Robert Rankin - Web Site Story

Within the shadow of the great gasometer, Big Bob coughed and wheezed, doubled over, big hands upon his great big knees. Kelly wasn't even breathless, she looked ready for a marathon run. She reached a hand towards Big Bob, then drew it back instead.

'How are you doing?' she asked.

'I'm in a mess,' said the big one. 'Trevor Alvy stamped upon my fractured toe.'

'But other than for that?'

'Other than for that?' Big Bob coughed and wheezed some more. 'Have you any idea what I've been going through?'

'None,' said Kelly, straightening her hair and selecting a strand to twist back and forwards in the shadows.

'Hell,' said Big Bob. 'I've been through Hell. And I'm not out of it yet. It's still inside my head. I can feel it. But it's weakening.'

'no we're not,' said the voice, resounding in his skull. 'and you just lost level three. you passed us on. that's all your lives gone. you lose. We win.'

'No,' cried Big Bob, clawing at his temples. 'I'm not in your games any more.'

'you are,' said the voice. 'that was it. Level three. you had all the information. but you muffed it up and we win. and now you die.'

'What's happening?' asked Kelly. 'What's going on? I don't understand.'

'They say I've lost the game. That I've lost my final life. They're going to kill me. No, thou demons, no.'

Big Bob's hands left his temples. Kelly could see him there in the darkness beside her. She saw the big hands shaking. The look of fear upon the big man's face. The hands closing upon his own throat.

Gripping, squeezing. Harder and harder.

Tighter and tighter.

'you lose,' said the voice in Big Bob's head. 'we win. you die.'

'game over.'

'No!' and Big Bob gagged and struggled. But the hands, no longer under his control, pressed in upon his windpipe and crushed away his life.

Joy, joy, happy joy.

Happy happy joy.

That big fat smiley sun rose up once more above the Brentford roofscape. It beamed down today upon a borough strangely hushed. There was the milk float of Mr Melchizedec bottle-jingling-jangling along. But it seemed queerly muted, as it moved upon its jingle-jangle way. And that tomcat, softly snoring on the window sill of the Flying Swan, growled somewhat in its sleep, as Mr Melchizedec stretched his hand to tousle up its head. And Mr Melchizedec, silent whistling, was aware that something altogether wrong had entered into Brentford and was waiting cobra-coiled and deadly and about to spring.

Derek awoke in his bachelor bed. Rather bruised was Derek and not in a joyous frame of mind. He'd had more than a night of it, what with the beatings he'd taken at the hoary hands of brutal poetesses and later at the leather-gloved and far more brutal mitts of FART men, who had bundled him, along with many others, into the back of a Black Maria and later into a grossly overcrowded police cell. It had been five in the morning before he'd been able to talk his way to freedom. Which hadn't been a minute too soon, as a large and bearded tattooed poet, who was evidently no stranger to prison life and who referred to himself as 'I'm the daddy now', had just been explaining to Derek exactly what Derek's role as 'my bitch' involved.

Derek had hauled his sorry ass back home in a painful huff.

Derek yawned and stretched and flinched from the pain of numerous bruisings. Somehow, he felt absolutely certain, this was all Kelly's fault. It just had to be. That woman was trouble. Trouble travelled with her like an alligator handbag. Or a cold sore that you couldn't quite shake off.

'But I hope she didn't get injured,' said Derek to himself. 'No, sod it. I hope someone punched her in the face. No, I don't really. Yes, I do. Well I don't, but I do.'

So to speak.

Others might have been rising early with Derek. But most weren't. Most involved in the affray were still locked up in the police cells. One called Trevor Alvy was learning the duties of 'my bitch'. But those who had managed to creep or crawl away home, were not, most definitely not, getting up for work. They would be calling in sick. And those of a religious bent would be doing so content in the knowledge that they would soon be Raptured, so what did work matter anyway?

Among this potentially joyous throng was the wandering bishop. Not that he was cashing in as yet upon his joy potential. The wandering bishop had wandered further than he might have hoped for. He had awakened high in the branches of an ornamental pine on the south bank of the Thames in the Royal Botanical gardens of Kew, where his elevated wanderings had carried him.

Kelly awoke in her rented bed at Mrs Gormenghast's. The pillowcases were still puce, as were the duvet and the curtains and the carpet. Steerpike the cat, Mrs Gormenghast's darling, was also puce, but it was a cat thing. Steerpike hailed from the Isle of Fizakery, where every cat is puce.

Kelly yawned and stretched and climbed out of her bed and stood upon Steerpike the cat. Steerpike the cat swore briefly in feline and took to his furry heels.

Kelly was not this morn pleasingly naked. She had slept in her polyvinylsynthacottonlatexsuedosilk mix dress, which was badly ripped and shredded. And slept very badly too. Her hair was tangled and she had bags of darkness under her eyes. She did not look the very picture of rude good health. She looked deathly pale.

Kelly took herself over to the cheval glass and examined her reflection therein. She did not find it pleasing to behold. The events of the previous evening had sorely troubled her. A feeling of overwhelming gloom smothered her like a damp shroud.

Kelly's fingers teased at the tangled hair. She stared at herself in the mirror's glass. A great deal of cosmetic restoration work was going to be necessary, if she was to look anything approaching her natural best for her first day at Mute Corp.

Kelly chewed upon her Cupid's bow and as she stared into the mirror it seemed for just a moment, just as a little subliminal flash, that the face of Big Bob Charker stared right back at her.

Kelly shuddered, she felt tears pushing forward into her blue blue eyes. But she forced them back. Big girls did not cry. She had to remain in control.

She had to take control.

At a little after seven thirty of the sunny morning clock, Kelly Anna Sirjan descended the stairs and entered the breakfasting area. She wore a lime green dress of chromecolorpolysynthasuedodickydido and looked as ever radiant as ever she had looked.

Upon her feet she wore a pair of bright red Doveston holistic ankle boots with tieback super-trooper fudge-tunnels, multi-socket implants and wide-trammel cross-modulating flux imploders. They were the very latest thing. And didn't they look it too.

The fire blazed brightly in the hearth and Mrs Gormenghast, wearing a puce nun's habit with matching wimple, greeted her with an Ave Maria and set to cooking hot crossed buns.

'Did you hear what happened at the Brentford Poets last night?' she called over the bubbling cauldron on the stove. 'The coming of the Antichrist, by all accounts. They say that dozens were carried off to glory, but many more have taken the mark of the Beast.'

'Do you have any coffee?' Kelly asked.

'Only tea, dear. Coffee is the Devil's drink.'

'I'll just have a glass of water then.'

'I've plenty of that, dear. I've had the tap blessed by Father O'Blivion, all the water that comes out of it now will be holy.'

'Do you have a home computer here?' Kelly asked.

'Bless me no,' said Mrs Gormenghast, ladling lard into the cauldron and wondering how it was that hot crossed buns were supposed to be made. 'My husband used to have one. A Mute Corp 3000 series, big bugeroo with side-flange demi-speakers and deep-throat hard blast modulator drive. I believe it worked on some system involving the transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter, but I couldn't say for sure, because I never used it. I have hay fever you see.'