NO! I'M NOT HARRY HOUDINI.

For Shrew's Houdini Competition

 

NO, I’M NOT HARRY HOUDINI

I’m not Harry Houdini – tho’ I’m always being mistaken for him. I suppose it’s the looks more than the ability to escape – staring eyes, bulging muscles and a liking for being chained up and a love of ropes. It was just after World War 2, and my English City of Liverpool had been badly bombed. The flattened streets where buildings had stood made a stage where open air theatre took place. On one such site, no less than the great Paul Robeson (my all time hero) once sang.   There would be barrows selling fruit, seedy men selling stolen and black market goods and stalls on barrows with all sorts of produce. By-laws had not been written to contain the free enterprise of the Liverpool bomb sites – but what has all this to do with Harry Houdini.

I had just come out of the British Army with a third rate demob suit, several campaign medals, a couple of healed bullet holes and precious little else. No job was found for me and no-one wanted to employ an unskilled, uneducated labourer with a limp.

Together with some ex army blokes I knew, we became actors. We put on strong man demonstrations in which we used props found on the site. No barbells for us – we lifted lumps of rock which once stood as proud façades in a beautiful city. I had the best body and certainly the manliest set of tattoos so I heaved rocks, challenged lads about town to do better and soon developed great strength, but we realised that rock lifters were ten a penny so I would lay on the ground while balancing a rock on my chest while a colleague hit it with a sledge hammer ‘til it broke, while yet another went round with a collecting tin. People eventually realised my ribs wouldn’t break so got fed up. We needed something new.

One of us made a canvas bag and we took it in turns to be handcuffed, chained, padlocked, placed in the bag which would be tied at the neck and then tied and chained again outside it. Rocks would be placed on the top of us and we had five minutes to escape, which of course we always did as the locks were faulty, the chains fixed, the handcuffs not locked properly and the knot on the bag was a slip with the end poked inside. While we struggled, the other two collected the money from the gullible gathered around hoping for a disaster. Our collectors were big, rough, tough and uncouth. Not many refused to pay up.

It didn’t pay well though so we turned to crime. We’d fought for a better future and been let down at every turn, couldn’t get jobs, were hard up and angry so we burgled, brawled, extorted and worked as ‘heavies’ in a protection racket. Frequently we had to beat up shopkeepers who wouldn’t pay but we were never caught.

One night we went to collect money owed to us by a bloke who ran a garage and the fool refused to pay. Little did we know we had been set up to be caught in the act of intimidation? As he made as if to attack us, the police were supposed to rush in.  We let him have it. They were late. Oh yes they came alright, but thought they’d get a more solid case if they let us rough him up a bit which we did with the result, the mechanic died from a blow to the head from my Iron bar, even as the police arrested us. Of course, it didn’t matter – what were handcuffs to an escapologist like me. I’d escape.

In those days, there was the Death Penalty for murder. I was duly sentenced to ‘hang by the neck until death’ by a clown in a red coat wearing a wig with a black hankie on his head. Of course, I would escape. Bars couldn’t hold me. I had been planning it since my arrest and had actually started weakening the cement which held them, then the swine moved me into a different cell and I was never left alone.

On execution day I was taken out of the cell and walked to the gallows. Yesterday I’d been introduced to a pleasant man called Albert Pierpoint who told me he ran a pub in Preston. I told him as he measured and weighed me for some reason, that when I escaped, I’d come and have a pint there –secretly of course. He smiled, that’s all. Now I had a bag put over my head and felt the touch of a thick rope. It was a cinch – like old times soon I’d burst forth leap over the guards and be off. Yes! What a leap it would be – my leap for life. Now for it, I started my escape routine, double spee  - - - - - - - CLUNK!                  

THE END.

Reviews

[Spat Queen]

This story is freakin' great! Nice ending! I really think it should be stretched. Really milked. It is fantastic. How did the character weaken the cement; etc. Really great read, I much enjoyed this piece.