Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

And I took my leave.

And I drifted down and all around and about. And I sought out the golden girlie and eventually I found her, locked in a broom cupboard on the third floor. And she was sitting there, all huddled up and sobbing, and I tried like damn to communicate with her but it was impossible, and so I drifted down some more and returned to the floatation tank.

And how was I going to get myself out of that? I drifted low and examined myself and the way I was fixed in. And I appeared to be most securely fixed in with many straps all soft, but very strong.

And I hovered about above myself and I fretted. How was I going to get free? There had to be some way. I counted off on my astral fingers my magical capabilities. I could smell people coming from a distance. I could hear what they were thinking. I could see with my eyes closed. And I could leave my body and travel about in the spirit. And that was it, really. Which was a shame, because if I’d just been able to move solid objects around with the power of my mind alone, I could have had myself out of that floatation tank in next to no time at all.

But there had to be a way.

And then it came to me, as if by divine inspiration. I would employ the positive neutral powers of the Tyler Technique. It had never really had a chance to prove its worth. And this was, I felt, because I had never really been able to give it its head. So to speak. Which is to say that, in order to make something happen by doing nothing at all, you really do have to do nothing at all.

And how few are the times when we are consciously doing absolutely nothing? I had always been doing something. Thinking something. Planning something. Getting involved in something. The entire point of the Tyler Technique was that it functioned on the principle of total non-involvement on the part of the person who sought to employ it. By doing absolutely nothing, the required something would come into being.

And there was I, down below in that tank, doing completely and utterly absolutely nothing. And here was I, up here, observing this and willing the Tyler Technique to function as I had never willed anything so strongly before.

And below me a door opened, gushing light into the room and onto the floatation tank. And two individuals entered. Two individuals who did not look particularly individual. Both wore thickly lensed spectacles, sported white coats and carried clipboards.

‘Did you hear about Trevellian in Corporate Holdings?’ said one to another as they both approached the floatation tank.

‘About him and the tall woman from Sales Services?’ said the other to the one.

‘Ms Williams? Not her. He’s getting engaged to Ms Haywood in Musical Therapy. The dark one with the sweet nose.’

‘I didn’t know we had a Musical Therapy department.’ The other fellow in the thickly lensed spectacles and the white coat tapped at a gauge on the side of the floatation tank and made notes on his clipboard with an official CIA biro.

‘It’s not a very big Musical Therapy department. There’s just Ms Haywood with her steel pan and her sweet nose.’ The first fellow in the thickly lensed glasses and the white coat consulted an instrumentation board upon a wall, tapped at a gauge upon that and made notes on his clip board with an all-but-identical biro. (His had green ink, rather than the other’s red. Because he did like to think of himself as an individual.)

‘Hold on,’ said the other fellow. ‘Her steel pan and her sweet nose? Do you mean that she plays her sweet nose as an instrument?’

‘She probably would if you asked her. She’s very amenable.’

‘Should this valve be in the on position, or the off?’

‘I’ve no idea. Do you think it matters?’

‘Probably not. I’ll switch it to the off position to be on the safe side. Tell me more about what she might do amenably, possibly even with the involvement of her sweet nose.’

‘Why is this bod in this tank in the first place?’

‘So he can’t interfere. He’s very important to the success of the old man’s project. But he doesn’t know that he is important.’

‘Wasn’t he once in The Sumerian Kynges? I had a flick through his file, to check out whether psychologically he could survive this treatment.’

‘And could he?’

‘Absolutely not. He’ll be a vegetable by midnight. But that’s the old man’s intention. He needs him for the ceremony. But he doesn’t need him to do any thinking, or cause any trouble, so he’s having him bobbing about in here so he’ll lose the last of his marbles.’

The other fellow peered in at my naked person through his thickly lensed specs. ‘I don’t think he was really in The Sumerian Kynges. I had a flick through his file too and it’s pretty grim reading, isn’t it? He comes off as a fantasist who always believes that he’s something special. Funny thing is that he is important, but he doesn’t know about that. Ironic, eh? Should this lever be in the up position, or the down? I’ve never worked with this particular instrument before.’

‘Nor me. Push it down – it looks tidier. Let’s talk some more about Ms Haywood and her sweet nose. Actually, do you think she’ll still be on duty?’

‘Bound to be. Musical Therapy is an evening thing, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think I’d heard of Musical Therapy until you mentioned it. Or did I mention it to you?’

‘Who can say? But let’s go and see her, shall we?’

‘Let’s do.’

And so, making a note or two more upon their clipboards, they left to seek out Ms Haywood and fawn about her sweet nose. But, and I had a little laugh about this, they would be thwarted in their plans because I had drifted through the Musical Therapy office on my way down from above. And it was empty, as Ms Haywood had already gone home.

Ha ha.

And so I hovered and I waited and I chewed upon my astral fingernails. Was the Tyler Technique going to come up cosmic trumps? Would what I hoped for occur because I had done absolutely nothing whatever to make it occur, but even less to stop it? So to speak.

And I hovered and I waited.

And then I heard a little sound.

It was a little hissing sound. As of pressurised steam backing up. And I drifted low and spied that a little needle on a little dial, one that had been most recently tapped, was moving into the red. And smoke was beginning to rise from the vicinity of the valve, which had been switched to the off position, rather than having been left on the on. And a lever that had been pushed down rather than having been left pushed up was starting to vibrate.

And the hissing and the smoking and the vibrating grew and grew and grew. And instrumentation boards began to pop and fizz and then to burst into flame.

And many red lights began to flash.

And panels lit up with the words-

EMERGENCY PROCEDURE SUBJECT RELEASE

And the fixings that fixed me clicked and released and the fluid drained from the tank.

And I returned with haste to my body, now sprawled on the floor of the tank. And I stretched my limbs and climbed to my feet. And I praised the Tyler Technique.

Tick tock went the clock, counting down to midnight.

Did you know that the average human life lasts less than one thousand months? It doesn’t sound like much when you put it like that. And it isn’t very much really. And like anything that matters, the less you have of it, the more precious it becomes.

As I rose all wet and bare-bottom-naked from the floor of that floatation tank and gave out with another of those great atavistic howls that were finding so much favour with me of late, I really felt the preciousness of life.

That and the need for underpants.

You just can’t go into battle in nowt but your bare skuddies. It’s not a good look and they’ll never put it in the movie version, the one where Ray Harryhausen is doing the animated monsters.