Back To The Future, Part II

Chapter Twelve

Marty felt something cold pressed to his forehead. He groaned and opened his eyes. It was dark in here, the only light coming from a picture wi

ndow that looked out on a dull grey sky.

He was lying on a bed, and he could see the outline of a woman standing next to him. Even in the dim light, he thought he recognised her.

‘Mom?’ he called softly. ‘Is that you?’

Cool fingers patted the back of his palm.

‘Ssshh,’ his mother replied. ‘Just relax, Marty. You’ve been asleep for almost two hours.’

Asleep? He had been asleep?

‘Ohh,’ he moaned, ‘what a horrible nightmare - it was terrible.’

‘Well,’ his mother replied gently, ‘you’re safe and sound now.’

She was right, too. Marty felt really relaxed for the first time since - well, since before he’d ever seen Doc Brown’s time machine. He could feel his eyes sliding closed.

‘Back home,’ his mother continued cheerily, ‘on the good old twenty-seventh floor.’

Marty’s eyes snapped opened.

Twenty-seventh floor?

Marty sat up. This wasn’t home. Even in the semi-darkness, he could see he was in a big room cluttered with stuff - a room he’d never seen before. And the bed was round. Everything had changed.

The nightmare wasn’t over.

It got worse when his mother sat down next to the bed and turned on the light.

His mother had changed, too.

Marty didn’t know what was more shocking - the curly wig; the heavy makeup and false eyelashes; the enormous earrings, necklace, bracelets and rings, all glittering with diamonds; or the spangled, low-cut evening gown. Boy, his mother had changed! The way she was done up now, she looked like some barmaid, or the wife of some evangelist he’d seen on TV.

Actually, he could see what change was most dramatic. It made him embarrassed to even notice it - his own mother! She seemed to have had some surgery done to the upper area of - especially in that tight dress, her torso was - well, there was no other way to put it - her cleavage was certainly - ample.

She was staring at him as if she expected him to say something.

‘Mom!’ he managed at last. ‘You’re so - so - uh -big!’

Marty frowned. That wasn’t what he wanted to say. But what could he say?

His mother smiled at him reassuringly, as if her son could never say anything wrong. She opened a cigarette case encrusted with diamonds, then picked up a cigarette between two deep red, sculpted nails, and fitted it into a diamond-inlaid cigarette holder. Plac^ the mouthpiece of the holder between her deep red lips, she lit the cigarette with a solid gold lighter, an inhaled as if the smoke was the breath of life.

She looked over at her son again.

‘Everything’s going to be fine, Marty.’She raised one overplucked eyebrow. ‘Are you hungry? We can call room service -’

Marty swung his legs off the bed. This whole room was as overdecorated as his mother. The wallpaper was inlaid with golden thread. The paintings were set in heavy wooden frames painted in gold leaf. Golden tinted chandeliers hung from the ceiling.

He looked out the window, past the gold-braided drapes. There, twenty-seven floors below, he could see the twinkling lights of Hill Valley and, beyond that, the ring of factories, with a hundred smokestacks belching forth thick, black smoke that blotted out the stars. He must be on the very top floor of Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise.

But why was the Paradise here? How did a place like this end up in Hill Valley, run by Biff Tannen, of all people? A nice place like Hill Valley, ending up like this - Marty felt a coldness deep inside, like an ice cube in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘I forgot,’ his mother jumped in, filling the void left by his silence. She waved happily at their surroundings with her manicured nails. 'You haven't seen the penthouse since we redecorated!’