by Brian Hughes
“Right!”
Jess screwed up his eyes in concentration.
When he reopened them a rucksack had appeared on his back.
It was brimming with bottles of Thackery’s Old Bastard.
Well, it was going to be a long climb.
“Let’s get goin’!”
Portion the Sixth: Conversations with a Caterpillar
The door was stout like those in the Halls of Enlightenment. The bolts around its edge wept rusty tears. The handle that resembled a Jack-o-Green’s head turned beneath Jannice’s grip.
“Shift you’re fat arse!”
She ignored the complaints from her rear, poking her face around the jamb instead.
The Realms of Childhood!
It was all very Victorian.
Jack-in-the-boxes resembling anatomical appendages chortled at her from the corners.
Here and there clockwork willies with gonad feet clattered across the floor.
“Gedda move on. I’m suffercatin’ back ’ere!”
Cautiously Jannice inched inside. She’d been hoping for carefree children on faraway hills. This dump bore more resemblance to Miss Havesham’s mansion than anything idyllic.
Jess Hobson struggled past her, still bent double from the squat entrance.
“You must ’ave had a pretty crap childhood!” He looked around only to be confronted by a huge pair of dust-coated buttocks. He gave one a squeaky prod. “Not t’ mention twisted!”
“It’s all symbolic!”
There was a loud rasp.
It was accompanied by a carrot of exploding dust.
“That for example,” Jannice continued, “Is Freud’s way of saying that I was Anally Expressive!”
“Thank God I don’t have dreams like this! Trust you to ’ave a retarded brain!”
“You don’t have dreams like this,” snapped Jannice, rounding on him. “’Cos your imagination is smaller than your dick!”
Under normal circumstances Jess would have retorted with something along the lines of, “It must be massive then.”
But his attention was taken up by other matters.
In the middle of the room stood the sort of fungal growth most commonly found in Noddy books. It was craggy and red with huge yellow tumours.
On the top sat a caterpillar, singing drunken shanties to itself.
“What’s that s’posed t’ be?”
“That…” said Jannice, reluctantly, “Is my father. I suppose we’d better have a word with him. See if he knows the best route out of here.”
She shuddered as though she was standing in an icy blast.
“God knows I don’t want to hang around here for long!”
From the purple pom-pom of the caterpillar’s nose stretched two stalactites of mucus. Its tufted chin trembled as the lyrics left its lips.
“’Ere we go, ’ere we go, ’ere we go!”
“Er, Dad?” Jannice’s eyes appeared above the rim of the toadstool.
They blinked.
“Oh, ’Ello, Janet…” said the caterpillar in a drunken Lancashire accent. “War bringsh you ’ere? Fanzy a pint?”
“No I don’t!” Indignantly she folded her arms and fumed. “And it’s Jannice you ignorant male pig!”
“What give’s with its face?”
Jess pulled up alongside, watching the pliable countenance intently.
For some reason the caterpillar’s features were constantly rearranging themselves.
“’Ow come it’s megamofosizing all the time?”
Jess thought about matters. “You can’t remember ’im properly, can y’?”
“He left home when I was three months old!” Jannice pursed her lips. “Typical of the inability of men to face responsibility.”
“’Old on!” Jess was obviously thinking hard. His tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth. “I thought y’ said ’ee abused you as a child! Beaten, whipped an’ molested! That’s why y’ come out with all this feminist crap. ’Ee must have bin pretty quick off the mark t’ do all those terrible things to y’ in three months!”
“All right, so I lied!” The confession was delivered with resolve. “And my mother isn’t dead either! But it was an excellent dream!”
Another prolonged stretch of reticence during which the atmosphere became thicker than that of a retirement home.
Jannice felt a small crinkled hand on her shoulder.
“Are y’ shure y’ won’t ’ave a dhrinck…? For ’ole times shake?”
“Come on!”
With determination she turned her back on the festering maggot and scanned the room stubbornly. A refraction of light off another doorknob caught her attention.
“We’ll take that door. It’s bound to lead somewhere more important!”
Portion the Seventh: The Attic of Anxiety
It did! A moonlit garden with swaying poplar trees. An owl hooted from one of the crooked statues. Their boots crunched along the gravel drive, the ground-hugging vapours tearing around their ankles.
At length, keeping her eyes fixed on the building before them, Jannice stopped and unfolded the map.
“I think we’d better stop, Jess.” There was the tiniest tremble in her words. “There’s no particular rush…”
“I know this place!” Jess squinted at the chateau beyond the trees, his head engorged by steam. “Only I can’t quite remember where from.”
“Well…” Jannice breathed in. “As I recall from ‘Psychology Studies’ everybody, even idiotic couch potatoes with no sense of privacy, dream about this place.”
The subsequent pause in lieu of drama was broken by Jess belching.
“I think you’ll find that building is completely empty. Apart from the attic. And that’s where we’ve got to go.”
“Mmm?” Jess was indulging in battle with an obstinate bogey. “What’s so bad about that then?”
“That attic…” Jannice swallowed her words. “Contains my darkest fears and nightmares.”
“Yeah? Bob on!”
A grin cleaved Jess’ head until a crab apple appeared at the top of each cheek.
“This should be good for a laugh!”
The house rambled.
Stairs went up. Grandfather clocks that had long since given up the ghost rotted in the corners.
Stairs went down again. Wood blistered along skirting boards.
Wallpaper hung from the walls like leprous skin.
Chambers, antechambers, box rooms and cubby holes.
All incredibly empty.
All in decay.
Then, finally, the door to the attic.
Jannice’s fingers trembled above the handle as though Parkinson’s disease had taken its grip.
“I don’t want to go in.” She felt the dread swelling through her bones. “I just can’t face whatever’s in there, Jess.”
“Now, Jannice.” A pair of comforting palms flattened themselves on her shoulders. “Just take a deep breath and…”
“AAArgh!”
SMASH!
The door shattered as Jannice was propelled through it.
Unable to stop she stumbled into the swirl of carousel music.
“So, this is y’ darkest fear, is it?” Jess entered the room behind her, forced his fists against his hips and stared. “What the ’Ell is it any’ow?”
“I’m not telling you!”
Jannice watched as several indistinct blobs pirouetted around the room.
“I’m not having you using my nastiest psychological secrets against me.”
“Jannice Applebotham!”
A child’s voice slashed through the atmosphere with the weight of a butter knife.
From the darkest corner a pig-tailed girl emerged. Her knees were covered in scabs and her school tie was the size of a kipper.
“Still fat, eh? Still Miss Fat Massive Wet Knickers!”
“You can’t hurt me, Belinda Goose!” Jannice brazenly set her jaw. “I’m all grown up now! Sticks and stones!”
A branch hit her violently round the back of the head.
It was closely followed by a pebble.
One of the blobs behind her had now transformed into an equally freckled girl. The sort of child who would have been rejected from the cast of St. Trinian’s for being too scruffy.
She was holding a pair of rusted tongues.
“C’mon y’ fat cow!”
With a sharp crack Karen O’Mallern wrestled Jannice’s tongue into the instrument, dragging her onto her knees.
One by one the other shapes changed into obnoxious schoolgirls.
“Time t’ cram your ’ead down the bog.”
“Well, well, well…”
Jess stuffed his fists into his pockets and watched enthralled as Jannice was tugged towards the most decrepit toilet he’d ever set eyes on.
And in a lifetime consisting mainly of curries, that’s saying something.
“So all this stupid feminist attitude has got nothin’ t’ do with the way in which men have treated y’, has it?”
Jannice tried to remonstrate but the words emerged as a muffled whimper.
She watched the lavatory approach with all the threat of an unwashed Christmas pudding bowl.
“It’s all because of your inability t’ get along with other women, innit?”
Jess cocked his head on one side. From all around a peculiar sound was starting to fill his ears.
“What’s that noise?”
Jannice’s head surfaced from the scrum.
“Oh my God, Jess. That’s Thomas crying.” It bobbed back down amidst a flurry of swinging fists, then reappeared. “What are we goin’ to do?”
“There’s not a lot we can do.” Jess wrinkled his nose. “You’re asleep.”
“But any second now I’m goin t’ wake up if I’m not caref…”
And suddenly Jannice was gone.
Panic-stricken Jess looked around, gawking.
“Jannice? Jannice, come back!”
The girls had turned their attention on him.
Rolling up their sleeves, they advanced in a crescent.
“Oh my GOD!”
Portion the Eighth: The End of the Cold War
Jannice blinked. Her eyes, without their mascara, resembled cloves pushed into the pomegranate of her face. Her tongue removed a wedge of sleep from the corner of her mouth. She shook her unfocused head, watching the feeble sunlight struggle in between the lace curtains.
It had all been a dream. A delirium brought about by some late night gorgonzola.
She tugged the duvet up to her chin and tentatively whispered, “Jess?”
No response. Just the bawling of Thomas from the bedroom next door.
She looked at the alarm clock, its glowing numerals now diaphanous ghosts against the morning light.
Quarter past seven.
Time to engage in battle with the day’s catharsis. A woman’s work was never done!
8.30 a.m. Jannice’s arms were sudded up to their dimpled elbows.
The lipstick had covered half the distance from the sink to her lips when she realised that her face was lagged with shaving foam.
Somewhat puzzled she gripped one tap in each of her palms and pressed her face to the mirror.
“What on earth possessed me to do that?”
“No idea!” Her mouth suddenly moved by itself, her voice dropping an octave. “I don’t usually ’ave a shave ’til Sunday!”
“Jess?” She bolted upright. “Jess Hobson? Are you still inside my head?”
“Yeah, and it’s bloody ’orrible!”
Jannice tried to look at her mouth. After an amount of cross-eyed struggle she bent her nose backward with her thumb.
“I never realised before ’ow crinkled you were first thing in the morning!”
“How long have you been in there?”
“Since y’ woke up! Those bloody school mates o’ yours nearly had me, y’ know?”
Clenching her teeth together with fury, Jannice screwed up her eyes.
“And I never knew ’ow badly designed toilets were for women. All that ’aving t’ balance at the right angle over the bowl!”
“You shouldn’t have been lookin’!”
“It’s a bit ’ard not to, innit?” Her hands reached up and cupped her pendulous bosoms. “Don’t these things get annoyin’ after a while?”
“Get your bloody hands off me, Jess Hobson, you…” Jannice sought for the most fitting expletive, “You rapist! And get out of my head! I’ve got an exam in half an hour!”
“I can’t get out of your ’ead, y’ stupid fat cow! You were the one who cut me buggerin’ life-line, remember!”
Smoke covered the kitchen ceiling.
Janet prodded the charcoaled toaster with a tentative fork. She’d just extracted one blackened chunk of toast in the shape of Pakistan. It had left a smudge of soot down the front of her nightie.
Jannice Applebotham struggled through the door in the manner of a mime artist battling a hurricane.
Janet’s eyebrows slid down her forehead.
“I’m off out, Jar-nette.”
One adipose leg hooked itself about the chair beneath the table. With a squeal Jess pulled it backwards.
His hand reached out for the frying pan.
“If Thomas needs anything, you know where I am…”
Briefly the arm became locked in conflict with itself.
Janet backed away from her overweight colleague as her fingertips grabbed the marmalade jar.
“I’m starvin’ y’ stupid warthog! I want me breakfast!”
“I’m not stoppin’ you!” Filled with panic Janet slid the plate of still smouldering toast across the cloth.
“Not you, not you!” shrieked Jannice. “It’s hard to explain right now, Janet. But…”
A dramatic drop in both tone and diction before the sentence continued.
“God aren’t your tits small when you ’aven’t got your padded bra on?”
Jannice gritted her teeth.
Her fists became rocks, her eyes confused lines.
“I’ll be back at dinner,” she managed to force out, fighting her way through the front door.
It slammed dramatically behind her, winding the dust from its hinges.
Breathing in Janet took stock of the situation.
“I can’t believe it’s that time of the month again.”
The situation, unfortunately, didn’t improve as the day wore on.
By 10.25 Jess Hobson still showed no signs of vacating her skull, although a great many students now suspected that Jannice had already vacated hers.
The assembly hall at Greyminster University was a bustle of anxious scholars.
Rows of makeshift tables had been erected with military precision.
Several chairs overturned with a clatter as Jannice stumbled into the room. She settled herself down and slid the rucksack from her shoulders.
“Now, Jess…” Her voice was squeezed from one corner of her mouth. “This exam is very important to me. So just keep shtum for an hour or so!”
Thwack!
A blob of well-chewed paper spattered up Daniel Jones’ neck in the seat in front of her.
The affronted student span round, shovelling the unctuous missile from the wet tendon.
Jannice glanced down at the still vibrating ruler in her hand.
“Jannice?” A voice warmed the hairs inside her ear. Jannice flinched. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes, thank you, Mr Jordan.”
A demure, almost girlish, smile took control of her mouth.
Filling Jess’ vision was a huge ginger beard topped by a heron’s nose.
“I’m sorry about that. I’m just a bit nervous about the exam…you sad outdated ginger ’aired twat!”
Mr Jordan’s acquiescent smile slid from his face, several exam papers fluttering to the parquet floor.
“Why don’t you sod off an’ stop breathin’ your puffy, sperm-infested breath all over me?”
>
An inner skirmish broke out, rearranging Jannice’s features into even more grotesque shapes than normal.
“Jess! STOP IT FOR BUGGERING HELL’S SAKE!
The university library, or ‘The Snug’ as the more cultured preferred to call it, was an octagonal building covered in ivy.
It was busier than usual right now.
Goatee-bearded youths were attempting to cram their twelve months course work into fifteen minutes.
The doors smashed open theatrically, raising the corners of thumb-stained pages in their wake, along with numerous pale faces.
Jannice Applebotham thundered through the opening, lurching between the shelves with a purposeful gait.
Seconds later she had disappeared into the corner where various cries of, “If you don’t stop annoying me I’m going to break wind on the librarian’s head,” drifted up.
“This is it!” She snatched a dog-eared volume from a bookcase and opened it. “Exorcism!”
Her index finger fell on the title of chapter five.
“’Old on a minute!” Jess stammered worriedly as Jannice scanned the information. “Can’t we talk about this?”
“No, Jess!” A leaf was thumbed with such intensity that it tore from the book. “You’ve already put my college work back a year. You’ve ruined me friendship with Doctor Jordan and you’ve effectively terminated me supply of cannabis from Mr Jones! It’s time to part company!”
“Yeah but…” Jess faltered. “I ’aven’t sin you in the bath yet!”
Jannice’s eyes zigzagged through the paragraph. She drew in a bosom-swelling breath and started to read aloud.
“Ex nihilo nihil fit, vae victis! In rerum natura, et tu Brute!”
For a moment sound hung suspended.
Only a gurgle in Jannice’s stomach broke the silence.
Then a warming sensation seeded itself around her naval, spreading out through her frame as though her intestines had been dipped in honey.
“No! Jannice! I forbid this!”
“Yeah, right. Dream on Jess!”
A flash of bluest white.
A flame that highlighted the cobwebs in the rafters.
Blisters raced each other along the tabletops, bestowing the students with sumptuous tans.
Then a smash, as though some invisible object had hurtled through the window.