by Rhys Hughes
“No, no, no, don’t ever give up! Come on, Sergio, you’ve got the material, the delivery, the timing, everything. You’re just out of luck at the moment. Puns and one-liners are unappreciated these days.”
“Should I change my act then?” Sergio asked quietly.
Marvin shrugged and sighed.
“Just stick at it, is my professional opinion. You’ll win them round if you keep persevering. You’ll get a cult following first of all, then it will grow and the kind of jokes you tell will be like gold again.”
“I’m not sure I believe it,” said Sergio in a sad voice.
Marvin uttered a chuckle and wiped a tear of mirth from his eye. “See what I mean? You’re a natural, kiddo, I tell ya!”
“That wasn’t a joke.” He paused and added, “I haven’t been feeling myself lately. I must be suffering from premature reincarnation.”
Marvin remained stony faced.
“That was a joke,” said Sergio.
“You’re confusing me now, kiddo. I’m doing my job, getting you gigs in all the best theatres and clubs, and you are doing yours. Let’s just keep doing our jobs and everything will be just dandy.”
“People who groan at puns should learn to be more groan-up.”
“Is that a joke or a serious point?”
“Both,” replied Sergio.
Marvin said, “Times are hard, there’s no denying, it’s the same with a couple of the other acts I work with, but the idea is to ride out the rough times. If anyone can ride anything out, you surely can? You’ve been ridden by heroes in the past, I imagine, legends and myths...”
Sergio uttered a whinny of utter astonishment. “I beg your pardon? I’m not a pegasus or centaur but a unicorn. I’ve never been ridden by anyone. I think I’m at the end of the road now, to be honest.”
“Don’t talk like that, kiddo! We’re moving on first thing tomorrow, going to the big city, to the place where the comedy connoisseurs still exist and thrive. That’s where you’ll be appreciated properly, I swear. Give it your best shot. The famous film director, Jacques Inleboqs, will be in the audience. Impress him and you might get a role in his next movie.”
“The French man was in love, amour or less.”
“Ha! I got that one, kiddo!”
“Yogi Bear studied cloning. Then his best friend died. Yogi Bear decided to clone him. When he finished he realised he’d made a Boo-Boo.”
“Keep them coming, Sergio!”
“Can you believe this? Talk about bad timing. I was invited to appear at a fringe festival the day after I had my hair cut!
“Your mane, you mean?”
“I fitted large rubber wheels to the seaside resort where I grew up and now they are the torque of the town...”
“I didn’t know you grew up on the coast, kiddo! I thought you wandered out of the forest ten years ago, unable to speak human lingo, and clip-clopped right up to the nearest police station. Funny that and I don’t mean funny in the chuckle sense but just weird. You still have never explained why you did that. I suppose you always wanted to be a comedian and there were no opportunities in the wild. All the same it does seem—”
Sergio raised an irritated hoof to his lips.
“I knew a girl who had the ultimate ‘bubbly’ personality. When I popped the question she vanished into thin air!”
“Oh yes, really?” Marvin clenched his jaw hard.
“There’s a new Scottish sweet wine on the market – Tokaj the Noo.”
“Sure there is. I believe that.”
“And for my next trick. Crushed garlic, basil, grated cheese and pine nuts blended with olive oil... Hey pesto!”
“Tasteful, I guess. Tasty.”
“Sans-Serif tried to chat me up, but it’s just not my type.”
Marvin sat down heavily in a chair.
“OK, I get the picture. Knock it off now. Save the gags for the punters. It’s not easy being an agent, you know. I get demoralised just the same as you do, but I don’t have anyone to encourage me to cheer up. I just have to look after myself. Don’t think I haven’t thought about quitting myself, but I keep going. I think we might be on the verge of making it, that’s why. But I’m tired, so tired. Let’s call it a day and get off back to the hotel. I’ll wake you up early in the morning and we will catch the train to the big city and you’ll give the performance of your life in front of Monsieur Inleboqs, yes indeed.”
Sergio grimaced but didn’t protest. He followed Marvin out of the dressing room and along the corridor to the rear exit of the theatre. A technician fiddling with some lights spoke out of the corner of his mouth, “Hey, unicorn-on-the-cob, you always a-maize me with your act!”
“Ignore the buffoon,” whispered Marvin to Sergio.
They passed through the door and into the night. No autograph hunters in the vicinity. Sergio’s hooves clattered on the cobbles. The street lights flared like impaled miniature suns in the misty rain.
“The hotel is this way,” said Marvin, pointing with his cigar. They had two rooms in a seedy part of town, in a decaying old building near a stagnant canal. It had once been a posh place but now was a derelict and the manager was a derelict too, a fellow with stick limbs but an immense belly, who ate tan-and-black striped humbugs without end, and spoke with them stored in his cheek, lips drooling all over the reception desk.
Sergio went up the stairs, his hooves still burning from standing immobile in the glare of the spotlight for so long. He entered his room and went straight to bed and he dreamed he was already on the train, the great shuffling locomotive, a furious steam beast striped like one of those appalling humbugs with alternating bands of brass and iron down its entire length. And the following morning, after he woke and had a wash and his breakfast—
Well, it turned out that the real train was nothing like that. It was a tedious modern electric but in bad repair and it took five hours to trundle them from this gloomy seaside town to the big city, the capital. They found reasonable lodgings and wandered the streets of the theatre district.
“This is the venue you’ll be performing at,” said Marvin.
Sergio squinted at the baroque building.
“It certainly seems nice,” he conceded, “but appearances can be deceptive. It might be a real dump on the inside.”
“Don’t prejudge, kiddo,” said Marvin.
“Good advice. The waterproof is in the very dry pudding.”
Marvin slitted his eyes and looked at him sideways. “You said that in your stage voice but I don’t think you mean it as a joke. No matter. Let’s check out the facilities, shall we? Familiarise ourselves.”
They went round the back in search of the rear entrance and Sergio voiced a few of the new gags that had come to him in his sleep, while he was a passenger on that dream train; for that is the way one-liners popped into his head: when he wasn’t really looking for them. They always looked for him and found him and this was a good way to work, in fairness.
“Japanese rice wine made from tears? For pity’s sake!”
“I asked the oysters of the world to give me just one pearl but they refused. What an incredibly shellfish attitude!”
“Spaghetti-holics like to reminisce about pasta times.”
“‘You are hiding in that valley but I recognise you. You’re Thunder, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Rumbled,’ replied the sound made by lightning.”
“I used to chew coffee beans and pour boiling water straight from the kettle into my mouth, then someone told me not to be such a mug.”
“I was told to ‘show my feelings’ so my anger did a dance, my glee sang a song and my sympathy sold the tickets.”
“Today, I am going to have a Popeye Salad for lunch. The ingredients are spinach, sweet peas, olive oil and Danish Bluto cheese.”
Marvin, who was ahead, looked back over his shoulder and said, “No one could ever say your puns were lame.” He grinned. “Not that puns have limbs to get lame in, but you know what I mean.”
“I s
aw a pun with legs. It’s a running joke!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, kiddo!”
They were the only living beings in the theatre, apart from a spider or two, and they explored every cranny of the ancient place. A calmness descended onto Sergio, a sort of ironic fatalism, and he stood in the centre of the stage and gazed at the auditorium. “I wonder where Monsieur Inleboqs will be sitting?” But the answer was obvious really: in the royal box.
“Don’t know what’s so great about having a box, kiddo, truly I don’t. It’s a sidewise view anyway, sure to crick a neck, but I suppose the prestige is what matters to people who pay for the things.”
And later, when the time came, the famous film director did indeed sit just there, with his companions and flatterers clustered about him. Sergio waited in a dressing room with a cracked mirror and composed himself, while Marvin gave a single knock and walked right in. “Ready?”
“Yes. Some people feel they want to go back and start again from scratch. But I feel I want to go further back than that and start from itch. Nevertheless I’m ready. In fact I feel fired up. I know someone who is writing a thesis on buttocks. They have got behind in their research...”
“Classic, kiddo! Knock ‘em dead, my friend. Oh yes, one thing. Monsieur Inleboqs has brought a huge sack with him. It’s full of doughnuts. I managed to get a close look. Spilling out of the top, they were! I imagine he plans to munch his way right through your performance, so speak up loud and clear. Project that voice of yours. Cut through the eating noises.”
“I will, Marvin, and despite our disagreements: thanks!”
And he trotted off to do his thing.
The curtains swished open and the spotlight hit him like a bucket of water and kept hitting him, making him feel wet inside but nowhere else, and the water came back out in the form of sweat, which dripped off his mane. Nevertheless he smiled a big horsey smile and initiated his routine...
“Poetry, huh? Baudelaire was paid individually for every poem he wrote. His entire poetic career was per verse.”
“Artificial wind-creating machines? I’m not a fan.”
“I wonder who the very first person was who said, ‘Nothing is original’? I bet someone said it long before he did.”
“Mathematics? Mechanical adding machines are derided these days, but the communal abacus counts for a lot.”
“I want to work with hammocks but I’ve applied for a job with a company that makes Japanese beds. Just to get a futon the door.”
“I met a mare yesterday. Her head was the number 10, her neck was minus 4, her torso was minus 3, her legs were minus 2.”
A few laughs and the voice of a heckler, “So what?”
“I think she might be the one!”
The punchline worked even better as a rebuke.
People were laughing, no doubt about it, but they weren’t overcome with mirth. It was as if they were able to somehow imprison off the jokes as soon as they entered the brain through their ears, seal them off from their viscera, so the joke was funny in purely an intellectual sense.
Sergio forged ahead like a hero.
“Some philosophers were giving a scarecrow a hard time, arguing against his beliefs. I think they had set him up as a straw man.”
“I met a drunken puppet on a snow slope. He said, ‘I’m Russian downhill!’ Then I knew he was the Doss-Toy-of-Ski.”
“Miss Ann Thrope got married yesterday. She still hates the human race but now she’s respectable about it.”
“Talk about minor misunderstandings! I went to the Post Office to collect my pension. I returned home with a small German hotel.”
“I wish there was an island near Haiti called Luvvy. And a mountain next to Kilimanjaro called Leavethemanalone.”
“That’s just peculiar!” shouted the heckler.
Sergio licked his lips. “Some people... and I name no names... have taken to having their names surgically removed!”
“Fritz Lang’s film about a master of disguise is going to be remade in the city of Kampala. What’s good for Mabuse is good for Uganda.”
“Current affairs? Apparently later today, ‘Tweet tweet chirp chirp cheep!’ How do I know? A little bird told me.”
A howl erupted from somewhere high overhead...
It wasn’t a howl of derision or joy, but inhuman and imprecise and quite unlike anything Sergio had ever heard before. He looked up and saw that it had emanated from the twisted mouth of Jacques Inleboqs, who was now standing on his seat and dipping into his sack of doughnuts. He pulled out a doughnut, held it up to examine it and then... threw it!
He didn’t eat the damn object but cast it at the stage.
And it was a good shot too...
It was a ring doughnut and landed on Sergio’s horn.
“Hoopla!” screamed Jacques.
Sergio heard an urgent whisper from offstage. “He’s drunk, kiddo, out of his tiny mind! Keep going, keep going!”
The doughnut settled to the base of the horn.
“I do wish that negative people would multiply with other negative people and try to get something positive out of it.”
“Some news just in... Infinite number of monkeys on typewriters have just recreated the complete works of Francis Bacon.”
“Any word you have to hunt/search for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions/aberrations/deviations to this rule.”
“Mont Blanc was feeling Matterhorny. ‘Don’t be too Eiger!’ cautioned the Jungfrau. ‘I can’t Alp myself! responded Mont Blanc.”
Another doughnut was thrown...
This one missed. But a third followed immediately and it landed on top of the first. People in the audience roared!
“Er... I went to a village fête and entered a tent. But I got spanked inside. Just my luck to pick the Marquee de Sade!”
“Everything in moderation including moderation. Enjoy a few blow-outs; otherwise you are taking moderation to extremes!”
“I’m going to attempt something that is two laughs a minute. It’s about time the ‘laugh a minute’ speed restriction was lifted!”
“No, you’re not!” shouted the heckler.
Another doughnut struck home. Jacques Inleboqs was good at this game, a fairground favourite. All the energy and enthusiasm drained out of Sergio and he just stood there immobile. He even lowered his head slightly, making it easier for Jacques to score a direct hit. The sack was rapidly emptied. A few doughnuts did miss their target but most landed on his horn. Now there was no more room for a single extra one and the audience applauded.
The spotlight died. Sergio groped his way offstage.
He didn’t go back to his dressing room. He never saw Marvin again. Where did he end up? There have been many rumours. Only one is true. The fact is that the explanation for the origin of his nickname given at the start of this story isn’t correct. Sergio wasn’t the one and only unicorn-on-the-cob in existence because his jokes were corny. A ‘cob’ is also a male swan. Reliable witnesses saw a white shape the size of a cloud flap over the city that midnight; and on the back of it an angry horse was mounted; and as they flew past the theatre the horse plucked off his horn and cast it down like a thunderbolt.
The theatre burned down and the doughnuts that had missed were toasted to ash on the stage where they still overlapped each other, sticky and sickly and quite lopsided, like the haloes of nasty saints.
Sunstorm
“A storm on the sun could take us back to the Stone Age.” – Alok Jha
Ug reached the top of the cliff and paused for breath, wiping drool from his chin with the back of a hairy hand. It had been a difficult climb and he was dehydrated as well as exhausted. But the cave mouth was ahead and he knew he would be able to rest inside.
The top of the cliff was broad and flat and almost perfectly circular, a mesa high above the savannah and its attendant dangers. A vast boulder stood in the centre of the mesa and this boulder was hollow, carved into a home by flint chisels, a task not so
daunting as it may seem, for the stone was very soft and crumbly, easily worked.
In fact it wasn’t really a stone at all, but a gigantic egg with a split in the side, laid by some monstrous flying reptile, and that split was the way into the cosy empty space, his own house.
A massive bear had occupied it originally but he had chased it out and away with thrown stones and sharp shouts.
Ug waited for his pulse rate to settle, then he loped toward the alluring entrance. His woman would be within, sewing skins into clothes, perhaps making a musical instrument from a tusk.
She wouldn’t be expecting him back until tomorrow.
He called out to her, “Ra-Kel?”
No answer. That was strange. She loved to sew skins into clothes and it was more than he could do to dissuade her from spending all her spare time on this work. Of her own free will, she never would have abandoned a task so satisfying and useful, unless—
She couldn’t have followed him without his knowing.
So she must be inside, surely?
“Ra-Kel?” he repeated, even louder.
He reached the entrance and peered inside but it took several moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Ra-Kel wasn’t inside. Her work lay on the floor, trampled by dirty footprints.
Ug crouched and sniffed. The quality of the strange animal skins they had found on top of this mesa was high indeed. They had been attached to the shell of the egg by tough sinews when Ug and Ra-Kel first discovered them up here on this lofty refuge, seemingly waiting for them, a gift from the gods perhaps? The only explanation.
“Ra-Kel!” shrieked Ug. Then he listened carefully.
A faint voice reached him. “Ug!”
It came from outside the egg, from far away, thin and desperate, as if it belonged to a spirit or the wind, which probably were the same things. Ug rushed back out into the glare, shielded his eyes and gazed around. But he saw nothing, only the bare ground of the perfectly flat top of the mesa, no vegetation or cover of any sort anywhere.