by Brian Hughes
“You’re eight foot six!”
The tankard was slammed into the beer-mats.
Mr Plum bobbed awkwardly behind the bar, trying to blend in with the bottle-bin.
“An’ y’ve got a moustache,” Wilberforce added resolutely.
The giant made to object.
Wilberforce yanked the chain, cutting his retort off at the source.
“Besides which, I created you! You’re my possession! So tough!”
Let’s take a gander outside.
Perhaps a better vantagepoint would be above the rooftops. Somewhere out of harm’s way.
Ah, look! There’s the Old Bull and Duck.
People are stumbling through the doors.
With an explosion of bricks Otto emerges from the porch, Professor Davis being hauled along behind him.
Litter bins topple.
Dogs’ howls turn into whimpers. Barrels roll from where the bay window once stood. Drunkards tumble into narrow streets. There will be talk of this around Greyminster tonight. Ordinarily law-abiding citizens will soon be forming lynch mobs.
Professor Davis obliviously snatches the chain and starts back towards his potting shed.
Experiment Three: The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing
Shadows capered down the corridor. The frond of the guttering candle lit up a plaque bolted onto an ink-bombed door.
The plaque read:
‘Sydney Lofthouse. University Janitor.’
The keys clattered in Dr Morgan’s hand as he leaned towards the lock. With a clunk the door inched open.
“Of course, back then, scholars had manners. Mind you, they still knew how to get drunk!” He flattened one hand against the jamb and gave the door a push. “Many’s the prank that’s turned into tragedy! I remember the time that Withenshaw-Prattly was ragging the juniors at Richardson’s Sawmill…”
Principal Morgan had rounded the eighty-year marker buoy on the great pond of life. Now all he could do was look backwards. Back to the war and the merits of pre-decimalization. Such things helped fill the void where the reality of haemorrhoids and arthritis crept. All very fine if you happened to be as withered as a date.
Constable Parkins, on the other hand, had had enough of Dr Morgan’s eulogising.
So it didn’t upset him too much when a carcass struck Dr Morgan on the head.
The frozen joint reached the end of its tether and then swung like a pendulum, divining Morgan’s crumpled body.
Parkins snuffled.
Then he lifted the candle towards the dark strip of the room.
The hessian groaned above his head.
The cutlet had obviously been meant as some sort of trap.
Gingerly Parkins inched himself through the door.
Body parts filled the room.
Toes and noses poked over the edges of shelves, inquisitively watching as he moved across the chamber. He resembled a stork, his long legs navigating the mounds of flesh.
The stench was indescribable. (Editor: But no doubt you’re going to have a bash anyhow?) It was a sort of aromatic cross between the alley at the back of Brasswick’s and, for some reason, ginger.
The light from his torch came to rest on two dismembered heads, their eye sockets stitched and their cheeks hollow with decay.
Between them, the railway signal of some lower appendage saluted Parkins morbidly. The largest toe was being garrotted by a name tag.
The clink of a darning needle on a stone flag made Parkins swivel round.
In the corner of the room, silently sewing a sausage to the head of some long-deceased lecturer, sat Sydney Lofthouse.
He was perched on a three-legged milking stool, squeezing his barnacled thumb into a thimble.
With an amount of lethargy he lifted his gummy face and attempted to grin.
His mouth took on the appearance of an operation scar.
As the horror took root, Parkins eyes performed a jig, met in the centre of his forehead and bowed to each other.
Then he toppled backwards.
There was a thump, the room submerging into darkness once more as the candle’s wick became engulfed by melted wax.
It was shortly before midnight.
Professor Davis awoke, coughed the phlegm from his throat and knew instinctively that something was wrong.
He grabbed his spectacles from the bedside cabinet and checked the room.
His eyes came to rest on the mat at the end of his four-poster bed.
The unoccupied mat with the broken chain and the well-chewed collar lying across it.
Angrily he threw back the duvet and thrust his feet into his slippers.
Then he tore the night-cap from his Brillo-pad hair, leaving individual spires standing upright.
In a blur of fingers he grabbed a cardigan from the back of the armchair.
“Sneak off without tellin’ me, would y’? Wanna go gallifrantin’ round Greyminster with all y’r new friends, eh? Hah, the return of the incredible sulk!”
He pulled the bottom drawer open furiously, tugging a whip from its cluttered depths. The sort of whip that had barbs fastened like fishing flies along it’s length.
“Well I’ll show you, my pretty little creation!”
The thud, thud, thud of lead-lined boots clumping down an overgrown ginnel.
It was a noise that stood in contrast to the excited screams on the other side of Greyminster.
Otto stopped, smoothed down his polka-dot frock, parted the bushes along Lancaster Close and peered towards the water tower.
He’d come across a number of strange things on his travels tonight. For example, a perfectly ordinary gentleman had taken a swig from a suspicious looking bottle and then transformed into a ravenous, lecherous monster.
The label on the bottle had read:
‘Tweedle’s Foul Fart. 50% proof.”
Patel’s ‘Wot-U-Want’ store on the corner of Mulberry Grove had overstocked with Halloween lamps and was having a serendipitous sale.
Anxious town’s folk had taken advantage of the knocked-down prices. Now their shadows climbed the walls, caricaturing Snow White’s dwarfs returning from their mine.
Crackling flames were thrust into doorways, startling cats into balls of bristle.
Other residents had armed themselves with makeshift weapons borrowed from sheds. Hoes, trowels, kitchen knives and in one instance a rusted toast-rack. (Editor: Don’ ask me!)
After sufficient routing, the crowd had divided into clumps.
At the back of one group hobbled Irene Pootle.
She was lost in her memories of the Second World War, her shrivelled fingers clutching a spoon whilst she shouted Anti-Hitler aphorisms.
“Halt!”
The largest group tumbled to a stop, the more inattentive of its members colliding with those in front.
Agatha McBride, self-appointed leader, dropped onto one knee.
Following a delicate pawing of the cobbles and a sniff of her fingertips, she struggled back up and swung her machinegun into a more comfortable position.
“Natterjacks!” she announced. “There’s only one place round ’ere as smells of natterjack toads!”
She swung the ornamental sabre that normally hung across her fireplace above her head.
“To the water tower, people!”
Scratch, rustle, crump.
On his own side of town Otto withdrew the bulbous thumb of his head through the hedge.
Somebody was tugging on one of his suspenders.
He frowned at the drunkard who was looking back up at him, clutching a bottle of malt to the red cabbage of his chin.
The gentleman resembled a pickled onion in a tweed suit. Otto almost expected his nose to flash on and off.
“Toutin’ for business, me dear?”
General Guthrie raised one brow suggestively. What appeared to be a wink took control of his features.
“The name’s Guthrie. But you can call me Sir, if you want.”
In true Peter Butterw
orth style, his fingers disappeared behind Otto’s rump.
“What a magnificent beam, old gal!”
By a stroke of irony, a car horn tooted beneath the railway bridge as the pinch was concluded.
Thought for the day:
How come sexually frustrated lechers in British films always overlook the women in skimpy bikinis and plumb instead for the obvious bloke in drag? (Editor: That’s because British humour tends to be puerile. A tradition the author of this story seems content to continue.)
Professor Davis rounded the gatepost at the entrance to the ginnel.
A twang indicated that the release of Otto’s suspender belt had ruptured several stitches around his groin.
Wilberforce skewed to a halt by his side, reached up onto tiptoe and clamped the manacle round Otto’s neck.
Mission accomplished, he turned to the chequered Weeble.
“How dare you sexually assault my slave?”
Guthrie staggered, watched the moon waltz between the chimneystacks, and saw the chain go taut.
“Mmm...slave? Ah...bondage eh?” The alcohol trickled down Guthrie’s dimpled chin. “Jolly good show. Got me sheep cuffs at home.”
“Am not slave. Am free woman!”
Eight fingers clamped themselves about the collar and gave a tug.
A lascivious grin ripped Guthrie’s face apart.
“Free woman, eh? Excellent bargain. Last filly I boarded cost me fifty quid!”
Wilberforce took up the slack on the chain, wagging an authoritative finger beneath the scone of Otto’s nose.
“You’re not a bloody woman! You’re a collection of parts sewn together by me. And as soon as you’re ’ome I’m gonna un-pick ’em.”
General Guthrie added his own tuppence worth. “A good spanking would do the trick!”
Which was where the scuffle broke out.
The ground being arid, the three grey figures were rapidly surrounded by dust, the punch-up resembling something from Dennis the Menace.
Stitches shredded, limbs thrashed about.
A sound not too dissimilar to a throttled duck emerged from the conflagration.
Then an incident occurred that, on the face of it, seemed unrelated.
It was almost as though the sky was a bucket of water reflecting the stars, turned on its head and defying the laws of gravity.
High up above, circles bent the atmosphere into hoops.
The star-scape buckled as though some comet had pierced its surface.
With a rush of wind two bedraggled creatures toppled towards the ground.
Two thuds echoed sharply from the walls of Lancaster Grove.
The scuffle between Guthrie and Professor Davis continued, ignorant of the newcomers’ arrival.
Brushing the baked earth from his tattered clothes, Conrad Brewster scrambled onto his feet.
Mickey Tomkins followed suit surrounded by a small cloud of blasphemy.
Both travellers had seen better days, especially as far as their clothing went. They now resembled characters from a 1930’s comedy. The sort of goons who’d stood too close to a fizzling object marked ‘BOMB’.
Craning his neck for a better view, his corpulence having diminished since our last meeting with him, Conrad checked the damaged Isolated Temporal Modifier (Pat. Julian & Horace Gnart, September 1998).
Then he lifted his sunken eyes towards the violence.
After several moments, he shook his machine.
“Accordin’ to this, we should be back ’ome!” A tear welled in one eye, his rotting teeth grinding together in frustration. “The damn thing’s obviously broken beyond repair.”
Mickey Tomkins’ lip began to tremble.
Smoke coiled up from his head despondently.
“We’ll just ‘ave t’ keep tryin’ I s’pose!”
And, with that, the couple vanished back into thin air.
Experiment Four: Thelma and Wilberforce Revisited
6.35 a.m. On the potting shed roof, Jasper’s single eye peered out from beneath his tail. It watched the sunrise. Streaks of red slithered over the craggy backbone of the fells, resembling lava flows of light. Here and there around Greyminster the occasional resident still stumbled blindly, clutching torches that were now virtually extinguished by the morning.
There was the crunch of segues across damp grass to accompany the crackling spit of a rat being roasted on a campfire.
Agatha McBride lifted her face from her smouldering breakfast and grinned at Constable Parkins.
Sydney Lofthouse was clutching Parkins’ fingertips. He resembled a chimpanzee, his head almost cleaved with a smile.
Agatha removed the toasted rodent from the heat and sank her dentures into its dribbling flesh.
She could sense an enquiry coming on.
“I’m ’oldin’ a siege!” The juices trickled round the crumpet of her chin. “The other soft buggers all got bored an’ went ’ome. Said the damp was playin’ ’avoc with their bones!”
Parkins frowned, thought about the old dear’s motives, and ventured an apprehensive, “Even you aren’t allowed t’ commit murder, Miss McBride!”
“Bastard vermin! It’s my job to exterminate ’em!”
Crunch, chew, gulp. She stabbed one wizened finger towards the silent shed.
“’Ee’s got t’ come out sometime! I can hold fort ’ere for a while yet! Plenty o’ good foragin’ round this neck o’ the woods.”
“’Ave y’ actually tried the shed door?”
The pensioner froze, the drumstick poised before her lips.
“Orh, Agatha y’ stupid bitch! Y must be gettin’ old! ’Ow come y’ didn’t think o’ that?”
The potting shed door swung open.
Squeaks escaped from its hinges, scuttling off across the floorboards.
A rectangle of light appeared beyond the gap, the distant gardens losing all definition because of the contrast.
Three pairs of eyes gawked into the gloom.
The speckled grey shapes of garden shears and lawnmower innards slowly sharpened into focus.
“W’at’s up with y’, y’ big girl’s blouse?”
Agatha gave the young constable a helpful shove.
A few seconds later he pirouetted to a halt on the wooden trapdoor.
“Go on, knock!” came Agatha’s insistence from behind him.
Apprehensively he raised a fist.
Dunk, duffel, whomp.
There was a pause whilst Parkins watched the trap door apprehensively.
Shortly the sound of iron boots down below chimed off the stone walls of some underground passage.
Clank, grind, rattle, clank.
The moans of an obstinate bolt in its slender groove rose up from the far side of the trapdoor. Eventually it let out a sigh and then burst open, flinging the rag-doll of Parkins into Sydney’s muscular arms.
The big toe of Otto’s head poked up through the opening, squinting myopically.
Parkins uprighted himself, crouched down on all fours and started to shuffle towards the hole.
His face appeared above the precipice.
Otto flinched.
“Don’t hurt, Thelma.”
He covered his sad face with his long arms.
There were numerous razor nicks standing out in red lines where he’d cut himself shaving.
“Thelma good slave now. She try hard to be obedient wife!”
“Thelma’s got lovely make-up.” Agatha lowered herself onto one knee and adjusted her mental faculties to the same level as Otto’s.
The lumbering giant lowered his arms, revealing a gash of resinous molars.
“Did y’ do that t’ look pretty for you’re master?” Agatha continued.
“Thelma good with lipstick.”
That was debatable. Whatever the rouge applied to the monster’s features was, it had been smeared around his lips and then branched off up one nostril.
“Thelma just made tea for Master. Would old woman care to join us?”
Agatha grinned back affably, pushing her German helmet across her forehead until it bayoneted the roofing joists.
“That’d be very nice, Thelma. Thank you.”
Four wary figures clumped down the tunnel.
They were stepped in size from Otto at the front to Sydney at the rear.
Four distinctly unusual characters, each with their own troubled thoughts.
It was a unique experience for Parkins, finding himself in the company of others whilst not retaining the epithet of ‘Least Intelligent.’
Somewhere en route Otto had picked up a platter. Now it was keeping a teapot and five greasy mugs above their heads.
The smell of cooking filled the passageway.
“Thelma learnt lesson now!” Otto stopped before a squat door, fumbling for the knob. “She make dinner like good slave. Master not complain no more.”
The door opened with its customary accompaniment of atmospheric shrieks.
All four pale faces leered expectantly into the lounge beyond.
They were confronted by a room dusted from ceiling to floor with immaculate pride.
Agatha, being the stoutest of the quartet, was the first to enter.
She crossed the rug with purpose and grabbed the armchair facing the hearth.
“All right, Mister!”
She raised one threatening finger towards the mop of bleached hair sprouting up from behind the antimacassar.
But the following sentence hung on her lips like a philosophical lemming.
“’Ere, Constable. Y’d better ’ave a look at this.”
Parkins shuffled up.
Laid out neatly, his limbs arranged lovingly over the chair arms, lay Professor Davis.
Every organ had been removed from his body.
The orifices had been closed with precise lazy daisy stitch.
Across the front of his deflated stomach, ripping his lab coat apart, stretched the gash through which his intestines had been extracted.
In the opposite chair General Guthrie mutely slept the repose of the dead.
There was a thump as Constable Parkins hit the floor in a sprawl of limbs.
“All very compliant now, are they Thelma?”