Larry 2: The Squeequel

by Adam Millard

  Oh, Larry, I didn’t mean blow the place—

  Larry pushed the ignitor on the cooker, and there was a tiny click-click-click, followed by a spark, followed by…

  *

  Three miles away, Derrick and Davina Jett were making love in their king-size bed. They had been married for seventy-two years, and so nights like this didn’t come around as often as they used to. After much fumbling and the removal of boiled sweets, Derrick had managed to penetrate Davina, his perpetually-flaccid penis pushing through the wall of cobwebs as if it were Indiana Jones on a search for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. After assuring his wife that, yes, it was in, and yes, he had remembered to put the trash out, Derrick Jett went at her like a jackhammer, albeit one on the blink. It was while Davina Jett considered which numbers to play on the Lottery next week, and while Derrick Jett thought back to the previous Sunday, when he’d caught a 60lb brown trout down at the lake, that the room began to shake. Pictures fell from walls; dust fell from the ceiling; their cat, Jezebel, fell from her rightful place on the mantelpiece and landed in the fire, but it was okay, for she had been stuffed for twenty years and didn’t feel a thing.

  When everything fell still once again, Derrick Jett removed his penis, tapped it once or twice on Davina’s inner thigh, and said, “You’re very welcome.”

  *

  Three miles in the other direction, Sam Treat and Martha Blankenship had just checked into their hotel after a night of wild partying. Sam, however, had decided upon an early night, for tomorrow was the Harry Hunter party and she wanted to be up bright and early in order to get her arse waxed.

  “Martha,” said Sam, climbing into bed and pulling a mask down over her eyes.

  “Sam?” said Martha, oiling up her body with cream until she looked like something you put in the oven at gas mark 7.

  “Set an alarm for nine, would you? Busy day tomorrow.”

  Martha nodded, gave Sam the middle finger – which was risky, but she didn’t think the bitch could see through her eye-mask – and reached for her mobile-phone-cum-alarm-clock.

  Just then, there was a loud bang, and Martha’s heart leapt up into her throat.

  “And Martha?” said Sam.

  “Yes?” Martha said, shaking a little.

  “If you’re going to be flatulent all night long, can you go and book yourself into another room?”

  *

  Eric Roberts sat up his tree, sharpening his throwing-stars and pondering upon how Sleeping with the Enemy was such a critical success. “It’s ‘cos she got fucked in it,” he mumbled. “Yeah, that’s what it was. Good ol’ Julia, always willing to go that extra mile for directors. Fucking bitch.” He ran his finger along the newly-sharpened edge of the star and, when he saw the blood emerge from a slit in his finger, he knew the job was a good un.

  He was about to settle down for the night when a loud bang sent him tumbling from the tree. “Ow!” he said, climbing to his feet and pulling the shuriken from his ass. “Can’t a guy take a day off around here?”

  After searching the perimeter of the alleyway, and finding nothing but a dead ‘coon and a candy wrapper which hadn’t been there an hour ago, he climbed back up his tree, where he dreamt that Hollywood hadn’t lost his number, after all.

  *

  Sister Clarice had just tidied up the Fifty Shades of Grey cupboard when the distant explosion rattled the foundations of Haddon Nunnery. “No, no, no, no!” gasped the nun, but it was too late. A sea of books surged from the cupboard, their insipid covers causing bile to rise in the nun’s throat.

  “Fucksticks!” said the nun, for as religious as she was, she knew when God was having a laugh at her expense.

  *

  Mayor Johnnie Ketchum was as pissed as a newt and, like the rest of the patrons of Lou’s Bar, did nothing to hide the fact. Shirts were untucked, vomit flowed freely, penises were exposed, and money spent as if it was going out of fashion. Tomorrow morning he would wake with the unholiest of headaches, but that was fine as he only had a Burger King, a RadioShack, and three new barbershops to unveil. If he couldn’t do that while half-cut, then his name wasn’t Mayor Johnnie Ketchum.

  “Hey, Mayor,” Lou said, wiping a dirty glass with an even dirtier dishcloth. “You got any of those 2for1 tanning vouchers left. It’s my wife’s birthday next week and I don’t know what to get her.”

  Johnnie reached into his back pocket, which wasn’t terribly difficult as he’d already removed his trousers and set them on the bar in front of him. “Hergh…how merny?” said he, in that internationally-recognised language known as Pissedish.

  “She’s a big lady, you know? Lot of field to crop-dust, if you catch my drift,” Lou said. “Better make it a dozen.”

  Johnnie began to count out a dozen vouchers, even though he’d forgotten how many a dozen was. In the end, he handed Lou thirty-seven of the little fliers. “Tell…guh…tell Mrs Lou…herpy berfday.”

  “Will do, Mayor,” Lou said, putting the vouchers in the register.

  Suddenly, the entire bar trembled. Glasses chittered along the bar as if they had become independent of their drinkers. A bowl of peanuts, already precariously balanced on the end of one of the tables, finally gave up the ghost and committed nuticide.

  “Wahey!” cheered the mayor. “Earfquerk!” Then he slammed back a straight whiskey, ordered three more of the same, before passing out in the toilet mid-piss.

  *

  Freddy’s eyes snapped open, and for a moment he didn’t have a clue where he was. Then he felt the Cuddle-me-Elmo behind him, and it all come flooding back. Had he fallen asleep? He must have, though he couldn’t remember it. In that case, what had woke up him? A loud bang, of some sort? Had he farted himself awake? That was always embarrassing.

  He turned toward the bed and was pleased to see, through the gloom, that Amanda slept on. God, she looked beautiful. Pity she was snoring like a sailor with emphysema. Still, part of him wanted to climb into bed with her. Just for a cuddle. The night had grown cold, and the Bateman house was old and big and sans radiators.

  She looks so warm, thought Freddy. So warm, like a taxidermy cat on a roaring log-fire, though where that simile came from he had no idea.

  He pushed himself slowly up from the chair, sending plush bears and crocheted hand-puppets overboard.

  If I could just get into the bottom of the bed, he thought, eyeing it up and licking his lips. She won’t mind if she wakes up and we’re top-to-toe. She’ll probably thank me, tell me it was nice, that my body-heat had—

  “Don’t even think about it,” a voice grunted from the darkness.

  Freddy returned to his chair in a huff and shivering like a shitting Chihuahua.

  *

  Larry, now lying in the Mayflower back garden, removed a smouldering door from his legs and climbed to his feet. The heat from the burning house in front of him was almost unbearable.

  A naked pirate ran past, squealing and more than a little bit on fire. He made it halfway across the blackened lawn before falling forwards onto his face, where he twitched once or twice before falling very still.

  In the distance, sirens wailed in the night (not to be confused with Captain Ahab, who also whaled in the night).

  Better skedaddle, said the mask.

  And skedaddle Larry did.

  13

  1203 Elm Street – The Morning After Larry Made a Crater

  There came a knock at the door. It was the kind of knock designed to wake sleeping people, and thusly both Amanda and Freddy jumped up and ran about the place, confused and still full of sleep.

  “What time is it?” Amanda said, unable to focus on her watch’s small face.

  “Seven,” Freddy said. He had a man’s watch – the kind of watch you could hang on the wall and call a clock.

  “Seven? Who the bloody hell could be calling at this time of a morning?”

  Freddy shrugged, picked up the shotgun, and peeked out onto the landing. “What if it’s Pigface?” he said. “It�
��s too early for a fight.” And he was right; we’ve all been there. Scrapping is usually the last thing one wants in those moments following slumber. Your limbs are all floppy, and you’re still struggling to keep your eyes open. Plus, you haven’t been to the toilet yet…

  Amanda shook her head. “I think I would have felt it,” she said, loathing the fact she was somehow twinned with a merciless butcher. “The nun!” she added, suddenly recalling the previous night’s telephone conversation.

  “Bit early for a nun, isn’t it?” Freddy lowered the shotgun. “I thought they had to shit, shower, shave, and pray first.”

  Amanda pushed past Freddy and headed down the stairs. Freddy followed, though he wasn’t giving up the shotgun just yet. If it was a nun, well, she just had to come to terms with being a nun with a shotgun pointing at her.

  “Hello?” Amanda said through the door. “Who is it, please?”

  There was a slight pause, and then a gruff, somewhat masculine, voice said, “Who the fuck d’ya think it is, you daft trout? Some saft fucker ordered a nun, now if you don’t mind letting me in and telling me what all this nonsense is about, I’ve got to get to the chemist for nine, and then a party this afternoon up at the Hunter mansion, so tick-tock, and all that bollocks.”

  Amanda unbolted the door, turned the key, slipped the chain across – unlike the Mayflower guests, who had seen it as some kind of unsolvable puzzle – and eased the door open. As soon as there was a gap wide enough, the nun waddled through it, barging Amanda aside. Once in the hallway, the nun turned on Freddy and said, “That a shotgun, boy? D’ya mind not pointing it at me, unless you like hospital food?”

  Freddy lowered the weapon, and also his bowels.

  Amanda closed the door and made it secure once again.

  “So,” said the nun. “What the actual fuck do you pair of cunts want with me? Huh?”

  “You must be Sister Geoff,” Amanda said.

  “And what?” said Sister Geoff. “Who you been talking to? Whatever they said I did, I didn’t.” The stench of stale alcohol filled the hallway, and it was only then that Amanda saw the cigarette tucked behind the nun’s cauliflower ear.

  “We need your help,” Freddy said, slotting the shotgun into an antique umbrella rack.

  “I don’t do abortions,” said the nun, motioning to Amanda’s belly. “Stopped doing ‘em years ago, after it all kicked off in the Vatican. No, if you’re looking to get rid of a baby, you’re gonna have to wait until it’s born and take it down the skip like everyone else.”

  “We’re not looking for an abortion,” Amanda said.

  “Why would you wanna keep a baby in this day and age?” Sister Geoff said, reaching up for the cigarette and stuffing it into her puckered lips. “What with all the paedos knocking about the place. I remember a time you could let your kid get in a car with a complete stranger and they wouldn’t get buggered. When I was a little nun—”

  “Look, we’re quite pressed for time,” Amanda said. There was something about Sister Geoff which frightened her, and it wasn’t just the cauliflower ears and broken nose, and she hated to interrupt, but they were, in fact, pressed for time. “We need you to help us locate a pig-faced slasher and then banish his soul from the body, which is nothing more than a vessel, now, since we watched him die last year. Only he’s come back, voodoo probably, and we don’t know what else to try.”

  Sister Geoff took it all in, only stopping to light her cigarette. After thirty seconds of head-scratching, the nun said, “It’ll cost ya.”

  “Well, how much are we looking at?” Freddy said, aware that neither he nor Amanda were incredibly well-off. “We’re not incredibly well-off.”

  “Either of you have any weed contacts?” said the nun, regarding them both in turn. “You look like you’ve smoked a bit in your time,” she told Freddy. “Hook me up with a regular dealer – mine’s just gone down for tax evasion, and by tax evasion I mean first-degree murder. You hook me up with a dealer, I’ll help you exorcise this pig-faced killer and send him on his merry way to Hell.”

  “Deal,” Amanda said.

  “You’re on,” Freddy added, trying to remember the name of the kid he once bought a joint from in woodwork class.

  Sister Geoff reached across and pulled the shotgun out of the umbrella rack. “I don’t think this will be any use at all,” she said, stuffing it into her tunic.

  “Then why are we taking it?” Amanda said.

  “Well, I don’t know whether tiddler-breath’s” — she pointed at Freddy — “dealer is going to try to sell me coriander, now, do I?”

  Amanda was about to reply when her eyes rolled back in her face and she made a low thrumming sound in her throat.

  “Fuck me,” said Sister Geoff. “What’s the matter with her?”

  Freddy, taking a few steps back, said, “It’s been happening on and off since she mentally bonded with our killer. It’ll pass in a minute.”

  “I bloody hope so,” said the nun. “She’s giving me the shits, and nothing frightens me. I went to a Catholic school.”

  “So what made you want to become a nun?” Freddy asked, looking anywhere but the creepy face of his former girlfriend, who had now gone into spasm.

  “I didn’t have much choice,” Sister Geoff said. “I was left on the convent doorstep, wrapped in a blanket.”

  “People still do that?”

  “They did fifty years ago. Look, is she going to be alright? I mean, should we punch her in the face or something?”

  “No, no, she’ll come to in a minute,” Freddy said. “So, are there any lesbians in your convent?”

  “Most of ‘em,” Sister Geoff said. “I’m one of the only ones that likes a bit of cock.”

  “That’s nice,” said Freddy, though it really wasn’t. “And do you—”

  “What’s with all the questions, cuntybollocks?” Sister Geoff said. “You working for the Feds or something?”

  Freddy dry-swallowed. “I’m just interested,” he said. “I’ve never had a chance to speak to a real-life nun before. I’ve seen plenty of your kind—”

  “My kind? My kind? Son, do I look like a Hispanic to you?”

  “Tad racist,” Freddy muttered.

  “Didn’t think so,” said Sister Geoff, settling once again, and now checking her watch, which wasn’t a man’s watch, surprisingly. “If she doesn’t knock it off in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to have to slap her. If I don’t get my methadone on time, 9am sharp—”

  “You go cray-zeee,” Freddy finished for her. “Don’t worry, she’ll snap out of it any sec—”

  “He’s in a skip!” Amanda squealed.

  “Told you so,” Freddy said to Sister Geoff.

  “Who’s in a skip?” Sister Geoff said.

  “Pigface,” said Amanda.

  “What skip?” said Sister Geoff. She was under the impression that she could waltz on out to the skip, perform an exorcism on it and its contents, fire a few rounds into it, just to be sure, put in her prescription, fuck off over to Harry Hunter’s party where things were bound to get messier than a bunch of incontinent seniors on curry night, before heading back to the convent with a bag of weed large enough to daze an elephant. Not bad for a day’s work, and part of the reason she became a nun in the first place.

  “I don’t know what skip,” said Amanda.

  “Fucksticks,” Sister Geoff said. It was the Daughters of Divine Charity’s favourite curse word. That and Womblecock.

  “Were there any clues?” Freddy asked.

  “Banana skins, used condoms, smashed bottles, lots of smelly stuff, nothing useful.” Amanda rubbed the sleep from her eyes; it was too early in the morning for psychopath visions.

  “If he’s in a skip,” Freddy said, “then he must already be in the city.”

  “We have to find him and destroy him,” Amanda said.

  “Matrix?” Freddy said.

  “Yeah, great line.”

  “I need my methadone.”

&n
bsp; “Come on.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I have to take a piss.”

  “Take a piss then.”

  And so on and so forth. It was fifteen minutes later when they left the house. Two teens and a rogue nun, off in search of a pig-faced slasher. Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

  14

  A Mystery Skip

  Glad you could join us, said the mask as Larry opened his eyes. Head pounding, he eased himself up into a sitting position, then quickly repositioned himself as something sharp embedded itself in his backside. He pulled the used syringe out of his ass and tossed it aside. “Where are we? It stinks.”

  Oh, that’s right, said the mask, sounding like an angry wife. You were too pissed last night to even remember climbing into the skip. I didn’t even get a ‘goodnight’ or a peck on the cheek. Sometimes, I don’t think you love me anymore…

  “What the hell are you babbling on about?” Larry said, glad to find he was still in possession of his axe.

  So you don’t remember drinking that fizzy pink stuff and then ramming your glass into Gerry Mayflower’s eye?

  “I remember that,” he said. “And I remember blowing up their house, but after that…” He trailed off, because after that he couldn’t remember diddlysquat.

  Well, allow me to fill you in, said the mask, its tone suggesting that if it had arms, they would have been firmly folded across its chest. After you decided to blow yourself up, the police and fire-brigade arrived at the house – or the space in the road where there used to be a house. We were hiding in the bushes out back, and I told you to stay put until the 5-0 had done their thing, only you refused to wait. You wanted to tell the police how much you loved them, that you wanted to sit in the front seat of their car and play with the siren—

  “What was in that pink drink?”

  Oh, it gets better, said the mask. So out you pop from the bushes, still smoking from the explosion, and over you go to the cops who are trying to figure out what had happened, and why there were bits of giant rabbit lying about the place.