Роберт Грант - The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

I glanced again at the grotesque mutation. ‘And I’m supposed to flirt with her?’

‘We all thought she was rather soft on you.’

‘But how did she—’

‘There’s no time to explain right now – get out there and shout sweet nothings!’

‘And why is there never any time to explain anything?’ But Dr. Janussen had hastened over to the extraordinary contraption Troy was finally trundling over the cobblestones. It was on caterpillar tracks, like a tank, but the cannon barrel looked more like a giant elongated version of the valve that my nose had recently accommodated. Troy shimmied up a lamppost, pulled out the bulb and plugged a long flex in its place. The giant valve began to glow blue and buzz like an angry beehive.

I gingerly leant the bazooka against a wall, adjusted my reindeer pullover to cover the flap of my long johns, and strode purposefully towards the beast. At the base of the tower, I cleared my throat and cupped my hands.

‘Uhm… Virginia! Hullo there! It’s… it’s me!’

The abomination stopped in its tracks, slowly turned its hideous visage towards me, and bellowed in a subhuman growl. The word was distorted and garbled, but undeniably recognizable.

‘Brrriiiiiiii-annn?’

I very slightly wet myself.

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

‘Ha ha. Yes… Honey bunch – it’s me, Brian.’

A large tendril fell off her and hit the ground with a splat beside me.

‘Brrriiiiiiii-annn?’ she/it repeated.

I glanced round at the horrified faces of the rapt crowd. ‘Yes, uhm… Lambikins.’

A wave of distaste swept through the throng. A small urchin threw a half-sucked gobstopper which struck the back of my head painfully and stuck there. I ignored it with dignity.

‘I was wondering if you might – if you feel like it – stop snacking on people’s faces for just one moment and come down from there?’

The beast let out a pained and angry howl, then turned back to the climb.

‘Wait! Virginia! I’ve been thinking – how would you feel about our going steady?’ This stopped the creature briefly, but there were more groans and some rather distasteful insults from the mob. I pressed on desperately: ‘Obviously we wouldn’t want to rush towards a wedding straight away. I mean, at the reception we wouldn’t know what greens to serve with the chicken—’

‘ Grunghhnnnuhn! ’ Virginia howled. Somehow, I seemed to have enraged her.

‘All right, all right: we’ll get married straight away! We’ll have children together. A boy who takes after me, and a girl who looks like a huge Brussels sprout.’

‘ Gnghhnnarhhhgnuhn! ’

A nun from a silent order suddenly yelled: ‘You’re a bloody awful flirt!’ Then clapped her hand over her mouth and crossed herself.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Troy furiously cranking a handle to elevate the cannon’s glowing barrel. The broccoli creature was almost at the clock face. It was one minute to midnight. I needed to buy just a little more time. Perhaps if I appealed to the person inside the beast.

‘Listen – Virginia – I don’t know what’s happened to make you this way, but try to remember you started out as a human being. And you still have that elusive spark of humanity inside you… I’m sure there’s a future for you of dignity and mutual respect and peaceful co-habitation…’

She stopped. She turned to me. She exploded.

Quanderhorn’s strange device had blasted her into thousands of fragments of sloppy green flesh and ribbons of foul-smelling viscera. The crowd shrieked as the ghastly carrion rained down on them.

There was a small moment of silence. A lurid flatfish-shaped organ splatted onto my shoulder and flapped alarmingly in its death throes. I slapped it to the ground and stamped on it, realising too late I was in my stockinged feet.

Big Ben began to chime the hour. I looked up from my saturated sock to see Troy’s beaming face.

‘Bullseye, eh?’ He winked. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m covered in the green slimy entrails of a respected colleague. How do you think I am?’

A strange expression clouded Troy’s handsome features. His mouth opened and closed like a fish undergoing a rectal examination. By a crab.

‘Never ask Troy to think. You might damage him,’ Dr. Janussen chided. ‘Troy, stop thinking at once.’ This seemed to do the trick.

The loudhailer barked: ‘Simple common folk – you can all go back to your celebrations. Well done everyone. But mostly me.’

The midnight chime rang, but it had a curious tone to it – a sort of whooshing reverse echo – and I felt momentarily light-headed. Had I sustained some kind of minor head injury in the mêlée , I wondered?

There was a small, shuffling pause, then various appalling renditions of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ began to break out among the cheering multitude. Of course! New Year! Scanning the revellers, I spotted some ‘Happy 1952’ banners. Some small part of my brain thought that odd, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.

Troy and Dr. Janussen had started packing the equipment away. I was turning to help them when I felt on my elbow a rather brusque tug, which had enough force to spin me round.

I was facing an imposingly tall and wide man in improbable sunglasses. ‘Do you know what this is?’ He nodded down to where a large object was tenting the front of his raincoat.

I licked my dry lips. ‘I’m sincerely hoping it’s a gun.’

The object jerked to the left threateningly. Gun or not, it seemed prudent to heed its instruction.

The mysterious figure ushered me down a dark alley. Was this to be the end for Brian Whatever My Second Name was? Shot in a dingy alleyway, for murky reasons I couldn’t even remember? The echo of our footsteps changed in timbre slightly. I looked up to see we were approaching a dead end. This was it, whatever ‘it’ was. In an attempt to appear slightly less cowardly than I actually was, I turned to face my tormentor and casually asked him ‘What now?’ with my eyebrow. Sadly, having raised the eyebrow, I couldn’t get it down again.

He leant over, I assumed to strangle me, but instead he pressed a protruding brick by my shoulder. The wall behind me slid aside smoothly and, with a reassuringly metallic prod from the overcoat object, I turned again and stepped into the darkness.

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

I was in some kind of office. I glanced around, but the wall had slid back in place, and my escort had vanished as suddenly as he’d appeared.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I picked out, on a large mahogany desk before me, a brandy decanter, a cigar humidor, a whisky decanter, a spare cigar humidor, a rum decanter, another brandy decanter, what appeared to be a vodka decanter, yet another brandy decanter, a barrel of Watney’s Pale and several cases of Veuve Clicquot Brut 1937.

Behind it all, panting and dribbling, sat an absolutely enormous bulldog in a bow tie. Its cold blue eyes held me for a terrifying moment, then it cleared its throat, leant into the foggy beam of the weak desk lamp and exhaled a plume of blue-grey smoke. Not, in fact, a bulldog at all, but none other than…

‘Prime Minister Winston Churchill!’

‘Agent Penetrator!’

I looked around for this agent person. There was no one in the room but us.

‘Agent who?’

‘Blast and damnation!’ the Great Man rumbled. ‘It’s just as we feared: they’ve arranged for you to “forget” the past few months.’

‘They?’

‘That infernal Quanderhorn and his cronies, of course.’