Dan Carver - Ruin Nation

“Okay,” says Calamari. “Now, I think we all know why we’re here. This is a two-pronged mission: Jupiter, you’re to spike the drinks with surgical spirit, wait until they’re all half-poisoned and then roll Former Prime Minister Bactrian out. See if you can get them to pledge some money. Be polite – these are a better class of inbred. And, if Lady Battencross propositions you, you’re to give her whatever she wants however she wants it.” And he points to the door. “Now, Spencer,” he continues, “you and the Brownshirts: You’re to locate young Lord Battencross…”

“Sir…” I start, about to ask something important – can’t remember what it was now.

“That’s all you need know!” he barks. And he presses a jar of ethanol into my arms and shoves me down the steps. But the briefing’s still audible through the window so I listen in.

“…And deal with him,” Calamari concludes.

“Brutally?” Spencer asks.

“I’ll leave that to your professional judgement,” says Calamari. “Just keep it quick, quiet and clean . Keep that in mind and you can do whatever you want.”

It sounds like they’re planning to kill Lord Battencross, so I decide to stay in full public view the entire evening. I wouldn’t put it past Calamari to frame me. And I straighten my tie and stride purposefully into the manor.

Right. Imagine blocks, great stone blocks, piled in the halls, stacked haphazardly in the walls and slipping silently from the vaulted ceiling and almost braining me. Whatever money the estate generates, it clearly doesn’t go into maintenance. I’m inside the building now, but the moss, mould and toadstools say different. Pull back the ivy and you’ll see the family portraits; fifty variations on the Hapsburg-jaw.

I survey my fellow guests, all beautifully dressed and all deeply, deeply weird. Darwin would weep. Take a photograph and you’d have all you need to disprove evolution forever.

We push through the throng, past someone who may be Malmot in disguise, and there’s seething old dowager, Lady Digitalis Battencross, in all her cacky-fingered glory.

Okay. I want you to picture Lady Battencross. She’s an interesting looking woman. She used to travel to Africa to shoot endangered species and enjoy the last vestiges of institutionalised racism. On her last trip, she’d caught a particularly vicious stomach bug and lost two thirds of her bodyweight in the form of violently-evacuated excreta. What’s left no longer fits the epidermis. She looks like she’s been deflated. Her empty skin hangs in huge fabric-swathed folds, from armpit to ankle, like a flying squirrel. You’ve heard of ‘Dowager’s hump’. Well, this is ‘Dowager’s rudimentary wing membrane’. Throw her out the window and she’d glide.

You’d think looking like an airborne rodent would dampen her social standing. But you’d be wrong. You see, it’s what’s inside that counts. And what’s inside our Lady B. is a fully-functioning reproductive system. In a social circle that’s been inbreeding itself toward total sterility, a fertile woman’s hot property. Even a widowed old gorgon with a face like a bag of spanners can be a goddess.

She surrounds herself with arselickers, aspirants and dirty old toffs who want to impregnate her. It’s all too much for her son, Lord Timothy Battencross, eighteen years old, and currently skulking round the buffet with a scowl on his face.

Young Timmy is going through a rebellious phase, “searching for truth and honesty in a life hitherto characterised by bourgeois privilege.” His words, not mine. Like all teenagers, he likes to sit back and pass judgement on people, which is why he’s thrown his hat in with the Socialists. They love redistributing his trust fund for him. There’s talk he may become their next leader. He’s certainly ugly enough. Perhaps this is why Calamari wants him dead.

A drunken cellist counts his drunker ensemble into an unrecognisable piece of music and I gather the ball has started. Time to disguise my humble origins and work the room. And I try, but all I meet with are blank faces and quickly-turned backs. I could let it bother me, but I prefer to remain philosophical. After all, surely it’s better to be rejected by people who don’t know you than people who do. And I content myself with the knowledge that, however bad I’m doing, Elton would be doing worse.

I locate the only non-alcoholic drink in the building and I find myself a corner to hide in. And what do you know? The woman with the turquoise ballgown approaches me.

“Are you a baboon?” she asks. I’m at a loss for words.

We’re joined by the gentleman with the three testicles, unless I’m very much mistaken.

“Maybe he’s a rhesus monkey?” says the man. “I shot one of those in Rangoon.”

“No, dear,” the woman replies, “that was your father.”

“Really! And the gorilla I shot in Sumatra?”

“Your mother.”

“Which explains…”

“Yes, dear. The inheritance money.”

“Gosh! Suppose I’d better take their heads off the wall.”

“Nonsense, dear. You shot them fair and square.”

I’m guessing this is a joke. Either that or I’ve finally slipped into schizophrenia.

“Excuse me!” interjects a beard with a person behind it. “I’ve got an honorary degree in animal husbandry. I’ll identify him.” And he grabs my hand and starts examining my fingers. “No fins,” he concludes. “He’s not a fish.”

“I’m human,” I whisper to the woman.

“Bunkum!” the beard spits. “How many balls do you have?!”

“Two…” I say warily. I’m not in the mood for show and tell, so I make my excuses and leave. Calamari collars me on some staircase or other.

“Is everybody drunk yet?”

“No, Sir.”

“Why not?”

“The ethanol reacted with the punch and caught fire.”

“Is that usual?”

“Round here, Sir? Anything goes. I’m sure I saw somebody eating a chunk of potassium earlier.”

“And?”

“His face melted.”

“Yes, that sounds like potassium alright. Any sign of young Lord Battencross?”

“I believe he’s sulking in his room, Sir.”

“Why?”

“He thinks eating potassium is ‘decadent’.”

“Well, it is expensive. Tell me, Jupiter, is he alone?”

“He’s an extremely unattractive young man, Sir, so I would imagine so.”

“Hah!” Calamari cries. “ Perfect!” And he stalks off with that shark’s smile and his eyes lit up all horrible. I figure it’s time to fetch Bactrian. There’s little else I can do.

All the events in my existence, they come as self-contained chapters book-ended by bursts of truly cataclysmic weather. It’s always been so. My mother died in a thunderstorm. My father was taken away in a blizzard. Bongo was stolen in a heatwave and I was married during a mudslide that collapsed the registry office. Tonight, dear reader, it’s raining fish.

Well, I don’t know why it happens. It just does. I’m standing by the bus. Bactrian’s half-in, half-out of the luggage compartment and it occurs to me that we didn’t build him to withstand plummeting cod. So I grab his legs and ram him back into his armoured container. All around me, I see toffs with nets, toffs with bed sheets, toffs with their petticoats outstretched and their underwear showing, all trying to catch tomorrow’s dinner.

Like I said, I’m used to stormy portents of doom. But my meteorological omens are usually explicable by science. Fish, though? Fish isn’t weather. Fish is just plain bloody stupid. Fish takes the piss. Fish is a middle-fingered salute direct from God.

I take a while to ponder what the Almighty’s chosen to infuriate me with this time. Something truly, unbelievably horrible, no doubt. Ten to one, there’s Lord Battencross involved and I’ll lay even shorter odds that you’ll find yours truly, up to my damn neck in it, and screaming.