Twisthorn Bellow

by Rhys Hughes

“I’ll be back, never you fear!” he screeched. “I know how you treated those other assassins, Crystalbonce, Billy Them, Tiktac Spittlegit and all the rest, but I’m not like them. I have learned from their mistakes and I’m more dangerous. You’ll see!”

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” grunted Twisthorn. Then he sighed and went to retrieve his swordstick.

  He wiped it clean on his knee.

  Then he addressed the corpse of the dead staff member. “What a long threat to make while flying out of a door. Prussian monsters must really be a unique kind! I wish I knew what our official position on Prussia was. I’d better go and find out!”

  * * * * *

  When Hapi arrived in Florida, the sunlight went to his head and he ended up spending his allowance on activities not strictly in keeping with what the Agency had planned for him. He drank cocktails in beach bars, went to nightclubs run by Cuban exiles where funk, soul and salsa helped him forget that music was an enemy, and visited a strange theme park where human beings dressed as gigantic mice. He did finger-snap half of those into oblivion, and got arrested for it, but after he showed his Agency pass he was actually assisted by the local police to hunt down and destroy the men-mice who had managed to get away.

  Florida was fun. He made no effort whatsoever to locate the poshodile and he consorted with whores whenever the opportunity presented itself. At last, feeling thoroughly dissolute and in need of physical exertion to recharge his spirit, he decided to go water-skiing on a nearby lagoon. He did so and something happened that changed him completely. He jumped over a behemoth that surfaced without warning and when he landed on its far side with a terrific splash, unhurt and without even losing his balance, he discovered that his vocabulary had enlarged. The shock had unlocked his vocal abilities. He could talk!

  * * * * *

  Cherlomsky could also talk, which was a mystery no less deep bearing in mind the fact he was deceased. His delight at meeting his old companion again rapidly settled down to a more manageable curiosity concerning the place he found himself in. Zimara confirmed that this was the Afterlife, a peculiarly bland part of it at any rate, for it emerged that Heaven was far away, beyond a fence, a high mountain range and a dozen spiral galaxies. This wasn’t Hell either, Zimara said.

  No, it was Limbo. A third option. Neutral.

  “The problem, professor, is that you may not be permanently dead,” he explained with a smile. “You see, the rules of the Afterlife mean that once you’re inside Heaven—or Hell—you’re not allowed out again. But you’re currently in cryogenic suspension and it’s possible, even likely, you’ll be called back to Earth sometime.”

  “So I have to wait here—in a waiting area?”

  “That’s it exactly!” laughed Zimara. “Limbo’s a repository for all those souls that don’t fit into either of the two other places, in other words men and women who weren’t really good or bad, or as in your case temporary shedders of the mortal coil . . . ”

  “Is it going to be boring here?” Cherlomsky asked.

  “Well, there are ways of keeping ourselves entertained while we wait for this eternity to finish and the next to begin. There’s a telescope if you want to observe events on Earth.”

  “Yes please! I want to check on Twisthorn—he’s my golem—and my mistress—she’s a giant foot.”

  “We’re no strangers to the sensual pleasures here,” said Zimara with a wink. “We even have music. Why not take this aulos and have a puff on it? I am a superb aulos player myself, perhaps the best who ever existed. Why the sour face? It’s only a double flute! Anyone would think you had an irrational fear of music!”

  * * * * *

  In fact the greatest ever virtuoso of the aulos was a faun who went by the name of Marsyas. The myth of Marsyas is a painful one and demonstrates the casual sadism of the ancient gods, who overreacted to ‘insults’ no less than new or middle-aged ones do.

  Marsyas enjoyed playing intricate and funky tunes and urging nymphs to dance to them. He was so skilled on his flute that he started to consider himself the best musician in existence. This belief, which probably wasn’t wrong, led him to issue a challenge to Apollo for a melody duel, and that golden but vicious god accepted.

  Apollo himself was a mighty adept strummer and plucker of danceable tunes, but not really as accomplished as Marsyas, yet he was determined to bring the faun down a peg or two. In fact he ended up hanging him on a peg—more of that in a minute!

  Marsyas went first and played an amazin’ piece of smokin’ aural magic called ‘Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow’ which has since been covered by the group Funkadelic but originally was a plea for rich Greek farmers to set their donkeys loose.

  The nymphs in the vicinity got down to some serious boppin’ and the judges—who happened to be Muses—assumed the duel was already over and the faun had won. But Apollo wasn’t ready to give up. He had a trick up his billowing toga sleeve . . .

  It wasn’t really up there. His trick was a pickup on his lyre. Carefully he connected his instrument to an amplifier that was already plugged in to speakers and one of the inventor Dædalus’s antique dynamos—though at that time it wasn’t an antique.

  Had Apollo been Roman he would have turned his amplifier up to XI, but he was a Greek deity, so he settled for the highest normal setting and sounded a test chord. The skirts of the Muses lifted in the wind of reverb. Olive-hued thongs, they had.

  Then he launched into ‘Voodoo Chile’, a song about sticking pins in a map of an elongated South American nation, not sure which one, maybe one under a groove, maybe not. The fact that South America hadn’t been discovered yet, at least not by Greeks, didn’t bother Apollo. He played his lyre with his teeth, made love to it, set it on fire, hurled it at his speakers, kicked over the amplifier . . .

  The nymphs bopped not a lot to his squeal.

  Marsyas did his best to hide his grin. The Muses conferred, their ears ringing, and declared the faun the outright winner. But Apollo refused to accept this decision and asked for a re-match. Before anyone could stop him, he drew a knife from his belt, leapt at Marsyas and flayed the poor faun alive, cut his hide clean off, leaving the creature underneath bleeding to death on a mossy ground.

  Then Apollo turned and glared at his judges. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I’ve cheated, that skinning a magical woodland creature isn’t the same as playing a tune, but you’d be wrong. His screams are my song and he is my instrument. He’s not a lyre but a liar—he said he was better than me and that was clearly a lie!”

  Isn’t it strange how puns that can only work in English must have been able to work in other languages too in the distant past! Isn’t it marvellous? Almost as odd is the fact that the pelt didn’t die, only the raw faun did, so that Marsyas became his own skin and naught else, hanging from the pine tree where Apollo pegged him like a coat. It remained on that tree until a cold man passed a few winters later who needed covering. He took down the hide and wore it warmly.

  Talking about covers, several millennia later Jimi Hendrix covered the first song that Apollo had played.

  * * * * *

  Throughout the history of our planet, and the histories of other planets if you want to be picky, and also of the various classes of the astral plane, business and economy in particular, skiing on water generally has played an insignificant role as an activity during which startling revelations are systematically created. Hapi’s post-jump revelation that he knew how to talk was a source of considerable pleasure to him but hardly indicative of a trend in action. When he returned to shore he exploited his voice for all he was worth, gossiping and bragging until he came to the attention of the crime lords ruling the region.

  One night he was kidnapped from a brothel by a herd of hoodlums and bundled in the back of a brand new Cadillac, a sound machine, and driven to Miami where he was hired at gunpoint to work as a telekinetic enforcer for D-d-d-d-Doctor Beet, a stuttering scientist expelled from Havana who funded his researches with money laund
ering, detergent smuggling, shirt ironing and other filthy-clean activities. Hapi had no choice but to obey. He enforced a great many things that D-d-d-d-Doctor Beet felt should be enforced and a few he didn’t.

  But all the patterns were changing and organised crime no longer was fated to be run in America by a series of independent kingpins acting like lords of sovereign realms!

  One of the big players wanted to be overlord . . .

  He desired hegemony.

  Well, the money more than the hedge, really!

  Anyway, he was moving in . . .

  Upside Downey Jr had been expanding his base of operations for more than a decade. From his home in Chicago he had uncurled the metaphoric but no less rubbery tentacles of his influence to stretch across the entirety of the Great Plains, the Evening Redness in the West, the Deepest South and now the Florida peninsula.

  Hapi was rescued inadvertently by some of Upside’s hoodlums during a raid against the Miami bosses. Bullets were sprayed through the offices of the main hideout and Hapi jumped behind a moll, using her as a curvy shield and whimpering like a massive softie, “Won’t you help me, Doctor Beet? D-d-d-d-Doctor Beet?”

  But no help came from that direction . . .

  The thugs left and Hapi found himself the only survivor. He scuttled out of the place and caught the first flight back to London. A big telling off awaited him there, he knew.

  During the journey he demonstrated his powers to the stewardesses. He enjoyed undressing them with his mental dexterity while uttering his new catchphrase, “Heeeey!”

  A stutter stolen from his former employer.

  * * * * *

  The buzzer sounded and Twisthorn glanced up from his desk. “See who is at the gate please, Miss Stake!”

  Abortia went out, returned a minute later.

  “Some sort of clown,” she said, “who claims he has changed his mind and wants to work for you.”

  “Really? Describe him briefly.”

  “Well, he has the dead eyes and sunken cheeks of a junky and his coat smells of ampoules and his . . . ”

  “Did you let him in?” asked Twisthorn.

  “No, I thought it might be another trick and so I decided to check with you first before opening the . . . ”

  “You unborn fool! It’s Guttersnipe Chutney!”

  “Sorry, I didn’t consider . . . ”

  Twisthorn waved an impatient clay hand.

  “Mr Chutney is unique. He’s the only known wereclown in existence. He has the nature of a clown but the brain of a sleuth. Half Pierrot, half Poirot, he’s a monster with a talent we can use. Ages ago I invited him to join our Agency as an agent.”

  “Well, he’s here now but he seems . . . ”

  “Enough chatter! Bring him to me, Miss Stake, and be quick about it. We need to make a good impression to win him entirely over to our side. What a superb stroke of luck!”

  Abortia sighed and did what she was told.

  The golem grew sentimental. “What a pity the professor can’t be here to witness this!” he lamented.

  Then he frowned and added, “I could thaw him out and resuscitate him for a few moments, but that would be hardly worth it, and might damage his system to the point where he’ll never be resurrected properly. No, it’s better to leave him as he is.”

  He stopped speaking. Nobody was listening.

  Abortia came back, escorting a clown with a painted smile and shoes so long it seemed they were the body and he was the footwear and that he was reclining on his back . . .

  “What an implausible illusion!” the golem remarked.

  “It is,” agreed Guttersnipe.

  “And how was it achieved?” wondered Twisthorn.

  “Yes, tell us,” urged Abortia.

  “Through my powers of clowning around,” came the reply, “which are extreme powers and not likely to diminish in old age. I do private parties on request, by the way. But I’m not here to sell myself. I sold myself once today already. To the French.”

  “Ha ha!” laughed the golem. “What a joker!”

  “Tee hee!” chortled Abortia.

  “No, I’m deadly serious,” declared Guttersnipe. “I accepted a big bribe from the French government.”

  Twisthorn wiped his eyes. “Oh yes? Ha ha!”

  “To do what?” giggled Abortia.

  Guttersnipe Chutney dipped into a secret pocket of his patchwork coat and pulled out something shiny.

  “To deliver this!” he screamed, as he rushed at Twisthorn and plunged a hypodermic needle into the golem’s arm. Then he depressed the plunger until all the contents had been transferred into the kieselgur. With a crazy glint in his eyes, he skipped.

  “A cocktail of carfentanil and tabun. You’ll be out cold in seconds and stone dead within five minutes . . . ”

  Guttersnipe stood and waited. But nothing happened.

  “Clay, not stone,” corrected the golem.

  “Clay dead then, you oaf!”

  One minute passed. Then five, ten.

  “I don’t understand . . . Ah, I see the problem! I employed the wrong needle! Reached into the wrong pocket. That was my heroin. I’ve got the poison one here. Stand still and . . . ”

  Twisthorn slapped the clown across the room.

  Guttersnipe landed in a heap.

  Abortia gasped. “Squashed my potted fig tree! Poor Uriah!”

  The heap’s name was Uriah . . .

  “Don’t worry, Miss Stake, your loss shall be avenged by the death of this traitor. I ruptured many of his internal organs with my savage blow. He won’t ever recover from it!”

  Guttersnipe moved painfully, drew a pistol from a holster under his armpit. “I may be as good as dead, but so are you. This is a gyrojet gun and the exhaust of its projectile will certainly detonate you and take your colleague with it. ¡Adios!”

  “That’s Spanish, not French!” pointed out Abortia.

  “So what?” sneered the clown.

  The golem spoke with difficulty. His smile was false. “Spain are our allies now. Against Portugal.”

  Guttersnipe didn’t reply but merely aimed his weapon and pulled the trigger. A bunch of flowers came out of the barrel, landed harmlessly on the shed leaves of the fig tree.

  “I don’t understand . . . Ah, I see the problem! I employed the wrong pistol! Reached into the wrong holster. That was my joke gun. I’ve got the real one here. Stand still and . . . ”

  Then he coughed much blood and died.

  Instantly his clown face turned into the face of a human and his shoes shrank to the size of feet.

  But Twisthorn was distraught.

  “For years I had high hopes for him. I believed he would make a good ally for the Agency. It seems I have been naïve. Clearly monsters can’t be trusted. But monsters run this Agency. We are monsters, Miss Stake. You and me and Hapi and Dancin’.”

  “You mean we can’t trust ourselves?”

  “I don’t know! One good thing has happened, though. My indigestion has vanished. The heroin mixed with my kieselgur is producing the same effect as kaolin and morphine!”

  “Which is a well-known bellyache cure?”

  “That’s what I implied!”

  “Every clown has a silver lining,” quipped Abortia.

  * * * * *

  The issue of trust became a major one for Twisthorn Bellow in the days that followed. He spent one whole afternoon trying to crystallise his own philosophy about what he did.

  “I need to get it straight in my head,” he said.

  “Logic’s all that matters. If I proceed perfectly logically, I can’t ever be wrong about anything at all. First, let me consider my guiding equation to see if it’s rigorous and true . . .

  “I operate on the following principle:

  “If my enemy’s enemy is my friend—and I have been persuaded of the validity of that dictum enough times—then my friend’s friend must be my enemy. That is unquestionable.

  “My friend is clearly my enemy’s enem
y.

  “That fact is already established . . . So the friend of my enemy’s enemy is my enemy! Let me at him!

  “But wait! The friend of my enemy’s enemy is me!

  “So I must be my own enemy!

  “Take this and that, you self-made rascal!”

  * * * * *

  After beating himself up badly, Twisthorn was dragged to the sickbay by newly-employed nurses. The Agency buildings had lately been filling up rapidly with civilians. Boffins had been employed, mechanics, actuaries, technicians, carpenters, surgeons, dentists, librarians, tinsmiths, cobblers, wheelwrights, coopers, priests, and many excellent medics—but no cooks with any discernible talent at all.

  The nurses tended the golem, bandaged his wounds, soothed his brow with a trowel, massaged his shoulders, brought him his kpinga for him to cuddle, listened to the radio news with him, read aloud Philip José Farmer novels, including the nearly-lost classic Owe for the Flesh. His confusion about his role slowly vanished.

  He regained enthusiasm, lost ambiguity, evolved a philosophy with the following prime dictum: DO UNTO OTHERS AS A MASOCHIST WOULD DO UNTO HIMSELF. And was so smugly pleased with the formulation of this rule that he tried to dance in his bed, fell out and banged his cranium on a passing porter, killing the chap.

  He remained in the sickbay for two weeks . . .

  The surgeons wanted to take this opportunity to make improvements to his structure, a few tiny adjustments. They straightened his nose with pliers, fixed his broken teeth and glazed him from horn to foot, unevenly it must be admitted. But he wouldn’t allow them to amputate the spiral on the top of his head. Never!

  While he was recuperating, Abortia took charge of everything, though the civilian men under her command sneered when she issued orders as if they resented being bossed by a female, which surely couldn’t be the case in the Twenty First Century.

  A parcel arrived for her one day and she opened it to discover an item of clothing from an admirer.

  The admirer didn’t give his name. The letter that accompanied the gift merely stated that he wasn’t French and wanted to express his wholesome liking for her by giving her a present that wasn’t an assassination attempt in disguise. Touched by this obviously sincere gesture, Abortia put on the garment. It fitted perfectly over her waldo. She rarely took it off from that moment and Twisthorn wasn’t around to chide her for her sartorial vanity. A disaster was on its way!