A Note From The Author…
Universal has announced that Johnny Depp will star in the remake of the H.G. Wells classic, The Invisible Man, slated for 2018. As a huge H.G. Wells fan and self-proclaimed Depphead, I couldn’t wait until next year, so I’ve rewritten the classic novel with Depp as the lead. Like the original text, this story will be serialized over the next few months.
The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from the nearby Planet Hollywood, and carrying a little black portmanteau with the text Public Enemies 2009 Official Crew Case printed on the side in his thickly gloved hand and even thicklier braceleted leather-cuffed wrist.
He was wrapped up from the top of his stylish fedora to the bottom of his black leather cowboy boots, and the brim of his hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his many scarves, tiger tooth necklace, Che Guevara necklace, Ganesh necklace, and a rosary draped around his neck, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. Did he have jeans on? Check. Were they baggy? Check. Ripped? Check. Comfy looking? Double check. He staggered into the Ritz-Carlton, more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. “A fire,” he mumbled/cried, “in the name of Keith Richard’s ghost! A room and a fire and a $1400 glass of red wine!” He stamped and shook the snow from off himself, and followed hotel manager Mrs. Hall into the lobby to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple of gold doubloons flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the Ritz.
Mrs. Hall examined the gold coins. She gave them a quick bite to check their worth. They were real, but a look of confusion fell upon her when she realized the face engraved on each coin was Captain Jack Sparrow from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean film and amusement park franchise.
Mrs. Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him an expensive glass of wine. A guest to stop at Iping in the wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no “cry-baby” about the room rate, and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune. As soon as the wine was poured and the cheese pairings were cut, and Millie, her disheartened maid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and silverware into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost éclat.
Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his fedora and coat and scarves and tiger tooth necklace and Che Guevara necklace and Ganesh necklace and a rosary as a necklace, standing with his back to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard. His gloved hands were clasped behind him, metal and beaded bracelets twinkling in the light of the fire, and he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed that the melting snow that still sprinkled his shoulders dripped upon her carpet. “Can I take your fedora and coat and scarves and necklaces and rosary, sir?” she said, “and give them a good dry in the kitchen?”
“No,” he mumbled without turning.
She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her question.
He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. “I prefer to keep them on,” he mumbled with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore big blue-tinted Ray-Bans®, and had a few loose dreadlocks peeking out from under the bandages and fedora over his popped up coat-collar that completely hid his cheeks and face.
“Very well, sir,” she said. “As you like. In a bit the room will be warmer. And it will have a color TV. We have all the movie channels, they come complimentary with the room. Although…” Mrs. Hall looked at Millie whose face became saddened in a way like she’d just received the gravest of news. Millie rushed back into the kitchen.
He made no answer, and had turned his face away from her again, and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like a man awaiting the call of “Action!” his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping fedora-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. A couple of his cool dreads popping out. She put down the wine and cheese and charcuterie ( on a tray that’s kinda like a mini-cutting board to give it more of a rustic feel), with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him, “Your lunch is served, sir.”
“Thank you,” he mumbled at the same time, and did not stir until she was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table with a certain eager quickness. The rattling of his jewelry could be heard all the way in the kitchen.
As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of duck liver being rapidly added to tiny goat curd rye crisps. Mrs. Hall gave Millie a few verbal stabs for her excessive slowness. She had prepared the wine and charcuterie, laid the table, and done everything, while Millie (still depressed) had only succeeded in forgetting the mustard for the sausage rolls. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hall. I’m still just so out of it because of… well, you know…” whined Millie.
Mrs. Hall filled the mustard pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour.
She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved quickly, rattling like a palette of Tic Tacs, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she noticed the overcoat and fedora had been taken off and put over a chair in front of the fire, and a pair of wet yet very cool black cowboy boots threatened rust to her steel fender. She went to these things resolutely. “I suppose I may have them to dry now,” she said in a voice that brooked no denial.
“Leave the fedora,” mumbled her visitor, in a muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting and looking at her.
For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.
He held one of his many colorful bandanas over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. Also he mumbled a lot. But it was not that which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue Ray-Bans® was covered by a white bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright, pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. He wore a burgundy velvet jacket with a high, linen-lined collar turned up about his neck. The thick black dreadlocks, escaping as it could below and between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance conceivable. It was as if he was a pirate that decided to wrap himself completely with bandages, then dressed like Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler cira 2004’s Honkin A Bobo tour. This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a moment she was rigid.
He did not remove the bandana, but remained holding it, as she saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his inscrutable blue Ray-Bans®. “Leave the fedora,” he mumbled, mumbling very distinctly through the multicolored scarf.
Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. “I didn’t know, sir,” she began, “that — “ and she stopped embarrassed.
“Thank you,” he mumbled drily, glancing from her to the door and then at her again.
“I’ll have them nicely dried, sir, at once,” she said, and carried his hip clothes out of the room. She glanced at his white-swathed head and blue shades again as she was going out of the door; but his bandana was still in front of his face. She shivered a little as she closed the door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise and perplexity. “Sweet Benny and Joon,” she whispered. She went quite softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what she was messing about with now, when she got there.
The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his funky bandana, and resumed his meal. He took a mouthful of emulsified sausage, terrine, and roulade, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another mouthful, taking a bandana in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier air to the table and his meats, breads, cheeses, and wines.
“The poor soul’s had an accident or an op’ration or somethin’,” said Mrs. Hall. “What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!”
She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended the traveller’s coat upon this. “And those stylish sun glasses! Why, he looked more like Barnabas Collins from the most recent Dark Shadows reboot than a regular man!”
“Never saw it.” Millie confessed.
“Me neither! But ya’ll get the reference, right?” Mrs. Hall shot back. Millie faintly nodded and retreated back to her depressing thoughts. She hung his dripping wet scarves on a corner of the horse. “This is only a few of many! He’s holding several other equally funky scarves over his mouth all the time. Mumblin’ through it! … Perhaps his mouth was hurt too — maybe.”
She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. “Bless my soul alive!” she said, going off at a tangent; “Ain’t you done them galantines yet, Millie?”
When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger’s lunch, her idea that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he had just ripped a huge hit off his vape pen, strawberry scents wafting through the room, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened the several Mister Freedom® brand vintage boro ties he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to put the mouthpiece to his lips. He sat in the corner with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red animation to his big stylish shades they had lacked hitherto.
“I have some luggage,” he mumbled, “at Planet Hollywood,” and he asked her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged head quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation. “To-morrow?” he mumbled. “There is no speedier delivery?” and seemed quite disappointed when she answered, as if he was used to always getting his way, like a huge international movie star who also dabbled in music. “No.” Was she quite sure? No man with an Escalade who would go over?
Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a conversation. “It’s a steep road by the down, sir,” she said in answer to the question about an Escalade; and then, snatching at an opening, said, “there was a horrible accident just a few days ago that left us a bit rattled. See, our previous coachman died in an accident when he lost control and drove off a cliff. He was killed. A gentleman also killed, besides our coachman. Accidents, sir, happen in a moment, don’t they? Few days before, the coachman, Millie’s husband, had fallen into a deep sadness. You see, we provide our guests and on-site staff with free HBO, as a special gift, because you know, who doesn’t love movies! But…” Mrs. Hall’s tone became grim.
“Yes?” The stranger inquired through his pre-distressed boro tie, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable Ray-Bans®.
“HBO showed only one movie, sir. Over and over. A dreadful film called Mortdecai, starring Johnny Depp. Have you seen it?” The visitor visibly tensed.
“Well, this film, Mortdecai, was repeating throughout the hotel and in the staff quarters day and night, day and night, like some sort of incessant devil’s loop! Each viewing more dreadful than the last. Man alive it was a living nightmare! Our staff, especially our coachman, became consumed with how bad it was, especially Johnny Depp’s horrendous performance. It sent our coachman into a spiral of depression and self-loathing.”
Mrs. Hall struggled to speak, her voice broken. “His last words to his beloved wife, Millie, were, ‘How could a God allow such a terrible movie to exist?’ Soon after he took the gentleman into town and well…” Mrs. Hall trailed off.
The visitor stood there, giving Mrs. Hall a moment to collect herself. “I can quite understand that,” mumbled the visitor.
“Can you? Have you seen Mortdecai? Let alone dozens of times? We wanted to rip, with our bare hands, the cable wires from the building! The movie was like a virus that kept spreading from room to room. Some of our guests became enraged at the film and Johnny Depp himself — Say! You kind of dress like him.”
The visitor laughed abruptly, nervously, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite and kill in his mouth. “Who me? Thanks I guess. The man is pretty stylish.” he mumbled.
“No. He is not. And it’s no laughing matter to us. Millie’s husband, our beloved coachman, and a gentleman with a family are now dead. And it’s because of that damn Johnny Depp and his damned to hell Mortdecai movie. We here at the Ritz-Carlton in Iping, West Sussex all wish a pox on him and his family — “
“Will you get me some vape pen batteries?” mumble-shouted the visitor, quite abruptly. “My vape pen just went out.”
Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him, after telling him the sorrow fallen on her and her staff. She gasped at him for a moment, and remembered the two vape pens Charlie Sheen’s entourage left in one of the rooms last summer. She went to fetch the pens.
“Thanks,” he mumbled concisely, and turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was altogether too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the topic of Mortdecai and Johnny Depp. But his snubbing way had irritated her, and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.
The visitor remained in the parlour until four o’clock, without giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part he was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the growing darkness vaping in the firelight — perhaps dozing.
Once or twice a curious listener might have heard a jingle jangle thanks to his many bracelets and chains and tiger tooth necklace and Che Guevara necklace and Ganesh necklace and boro ties and a rosary as a necklace, and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room. He seemed to be talking to himself. Or perhaps going over lines for a performance? Then the armchair creaked as he sat down again. Occasionally he would stand at the window, watching the sun slowly set.
What no one in the Ritz-Carlton had noticed, not even Mrs. Hall or Millie, was the embroidered text on the back of his burgundy velvet jacket which read: SOPHISTICATION HAS A NAME. MORTDECAI. JANUARY 23