Web Site Story

'he flees!' cried the bishop from on high. 'the unholy one flees. pursue him with god’s speed.'

Old Vic, whose eyesight wasn't what it was, fired upon the hovering bishop. 'It's the Red Baron,' he hollered. 'Man the ack-ack. A pint of stout for the gunner who brings the blighter down.'

The pimply youth, who still had a hold of Vic's gun, lost the tip of his nose.

Gunfire often stills a mob. But sometimes it makes matters worse. And as this was one of those sometimes, the gunfire made matters worse.

'Calling FART. Calling FART,' called a constable into his lapel radio (Mute Corp 3000 series). 'Riot in progress at Waterman's Arts Centre, shots fired. Send everyone you have.'

Big Bob was now out on the terrace. Kelly was battling the new recruits to the Christian fundamentalist movement currently in hot pursuit.

'I'll have the balls off the next man who takes a step through this exit door,' she told them in no uncertain tones. Those in hot pursuit considered the trail of fractured bodies that Kelly had left in her wake. And reaching a consensus of opinion, agreed to let the Antichrist make an unharassed retreat.

'We know where you live,' shouted a poet, making the sign of the cross with his fingers. 'We'll be round tomorrow, just you wait.'

'We'll whip your sorry ass,' said a muleskinner. 'Or if you don't have an ass, we'll whip your budgie.'

'Run,' Kelly told Big Bob, but Big Bob was running already.

The gasometer by moonlight is a beautiful thing to see. Many of the Brentford Poets are inspired by it. Many of them write really long poems about it. And several would have been read out tonight, if things hadn't gone as they had.

Within the shadow of the great gasometer, Big Bob coughed and wheezed, doubled over, big hands upon his great big knees. Kelly wasn't even breathless, she looked ready for a marathon run. She reached a hand towards Big Bob, then drew it back instead.

'How are you doing?' she asked.

'I'm in a mess,' said the big one. 'Trevor Alvy stamped upon my fractured toe.'

'But other than for that?'

'Other than for that?' Big Bob coughed and wheezed some more. 'Have you any idea what I've been going through?'

'None,' said Kelly, straightening her hair and selecting a strand to twist back and forwards in the shadows.

'Hell,' said Big Bob. 'I've been through Hell. And I'm not out of it yet. It's still inside my head. I can feel it. But it's weakening.'

'no we're not,' said the voice, resounding in his skull. 'and you just lost level three. you passed us on. that's all your lives gone. you lose. We win.'

'No,' cried Big Bob, clawing at his temples. 'I'm not in your games any more.'

'you are,' said the voice. 'that was it. Level three. you had all the information. but you muffed it up and we win. and now you die.'

'What's happening?' asked Kelly. 'What's going on? I don't understand.'

'They say I've lost the game. That I've lost my final life. They're going to kill me. No, thou demons, no.'

Big Bob's hands left his temples. Kelly could see him there in the darkness beside her. She saw the big hands shaking. The look of fear upon the big man's face. The hands closing upon his own throat.

Gripping, squeezing. Harder and harder.

Tighter and tighter.

'you lose,' said the voice in Big Bob's head. 'we win. you die.'

'game over.'

'No!' and Big Bob gagged and struggled. But the hands, no longer under his control, pressed in upon his windpipe and crushed away his life.

14

Joy, joy, happy joy.

Happy happy joy.

That big fat smiley sun rose up once more above the Brentford roofscape. It beamed down today upon a borough strangely hushed. There was the milk float of Mr Melchizedec bottle-jingling-jangling along. But it seemed queerly muted, as it moved upon its jingle-jangle way. And that tomcat, softly snoring on the window sill of the Flying Swan, growled somewhat in its sleep, as Mr Melchizedec stretched his hand to tousle up its head. And Mr Melchizedec, silent whistling, was aware that something altogether wrong had entered into Brentford and was waiting cobra-coiled and deadly and about to spring.

Derek awoke in his bachelor bed. Rather bruised was Derek and not in a joyous frame of mind. He'd had more than a night of it, what with the beatings he'd taken at the hoary hands of brutal poetesses and later at the leather-gloved and far more brutal mitts of FART men, who had bundled him, along with many others, into the back of a Black Maria and later into a grossly overcrowded police cell. It had been five in the morning before he'd been able to talk his way to freedom. Which hadn't been a minute too soon, as a large and bearded tattooed poet, who was evidently no stranger to prison life and who referred to himself as 'I'm the daddy now', had just been explaining to Derek exactly what Derek's role as 'my bitch' involved.

Derek had hauled his sorry ass back home in a painful huff.

Derek yawned and stretched and flinched from the pain of numerous bruisings. Somehow, he felt absolutely certain, this was all Kelly's fault. It just had to be. That woman was trouble. Trouble travelled with her like an alligator handbag. Or a cold sore that you couldn't quite shake off.

'But I hope she didn't get injured,' said Derek to himself. 'No, sod it. I hope someone punched her in the face. No, I don't really. Yes, I do. Well I don't, but I do.'

So to speak.

Others might have been rising early with Derek. But most weren't. Most involved in the affray were still locked up in the police cells. One called Trevor Alvy was learning the duties of 'my bitch'. But those who had managed to creep or crawl away home, were not, most definitely not, getting up for work. They would be calling in sick. And those of a religious bent would be doing so content in the knowledge that they would soon be Raptured, so what did work matter anyway?

Among this potentially joyous throng was the wandering bishop. Not that he was cashing in as yet upon his joy potential. The wandering bishop had wandered further than he might have hoped for. He had awakened high in the branches of an ornamental pine on the south bank of the Thames in the Royal Botanical gardens of Kew, where his elevated wanderings had carried him.

Kelly awoke in her rented bed at Mrs Gormenghast's. The pillowcases were still puce, as were the duvet and the curtains and the carpet. Steerpike the cat, Mrs Gormenghast's darling, was also puce, but it was a cat thing. Steerpike hailed from the Isle of Fizakery, where every cat is puce.

Kelly yawned and stretched and climbed out of her bed and stood upon Steerpike the cat. Steerpike the cat swore briefly in feline and took to his furry heels.

Kelly was not this morn pleasingly naked. She had slept in her polyvinylsynthacottonlatexsuedosilk mix dress, which was badly ripped and shredded. And slept very badly too. Her hair was tangled and she had bags of darkness under her eyes. She did not look the very picture of rude good health. She looked deathly pale.

Kelly took herself over to the cheval glass and examined her reflection therein. She did not find it pleasing to behold. The events of the previous evening had sorely troubled her. A feeling of overwhelming gloom smothered her like a damp shroud.