Freckles

I popped by briefly to see Marty again but it wasn't very successful. This time, the pretty nurse at reception just let me straight through with a distracted smile. The phone on her desk was ringing but she wasn't answering it even though she didn't seem to be doing anything else. She just stared at it and cheerily said "ring ring" after each ring. I thought it was nice. You know, nice like wasabi when you make time.

Marty's door was open but when he saw me coming he started going crazy, waving his arms and legs under the bed covers. "Get outta here, get outta here!" he was yelling, "you're too bleak, you're way too f-cking bleak, you bleak freak!" and he threw his bedside alarm clock at me, which flew just a few yards from the feeble effort.

Then I saw the head of his girlfriend pop round the side of the door at waist height. She must have been sitting on a chair behind the door. As I approached the increasingly agitated Marty, I saw her head rise as she got up from the chair. She grasped the edge of the door and, with a steely smile just as I was at the threshold, threw it shut right in my face. The force of the door slamming against the oaken jambs was so immense that I felt the rush of compressed air blast past me and the shock of the impact carry back down the corridor, rattling the open windows in their frames and blowing out the curtains like tissue pennants in a wind-tunnel.

I think they may have Marty on some strong medication. That can be my only conclusion.