Robert Rankin - The Brentford Chainstore Massacre

Derek cocked his weapon in the manner that sometimes got a cheap laugh. “I don’t know why you’ve bothered with all this subtle stuff. You should have arranged a nuclear accident, flattened the whole frigging borough.”

“Dear oh dear.” Fred rolled his eyes. “You really don’t get it, do you? When Pooley introduces our little bagged-up friend into the Professor’s magic circle, the entire ceremony will be reversed. Goodness won’t come flooding into the world. Its opposite number will. Mr Pooley will turn this entire planet into a seething cesspit of evil. Which is just the way my master wants it to be.”

“You’re one bad mother,” said Derek.

“Yeah,” said Fred. “Ain’t I though.”

There really didn’t seem any way that Fred’s car would actually be able to drive into Brentford. All the roads in were now blocked by other cars, engines off, doors locked, their owners and passengers gone to join the party. And it really was growing into some party. A PARTY! in fact. Folk from all around were descending on the borough, eager to engage in the free festivities. The novelty of this little west London town’s genuinely celebrating the millennium two years before the rest of the world had a certain pulling power.

Fred’s limo ground to a halt. “Get a move on,” said Fred.

“I can’t,” said Clive. “The traffic’s all snarled up.”

“Then put the car into overdrive.”

“Overdrive? What good’s that if I can’t move?”

“Didn’t you ever see that film The Car?”

“I did,” said Derek. “Absolute corker. This big evil black car comes out of the desert and wipes out all these people in a little mid-west American town. And The Car is really the Devil.”

“Wasn’t Bradford Dillman in that?” asked Clive.

“Nah, Bradford Dillman was in Bug.”

“Now that was a good movie.”

“The Swarm was better.”

“The Swarm was crap.”

“Shut it!” shouted Fred. “What I am trying to say to you, Clive, you little twat, is that you’re driving The Car. Stick it into overdrive.”

“Overdrive,” said Clive, finding the switch. “Overdrive, OK.”

Clive flipped the switch and The Car rose up and crunched over the roofs and bonnets of the un-parked cars.

“Nice,” said Fred.

“Rock’n’roll,” said Derek.

“Let’s all Rock’n’roll,” cried the lead singer of the Lost T-Shirts of Atlantis. “This one’s called ‘Happy in the World’.”

The crowd roared approval and the Lost T-shirts launched into a classic.

“Now that one’s in C,” said the lady in the straw hat.

“I agree,” said Paul. “Fancy a bunk-up?”

“Stand up,” said Dr Steven Malone. “It is time for us to go.”

“Father,” said Cain. “Are you absolutely certain of what you are doing?”

“Never more so,” said the mad doctor. “Very soon I will know all there is to know.”

“Abel says that we should kill you, father,” said Cain. “What is your opinion of this?”

“Now in your opinion,” asked Norman, who was setting up a formidable array of fireworks to the rear of the rock concert stage, “should I start with the thunder flashes or the really big rockets?”

“Don’t ask me now,” said the lady in the straw hat. “Can’t you see I’m being taken from the rear by a medical student?”

As all students of the occult will know, concentration is everything. Unwavering concentration. The mind must be cleared of all extraneous thought. The pathway opens. The magician focuses totally upon the operation in progress. Numerous mental exercises have been formulated to perfect the technique. One is a visualization exercise. Close your eyes and picture an egg with a crown above it. You’ll get it for a moment, but then your mind will wander. Try again and again and slowly, slowly you will be able to hold it for two seconds, three, four, five. When you can hold it for five seconds, lie in bed next to your sleeping partner and do it. Your sleeping partner will jerk awake crying something about an egg. Try it, it works.

The Professor could hold the image of an egg with a crown above it for as long as he wished. He was an Ipsissimus, a master of the temple. A magus. He was totally focused.

Within his study the astral light glowed bright. Within the sacred circle the ancient stood reciting the first words of the ceremony.

“Ten o’clock,” said Jim, finishing his sixth double vodka.

“And bloody closing time,” said Sandy. “I’m off to join the PARTY!”

“We are the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death,” howled the lead singer with all the considerable attributes through the microphone on stage. “And we have come for your daughters. Those we can’t screw, we eat.”

“It’s a great line that,” said the groundsman, backstage, to Norman. “But I suspect probably the only one he’s got.”

“This first number’s called ‘I Love You So Fucking Much I Could Eat Your Shit’.”

“Or perhaps not,” said the groundsman. “What exactly are you doing there, Norman?”

“Well,” said the scientific shopkeeper, “we want to go into the millennium with a big bang, don’t we? So I’ve cranked up the old de-entropizer here, to double the strength of whatever it de-entropizes. So once I’ve set off a firework, you stick the burnt out remains into the de-entropizer and it will produce a brand new one twice as powerful for the next setting-off.”

“No problems,” said the groundsman. “But just one question.”

“What’s that?”

“Would it be all right with you if I stuck my willy in your machine?”

Time moved forwards, as time generally does, and the countdown to the New Millennium became minutes rather than hours.

“No, Cain, no.” Dr Steven Malone stood in his basement laboratory at Kether House. All its horrors had been removed by the police months before, but new horrors now replaced them. “We have been arguing over this for hours. I should not be the one to die. I cannot be the one to die. For what I shall learn will affect all mankind.”

“What will you learn, father?” asked Cain.

“All, Cain, all.”

“No, father, that is the answer you have given before. No man can know all. All can never be known. Only God knows all.”

“I will know more than God,” said Dr Steven Malone. “For I will learn what makes God God. Of what God is composed.”

“And how could you possibly learn this?”

“From the DNA of God. The DNA which is THE BIG IDEA. The first thought. I will possess this and from it I will clone myself.”

“That’s a crock of shit,” said Abel.

“Hold your tongue, boy.”

“Boy? I am now the same age as you.”

“But you can grow no older.”

“This I know. But I do not know how I know this.”

“Because you do not know who you are.”

“Then tell us, father,” said Cain. “Tell us who we are.”

“You are the clones of Jesus Christ.”

“No.” Cain shook his golden head. “This cannot be. This is madness.”

“We should put the bastard out of his misery,” said Abel. “He’s clearly a stone bonker.”

“I am telling you the truth.” Dr Malone thrust his pale white hands into the pockets of his grey tweed trousers. “Cloned from blood taken from the Turin Shroud. I have puzzled long regarding your differences. But then I checked my case notes. You, Abel, the blood from which you were cloned came from scourge marks. While yours, Cain, came from the rib where the spear of Longinus the Centurion pierced you. The Agony of Life and the Ecstasy of Death. But I must take my samples at the next stage. The moment of resurrection.”