimes more like Mr Sour,’ Manni leaned forward and whispered deliberately loud.

Ben laughed, but added more gravely, ‘I might be doing alright, but what about you two? Coming to my rescue cost you your jobs - Hell, your whole lives, pretty much. You can’t go back to London, can you? The Rookery’ll be waiting for you there.’

Inhaling, Manni nodded slowly, took Arthur’s hand and squeezed gently.

‘True, true,’ he conceded. ‘But that’s not your fault. We knew the risks, going in. Well, sort of.’

‘Too bloody right,’ Sweet added. ‘Old mate of mine even told us to drop the case at one point. He smashed me old phone to bits and all, didn’t he?’

Again Manni nodded.

‘So what now?’ Ben asked them. ‘I mean, I know you guys are getting ready to sail to this… Island that Law mentioned, but… Well, we’ve seen for ourselves; The Rookery are vast. And powerful. And they don’t fuck around. I don’t think storming in there with a taser’s gonna cut it this time. You don’t even know what you’re gonna find there.’

Arthur drained his mug. ‘Give an old dog some credit, son, it’s not like we haven’t thought of that.’

‘The plan is purely reconnaissance,’ Dey elaborated. ‘We follow the coordinates Law gave us, find this Island and film whatever we can without being seen -‘

‘Which might be easier for one of us than the other,’ Sweet chimed in, patting his mammoth girth, ‘but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’

‘Right,’ Dey continued. ‘And we take our footage or findings or whatever we’ve got…’

‘You can’t leak it to the press,’ Ben interrupted with sudden severity. ‘The Rookery have got control of the media. They’ve got fingers in every pie; that’s what Law said.’

‘We find people we can trust,’ Manni assured him. ‘That’s what we do. Whatever we capture on film, we leak it to the right source, or sources. It might take a bit of time. And we’ll need to be extremely careful, of course.’

‘We are ex-coppers, remember, lad. Detective Inspectors for the London Metropolitan,’ Arthur interjected with a note of pride. ‘This ain’t our first rodeo. And I’ve been at the game even longer than he has.’

‘Sorry,’ Ben responded. ‘No, you’re right. I just… you know…’

Sweet and Dey did know. It didn’t need to be said. Ben’s treatment by The Rookery had been brutal and protracted. The curvaceous flab that bowed from his body in all directions told of just how far they’d pushed him, and had kept pushing. By comparison, Arthur had only experienced a small taste, and even that had been more than enough for the older man.

‘Just promise me you’ll be cautious,’ Ben told the pair, now gripping his mug with both hands.

‘Course we will be,’ Arthur sniffed, sincerity hiding in the gruffness somewhere. ‘Course we will.’

‘I promise,’ Manni said.

A little pocket of quiet emerged in the cruiser after that, partially filled by seagulls squawking and wailing outside. ‘Juicy Julie’ rose and ebbed on gentle summer waves.

‘You wanna stick around for a bite?’ Manni spoke into the silence. ‘We were actually gonna head off after breakfast.’

‘You’re leaving now? Today?’ Ben asked.

‘No time like the present,’ Arthur replied.

‘He isn’t getting any younger,’ Manni hooked a thumb at his partner with a smirk.

‘Whereas he is, weirdly,’ Sweet retaliated.

‘Alright,’ Ben smiled. ‘I haven’t got work ‘til later.’

Arthur then clapped and rubbed his fat hands together, and heaved himself up with a middle-aged groan. ‘Rightyo, I’ll do us some sarnies, in that case.’ And as he waddled back into the kitchenette, he planted a kiss on Dey’s crown in passing.

‘Cheers, handsome,’ Manni told him.

They breakfasted out on the upper deck, people-watching, soaking up the glorious day. Arthur really was relieved to see Ben doing so well here, in his new home. The boy deserved a quiet, peaceful life. He’d been through so much.

Then of course came the elongated farewells. Lots of hugs and ‘one last thing’s. But ultimately the former detectives were as ready as they were ever going to be. The Island was calling them. The time nigh.

‘Are you absolutely sure about this?’ Ben asked them, now stood on the jetty while Manni went about the process of casting ‘Julie’ off, working his thick biceps to each task (Arthur supervised and ate extra ham and cheese sandwiches).

‘Pretty sure,’ Manni flashed his model-grin.

‘Ain’t got nothin’ better to do,’ Arthur added with his mouthful. It wasn’t true, of course. But maybe… maybe he didn’t want Ben worrying, or something like that.

Dey may have been the one with the boating skills he’d learned during his time in Cambridge, but Sweet actually did know how to pilot a boat, thanks to a handful of bygone summers spent with his uncle in the Lake District a great many moons ago. So before he lumbered inside to man the wheel, he called out,

‘You take care of yourself now, Ben, alright?’ And he meant it. ‘Don’t go messing around with no funny buggers.’

Ben snorted a giggle at Sweet’s charmless delivery, but looked softly sad in the eyes.

‘You neither, Detective Sweet,’ he replied.

And Arthur headed into the cabin. And ‘Julie’ began to pull away. And Manni waved while Ben waved back.

And in time the harbour and Ben and the Isle of Man and all its contents grew small, then distant, into a pinprick, to be replaced only by the open sparkling sea.

****

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

‘Mmmh…?’

‘He’s waking up, Doc.’

‘Uugh…’

‘Is he now? Ah, that’s grand. Took a while, eh?’

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Lucas’s eyelids felt like lead. When he tried to bring his head to an upright position, he found it equally dense. A deep black sleep was turning slowly to bright white. Difficult to focus. His limbs weren’t particularly responsive.

‘Wha… Wwwh…’

Speech wasn’t forthcoming either. And somewhere a damned clock wouldn’t stop ticking. There were people talking nearby.

‘Need me to take care of him?’

‘Ohh no no, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Not yet.’

Lucas looked around with smeary vision. Where was he…? Stark white walls, windowless each. Brushed steel tables and trays. Monitors. He glanced down; he was reclined in a large padded chair with fancy armrests, like something you might find at a dental practice.

What was this place? How had he wound up here?

‘What…,’ he tried again. ‘Whh… Where am I…?’

To his right stood a - frankly - absurdly burly man; a guard, looked like. Or an orderly, maybe, from the outfit. All crossed arms and knotted brow.

To the left was an older gentlemen: A tallish man perhaps in his fifties, both thinning hair and bushy beard a warm chestnut shot through with plentiful grey. Under his lab coat and argyle, a dicky bow tie and off-white shirt, all snugly filled by a plump-bellied physique. When the man spoke, soft, deep Irish tones rose and fell with an almost lyrical quality. ‘How’d you do, young man? My name is Dr Nightingale.’

Lucas watched as the doctor consulted a clipboard through serviceable spectacles.

‘Says here you’re… Lucas, is that right?’ he asked.

Lucas wanted to nod but evidently his neck and cranium weren’t in much of a mood to comply, at least not promptly.

‘Y-Yeah,’ he uttered. ‘But… What am I… doing here? I was… I was… at the market… I don’t understand…’

Dr Nightingale flipped a page of notes and carried on, ‘I’ve got here… Let’s see now… Twenty-four years of age, five foot nine, and one hundred and sixty pounds. Have we got that right, Lucas?’

It was hard to focus. The man’s voice was like pure ASMR; not at all helpful in stimulating Lucas from his stupor. More like vocal honey to the ears.

‘I don’t… understand…,’ he repeated. ‘Am I in the hospital? Am I sick…?’

A look passed between the doctor and the guard, the former saying, ‘Hoh hoh, no, no, you’re quite well. Quite well. A little small but we’ll soon have that sorted out, hoh hoh.’

Small? What was this guy talking about?

Then the doctor unhooked a stethoscope from around his neck. ‘Lucas, I’m just going to lift your shirt a wee bit while I listen to your heartbeat now. This’ll be a smidge cold on your chest for a moment, I do apologise…’

It was cold, but that wasn’t the problem. While Dr Nightingale performed his test, Lucas could only combat a rising feeling of fluster.

‘But if I’m not sick… why do I need a doctor…?’ he asked. ‘I’m confused.’

‘Mmm,’ the doctor replied, listening through the stethoscope and nodding. ‘It is confusing to start with, I know…’

‘I’ve been staying at the Conrad Hotel. I-I-I’m backpacking around Europe…,’ Lucas went on, still hoping to understand. ‘I was at the market, in Istanbul… and then… and then…’

And then what?

He’d been perusing market stalls all morning. Then everything had gone dark. That’s all he could recall. He must’ve passed out or… something…

‘I don’t know what happened. I just… woke up here…’

The doctor nodded again and made some vaguely affirmational sounds before responding with, ‘Could you just poke out your tongue there for me now?’

Lucas did so, and the older man laid a wooden splint onto his tongue and shone a small pencil-torch down his throat. At this proximity, Lucas’s senses could pick out the doctor’s gardeny cologne amid the sterile, chemical smell of this room.

‘Seems fine,’ the doctor muttered to himself. Then louder, ‘Backpacking! How fun! I’ve got in my notes here that you’re from the good old U S of A originally; Wyoming, is that right?’

‘Uhhh, uh-huh… It’s my first time abroad… But listen, Doctor… Sir… Please, what’s going on? Why am I here? Where… What is this place? Are we still in Istanbul?’

‘Ha!’ The volume of such a caustic laugh in response from the doctor caused Lucas to jump. ‘Oh, sweet Lord above, no. Ohhhh no no. Oh my, hoh hoh.’

‘Then where-‘

‘I should think we’re just about ready to get things underway now, hmm?’ Dr Nightingale spoke over Lucas, to the hulking sentinel guard, who nodded once as an answer. Then both were out of Lucas’s periphery for a moment.

‘Doctor… Doctor, please… Please tell me what’s going on…’

But in place of receiving a reply, something far more bizarre happened:

A flowing, ethereal kind of singing began to play, presumably from some unseen speaker system. There were synth-piano accompaniments, too; the whole thing sounded a bit retro, and New-Agey.

The doctor plodded back into view, bringing his scent with him. ‘Now, I’ve already got this in my notes, though I always like to ask,’ he began. ‘Can you confirm for me, Lucas - What’s your favourite food?’

But the music was distracting, only compounding the oddity of this scene.

‘Is that… Is that Enya…?’ Lucas asked.

At this, Nightingale’s eyes practically lit up behind his glasses. ‘Why yes! Yes it is!’ he proclaimed, stunned and grinning. ‘You see?’ he then addressed the huge guard. ‘Some people around here do know good music when they hear it! Hoh hoh!’

While the doctor had been gleefully expunging, another bizarre thing occurred: A long metal chute lowered down from the ceiling, suspended by thin metallic rods. Down and down it came, its origin somewhere in the darkness of the ceiling, its tip now all the way down to Lucas’s bottom lip.

‘P-Please, Doctor… what’s happening…?’ he tried again, going slightly cross-eyed in trying to focus on the chute before him.

When the guard suddenly stomped over in two mighty footsteps and clapped semicylindrical cuffs around Lucas’s forearms, he gave a start and a thin yelp. Before he knew it, a tight leather strap was brought across his forehead, pinning his skull to the headrest. He felt metal bind over his shins too.

‘D-Doctor…!’

He couldn’t control his panic. Any attempts to free his limbs or move his head were impossible; he was strapped in tight.

‘W-What’s happening…?!’

The echoing, processed sounds of Enya weren’t helping in the slightest.

‘I’ve got ‘ramen noodles’,’ Dr Nightingale suddenly spoke up again. ‘For your favourite food, I mean. That’s what it says here. Ramen noodles. So we’re going to press on with that, if you don’t mind? It’s a wee bit late in the day to change it out now anyway, but I always like to check.’

Lucas didn’t understand any of this. He wanted out. He wanted to get out of this chair, out of this building.

‘Nice easy one for the chute, that,’ the doctor rambled on.

And suddenly a buzzer sounded, and a green light illuminated on the side of the chute, and a procession of noodles came flowing down it, down towards Lucas’s mouth.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Nightingale said, then produced from the breast pocket of his lab coat a nasal peg which he placed firmly over Lucas’s nose. ‘I’m sorry it can get a little uncomfortable. And it does tend to dull the sensation of taste, sadly, but needs must, I’m afraid.’

Lucas wanted to ask, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ But the moment he opened his mouth, in went the ramen noodles. And they were sliding down the chute in such limitless quantity that they began to stack up inside Lucas’s mouth. He closed his lips and chewed, but with his nose pegged, it was only a few short seconds before he had to open up to breathe again. And when he opened back up, more noodles piled in.

He tried to look to the doctor, or even to the guard, for help, for answers, anything! But Lucas’s head was firmly pinioned in place. All he could do was keep eating. It was quite literally impossible to do anything else.

‘Thaaaat’s it, lad, hoh hoh,’ the doctor chuckled and gave Lucas’s average midriff a pat. ‘That’s it. You eat your fill now.’

Lucas felt the pressure of more and more food mounting in his mouth. He tried to ply excess noodle into his cheeks while he chewed and swallowed the incoming batches but that only swelled his cheeks up like little balloons. Doing all of this while trying to breathe through his mouth was causing mushes of foodstuffs to flop down the sides of his face. He was trying desperately not to hyperventilate. And not to choke.

‘You know she’s from the same county as me: County Donegal,’ Dr Nightingale proceeded cheerily. ‘Enya, that is. We went to the same school. But she was a couple of years above me, hoh hoh.’

Why was this happening? Why were these people forcing Lucas to eat and eat like this? It didn’t make a damned bit of sense! He was sweating from the effort, his jaw already aching.

‘Now, you must tell us if you start to feel any nausea there, okay, young man?’ the doctor asked him.

Of course, Lucas couldn’t nod, or really speak, but he did make a kind of ‘Unnnffgh!!’ noise in response.

‘There’s a good lad,’ Dr Nightingale smiled. Then he consulted his clipboard and brought a sleek-looking watch wrapped around his hairy wrist into view. ‘Right, I’ve a few errands to see to. The Lab doesn’t run itself now, hoh hoh! But I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?’

(Hours???!!)

‘And don’t forget to holler if you feel sick.’

Lucas tried to plead while the plump doctor left the room, widening his eyes as large as they could go, sounding ‘UUNNFGH!’s along the way, but it was to no avail.

More noodles came, and were chewed, and were swallowed, and Lucas felt it all beginning to settle in his stomach, getting uncomfortably tight and full.

The guard paced away, out of view. He might have made a little grunt of laughter.

Lucas couldn’t take any more. He’d never eaten so much in life. He didn’t know how many hours had passed. At first he tried measuring time in Enya songs, but they all kind of blurred into one another after a while. Even with his nose pegged, the taste of slightly-chickeny noodles was driving him insane. No-one was meant to eat this volume of it, surely?! He couldn’t be sure each bite wouldn’t be his last, such was the absolute agony his stomach was in. It felt like the lining of it was going to come apart at the seams! He could barely breathe. His head was spinning.

‘Soooo now, how are we doing in here, young man?’

The reappearance of Dr Nightingale heralded hope. He would put this whole fucked up escapade to rest now, wouldn’t he?

‘How’s he doing?’ the doctor asked the guard.

The muscle man shrugged his enormous shoulders and replied with, ‘Alright.’

This seemed good enough for Nightingale, who beamed brightly at Lucas and laid a hairy hand against his now ridiculously swollen abdomen. ‘Well,’ he began. ‘I daresay this is all going swimmingly, hoh hoh.’

‘UUUNNNFFGH!!’ Lucas screeched back. Never in his life had he felt so tightly stuffed. He was positive his stomach was about to explode in a cacophony of ramen.

‘Feeling sick?’ the doctor furrowed his brow.

Lucas would have given anything in the world just to nod. Just to express YES! To get this fuckery to STOP!

‘UUUNNFGHH!!!’

‘Alright, alright…,’ Dr Nightingale gave Lucas’s bump a few gentle pats and sauntered off. Lucas heard the metal trays being opened. Clattering. Clanging.

When the doctor returned to view, Lucas’s heart sank. In the man’s hand was a large hypodermic needle, a clear liquid inside.

Any hope of being freed died in that exact moment.

Lucas’s eyes turned downwards at the sides. He felt tears forming.

‘This’ll help with the sickness,’ the doctor told him, tapping the needle and pushing it into Lucas’s arm. ‘Just a wee scratch and… theeeere, we’re all done. That wasn’t so bad, was it now?’

‘UUUNNNFFGGHH…..’ The screeching turned into sobbing. Lucas felt his chest convulse with every blub, only causing more pain in his diaphragm.

‘I know,’ Nightingale employed his most soothing tone yet. ‘I know, boy. The first time is always the worst. But at least the shot’ll help to keep you going for a while longer.’

Lucas didn’t have longer. He was going to pop. He was literally going to rupture.

‘This is what Mr Swan wants,’ the doctor went on in that soft, pacifying measure. ‘And we have a saying around here… What Mr Swan wants, Mr Swan gets. Understand there, Lucas?’

Lucas could only keep crying.

‘UUUUuuuunnffghh…’

‘Try and say it with me…’

This was useless. They were going to force feed him to death. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong. But this is where it ended, in this room, eating endless ramen noodles.

‘What Mr Swan wants… Come on now, try it…’

‘Uuughh uuughhhhr uuugh Unnfghs…’

‘What Mr Swan wants, Mr Swan gets.’