The events of My Naked Shame and My Naked Shame (Part II) continue…

EYEBALLS

Murder can never be justified for getting a story, particularly when it’s my murder. It’s a maxim I’m determined to stick to.

I took a trip down memory lane, to an afternoon lesson in Oxford, when Master G chided me for my lateness (like I said, I hate the thought of being late). “Student R (that was me), come and stand by my side.” I rose from my cushion and we moved to a small table, covered with a white cloth. It held two tall purple candles, yet another stick of incense, and a book with a plain yellow cover, with the title “Magic Spells’.

“Face the class, Student R, because in this sacred space, this action will be for your benefit alone.” My classmates watched eagerly. With a single match, he lit the incense and the candles. He opened the book and chanted in a language I could not place. The smell of sandalwood filled the air.

“I have cast a spell, Student R, which prevents you from closing your eyes.”

Automatically, I tried to close them. I failed. “Master, I cannot.” Genuinely, my eyelids were glued wide open. My seven fellow students gasped.

“Why are you not able to close your eyes, Student R?”

“Because of the spell, Mater G.”

“If I said that there was no spell? That it was a fiction, this is a Welsh telephone directory, and that truth is always stronger than superstitious fear, what then?”

I closed my eyes.

COUNTDOWN

With eyes closed, I roughly sent the computer screen clattering from the table and took my nail clippers from my pocket. A spider does not spin a web to trap itself in – not while it is dicing with death.

Carefully removing the papers from the briefcase, I accessed the wires which controlled the bomb. The timer showed that 10-seconds were left. Which left me with a familiar conundrum – which wire to cut? Red? Blue? 9-seconds. This was a worse colour-induced headache than the screensaver. 8-seconds.

Mauve? Turquoise? 7-seconds. An image of Biscuit, my first pony, jumped into my mind. 6-seconds. His photo in my hall hangs against a turquoise backdrop. I cut the turquoise wire. The timer halted at 5-seconds. As Master G may have said, a briefcase is not evil of itself, nor good. Rather, it is how we use it that makes the difference.

Thank you, Biscuit, wherever you are.

COVER-UP

I left the hotel by a side door and slipped behind the wheel of my car, to escape yet more unwanted, hampering publicity, courtesy of Bane’s webcam fetish. Bane. That rogue member of the PR community. Always several steps ahead of me. Worse than that, he had set traps which I had blithely walked in to.

As I drove west along London’s Oxford Street, towards Knightsbridge and the Major’s house, a scheme began to form in my mind. A scheme which offered a sure-fire way to launch a return salvo at Bane’s big head. To lure him into troubled waters, fire a few torpedoes of my own, and capsize his titanic ego.

Firstly though, I would pick a wig with a new colour and cut. After all, I am a professional.

To be continued...