AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see lindakentartist’s blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh. Further warning – posted by co-author in absence of co-author.
Previously- Who is the strange Anser Damiou, and why doesn't he say much? Meanwhile a priceless vase is needlessly broken whilst, never one to miss an opportunity to pass out, Wolfcastle indulges in a fit of fainting. Now read on..

Chapter 45

Down and down and down they went, further under the ground, below the oddly named abode that was 21.57. The spiral staircase seemed to drill into the ground beneath them as they descended. The only light available came from the glow of her mobile phone, the flickering flame of the disposable lighter held up by the Bangladeshi and the ever present glint in his eye. Occasionally the claustrophobic shaft that contained the stairs would open up to reveal what might have been vast caves of some sort. At first these seemed to be empty spaces full to the brim of empty space. There wasn’t time to really look as he was urging her onwards, downwards. Gradually as they traveled down the steps the spaces they encountered caves that were packed full of large wooden crates. Each crate, she guessed, would be about one metre wide, high and tall. A Cube in fact. Despite the lack of ambient light she was just able to pick out the word ‘CHINA’ stenciled on the side of one of the crates. Was this a reference to the boxes contents or did it refer to a destination or point of origin? There was no time to dwell, the eager old man implored her to go ever further down with increasing excitement.

She wasn’t sure how far down they had gone when he eventually called for her to stop. The stairs certainly continued down into the inky black darkness but she was glad of a chance to catch her breath. When she vocalized this desire the flirtatious old man, with an exaggerated wink, gladly offered to catch it for her. Samantha declined his advance.

He extinguished the lighter and with a click he called up the man made luminance of electric light. After blinking and recoiling slightly at the shock of it all, Samantha began to take in her new surroundings. They were stood at one end of a long chamber, not entirely unlike an Underground platform – minus the passengers, trains, and track but instead having water where a track would be if it were an Underground platform. Some sort of subterranean canal stretched before them for approximately forty three metres.

‘Where are we? What was in those crates? Where do the stairs lead to? What IS this place?’

‘This is my ‘office’ my dear, the ‘Nest’. You are very privileged to be here you know. I certainly don’t bring all the ladies to this place.’ He punctuated his comments with yet another wink. She wasn’t sure whether it was some violently unsubtle come-on or whether the poor man was in the midst of some kind of seizure or stroke.

‘The Nest? For what? What lives down here?’

‘Questions, questions, questions. Patience my dear. All will be revealed shortly’ he chuckled.

As if to some predetermined cue there was a rippling in the water and a small tubular piece of metal appeared. A periscope! With animal-like caution it scanned left to right and back again. Satisfied with what had been seen the periscope disappeared again and slowly, as Samantha watched in amazement, a submarine appeared from beneath the impenetrably gloomy water.

‘Allow me to present to you the [can’t think of a name just yet]. The pride, the whole, of the Luxembourgian Naval fleet.’ (Being the only member of the afore mentioned Naval fleet this was indeed an accurate statement).

As it finally and slowly surfaced, the Kalan class former Soviet attack submarine caused an impromptu tide of water to slosh up over the subterranean quayside. Stood watching this appearance with amazement the intrepid channel 12 news reporter found herself lost for words and failed to noticed that she now stood in several inches of water[1].

The water in the Nest was rising rapidly, a fact the storehouse of knowledge that was Samantha Panther, fledging reporter, announced to her small listening public. ‘This waterlevel has gone up by at least 12 inches,’ she said in measured tones, ‘And still rising.’

‘You’ll be fine, my dear’ slathered her public. ‘Your chances of winning the upcoming wet T-shirt contest are going up with the water level. Along with my chances of winning the wet dhoti contest.’ Her public rolled his eyes down at his garment with an ‘Ain’t I grand!’ invitation on his lips. Samantha was not impressed. Plenty of Bangladeshis spoke Hindu, she imagined, and spelled it too.

He, being shorter than she, began to tread water. This did impress her. Very few Bangladeshis knew how to swim, as she knew from reporting on floods and ferry disasters. This gent must be very wealthy, wealthy enough to have traveled to Switzerland to study natation and god only knew what else. But Samantha herself had never learned how to swim. She hadn’t needed to, not living in Cardiff where she could always pay a hungry undergrad a few squid to do her swimming for her.

This rising water was an Awful Business(TM) and she was in it up to her neck. If she couldn’t learn how to swim, she had better learn how to glug.

‘Glg!’

‘Not bad for a beginner! Try it again!’ Her public playfully sluiced water into her face before it sank again.

Gllgg! She had no time for quotation marks, she was drowning. The next time she came up she saw through waterbleared eyes a furry figure dog-paddling toward her determinedly, tongue hanging out and fauces dripping. ‘Lassglie!’ she mangled, ‘Helpglglee’ and disappeared beneath the waves for the third and final time in her brief career.

Away from the dramatic events facing the heroic lassie and her companion Miss Panther the world was going about it’s usual routine. Things were being said, stuff was getting done. Some people died, some more were born. Profits were being made by those who mattered (in their opinion) and money was getting taken off those who didn’t seem to matter – at least not to those making the profits off them.

In a Brazilian rainforest a butterfly was busy contemplating the finer points of Chaos theory whilst a Professor of Philosophy, Philately and Anglophysics a the Welsh University was waving her arms about in an apparently random manner. Six months from this point the butterfly and it’s habitat would be destroyed as yet another area of virgin rainforest was cunningly converted into lumber. Whether the Professorial arm flapping was the cause of an area the size of Wales[2] being reduced to little more than a pile of wood chippings and some expensive furniture – nobody was saying. People were certainly making profits from the venture and so that, to them at least, was all that mattered.

None of this was of any interest to our afore mentioned water stricken colleagues in their H2O based crisis.

[1] Approximately 183 millimeires and rising.

[2] ‘The size of Wales’ is now the unofficial global measure of all large scale surface devistation. Regular reports cite deforestation, flood, volcanic magma flows and other such events as things to be quantified in an order of magnitude based on an approximate guess of ‘The size of Wales’.