The last supper.

For Clive, time slowed and was devoid of sound: he saw Will allow the saucepan to fall from his delicate hands. He noted H Butt’s mouth gape open in a horror-film-scream and Betty drop like a rag doll to his knees. He sensed Georgie Delaware struggle, dazed, to his feet and then slam unsteadily against the wall as he screamed, spittle flecking from his lips – something about them all being dead men.

Clive believed he had been shot; this was why everyone looked mortified, why his face felt wet, why he felt distant. Maybe this is how it feels to be on your way out? Whilst inhabiting this no-mans-land he was surprised to turn to recent regrets: He wished he hadn’t had sex with those five Japanese groupies, two years ago, one of whom gave him the clap, which he passed to his wife Mindy. He regretted, after the tears and recriminations (all deserved), agreeing to her terms, five men of her choice – an eye for an eye as it were. Number one was Fingers – afterwards, over dinner, she exhibited a previously untapped, almost cinematic descriptive talent, verbally reliving the event, from the sensation delivered by the girth of his pierced cock, to her abundant and multiple orgasms. The remaining four lovers were carefully picked from members of their local pub’s football team, each of whom she photographed during coitus and shared a lively montage with Clive, in the form of their seventh wedding anniversary card.

He swallowed hard and ‘something’ soft went down.

Also, with the gift of hindsight, he regretted investing the entire advance for the new album in that ‘no brainer’ Korean property deal. Mostly though his biggest regret was having hired this fucking house, on this fucking island, where he was about to fucking die.

He held this thought as he watched Will scuttle across the room and crouch, next to Cyclon who appeared to be missing a large part of his vast forehead. It then slowly struck Clive that the gloop dripping down his own face, the soft curd like lump he had swallowed and the crunchy bits on his lips were scraps from Cyclon’s skull and frontal lobe. This was when Clive bent to throw up, and throwing up was the thing that saved his life.

For Fingers time shifted up a gear and moments before Clive vomited he realised he only had one chance. With seconds left to live, as Georgie steadied himself, reached down to retrieve his gun and retrain it on the man who fucked his daughter’s pig, Fingers leapt off the sofa, putting Clive between himself and the gun barrel just as Georgie pulls the trigger. KLICCCCCKKK WHOOOOOOWWWW KABOOOOM. Fingers couldn’t, of course, have anticipated, that Clive would bend to hurl.

He is thrown against the far wall, a ragged bloody hole blown through his left shoulder. Georgie ready to finish him off, steps forward but falters and stops, lowering his gun, because Cyclon sits up, rather abruptly, as if woken from a night punctuated with Sambuca shots. In a sleepy childlike manner he wipes goo and blood from his eyes, teeters to his feet, staggers to his drums, sits down and sets to them – for five genius and utterly out of character Clyde Stubblefield-esque minutes. This is followed by an awe filled silence – after which Cyclon drops his sticks, the left then the right, and falls sideways off his stool. Dead. Betty screams and screams and screams until H slaps him, hard.

It is only then that Clive clocks Georgie Delaware has gone, as has the gun – then Fingers, a disembodied voice from behind the sofa, sobs:

“Loves, ah’ve been murdered, the bastard shot me, Oh fook, Oh fook. Ah don’t wanna die loves…Ah don’t wanna die…”

Clive Brendon is not a terribly brave man and so what he does now is entirely in character. He runs. He does so without engaging his brain. He dashes down the hall and drags open the main door to be confronted by driving stinging rain and a KAAABOOM CRAAACCCK as a bullet bounces off the stone work to his right.

“Oh god,” he whimpers as he fights, to close the door, against the elements and potential death. He wins, turns, utterly spent to find Will, H Butt, and a tearful, red-slapped-cheeked Betty, glaring breathlessly at him. Before anyone has a chance to use the phrase ‘you-mother-fucking-coward’ a hideous, agonising scream emanates from the drawing room – it continues for three minutes and then stops, dead.

“Fuck…” whispers everyone in unison, “Wer tha’ Fingers?”

To be continued…