Setting the Scene

 

In the country of Runway Four, in the north of Bludgeon City, just over the Regal Canal, the Lie District is found. If you drill down into it via Google Maps, your eyes fall on a vast warren of bleak houses, the layout broken in key parts by a grim prison, a mental institution, and a large Gothic cathedral, rebadged as Secular Hall. Nestled deep in this maze of misery is Rodent Street where lives a man of little renown and even less significance. He dwells in a pokey little room—his very own rathole—in a house of spartan flats. He is tall, fair-haired and twenty-five years old. His name is Grudge Galmount.

                                                              ***

Grudge was alone in the rathole with only his thoughts for company. His Spanish girlfriend, one Beatrice Marcos, was back in Madrid. The pair had enjoyed, if that’s the word, a six-month relationship while she lived in Bludgeon to improve her English. Her mother—a well-off widow—had encouraged her daughter to travel. Now, from her mother’s apartment in Sol, Beatrice had written Galmount a long, lecturing letter—her second in a week—in which she urged him to change his ways and reverse the downward spiral of his life. The letter’s tone jarred with Grudge. Propped up by pillows on his rickety bed, he mulled over his reply. He considered this for a trial run:

 

My sweetest Bea, 

I am sick of you and your fucking letters…

But he trailed off right there. He didn’t have the heart to go on in such a bitter vein towards the woman he loved most in the world. At least he told himself he loved her. The emotionally erratic Galmount was prone to falling hopelessly in love. Since reaching adulthood, he had given several people his all. Bea was just the latest in a longish line.

© Brian Ahern 2014