Hypnotizing Chickens

Monday, 14th October 1996

Lying on the floor with his head for some reason propped up against his hand, King Movie's attention was distracted momentarily by the discovery of a new scab on his forehead. He ran his finger around its perimeter to gague the size, and was about to start picking when he thought: "hang on, something was happening just then, something not good, it's still going on...." King Movie felt a hand grab his collar, lift his body from the concrete, and watched as a blurred figure in front of him slammed a boot into his stomach. Then King Movie remembered. He was getting the shite kicked out of him.
-
He wasn't a bright boy by any stretch of the imagination, but in the time it had taken him to become a full-time smackhead and contract the plague, King Movie had it all pretty much figured out. The moment he had changed from a regular Joe into Charlie H Smacko. That had now become clear.

He'd had part of it figured out a while back, when he was in the room in Clapham; a mumbling idiot off his head at times with h, at other times with pain, and other times.... He couldn't remember getting to the room, or where he'd been before; he woke up and found himself being prodded by a girl with all metal bits stuck to her face, saying "Oi, King Movie, cup of tea?" Turned out the girl was called Sheel, he'd been found slumped on the steps outside the building, and through an act of extreme junk-inspired philanthropy (and horniness) she'd brought him inside.

She called him King Movie. He thought, that must be my name. He hadn't asked her why for a while, but that was just part of figuring things out, wasn't it? And all the while, at the room in Clapham, bits of his life were coming back to him, bits of his life before the experimentation with chemicals he could barely say let alone spell, and a face; a face on a man, the bald man in the long coat he could blame for his inevitable untimely demise. Then he left the room in Clapham and went on a search.
-
Having the shite kicked out of him was par for the course. It had nothing to do with himself or the man, it was just random and violent and of course it hurt, but he'd had a substantial hit shortly before and it lessened the effect. The thugs eventually got bored and threw him against a wall and left him. Everything was blurred, but it always was. Then eventually footsteps. A shadow outlined in the daylight that broke into the tunnel behind it, and a halo. King Movie squinted; not a halo, just the sun bouncing off a hairless head. King Movie smiled.

The shadow spoke. "Today I'm facing people."

And, not for the first time in his life, King Movie passed out.