Boscombe thought of them. Both were dead, he thought.
‘It’s not what a man looks like. It’s what he has inside him.’
Boscombe raised a grubby mitt to squeeze a prominent boil on his neck and release a little of what he had inside him.
‘Oh, please don’t,’ implored the doctor. ‘The surgery has just been redecorated.’
Boscombe returned his mitt to his lap and scratched his groin with it. ‘So what you’re saying,’ he growled, ‘is that you can do sweet sod all to help me.’
Doctor Kinn, for such was the physician’s name, coughed politely. He had come to dread the weekly sessions with this unsavoury little man. An aura of evil surrounded him, which made him about as welcome as King Herod at a baby show. ‘Go out and live your life,’ the doctor advised. ‘Rejoice that you are alive. Revel in your existence. Think positively.’
Boscombe rose negatively from his chair. ‘Bloody quack,’ said he.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, bloody quack. As in doctor, rather than duck.’
‘You can collect your usual prescription at the reception area,’ said Dr Kinn, moving papers around on his desk. ‘And, er, come back and see me in, what shall we say, six months?’
Boscombe hawked up a green gobbet of phlegm the size of a glass eye and spat it onto the carpet. ‘That to you,’ said he.
‘Make that one year,’ said the doctor. ‘And see yourself out.’
Boscombe had recently taken to wearing tropical kit, as it made the mosquito net he had stitched onto his pith helmet in order to conceal his face seem a little more in keeping. The khaki shorts, however, flattered neither his beer belly nor his bow legs.
From the surgery in Abaddon Street to the chemist’s on the main road is a fairly short shuffle, and as it was term time there were no children about for Boscombe to cuff as he passed upon his dismal way.
A cat or two to kick at though.
Beneath his breath the ugly man cursed darkly. He would do for that bloody quack. Pop around at lunch-time and loosen his bicycle brakes, watch him sail down the hill towards the traffic lights, then—
Boscombe Walters sniggered. ‘Then splat and physician heal thyself.’
There was no spark of goodness in Boscombe. He was ugly through and through. From the outside to the in and out again. Boscombe cared for no-one and no-one cared for him. And that was just the way he liked it. Ugliness suited him fine. He’d made a career out of it (although not one that was likely to bring him fame and celebrity and the love of a good woman). Boscombe’s problem was the spots. The boils! The buboes! If only he could rid himself of these, then everything would be as fine as it was ever likely to be. Which, though far from perfect, was perfect enough for him.
Boscombe took a short cut down an alleyway, on the off-chance that there might be dustbins to ignite, or ladies’ items upon a line that he might add to his collection.
Sadly there was neither, but as he slunk along, muttering sourly, he did chance to notice a bright little card that was pinned to a back entrance gate.
It had the look of those printed postcard jobbies which always add that essential touch of colour to the otherwise drab interiors of telephone boxes. This one, however, did not promote the skills of some lady ‘trained in those arts which amuse men’. This one bore a mysterious logo and the words:
DR POO PAH DOO. OBEAH MAN.
HERBALIST. SKIN SPECIALIST.
BMX CYCLE REPAIRS.
(in capital letters)
Out of habit, born from badness, Boscombe plucked the little card from the gate and crumpled it between the fingers of his rarely-washed hands. He was about to cast it ground-ward when a little voice inside his head said, ‘Hang about there, pal.’
Boscombe sniffed deeply, brought up another ball of phlegm and sent it skimming back along the alleyway. And then he uncrumpled the card. DR POO PAH DOO. SKIN SPECIALIST!
‘Luck,’ said the ugly man. ‘Luck indeed.’
But was this luck? What was an Obeah Man anyway? Something to do with voodoo, wasn’t it? And that was all dog dirt, that kind of thing.
‘Nah,’ said Boscombe, recrumpling the card. ‘Waste of time.’
But then, DOCTOR. SKIN SPECIALIST. HERBALIST? It had to be worth a try. It couldn’t hurt. And a spotty man is a desperate man.
Boscombe thrust the card into a pocket of his safari jacket and pressed open the gate. It moved upon groaning hinges to reveal a squalid backyard. There was a mound of mouldy papers and a black cat.
Boscombe skirted the mound and kicked the cat.
‘Meoooow!’ it went.
The back door was open. Boscombe didn’t knock.
It was dim and dank within. A dour hallway led to a flight of uncarpeted stairs. A sign on the wall read, ‘Dr Poo Pah Doo. First Floor.’ Somewhere in the distance a dripping tap spelt messages in morse.
Boscombe trudged up the stairs. This house smelled none too good. This house smelled of dampness and old bed linen.
This house smelled like Boscombe’s house.
On the first floor was a single door and upon this a brass plate which bore the name of Dr Poo Pah Doo.
Boscombe knocked.
‘Come on in then,’ called a deep, dark voice. ‘And bring yo’ bike.’
Boscombe entered.
The room was souped in ganja smoke. A single bulb, yellow-hued and naked, cast a wan crepuscular glow.
Bits and bobs of bicycles brought an occasional glitter. But there was nothing here that really offered welcome.
‘Welcome,’ said something.
Boscombe strained his toad-likes. Close by in the fug something sat. It was a beefy-looking something and it wore a top hat decorated with chicken feathers. Two large dark hands tinkered with an alloy chain-set.
‘What de trouble?’ asked Dr Poo Pah Doo, for such was this something. ‘Bin doin’ de bunny-hops and done twisted yo’ frame?’
‘I don’t have a bike,’ said Boscombe.
‘Well, I don’t do skateboards. Trucks too damn expensive.’
‘Don’t have a skateboard either.’ Boscombe turned to take his leave. This obviously was a waste of time.
‘Where yo’ damn well goin’?’ asked the Obeah Man. ‘What yo’ problem anyhow?’
‘Skin.’ Boscombe had one hand on the door. ‘I saw your sign. Skin specialist, it said.’
‘And in capital letters.’ The tall top hat rose to expose the face beneath. It was an African face. A noble warrior’s face. Fierce, with piercing almond eyes, but smiling a mouth-load of golden teeth. ‘Come here. Let’s have a look at you.’
Boscombe did a two-step shuffle, raised his mosquito net and inclined his head towards the sitter.
‘Whoa!’ went this body. ‘Not so God-damn close. Yo’ got a real rake of trouble and grief there, boy. Yo’ should get someone fix that for you.’
‘Someone?’
Dr Poo Pah Doo sniffed at Boscombe. ‘I can smell yo’ aura boy and it don’t smell good. It smell wicked. Yo’ wicked ‘cos yo’ ugly, or ugly ‘cos yo’ wicked? Which it be?’
‘You darkies know bugger all!’ said Boscombe, who numbered racism amongst his more appealing qualities. ‘I’m off.’
‘Yeah. Yo’ do that. Come in here, uglying up my workshop. I not make yo’ pretty.’
‘As if you could.’
‘Oh, I could do it, wicked man. I could do it. But I won’t. Go on now. Scoot.’
Boscombe stood his ground. ‘What could you do?’ he asked.
‘I could fix up that face of yours. Make that face as smooth as a baby’s bum bum.’
‘How?’
‘There’s ways.’
‘What ways?’
‘Old ways.’
‘Mumbo Jumbo.’
‘If yo’ think it’s that, then that’s what it is. It don’t work unless yo’ believe. Why do yo’ think I sit here fixin’ bikes all the damn day?’
‘Probably because your old ways ain’t worth nothing,’
Boscombe suggested.
‘Then reckon yo’ know best, wicked man. Go on now, scoot. Believe in nothing. Be wicked ugly man all yo’ God-damn life. See if I care.’
‘How much?’ Boscombe asked.
‘How much I care? Not much. Not damn all.’
‘How much to make my face as smooth as a baby’s bum bum?’
‘Hundred pounds.’
‘How bloody much?’
‘Hundred pounds. How much it worth to yo’? I charge you two hundred pounds and that’s my final offer.’
‘Done!’ said Boscombe, who didn’t intend to be.
An hour passed and during this time various prayers were offered up to less-than-Christian deities. Some salt was thrown. A frozen chicken was symbolically sacrificed.
A cheque for two hundred pounds changed hands and a bottle of yellow pills came into Boscombe’s possession.
‘Trust it must be,’ said the Obeah Man. ‘Now go, wicked man. Take one pill each day at dawn and look not into a mirror until the seventh day. Then all be done.’
‘As smooth as a baby’s bum bum?’ Boscombe asked.
‘As smooth as a baby’s bum bum.’
Boscombe went off whistling, he had omitted to sign the cheque.
The days dragged into a week. Boscombe took one pill each dawn and on the seventh he rushed to his mirror.
And there a great wonder was to be revealed.
Boscombe blinked and blinked again. The hideous pustules had vanished without a trace. The skin, so long pitted and ghastly was now pure and unsullied, sensuous and soft.
The horrible pimples were gone.
So too were Boscombe’s nose, ears and eyebrows.
And as he stared, his left eye smoothed over, closely followed by his right. Boscombe was about to remark upon the somewhat Gothic turn that events had suddenly taken, when his mouth vanished, leaving his entire visage as smooth as a baby’s bum bum.
And he suffocated.
LITTLE EPILOGUE BIT
Dr Kinn, who viewed the spot-encrusted face of the deceased said that he ‘appeared to have died from natural causes’, but declined further examination of the body on the grounds that he was ‘far too ugly to look at closely’.
‘Quack indeed,’ said he, as he rode off on his BMX to his chess evening with Dr Poo Pah Doo.
6
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
L. P. HARTLEY (1895-1972)
Death to false metal!
MANOWAR (1980-
HEADS AND HANDBAGS
(Or how Danny finally made a decision)
Discovering just what your friends really think of you is, of course, one thing you can do, if you happen to find yourself in someone else’s body for an evening.
It’s one of the things Danny did. He went along to The Shrunken Head and did it.
He wasn’t too surprised by the responses. The general opinion seemed to be that Danny Orion was all right, not a bad bloke, a bit idle, always whinging that he couldn’t have a dog of his own, mean with his fags.
As Mickey Merlin, Danny bought drinks all round, ran up an enormous bar tab and got commode-hugging drunk.
Well, he wouldn’t have a hangover in the morning, would he? Because when he became Mickey, he’d no longer had the cold he’d caught at old Sam’s funeral, had he? No and no. So.
‘More drinks all round,’ he called out once again, and (hopefully), ‘Has anyone seen my girlfriend tonight?’
When Danny woke up in the morning, Danny was no longer Mickey. He yawned, sniffed, concentrated his thoughts. Concluded that he didn’t have a hangover. Then he tried to remember how the evening had finished.
It had finished, he so recalled, with Mickey Merlin’s girlfriend giving him a—
Danny chuckled. At least Mickey will be pleased to wake up in his own bed, he thought. I trust he stuck to his Magician’s Code of Conduct and got me home in one piece.
Danny opened his eyes and blinked up at his ceiling.
No, it was not his ceiling.
It was the ceiling of Mickey Merlin’s converted hut.
No. It was not that ceiling either.
It was the ceiling of a police station cell.
Oh no! Danny tried to rise, but could not. He craned his neck and peered at himself. He was strapped down. There was a kind of leather belt arrangement over his chest, two more secured his wrists. Oh no! Danny’s eyes did startings from their sockets. What was he wearing?
He was wearing a skin-tight mini-dress of red PVC. Fishnet stockings. On his right foot a black patent leather shoe, with a winklepicker toe and a high stiletto heel.
On his left foot, a large white bandage.
His left foot was hurting like the very Devil. ‘Mickey, you bastard!’ Danny’s scream rang about the little cell. Ring, ring, ring, it went. And then Danny’s tongue went taste, taste, taste, about his upper lip area. That was lipstick he was wearing, wasn’t it?
It was.
Danny’s brain turned a number of cartwheels. Mickey Merlin had done this to him. Dressed his body up in drag and then got him into trouble with the police. The dirty trickster. What a way to treat a friend.
‘Mickey… you…’ Danny cleared his throat. ‘Mickey… you…’ Danny coughed several times. ‘Mickey…?’
There was something very strange about Danny’s voice.
It did not sound right at all. Rather high-pitched, it was. And with a regional accent. But not any region of the British Isles.
‘Mickey?’ Danny tried the name again. He tried to make his voice go deeper. But it wouldn’t. Danny ran the tip of his tongue around the inside of his mouth. His teeth were rather straight, weren’t they? They’d been all over the place yesterday.
‘Mickey,’ said Danny, once more. Just to hear the sound.
Then.
Danny craned his neck once more.
Looked down along himself once more.
Down along the tight red PVC mini-dress.
The tight red PVC mini-dress with the high breast definition under the leather strap arrangement.
‘Tits!’ Danny screamed this word with considerable vigour, and that voice went ring, ring, ring, all around the cell once more. That voice that wasn’t his.
That woman’s voice.
‘Aaaagh!’ it went. ‘I’ve got tits! I’ve got tits! I’m in the wrong body. Help!’
‘Shut the Hell up in there.’ Something, possibly (probably) a truncheon, went bang upon the cell door. The nasty little sliding hatch thing slid aside. A policeman’s face leered in. ‘Keep it down, Audrey, or I’ll have the guys give you another strip search.’
Audrey! Danny rolled his head (or Audrey’s head) from side to side, wrestled to free himself (herself) of the straps. Kicked his (her) legs. ‘Let me out of here. Help! Help!’
‘Wrap it,’ said the policeman with what was definitely an American accent. Just like the one Danny/Audrey had. ‘The priest will be here in a minute to give you the last rites. Not that it’s gonna help you, Audrey. You know you shouldn’t have put the last head in your purse. Careless that was.’
‘Head in my purse?’ The eyes that weren’t Danny’s crossed. ‘What are you saying?’
‘You’ve lost your appeal, honey. Guilty as charged on all sixteen counts. You got just half an hour left before you fry in Old Sparky, the electric chair.’
‘Nor screamed the voice of Audrey. ‘No! No! No!’
‘Yes, yes, yes. God-damn serial-killing bitch. We’re gonna fry you slowly, tease that current up and down, up and down. Melt ya a bit at a time. Make it last real long.’
‘No!’ Danny jerked the head of Audrey back and forwards, up and down. And he screamed and he screamed and he screamed.
And then he passed out.
He awoke, a quivering wreck, to find Mickey Merlin grinning down at him. ‘And let that be a lesson to you,’ said the magician. ‘Getting my girlfriend to—’
His words were cut short as Danny leapt at his
throat.
‘Get off me! Ooh! Ah!’ Mickey punched Danny in the ear, knocking him backwards across the converted hut. Danny snatched up a frying-pan and swung it at Mickey’s head.
Mickey ducked and punched Danny in the stomach.
Danny doubled up, but he did manage to get one good welt in with the frying-pan, as he went down.
Right on Mickey’s left foot.
Mickey took to hopping about. ‘You sod you. You’ve broken my bloody toes.’
Danny croaked and gagged and spat out words such as tits, head and handbag.
‘Served you right.’ Mickey slumped down onto his bed and worried at his foot. ‘You can pay off that bar tab at The Shrunken Head also.’
‘I damn well won’t.’
‘You damn well will, or it’s back to the States with you, and The Electric Chair.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Call an ambulance,’ moaned Mickey Merlin. ‘And call it right now. Or you’re in big trouble, Orion.’
Danny rose groaning to his feet. ‘Do you have any change for the telephone?’ he asked.
Of course the ambulance wouldn’t come. They won’t for a couple of broken toes. Danny had to call a mini cab.
Big Frank arrived in his mum’s Morris Minor.
He didn’t charge Mickey. Well, after all, Mickey had stood Big Frank drinks all the previous evening, hadn’t he?
Danny waved Mickey off and then returned to the converted hut, where he had been ordered to finish mucking out the rabbits, do the washing-up and make the bed. And not to touch anything, especially the book of spells, which Mickey had kissed goodbye and told to be good. Danny touched that first and received for his disobedience an electrical charge that sent him reeling.
Danny sat down upon the bed, pulled out his packet of Woodbines and found it empty.
‘I had three left yesterday,’ Danny complained. ‘That blaggard Merlin must have smoked them.’
Danny rootled about amongst Mickey’s private items, unearthed a packet of Rothmans and smoked one of those instead.
He was still as well peeved as ever.
A Dog Called Demolition Page 5