by Rhys Hughes
‘And the end for humanzees!’ wailed Fabalo.
His son sighed. ‘I don’t know what can be done about it. Luckily, I’m an apedog, so not affected by the gas. And I have been sleeping around a lot since I reached puberty, impregnating women. Hey, maybe my task is to be the biological father of the coming race? Maybe everyone born after 1938, including anyone out there reading these memoirs of the journalist Lloyd Griffiths, is part apedog?’
‘Indeed. There’s your incident for you!’
‘Oh yes, so it is. Right under my very nose! Typical.’
The Final Chapter
This is the final chapter of the book I’m writing. Don’t be deceived by any that come after; they aren’t official. Are you enjoying my memoirs so far? I appreciate your company, you know. Don’t doubt that for a minute. You are exactly the kind of reader that an author dreams about; attractive and elegant, as well as tolerant and wise. Take a look at yourself in the mirror right now. Outstanding, don’t you think?
There was another rustle in the abused undergrowth …
Bandits on horseback appeared!
The leader was a girl with fictional qualities that happen to be real too. Very rare it happens that way round …
Her long, wavy black hair streamed in the breeze and her eyes glittered in the moonlight, even though the moon hadn’t risen yet; I didn’t miss the fact that she held a musket in one hand, a primitive matchlock model. She was Luísa Ferreira, the Bandit Queen.
‘I remember you. You haven’t aged a day! Have you gone for monkey gland treatment also?’ I gasped.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m just naturally youthful.’
‘Welcome to Humanzeeville!’
‘Thank you. But my followers are here on business, not pleasure. Take a look at them. Recognise anyone?’
I peered intently at the rogues and rascals in their silks, leathers, brass armour and embroidered shirts. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘For that is your cook, João Seixas, the former lawyer; and over there is Pedro Marques, a fellow with wavy hair that’s the colour of the moon. Maybe his hair is the source of the moonlight that makes your eyes glitter. See how good my memory is after more than two decades?’
‘I wasn’t referring to them,’ she said.
‘Who then, Dona Luísa?’
‘This person here, Mr Jason Rolfe. We have been looking for you on his behalf for a long time. He has some unfinished killing to do with you. We made a lance for him, following his specifications exactly: it happens to be the longest lance in the world.’
I blinked and regarded it.
‘Yes, it’s so long that it actually goes right round the world. Might that not be something of a hindrance rather than an advantage?’ I wondered, but Mr Rolfe scowled and snapped:
‘Leave details like that to me. You’ve had this coming for ages, Lloyd Griffiths! Prepare to be perforated!’
And he jabbed forwards with his weapon.
But the lance was so long that it truly did circle the planet; the point of it was directly behind his buttocks.
And when he thrust with it, he jabbed his own posterior.
He yelped and ran forward …
As he ran, he swung his arms, as runners tend to do.
So the arm that cradled the lance swung forward and the point jabbed him again. He ran another step. Ouch!
Once started, the cycle was self-propagating.
Prompted by the jabs, he accelerated his pace. The jabs, therefore, poked him harder, stimulating him to even greater speed. Off into the jungle he went, shouting with rage and pain.
He had just invented the pulsejab engine!
And so began his second circumnavigation of the globe, this time on foot. A remarkable achievement …
We watched him depart into the annals of history; or if not into those annals, then some alternative annals.
I said to Luísa Ferreira, ‘Why not settle down here? The opportunities are probably just as good as back in Portugal. And why not marry me? I can see you are every man’s dream girl. I know I’m a zombie midget; but you won’t find a finer journalist anywhere. And even if you do, that’s not the point. I’m fully domesticated.’
‘Thanks for the offer; but no thanks,’ she said.
She rode away on her unicorn.
I went back to Wales.
The Book Group
The tale was done. The members of the book group mostly sat in a circle on the floor, propped up by cushions, and sipped their red wine languidly. One of the more forceful members stood and paced the room. He held a copy of this book in a white fist. His beard bristled. His spectacles caught the light of the tasteful lamp.
‘I’m just not convinced at all,’ he muttered.
One of the other members said, ‘Certainly it’s an unconventional kind of novel. It begins in a fairly sober, serious tone, then it quickly gets more absurd. The three parts have different flavours. I can’t decide if they make a sum greater than each section.’
‘But is it actually a novel? Or does Lloyd Griffiths truly exist? Maybe these really are his memoirs?’ interrupted a man who wore a thick turban; but the man with the beard sneered.
‘That’s just a conceit; and a bad one at that!’
Someone else said, ‘It contains too many errors for it to be factual; for example, the character called “Hubengo Gordbloaton” was originally two men in a large suit, but when Distanto turns him into a balloon, Hubengo is treated like a single entity with one communal nether region that can be used as an access hatch. If the tale were genuine, such an error could never occur. To my mind, it’s lazy fiction—’
‘Not so! Not so!’ objected a man with a Czech accent. ‘If this book is a work of imagination, an editor would have ensured such discrepancies were removed. The discrepancies remain. As far as I’m concerned, that is evidence that the story is authentic.’
‘Nonsense! The Faraway Brothers never existed, I’m sure of that. Do any photographs exist of the triple-headed creature they became? Apart from this account, is there a single reliable eyewitness report of such an anomaly roaming the world; and we’re expected to believe it helped out in the war effort! It’s a paltry joke!’
‘Yes, the whole thing is so farfetched I’m amazed anyone here could take it seriously for an instant …’
‘Why did we choose this title for our book group?’
‘Good question! I loathed it.’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ pleaded a man who resembled a sailor, his earring flashing in the glow of the soft lamps. ‘We selected it at random from a box of books we found dumped outside a charity shop. Fate made the choice; don’t berate yourselves.’
‘I hope the next book on our list is something better,’ snapped a man who seemed to be a priest; perspiration stood out on his forehead. He had contracted malaria and never entirely got over it. ‘Does anybody have the list? I haven’t seen it yet myself.’
‘I have a copy here,’ came an obliging reply.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘Jane Austen, I’m afraid …’
‘Oh no! That really is the final straw. Surely there are better ways of creating a social life than this?’
‘You’re not planning on leaving the group?’
‘Yes, frankly I am. If an utterly ridiculous fake memoir by some failed journalist named Lloyd Griffiths is followed by a boring domestic idiocy of that mannered hag, then really—’
‘You know something? I am inclined to take seriously the notion that the book we have just read, Captains Stupendous, is true. The first part is a reasonably orthodox adventure story; midway through the second part, the tone changes somewhat; the third part is eccentric in the extreme. But consider when the change begins.’
‘Soon after the narrator is turned into a skeleton?’
‘Exactly! And wouldn’t a skeleton be a much less sober narrator than a flesh and blood man? It makes sense.’
‘No, it doesn’t. It’s still a mound of festering—’
‘I’m not saying you must like it, but it is more consistent than you give it credit for. It’s not just random—’
‘Wait! What’s that noise?’
‘What noise? Oh, that weird hissing …’
‘And look at that shadow on the wall! What on earth—’
‘I don’t believe it. A Mongorgon!’
‘Impossible. That’s just a creature inside this book. We are outside the story, where such things don’t exist …’
But the Mongorgon chuckled as its snakes reared up higher. Its teeth chattered. ‘You’re mistaken about that.’
The man with the spectacles demanded, ‘Mistaken? You don’t belong out here. How dare you suggest we are wrong about anything? Get back inside the text before I telephone the pest control department of the local city council and get you removed by—’
The Mongorgon spoke over him:
‘You aren’t outside the book, but inside. You have always been inside, for you are the minor background characters that appeared in the sundry chapters of the three sections. Take a close look at yourselves. Don’t you recognise your own identities? You are Stepan Rehorek, the Czech sailor; and you are Captain Marlow Nullity; and you are Dumitru Banuş; and so on. The book hasn’t ended, you fools!’
‘Liar! The final chapter has already been and gone. It was called “The Final Chapter”, and the last sentence in it was “I went back to Wales”. See for yourself if you don’t believe me.’
The Mongorgon sneered. ‘You are Mihaila Adrian, also a character in the book; and you are Victoriano Huerta; and you are Dom Daniel; and you, with the large turban, are Sadegh Safani; and you are Nikola Tesla; and over there is the factory owner from Chengdu, who doesn’t seem to have a name at all; and Mr Higgs, the dissolute railway manager based in Srinagar, is pouring himself more wine …’
‘And who the hell am I?’ demanded the fevered priest.
‘Father Phigga,’ said the Mongorgon.
The priest trembled when he heard this; whether from his disease or from existential shock is debatable.
‘Even if what you say is true, it doesn’t excuse you from breaking and entering this property. So get out!’
The Mongorgon’s serpents shook their heads.
‘Not before I have slaughtered you,’ the beast said nonchalantly. And before anyone could react to this threat, it jumped forward; the snakes on its back darted out right and left, delivering fatal bites. ‘I like to see loose ends tied up,’ the Mongorgon added.
Wine glasses tinkled; their contents splashed.
Men collapsed to the floor.
Twitched and expired.
There was silence. The Mongorgon turned very slowly to look out of the page; to look directly at you, the reader, and lisped, ‘Do you have any issues with this book? Yes you. No good just sitting there with that smug expression, as if I can’t see you.’
There was a pause; a pause you created.
It licked its lips. ‘If you do have any issues, I’ll be more than willing to discuss them with you.’ Then it smiled horribly. ‘Live inside these pages, I do. I can come out any time I please. So remember … Don’t glance over your shoulder at night when you hear a strange noise. Look between these covers instead. But I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily. I know you’ll do the right thing and never criticise—’
It would have said a lot more things that would have been deeply unpleasant, and probably you would have been troubled by them. But a metallic elephant’s trunk pushed itself in through the open window and began spouting steam.
The steam filled the room, obscuring the Mongorgon and muffling its words to the point of inaudibility.
You can’t see a thing now. Neither can I.
Which leaves us no choice.
It’s all over. Goodbye.
And take care.
F I N I S
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RHYS HUGHES was born in 1966 and began writing from an early age. His first short story was published in 1991 and his first book followed four years later. Since then he has published more than thirty books and his work has been translated into ten languages. His main ambition is to complete a grand sequence of exactly one thousand linked short stories, a project he has been working on for more than two decades. He is now three-quarters of the way through this opus.
CAPTAINS STUPENDOUS is his attempt to write in a genre called 'Steamprog' that he has invented just now.
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