Day 10, Chapter 15 - the sophomore slump

The slog continues as Nanowrimo grinds on. Actually, it hasn’t been too bad, but the famous sophomore slump definitely takes a bit of will power to get over. I’m about 15,500 words in and was about to knock off when I listened to a particularly inspiring podcast on the Naowrimo.org website by an author who has had three novels she wrote during Nanowrimo published.

She said the first draft of her first attention was utter crap too, but from it, following numerous revisions, a worthy manuscript sprung. I’m hoping the same can be said for Junket. For those who know the feeling of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, the previous night’s exploits a complete blank to you, here’s chapter 7.

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SEVEN

The metallic rumble had come and gone an endless number of times but I assumed them to be part of the uneasy dream playing like a loop of grainy video in my head. Finally I sensed the intruding noise existed in the real world. I opened my eyes.

I was lying in a bright, white corridor, on my side, my right cheek against the gritty pavement. It occurred to me for the first time how hard the concrete floor was and how stiff and sore my body was. I tried to move but couldn’t. Straight across from me a man was sitting rocking back and forth, a dirty laundry bag beside him. He was flanked by large backlit advertisements, one for a Samsung TV, the other for HSBC.

He sat looking up the corridor playing with his wispy beard. Feet came into view, people passing by, dozens of them, hurried and determined, ignorant of my presence. I truned my head painfully to see the corridor full with people making their way down it towards me. I was in some sort of public thoroughfare, a subway tunnel, most likely. I scrambled up and lent against the wall as a pulsing wave of pain cross the front of my head. I groaned and closed my eyes. Another rumble from above, a familiar sound, like being in the tube stations in London.

I looked down at my hands. They were filthy, covered in mottled brown, my fingerprints standing out, the lines caked with the filth. I looked down at myself. I licked my left index finger. The unmistakeable rusty taste of blood.

My white shirt was covered in blood, dried blood. I stared at my chest uncomprehending. I touched myself delicately, alarmed. My entire left side was painful to the touch, my shoulder stung as the fabric of my shirt moved against it.

Commuters were beginning to pass by in numbers so I closed by tux jacket, hugging it to myself.

What the fuck is going on?

I summonsed all my energy to drag myself up the subway wall. Again I looked at my hands, splotched brown, the cuffs of my shirt painted with a random pattern of red flecks. There were a pile of DVDs lying on the ground, my souvenirs from the market. I bent down painfully to pick them up and joined the flow of people moving down the tunnel.

The central platform at Shanghai Central Train Station was already teeming with early morning commuters. A digital sign read 6.13.AM. A public address squawked a babble of mandarin, massive signs flicked up rows of Chinese characters. People zigzagged across the platform, some eyeing me for a second before moving on. Nothing made sense. There was nothing to orientate myself, nothing to hold onto.

I shuffled away from the platform out of the rush. A sign in the shape of a stick man caught my eye. I cut back across the platform and entered a sour-smelling block of toilets. I entered a booth, unzipped my fly and took a piss into the steel bowl. My cock hurt. There was a crusty film of blood over it. I made a conscious effort not to examine my hands again, my shirt, the rest of me. I just focused on the relief of emptying my bladder. Maybe seeing myself in the mirror would help me better understand the state I was in.

I walked out of the booth. A Chinese businessman was standing at the wash basins, combing thin grey hair across his liver-spotted scalp. I walked to a basin two away from him and ran the water. I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was no worse than usual for a big night out – a thin coating of stubble, bloodshot eyes. It was the stains on the shirt that alarmed me. I took off the tux jacket. The entire front of the shirt was soaked in blood. The arms remained pristine white. Whatever had happened the previous night, it had happened with my tux jacket on, even if my pants had somehow been off.

The Chinese man was looking at me. I glanced again at the mirror and realised what a disturbing sight I must look. But he just kept combing his hair. Finally he ran the water over his comb wiped it on a handkerchief and walked out of the toilets.

I took off the shirt and threw it in a bin mounted in the wall. There was a V-shaped stain in the hollow of my neck and other red smears on my chest where blood had settled. On my left shoulder were some razor-line scabs that ended in welts of torn flesh. The whole of my left side was bruised. I prodded myself carefully. No broken ribs at least. I turned around and craned my neck to look at my back. More of the thin scratches on my back had drawn blood. The discolouration of bruising.

I felt the pockets of the tux and found my wallet and the phone were still there. Suddenly I had an urgent desire to get out of there, to get back to the hotel and the relative familiarity of the Grand Hyatt. I put on the tux jacket, stuffed the DVDs into the jacket pocket and headed for the door. I stopped halfway, came back and scrubbed my hands. The water swirled a murky brown against the porcelain sink.

Outside, Shanghai was already alive, the constant cacophony of two-stroke bike engines, taxis, trucks, air-conditioning vents and machinery creating a constant high-pitched roar that hurt my ears. I headed straight for the first veedub I could find and climbed in the back.

“Grand Hyatt,” I said and collapsed back in the seat as a wave of nausea washed over me.