Imp.

Waking suddenly with the feeling that his living breath is being sucked out of his lungs. Murdoc snaps his eyes open and for half a second, almost expects to see something horrible sitting on his chest with a maniacal grin spread wide over its face. Blinking back the blurred fog of sleep he cranes his neck and checks the corners of the room. Then with the fading image of Henry Fuseli's Nightmare slipping back into the depths of his mind. He sits up and shivers when he realises what it was that had more than likely woken him. His teeth begin to chatter and his breath fogs before his face. Condensation has built up on the inside of the windows, trickling down into little pools that follow the window frame until it finds a gap that it can escape into. A sure sign that either it or perhaps the wall isn't entirely square. It hadn't taken the other band members long to notice the odd bits of shoddy workmanship around the place.

Noodle has been seeking the cause of a rather nasty damp smell in her bedroom since she got to the Wobble street house. So far she's tracked it to a spot in the floor and if it wasn't for the bassist confiscating the crowbar, she would have torn it up to track it further. Usually the first person to be there breaking something. Why he put a stop to her investigation intrigued her. But not long later her attention was drawn elsewhere and she quickly forgot about it. Until she went to bed that night and was once again fixated on what was causing the odour.

Russel has been rather irritated by the rattling of the window in his room. He had temporarily fixed it by shoving a piece of thick cardboard between the glass and the wooden frame. Only to find that the frame was rotten, which is what had caused the rattle in the first place. To compensate it, he had inserted a thicker piece. Unfortunately instead of solving the problem it had instead exacerbated it. Which means that now the rattle has been joined by the sound of wind whistling past the hole that he had inadvertently made.

2D has had noise problems too. Every now and then he has heard the sound of scratching and gnawing in the walls and on two occasions had thrown a boot at it to make it stop. At first he had assumed that it was mice. Except that a few times the noise had been so loud that he had changed that assumption to rats. Recently he has had begun to think that perhaps he is still wrong. Because the persistent scratching, chewing and scuffling sounds are so loud, that if it does happen to be rats then in his opinion they must be the biggest rats in the whole world. In fact he'd mentioned to Noodle that if it turned out to be an Alsatian that had accidentally become stuck in the wall, he wouldn't be that surprised. Especially when his lights flicker on and off, because they are chewing on the wires.

Adding to the discomfort, as if being evicted wasn't already bad enough, the heater in the lounge room where he had fallen asleep appears to have broken down. A quick look at the clock on the wall reveals that it has just gone 2am. So gathering up the throw from the back of the sofa and wrapping it around himself, Murdoc takes a quick swig of rum then stands and walks over to the radiator, hoping it just needs a little adjusting to get going again.

“Brr it's cold,” Stuart's voice says from the stairwell outside the room. Closing his eyes and huffing out slowly in quiet frustration, the bassist hopes that he had imagined that and continues examining the unit. Not seeing anything that appears out of place, he gives it a swift kick to see if that will make a difference. “Is that you Muds?” Poking his head into the room, Stuart sees the older man and makes his way over to him.

“Bloody thing,” Murdoc mumbles, completely ignoring the singer and his question.

“Why is it cold?” Stuart asks, rubbing his arms with his hand and pulling the blanket that he has wrapped around himself tighter. He flinches back a little when Murdoc kicks the radiator again. “Is it broken?”

“No, I'm kicking it for the sheer fun of it, you nob,” Murdoc answers, bending over and studying the controls, he twists the knob and pushes a few buttons, before tapping and slapping the pipes.

“Why is it cold?” Noodle asks as she steps into the room. Groaning and bowing his head as if in pain, Murdoc slowly shakes his head.

“It's not cold. You're just so toasty and warm that you've blown a fuse and think that you're cold,” he growls at her. She sucks her teeth in annoyance and pulls her duvet tighter around her shoulders. Not having any luck and not sure what to do to get it started again, Murdoc gives the radiator one more kick with his foot.

“Stop doing that. That is probably why it is broken,” Noodle snarls at him.

“Hey! I only started kicking it after it stopped working. But if you're such an expert...” He steps back and sweeps his hands towards the appliance. “...please feel free to show me how to get it going again.”

“Yo! Why is it snowing in my room?” Russel's voice booms from the doorway. Noodle and 2D turn and look back at him, while a building ball of anger builds inside the bassist. Doing his best not to explode, by clenching every muscle in his tired body as tightly as he can, until he starts shaking with the effort. Murdoc mutters bitterly to himself.

“Because I got bored of the London atmos' and had the whole house transported to the Himalayas, on the back of a flat bed truck. While you slept,” he snarls viciously at the drummer. Then shoving his way past them all he leaves the room. Coming to a stop beside Noodle, Russel looks at the young woman blankly for a moment.

“You know odd as it seems, I kind of believe that,” he says to her, stabbing a thumb over his shoulder in Murdoc's direction. Looking back at the doorway while she thinks about it, Noodle gently nods then looks back at the radiator.

“It is in a way the kind of thing that Murdoc would do to annoy people,” she agrees. They look at each other then suddenly smirk and snigger in amusement at that. Slowly rolling his head on his shoulders as he gazes up at the ceiling and around the room, with his mouth agape. Stuart tries to picture how such a thing could occur. Without much success.

“It would have to be a really big truck?” he mumbles to himself. Tipping his head slightly to his shoulder and scratching the back of his head. He then suddenly realises that he doesn't understand it at all. “How would they get it up there anyway?” he questions loudly.

“With a jack,” Murdoc grunts when he steps back in the room, carrying a hammer. “A really big one,” he adds and comes to a stop by the broken appliance, drawing the hammer back and ready to beat the radiator into submission.

“No!” the other three band members yelp and dive at him, tackling the bassist to the ground.

“Get off me you tossers!” Murdoc snarls, kicking and hitting out at the others, who are trying to hold him down and get the hammer away from the older man. “If I hit it in just the right place it'll start working again!”

“You can't hit it with that man!” Russel snarls back, squeezing his thick arms around Murdoc's chest to stop him from waving the hammer around, while Noodle tries to pries the tool from the bassist's hand.

“I'm sick of you trying to tell me what I can and can't do,” the older man snarls and opening his jaws wide he bites Russel hard on the arm.

“Dammit! Stop biting me!”

--------------------------------------------------------------

With the bassist now firmly tied and gagged to a dining chair, Noodle drapes a blanket around him then leaves the room, switching off the light as she goes. Glaring at the doorway and breathing heavily through his gag, Murdoc explodes in a flurry of movement. Determined to escape his predicament, so that he can storm into each of their rooms and tell them off for treating him this way. Now snuggled in their beds, Russel wrapped up in a couple of thick blankets and Noodle and 2D curled in their duvets with a space heater glowing softly at the foot of their beds. They quickly fall back to sleep and forget about the bassist. Whatever had caused the problem, they're certain it can wait until morning.

Back in the lounge room, Murdoc has started rocking the chair from side to side, slowly building momentum while trying to at least get an arm free. Just as he begins to feel the rope around his wrists loosening, his rocking of the chair reaches the tipping point and before he can stop it he realises that he's falling onto his side. Squeezing his eyes shut he braces for impact, landing with a thump and now trapped in an even more awkward position than before. Craning his neck and trying to look for a way out of this, he becomes even more frustrated and waggles his feet and jerks his body even more erratically than before.

A little past four in the morning, the house has gone quiet again. Having exhausted himself with his efforts and crushed into the corner of the room, facing the wall like a naughty child. Murdoc has fallen asleep, still tied securely to the chair. On the opposite side of the room in the dark, a scratching can be heard close to the floor, followed by the tearing and splintering of wood. Moments later the click clack of clawed feet scurrying over the linoleum, moving in the shadows and closer and closer to the sleeping bassist. He sleeps on, perfectly unaware of what is creeping up to him. The light pouring in through the window falls upon the creature. Bloated with stumpy squat legs and standing no higher than a small child. It stops at the man's back and looks around the room, then certain they're alone it sniffs him with its piggish snout. Easing up onto his hip it leans down over him, staring at the side of his face and breathing in deeply when Murdoc breathes out. Its golden eyes glow brightly and it smiles as though satisfied. Relaxing itself into the hollow between his hip and his ribcage, breathing in what little may be left of the older man's life.


The End.