by Rhys Hughes
He paused for breath and then continued, “Let’s be generous and say that the speed of your thought is currently 20 metres per second. I’ll have to divide your body in two, send one half to Venus, at a minimum distance of 41,840,000 KM, and the other half to Mercury, at a minimum distance of 77,300,000 KM. The first half will arrive at its destination in at least 63 years, the second half in no less than 122 years. There’s nothing to eat on the way, so you’ll slowly starve to death. But in fact you’ll be dead long before then, because there’s no air in space. And in extra fact you’ll be dead long before you reach space, because of the fatal division of your body. I did ask you to reconsider... Now where did I put my saw?”
There were no rose petals, musical notes or the glints of smiles inside her head after all. His work finished for the day, the genie mounted the lamp on the sideboard with some difficulty and flew out of the window, cutting a few of his threads of the edges of the breaking glass. Then he went to the slum to enjoy a night of hard drinking in the bleak surroundings he liked best.
2: The Furry Godmother
She wanted to dance at a ball, Fanny did, because it was the most romantic thing she could imagine. Often she daydreamed about this breathtaking event, but the details remained vague and it would have been impossible for her to describe the look of the ballroom or the kind of music she danced to. Not that anyone ever asked her to reveal the substance of her fantasies: she was a loner and had no real friends.
Seventeen years old she was and lightly freckled. Her features were dainty but in perfect proportion. Her small nose could sneeze without disturbing the mice that lived behind the walls of her room and her eyes sparkled like small coins. As for her curls, those tumbled like a cascade of stringy syrup, all golden on her shoulders. But not sticky.
One evening in autumn, that misty season when certain gardeners get ready to enter enormous vegetables in competitions, Fanny sighed wistfully and was about to lose herself in her favourite daydream when she was interrupted by a cough at the open window. Although it was an upstairs window, the highest in the house, a figure was climbing through without the aid of a ladder, a silver wand gripped in one hand.
“I may grant you any wish you like,” the new arrival said.
“Are you a werewolf?” blinked Fanny.
The figure scowled. “I’m a fairy godmother but I have a distressing genetic condition called hypertrichosis. And before you ask: there’s no cure. Let’s get back to the reason I’m here, shall we?”
“It’s very hairy, your face,” persisted Fanny.
“I explained why. There’s no need to talk more about it. Very self-conscious it makes me and I’ll be grateful if you don’t draw attention to it. We all have our defects. But I’m a supernatural benefactor and...”
“Laser treatment might work,” suggested Fanny.
“Enough! I’ve come here to do a job, to grant you a wish. I already know your deepest desire and I’m in a position to facilitate its attainment. Behold! You shall go to the ball!”
The wand was waved and multicoloured stars seemed to drift lazily from its tip. Fanny stood there in perplexity. Nothing much seemed to have happened. “Shall I?” she whispered.
“Yes! Go onto the street and proceed down the hill. Turn left at the bottom and then take the second right and keep going until you reach the park. Enter the park and walk around the lake towards the pavilion. That’s where the ball is. But remember this: make sure you’re back before midnight, for on the stroke of that hour everything will change!”
“Don’t I get a glass slipper?” asked Fanny.
“Too bloody dangerous. They’ve been banned.”
The magical godmother clearly wasn’t going to say or give anything more, so Fanny went out and hurried along the predetermined route. Gangs of drunken people shouted abuse as she went, slipping in their own vomit and falling onto broken bottles. She passed the spiked gate of the allotment gardens and reached a row of shops, all boarded up expect one selling exotic pets that was really a front for a drug pushing operation. Lizards basked in a glass tank while heroin dealers schemed in a back room.
She continued to the park and saw the lake gleaming in the dark, its waters sluggish with rubbish. When she finally skirted it and came to the pavilion her face fell in disappointment. Here was the ball. Ten metres in diameter it stood, some ancient sphere mysteriously transported from the depths of intergalactic space to this suburban patch of spoiled greenery, the heart of a lost comet or the frozen teardrop of a forgotten god.
Cold it was and streaming with unearthly mists…
A profound silence seemed to radiate from it, tumbling over her like waves of emptiness. There was no music at this ball.
Cracks covered its translucent surface and Fanny peered into its depths with a contempt that was now tempered by horror. Embedded inside, deeper than the rules of perspective should ever allow, were shapes. The profiles of strange beings, an empty suit of armour, an octopus...
She glanced at her watch. It was already five minutes to midnight. The fairy godmother hadn’t turned up until half past eleven. Maybe she was overworked at present? That would explain the confusion between two different meanings of the word ball. A clerical error due to haste.
Might as well wait for the stroke of twelve, Fanny decided. Maybe the ball itself would change. Maybe that’s what the godmother had meant. Somewhere the victim of a mugger screamed.
Twelve came. Nothing happened. Fanny shook her head and walked away with downcast eyes. In the morning the surface of the ball would be covered with obscene graffiti, she knew.
The return journey was more eventful than the original stroll. In the pet shop window a number of footmen had somehow got inside the lizard tank and were stuck there. The lizards were nowhere to be seen.
Further along, a furious gardener with an electric torch was roaring outside the gates to the allotment. He had gone to uproot his prize pumpkin ready for a competition tomorrow and found that it had been replaced by a carriage. “I’ll murder the swine who did this!” he bellowed.
Full of foreboding, Fanny continued home. Once she thought she saw a creature on all fours dart down an alley as she approached, a monster with a shredded face and huge canine teeth, hot tongue panting and drooling. But it didn’t menace her and she pressed on to her house. Her room was empty but the razors she used to shave her legs were all blunted and clumps of bloody fur lay scattered about beneath her mirror.
She went to bed but had difficulty sleeping because of the horses that kicked behind the walls all night.
3: Petal Put the Kelly On
A tremendous storm had arrived from nowhere, smashing windows and uprooting trees, bringing down power lines and plunging the entire city into darkness. But Fanny still hadn’t been snatched up by the ferocious winds and whisked over the nearest rainbow, an omission that caused her much sadness and irritation.
As she stood near her window gazing at the incredible downpour, she dreamed about the wonderful land rumoured to exist on the other side of that arc of multicoloured light, a realm of magic and romance, perfect for a lonely girl no older than seventeen summers who loathed the grime and violence of her present environment.
Her lips quivered and she began to weep.
It was at this very moment that an apparition materialised in her room and tapped her gently on the shoulder. She turned in surprise to behold a burly figure in a pink dress. “I’m the good witch of the south, so cheer up and stop blubbering.”
“But you’re a man!” Fanny protested.
“Aye, and I’m from up north, but discrimination based on gender and origin has been outlawed in the workplace. You want to leave this city and go somewhere special? Well I can help!”
Fanny nodded eagerly. “I hope to find…”
“I know! Listen closely. All you need to do is follow the Yellow Sick Road. Can you do that?”
Fanny frowned. “I don’t understand.”
The witch rolled exasperated ey
es and spat on the carpet from the side of a grizzled mouth. “The torrential rainfall has burst the sewers and all kinds of human waste is floating down the flooded streets. Soon be a hepatitis outbreak and jaundice is one symptom of that disease. Turns people yellow. Visit all the worst cases and that’s the Yellow Sick Road. Follow, follow, follow!”
Fanny winced. “Is there no other way?”
“Nope, and I’m leaving now. Wait for the epidemic to get going before setting off. As for the lion, the scarecrow and the other one, personally I wouldn’t bother with them. Bye!”
“Wait! What’s your name?” she cried.
“Petal,” said the man.
The answer was unconvincing but she accepted it. Then he vanished as inexplicably as he had come.
In this grotesque city ordinary days passed slowly but her impatience now made matters worse. Yet Fanny listened carefully to the emergency broadcasts on her portable radio for the announcement of the anticipated hepatitis outbreak. When it came she pulled on a pair of waterproof boots and began her magical journey.
For a month she wandered the wards of the local hospital, an edifice that suffused from every window of its decaying façade the bleak twilight with the multiple migraine flicker of cheap fluorescent bulbs, but not one victim of the affliction ever showed a particle of gratitude for her kind words and soothing hands.
The nurses were also hostile to her presence, suspicious of her motives and jealous of her beauty. Fanny had to remind herself that the Yellow Sick Road wasn’t meant to be an easy path to tread and that only an attitude of extreme stoicism would serve to propel her down it right to the end. Her pretty teeth gritted.
Once she came to a fork and didn’t know how to proceed. Hepatitis A to the left, Hepatitis C to the right! Which way? Then a scarecrow in a nearby bed came to her assistance. He wasn’t really a scarecrow but a drug addict whose habit had destroyed his intelligence to the point where it could be said he had no brain. Yet he still possessed enough wisdom to inform her:
“Hepatitis B is the one to watch for! When combined with Hepatitis D it has the highest mortality rate.”
She thanked him and moved on. Later she met the lion, but he wasn’t real either, just a normal human coward, too scared of reprisals to report his rapist neighbour to the police. Yellow eyeballs followed her movements, undressing her with fevered stares, covering her body in the custard pus of moral contagion.
At no point did she come across the tin man.
Fanny also visited the sick and dying in their own homes. In basement flats and cramped attics, in narrow rooms with curtains always closed and faulty gas heaters leaking carbon monoxide into the damp air, she did what she could to provide comfort.
Malnourished babies and whipped dogs whimpered from inside locked wardrobes, fat ugly wives boiled eggs and underpants in the same pot, the verbal abuse she received from feeble but vicious terminal patients often reduced her to tears, but Fanny never abandoned her quest. Her need to escape forever was too strong.
Finally she caught the disease herself…
She lay on her own bed and wondered if Petal had betrayed her. Was it really going to end like this? Then she felt her soul rising out of her body, bursting through the roof, floating higher and higher. In front of her curved a rainbow and she glided over it. Then began a long descent and everything went black.
Fanny awoke. With an effort she climbed to her feet, her movements producing a clanking noise: she was encased in metal. Then she realised the truth and clapped for joy, sparks flying from fingers and palms. She was the tin man! It was all so obvious now.
She was in some kind of shack. Gruff voices came from outside. “Ned Kelly! We know you’re in there!”
Then she was through the door and in the sunlight. As bullets slammed into her head and chest, bouncing off her homemade armour but causing lethal shrapnel to penetrate her brain and heart, she realised that not only had she reached the land of her desire but was about to become one of its most famous historical figures.
Unfortunately it was the wrong Oz.
4: Fanny of the Apes
Far from the crumbling urban jungle, way down south in the tropic sweat of Africa, a real jungle of creepers and wild beasts and lost cities awaited Fanny. She knew she was destined to travel there and meet a strong noble man raised by strange apes and fall in love with him and become his wife because her daydreams said so.
Yes, she had watched too many Tarzan movies, but she was seventeen and highly impressionable. She was also lightly freckled and deserving of the passion of a rainforest lover.
But no genie, fairy godmother or good witch seemed inclined to help her achieve this particular ambition, so she finally decided to organise the escape herself. She found a badly paid job in a corner shop that catered to aggressive unemployed alcoholics and she endured their crude behaviour and insults until she scraped together enough money to pay her airfare out of this depressing city forever.
While she stood in the bus station waiting for transport to the airport, a voice from nowhere cried, “You’re making a mistake, Fanny! Please don’t get on the bus. Listen to me!”
“Who said that?” she wondered.
“I’m your author, Fanny,” came the reply, “and because nobody else is available to advise you, I deemed it best to turn up myself and warn you of the dangers that lie ahead.”
“You mean I’m just a character in a story?”
“Yes,” I said truthfully.
“Why shouldn’t I go to the airport? There’s a plane waiting to take me over the equator to an ancient land where a primeval man will hold me in his brown arms and kiss me…”
“I’ll tell you why, Fanny,” I interrupted, “and it’s very simple. In tales of this type the most ridiculous things always happen, so if you get on the bus I can guarantee the plot will compel it to take a wrong turning and go to the spaceport instead, where you’ll accidentally board a spacecraft and be blasted into outer space.”
She widened her eyes. “Really?”
I nodded. “Yes. This spacecraft will then be caught in a timewarp and you’ll land on a future version of Earth, centuries after a nuclear war has destroyed human civilisation. Only the top half of the Statue of Liberty can survive such a war. The devious talking apes that rule the planet will capture you and use you for unseemly experiments. There will be lots of outraged grunting — by you!”
Fanny considered this carefully and frowned.
“I want to be loved by an apeman with the emphasis on ‘man’, not by an entire planetful of real apes, which sounds singularly painful, so I’ll take your advice, but I’m disappointed at giving up a daydream inspired by the Tarzan franchise.”
“Don’t worry about that, Fanny. As your author I’m in the best position to make special arrangements. In fact I’ve already done so. At the docks a tramp steamer is waiting to take you to your destination. Much safer to go by ship! A certain Mr Denham is your contact. Just mention my name and he’ll provide your every need.”
“But I don’t know your name!” she protested.
“Look on the cover,” I said.
Then I waved farewell and left her to her own devices. Normally I enjoy putting characters into terrible situations, not taking them out, but Fanny is an extraordinary case and I was happy to save her from a horrid hairy fate in a chattering simian future.
She walked to the docks and a man greeted her. “Hello Fanny. We’re ready to set sail immediately.”
“Thanks, Mr Denham,” she answered.
“Call me Carl,” he said.
She crossed the gangplank to the deck and shortly afterwards the ship set off over the rough sea. They sailed south for many weeks, then turned to the east. A hulking landmass loomed to one side, and Fanny felt sure it was Africa, but they continued past it. The weeks became months, storms emptied her stomach of every morsel of food she managed to swallow at mealtimes. She turned green.
Eventually she took to her bed. “When will we reac
h the jungle where Tarzan dwells?” she gasped to Carl Denham. He had gone below to visit her. She swung in a hammock and dried vomit caked her slobbery mouth and heaving chest.
“What are you talking about? Our destination is Skull Island, off the coast of Sumatra. We’re going there to capture a giant ape by the name of King Kong, to take him to New York and put him in a Broadway musical against his knuckle-dragging will. By the way, did you know that ‘kong’ is the Danish word for king? In Denmark, King Kong means Kong King. How pointlessly silly is that?”
“My author tricked me!” Fanny hissed.
“He probably didn’t know. But don’t worry, I’m sure that when we get King Kong to New York and he escapes, which is inevitable, and kidnaps you and climbs the Empire State Building with you gripped in one hand, while flimsy biplanes try to shoot him down, you’ll be perfectly fine and come to no ultimate harm.”
Mr Denham must have possessed a gift of foresight, for most of what he mentioned actually happened. On Skull Island, the gargantuan ape in question fell in love with Fanny and tickled her whenever the opportunity presented itself, but he was captured and transported to Broadway. Seems he wasn’t cut out for the stage, for on his opening night the flashbulbs of the photographers sent him wild and he broke his chains. More actors in more musicals should be put in chains, in my view. Anyway he snatched Fanny and went off with her.
Up the side of the Empire State Building he climbed. Flimsy biplanes were scrambled, but not like eggs, and safety catches were removed from loaded machineguns. But Fanny wasn’t scared. She recalled what Carl Denham had told her. The massive ape would certainly put her down on the observation deck at the summit of the skyscraper before swatting at the planes. She would be safe while he was riddled with dum-dum bullets and sent plummeting to his death.
Then she could be rescued without injury! But why was the skyscraper rumbling? What did it mean?
