Dreamaticus

I’d only met C in real life once before. Since our brief encounter earlier in the year all our recent contact had been online, where C’s alias was A. He’d agreed to pass on some photography hints to TPR so we set off to meet him in a bar on Leith Walk.

After half an hour of amiable chat we made to leave and C, accompanied by what looked like his entire family including his pregnant wife (who I congratulated heartily), followed us out on to the street. C’s relations came across as incredibly friendly, especially his Chinese mother. She delighted me with the gift of a clear red plastic-bound Filofax-style 2012 diary, handed over just after we passed the Edinburgh Central Youth Hostel.

Our original intention was to walk with C as far as McDonald Road or Pilgrig Street, and TPR did just this before heading home. I, however, missed the turning and before long I had no idea where I was. Strangely it appeared that we had been transported to the Isle of Skye. The group that had formerly just comprised C and his family now included many more people, and it was only now that I realised that they were all members of a sect intent on recruiting me. I had to escape – fast!

My new “friends” put on an almost-credible act that gave the impression that they cared enough to make arrangements for my return home from our current location just south of Portree. I was not convinced of this. I saw through the offer of a young man to drive me home in his car as a means of avoiding my inevitable delivery to the “facility”. I guessed that it was more likely that he intended to take me straight there. Equally, I could tell that the man who flirted with me in front of his wife and two babies (born five months apart) was a fake, even when he handed his house keys over to me in case I couldn’t wake up TPR to let me back into my own flat once I reached home again. It was obvious that they wanted me locked up, and locked up for good.

The first person to attempt to release me from the clutches of the evil sect was a complete surprise: my long-dead Granny H. Her entrance was one of bravado, but the moment that she came face to face with my captors she collapsed into a flat, lifeless version of herself, and was of no use whatsoever to my plight.

My spirits then lifted with the arrival of Great Dane MSB. As a former inmate of the facility herself, she knew a trick or two. She declared out loud that we both needed to go to the toilet then legged it across the yard straight past the guards, and into the main road to hail an ambulance.

I followed close behind, but at the very last moment a leaning, drunken tramp weaved his way towards me and blocked my escape. “Could things get any worse?” I wondered out loud. “Perhaps he’ll lunge forward to kill me?” – which is precisely what happened next.