Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help

by Douglas Anthony Cooper

  Massimo patted one of the comfy leather chairs, and indicated to Arabella that it was hers. He then patted the comfy leather sofa, and indicated to Milrose that this was his.

  Arabella sat on the chair, rigidly, as if it were a bed of nails. Milrose, on the other hand, expressed his contempt by stretching out on the sofa, with his feet up on the armrest.

  “There we are,” said Massimo Natica. “All comfy.”

  If he uses that word one more time, thought Milrose, I will fetch the cattle prod.

  “Now then. Time to get fully acquainted. We’re going to be good, good friends. And we’re going to get to know each other very well. What we are about to engage in is called Intensive Help. It is by far the best kind. You will be Helped during the day, and while you sleep here, you will be Helped during your dreams.”

  “Hang on!” said Milrose Munce. “We have to sleep here?”

  The sleeping quarters were approximately as winning as the den itself. A low doorway led off one wall of the huge room—so low as to require even Arabella, who was not all that statuesque, to bow her head. Milrose insisted that they have a good look at this bedroom before they commenced with any further Help, and Massimo Natica—with a smiling hint of impatience—agreed.

  The room was without windows. Come to think of it, Milrose came to think, the entire den was windowless, with the exception of the fortified glass set into the entry door. The bedroom was, however, unusually tall, perhaps three or four stories. The ceiling could barely be seen in the gloom. For the moment the only light was what poured in (slowly, like molasses) through the open door.

  Apparently, Arabella and Milrose were to sleep in a bunk bed. It was not an ordinary bunk bed. It had mattresses, one on top of the other, connected by a ladder, but it had about twenty of these, arrayed in a tower.

  “Feel free to choose!” said Massimo Natica. “I shall in fact come to some conclusions, based upon which bed you each decide to occupy.”

  Milrose thought it might be nice to sleep at the top of a tower of beds. On the other hand, rolling out of bed by mistake would be a dramatic and serious affair. Sleeping had never struck him as an adventurous activity, but then much of what he was now experiencing was new.

  “I shall take the third bunk,” said Arabella.

  “Ah,” said Massimo Natica. “For any particular reason?”

  “Yes,” said Arabella.

  Milrose pondered his choice.

  “I shall wait until you are far from this room before making my decision,” said Milrose. “Feel free to come to a conclusion based on that.”

  After this small and depressing episode, the two found themselves once again occupying their respective chair and sofa, in preparation for whatever might be inflicted upon them. Massimo Natica had a glowing smile upon his absurdly shaven face, as if he had already accomplished great things in the way of Helping his two patients.

  Is that what we are? wondered Milrose Munce. Patients? He lay on his sofa, doing his best to reduce the voice of this man to an undifferentiated drone in his ears. Milrose was pretty good at not listening. He had practised this rigorously in the classes of Mr. Borborygmus, so that he could sit through an entire lesson without having to take in any of that teacher’s useless information.

  As Milrose was in the process of not listening, he examined the ceiling above him. It was certainly not an exceptional ceiling—with one exception. It had a door. Now, the occasional ceiling does have a door—a trap door, which leads in general to an attic. This, however, was not a trap door. It was a door door. It had a doorknob. It opened out, apparently, into mid-air. In that sense it was a dangerous sort of door: Milrose could imagine someone on the other side opening it and falling, bellywards, onto the floor. Then again, it was unlikely that anyone opening that door would be unaware of the fact that they were horizontal while doing so.

  Massimo Natica droned on, and Milrose spent the entire drone daydreaming, but Arabella was taking a morbid interest in what the man was saying.

  Later, when they were lying in their respective beds, Arabella explained to Milrose what it was that Massimo Natica had said.

  “It seems,” said Arabella, “that we are to be fully erased.”

  She had to say this very loudly, as Milrose had decided that he did indeed wish to sleep on the topmost bunk.

  “We are to be rubbed out, like a bad essay written in pencil. And then I guess we get recomposed, like a better essay written in ink.”

  This was not the kind of thing that Milrose wanted to hear, but it was not unexpected.

  “He went into a very long explanation, trying to justify this. I was not convinced. Are you convinced, Milrose?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Think again.”

  She thought again. “Yes, I think I know your thoughts.”

  “Who do you think he is?” said Milrose.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t yet figured out what he is.”

  “Well, a Professional, clearly.”

  “Did you see a diploma on his wall?”

  “No.”

  “Professionals almost always have diplomas on their wall. It’s a point of pride.”

  “Right. I say we search for the diploma tomorrow. If he doesn’t have one, then he’s a fraud.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if he were a fraud?”

  “Yeah. I’d like that. We could torture him with that little fact. Until he broke down and ceased to Help us.”

  They paused to enjoy this possibility.

  “You know,” said Milrose, “there’s a door in the ceiling.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. An ordinary door. Except it opens downwards. Or perhaps upwards.”

  “Into the second floor?” asked Arabella.

  Milrose considered this, with growing excitement. “Yes! That’s exactly where it would open into. Or out of. Man, I never thought I’d welcome the thought of seeing Poisoned Percy, but it would be great to have him here.”

  “He’s not so bad, Percival.”

  “He’s a pompous, self-obsessed, mediocre bore.”

  “I do believe you are jealous, Milrose Munce.”

  Milrose snorted. And then he realized that he was indeed jealous. He was not sure why. It shouldn’t really bother him, should it, that this ghost was friends with Arabella? He changed the topic. “It’s funny, isn’t it, that there are no ghosts on the first floor. Ever thought about that?”

  “There are rumours,” said Arabella.

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. On the second floor, they talk about this a lot. It’s not certain what happened, but there are very distinct rumours.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Well, it’s a bit weird. And disconcerting.”

  “Yeah, well, that seems to be a theme today.”

  “What Percival says”—and once again, Milrose felt that utterly inappropriate twang of jealousy—“is that there was an exorcism.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes. It was once a favourite haunt. So the story goes. But the staff banded together and petitioned the mayor to put up funds for a good exorcist, who came and cleaned it out.”

  “This gives me the creeps.”

  “They’re not too happy about it on the second floor, either. I mean, it’s nothing more than superstition these days, but nobody dead dares set foot on the first floor, for fear of … well, nobody knows what they’re in fear of. But it’s definitely very frightening.”

  Milrose did not feel like thinking about this at the moment. And so, as generally happened by default when he did not wish to think, he thought about food. “What do you think we get for breakfast?”

  “I don’t know. Cold porridge and stale bread? That’s the tradition, isn’t it.”

  Dinner, in fact, had not been that bad. Massimo Natica had left the room briefly, counselling them to avoid touching the cattle prod, and had returned with a tray laden with food. Not great food, but passable.
>
  He had also brought ridiculous pyjamas—three sets each—so that they might have something ridiculous to wear. I suppose this indicates, Milrose had thought grimly, that we’ll be here for at least three days.

  During the silence following the contemplation of tomorrow’s breakfast, Milrose noted that Arabella had begun to climb the ladder towards his most elevated bed. His heart, which seemed to be doing unexpected things, did a triple back flip with a half gainer.

  He wondered whether she had a birthmark, where it might be, and what it might look like. He could very much imagine her having, for instance, a birthmark on the sole of her foot in the shape of a sneezing gondolier. This wonderment would plague him increasingly, despite his allegiance to Ms. Corduroy’s birthmark. Clearly, thought Milrose, I am capable of pondering two birthmarks at once. I suppose that makes me unfaithful, mentally. And perhaps shallow. But that was okay, as Milrose Munce did not mind being shallow.

  Arabella’s ascent, however, was purely practical. She wished to be much closer to Milrose so that they could converse quietly. It was not clear that Massimo Natica was listening in on their conversation, but neither was it clear that he was not.

  Arabella, who was mildly afraid of heights, was happy when her brief climb was complete, and she was lying, heart athump, in the second-highest bed.

  “There is a spring in this mattress,” said Arabella, “which is very slightly less stiff than the other springs. It causes a tiny depression. Which depresses me.”

  “You are ridiculous,” said Milrose fondly.

  “I wonder,” plotted Arabella, “whether, when Massimo Natica goes out to fetch our next meal, we might ambush him in some exciting way when he returns.”

  “I was thinking much the same thing. What I wouldn’t give for a nice chunk of potassium just now.”

  “That is an element in the periodic table?”

  “Yes. A personal favourite. Combined with water, it would do excellent things to this Massimo Natica. Rubidium’s even better stuff, but it’s been banned from the lab ever since Dave …” Milrose caught himself. He considered Arabella’s delicate sensibilities. “Uh, never mind.”

  Milrose Munce furrowed his brow, which set his brain in motion. What would Ms. Corduroy have come up with in this situation? She who was so adept at conjuring malevolent punishment? Certainly she would be smiling, with her patented evil smile, and agreeably evil thoughts would be drifting into her happy mind. Milrose smiled a devilish smile, hoping that this might aid him in emulating Ms. Corduroy’s thought processes. It did. “Got it,” he announced.

  “Yes?” said Arabella, with the closest thing to excitement that she ever permitted herself.

  “We’ll stand on either side of the door. You’ll hold the cattle prod, and I’ll hold a straitjacket. When he enters, you know, bearing our cold gruel, you’ll zap him with the cattle prod; and while he’s twisting up in pain, I’ll put him in the straitjacket. Then we’ll prop him up against the wall, where the jacket is supposed to be hung, so as not to interrupt his precious historical display.”

  “Yes,” said Arabella, with the same approximation of excitement. “And I shall curtsy politely.”

  “Yes!” said Milrose Munce, who was always happy to express full and delighted excitement. “And I shall say something sarcastic.”

  “That will be a nice touch,” Arabella agreed.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  MASSIMO NATICA, UNSPEAKABLY WELL SHAVEN, OPENED THE DOOR AND ANNOUNCED THAT BREAKFAST WAS READY.

  This was a terrible disappointment. It meant that he had already left to fetch the meal, and was now fully returned, which would give them no opportunity to prepare their ambush. The battle would have to wait until lunchtime.

  “Something we have not yet addressed, and which clearly must be addressed over the course of our Professional engagement, is the matter of voices.”

  “What, you don’t like the way we talk?”

  “I mean the voices which you both apparently hear, even when nobody is speaking.”

  Milrose caught Arabella’s worried eye.

  “It has been reported to me by the staff of your exalted school that you have both, on numerous occasions, been found discussing matters with the unpopulated air in front of you. Long one-sided conversations have been witnessed. And you, Milrose, have been seen laughing at jokes whose punchlines were not delivered.”

  “Can’t be helped, Massimo babe. Family trait. My great-grandmother used to deliver long nagging tirades at her needlepoint. And she would conspire with her brooches.”

  “Part of our process here is to cure you of your debilitating family traits.”

  “Sure, man. Cure away. I hate it when the compost sings to me. Highly distracting. Terrible voice, too. And really lousy taste in music.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Natica,” said Arabella with cool calculation. “Do you ever find yourself hearing voices from places where voices ought not to issue?”

  “Absolutely not! Which is why I confer Professional Help, rather than receiving it.”

  “Never heard even a little peep of unexpected chatter, guy?” asked Milrose.

  “I assure you, that is not in my nature. And were it, I should have to immediately resign my position and join you in this most effective therapy.” Massimo Natica laughed heartily at the absurdity of this scenario.

  “How do you propose that we silence these voices, Mr. Natica?” asked Arabella, with her very best insincerity.

  “Ah. Well, that will tax my Professional powers to their fullest. But it can be done.”

  “Speaking of your Professional powers, dude—where’s your diploma?”

  A pause followed this question. Was this a potential opening, an avenue of assault, a chink in the superlative suit? Could he possibly be without diploma?

  “I have always considered Professionals who prominently display their diplomas to be unProfessional.”

  “I can certainly understand that,” said Arabella. “And your admirable lack of vanity makes it impossible for you to descend to the level of those narcissists. Who did you say your tailor was?”

  “Natica, buddy. I have no problem with your keeping your diploma in a drawer. As long as there is, you know, a drawer.”

  “I cannot understand why my furniture would concern you in the slightest. Now then. Let us discuss the tactics we shall employ to rid your unfortunate heads of these intrusive and unwelcome voices.”

  “Cattle prod?” asked Milrose.

  “Certainly not. Although we have found cattle prods effective in this regard.”

  “Pitchfork?”

  “I’m afraid the pitchfork has never proved much use in the silencing of voices.”

  “Surely it would be hard to hear voices with a pitchfork stuck deeply in the brain?”

  Massimo Natica smiled. The precise content of that smile—apart from the teeth—was difficult to discern. Milrose Munce wondered whether this little parodic suggestion might have been a tactical error. Best not to give ideas to this possibly fraudulent Professional.

  “Perhaps, Milrose, perhaps. But that would fall into the category of antique therapies, and I like to employ only the latest techniques. Now, what we shall do is this. Arabella, I would like you to stand behind Milrose. Very good. Now, I would like you to say something.”

  “Diploma,” said Arabella.

  “Uh, yes. Very good. Did you hear that, Milrose?”

  “Hard not to. Given that I have ears and all.”

  “Good. This is going marvellously.”

  “Gosh, this is modern,” said Milrose.

  “Thank you,” said Massimo Natica. “Now. Arabella. I would like you to simply mouth a word, without making any noise.”

  “Fraud,” mouthed Arabella, without making any noise.

  “Good,” said Massimo Natica, who of course had not heard the mouthed word. “Milrose. What did you hear?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “A simple question. What pre
cisely did Arabella just say?”

  “Er, ‘unprofessional’?”

  “Is that what you said, Arabella?”

  “No. I said ‘fraud.’”

  Massimo Natica’s smile was stuck, it seemed, like a scratched record.

  “Lovely. Yes. Good. Now, I would like you to say a few words, out loud, but in between those words I would like you to occasionally insert a mouthed word.”

  “This is great fun,” said Milrose, yawning.

  “You are a fraud,” said Arabella. Between the words a and fraud she mouthed the word consummate.

  “Now what did you hear, Milrose?”

  “You are a fraud,” announced Milrose, with great pleasure.

  “Superb!” said Massimo Natica, through clenched teeth. “You are not having trouble with voices at all today. Not at all. You are hearing what is said, and not hearing what is not said.”

  “To get to the other side?” said Milrose.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “That’s the answer, isn’t it?”

  “The answer to what?”

  “The question you just asked. ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’”

  “I didn’t ask any question,” said Massimo Natica with concern.

  “Oh no,” said Milrose, with false alarm. “I must be hearing voices. Even worse: voices telling bad jokes.”

  “I feared as much.”

  “Darn,” said Milrose. “Cattle prod.”

  “I think we should save that as a last resort,” said Massimo Natica. Milrose again immediately regretted this comment. “Well, then. Professional Help it is. I have a whole plethora of techniques.”

  “I hope we don’t have to go through the entire plethora,” said Arabella.

  “Yeah, me neither. ’Cause at the end of the plethora lurks the cattle prod.”

  “Okay now. Milrose, I want you to cover one ear with your hand. If you hear a voice, let me know which ear it enters.”

  “Will do. Do you also want to know which ear it exits?”

  “That is unimportant.”