CHAPTER
FORTY-THREE

Eyes watering, Noah bit down on the balled-up sock that was in his mouth as Mick drove the van over yet another evil London speed bump. On his back, on the rear seats, legs spread out as wide as he could, totally akimbo, anything, just to provide maximum airflow around the stricken area. Harry and Pierre were somewhere in the front; he didn’t really care. A hotel “complimentary robe” barely covered his lower regions, but he also didn’t care. With pain this intense, the only thing you could focus on was the MONUMENTAL AGONY.

The last thing he remembered clearly was slapping the cream all over his boy parts.

From there, it was pretty much a blur.

He remembered a tingling sensation that quickly developed into RED-HOT HELLFIRE.

He recalled screaming for help.

Desperately scraping the cream away … splashing with water … trying to get into the bath … slipping, flapping about in the bath … falling against the hot towel rail … banging on the en-suite door…

The next thing he remembered was Mick carrying him past reception in his arms, like a dying child, Pierre and Harry following, Mick angrily saying, “Grab all your stuff, after this you’re all going straight home!”

Words … frantic phone calls … mention of A&E departments…

Someone produced a bag of frozen peas, but they were quickly dismissed.

The hotel car park … was that a black Vauxhall Astra?

The woman … she was there…

Then bundled in the back of the van…

The pain! The burning! What had become of his testicles? he wondered. Were they still even there? Or had they been burnt away in the Great Fire of Testicles?

Noah’s delirious words: “Is Kitten Face chasing? Is it a test?”

And then:

BRIGHT LIGHTS

Doctors

Nurses

A trolley – rushing through corridors…

Voices and faces blending into one big nightmarish TUBE OF VEET with evil horns and red eyes, dancing around Noah, goading him, squirting its devil cream at him.

A voice: “Can someone shut him up, there’s a man having a stroke in here!”

Other voices – laughing?

“Can we just sedate him, this is ridiculous,” another voice, maybe a surgeon or very important doctor who had been urgently drafted in for the case.

The last thing he remembered, as a needle went in his arm and the fluid dripped in, was reaching out to Harry: “Has the goose shat yet? Has the goose shat?”