16 March 2008
Hard Times
Date unknown, 1857.
I awoke with the most awful of headaches.
I am no stranger to hangovers, of course. My hedonistic lifestyle dictates that I often wake up with a fierce, pounding headache and with little or no recollection of the previous twenty-four hours. Indeed, the entire of the 1830s remain a mystery to me still, being nothing more than a decade-long hangover.
This time, however, was different. I could not recall one single damned thing, not even my name, who I was, or how I had come to be sitting in the street, in a puddle of my own piss (at least, I hoped it was mine).
And why were people throwing coins at me, for cock’s sake?
“Get a job, you filthy, degenerate swine!” yelled one portly gentleman as he passed me by.
I may have been completely clueless as to my own identity, but I was fairly certain I was not the sort of chap who tolerated that sort of slur upon my character.
Did I even have a character? I could not remember.
“Go and take an extremely lengthy constitutional off an incredibly meager pier,” I retorted to the fat fellow. At least, that is what I had tried to say. What actually emitted forth from my mouth was a lengthy, slurred cacophony of nonsense, which caused the target of my vitriol to nod sadly and stride onwards.
I mumbled something in return, then allowed my head to loll over to the side, where it remained as I tried to marshal the facts I had to hand in an attempt to fathom out precisely who I was.
I grabbed at my groin. Fact one: I was a man. Good, I thought, I am making progress.
Fact two: I was a particularly well-blessed man. Even better.
Fact three: I was on a street.
Fact four: I was -
“Mother, dearest, what on Earth is THAT?” asked a precocious young lad with a shock of blonde hair, pointing at me with clear disgust.
“Keep away, Sebastian,” replied the child’s equally pretentious mother. “That is a homeless man. Keep well away, for the homeless eat little children for dinner, you know!”
The child yelped in horror and withdrew back behind his mother, and then they both scurried past in a terrible hurry, leaving me with one, final, undeniable fact.
Fact four: I was a homeless man.
Something was distinctly amiss here, of that I was certain.
- Lord Likely.
Next Time in The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely: Likely is drunk. Very drunk INDEED.
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