For the second time in two days, Dan was late. Although technically he wasn’t late yet, but the distance he had to travel and the time he had to get there meant that he knew he would be late. So Dan ran. Fast. As fast as his tired out legs could take him. He looked at the card in his hand as he did so, as if looking again would make the address closer, but he knew that it was in the East end. Susie’s flat was way over in the West end, and it would probably take him well over an hour to get there, even if he kept up his speed. He had had a couple of hours to think about his life, and think about his choices whilst at Susie’s place, and he truly did want her to help him. But he had figured that if he was going to give up karaoke for good, he should probably just have one last hit, just to see him off. That was all he needed. Just one more. Then he would never take any more. No more karaoke, no more midgets, no more sleeping in the street. He would get his life back. But let’s not be hasty here, first things first, one last hit.

Buy the time he reached the right address, the rain was lashing down hard. He was soaked, but frankly, didn’t really care. Dan looked at the address one more time. It was the same address that it had been for the last eighteen hours, the same address that he had memorised in the early stages of that time. Number ‘11a’. Strangely, however, Dan couldn’t find ‘11a’. Number eleven was there, that was fine, and number thirteen too. Even number nine made an appearance. He couldn’t work it out. Then Dan looked at the floor, and noticed a large drainage grate on the floor.

You can’t be serious, he thought, smirking. It reminded him of a certain cartoon involving turtles and an oversized rat. The grate looked like a tight fit, and at first there seemed like no obvious way of opening it, so, ever the resourceful one, quickly bent off a damaged metal fence post. With the right application of leverage, he soon had the grate lifted off, and didn’t hesitate to jump down inside.

At least, he would have ended up inside if he didn’t get stuck halfway down.

Wedged at the hip, with the rain still thundering down on top of him, Dan figured that now would be a god time to reconsider his situation. Add to that the fact that he was in a drain, and the rain had a tendency to funnel towards him, meaning that all the parts of him that had managed to hold off the rain, were now well and truly drenched as well. Dan knew that at times like this there was only one form of action that he could call for.

"Shit! Fuck! Bugger! Crap! Bastard! Shit! Shit! Shit!" he shouted.

A moment later, Dan heard a noise coming from somewhere just behind him. The sound of a door opening, then the sound of a voice came from the doorway.

"You Dan?" asked the voice

"Er Yeah" he replied. Dan was making several efforts to turn his head back and to the left, but couldn’t actually see who was talking.

"When you’ve got yourself sorted, you might want to come this way. Don’t take too long" said the voice. Dan could have sworn he heard the voice smiling.

Much effort ensued on Dan’s part to get himself out of the drain, but he eventually made it, and could finally look round to the source of the voice. Yet the source had gone. In it’s place, down a few steps, was a small door, about four foot high. The door barely made a foot above the pavement level, and in fact looked very similar to the walls either side, as though it was created to be hidden from an average persons view. Dan opened the door, and due to it’s diminutive size, crawled in.

"Well, look who’s come crawling back" remarked the same voice that had spoken to him earlier. The voice belonged unsurprisingly to a midget. Dan recognized him as one of the two midgets that entered the toilet to listen to him last night.

"Erm, I don’t understand …." Started a puzzled Dan, "What do you mean back? This is the first time I’ve been here."

The little person looked at him slightly speechless. His name was Rab, and his entire job was to guard the door. It wasn’t the most satisfying of jobs, and Rab liked to keep himself entertained by ridiculing everyone that came in. Unfortunately after doing this for several years, his jokes had run a bit thin, and most of them involved some form of crawling.

"Yeah, but you’re back from like, the other night and …" started Rab

Dan stood up, the hallway he was in was much larger than the door would suggest. The entire place seemed to be perfectly normal proportions inside. Looking back at the door, Dan could see a vague outline of a standard, eight foot, Glasgow tenement doorway. It had simply been boarded up, plastered over and a new miniture door put in it’s place. The new door had several large bolts and locks on it, and had been painted a rather flamboyant yet tacky gold colour on the inside.

"You know using stupid pun jokes make you no better than the average embarrassing Dad." remarked Dan dryly

"What, no! … shit. Maybe you’re right. Get the fuck out of here, Sylvester is waiting. Head down the corridor it’s the room at the end" replied Rab. He had obviously been shaken by Dan’s comments, and figured that he should probably try to work out something a bit more inventive next time someone came in.

Dan moved down the corridor and knocked on the door at the end.

"Come in" shouted the voice of Sylvester, and so Dan entered the door.

Sylvester sat at the head of a large room, on a handmade throne. It had all the look of a traditional regal style throne, except that if someone would happen to look closely, they would notice that it was actually made up of gold painted chip-board, and covered in felt from a snooker table. The rest of the room had the same feeling. At first glance a casual observer may be forgiven for thinking that it was as grand as the very grandest of Masonic lodges. Yet upon closer inspection, the entire room would look like a botched job thrown together by amateurs. This is probably because it was. Two rows of large pillars ran from the doorway up to the throne, they too were painted gold, only somebody had wrapped corrugated iron around them first to give them a rippled effect. A long red carpet stretched along the stone floor, only the stone was actually a stone-effect laminate flooring bought in any typical flooring shop. The walls were smartly lined with grand paintings of various people, some diminutive, framed in golden frames. They were, however, only large print outs from a home computer, and the frames were painted directly onto the walls.

In one corner a tall skinny man with red hair was on his knees feverishly painting the skirting board. The man’s skin appeared to have been sucked in to reveal his bones and muscles leaving a certain look of malnutrition about him. Dan felt a feeling of fear, or nervousness exuded from his aura. Dark sunken wide eyes, gritted teeth and messed up hair all added to Dan’s unease about this character. Next to the man stood another diminutive man, wearing a suit and shades, with an obvious gun tucked into his belt.

Dan carried on walking down the room toward Sylvester, who was happily immersed in a magazine. Giggles kept spouting from his mouth now and again, and he didn’t seem to even notice Dan reach the desk. Dan let out an attention grabbing cough, Sylvester jumped and quickly threw his magazine to one side. His smiling. Giggling face evaporated away, and became replaced with a stern and serious one.

"Dan, welcome, I’ve been expecting you." He stated

"Cheers, I wasn’t sure if was going to come back to be honest."

"I see you’ve managed to clean yourself up a bit, but you look a bit wet, take off your coat and have a seat"

Dan did as he was told.

"So, what is it…" Sylvester paused, "That I can do for you, Dan?"

"I have to have some more karaoke. The two hit’s you gave me last night, they only lasted until lunch time. I’m going to give it up but I just need one more to…"

"Settle down Dan, we can provide you with what you need," replied Sylvester calmly, "But naturally like any business transaction, there is a cost."

"I know, and it’s fine, I’ll do that again, I’d be happy to…"

Sylvester motioned with his hands, suggesting to Dan to slow down.

"Dan, Dan, Dan, don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything like that tonight. It was merely a test, to make sure you are made of the right stuff. As payment for your karaoke tonight, I have a little job for you."

"A job? What like an errand?"

"Of sorts, yes. But let’s not worry about that yet." Sylvester smiled, "First, let’s give you what you came for. "

He leaned forward and pressed an intercom button on his desk

"Rab, bring in the machine." Then he turned to the other little person in the corner, "Help him out Paddy." Paddy left the room, leaving the skinny man on his own.

Dan felt uncertain about all this. He looked around the room and knew that something wasn’t right. He had no idea what this job was going to be, why everybody in the gang was so small, what the skinny worker was doing on the corner or why this room looked like something out of an amateur B-movie. Everything felt wrong, and Dan suddenly got the feeling that making a deal with this gang was a bad idea. He had to get out of there, and quickly.

"I’ve, erm, changed…" started Dan. He was quickly interrupted, however, by the opening of the doors behind him. The two little people, Rab and Paddy wheeled in the same karaoke machine that Dan had used the previous night. Suddenly it wasn’t quite so easy to walk away. Without realising it Dan’s mouth began to hang open, and drool dribbled down it’s right side. Transfixed, Dan could do nothing more than open his eyes wide and stare. The spell was only broken when the first globule of drool left his chin and landed on his knee.

"Sorry, Dan, were you saying something?" Sylvester was obviously hiding a knowing smirk, obvious to everyone except the spellbound Dan that is.

"No no, it looks like we have ourselves a deal. Where do I sign?"

"No need to sign anything Dan, I’m a man of my word, as I’m sure you are to. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, remember Dan? Are you happy with the same deal? You can have two hits, to a decent audience, in return for a little job? How does that sound Dan?"

Yet Dan wasn’t even listening. He had already ran over to the karaoke machine, and spent his time scanning through the songs to pick a couple of hits. He wanted to choose a couple of unusual entries, as on a night like this, he felt he could afford to experiment a little. With that in mind, he picked ‘The Kinks - You really got me’ and the ‘Beatles - Help’

"I’m ready. Where’s my audience?" he demanded. Already a look of fierce determination appeared in Dan’s face. His eye’s were narrowed, and he was ready for his hit. Nothing was going to stop him.

"No problem Dan."

Again, Sylvester called into the intercom,

"Come in, he’s ready. Bring everyone that’s not asleep."

Moments later the room had filled with around twenty people. Around eight of them were wearing laboratory coats, and at least three of those had what could only be small blood stains over them. There were several other men wearing black suits, just like Rab, Paddy and Sylvester, but four people had a bit of a different, scruffier look to them. One of them was the skinny man from the corner, and each of the other people had some sort of quirky trait to them, a twitch here, a bizarre haircut there. Nothing major, but just enough to make them look like a bunch of misfits. They all had a series of scars scattered over the visible parts of their bodies, and most had a wild look of nervousness about them. Two of them, a short fat man and a tall curvaceous blond woman, looked like they were about to explode with excitement. The other two, a stocky, average built man and the skinny man with red hair, looked like they were about to break down and cry. Yet it seemed fairly obvious that all four were kept under control by the men in suits, with each scruffy, quirky character having a suit stood right behind them. If Dan hadn’t had a microphone in his hand, he would have possibly wondered exactly what it was they were all doing here, but his mind was only focused on one thing, and that was about to start.

And so Dan began to sing. Yet the fix he desired seemed to be a long time coming. Perhaps it was the mixture of his slight unease about his surroundings, and the fact he had built up a tolerance to it, having just taken a couple of hits the night before. But the hit did come, and as usual, it felt so good.

The reaction that he got from the crowd was one of the strangest sights he had ever seen. The two men that looked like they were about to cry before he had started doing just that, collapsing to the floor, shaking their heads and screaming in pain. They began doing this halfway through his first song, and with ever more dramatic moans as his set went on. By the time he had finished these two were both curled up in the fetus position. Contrary to this the suits, as Dan liked to call them, although applauding loudly, kept stern, expressionless faces throughout. Within moments the fat man and blond woman started racing towards Dan, shouting about it being their turns next. They simultaneously grabbed the microphone out of Dan’s hand and turned on each other in a fit of rage. The suits in charge of these two quickly ran forwards, and whacked them across the head with the back of their guns. The blond and the fat man quickly dropped to the floor in unconscious lumps. Sylvester looked over at the crowd.

"Get them out of here." he said

All four of the misfits were unceremoniously dragged out of the room. Everybody else carried on applauding as though nothing had happened. None of this mattered, however, as Dan’s adrenaline from the hits was intense.

As the applause died down, everybody began to leave. Sylvester then turned to Dan.

"Sorry about that Dan, good help is so hard to find. Anyway, I’ve kept my end of the bargain, Dan. Now you have to keep yours."

‘That’s fine. Will it take long? It’s just I have to get back and catch up with someone’

‘Oh, Dan, the job I have for you isn’t to start now.’ And on that, Sylvester gave a subtle nod to Paddy and Rab, who were still stood at the side. Dan didn’t even notice.

‘Really? Does that mean I can go?’

Before he knew what was going on, Dan felt a sharp pain in his arm. Looking down, he saw that Paddy had just injected him with something.

"Hey, what the?" he said. But the damage was done. A grinning face of Sylvester was the last image in his mind before everything turned to black.