Robert Rankin - The Brightonomicon

'They keep turning up,' said Doctor Proctor. 'Brighton is full of them – the down-and-outs and Big Issue-sellers with their big dirty boots and spaniels on strings. They have no identities. They do not remember their names. There's no doubt in my mind, of course, as to who they really are.' 'Who?' asked Nurse Hearse.

'Do you believe in fairies?' asked the doctor, shining a torch into my eyes. 'I've never really thought about it.'

'Well, you should. I am presently writing a treatise on the subject, a medical treatise in which I explain my theory that all these folk who wander the streets of Brighton were bewitched by the fairies, that they stumbled into a fairy mound, partook of fairy food and became bewitched. Time, you see, is different in fairyland. This fellow here, for example, he probably wandered into a fairy mound several centuries ago and left again what he thought to be several hours later. But it was in fact several centuries later. And here he lies before us now, another helpless, lost soul, with no identity.'

I took to a certain inward shuddering and wondered if the doctor's words might in fact be true. After all, I really did not remember who I was or where I had come from. But. I was pretty damn sure I had never met any fairies. 'So what should we do for the best?' asked Nurse Hearse.

'What we always do in cases like this. You know the drill, Nurse. This is Brighton. This fellow should be good for numerous donor transplants – heart, lungs, liver, retinas. Have you checked out his old chap?' 'His father?' 'His… you know.' I saw Doctor Proctor pointing to the area slightly below his waistline. 'Ah,' said Nurse Hearse. 'His plonker.' 'There's always a need for plonkers in the Third World, Nurse. And this hospital could never survive financially if it wasn't for the trade we do in transplant organs.'

Something clicked when I heard this, as if I had heard it all before – read it in fact, in some book. Although I felt certain that it had been a work of fiction.*

'Help!' I cried silently and unheard by anyone but myself. 'Help, Mister Rune, get me out of here!'

'And there're no signs at all of brain activity?' asked Doctor Proctor.

Nurse Hearse shrugged (I assume, because I could not actually see her then). 'I've no idea, Doctor,' she said. 'We haven't bothered to connect the encephalograph.'

'You're a credit to your calling,' said the doctor. 'A regular Mother Teresa.' 'Isn't she a nun?' 'She's a kind of nursing nun. Dresses in tea towels, a bit like Yasser Arafat.' 'Is he a nun?'

'Don't try to confuse me, Nurse. Others have tried – and succeeded, let me tell you – but it doesn't inspire confidence in the patients.' 'I'm sorry, Doctor.'

Doctor Proctor was now fiddling with my chest. My eyes were still open and I could see him at it. He had his stethoscope on me. It was cold, of course.

'Heart seems sound,' he said. 'Pulse a bit rapid, though. What do you make of this?'

'The mark on his chest? It looks like a hoof print, doesn't it? But burned in, somehow.'

'By a fairy horseman, probably. Bit of a shame, really -we generally use the chest skin to make lampshades.' 'Help!' I screamed silently. 'Mister Rune! Help!'

'I've a lovely collection of them in my study,' continued Doctor Proctor. 'Perhaps you'd like to come up later and see them, Nurse Hearse?' 'I'd love to,' said Nurse Hearse. * And a good 'n. And I screamed 'Help!' once again. Silently, of course.

After a while, the two of them left. It had been an unpleasant while for me, what with Doctor Proctor measuring my old chap, because apparently they are sold by the inch, and Nurse Hearse asking the doctor whether she could have my finger bones, because apparently she made contemporary jewellery out of them that sold well at the Brighton Festival.

Once they had gone, I lay and stewed in my own juices. Actually, I was rather hungry. They could at least have hooked me up to a drip or something. But beyond being hungry, I was very scared. It had been no female student that had knocked me unconscious; it had been some mad mythical beast. And what had happened to Mr Rune? Had the monster killed him? If it had not and he had escaped unscathed, surely he would be looking for me. Surely he would know that I was here? I tried to cry out once again, but failed miserably. And then, I suppose, I must have lost consciousness again.

Because the next thing I knew, there was a lot of bumping and banging about, which I assume must have woken me up. And there was that damned doctor shining his damned light into my eyes once again. And I did view a drip this time and a corridor ceiling and some doors and some more ceiling and then some more doors.

And then sky. An early-morning sky. And I heard the sound of the dawn chorus and smelled the fresh new air.

'Across the car park,' called Doctor Proctor, 'and into the Royal Mail van.'

'Are we going to post him, Doctor?' I heard Nurse Hearse ask. And it was chilly out, I noticed that, too.

'Not immediately, Nurse; we are, however, going to dispatch him, if I might put it that way. We use a lot of Royal Mail vans for this sort of thing, which explains why the post is so unreliable in Brighton. But that's by the by. The vans are mobile euthanasia units. We dispatch the… er… donor, then do the dissections and parcel up the pieces, and then it's on with the address labels and off to the sorting office. It's all quite official – it has the Royal Seal of Approval. This is the Royal Mail, after all. The Queen Mother approved the scheme for the National Health Service shortly after the Second World War. The country's economy couldn't possibly have supported all the war wounded flowing back from all around the world, but by selling off the organs of these otherwise hopeless individuals, the books were made to balance. There wouldn't be the swinging sixties, with full employment and everybody happy, if it wasn't for schemes like this.' 'It's all so simple once it's explained,' said Nurse Hearse. My, it was really chilly out. And my, did I try my damnedest to scream for help. And my, did I get nowhere at all. Except to the doors of the Royal Mail van. And then through them and into the van.

And once the doors were closed, and the van was in motion, it was, well, at least a bit warmer. Although it really smelled in that van. It smelled like a slaughterhouse.

And I could see Doctor Proctor looming above me. And I watched as he took big, deep breaths.

'I love the smell of cadavers in the morning,' said Doctor Proctor. 'Smells like victory for the NHS.'

'Should I give the poor soul a lethal injection?' asked Nurse Hearse. 'Put him out of his misery?'

'Heavens, no, Nurse – lethal injections cost money. They generally die of blood loss, anyway, and the organs are fresher when taken from a living donor. So where should I start?'

'Could I cut his old chap off? It's always been an ambition of mine.'

'Certainly, Nurse. Use one of the big scalpels – see if you can take it off with one swift-'

Now, I know what they say about people being talked out of comas, or sung out of them by pop-star types who are in need of a bit of good publicity to cover up some shame or other that is due to come out in the press. And like everyone, I suppose, I have always wondered whether it was actually true, or whether the coma case just happened to wake up at that moment. Or whether in feet there really were any coma cases who ever woke up, or whether the entire thing was made up by the newspapers. Most likely the Weekly World News: RIP VAN WINKLE: Coma Patient Wakes Up After Two Hundred Years When Sung To By Elvis.

But believe me, or believe me not, if you really want to raise a male patient from a coma, just try threatening his old chap with a scalpel.

'Aaaaaaagh!' I went, very loudly, with all my limbs once more on the go. 'It's a miracle!' cried Nurse Hearse.