Robert Rankin - Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

The camera’s eye took in the aisles and iron walkways, moving slowly and lingering here upon a nail-studded Congolese power figure and there upon a mummified mermaid. Then on.

Two figures were approaching. One was the inevitable Bobby Boy. The other was Peter Cushing. Peter wore thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses. He was evidently playing the part of Mr Fudgepacker.

“Do not look directly upon Him,” said Peter Cushing. “And never, never into His eyes. Just keep your head bowed and kneel when I tell you.”

“How long?” asked Bobby Boy. “How long has He been with you?”

“For many years. I am His guardian. All this, all this in the Emporium is His. Time captured, you see, in the taxidermy, in the religious relics and the pickled parts. That is how He likes it. How it must be.”

“Now what is all this about?” Russell asked.

“Will He know me?” asked Bobby Boy. “Will He know why I’m here? What I want?”

“He knows all. He knows that you want more time. More time to correct the mistake you made. The mistake that changed the future.”

Russell put his hands to his face. “What did I do? Or what didn’t I do? This is bad. This is really bad. And who is this He ?”

The figures on screen approached a small Gothic door at the end of the aisle.

“There’s no door there,” said Russell. “How did they do that?”

Bobby Boy pressed open the door and the two men passed through the narrow opening.

The camera followed them down a flight of steps and into a boiler room.

“And there’s no boiler room,” said Russell. “Or at least I don’t think there’s one.”

“This way,” Peter led Bobby Boy between piles of ancient luggage, old portmanteaus, Gladstone bags, towards a curtained-off corner of the room.

“Part the curtain,” said Peter, “and avert your gaze.”

Bobby Boy drew the curtain aside.

Russell looked on.

Something moved in the semi-darkness, an indistinct form.

Russell squinted at the screen.

Something lifted itself into the light.

Russell gaped in horror.

The terrible thing sat upon a throne-like chair, its grinning insect face a vivid red. A face that moved and swam with many forms. The black maw of a mouth turned upwards in a V-shaped leer. The fathomless eyes blinked open.

“Aaaaaaaaaagh!” screamed Russell, falling backwards off the chair.

The face gazed out from the screen. Tiny naked human figures writhed upon its skin, drifting in and out of focus.

Russell scrambled up and stared. “Holy God,” he whispered.

The eyes bulged from the screen. “ I am your God,” cried the one voice which was many. “Kneel before your God and I will give you more time.”

“No,” went Russell. “No no no.” He snatched up the remote control and pressed the eject button. The cassette slid out from beneath the screen. But the face stared on.

“No,” went Russell, pushing the “off” button.

“Yes,” went the dreadful voice, and the leering face stared on.

“Oh my God.” Russell snatched at the cable, wrapped his fingers around it and tore the plug from the wall socket.

“You have deviated,” boomed the voice, and the eyes that bulged from the screen stared into Russell’s. “You have deviated from the script. You must be rewritten.”

“You can go to Hell.” Russell took the monitor in both hands raised it high above his head and dashed it down to the floor.

Sparks and crackles.

Silence.

Bobby Boy’s voice broke that silence. “You shouldn’t have done that, Russell,” it said.

Russell swung around to gawp at the long thin fellow. He stood beside the sliding door of the hangar. Mr Fudgepacker was with him.

“Very expensive SFX,” said the old boy. “That will have to come out of your wages.”

“What wages? I mean, my God, what have you two done? What was that creature? What is this movie? Why is it about me? Why …?”

Bobby Boy shrugged his high narrow shoulders. “So many questions. And you really shouldn’t be asking them. You’re the star player in all this. You started it. But you have to follow your script. You’ve deviated from the plot. You weren’t supposed to do this.”

“We could write it in,” said Mr Fudgepacker, scratching at his baldy head and sending little flecks of skin about the place. “It might make an interesting sequence.”

“No,” the thin man shook his head. “I think we should just write Russell out. As of now.”

“What?” went Russell. “What are you talking about?”

Bobby Boy sidled over. “You don’t get it anyway,” he sneered. “But then, you were never supposed to.”

Russell had a good old shake on. He reached for the Scotch bottle.

“And drinking my booze.” Mr Fudgepacker threw up his wrinkled hands. “That’s definitely not in the script. I’d never have put that in the script.”

“What script?” asked Russell. “The script of this abomination? I don’t want to be in your script.”

“But you’re already in it. You’ve watched the videos. You’ve seen what you do, what you’re going to do.”

“You’re mad,” said Russell. “This is all insane.”

“Sit down,” said Bobby Boy.

“Stuff you.”

“Quite out of character,” said Mr Fudgepacker.

“Sit down, Russell,” said Bobby Boy.

Russell sat down. And then he jumped up again.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Russell sat down again.

Bobby Boy took the Scotch bottle from his hand. He hoisted himself onto a table and dangled his long thin legs [24] It was a very high table. . “Are you sitting comfortably?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well never mind,” Bobby Boy put the Scotch bottle to his tricky little mouth and took a big swig.

“Oi,” croaked Mr Fudgepacker. “My booze.”

“Shut it old man.”

“Well, really.”

“Tell me, Russell,” said Bobby Boy, wiping his slender chin, “what do you remember?”

“About what?”

“About your childhood, say.”

“Mind your own business.”

“Come on now. What school did you go to?”

“Huh?” said Russell.

“Come on, tell me. I’ll give you a nip of this Scotch if you tell me.”

“I can take the bottle from you whenever I want.”

Bobby Boy produced a gun from his coat pocket. “I’ll bet you can’t,” he said.

“Come off it.” Russell put up his hands.

“Tell me which school you went to.”

“I …” Russell thought about this. “I …”

“Slipped your mind?”

“I …”

“Tell me your earliest memory, then.”

Russell knotted his fists.

“Careful.”

“All right. My earliest memory, all right. It’s … it’s …” Russell screwed up his face. “It’s …”

“Come on, spit it out.”

Russell spat it out. “It’s Morgan,” he said. “Morgan telling me about The Flying Swan.”

“And nothing before that?”

Russell scratched at his head of hair. Before that? There had to have been something before that. But what had it been?

“No?” asked Bobby Boy. “Lost your memory?”

“I’m drunk,” said Russell. “I don’t feel very well.”

“There’s nothing before it, Russell. You didn’t exist before that. You were called into being, Russell. So that you could fulfil a particular role, play a certain part. And you were playing it well, before you started to deviate. Opening the safe? An honest fellow like you, quite out of character.”

“I am not a bloody character,” said Russell. “What are you implying? That I’m just a made-up character in a book?”

“Character in a book?” Bobby Boy laughed his grating laugh. “Now that really is absurd. No, Russell. But you’re not a real person. You’re a construct. A bit of this person, a bit of that.”