A Splat in Baggy Underpants

An unfortunate guy finds himself locksed out of his guest house bedroom in the middle of the night, naked.

A Splat in Baggy Underpants

 

My Friday began around 4am, and thereafter continued to deteriorate.  In fact not a minute of the day was agreeable.

 

The temperature was sub-zero and the damned van wouldn’t start.  After struggling to locate the fault with my scant knowledge of mechanics, I threatened it with a one-way trip to the scrap yard.  Apparently surrendering, the van conceded to fire up and I left home forty minutes late in a foul temper.

 

I picked up Splat at the end of his road.  He was shivering, hacked off and expressed his displeasure at some length. I was inclined to eject him from the van, and enjoyed a brief mental image of my size 12 boot mark on the back of his clean overalls.  Suppressing temptation with some regret, I inserted a folk music CD and turned up the volume.  Splat loathes my taste in music.

 

Splat acquired his nickname when some careless idiot upended a gallon of white gloss paint from a second storey windowsill.  Little Jock, as he was known until that incident, happened to be standing underneath.  The perpetrator of the accident, yours truly, was also re-named, in honour of the occasion. Don’t ask. 

 

The day continued:  Fog, freezing weather, queues on the motorway, late arrival, job falling behind, an argument with the boss and Splat sulking.  I won’t bore you with all the details.

 

Around 8pm, tired and irritable, I was forced to accept that we would need to stay overnight, which destroyed my plans for the weekend and peed me off even further.  We spent a fruitless couple of hours in search of accommodation. To be precise, I searched. Splat trailed behind me, sniffing and grumbling. Apparently there’s a Conservative Party annual conference taking place this weekend. It would have been a tad easier to accept our predicament had it been a Labour conference. 

 

By the time we approached the twenty eighth guest house, I was prepared to kill Splat and anyone else daft enough to bother me. In contrast to the neat appearance of the other buildings in the road, a tatty wooden fence, so high we could barely see over it, surrounded this one.  Attached to the gate was a shabby sign marked ‘Accommodation.’  An arrow pointed to a buzzer. I kept pressing and letting go. The repeating zzz  zzz  zzz  zzz  zzz soothed my homicidal frame of mind.

 

The gate opened with a spine-chilling creak.  Behind it stood a squat, obese person dressed in filthy jeans and a tee shirt that no doubt doubled as a floor cloth. His pale sweaty face was a very unhealthy colour, and the stringy remnants of his greasy grey hair hung to his shoulders either side of his baldhead.  He observed us with jaundiced eyes and without speaking, led up a path choked with weeds towards a door that desperately needed a paint job. The entrance hall exuded a disagreeable odour of tomcat and other nauseating aromas.

 

‘Er,’ I hesitated, revolted by his appearance. ‘Do you have any rooms available?’

 

 ‘£50 each. No breakfast,’ his tone discouraged my proficient negotiating skills.

 

‘Can we see the rooms?’ I wasn’t inclined to be courteous.

 

Without uttering a word, he showed us two adjacent rooms. My house-proud mother would collapse at the sight of them. 

 

‘Where’s the bathroom?’

 

By way of reply he pointed to a door at the end of the corridor and went back downstairs, leaving us to follow.

 

‘Just tonight.’  I proffered my credit card.  Reading his expression, it was about as acceptable as a bar of soap.

 

‘Cheque?’

 

‘Cash.  In advance.’

 

Fortunately, we just managed to scrape the cash together between the two of us. To be precise I ended up in debt to Splat to the tune of £45.37. I shut my ears to his views on the matter. The proprietor accepted our payment without thanks and provided our door keys together with some verbal instructions.  ‘The doors are equipped with automatic closers.  Don’t leave your room without taking your key.’  He departed without further comment, possibly to underneath his favourite stone.

 

We fetched our belongings from the van.  I entered my room, unpacked my towel, (none were provided,) and with key in hand I headed for the bathroom. The toilet was crusted with brown gunk. There was neither a toilet seat nor any toilet paper, though judging by the smell, the bathroom featured a decomposing corpse in the cupboard. I waited in vain for the water to heat, kicked the pedestal to express my disgust and decided not to wash.

 

Too tired to go out and eat, I wolfed down a sandwich left over from lunchtime and fell into the dilapidated narrow bunk, masquerading as a bed. I briefly gave a thought to my bunk-buddies, creepy and crawly and drifted into sleep.

 

   Sometime later I woke up needing the bathroom and discovered that our host considered lighting to be an unnecessary extravagance. I groped my way down the dark corridor, guided to my destination by the stench. I was in midstream when I heard my bedroom door slam.   My heart sank faster than a perforated, lead filled rowing boat.

 

Having completed the necessities, as best I could in the dark, I stood outside my bedroom door and willed it to open whilst considering my options.  Knocking up Splat and proposing to share his bed was a dodgy option.  I was stark naked.  I descended the stairs, went outside and hobbled to the gate, the freezing gravel cutting painfully into my bare feet. 

 

‘Feck.’ Realising that I needed to go out into the noisy street to reach the intercom button, I re-considered waking up Splat.  He hasn’t forgiven me for the paint spill episode and would relish an opportunity to reap his revenge.

 

Choosing for the less humiliating course of action, I opened the gate and peeked out.  There were numerous pubs on the opposite side of the street and groups of revellers milling between them.

 

Playing it cool, I stepped out and walked to the intercom.  Turning my back to my audience, I pressed the buzzer continuously, ignoring the laughter, catcalls, whistles, vulgar comments, propositions and one marriage proposal, until a grunt informed me my host was awake. I re-entered the garden and slammed the gate, but not before I had taken my ovation with an appropriate gesture, borrowed from a certain jockey named Mr Smith.

 

Back outside my room, shivering with cold, I watched my rescuer approaching up the stairs.  On arrival, he stared at me for a long moment his expression unreadable.  His tobacco stained top lip curled into a sinister sneer. It suddenly occurred to me how he might interpret the situation as he gazed at me standing before him, naked and trembling, clutching my parts I prefer to keep under wraps, particularly in this situation.

 

He unlocked the door of my room, opened it and stood in the doorway. I pushed him out of my way, rushed passed him and without expressing my gratitude and slammed the door in his face.

 

Breathing heavily and gagging at the lingering smell of his rancid body odour, I listened to his heavy footsteps descending the stairs until I was certain he’d gone.  It took me a while to calm down and fall asleep again.  But not for long…

 

I felt a movement on the bed, hair brushing my skin.  My eyes snapped open. One hand was reaching towards me. The other was knocking on the bedside table.

 

‘Stop!’

 

He moved closer.  Grinning evilly, he waved both hands in the air and lunged towards me.  The knocking continued loudly. Yelling in terror, I dived sideways and landed heavily on the floor.

 

‘Mick, open the door.’

 

My senses reeling, I staggered to my feet, the knocking pounding in my head.

 

 ‘Mick. Wake up.’

 

‘Splat?’ Groggy, I pulled on my jockey shorts, and opened the door.

 

Splat, so skinny he appeared to be on the verge of starvation, and blessed with a pimply face only a mother could love, was clad in a pair of grey-ex-white, worn out baggy underpants, sporting several holes. Still in a state of shock, I stared at him without speaking, grateful that the dark was sparing me a clearer sight of this unattractive apparition.

 

‘I’ve been knocking on this bloody door for ages Mick.  I went for a pee and my bedroom door shut.’

 

I continued to stare, trying to pull myself together.

 

‘Well, let me in. And stop staring at me. You’re not, you know. Are you?’

 

I opened the door wider and motioned him inside.

 

‘Look mate, I’m really sorry. I feel so embarrassed. I didn’t dare to knock up the landlord, he gives me the creeps.’

 

My nerves still rattled, I had nonetheless recovered sufficiently to recognise the advantage to be gained from this fortunate turn around of events and blatantly exploited the situation.

 

‘I wouldn’t be daft enough to lock myself out Splat, but if I’d done so, I would have preferred to wake up the proprietor.’

 

‘You would?’

 

‘If I’d appeared at your bedroom door, clad in my y fronts, with my todger hanging out, at some God forsaken hour of the night, wanting to share your bed, you would revel in telling everyone we know.’

 

Blushing, he adjusted his underwear and beamed. ‘Yeah, I sure would.’

 

I waited. Splat was always slow on the uptake.

 

Realization dawned. He changed gear and back-pedalled at speed. No! No mate, I swear. No. I wouldn’t have said a word.’

 

I climbed into the bed.

 

‘You may as well get in Splat.  I’m not, ‘you know, so your chastity will remain intact.’

 

‘Please mate, don’t say a word about this. The lads are still ribbing me about the paint incident’.  He sounded close to tears.

 

‘Goodnight Splat.’

 

I illuminated my watch before turning my back to him.

 

It was 4am.  Anticipating the jokes I would share tomorrow at poor Splat’s expense, I had a smile on my face for the first time in twenty four hours.