by Brian Hughes
What actually happened to Conrad Brewster and Mickey Tomkins we might never know.
One final point: There are some book-reviewers that are professional and unbiased. Nicola Jolly from the Preston Citizen springs to mind. That’s why such publications as the Preston Citizen are very popular, and why the publishers of this curtailed story can recommend it as an excellent read.
On the other hand there are just some critics that smell as bad as mouldy old socks. Poor talentless gits with no contribution to the literary profession and the sense of humour of a misanthropic weasel.
And I suspect they also have the genitalia to match.
It is for these miserable, friendless imbeciles that we disrespectfully dedicate this story. Get a life and leave the rest of us alone you nepotistic, plagiarising smart-arsed CENSORED!)
Intermezzo the Fourth
There followed a histrionic silence only broken by the occasional blink and the even less frequent snuffle.
At length Lucy coughed uncomfortably, a little uncertain as to whether the stranger was going to add more to his story or not.
“So,” the traveller said, grinning. “What object next?”
“You can’t be serious?” Lucy raised her eyebrows questioningly. “That’s really how it ends?”
“How about something a little different?” continued the stranger, obviously embarassed by the way his tale had been received.
“Like a proper story with a proper ending?” Lucy snapped.
“Hey look! I come cheap...” the stranger went on by way of excuse. “What more do you want? A soap opera perhaps?”
“Yes, why not? It'd be an improvement,” answered Lucy with sudden conviction. “So long as it isn’t East Enders. I hate that programme. It’s so bloody miserable”
The traveller made to comment but then realised that his companion was launching herself into another of her rants. So instead he settled back quietly and allowed her to sound off without interuption.
“W’at!? You mast be jokin’ mate! Get orf moi bark yoo slarg!” Lucy had adopted what, presumably, was meant to be a Cockney accent. The impression ended abruptly. “I’ve never seen so many worthless pieces of flotsam gathered together in one place. Well...not outside prime minister’s question time anyhow. It’s about time the BBC got rid of this depressive, endless stream of bowel-produced gruel don’t you think?”
The stranger shrugged but Lucy wasn't paying him much attention.
“I don’t care what the boffins in the sandals and the goatees on the BBC Learning Zone say, East Enders is not the modern day equivalent of Shakespeare...it’s the modern day equivalent of the bubonic plague.”
She adopted her badly mimicked Cockney accent again with accompanying facials.
“Bat Oi lav ’er! Oi knaaaaar she tried to stab me, bat she’s such a warm ’earted lovin’ girl when ya get ta know ’er!”
Her accent reverted to its usual Lancashire twang as she continued unabated.
“No she’s NOT! SHE’S A DREARY, SPOTTY, UGLY, MISERABLE COCKNEY GIT WITH THE PERSONALITY OF A ROTTING DOG’S CORPSE!”
Several moments of silence followed the outburst during which only the sound of the traveller’s teacup rattling against its saucer could be heard.
At length:
“Now, which object would you like to hear about next?”
“Your hat...” said Lucy, calming down a little. “Where did you get such a ridiculous thing? Is that a seagull’s feather off the beach in the band?”
“This is a curious object...” interrupted the stranger ignorantly. “The tale that accompanies it...”
“Or your trench coat?” Lucy continued. “Did you buy it from Oxfam? Have you ever actually been out of Greyminster, Mr Storyteller, or is this all some ridiculous charade?”
“The tale that accompanies it...” repeated the stranger a little louder and starting to look cross. “Is a terrible tale...”
“Like all the others then,” commented Lucy, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms. “I want to hear about your hat, please. I’ve got nothing better to do with the afternoon.”
The traveller broke into a smile and spread his arms accommodatingly.
“Choose another object,” he said.
Lucy scanned the worthless trinkets with her eyes almost closed. At last she tapped a needle and thread with her finger.
“These have got to be the most pointless and mediocre things in here,” she said. “Although, I’ll admit the competition’s stiff. What’s the story behind these...”
She picked the sewing equipment up and studied it carefully.
“These once belonged to a brilliant but arrogant man,” returned the stranger plucking them from her grasp as though they had hidden value after all. “A tragic man in the most Byronesque sense of the word!”
The Downfall of Wilberforce Rhys Davis
Experiment One: Here’s to Mary Wolstencraft
Greyminster slept beneath a hot August evening. The first of the leaves to fall from the trees now danced between the Victorian buildings, youthful hedonists exploring the thermals before the drains lured them down.
Along the terraces bedroom windows had been thrown apart, lolling tongues of lace into the streets.
Jasper, the tom cat from Stewartstones’ Slateworks, strolled across the rooftops of this Arabian night. He shook the pollen from his whiskers and twitched the tattered moths of his ears, listening intently.
Something was moving out there in the darkness.
Something sinister, heading in his direction.
Thump, thump, squelch!
Through the allotments the grave-robber struggled beneath the weight of a cumbersome object. An object wrapped in a coarse linen sack, one cadaverous limb snapping the dahlias in its wake.
Jasper dragged one paw across the scar where his eye had once been and coiled his tail around his haunches. Then he studied the patchwork landscape around the water tower to see what would happen next.
At length the figure reached Professor Rhys Davis’ potting shed, dropped his cargo with a thud and raised one fist.
Knock, Rap, Bang!
“What do you want?”
There was the clatter of shafts along grooves and the rattle of chains.
The door creaked open, revealing a crack of light. The noise that accompanied it belonged more to the drawbridge at Dracula’s castle than to a simple harbour for lawnmowers.
One eyeball topped by a briar of tangled hair peered out through the slot.
“Oh, not tonight Sydney. But thank you all the same!”
The grotesque bogeyman didn’t move.
Instead he grinned.
“Good fresh torso!” The top of the sack was unlaced. Several bluebottles made a gallant bid for freedom. “Sydney only want four pounds!”
“Look Sydney!” The door was flung fully open. “The University Art Department’s going to notice all these things missing if y’ don’t stop! I’ve got enough spare parts f’r now, so bugger off back to your Janitor’s Office!”
Slam!
“Sydney gotta make a livin’!”
He heard the footsteps retreating, although the shed was only six feet in length.
They were followed by a cast-iron door being closed.
Then Sydney was alone on the step once more.
“Bugger you then!”
He hauled the sack across his shoulders, sniffed the fingers sticking out of the hole, then set off back through the moonlit gardens.
“Oi tell ya, ’ee’s bin nickin’ me pig’s ’earts!”
Farmer Barley slammed the bottle of turnip wine down on his kitchen table. A flea-bitten bantam was disturbed by the jolt. It squawked, shedding feathers into Constable Parkins’ hot chocolate.
“Saw the bugger wi’ moi own eyes, Oi did.”
“’Ave y’ got a description?” The eager policeman removed the notebook from his pocket.
“Well, they were all ’eart shaped wi’ tubes an’ valves an�
�� purple bits surrounded be fat!”
The glug, glug, glug of wine filling a mouldy tankard.
“An’ as for tha bugger ’oo nicked ’em, it was thart ugly caretaker from tha college! I tells ya, I saw ’im with moi own…”
A couple of moments whilst Barley struggled through some difficult calculations.
“…moi own two eyes.”
In the corner of the candle-lit room a goat bobbed for potatoes in Anne Barley’s bathtub.
“’Ee keeps on comin’ round ’ere of a night,” Giles’ corpulent niece eventually proffered, placing the peeler on her lap along with a partially disrobed King Edward. “Always prowlin’ about in t’ offal shed.”
“Shut it, Woife!” Barley rounded on her, one stubby finger pointing with the menace of a loaded crossbow towards her nose. “Did Oi give tha permission t’ speak? Now…”
He returned to his tankard.
“’Oo’s tha gonna put on tha case?”
“Only tha …I mean the best, Sir!” Parkins’ saluted. “Yours Truly!”
He pointed at his swollen chest with pride.
“I’ll ’ave this bugger caught in less time than it’d take t’ boil a weasel!”
Wilberforce Rhys Davis frowned at the electricity bill that reached down to his shoes.
Its length was hardly surprising. Not when you stopped to consider all the machines fizzling and popping around his subterranean lair.
At five-foot-four Wilberforce resembled an unseasoned Twiglet.
The same, however, could not be said of his brain. His brain was so massive that his forehead had been transformed into the shape of an anvil, his eyes magnified by his national health glasses.
In the middle of Wilberforce’s dungeon stood an oak bench, harbouring secrets beneath a sheet of muslin.
One of Farmer Barley’s chickens squawked between the bolts of electricity.
It has been said that the line between madness and genius is a tightrope.
William Rhys Davis stood about thirty-odd feet this side of insanity.
Throwing the invoice onto the flagstones, he crossed to dials on one wall. Sandwiched between them hung an enormous handle.
Wilberforce grabbed it and threw his weight against the hinges.
“Cut me off would y’, y’ buggers?”
(Editor: It might be important to note that lightening was extremely difficult to entice into underground bunkers.)
“Well I’ll show you! Life from Death! My creation will be animated if it uses all the power in Lancashire!”
Four small pylons on the daido rail vibrated. A zigzag of power surged down each one, arcing into a web around the chandelier.
Professor Davis put on his sunglasses before his retinas burnt out.
Through the cracks that outlined the trapdoor above, sheets of illumination fluttered upwards, blowing Jasper from the roof like a dandelion clock.
“Life!” screamed Wilberforce, raising his hands toward the ceiling as the electricity bore down into the muslin. “I am the creator! I am GOD!”
With the tiniest phut, the fuse in the plug blew and plunged the room into darkness.
Experiment Two: The Etiquette of Criminals
“Last orders, Gentlemen!” The clang of the triangle behind the bar sounded the death knell on the Bull and Duck’s activities.
Due to the heat the doors had been thrown open wide tonight.
The customers themselves had spilled into the car park, quaffing their ale and concocting drunken designs on the back door of Woolworth’s.
Simon Edwards was studying his reflection in the toilet mirror. Even though he doesn’t hang around for long, it might be interesting to learn something of him.
Three points.
Point One: Football. Simon was the sort of fanatic who had a coathanger reserved in the Armchair FA’s anorak closet. It was accompanied by the most expensive boots on the market.
Point Two: For Simon, clothes without designer labels were just rags.
Point Three: Simon spouted monotonous bullshit by the tractor load. Especially concerning this year’s model of Porsche.
(Editor: This is obviously an attack on one of your associates. Stop it right now!)
He fluffed his hair into a meringue and studied the graffiti inside his dribbling cubicle.
With a crash a urinal tore away from the wall.
It trembled for a moment, then took a nosedive that resulted in an explosion of pottery shards.
As the dust cleared Simon removed a chunk of alabaster from his crown and stared at the hole.
“Now, what have I told you, Otto?”
Crack went the whip across the giant’s humped spine. Wilberforce Davis gave a tug on the manacle clamped about the wide neck above him. The two rusted wingnuts protruding from Otto’s collarbone rattled noisily against the metal hoops.
“’Ow are y’ going to pass for normal if y’ don’t use the door?”
“Sorry, Master!”
The colossus attempted to straighten himself. The seams where his limbs were sewn together creaked noisily.
“Please don’t call me Otto! My name is Thelma!”
“We’re not startin’ that nonsense again, are we?”
Another yank of the chain. Otto’s head went through the ceiling in a shower of Artex.
“You’re a bloke, Otto! Y’ve got dangly bits!”
Otto, his head still stuck through the ceiling, blinked across the upstairs living room.
He blew a small cloud of dust into the air with his pursed lips.
“T’ be honest,” Wilberforce continued. “Y’ve got the sort o’ dangly bits that Hannibal would have been shocked at!”
“But Otto feel like woman!”
On the third tug the giant lurched forward, the rafters shredding around his throat.
“Otto wanna be dainty an’ wee,” the monster continued. “Otto wanna wear pretty dress an dust mantelpiece with feather boa.”
There was a thwump as his face collided with the corner of the upstairs’ parlour.
Wilberforce stopped and gazed up at the lengthening groove in the roof.
“If you want to be me feminine y’ could start by tidying me shed for me!” Another yank and the procession got underway once more. “Me lawnmower looks like a bread bin ’cos y’ sat on it!”
There was a crunch as Simon Edwards became a flattened pizza beneath Otto’s orthopaedic boot. (I said he wouldn’t be hanging around for long, didn’t I?)
Otto carefully hoisted one mini-skip foot from the oozing rubble and staggered forward, dislodging the urinals one by one like a set of dominoes.
“Besides which,” the professor continued. “Genetically y’r male. Y’ve got a man’s brain. I know ’cos I dug it up meself!”
Thunk, Duffel, Dunk!
That was the sound of a door being knocked.
Exactly why Constable Parkins was wearing gloves on such a sweltering night was anybody’s guess. All around him the cobblestones were splitting in the heat.
A dim light flickered beyond the curtains.
There was the shuffle of tartan slippers accompanied by a catarrh-filled cough.
“What do you want?” Doctor Charles Morgan prodded the letterbox open with his finger. “This had better be important! When will you students learn to take your keys? Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, and all that rot.”
“It’s the police, Sir.” Parkins grinned. He’d always wanted to say that. “Open up or I’ll ’ave t’ kick in the door.”
He’d always wanted to say that as well, regardless of how inappropriate it was. He knew that the university principle was eighty years old and about as dangerous as an asthmatic cricket in a paper bag.
“Oh dear!” There followed the bickering of door handle innards. “There’s no need for that, Constable!”
The worried rattle of keys.
A thin slice of face appeared behind the safety chain.
“You should have just said. I’m always
at home to the Boys in Blue.”
The door was pulled open.
It reached the extent of the tautened chain and stopped.
Two rheumy eyes gave Parkins the once up and down.
Then Doctor Morgan tried to dig the chain from its stubborn trench.
Parkins added his own weight to the door to speed matters up.
Eventually the links gave, Parkins and Morgan toppling into the kitchen.
“What can I do for you, Constable?” the old man wheezed because Parkins was sitting on his frail chest.
Parkins picked himself up and gave a tug on the base of each glove.
“T’ be honest, Sir” he said. “I can’t bloomin’ remember now!”
In the Old Bull and Duck, Wilberforce Davis was amazingly ignorant of the commotion around him.
Tables span across the room, rolling into customers like some sort of human bowling alley.
Bodies flew through doors.
Boots disappeared through windows.
His ignorance was similar in many respects to that of young mothers with tearaway toddlers. (Editor: It’s quite obvious what’s got your goat up today! Perhaps if you spent more time working instead of lounging around cafes, you wouldn’t encounter such problems!)
“Don’t argue, Otto!” Wilberforce grabbed his tankard angrily. “You’d look bloody stupid in a summer frock!”
“Is Otto’s decision,” came the response from beyond the roofing joists.
In the room above, completely ignorant of the head poking up through the floorboards, Mable Plum entered the lounge with steaming hair.
She was humming Oasis’ latest number.
Her mouth dropped open as she suddenly spotted Otto blinking solemnly up from the middle of the hearthrug.
She dropped the towel and stood for a moment totally naked apart from a bangle of suds.
Then she screamed loudly.
“Otto thinks he’d make a good woman,” Otto concluded.