SOUTHMINION

 

“To make friends I made love hour to hour, only another reason was for its power.”

                                                                 from Gwendoline Flesk’s statement to the Inquisitors

                                                    

It was a day to learn lessons in humility. They began when he trod in manure while walking over the Aluminium Bridge. He was clean-shaven and headed for an important appointment, walking erect with his shoulders back; happy in his appearance to the point of vanity, from his new pair of shoes to his well-coiffed hair.

The dung had been dropped by a police horse, so no point in complaining to the owner. He’d gone into a bar to clean up; the barkeep shooting him a wary glance as he limped to the loos.

Five minutes later—emerging clean shod to the street—he’d chided himself for feeling so proud: watch your step, God put that shit there.

Jot it: a morphing __ century lesbo slut sailor, riddled with guilt and confusion.

Remember George Douglas Grant? He was the agent for Todd David Flesk. His web address was stickysitu.com. As for his private she-male, well, I never did get it.

I recall his eyes, in a most specific sense, when he said: “You can’t have that as yet.”

They said of Eric Blair on television shows that he was “A debunker before the word existed.”

An actor voicing a Philip Larkin poem spoke of “Days of thin continuous dreaming, watching light move”.

The Dauphin swam down the sea-bound waters. Powerless since absconding, he was shameless and ardent in his beliefs.

When he heard the news he treaded water watching light move till it sank in; then turned around and headed upstream.

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Southminion: a place’s name. It wasn’t even a special place. It was the king’s part of town; maybe that counts for special. The locale—though a world away from squalor—was beside a rundown zone, typifying the sharp divide between the classes. It certainly wasn’t the USA, as Daphne Showie might say. Put it this way: the palace was there—such a splendid pile—and a lot else besides.

In medicine, methods of testing for disease had changed little in a century or more. Todd had taken his notes. Fear of confiding to doctors—as well as to other professionals—was legitimate.

The proles were alive and well. Todd Flesk was too.

He recalled a date—the 27^th of somesuch in the year of someorother—and remembered rising with two gazelles from a slumber. The girls blinked, winked and ran the hell out of there. He saw a lusty old goat staring from the corner—a chap from school who had aged starkly. Todd, in the first heady days of manhood, was full of “youth’s sweet joy”—as some cloying bard once said.

He’d been cutting his teeth in the prisons at the time, a steady line he’d long ago lost for an over-familiarity with some female inmates. Apart from those warm flurries in the showers of the Hopeless House side of the facility, he’d found not a sniff of joy in the dank cells—the men’s side known as the Devil’s Den.

On Coronation Day he arrived as the boys were throttling a low-eyes in the yard. How the fellow had made it to exercise Todd couldn’t even guess—but what a commotion they’d made! The officers took charge and calmed it down quickly.

Todd’s mind was on the Purple Arrows, bringing up the rear of a flypast, marking Roger’s ascent to kingship. The beauty of the weaponry (to quote a phrase) obsessed him. The king had been enthroned for eighteen years at that stage and his fatal illness was still a secret from the press—or the seventh scheme as they were called in Runway Four—a collective under King Roger’s ultimate control; the sovereign’s glove being made of iron and with it he wielded his potency, obsessively grasping the lever of power.

It was whispered among the people that every single word disseminated to them had—in the first instance—passed through Roger’s sharp discerning brain.

The king’s lighter side (soft Rog) allowed a policy of pretend dissent to pertain.

Roger especially liked to liaise, on matters of media manipulation, with one Maureen Nixon; the woman whom, in the king’s view, edited the greatest organ published in Runway Four—namely The Money.

His Highness was forever feeding Nixon news fodder to amuse himself, using his trusty aide Cornelius Cobb as his conduit.

Sure, the citizens could carp on about this and be outraged by that; whole battalions of pernicious pen-pushers busied themselves daily on articles written to create an impression of open debate. But Roger’s influence (nay, the stamp of his jackboot, to use a phrase of Eric’s) was marked on every format of media pronouncement in the land, at times glaringly and by turns more subtly. However, you could be sure—at the end of the proverbial day—Roger’s word held total sway.

Todd had not entirely bought into this idea of the sovereign’s absolute control of the vast collective comprising the information-spreaders and storytellers of Runway Four, aka “our friends from the press”. He knew of numerous websites spitting poison all over Roger and everything for which his name stood. The majority view was that these online dissidents were nothing but muckrakers, but Todd was inclined to take their side. Though he did feel one or two were being excessively venomous now that Roger’s sickness was out in the open.

He knew also, his ear ever stuck to the ground, of a band of sturdy rebels—undetected by the Inquisitors—who led their rebellious lives among the king’s legion of loyalists. (I must add that, since becoming ill, ole Roger had had to cease his hands-on approach to media control and withdraw to his sickbed; in the process permitting various plotters to grapple for dominance over the seventh scheme).

The planes flew over Southminion at three p.m. that public holiday, as an impassive Todd sat in a cell listening to a prisoner speak of a sex toy called the Purple Arrow. The jailbird went on to reveal that his cellmate possessed such a toy and was nightly inflicting it upon him.

What could Todd say? And, as it occurred, he’d said nothing.

Back to the now: Roger’s lying dying. The build-up’s been intense—in a most particular sense—this past week. Didn’t people get it? The king’s on his way out!

The muckrakers, spewing away on the anarchic web, were having immense fun contemplating the day of death; all that power and glory about to be snuffed out—not to mention their glee at the missing heir.

They spoke of the prophet Eric on television programmes, saying he held “violent resentments”.

When he started to write The Smouldering Embers, the book for which he is best remembered, his voice took flight. The ghost’s voice echoed to Todd from across the hills and told him seventeen words about his problems “Those things are passing, like the cold mountain wind or a passion dimmed, so forget them, Todd.”

A giant censer descended from high in the clouds and shook its incense upon Mount Pot—that gargantuan peak from whose foothills the city had seeped for countless years—as priests landed in helicopters and dashed to houses to dish out communion host; the padres shouting their masses above the whirl of the rotary blades—changing mere bread to His body as they sped.

As a method of distribution, it was certainly unconventional.

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On a Southminion street, indoors, Daniel Druff sat with his head bowed, fate having dealt him a foolish name. Although, it should be noted, he did like Daniel—but combined with Druff. He’d be rich if he had a goldmark for every time he was asked “Do you suffer from dandruff yourself, har har?”

He recalled—and with the most pain—the rugby players who’d asked him this question at their club. He’d smiled and tried to laugh with them but could see, all too plainly, the menace in their eyes blending with their boozed-up loutish grins. They’d kicked the crap out of him at closing time. It was a run-of-the-mill occurrence, but people had died from such beatings. Dan was lucky spending only a week in hospital. But luck’s leprechaun would not be around forever; this thought occurred to him often and always with an unsettling shiver.

His wife, known since her youth as Old Ann, was looking at her reflection in a spoon, thinking how great the hair straightener was she’d recently begun using on her tresses. But her hair wasn’t uppermost in her mind. Try as she might to ignore them, her bowels were. She was looking at her image in a desperate attempt at diversion. Why had she let Daniel talk her into coming out tonight? With poor Roger about to pop his clogs at any second, Lord Almighty she’d needed some distraction to stop her racing mind. But she should have known that a meal was a bad idea, the way she’d been pebble-dashing the bowl all week.

Someone was laughing—she thought it was a woman—some tables from her own. Mrs Druff stirred her food but didn’t eat anything; sometimes dining wasn’t such a pleasure nor was food always fun, fresh and funky—as all those web chefs would have one believe.

The laughter continued to an annoying extent. Old Ann Druff focused on her diarrhoea which had come on so severely the night before. The foul condition had been plaguing her insides for a week. Seven shitty days had passed; seven days when, so to speak, the floodgates had opened; seven days, too, since the land had become electrified (although, come to think of it, the land had been alight for months now, with the flame centred on the dying king) and every scribbling pusher of writing implements was banging on about this bloody countdown: would he or would he not croak it today? The pain of speculation was intense for Old Ann. How often, in recent times, had she wanted to shout in the street “It’s me he had the affair with, we did it behind the throne!”

But she’d kept schtum. Just as she’d done for three long years since Cornelius Cobbe, in the dead of night, brought her the payment from Roger—the one hundred grand that had bought her silence. (The coupling of Roger and Old Ann had been an “affair” in its time, taking place, as it did, while Queen Regina still lived. The good queen had met a contagion about a year back and, to continue paraphrasing the old song, had sank to the tomb with considerable speed.)

Many at court were surprised that Roger had bothered to buy the silence of Old Ann at all. The monarch was not normally slow to have sources of irritation exterminated. His aides put it down to an actual love for Ann on the king’s part that he hadn’t had her neck snapped since ceasing his vigorous explorations of her body.

The restaurant—a mid-range place down the road from the palace—contained, besides the Druffs, other notables: namely, a literary critic and Nixon the newspaper editor who was dining with her closest confidante, the enigmatically named, P.

Also present was a less than civil, civil servant, who was drunk and about to be turfed out (by a strong chef and the maître d’) to the street—never again to appear in this story.

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Bludgeon: a city’s name. As you may have gathered, reader, a king lay dying.

At his bedside, ministers, servants, and minions, some close to tears, some crying. Some, too, who feel no sorrow—who stare yes, with solemn eyes—but think only of the post-death rejig.

At the foot of the opulent four-poster a priest reads, in continuous hushed monotone, excerpts from the Bible. Also on hand are three doctors, though there is little they can do at this stage. Four nurses stand, too, stern of face, doing tender final things. The priest keeps returning—as the minutes drag—to lines from Hosea 13:14 which had been a favourite of the moribund king all his privileged life:

“I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?”

In this past week, as King Roger’s death grew closer, Fr Owen O’Whisper had been dipping into a range of passages he thought suitable for a time of approaching loss. The passages were by no means his favourites but—knowing his stuff—he’d come up with a suite of apt bites from his days of rigorous biblical study (O’Whisper had paid rapt attention in divinity school, listening as the dying listen).

To the room he’d quoted James 5:14-16 par exemplum and 2 Corinthians 5:1-5, not to mention Philippians 4:6-7—but it was to Hosea’s Old Testament lines he had returned again and again.

With these quotes he was playing to the rogues’ gallery around the bed. Notwithstanding the presence of some sympathetic souls—bidding Roger adieu—there were some right villains hanging about. O’Whisper didn’t dare voice lines (and he could think of many) to express his real feelings at the extinction of Roger—a man he believed had become, in recent years, an ever more vainglorious tyrant; far worse than the person he’d first encountered nine years before on the day he became the king’s religious advisor. At that meeting Roger had said “We are giving you a concession, Owen. You may look at Us straight in Our face.”

Reading aloud to the room was becoming tiresome for the priest. However, this sense of boredom was something else he dared not voice in the majestic death lair in which he found himself. Among the cast of ghouls present, he must play the role of the loyal padre and show no signs of ennui or disrespect; he must play the role as though his life depended on it, which, in a sense, it did, as already very lethal people were giving him dagger glares. The good father was certain huge changes would occur when Roger breathed his last—especially with the fact the Dauphin had vanished.

O’Whisper reflected on Roger’s full life. What a presence he’d been, always and everywhere. And what a reduction now! A ventilated husk on a deathbed departure point to an afterlife which O’Whisper, in his darkest moments, doubted was even there. However, his training as a priest had taught him never to express this doubt. He believed in leading flocks with expressions of faithful certainty—in fact, his stock answer to doubters, who queried his position on the existence of the hereafter, was ever thus “We’re bound for paradise, it’s just going to take a while.”

Having been Roger’s high priest for close to a decade, he was constantly being asked to surmise and pronounce on conditions in the “beyond”. As spiritual guru to the king, a day did not pass without his views being sought out.

So, still in monotone, he continued reading to his audience, though they’d all stopped listening by now. Even the once faithful nurses had lost interest this past week, not feeling the need for a priest to provide hope and guidance—a confused priest at that, racked with inward doubt.

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Another attendee at this near wake, the aforementioned Cornelius Cobb, turned on his heel and left the death chamber. Once lowly ranked in the hierarchy of state, Cobb had grown close to King Roger over several years. He’d become inter alia an official advisor to the king on monetary matters; Roger having plucked him from the ranks of his coin-collectors (a slavish set who toiled daily in their dim workplaces). Impressed as His Majesty was by Cornelius’s answer to a question, posed, during a visit to a counting house. It was a winter’s afternoon and in the bleak light around the counting desks, in the main counting room of the counting house (on a cuntingly cold day come to think of it), Roger had pondered aloud “What happens if they don’t pay?” (Roger was referring to his subjects, the citizenry of Runway Four). Quick as you can, collector Cobb replied, “We make their life hell, Your Majesty.”

At that instant a friendship sparked. Both men, despite the disparity in their earthly posts, struck up a warm rapport. The king, though reduced now to a set of dying bones on a bed, was then a mighty physical presence—a regal giant who took a real shine to Cornelius Cobb. Roger began seeking Cobb out whenever a money matter proved too taxing for the royal brain; booming at his ministers explanations such as “That boy knows what he’s on about, he comes up against worse every day at the coalface!”

Of course, once his relationship with the king blossomed, Cobb started spending less and less time at the coalface. Roger initially provided him with a small desk in the palace’s bureaucratic wing, before upgrading this to a plush office—close to HRH’s private quarters—where Cornelius divided his days linking with the press and counselling the king on economic issues (counselling Roger, that is, while the Sire still had the health to listen). The office came replete with a staff of twenty who obeyed, without question, Cobb’s orders, which he liked to bark the livelong day.

Such a position of power was a mighty elevation indeed for the former coin-collector.

Watching the monarch now—his dearest friend—on the cusp of expiration was proving too much for Cornelius Cobb. To ease his stress, he went to the courtyard for some air.

Standing alone beneath the night sky, he believed it was only a matter of minutes before the regnant soul gave up the ghost. (Cornelius held fast to an elaborate faith system, which he’d garnered from a William Sorrows novel, wherein each person possessed seven souls. As Cobb appraised the situation—assuming he was following the book correctly—the dying bones of Roger were now ready to bloom into the king’s seventh soul; and, reprising the old ditty, said soul was set to fly to mansions on high).

Also, with this death about to overtake the country, Cobb could sense a malaise, huge and all-consuming, about to grip his life. His position, as something of a big cheese within the apparatus of state, might soon be gobbled up. With all the jockeying for position taking place at court, he found it difficult to gauge just who exactly was in charge as Roger’s life ebbed away.

The widespread implications of Roger’s loss had been foremost in Cobb’s mind since the terminal illness was announced.

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Runway Four: a country’s name (inspired, if I’m to be honest, by Airstrip One).

Joshua Flesk, cousin of Todd, was riding the Beaker—Bludgeon’s underground transport maze—and thinking of another Flesk altogether: his and Todd’s mutual and reclusive cousin Gwendoline; she whose middle name could be Reputation when one considered some of her past exploits—not to mention certain stories gaining traction regarding her present behaviour.

The other night, Todd had phoned with fresh news of Gwen and her latest stratagem. According to Todd, a lawsuit loomed, and Gwendoline was saying it was just the beginning; she had muck on many and was most anxious to spread it about the halls of justice. To this end, she had recruited top lawyer and professional bastard Harold Ignatious Noone (known to friend and foe alike as Hi), who had enthusiastically rallied to her cause—having, no doubt, first sampled her carnal delights. Of that, Josh and Todd were sure; there was simply no other explanation, for the guy was known to command such astronomical fees; fees quite out of Gwendoline’s reach financially. So, she’d reached for him sexually; encountering Noone one evening as he holidayed in the town of Alderwood—a resort in the northeast where the Flesks had their origins.

Gwen had returned to the outskirts of this tourist trap at the folding of her wrap-dancing years (let me explain, reader, for I can envisage your puzzled frown: wrap-dancing clubs bloomed in the early __ century; the girls and boys boogied, bopped and suggested sex sublimely; and, took as pay, for their non-stop dances, wraps of a snow-white medicine that hinted of heavenly bliss. Now, post-elucidation, let me on with this—my tale!).

Espying Hi doing the souvenir shops as they were closing for the day, Gwen had taken him to her bed within an hour. And—presto!—he was now her lawyer.

In Josh’s view his cousin had, in recent years, become something of a study in loneliness. The last news heard of her, before Todd’s phone call, was of a somewhat scatty Gwen dwindling out her days in a disorderly room in Alderwood. She’d fled back to the resort mainly for the availability of this room, taking it over when her aged father Lead Flesk checked out of the Hotel of Life; her sole sister and three brothers had long since left for Bludgeon to establish themselves.

Here in Lead’s old room, the cosiest spot in the crumbling old house, she existed—in the fashion of any great recluse (not to say abuse victim)—surrounded by an array of cats; at rare times phoning a relative to harangue them or causing a scene in the town’s supermarket. However, with the passing of the weeks into months, her eruptions had become ever more infrequent.

It was all quite unlike the situation a few years back when her reputation for witchery and promiscuity was being forged. Part of this rep was just a perma-crazed gaze from Gwen’s orbs—she was born like that—but most of it began when the hot young girl from the country (as she then was) began working at a wrap-dancing club upon her arrival in Bludgeon.

Although a classic rustic greenhorn, Gwen took, with skill and ease, to thrusting about the pole in a frenzy of corrupted sexual mores, while being paid, as I’ve explained, in wraps of morphine (of a strongly satisfying strain).

Ronan Colreavey, the proud owner of Club Sleeve in the trendy Churchstick district, was pleased indeed with his new employee whom he billed on flyers and posters, and on the club’s website—in a saucy play on Gwen’s name—as: Gee Flex-The Dirty Dervish (Gee, with a hard g, being Bludgeon slang for the pudendum).

Word of Gwen’s new line of work filtered back to Alderwood and caused a scandal which raged for years. And now, cousin Todd had been on to tell of Gwen’s first excursion to the law courts. It looked like she was determined to settle scores against those who’d tormented, traumatized, and demeaned her. With these new developments, Josh and Todd agreed, some powerful people would want her silenced—Gwen’s very life could be at risk!

As you can guess, constant reader, Gwen liked to uncoil from the pole, on occasion, to engage in less strenuous activities—one couldn’t spend all one’s day dancing: hand jobs, blow jobs, full intercourse, drug use—both prescription and proscribed—all that kind of thing; with some of Bludgeon’s most distinguished denizens in tow, aiding Gwendoline in her debauched pursuits.

Then, Lady Luck had led her to Hi Noone and to start with she was challenging the dry-cleaning magnate Goss Mangle. Telling Hi when they’d first discussed it (through a haze of post-coital cigarette smoke) “I’ll get around to his grosser deeds later.”

She’d also mentioned, ominously, that she’d “get around to my childhood stuff, too, at some point.”

Being gentle to begin with, she’d decided to have Goss for mere “computer pestering”. As she explained, between blowing smoke rings, “The law is a new avenue for me. I can’t just barge in, like the blind leader of a one-man band, playing my tragic tune. I’ll rehearse with some of Mangle’s milder stuff. What a sleazebag he is!”

— “Rehearse for what?” Hi had asked.

— “The kill,” was her cold reply.

(While “computer pestering” existed on the statutes in Runway Four, it was not considered as vile a deed as, for two examples, “jaywalking” or “public whistling”, both of which were truly despised.)

And, so, Gwen had levelled the charge of a soft and persistent bombardment by the laundry boss to her various platforms and devices of the pop-up question, asked at least a thousand times:

— “Are you an angel?”

Of course, it was entirely possible, with Gwen’s looks and raw sexuality, that she would be asked this question so frequently (I might add that it was also entirely possible that she was, indeed, an angel—albeit of the fallen variety).

Goss protested his innocence loudly, but Gwen was adamant she’d been unnerved—nay, frightened—and added that the true amount of pop-ups was closer to five thousand sent by the besotted Mangle.

Josh thought of his cousin embroiled in this controversy. The whole thing resembled one of those dreadful stalking stories one saw on the net; something the author of an airport blockbuster might latch on to for a place on a bestseller list. And, to use an old saying, the tales on Gwen were growing in their telling. Another family source had made contact that very morning to say Gwendoline had posted on her blog that she would expose: “Every last man Jack of them, the sick fucks!”

As Josh figured it, if she managed to win a case or two and earn some compensation in the process, she mightn’t die a penniless hermit after all; the fate that everybody had marked out for her—to die, alone and poor, in winter say, with her organs failing and not a sibling, friend or lover near.

The lawyer Noone was known to win handsome payouts for his clients in return for his high fees (or, in this case, the receipt of Gwen’s raptures). There was every reason to believe Gwendoline could make quite a killing from this new alliance.

Sitting on the Beaker train, Josh was surrounded by newspaper headlines concerning King Roger’s impending death. Yet he pushed aside Roger’s agony for a time to ponder a compliment long ago paid to him by Gwendoline regarding the steepness of his cheekbones. The carriage was crammed, and nobody saw his chuckle (in fact several people did and took him for mad) as he recalled the intensity in Gwen’s eyes—those orbs again! She’d thrown in the verbal bouquet during a calm silence over a table they were sharing: “You have very high cheekbones, makes you so attractive.”

A philosophical exchange on the nature of love had been taking place. Gwendoline advising him, as an older and wiser friend, with several sage words; some of which had hit the mark. One pithy phrase in particular had lingered long with Josh: “Don’t ever apologise for being in love.”

She’d hardly meant for him to remember this praise of his face, all these years later, with the same clarity that he recalled her pregnant phrase on the subject of love. But Josh Flesk never forgot positive remarks about his face, body, or mind; nor did he forget negative ones, all of which he stored indefinitely—quite a resentful guy in fact.

As the Beaker shook and rumbled through the tunnels under Bludgeon, Josh’s mind continued with the medley of thoughts that evening had brought him: of his cousins Todd and Gwendoline; of God and the dying king; and, not least, of the many things he had to do next week (a major monarchical death notwithstanding). He thought that love wasn’t something modern that would eventually catch on, but rather that people had been in love for ages.

In Southminion the law was a lake of quicksand. Gwendoline Flesk was sinking fast.

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In the restaurant it was time for dessert and the waiter turned from the Druffs’ table with their order taken for lemon meringue pie. As the mincing garçon dashed away, Daniel’s eyes finally met those of Otis Morkbad whom he’d been peeking at, fearfully, throughout the starter and the main course. Morkbad’s expression spoke only loathing to Daniel who quickly turned his gaze back to his wife. Otis Morkbad—the renowned literary critic—possessed such piercing peepers that they caused a frisson of abject foreboding to shoot through Dan Druff’s frame. That look is nothing short of evil, Dan thought, what a frightening figure he cuts—it’s like Old Nick himself is looking at you; and that’s just his appearance—there‘s also the not inconsiderable fact that he is the most feared critic in the whole of Runway Four. 

To think of so much bile contained within one man amazed Dan, who knew all about Morkbad’s reputation and his odious brand of savage censure. Dan’s own attempt to become a poet—his collection Dreams from a Pipe—had been pummelled into extinction by a Morkbad review; Otis describing Dan’s odes as “having the whiff of dog excrement about them”. Many a budding writer in fact had had their hopes of success dashed by Otis’s pen; memorably, he’d compared one play—debuting at the Merriment (Bludgeon’s top theatre)—to a “basin of puke”. That production had folded its tent an hour after Otis’s diatribe was published.

Morkbad’s views on the arts were highly valued by the proles of the land. He was the barometer by which Joe and Josephine Citizen judged the state of artistic endeavour, by anyone brave enough to be creative, in Bludgeon and the rest of Runway Four—that hallowed expanse where the angels and the people dwelt. Morkbad’s opinion was respected right up the line to Roger.

His Highness had decreed that a statue be erected, by the palace entrance, in the critic’s honour; disproving, in one fell swoop, the immensely common belief that “there was never a statue put up to a critic”; and, what was more, Otis had earned his sculpture while still breathing—extant—not following the usual course of events where death precedes a monument to immortality; for Otis lived and worked and caused his anguish still.

We see him now scowling at Dan before leering at the lad who lifts his finished dish and places a sweets menu beneath the captious nose.

His statue meantime stands, an imperious and imposing presence, only a stone’s throw from where Roger is fading fast: that scene again, with O’Whisper whispering his lullaby lament and all present persevering with the final acts in the fate of the king—those last oh-so-cruel touches.

As a light drizzle falls on tensed streets, the black sculpted figure of Otis seems, for that instant, to wink at the lens of the Lie News camera panning (for really simple syndication) the palace and its environs.

At their table, the Druffs’ meringue pie arrives as Dan is mulling over what a masturbator Morkbad is: a wanker, as the Bludgeon vernacular has it.

He again took a glimpse towards the critic only to be met by the living (and by no means statuesque) Otis smirking back at him prior to burying his picky eyes in the list of desserts to study them in baleful silence. Dan shuddered; the waiter hovered—a nervous pretty pansy; just the type of guy, by the by, whom Otis favoured. After a short time, the horrid head was raised, and the voice barked at the lad.

— “That venison escalope, I may throw it up. I hate those Bambi-ish creeps. Get me some banoffee to chase it down. And make sure the bananas were picked by slaves. Faster, boy, faster!”

Otis often claimed, during his many broadsides, to hold a deep and abiding affection for Runway Four. Dan, however, suspected that this affection was nowt but a scoundrelly affinity to country—the selfsame sort that we hear of in the pithy old phrase about the last refuge and the rest. The only thing that that onanist loves, Dan reflected, is his prick in his hand as he pisses on the land.

Dan was preoccupied with thoughts of the country. Even Old Ann’s ailments could not distract him from pondering the fate of Runway Four, although this week his wife had been particularly clamorous on the matter of her stomach—how she’d blathered on and on!

Nevertheless, between the king about to snuff it at any minute and all the tooled-up police and Inquisitors with high calibre shooters swarming about and sirens constantly blaring, events in Bludgeon were impacting drastically on the Druff brain; and everyone he met seemed equally affected; for the psyche still reeled following 8/10. The events of August 10^th, that infamous year, were ever fresh in a vast amount of minds, causing, among other things, nervous trigger tapping by anxious and malevolent cops.

Dan plunged his fork deep into his pie.

In Southminion as a rule the guard was changed ten times daily. With decay coming, they’d upped it to twenty.

While never relinquishing overall control of the message, Roger had interacted and played with the media throughout his reign. The smallest and silliest details of his life had been drip-fed to a populace who had no other choice but to receive them and after a time the people had become addicted to the minutiae of Roger’s days.

Now, at the finale of those days, Roger was overrun by an electrified press swarm relishing the story of the mighty head of state’s demise. Though his state up there on the bed was a good deal less than stately: the shattered shuck going to dust with the unblinking eyes of the seventh scheme glued to the scene at the palace gates; and, throughout the kingdom, screens were awash with near obituaries on what a majestic life the king had led. Heated compliments abounded in these pieces, unleashed in earnest a week earlier when Maureen Nixon got the nod from Cornelius Cobb.

As already stated, Nixon edited The Money, the most widely read and, in Roger’s view, the best organ published in Runway Four. As soon as she learned the king had but a week to live (such accurate devices) she’d “got the word out” to “every rogue in the gallery”, as she was now relating to her friend P, over dinner, three tables from the Druffs. And at Mo’s instigation—so influential was she—an orgy of hagiographic penmanship, about the monarch, had commenced.

Also, at this time, the speculation, among the people and in the seventh scheme, on the whereabouts of the Dauphin reached fever pitch. The press was like pigeons around vomit. The heir apparent had been out of the picture for nigh on a year now (since shortly after Regina’s death) and, as Roger’s only heir (the one other possibility, Roger’s brother Gary, had died of a drug overdose a decade before), the throne of the land was liable to be hijacked if the Dauphin did not reappear soon.

Everyone was rattled regarding the direction in which Runway Four was headed. Some of the surmising re the Dauphin was seedy in the extreme. There was open talk of his employment as a sex worker. It was totally scandalous.

A few revolutionary bulletins, in a move described by Maureen Nixon as being “in breathtakingly bad taste”, had emblazoned Roger’s face on their mastheads along with the dubious blessing: Happy Deathday To You.

Into the bargain, too, strong detractors could be found on the web railing against the king’s good name. rogeroverandout.com had sprung up sporting—on a shrill homepage—the proclamation: FUCKOFF + DIE ROG.

However, it must be said, that most media outlets (in Runway Four at least and with Nixon’s in the vanguard) had toed the line (they had little choice really) with their praise and sorrow over Roger.

The speculative heat had turned to near boiling point that morning with word reaching Nixon, via Cobb, that today was a dead cert to be Roger’s last; Cornelius having come to the climactic chapter—The Seventh Soul Soars—in the Sorrows book, he now felt that he knew a flight to the afterlife when he saw one and had contacted the editor post-haste. The net, all the while, buzzed with activity; a wild, weaving, mad maze abounding with innuendo side by side with blatant crudeness. It was becoming impossible to tell fact from fiction. The gossip was nothing new, just increasingly intense with Roger’s last breath about to be drawn.

Some months back a rumour had emerged of the Dauphin working on a stage at a gay club somewhere on the sub-scene in a small southward sphere. A sleazy picture was painted of the handsome heir wearing a Bomb Baghdad badge pinned to a garter; and wearing not much more. According to the rumourmongers, he was watched in this brazen state by serial masturbators who placed money in his suspender to sustain their much admired, strutting stimulator.

The whispers had been started anonymously by Hi Noone. He couldn’t very well tell the chaps up in the legal swimming pool that he’d been surfing poofs’ porn and had come upon the “future of the country” (who could forget that face!) strutting his stuff on a site called Nancy’s Tea Dance. (Incidentally, Hi’s sexuality can be appraised thus: though appearing to all as a dyed-in-the-wool straight, he was, at root, bi. A fact which did not, in any way, diminish the deep love he felt for his doxy Gwendoline.)

The salacious rumours had reached Roger’s ears shortly after his son vanished. The tittle-tattle compounded the king’s anger over the boy’s disappearance; a decree was issued ordering his immediate capture should he return to Runway Four: “A son of Ours, a scion of greatness, predestined for the throne of this glorious realm, acting the faggot in some queers’ bar? We’ll teach him. Throw him in Our dungeons for a while, soon knock those urges out of him!”

His heir’s new and depraved line of work was confirmed to Roger when he contacted the court in the south and was given the full picture from the authorities down there. Details of the Dauphin emerged, earning a crust, performing as a wrap-dancer in a homosexual club. The king cringed when he considered the sort of crowd such frolicking attracts. He felt that his line was being utterly corrupted and railed at the horror and scandal of it all. It is possible, in fact, to trace the onset of Roger’s illness to these revelations regarding his son which followed so quickly upon Regina’s death. In a fit of ire and revulsion Roger spoke of stopping the Dauphin from ever becoming king: “He’ll quit that pansy prancing once We disinherit him!”

Sitting by his table of cake, strewn with coffee cups, sugar (heck, there was even a decorative ashtray), Dan felt that he belonged nowhere anymore; most days he wanted to be the insect that the spider devours. He often considered prostituting himself behind Old Ann’s back; he felt that acting the whore in secret would afford him an ideal chance to escape himself in an ecstasy of self-avoidance. However, his low self-esteem quickly rid him of this idea as he considered his frame and general demeanour and realised that he’d need enormous amounts of luck to turn a profit from turning tricks. Also, there was the question of what effect it would have on Old Ann if she were ever to discover that her husband was a whore. A disclosure like that might kill her altogether and, if not, would certainly exacerbate one of her many conditions. He couldn’t expose his wife to such pain.

So, with his head frankly melted, Daniel piped up.

— “The bill please, we’re leaving.”

He heard a faint burp and looked across at Old Ann looking back at him. She wore an abashed smile that soon became a grimace as she explained how she was off to the loo, promising to be quick.

— “Just a number one, hon.”

Dan nodded in reply. His face wore the vacant expression of a cow or a miscreant teenager. He had managed, for one luxurious moment, to empty his mind of all thought.

With his wife at the toilets, he gazed around the restaurant and quickly fell into brown study again.

He imagined the people of Runway Four would go to ground when the final siren sounded.

-------

Well, in Runway Four, on the subject of last bells and the like, if you wanted to talk of how things invariably panned out, you just looked to the funeral industry and its diverse clientele—all human death was there: from lowly vagabonds and their hasty burials, to the corpses of crowned heads awaiting—this happened several times a century—the embalmers’ final touches before glorious interments.

If one contemplates this notion further, endless examples of expiration spring to mind: those who burn to cinders in house fires, the ones who disappear at sea never to be found again, the victims of automobile accidents, the victims of their own hands and so on and so forth.

-------

There was no lowlier vagabond than Zully. About fifty, he’d been on the tramp trail now for a decade; the classic routes, drink, and gambling, having led him to his ruinous state. He was one of quite a few bereft souls with no fixed abode who existed in the locality (rather curiously, some of the mendicants were beginning to put on weight).

Zully slept nightly in a thick bush situated in an overgrown section of Kepano’s Green—a famous Southminion park. For the past month, this vagrant’s version of domesticity had been his home.

Tonight, he’d retired early enough, around eight, and immediately began rolling from side to side trying to find comfort in the bleak foliage—an impossible task which he knew was doomed from the start. A lack of money and a consequent lack of cider had him thus flustered and he sensed that going peacefully to the Land of Nod was a hopeless prospect.

Zully’s depression was grave. The old blankets, newspapers, and cardboard of which his nest comprised were smelly sodden piles and sleeping on them made him feel he was but one remove from the pit of no return.

Still, in these far from select surroundings, he went on seeking the balm of sleep to escape the destitution of his day; hoping against hope to find repose on the sorry spot where he mournfully lay.

The minutes ticked by. His alcohol cravings lessened a little. Trying to sleep was a time-passing exercise if nothing else. In Trampland one had a right royal plenitude of hours to kill.

As Zully rolled (he was by no means lolling) he reflected on life’s lottery and his own luckless ticket. He thought of a fellow tramp with whom he’d shared some Devil’s Crop in the Green that afternoon. The guy, just out of jail, kept praising the view of the sky; even shouted his praise to an eerie looking man in a hotel window who was staring across at the pair of bums. But Zully didn’t buy this “splendour of nature” crap. In his estimation, nature was cruel and cold, and he possessed nothing in her scheme.

For many nights now he had visualized a conveyor belt, in eternal motion, replete with every possible material thing that a person could desire; and in this recurrent vision he seemed forever star-crossed to be a deprived bystander.

Some people counted sheep to bring on sleep and many still do. The goods belt was Zully’s method.

(This conveyor belt imagery in the tramp’s brain was indicative of his early childhood viewing of The Era Puzzle i.e. Brise Soothsay’s old show, he being the Baron of Burlesque from Old Zork city, upon whose programme contestants saw goods flash by, on just such a belt as appeared in Zully’s mind’s eye; and what items they could recall, when the belt had stopped and they were asked to recite, they were free to bring home with them till doomsday. Poor Zully, though, was but a dreamer with a few miserable possessions and no home at all save his desolate patch.)

Of course, he reflected, the rich had their problems too; wasn’t the king himself dying? The newspapers at Zully’s feet told him so. But he was forced to conclude, though life at the top could be terrible at times, the bottom was so God-awful that nothing beat it for fiendishness. Zully would swap where he was on life’s bottom rung for a place at said top, at the drop of a clichéd hat.

And, with that thought, he rolled over again, still seeking sleep in the undergrowth.

-------

In a hotel overlooking Zully’s bush bed, a gathering of chartered accountants was attending a male-only dinner, in black tie, which stretched into eternity; table after table spread along the tiled floor, continuing over and over it forever. The dinner guests talked on and on—incessantly—about money.

-------

Ms Anne Udder lay dying in her bed at the hospital, sitting up from her pillows every now and again to curse her enemies from a height (or as much height as she could muster from a sickbed).

— “Shush, lie back,” the medical staff implored her. “Stop cursing. You must rest.”

Anne looked at them all, from face to face to face. These souls are stupid, she supposed, I really ought to tell them:

— “I always turn the air blue when I’m dying.”

-------

Joshua Flesk’s Beaker pulled into Southminion station. The carriage doors parted, and he walked with other souls onto the platform. Making for the exit to the street and the fresh air, he fell into thinking of his recent visit to a spirithouse (or what was known as a church in the old days). There, at the service, with the fervent singing of psalms all around him, when he should have felt salvation biting into his soul, he’d had no sense of being saved whatsoever. Nor, for that matter, did he feel any affinity with the people present or the slightest connection to the rite at hand. On the contrary, his overriding emotion was one of brute fear for his life and future. He’d come out of the spirithouse wondering what exactly it was that the suits of skin within saw in religion. He couldn’t grasp the point of prayer and had scurried away from the service, blending in with the other ghosts on the pavement; no one heeding him as he walked in the zone. And now, this evening, as he emerged from the station to another pavement, he blended in again, though in far less of a scurry on this occasion. No one here, in the outdoors, aware of his difficult past: the criminal record, the evictions, the drunken violence; and nobody, either, familiar with the story of his atonement. Joshua saw no need to discuss his fraught history anymore. He felt the old confessional side of him dying; that impulse he’d once had to blab private details of his life to strangers was fading as fast as King Roger on his deathbed.

(Once again, the motif of Roger’s impending death has been resurrected in the course of this tale; needs must when the Devil drives!)

Strolling through Southminion, Joshua parked all brooding on his pernicious past in a part of his brain where it could remain inactive for days. He endeavoured to lighten his mood by turning to thoughts of concupiscence—that’s lust to you and me.

He found himself humming a Muddy Waters’ line which came to him of a sudden: “When I make love to a woman, she can’t resist.”

Joshua Flesk loved the song (Mannish Boy), loved the singer, but he hadn’t made love in months; and that last time had been with a roadside prostitute.

After picking her up in his ramshackle auto at Bower Hill, he’d gotten her to his room and first announced that he wanted to pop his can. The lady of pleasure had given him a startled look; perhaps thinking that he referred to some depraved new practice of ‘can-popping’ not contained in her repertoire of tricks. Josh had only meant the 7UP he was holding in his pocket; the whole process of hiring a hooker had given him the devil of a thirst.

Watching him quaff the can’s contents, the girl began to relax somewhat and started to undress. Being a Hill prozzy, she was by no means of the high-class variety (his preferred type of tart). Nevertheless, Josh was turned on considerably by the unexpected quality of the bra and thong now tantalizing his eyes.

Still, despite the effort that the girl had made to please, Joshua saw no need for conversation as to her life and interests or for anything approaching the formality of foreplay.

Instead, having ripped off her G-string, he dived straight at her with wild abandon.

Now, as he sauntered along, recollecting his brush with the oldest profession, he found himself becoming strongly aroused.

He resolved to go home, collect his car, and make for Bower Hill to do it all over again.

-------

Bower Hill held its reputation as a red-light district lying within Southminion for many a long year. Alongside it lay another thoroughfare with the incredulously apt moniker of—and I kid you not—Sex Street!

Tonight, in the upper rooms of a shop premises on Sex Street, production has halted—suddenly—in the shooting of a low-budget pornographic film. The starring actress, Ms Indi Azz, inadvertently defecated during the climactic sodomy scene. The lead actor, Gonzo Bone, managed to make a clean break at the right moment—luck and instinct telling him that the shit was about to hit his manhood.

The bemused crew stand around repulsed, and not to say a little embarrassed, on Indi’s behalf.

Because of financial pressure, an immediate re-shoot is ordered.

-------

As mentioned, there had been humility lessons throughout the day: the police horse dung was one; a café waitress who’d turned him down for a date was two; a puddle-mugging by an estate agent’s car was three (he’d found out it was an estate agent by catching up to the guy at a red light and banging on his window. The disturbed driver had rolled it down a fraction to exclaim: “Fuckoff, I’m in property!” before speeding away).

But Todd Flesk’s biggest lesson in the dangers of excessive pride, on this day of lessons, was being told that he was too old for the job.

All throughout the week, as the city of Bludgeon and the entire realm braced itself for the Crown’s death, Todd had been preparing, assiduously, for a job interview at Specific Tent Editors Incorporated for the position of Youth Affairs Publisher (YAP).

During his preparations, he’d found the phrase “oh, for my prison days” entering his head on several occasions, at which point he would slope off to dreams of halcyon shower-rooms at the incarceration centre.

But knowing his prison days could never come back and figuring the nation was about to plunge into a state of upheaval, he had decided that a steady employ somewhere would be useful at this point. He would get his foot in a door before the economy started to depress.

So, he’d chosen some dapper attire; done his homework re the job on offer and gone along, hopeful and confident of success, to have a yap about becoming a YAP; only to be promptly turned down by an inhuman resources manager named Oliver Caan who complained about Todd’s 33 years and how they rendered him totally unsuitable for the job, adding that Specific Tent’s idea of a youth affairs market was an age range of 13 to 20 and that they “really wanted someone in that bracket”.

Todd had accepted the rejection with grace. He wasn’t going to plead his case nor beg for the post. He wouldn’t beg from a smug type like that Caan chap who’d asked most of the questions. The guy wouldn’t know artistic strife if it bit him on the balls, let alone how to publish books for young people. Flesk knew both. But Specific Tent obviously didn’t want his knowledge and he’d left the publishing firm determined never to darken its door again.

It was then that the thought struck him to visit Hi Noone. Perhaps the famous lawyer would find it in his heart to offer him some work at his law offices. Especially if he threw in the fact that he was a cousin of Gwendoline Flesk’s.

The plain fact was that Todd wanted work and no task, in the present climate, would be too lowly for him to perform. He would clean Noone’s toilets, sweep his floors, or count his paperclips if it meant a start for him in a regular job.

It seemed like a perfect idea. Nonetheless he chose to postpone the trip till the morrow and, for now, head for home. Evening was approaching and going to see Hi would entail a lengthy train ride to Bludgeon’s outskirts—a train ride that Todd was simply too exhausted to make so late in the day.

Hi’s firm, Noone Legal, with its punny slogan No One Better in Your Court had recently moved from their grim Georgian offices in town to the upper floors of a new-build high-spec tower situated where the city became the countryside—where, if I may be poetic for a moment, the burbs of Bludgeon ceased and the rolling fields of Runway Four began.

From this new vantage point, they would “assume the stratosphere” as Hi told his workers on the day of the move. He was determined that Noone Legal would become the biggest fish in the country’s judicial pond. Hi found that he was helped immensely in his thinking, plotting and planning if he just gazed at Bludgeon’s sprawl from his enthroned perch on the tower’s top floor.

Also, from this eyrie (being a legal eagle after all) he reflected upon Gwendoline’s perfect form and his own propensity to proffer her paramountcy. He wondered, nervously, where the law stood in relation to this love of his. However, he soon concluded that he was covered: Gwen was an adult, their lovemaking was consensual, and all the sessions were held in camera (he’d also been lucky enough to capture some of them on camera by positioning his Canon on a tripod and recording the frenzied pair in flagrante delicto in the sanctum sanctorum of his bedroom).

But then again, he thought, with a stab of worry to his heart, wasn’t Western law different in so many ways to the Inquisitors’ strictures. The Inqs could take exception to him any time they chose. They could even—and this struck terror into his breast—elect to make an example of him. These fretful thoughts filled Hi’s mind as he took in the splendid views across Bludgeon.

Having foregone the train, Todd, meanwhile, wandered wearily towards his lodgings.

He considered his peripatetic existence (or very pathetic as some would have it). Where, in his ancestry, did this urge to drift come from? He never lived in the same place for more than seven months at a time. It was Todd Flesk’s rule. He’d wound up now in this part of Bludgeon called Southminion and was enjoying its bustle in so many ways. He’d taken Sundays to delve into local curiosities in architecture and on weekdays had explored some nearby adult shops. Also, he’d spent evenings in the library scanning reams of text about the zone’s history; always a scholarly chap, Todd was well versed in his knowledge of quite a few locales at this stage of his journey on Earth. When he wasn’t spanning epochs, he’d specialize in local history and consistently kept his research in-depth.

And, while he remembered places in their own way, he felt no unique loyalty to any of them; no special fealty would Todd impart. He believed that he could not be planted, nor could his flag be placed in any soil; he didn’t even own a flag. He just had a fondness for moving on—every seven months.

-------

Darkness was coming, but the night was still young. It would certainly drag on. Assisted by a flurry of anodyne narcotics, King Roger was going gentle into that night (to paraphrase a poet now revealed to be an infantile, parasitic wastrel).

As Todd continued to his current home, he deliberated further on his nomadic way of life. Maybe it was all about ownership, he thought. If the bricks and mortar were mine, I’d respect them all the more and want to stay within them. Also, I’d want to ensure they remained in good condition; but maybe not.

Deep down he knew why he moved around so much; why, through a rose-tinted glass in his mind’s eye, he was a paramilitary soldier, ducking from safe house to safe house, in a battle with a corrupt order.

It went back to the graveyard, didn’t it? Being hurled through the gates into this land: to learn, to work, to fight. He couldn’t put down roots; there was just too much for him to do.

He reached his abode and went inside—thinking of his ancestors.

-------

Goss Mangle owned seventeen launderettes throughout Bludgeon, along with a slew more in the rest of the land. He’d also, in the course of about a decade, brought his company, MangleKleen, across many borders building up quite an empire for himself in the process. To quote Hi Noone, speaking in another context but equally applicable here: “There’s a lot of bread to be made from dirty laundry”.

Because of his money, Mangle was accustomed to having his wants sated on demand; and my, how he’d wanted Gwendoline Flesk, from the moment he spotted her gracing the pole at Club Sleeve.

Goss had gone to the club to unwind following a surprise visit to the Churchstick branch of MangleKleen. It was actually his third surprise visit to a branch that month. The swoops had been suggested to him by his finance head as a way of unmasking layabout employees. They had proved quite a success, and, in point of fact, he’d removed the masks from two salaried sluggards that very day—the fateful day when Gwendoline Flesk wrap-danced into his life.

The pair of loafers (let me stress that I don’t mean shoes here) had had the temerity to engage in a card game while all about them were gathered bags of soiled linen and garments. It had outraged Goss to see such idleness on display; so, he’d sacked the men on the spot. Mangle’s reputation for ruthlessness was well known; one doesn’t become a business magnate without such an attribute.

As soon as Miss Flesk trod the boards into his line of vision, lust had erupted in Goss’s groin and his bombardment of Gwen’s social media platforms began almost immediately.

He’d ascertained her identity by means of a quick word in the ear of Sleeve boss Colreavey. The endless questioning regarding her angelic status commenced and continued in earnest for weeks upon weeks.

And now the bitch was suing him, and he had Hi Noone up his ass in the form of a correspondence received; the letter mentioning a day in court and something to the effect that Gwen would have hers.

Goss’s initial response to the missive had been to issue an outright denial. But he knew, in an ultimate sense, that the situation would require something far more stern. Goss was only too well aware of the good repute in which the lawyer Noone was held. Hi Noone had brought about the ruination of many an opponent on the legal battlefield. Goss had no intention of becoming another crown to be scalped by this whiz of the judicial world. What an appalling vista, to be brought down by Noone and that whore Flesk! He couldn’t let it come to pass so he focused his mind on the measures that were needed. Then he made the call.

Donning a mask moulded in the image of a typical prole, Goss Mangle left his suburban mansion and ventured towards the centre of Bludgeon. Specifically, to Churchstick and his favourite internet café; an establishment he liked to frequent when making occasional incognito trips to town. Goss enjoyed nothing better, on these excursions, than to sit, unheeded, amidst the common folk soaking up the atmosphere of their small lives.

Churchstick was the city’s most happening zone, with a large number of tourists prevailing. The visitors could be found mingling with ordinary Bludgeoners both indoors and in the open air. Also, members of the swinish multitude flocked to the area from various parts of the city to work its ethanol-rooms, restaurants, and trinket shops. The proles socialized, too, in certain Churchstick imbibing emporia. This heady mix of locals and tourists alike was sold internationally as an utterly chi-chi place to be.

But Goss hadn’t dressed in his ugly disguise solely to play the role of a prole strolling to his evening workplace. Nor would he be slipping in somewhere to imbibe ethanol; sold, as it was, in a variety of alluring potions, all designed to stupefy the lumpen herd.

Let them fill the ethanol-rooms if they so wish. If it helps them to kill the pain of Roger’s passing. Goss Mangle was going to meet the famed “man about a dog”, and to pay that man good money to do murder upon the head of Hi Noone.

So he waited at the café, amongst the flickering screens, for the assassin to arrive.

-------

The announcement of the terminal illness had struck a chord that stunned the inhabitants of Runway Four. Coming, as it did, through the technology, one normal morning, from out of the hackneyed blue.

To all souls, the revelation of Roger’s sickness ranked with 8/10 in terms of its sheer shock value. Wage-slaves logging onto work screens had seen it; as had commuters cramming aboard buses and Beaker trains; farmers in fields, too, saw the information emerge on sky-borne teletext. Every airwave, televisual tube and internet portal seemed to bear the crushing news; a plenitude of websites trumpeted the horrific fact: the king had an illness, and it was going to kill him.

Unseemly banners abounded on that red-letter day all of seven months back; and everyone remembered where they were, and what it was they were doing, when they’d first seen and heard such ugliness as: “Rog Has the Highland Dancer”, “It’s the Big Casino for Roger” or “Carcinogens Attack Our King”.

And his lights were finally going out tonight; the monarch about to slip from his near-death narcosis over the last border; the line betwixt the quick and the dead.

And when it occurred, when, as was bound to happen, it was ultimately announced, everyone would recall their actions (and would remark upon that fact long into the future). Everyone would say: “I remember what I was doing the day King Roger bit the dust.”

-------

A member of the hoi polloi, believing it was his kismet to kill the king, approached one of the sentry boxes sited by the palace gates. The man, Mr Noah Bodee, was armed with a small yet efficacious gun with which he hoped to blow Roger’s head from off o’ His Majesty’s neck. Noah also carried a can of pepper spray. He unleashed the stinging substance into the eyes of the first sentry who came his way and, upon doing so, was instantly eaten by a mammoth dog loosed by a second sentry on duty.

The animal was of a genetically engineered type specific to the military.

The true efficaciousness of the gun was never tested.

-------

In the meditative confines of his kitchenette, Todd Flesk stirred the green tea which he drank on a daily basis. The liquid acted as a perk-me-up and a gentle hallucinogen.

His father, Chuck Flesk, was flitting through the rooms of Todd’s mind and, to continue with the residential analogy, would not leave the house when asked to do so. 

Chuck was parading around up there like the starring actor in one of his own plays.

Todd’s recently deceased daddy had written many dramatic pieces throughout his lifetime. The dead playwright had enjoyed early success with his works, a number of which ran in the Merriment, and theatres further afield, for long profitable periods.

Chuck Flesk had been that rare creature in Runway Four, namely a writer whose work was enjoyed and praised by the critic Otis Morkbad (whose reputation for savage censure struck terror into the hearts of the country’s scribes).

On the strength of his commercial acclaim, Chuck was able to finish out his days composing self-indulgent one-act rants which he then displayed on fringe circuits.

He had also written a column for The Looking Glass—one of the sewer rags—and had been read by a multitude. In this weekly excerpt from Flesk senior’s brain, he’d spat out line upon line of populist piffle, endeavouring to stir the masses into a frenzy of indignation and action on such notable topics as: “castration of boy sopranos who show talent”, “the coursing of nuns” and “mercy killings for the over 35s” (these but three examples from among hundreds).

Chuck basically used his media soapbox as a platform to propound on whatever subjects tickled his fancy; his mood, when he sat down to pen it, determining the column’s content.

It delighted his exhibitionistic side to lay out his thought processes thus, in full sight of the citizenry. This outlet for his views also showed everyone just how much his mind meandered; what a right old mess things were up there in the Flesk head; and the people all said: “The rogue!”, “Good ole Chuckie!”, “A Renaissance man absolute is he!”

Upon his death (that “darkest” of days), it was universally agreed that his life had been full to the brim with achievement and vim. But Todd knew the coin’s other side; he knew Chuck’s muck.

And now, with his mildly stoned head bowed, in his little kitchen alcove, Todd felt an intense hatred for his dead father. He detested Chuck’s memory and his story. His story was a lie. Todd knew it was the tale of a redemption that had never, in fact, taken place.

The whole sorry history was recorded in Todd’s head. Giddy from the tea, he considered—but only for an instant—transcribing it to paper.

Incidents came rushing back, each hurtful in its own right, some stark in the memory; others dark, smudged shots in the mind, like ghosts departing him on a strand.

He recalled the day Chuck phoned him at the coffin factory where he was working at the time: “Flesk, it’s your famous father,” the foreman had shouted. “He sounds a bit fucking funny.”

He had downed his saw and gone to the foreman’s office to pick up the phone. The noble Chuck was on the line and the words slurred out of the earpiece into Todd’s shocked shell-like: “I hate you!”

It was spoken thrice, in the manner of an incantation, and then the phone was slammed down.

Not only was Todd shocked by the words (all nine of them) and the message they conveyed, he was stunned, too, by the inebriated tone in Chuck’s voice. At that stage (his coffin factory days), Todd laboured under the belief that his father had licked his drinking habit for good. He was sure, when he had last done the math, that Chuck had been sober for a decade.

Clearly not! For he was without doubt pissed when he’d spat the horrid words down the phone to his son.

Though the message was brief, the fact of his father’s drunkenness could not be denied; Chuck’s whole tone screamed intoxication, and anyone hearing it would have agreed.

Except that no one had heard it save Todd, who was left hurt and dazed indeed.

Shocked and unable to speak, he returned to his tool on the factory floor and buried himself in work. To be more precise, he’d put the finishing touches to a casket he was working on and tried to forget his father had phoned him at all.

But he could not forget, and the drunken call played on his mind for days afterwards.

At last, he could stand it no more and phoned Chuck to arrange a meeting to question him on the sottish contact that father had made with son.

They assembled at a restaurant for lunch and, straightaway, Todd asked his pops to explain himself. Holding nothing back, he queried:

— “Why the hell did you phone me drunk to tell me that you hated me?”

Ever the consummate liar, Chuck met the question head-on. Smiling confidently, he explained it was a turn of phrase he often used in an ironic sense, when of course he had meant the opposite, that is to say, love.

— “As for me being drunk?” Chuck said, lifting a soda water to his lips. “Not a chance son—must’ve been a bad line.”

Knowing at his core it was untrue, Todd nevertheless accepted this cock-and-bull baloney from his phony father.

How it niggled him now in the gloaming of his small living space, and even the narcotic tea could not stop the gnawing mental hurt. The thought uppermost in Todd’s mind was of what an absolute deceptive cunt his father had been. A refrain churned in his brain: “I should have done this; I should have done that.”

And what Todd felt most was that he should have screamed at the old bastard; not even words, just a visceral roar into the fucker’s face; followed perhaps by a punch.

But he knew the loudest roar would not have registered in Chuck’s sozzled and demented head; nor would a blow have inflicted any sensation to his numbed brain.

All the man had ever felt was a burning rage at his fate.

And yet, and yet, once…

Chuck Flesk had had his newspaper column and it happily went like this:

                                                   Chuck Flesk is Well

               Hi Guys,

                      Chas here. My views change by the minute. I can’t describe

                      myself as having a solid opinion. Everything is fluid. Ripples from      

                      the centre out. Waves at times. Take ciggies for example. Or rather  

                      don’t. They’re bad for the body. When coursing, use nuns instead

                      of hares. My copy is loved on the web. Bye dears,

                                                                                                        C

And the populace had bought into this rubbish for years. Todd had too; thinking how terrific his father was—as a writer anyway he could not be faulted, notwithstanding his poor parenting skills.

However, since Chuck’s death, certain facts had come to light which had caused Todd to appraise his father’s life in a completely new fashion. His dishonesty over his sobriety was merely the tip of an immense iceberg and, with reflection and intuition, Todd could tell his father, the “great” Chuck Flesk, was bound for Hell (if he hadn’t already reached the hot halls of Hades), there to dwell forever more.

A pensive Todd Flesk resolved to let time pass, as inevitably it would.

He thought he heard a voice whispering to him, reaching him from out of the walls.

The voice told him to breathe deeply the air in Bludgeon: “It’s the last air you’ll ever breathe, Todd.”

He hoped it was just the drug tea tightening its hold.

-------

At this juncture, as the author, I would like to make a small input to the narrative. While the tale of the locale flows on, my own whereabouts—if they exist at all—are simple: I occupy a place (quite close to the casement) in the Transcendental Hotel, one of the grottier rooms by the green expanse. In the ballroom above, the business suits are having an eternal tea dance. I am positioned in a permanent state of anger-tinged fear, awaiting (endlessly) the arrival of Nurse Muse. I imagine she will come, one day, to measure the heat of my body and, subsequently, to beat me to within some inches of my “being here at all”; or punch in me ole lights, as the proles might say.

But alas, Nurse Muse never shows. The unfolding of the story dumbfounds me. My “being here at all” is an amazement. The only fact to which I can attest, in any sure-footed manner, is this: I will deal with things in their turn, even if it takes me an age.

As the lyric of the songster so precisely puts it: “The line I shoot will never miss.”

And, as the writer of this piece, I would like to believe that my words will reach the ears of every mad old bastard living in Runway Four.

But quickly, without further ado, let us return to the internet café in Churchstick where a transaction has just taken place between Mr Goss Mangle and an individual known, notoriously in the land, as: El Grimster.

-------

With his instructions clear, El Grimster left the café and took the train to Bludgeon’s perimeter; specifically, to the offices of Hi Noone. Goss had ensured that Hi would be at his tower, upon Grimster’s arrival, by speaking to a cleaner employed there who’d told him: “Yesirree, Mr Mangle. Hi bin here the past two nights most late, stays in his inner office doing Lawdy knows what. He in there now and we bin told not to clean fo’ him, cos he again stayin’ late.”

Goss had had this contact—a former employee of MangleKleen—keeping tabs on Hi’s movements ever since he received the legal missive flagging Gwen’s impending court action. It always helped to know what your enemy was up to, Goss reasoned, when initially asking the cleaner to track Noone. It didn’t really dawn on him that his actions were those of someone in the throes of extreme paranoia; then again, it’s a well-known fact that paranoiacs can often have strong reasons to be so mistrustful.

Over lattes, the killer (not known for a sense of humour) had chuckled quietly when Goss told him the name of his newest target. In a gruff voice—seldom heard in this most taciturn of men—he’d commented: “So, it’s high noon for Hi Noone.”

(Normally, El Grimster only spoke with anything resembling animation at the moment of killing itself, at which point he could be relied upon to provide a cúpla focal for his dispatched ones.)

Goss had affirmed that Hi’s demise was indeed nigh before handing the killer half the cash while agreeing to furnish him the balance when: “I see Noone’s death posted on the web. No need to contact me yourself, Mr Grimster. I’ll know it’s curtains for the lawyer when I see it publicised. Then, I’ll wire you the remaining money.”

Meanwhile, Hi was high, but purely in the sense of lounging on the tower’s top floor, having foresworn all drugs as Gwen—for a spell—was out of town; getting stoned and copulating till dawn was, currently, the couples favourite form of recreation. Both had lately become beguiled by—and somewhat addicted to— the aphrodisiacal properties of Dimethoxybromoamphetamine in combination with bath salts.

When snorted, this substance could take up to an hour to kick in, but it was pure bliss till daybreak once lift-off was achieved. As he found himself recalling certain nights that they’d passed together under the drug’s influence, Hi awaited, with an aching bone, his Gwendoline’s return.

The good lady had gone back to Alderwood to finalise the sale of the Flesk family homestead; the house where she’d been fading away in Lead Flesk’s old room, prior to meeting the Hi of her dreams. She and Noone now planned to set up home, on a permanent basis, at the lawyer’s palatial abode; a move designed to up their relationship several notches in terms of its seriousness.

(It strikes me, here at the Transcendental Hotel, that top lawyers, business magnates and, further down the scale, professionals of any description in fact, always own, or aspire to own, palatial abodes. They want palaces because they yearn to live in kingly style; with Roger’s life seen as the highest style in the land by which to live; and, in a material sense, it is. No one has it plusher than ole Roger, who lives like a king because he is the King. The trappings of his regal world are eagerly pursued by a certain breed, by a multitude in truth, of the Runway Four population; citizens hungry for the comforts a royal birthright brings. I must say, though, from this casement’s vantage point, and having heard that tramp today—shouting his joy at seeing the sky after ten years in jail—I must say: emulating Roger has never been my bag.)

Anyway, as related by Goss’s informant, Hi was sitting on his top floor perch, oblivious to the fact that El Grimster was closing in on him. The assassin had just reached the grounds of the tower and was surveying the edifice to determine the best point of entry to Hi’s office, which he knew to be at the peak.

El Grimster had come off the train having found the long journey quite beneficial, affording him, as it did, an opportunity to let his mind drift; daydreaming being his preferred form of relaxation prior to a killing. He now felt fully on song for the task of exterminating Noone, who remained enthralled in the holiest of holy places—namely his inner office—going about the business of satisfying his soul. In Hi’s view, the only other site that matched his current location, in terms of sanctity, was his bedroom.

The atmosphere in the tower was less frantic now as night fell. By day, the place was busier than Hell on a Saturday night. But now, at day’s end, most of the employees were off the premises. An occasional conscientious drudge remained at a workstation; busy at some unpaid overtime—the prize of a promotion prominent in their mind’s eye. However, with the onset of evening, it was mainly janitors and security guards still scurrying about, like so many ghosts round a graveyard at night.

In Hi’s outer office several cleaners (among them Goss’s spy) were assembled, dusting and polishing the opulent furnishings. These cleaning folk, we could say, were like undertakers preparing their parlour for a body to lie out.

For Hi will soon crawl, bloodied, from inner to outer office, to die before their eyes; and all in a matter of mere temporality.

But stop! Pull on the reins! I’m racing ahead of myself in the telling of Hi’s demise; an individual whose name perhaps had fated him for this moment—always there in the back of his mind and, in an eventual way, it had now arrived.

In order to relax, amuse and—let’s be frank—arouse himself in his lover’s absence, Hi was viewing some of the footage he had shot depicting himself and Gwen in several sorts of sexual acts. He was becoming increasingly fixated with those scenes where her derrière took centre stage (he’d captured the images amid the ornateness of his bedroom). Putting it quite simply, he couldn’t erase the joyful creation that was Gwendoline Flesk’s ass from out of his mind. Last night and the night before, with Gwen away and not wanting to face an empty mansion, he’d stayed at the office till late into the night. During these hours, he’d gazed out at a lit-up Bludgeon, from time to time, but gazed, in the main, at some fornication he’d filmed with Ms Flesk about a fortnight before. Looking at the shots, in full masturbatory mode, with pants down and a good grip maintained on his manhood, he would, in such a manner, linger lustfully upon himself and his hot lover going at it hammer and tongs.

Tonight was no different. How he quivered, with a mixture of desire and anxiety, when he considered the healthiness, or not, of his fixation. Fixation: the word itself conveyed a sense of something not quite right. Something ultimately damaging to the fixated person (him), not to mention the danger posed to the object of the fixation (in this case, Gwen).

He knew that history was littered with instances of obsessions leading to calamity. He thought of that crackpot Fellow-Woman obsessed and deranged over Stanley. He ruminated over Tame’s famous line that each man loves the thing he hates. He then chided himself for being so over-dramatic in his train of thought. It’s only a relationship, Hi, he told himself, don’t let it consume you. Besides, he didn’t want to generate too many reservations in his mind about the material he was viewing, didn’t want to put himself off it too much. He was well aware that whatever his doubts about the healthiness of watching such stuff, he’d keep watching it nonetheless. For Hi couldn’t take his eyes from the screen, where the sublimely shaped rear end of Gwendoline Flesk—her fine behind—was playing havoc with his mind.

Just then, as is the way of these things, El Grimster made a dramatic, cinematic entrance to Hi Noone’s office. Bluntly speaking, he came crashing in through a large pane of glass; the same pane through which Hi had been observing Bludgeon’s vastness in these past few weeks. To say that Hi was surprised by this development is putting it mildly indeed. He stared, aghast, at the harbinger of death that had landed at his feet: the gruesome El Grimster, replete with all his ghoulishness—not to mention the Darth-Vaderish heaviness of his breathing. In the assassin’s left hand was found a powerful little pistol—his trademark piece—an item of weaponry not unlike Noah Bodee’s gun from some pages prior. However, there were no large dogs on hand in Hi’s office to masticate El Grimster away; and, unlike the ill-kismeted Noah, a sorry fate (tonight at least) did not await the killer.

For Harold Ignatious Noone, though, the picture was bleak. He didn’t have time to zap the picture from the screen, let alone raise his pants back to waist level (to die with some dignity), before El Grimster fired three shots into his palpitating chest. The shooter exclaiming a few words as he did so: “I’m El Grimster and I break God’s laws. Meet your maker, motherfucker!”

The shots fired, Hi’s death a certainty, the grim fiend opted for the stairs as his means of departure. Satisfied that his scaling of the tower, to make an entrance, was drama enough for one day, he now selected a more low-key exit strategy. The last sighting in my tale, of this infamously vicious creature, is his flapping mantle and bounding frame as he heads for the fields behind the tower, making good his escape—looking, not a little, from the rear, like Jack the Ripper scuttling through a Londinium peasouper (although without the fog, thereby rendering my description a somewhat strained simile).

But back to the target: discarding his pants altogether, Hi had crawled as far as his outer office, leaving a bloody trail on the sumptuous carpet. The cleaners, who’d been working out there, stood shocked and staring. In statements afterwards, all mentioned how Hi—in his throes—seemed intent on saying something of great import, managing only a grunting groan and some gasps instead—the blood in his mouth badly affecting his pronunciation.

I take no real pleasure, at this point, in revealing to you—sweet scanner of my words—that the one word Noone tried so hard to utter, as his life ebbed away, was: “Gwendoline”.

That gal! Steer well clear, man! She’ll be the death of you. Noone was just a case in point, and only one of many.

So, on the top floor of the tower, amid the finery of his office décor, and with a small audience of stunned proles pausing from their polishing, Hi died. Bye bye, Hi.

Standing in this tumult, Goss’s spy peeked into the inner office. Seeing the screen still flickering, she was amazed when met, on the large and expensive set, by an anus—Gwen’s in close-up—peeking back at her like the gaping eye of a peepshow watcher.

One hour later Hi’s murder was the second biggest story in Runway Four. It was everywhere, including “all over the web”, “I saw it on the internet”, as people breathlessly related to one another the story of Hi Noone’s death.

Only Roger’s sinking to the tomb was beating it for newsworthiness.

(One Final Thing: I stated above that the sight of the fleeing fiend was the last we’d see of El Grimster. I was wrong in this assertion but hope, constant reader, you’ll find it in your heart to offer me forgiveness. For it now becomes necessary, for the sake of narrative flow, to snatch a final glimpse of the killer, in the safety of his lair, awaiting transfer of the balance of his fee—due from Mangle, via wire, at any moment now.

And with that, let me assure you, we’ve seen the last of this loathsome wretch.)

-------

Back at the restaurant, having settled his bill, Dan Druff had made it to the coat stand by the exit where he waited, sucking a mint, for Old Ann to emerge from the ladies. She’d been in there now, he reckoned, for far longer than the time it would take for a mere numero uno to transpire.

He was actually onto his second mint from a bowl of free ones, placed, for the pleasure of patrons, beside the cash register.

Though wondering what the devil was keeping her, he wasn’t really surprised by his wife’s delay having listened all week to her complaints of intestinal turmoil. No doubt she was in there now going through the motions of her motions going through her.

His mind drifted to Old Ann’s recent acquisition of several body piercings (including one in the groin area which, he’d noticed last night, had left a small scar) as well as some tattoos (one, rather cheekily, on her posterior). He really didn’t mind his sweetheart’s attempts, at thirty-five, to stay au fait with de rigueur trends but felt that she was ultimately backing a losing nag—although he didn’t have the nerve to tell her so. He knew that in Runway Four nineteen was considered over-the-hill, making thirty-five positively antediluvian. But, and here he gave a mental shrug, let her discover that for herself.

He was becoming ever more impatient standing there thinking of his wife’s bodily functions but, nevertheless, the thought of her pee flowing past her silver clitoral appendage did prompt this on-the-spot ditty to form in his mind: “Tinkle, tinkle, little scar, wife I wonder where you are.”

Listening to such doggerel turning round in his head, Dan worried that he may have reached a point of madness from which he could never return.

At Maureen Nixon’s table her phone began to flash, indicating an incoming call and interrupting an eager discussion, on the nation’s condition, in which she and P were engaged.

— “Just let me get this,” Maureen said, as she placed the contraption to her ear and began taking in the astounding news: information—so long expected—but so shocking for all that.

She remained composed at what she was being told, though anyone looking closely would have seen tears forming in Nixon’s eyes. P certainly noticed them and proffered a napkin, in a gesture of comfort, as the editor continued to speak, hesitantly, into the instrument.

— “Yes, yes, I’ve got all that. I’m going straight in. I’ll call the team together. There’s a long night ahead. Rest in peace, dear, dear, Roger.”

Nixon placed the phone on the table and looked her companion straight in the eye. In a strong voice, but one infused, too, with sorrow, she announced:

— “I must go, P. Come with me. Roger’s dead. That was Cornelius Cobb. It’s happened at last. His royal soul is flying to the other side. We’ve got to work. People will need direction. They’ll need news.”

These were brave sentiments coming from the Ed, focusing on her journalistic vocation despite the harrowing emotion of the occasion. The choice was clear-cut: get busy or be crippled by sorrow.

So, Mo and P, both fighting the urge to mope, got up to leave.

Dan, all the while, was still at the door and had now spotted exactly where Old Ann was.

He observed her coming through the dining area towards him, past Nixon and P, wearing what could only be described as half a smile—a mini grin tinged with wariness; for what a tremendous anxiety she was feeling regarding her inner workings. She had just left her husband waiting these past fifteen minutes while she emptied herself thoroughly on the loo—thoroughly, for the time being at least. The really worrying thing was that, with their high activity levels, her bowels could unleash further torrents at any moment. Old Ann experienced this worry keenly, this sense that her plumbing seemed to have a mind of its own. What a truly faeces-filled time she was having of late. She thought of a quote of Otis Morkbad’s, from his crushing review of Dan’s poems, and applied it to her current situation: “Where is this cack coming from?”

As she passed the editor and P, both rising from their chairs, Old Ann overheard Nixon impart the poignant detail (which she in turn had heard moments earlier from Cobb) of the doctors bursting into spontaneous tears whilst the ventilator was being unplugged. Hearing this and realising it referred to the sovereign’s passing, it dawned—with stark severity—upon Old Ann that King Roger was finally dead! This newly acquired information, which she found so heartbreaking, about the man who was once her lover, acted as a trigger to her insides. In full view of guests and staff, in the most prominent part of the restaurant, where the maître d’ stood of an evening, she fell to the floor, excreting as she went, to lie weeping in her fug—overcome by the brutal finality and cruelty of existence.

Dan dashed to her side to lend what aid he could as—agape and agog—the rest of the restaurant gawped on.

Otis Morkbad, still slurping his banoffee sweet, glowed with a superb sense of schadenfreude. Smiling from his table, with satanic satisfaction, at the sight of Dan Druff’s wife, Old Ann Druff, in such an abominable state.

-------

In the dying room (now the dead room) Father O’Whisper threw care to the tide and decided to quote a favourite of his own. At a time like this, he thought, it can only be Ezekiel—specifically chapter 32 verses 6 and 7:

“And the ravines will be filled with your flesh. When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars;”

Owen had been yearning for days, in the course of his biblical recitation, to spit out these profound words, for in them he found voice for an intense gladness in his being—a delight at the departure of the king. At long, long last, Roger’s reign had ended. (As it happened, at that historic hour, the weight of Ezekiel’s words, spoken by O’Whisper, registered with no one. By that stage of the week, the priest’s voice had become nothing but a drone to be ignored if at all possible. Owen O’Whisper could have been reciting “I’m a necrophiliac who likes the look of Roger’s corpse”, for all the attention he was being paid.)

The chief medic, who was also the weepiest, had turned to the room, having completed the task of unhooking the ventilator, with a face that expressed utter loss. Tears gushed down the cheeks of this shattered pulmonologist and the other physicians present drew near to comfort their colleague. Even the hard-faced and normally unflappable nurses cried openly, though they continued to go about their duties—that innate calling to care never leaving them despite their great grief at what had occurred.

O’Whisper looked again at those around him in the chamber of death, wherein the seventh soul of a king had, moments ago, fled to paradisal pastures further ahead (that is, if one believed the system of faith expounded in the book that Corn Cobb had been reading so diligently; for maybe this was simply the sepulchral rat-hole of a just deceased despot; who, and what, was one to credit anymore?).

The priest saw thin smiles, veiling delight, on the faces of several of those standing by. Such simmering joy had been the case all week among a callous crafty few, who, if the truth were known, had been awaiting the monarch’s death for years. However, Fr Owen also saw, as he surreptitiously surveyed the attendees, deep dolour in the eyes of others. Roger, the legend they had loved for so long and with such passion, was now gone. That fact was inescapable. So deep went the grief, in certain cases, that some souls on the scene lost the will to live from that point onwards. Likewise, many in the wider population were to feel equally soul-destroyed; and would feel it soon.

For up next, in the order of priorities, was the announcement of the king’s death to the people of Runway Four. Setting the wheels turning for this task fell to Cornelius Cobb, who for so long had acted as the court’s go-between with the enormous construct that was the seventh scheme. Cobb was the mouthpiece who got the word out to the editors of the land. His was a steady voice ready now to interface and soothe the hurt of many. The plebeians would have to be fed and those nobler would listen, too, with rapt and anguished attention.

Thus, with the doing of his duty dominant in his mind, he stepped away from the bed and made for the outer corridor. Once there, Corn produced his cell and began the process of revealing the news. As I’ve outlined, he contacted, at first, Maureen Nixon—detecting, as he did so, a faltering tone in the lady’s voice, normally so ebullient in its timbre. Once he’d imparted the tragic information to Mo, he spoke with several other editors and then returned to the bedside of his dead friend. The country’s king was gone but so, also, was a much loved and cherished confidante. Cobb felt an intense urge to pray.

As he reached the corpse’s side, a commotion was heard coming from the lower levels of the palace. The sound of clanging steel and raised voices reached the ears of those subjects gathered by the four-poster. Then, something startled all present as a familiar voice filled the air. So distinctive to all, it had to be, it could only be, it was: The Dauphin.

— “Get out of my way for God’s sake and put down that weapon, you’ll only regret it. Forget your orders, I’m going up there!”

The little crowd, hearing this rumpus from deep in the keep, began to shuffle and murmur with the utmost surprise. Fear flashed across the faces of some—with a silent, staring terror in one or two cases.

Dear, oh dear—Gadzooks!—he’s back; they quietly calculated the implications. The heir’s presence here was a curse on all their plans. They had prayed so hard for him to die at the tea dance. Hearing him arrive, confusion reigned as to where they now stood.

Fate had been extremely kind to the Dauphin. Supremely confident, he bounded into the chamber where the mortal remains of his father lay and, imbued with zeal, instructed those present to:

— “Get that corpse out of here. Wrap it up, the fucker’s dead.”

Obedient citizens one and all, they began to do what they were told.                                                                         

Epilogue:

Heedless of Otis Morkbad’s criticism (spurred on by it, in fact), Daniel Druff is busy working on a fresh collection of odes—provisionally entitled Too Stoned to Function.

Suffused with a new sense of artistic direction, Daniel is also considering a prequel to his collection Dreams…, which he is calling, for the time being, Intimations of the Initial Rush.

Noah Bodee’s son, the inappropriately named Sum—as he never amounted to aught—reacted badly to his father’s death (devoured, as his daddy was, by a deadly dog). Hearing the news, by telephone, while driving to work, Sum jumped from his car into fast thick traffic and was decapitated by a circus truck. People can say Sum needlessly took his life, but clearly, during months spent pondering kismet and planning to kill Roger, Noah never once considered the effect that the actions of the father would have upon the son.

Although initially a suspect in Hi Noone’s killing and forced to endure an interrogation at the hands of the Inquisitors, Gwendoline Flesk was quickly exonerated and soon recovered from Hi’s death. Through an alteration in the lawyer’s will, which Hi had changed while in the throes of lusty ardour, Gwen inherited ninety per cent of the Noone fortune (Hi left the rest to his sister, the oddly named Half-Tear, who developed a deep and lasting hatred for Gwendoline). Miss Flesk currently lives in luxury, spending her time chewing men up and spitting them out.

Todd Flesk has weaned himself off the green tea and continues to breathe deeply the air in Bludgeon. Where there’s life and death, there is hope.

© Brian Ahern 2015