Vast Bulk

This is my eldest son Jeff and he ought to be ashamed of himself, but he isn't. I blame his parents.

Below is an excerpt from my novel:

"HOOTS or the Honorable Order of Treasure Seekers."
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Quizzically I glanced at the Fatman. His vast bulk seemed to quiver, a raging scream of silence threatened the evening air, clandestine thoughts filtered like guilty spies from my subconscious, grim forebodings, ghastly acts of imminent cataclysm.
Uneasily he shifted his vast bulk. Too late my mind raced towards the only solution. Of course! It had been…but no…but yes! It had to be.
I looked at him, my eyes straight as dies. He sensed my loathing but shrugged it off like a drake off a duck’s back, arrogant in his vast bulk, and in that moment I knew. I knew with an overwhelming certitude that I had been right all along, my instincts had not failed me, my resurgence of self-confidence gave me a sudden blinding insight into the whole terrible miasma.
He must have seen the lightning flash of cognisance, because, as though already accused, he shifted uneasily, one enormous hand twitching faintly like an elephant’s liver.
Suddenly he heaved his vast bulk from the chair, moving surprisingly slowly for such a fat man, and with a horrible bellow leapt from the balcony, like some agonized pachyderm, his vast bulk crashing through the matchwood verandah, splintering it like so much matchwood.
A startled shriek, a horrible cry and then a ghastly thud as his vast bulk hurtled through the pavement ten stories below into the local subway system, smashing through the roof of a passing train and squashing a German ourist who was in the process of being mugged for the second time that day.
A siren howled mournfully in the night.

I wiped the beads of sweat from my panting brow and with some difficulty eased my vast bulk from the sofa. I walked to the telephone and dialled.
“Yes?”.
“It is done,” I said .
“Sorry, wrong number.”
I dialled again.
“Hello?”
“It is done,” I said.
“Well I’m very glad dear, but it’s still a wrong number. Wait a moment, is that you Henry? Stop playing silly buggars, I mean honestly.”
I hung up wordlessly, cursing my lack of combative vocabulary and the vast bulk of my fingers, so unfitted to the mundane task of accurate dialling.
I rang room service.
“Lord Mortimer Trench here, room 711. Send up a lot of anything with saturated fats.”
I settled my vast bulk down to contemplate the Bangkok skyline, on the tattered poster of Thailand hanging on the stained wall.

©All rights reserved Julian Chagrin 2007