The Rock Climber Part VII (wip)

You couldn’t believe your luck, could you? All those years ago, when the offer had come to exchange your freedom for a vast lump of cash, which only actually represented around half of your total worth. You had witnessed the forming of stalactites, like Vaseline spread over carrots, all candied with the petroleum jelly, which you remembered because you used to spread it thickly on your cold sores and the acidic arse of your disgusting first child. The money, which you kept hidden in two old mortar shell boxes you stole from the surplus shop which was gunked in fire during the uprising, was slightly tinged with a brown hue, not far off beery shit, but it smelled like cinnamon pudding. You watched as they flicked at your dirty wedges of cash with their bulbous thumbs, but you moistened your crispy lips with your oily spit, like basting a roast-turkey skin. You just thought of the fresh and warm freedom you would acquire as a result of this caked transaction. Once you had been released you thought only about burgers for at least a week, you remembered the Botham Burger, a cricket ball sized lump of perfect ground chuck beef, egged, then cut with onion, breadcrumbs a touch of salt and pepper and a nice slap of Dijon, applied with a basting brush. All housed in sweet brioche bun and glooped in lush-horrible cheese so it squirms down your glottis, lubricated and quick fast. As you searched for a burger joint, you could almost feel the depth of flavour and the soft-ish solid texture of a mouthful as it hit your tonsils, this conjured a little noise in your throat, amplified by your open, hanging mouth, all of this in turn forced you to hoover the pools of saliva that had gathered under your tongue, and focused your mission. After eating for a few days, your attention turned to the future, like someone returning to an old house left for decades to decay, all taken over and overruled by nature. The future felt like a decrepit idea, unused and forgotten, cancelled maybe. You had eviscerated most of your desires, but one had remained, treacled and reduced, dwelling in the very bottom of your disk shaped soul. A yearning to be high-up. You macerated some compressed balls of bleached white bread in a bowl of unknown milk. You had made the bread balls in your jacket pockets, secretly rolling them between your clammy thumb and forefinger. Once soaked you had found that they could have hot gravy injected into them using the hypodermic needles you pocketed at the wrecked hospital before your captivity had begun. If you placed one in the centre of your tongue, the milked bready balls could be gently popped, resulting in the secreting of the hot savoury fluid to the back of your tongue and then you liked to allow it to dribble down your larynx unaided.