Week Two, Day Four : Disgrace

I'd forgotten this bit :  The nerves, the vomiting & hyperventilating, the shitting (God, the shitting), the petty behind-the-scenes one-upmanship & catastrophic elimination of personal courage. In short I bailed. Twenty minutes before curtain up I slipped through the throng in full regalia & into the theatre vaults. Lithgow had kindly provided me with a litre of Rescue Remedy which I necked instantly, along with four hits of Valium & half a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream. I became unstoppable & it was a beautiful thing to behold. But the crash came early : The vaults were unlit & my Zippo was out of juice. Feeling my way along the damp stone I came across what felt like a pane of glass embedded into the walls. Perhaps a way out, I thought. But surely too small to be a window? Further down I found a rope dangling from the ceiling which I tugged for narrative purposes. Instantly the room was bathed in a vicious glare & I heard the casters of a heavy door rumbling to a close. Müller, it had to be Müller. But he was nowhere to be seen. Slowly my eyes acclimatised to my surroundings :

Above me, six nooses were tied back from their inhuman purpose, congealed & bloody at the arc, & behind what I had thought to be a window was a photograph in sinister sepiatone of women & children from a bygone era practising their demonic craft. IN THE VERY SAME ROOM! I staggered back from the spot, reeling & nauseous. Inadvertently I must have stumbled on Müllers' inner sanctum & I shuddered to think of the horrors it must have witnessed. There was only one thing for it : Still high on low-budget liqueur & sleeping pills I attempted to dismantle the ghastly apparatus, blindly, wildly, inadequately. And then footsteps : Faint & distant at first, but then deafening & omnipresent. Frantically I searched for an escape & in no time at all found a map with the exit points clearly marked :

What a stroke of luck! It even knew where I was. Before long I was enjoying a refreshing glass of Tizer at reception but my troubles were far from over. Madden came bursting in from the lounge dripping with sweat, bug-eyed & shaking. I asked her if she had enjoyed her run. After slapping me twice in the face she blurted out that Lithgow had gone missing from the British Legion. Turns out he gave them the slip after the Hustler slide went up, nice touch. I knew he was up to something, just didn't figure he'd go before I'd done Marjorie Daw. Not that I did but he wasn't to know that. And now we're all in the soup. Without croutons. The bastard...