Lollipop

by David Fletcher

  'He'll come back,' she said. 'He'll come back to the dressing room. And this time we'll have him.'

  Bessie was sitting opposite Cristalina in a large padded chair. She was in her nightgown. It was candy-pink, and it had a light-blue fluffy edging around its neck. Its only redeeming feature was that it was entirely opaque. There was no risk of Cristalina being turned to stone by setting eyes on what lay beneath it.

  So far it had just draped itself about the monstrous slab, taking no part whatsoever in the exchange between the two women. But now it had awoken. It was doing something. It was… well, it was trembling. Or was it more a quiver…? And then Cristalina realised. It was telling a story. It was giving away a secret. And the secret was that Bessie's boster-sized body was now shaking uncontrollably, the sort of uncontrol that accompanies out and out fury. Yes, she was boiling up - boiling up into a massive rage.

  'Cristalina,' she started almost quietly, 'the very future of Trampul hangs in the balance. My future hangs in the balance. Your future - if we assume for the moment that you have a future - that too hangs in the balance. Yes, everything at the moment rests on our ability to bring to a successful conclusion a particular little scheme. A rather silly little scheme based on the rather suspect science of goonie communications - and our supposed ability to monitor these communications… And that, in turn, depends on our ability to transport ten of these bastard little goonies to a rather awkward-to-get-to spot on this goddam fuckin' ship. And in…'

  and here Bessie rolled her eyes in a way no gargoyle could ever have hoped to,

  '…in, would you believe it, a fuckin' costume chest. Two at a time, of course. No point in making it too easy. And that presupposes that the whole fuckin' set up isn't fucked up some more by this mystery magician, the one who seems to be able to materialise out of nowhere - in - you've guessed it - in this same fuckin' chest.'

  Bessie's voice was now a good deal louder than quiet. It was giving the sound insulation between the cabins a seriously testing workout. And still it got louder.

  'But all will be well because this magician-guy is going to hand himself over to my troupe of lovelies… I suppose later tonight… So he can be picked up and packed off. And then all will be fine. All will be dandy and cherry-cheeked fine.'

  The face above the quivering pink nightdress was now bright red. It was ghastly. It merited a health warning, and a stern one at that.

  'Well, starch-arse, I hope it will. I hope it will be so cherry-cheeked fine that we'll all want to dance. Because you see, my dear, if it isn't, you are finished, you are dead. Do you hear me, you bitch? You are effin' dead. And that, my dear, is effin' soddin' dead with a capital effin' D!'

  Bessie had ended this address with the volume turned up to somewhere beyond a shriek. But now she was silent, completely silent. It was time for Cristalina to go. And without a goodbye kiss or a good luck wish. She just had to withdraw. And then to return. But only when she had the right result: the cherry-cheeked fine one as required by her boss.

  Well, she was sure she could do it. Despite the slip up, despite the further difficulties she faced, and despite the foul-mouthed tirade she'd just endured, she was sure she could succeed. And she was sure because she knew that, to start with, her lanky tormentor would present himself as she'd predicted. He would turn up at the dressing room this very night. He was bound to. And then they would have him. He'd not stand a chance.

  He was a man, wasn't he? And all men were stupid. It was an indisputable fact. He'd turn up all right. There was simply no doubt about it. Hell, only a man wouldn't see that!

  32.

  When Renton came to, the room was in total darkness. The operating theatre had clearly been abandoned.

  Renton absorbed this fact almost immediately. But he had a lot more to absorb - and to try to understand: like what the hell was going on - and what did it all mean?

  Well, an unknown on this scale could be dealt with in only one way: with a bit of mental list making. By drawing up an inventory of what he did know, he might be able to sort something out. And maybe, most important of all, he might be able to come up with some idea of what to do next.

  So he began. He began to list.

  Number 1: This had to be the Lagooners, these oddball custodians of the Lollipop - who were almost certainly into some seriously antisocial behaviour. OK, those “surgeons” down there had been hidden beneath their gowns, but Renton was pretty damn sure they were all graduates of the goonie school of chop and lop. In the first place, this was pretty obviously a Lagooner part of the ship. And try as he might, he could not believe that they would throw it open to any of their fare-paying guests - and certainly not so they could cut up some of their fellow passengers. And in the second place, there was the body-part storeroom. That was in a Lagooner section too. And it was just inconceivable that the preparation and the bottling activities were not in some way connected. They had to be. But there was something else that convinced Renton that those body dismantlers were Lagooners - and this was nothing to do with where they were or the connection with the pickled bits. It was the movement of those guys. They'd been performing their dissection at two-thirds speed. Everything was being done very slowly and very deliberately. It was as though they were participants in some sort of ritual. And that was the clincher. It just screamed Lagooners. There was simply no question about it. The owners and operators of the SS Lollipop were slicing up some of its occupants and preserving the resulting yucky bits in glass bottles. Oh - and there was a very good chance that these unfortunate passengers were being prepared for their dismembered future by first of all being interfered with - in their cranial department. Those brain probes he'd found previously must be the start of their… well, of their undoing. Even if that nice Naira Selva had somehow been spared. But what for? Why did these Lagooners choose such a ghoulish end for their guests? What could they possibly derive from such a pastime? Knowledge? Pleasure? Revenge? Sustenance? Renton gulped so hard, he remembered what he'd eaten for his previous meal - and the two before that. 'Oh God,' he sighed to himself, 'they're eating them. They're bloody well eating them. What else would they want them for? They're cannibals. That's what they are. And I bet it's all to do with this drifting about in space. They've gone space happy. Or no… it could be simpler. Just a deficiency. Yes, that's it; they're just deficient in something. So they need to ingest it directly. And none of your processed nonsense. No, just the real stuff - kept under brine. And they do look a bit pasty. I mean, a bit washed out - as though they're missing something…'

  There was a sharp snapping noise. Renton hadn't realised it but he'd been biting his nails, and his teeth had just clashed together as they'd lost their grip on their meal. It made him jump and then it made him feel nauseous. Nail chewing was, after all, the thin end of cannibalism - or so it seemed to a very shaken Renton.

  Maybe it was time to move on. So:

  Number 2: No question: Madame Toothbrush's troupe of blondes. Well, here was more mystery than ever. If one assumed for the moment that the four of them he'd recently encountered were representative of the whole, then all twelve of them were regular, rotten-to-the-core villains. Just as Renton was now convinced that the Lagooners were cannibals, so he was now sure that those big breasted bruisers were bad guys, real bitches, people who were simply not nice to know. It was the way they spoke - and the way they went about their business - with those two Lagooners. But here was a paradox: their victims were worse than they were. Rendering people unconscious with a club wasn't what nice people did. But it was pretty small beer compared to swallowing them. What was it all about? Were they in somebody's pay, a husband maybe, whose wife had been served up for tea - and they were here on this ship for revenge? Or possibly they didn't even know about it: the Lagooners' taste for the “corpus delecti”, that is. They were here on some other mission, a criminal one that was nothing at all to do with the habits of their hosts - but instead all to do with their wealth - or something more special perhaps. Maybe
even the Lollipop. It could be as simple as that. They were in the process of pirating the Lollipop - or hijacking it. It was possible. But what would they do with it? How would they gain? Renton was getting nowhere very fast. All he was really sure about was that these well-endowed ladies were up to no good. And no, they were not here on a mercy mission; it was nothing to do with putting a stop to some questionable dietary habits. They had some other purpose and it was a bad purpose. He was certain of it. Then it occurred to him. 'If they're up to no good, that means old Miss Toothbrush is as well.'

  He was into the third item of his list before he realised it. And this was to prove as puzzling as numbers one and two:

  Number 3: He had to remind himself that he was not a regular passenger on board this spacecraft. He was here to do a specific job. He was here to find a woman with a tattoo on her right knocker. And if this woman was the good looking one in the troupe of trollops, then quite possibly the reason he was looking for her was not unconnected with how her colleagues behaved with their clubs. If that were a valid deduction, an equally valid deduction would be that Boz might know something about their intentions. Indeed he might know precisely why they were here on board this vessel. After all, it was a detective business he worked for now, not a nursery. And it wasn't unknown for detectives to be employed to discover things about people who were sometimes just a teeny bit naughtier than norm. Well, maybe Boz had already done some of that discovering, and now needed Renton to do a little bit more, a little bit more to complete the picture. Or maybe Boz knew that the Lollipop was to be violated and for what purpose, but he didn't know the identity of the violators. That was what Renton was supposed to unearth. But if that was the case, it implied that Boz, and indeed the business that was Boz, Madeleine and Renton, was in the employ of the Lollipop's owners. They were currently being retained by a bunch of people-eaters. And was Boz aware of that?

  Renton had rarely been through such a chilling series of thoughts in a single list making. Nor had he often been left feeling more confused than he'd been when he'd started. But on this occasion that's what he was. He had no idea what the hell was going on, why the Lagooners were being so beastly to their guests, why the Bristol Brigade were assaulting their cannibal hosts, and what connection his quest for Miss Toothbrush had with either of these unknowns.

  This left him with little inspiration but a great deal of desperation. He knew he had to do something, but what? What could he do that would give him any chance at all of solving all these riddles?

  He sat in the darkness pondering and wondering, and eventually he decided to do what he knew he had to do all along. It was a course of action that had much to recommend it. It would avoid the need to confront the distasteful subject of cannibalism. Because for the time being, at least, it would dismiss the existence of its practitioners; the Lagooners would be ignored. It would however offer a real possibility of finding out a great deal more about the team of blonde blaggards - and about one of them in particular. Miss Toothbrush still remained his prime target, and Renton could not forget that. Whilst his trail had become a little fraught of late, it was still taking him closer to his desired destination - and a certain revelation at that desired destination.

  He would return to the blondes' dressing room. Immediately. That's what he'd do. It was the one place he would be able to pick up the threads of his search.

  'And what's more,' he thought, 'it will be the last thing they'll expect. Just imagine. The guy they were so keen to catch, simply back-tracking to their lair. It's a fantastic idea, absolutely fantastic. Hell, only a woman wouldn't see that!'

  33.

  It was the early hours of the morning. But not nearly as early as when Renton had first set out. Finding his way back to the suite of dressing rooms was proving a little more difficult than he'd expected. And this was not good. It gave him time to think. It gave him time to consider his plan - and time to pick holes in it. And the result was inevitable. He began to wonder why he had ever thought that it could work in the first place.

  Even women, he decided, might guess that he'd do this. That he'd simply retrace his steps to the starting point. And if they did, then that would be it. There'd be a reception committee - waiting for the return of the prodigal son. And he'd not stand a chance.

  And as if that wasn't bad enough, he was beginning to feel tired and muzzy as well. And that meant there was a headache on its way. He hadn't eaten for hours now, and that always tended to trigger one. Maybe he should just call it a day. Retire to his room for a snack and a sleep - and then rejoin the battle on the morrow, revived and refreshed - and… and then he saw her. It was a woman lying on her back, right in the middle of the corridor. And she was sporting some splendidly outrageous clothes…

  He approached cautiously until he was standing above her recumbent body. And then he realised two things. The first was that she was one hundred per cent, zapped-out unconscious, and probably planned to stay that way for quite some time. And the second was that she was a man.

  What Renton had taken for a head of silvery blonde hair was, in fact, an elaborate silvery blonde wig, dotted here and there with small sparkly stones. And it was clearly designed to complement the accompanying outfit. This consisted of a silvery-rainbow-effect waistcoat, worn over an otherwise naked torso, and a tiny, highly decorated pair of briefs. They were encrusted with hundreds of tiny jewels, none of which, as far as Renton could tell, was other than fake.

  It was while Renton was evaluating this lack of authenticity of the jewellery - and the lack of aesthetics of the whole ensemble - that he was cursed with the most unwelcome of thoughts. It must have stemmed from his improvisation training as a Tickler, and it arrived automatically in response to his present situation. It concerned the all too obvious availability of a disguise…

  'Oh no,' he groaned to himself. 'You cannot be serious. You cannot expect me to get into that stuff. I mean, just look at it. It's hideous. And it's so… well, it's so cheap! I mean, what if somebody saw me? What the hell would they think? And more to the point, what would they do? After all, this is the soddin' Lollipop, not exactly the best place in the universe to find what you might call sexual reticence. They wouldn't hesitate for a second. And who could blame them? I'd be bloody well inviting it.

  'And now I'm prevaricating, because I know I have to do it. I know I have no choice but to go back to that dressing room. And when I arrive there, I know that the only way I'll avoid instant recognition and probably instant demolition, is if I wear a disguise - this disguise, this Mary Ann of an outfit that'll make me look like a real bloody fairy with the wrong sort of wand. And I've got to do it! I've friggin' well got to do it!'

  He sighed - and not just a small sigh but an enormous sigh. And then he got on with the task in hand, the task he now couldn't avoid. And he hurried. It was the middle of the night and the ship was deserted. But there was no guarantee it would remain so. And he hardly wanted to be disturbed in the middle of his work. That would be even worse than the disguise.

  He started with the wig. That was easy. It just slipped off the chap's head. Then the waistcoat. That was easy too. Its zombie-like owner made no effort to retain it. And then it was the briefs…

  'Squeamish' was a word Renton usually reserved for his reaction to the sight of blood. Or more accurately, to the sight of blood being dislodged from its normally discreet confinement - as in an operation involving the removal of limbs and things. But now he discovered it also applied to his reaction to something very different: to the prospect of de-panting a fellow male. Hell, could he really do it? Could he really tackle such an intimate assignment? And could he tackle what this assignment would no doubt expose? In short, could he tackle the tackle? Heck, it just wouldn't be proper, would it? It just wouldn't be very nice.

  Then Renton had an idea. He would turn him over. That would at least provide a bit of decorum. And it might even make the pants removal a little less awkward on the physical front as well. So he did. And as he did, he
shrieked.

  'Oh no, it's a thong-thing! It's a fucking thong-thing!'

  And sure enough, it was. Renton had found an even more interesting costume than he'd first imagined.

  There now transpired a serious tussle in the Tenting control room. Did this discovery represent extenuating circumstances, a degree of derriere-ing-do that could be regarded as beyond the call of duty - as well as beyond the bounds of decency? After all, this wasn't just about a bit of de-bagging anymore; this was now about the removal a snug-fitting item of the-most-intimate apparel, and its immediate reinstallation into a site of special anatomical interest - his site of special anatomical interest - and while it was still bloody warm! So could he legitimately do a volte-face on his original plan and simply scurry off back to his cabin?

  Could he hell! He had a job to do, hadn't he? And he'd better get on with it - and bloody quickly!

  Renton was the only person he knew who could lose an argument with himself.

  He half closed his eyes. But he still saw more than he wanted to. And he certainly didn't enjoy it. But finally he had divorced the gaudy thong-thing from its owner, and he now held it before him, regarding it as one might regard an etching of a turd. Then he closed his eyes. It was time to steel himself and to get on with the next bit.