by Brian Hughes
Waiting for his girlfriend on a mediaeval stone bridge stood a young impressive gentleman. In one hand he held a gleaming, well-brushed top hat. His paisley cravat stuck out like a bullfrog’s throat from his clean-shaven chin.
The juvenile Irene Pootle sidled up, her blushing face embedded in a posy of dandelions.
With a hiss of static, the scene changed.
Now Mrs Pootle was old and shrivelled.
Due to her bent spine everything appeared to be much closer to the ground.
There was Fredrick, Mrs Pootle’s grandson, dropping her off at the old folk’s home, then disappearing as fast as his greedy legs could carry him.
The bedroom door creaked closed, depression drifting over the sterile chamber.
Dewdrop shuddered.
The picture fizzled and then turned back to interference.
Cocking her head at an angle she studied the aerial circumspectly.
Then she reached a conclusion.
“It’s some sort of Mind Reading machine! That’s what it is!” A mischievous smirk ripped across her lips. “I could have a lot of fun with this! All the best indeed, Mr Oddman!”
Act Three: Terra Incognita
Like most Victorian boarding houses, arcades that might have been stolen from the Isle of Man Steam Ferry connected the rooms of Thirty-three Bethlehem Drive together. Narrow wooden affairs with sloping roofs and 1930’s lamps that only illuminated their own particular bits of wall.
Sounds tended to gather in these dark soulless places. They left their individual berths and held confused, muffled meetings in the broom cupboards.
Dewdrop could hear the scratching of a pen right at that moment, from Mrs McClusky’s chambers. Dewdrop’s television had just enough flex to reach her landlady’s door.
Mrs McClusky coiled her fat arms across her bureau in an attempt to conceal the ledgers from prying eyes.
Not that there was anybody to observe such personal matters.
Nonetheless, the task was performed with all the grace of an abandoned sealion, only the top of her fountain pen on display to the world.
Mrs McClusky couldn’t be described as obese. It would be impossible to label anybody four-foot-six inches high with that particular epithet. It was just that, unlike the residents of her grim boarding house, Mrs McClusky enjoyed the better things in a life.
Perhaps a trifle overindulgently.
Now in her dotage she resembled some gigantic cashew nut.
Dewdrop organised the aerial, then switched the set on.
Static filled the screen.
Then Mrs McClusky’s form emerged through the fog.
It was Bob-a-Job week in the alternative Greyminster. The enthusiastic cubs were receiving a commendation from Arkayla Johnson. The church hall at St. Oliver’s could almost have been tinged in sepia colours with the nostalgia of it all.
In the antechamber beneath the stage, however, a different story was taking place.
Arkayla Johnson had hidden the week’s takings behind the morbid dummy they’d bought for the First Aid Badge.
Who was this magnified bumblebee, probing the junk set aside for the annual Gang Show?
With a tin opener Mrs McClusky set about the sealed cigarette box. The rusted lock gave with a snap, pellets of iron ricocheting upwards.
She thrust her corpulent fingers into the mound of ten pence pieces. The coins trickled sensuously between her hoary knuckles.
Stuffing a fistful into her cleavage, Mrs McClusky laughed.
Coins bounced between her udders, disappearing down the cups of her bra.
In all fairness to Mrs McClusky, this might not have been the memory of an actual event. It could have been some darkened daydream.
Whatever the case, Dewdrop’s face turned the colour of beetroot as she struggled to control her resentment.
Yanking the antenna away from Mrs McClusky’s deprived little world she crawled on all fours towards Mr Gardener’s room.
Somewhere behind her, the cord snagged on the telephone table. Dewdrop gave it a tug and sent the table into a spin. Fortunately it remained standing upright otherwise Mrs McClusky would have heard the crash and rumbled her espionage.
Moving the set about the carpet, Dewdrop lifted the aerial to Mr Carpenter’s door.
From beyond came the sounds of Radio Four.
Mr Carpenter was firmly entrenched in his customary afternoon doze. His vibrating lips created the sound that a reed disembodied from a piccolo might have made on a draughty front doorstep.
Across his lap Mr Carpenter’s photograph album had been left open. Which one of those watercolour memories would he be dreaming of, I wonder?
A moon-swept night.
A dark blue moor surrounded by the silhouette of a forest.
The cool summer breeze was making the grass bow in reverential whispers.
Mr Carpenter mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He looked like the Skegness Sailor as he capered towards the copse.
All around the sounds of sheep rose up to confront the hollow night.
So many sheep, their hooves thundering down the cloud-swept meadows.
Too many sheep in fact!
As the scene pulled away from Mr Carpenter’s flushed face, it became apparent that he was totally naked, apart from a pair of wellingtons and a scarf.
His smile broke into a grin of expectation, a worried ram backing apprehensively into the wood.
‘Clunk!’ Dewdrop turned the set off and bolted upright, her eyes even wider than usual. There were just some things that she wasn’t meant to witness, Mr Carpenter’s fantasies being one of them!
“My God! What a fascinating invention this is…”
She gave the television a thorough examination, as though it didn’t belong in this world.
“I wonder what other dark secrets Greyminster holds? What other masks people are wearing?”
From Mrs McClusky’s chamber came the sound of the bureau being locked. Mrs McClusky must have finished for the night. Soon she’d be emptying the meters.
“What I need is a better advantage point. Somewhere high. That way I could tune into everybody’s thoughts all at once. But where?”
The answer reached her at the same moment that Mr Carpenter awoke.
A succession of coughs bustled from his apartment, some obviously moist.
Dewdrop hoisted the set beneath her arm and struggled onto her feet.
“I’ve got it!” she decided. “The roof! That’s an excellent spot to continue!”
Act Four: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
The hatch tilted upwards, coercing a pillow of crisp snow onto the tiles.
Dewdrop’s head emerged from the hole. With a grunt she hoisted herself onto the roof, ramming the soles of her boots against the steep tiles for good measure.
Moments later the set was hoisted up in her wake, the cord being fed hand over hand until it was out in the open.
Arranging it carefully on the snow-covered chimney so that the smoke from Mrs McClusky’s hearth was forced to divert, Dewdrop took her first tentative glimpse at this elevated domain.
Sooted fingers coiled out from beneath the set, obscuring her view of the town in bars. Dewdrop could make out the robes of silent snow across the rooftops.
The meagre glow of the Christmas lights across Greyminster High Street created the impression that the storm was radioactive.
Down below in Bethlehem Drive New Year’s revellers were waltzing with lampposts.
Blowing into her striped gloves Dewdrop turned the television on.
Deep inside, the ancient valves crackled in protest against the cold.
Picking up the aerial she pointed it randomly at a terraced house towards the north end of town.
Alfred Thomas stamped the snow from his boots, then shook the damp from his overcoat and hung it up on the stand.
The chill of the night followed the middle-aged factory worker down the hall, making the flames in his hearth tremble.
; The smell of roast beef reached his nose. Annie Thomas shoved her head round the kitchen door and offered her husband a smile.
“How was work?”
She disappeared, reappearing moments later behind a ligature of steam.
Alfred accepted the coffee mug, his fingertips burning.
“Same old, same old! Some bugger used all the teabags an’ didn’t replace ’em.” He took a slurp then placed the mug down on its coaster. “But other than that there was nothin’ eventful.”
Unzipping his head, a small warty creature climbed out of the hole.
It forced itself free from the human flesh, shaking the skin around its metallic stilts.
“What sort of fantasy is that?”
Dewdrop belted her television angrily. Several sparks flew out. She frowned, as though somehow that would make it behave.
“What kind of person dreams about being an alien, for cryin’ out loud? I thought Mr Carpenter was bizarre!”
The screen shuddered, momentarily patterned with zigzagging lines. There was the living room again, in all its suburban splendour. It was still being observed from Mr Thomas’ point of view. His odd little torso reached the drinks cabinet.
One claw reached out from beneath the creature’s chin and turned the key.
As the shutters ground open, a spluttering machine loomed out between the decanters. The sort of machine that had Radio Ham written all over it.
Dewdrop looked around, trying to work out who she was tuning into. Unfortunately the curtains to the mysterious household were closed.
Somewhat puzzled she returned to the crackling box.
“Alpha Lemur Foxtrot! Come in Alf!” The speaker behind the bottle of vodka vibrated briefly as the voice broke through the ether.
“Alf ’ere! ’Ow’s it goin’ Horace?”
Mr Thomas’ claws were holding an old fashioned microphone. The sort of mesh-covered block that BBC announcers used back in the forties.
“’Ow’s our plan t’ take over the World?”
“Comin’ along, Alf!” The speaker rattled around the bureau, bumping into several glasses with humorous chimes. “These puny Earthlings won’t know what’s hit ’em! We now have 400,000 Warriors of Gnart impersonating humans all over Britain.”
“’Old on, Horace!”
Another hooked claw came into view. It fiddled with some knobs along the radio’s skirt. Red and green lights blinked on and off.
“Someone’s cuttin’ into our waveband! We’ve got eavesdroppers again!”
It was difficult for Dewdrop to remain upright. The snow was tumbling heavily now. Her buttocks clasped the roof on either side of the grey ridge.
Down below, at the Thomas’ household, the living room curtains twitched apart.
A beady eye peered out from the crack.
Seconds later it was joined by the glisten of a ray gun.
There was a Zzzap!
An orange cord zipped out of the barrel, looping the chimneystacks in the manner of party string.
With a smack, one end planted itself into Dewdrop’s forehead.
Dewdrop froze.
For a moment electricity danced around her aching frame accompanied by a pastel orange glow.
She tried to move. But found that she couldn’t.
She was forced instead to watch the curtains close again as the repulsive creature vanished.
From her right ear she could hear the microphone on the television set being picked up.
After one or two false starts Alf’s squeaky voice rang out.
“Got ’er, Horace! Straight between the eyes! I’ll go an’ finish the job off in the mornin’.”
“Save some blood for me, Alf!”
The crackle of static!
“’Appy New Year! Over an’ Out!”
Intermezzo the Second
“So...” The stranger was having difficulty talking because his mouth was full of chocolate Hobnobs. “Was that scary enough for you?”
“I’m trembling in my seat.” Lucy toyed with her teaspoon for a moment, then blew the feather in her companion’s hat until it bowed pathetically. “I hope you realise that I’m married?”
“I’ve already mentioned that,” the stranger replied, indifferently. “Not that you’re terribly happy with your partner. Let me guess...he’s always busy and doesn’t appreciate the difficult work you do?”
“I’d rather he didn’t spend all weekend playing football,” Lucy admitted, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “But regardless of that, I wouldn’t want to sleep with a geek like you.”
“I never suggested that you should.”
The stranger stirred his coffee.
Then he stared at the water-colour trees through the cafe window.
Lucy frowned and wondered what it was he was actually up to. He didn’t seem much like all the other men of her aquaintance. Or rather of her husband’s aquaintance.
They were all obsessed by beer and sport. The closest that Lucy had ever come to appreciating sport on any level was watching Robot Wars on a Friday evening.
“If we'd have had Robot Building during games lessons at school I'd have been much more interested,” she muttered, scribbling a drawing of a rabbit in the margins of her pad. “Beats the crap out of being smacked in the chin on a foggy morning by a sphere of frozen ice and then spied on in the shower by the games mistress.”
“Oh I don’t know...” began the traveller but was cut short in his tracks.
“Imagine how different it would have been to have used technology skills instead of being forced to run through the college grounds in a pair of bloody shorts. Not much fun with legs like mine! At least there would have been some skill in robot building. How come we were never taught technology at school anyway? The closest we ever got was jumping up and down on the physics teacher's circuit boards. So much for teaching us something useful eh?”
Again the stranger made to interject but found himself caged in by Lucy’s growing tirade.
“I've never, once, in my entire life since leaving the incomprehensive system found a use for quadratic equations or microbiology, but the number of times I could have done with knowing how to fix a vacuum cleaner or remove a nostril-hair clipper from a snarled up pair of knickers...er...ignore that last bit.”
He tried his best but his cheeks appeared to redden beneath the coating of grime.
“All right...what’s so special about this?” Lucy suddenly picked up another object without really looking at it.
It felt coiled and metallic against her fingertips, although she couldn’t be certain because she didn’t remove her eyes from the mysterious gentleman sitting across from her.
“This is just a spring, isn’t it? What ridiculous tale does this have to tell?”
“Ah, now this...” said the stranger, taking it from her and holding it up to the pale light from the cafe window. “Once belonged to a misunderstood genius.”
The Crooked Chronometer
Seizure the First: What a Worthless Waste of Effort
It was twenty past two on a hot June morning. Outside the attic window at forty-seven Caldwell Crescent the summer tempest unrolled across the rooftops.
Not that Matthew Palmer had noticed.
He was too busy with his mechanical jigsaw.
“Massive fat hairy gnome’s knockers!”
In a fit of rage he threw the screwdriver towards Chewbacca’s cage. It ricocheted off the bars, frightening the overweight hamster behind his wheel.
With his fringe plastered to his forehead, Matthew probed the machine with one cautious fingertip. A bolt of electricity earthed itself into one of his eyebrows.
“Snot bugger damn it and blast! What a waste of shagging effort!”
From the flat below a series of thuds indicated that Mrs Tulip was battering her ceiling with a broom handle.
Matthew swept the clutter from the table before him, then flung his useless Temporal Suspension Unit against the wall.
Pushing his chair
back in disgust he stomped to the greasy window and watched the raindrops race each other down the pane.
Shortly after 10.30 a.m. Mrs Tulip, a woman so ancient she looked as though all the air had been removed from her body with a suction pump, poured the contents of her teapot into Mrs Prune’s cup. Most of the brew found its way onto her visitor’s lap.
“He was at it again last night, Victoria.” Beryl Tulip sat down much to Mrs Prune’s gratitude. “I didn’t get an ounce of sleep. Look at the bags beneath me eyes.”
Mrs Prune studied the bulging pouches of skin, more for the sake of common decency than anything else. Mrs Tulip had always had bags beneath her eyes. In fact they weren’t so much bags as rucksacks.
“Orh, me poor hands are all shaky.”
A knotted tassel of fingers was proffered up for inspection.
Mrs Prune nodded in that patronising manner she had perfected over the years. To be honest, her friend had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for as long as she could remember anyhow.
“Why don’t y’ call the police, Beryl?” She lifted the cup to her lips, the fact that it was empty producing a farting noise. “Y’ can’t let these buggers get the better of y’! You’re getting on in years.”
“I’m eighty-seven.”
Beryl Tulip jabbed her nose towards the ceiling, obviously proud of her advancing dotage.
“My Fred fought in two world wars for the likes of him.” One horny thumb indicated the ‘Him’ to whom she was referring. “It’s not natural all this banging and crashing and blaspheming in the small hours!”
She rearranged her bosoms sanctimoniously.
“I was raised a Christian, Victoria. There’s sommet unholy about all this. Now, are you going to read me tarot cards or what?”
Seizure the Second: What a Worthless Waste of Groceries
Samuel’s Singh’s Grocery Store on Crookley’s Grove was one of those buildings that occupied the elbow of two terraces.
It was the sort of shop where first time customers often thought that they’d walked into somebody’s front room.