by Rhys Hughes
At this point I feel obliged to include a scene from a meeting that took place in 1929 between the three architects responsible for the building’s design. Shreve, Lamb and Harmon are sitting around a table discussing how strong to make the structure.
“Best to take every eventuality into consideration. I insist we make the frame tough enough to withstand the weight of a 50-foot ape, just in case one decides to climb it. I hate to think of our skyscraper collapsing under the strain of a vast primate.”
“Agreed. But shouldn’t we make it a little stronger than that, strong enough to take the weight of an outsized ape plus the weight of a slim, pretty kidnapped woman?”
“On no account! To err on the safe side is one thing. To be ludicrous and whimsical is another.”
“Just the weight of a solo giant ape then?”
“Yep. Just that.”
5: Knobheads and Dipsticks
A woman holding an umbrella fell past the window and Fanny gasped in surprise. Although only seventeen years old, with a lightly freckled nose, pouty mouth and big green eyes, she was wise enough to know that death or serious injury is the normal result when human beings jump from high places without a proper parachute.
Unfortunately, that’s true. A small fabric canopy fixed to a short stick designed to keep off rain and drizzle isn’t sufficient to reduce the terminal velocity of a plummeting body to a safe velocity. Had the woman been pushed out of an aeroplane? Fanny rushed to the window and looked up at the sky, but it was featureless.
A sudden crash startled her into dropping her book of poems, which hit the floor and slid under the brass bedstead, one of her most cherished items of furniture. She blinked. Some force had smashed down her front door! Trembling, she vacated her bedroom and hurried downstairs. Yes, the wooden door had been shattered into cruel splinters that littered the hall carpet and made it impassable.
At first Fanny couldn’t see any intruder but then she realised that two stockinged legs were protruding incongruously from the umbrella stand. These legs undulated feebly and Fanny felt obliged to approach and ask their owner if any assistance was required. An answer in the affirmative was forthcoming, so Fanny took hold of the ankles and pulled. Out of the porcelain cylinder popped a woman who resembled a Victorian nanny or prostitute, Fanny couldn’t decide which, dressed in a tightly laced corset and frilly bonnet, with gloves that extended to her elbows. She wore her rings over the fingers of the gloves.
“Dashed short runway!” exclaimed this apparition.
Fanny clapped a joyous hand to her wistful mouth and hopped on one foot, whether from exuberance or because she had a splinter in the other isn’t presently known. She recalled that there was one person who could fly using an umbrella without stalling in midair, a magical kindly woman who benignly dwelled in the clouds.
“Are you Mary Poppins?” she breathed.
The woman grinned and revealed many rows of sharp teeth. “No, my dear, I’m actually Scary Poppins.”
Fanny recoiled but she was still impressed and she wrinkled her pretty brow. “Any relation to Scary Spice?”
The woman ground her fangs at this suggestion.
“Don’t be a dipstick. How can we be related? Our surnames are totally different! And even when surnames are the same it doesn’t prove there’s a genetic connection. That’s a moronic assumption! Is Sadie Frost related to Jack Frost or Chocolate Frost? But I’m not here to discuss family trees or even blood types. No, I’m here to reveal a supernatural secret. Fanny, you should be aware that your brass bedstead is a transportation machine that will convey you anywhere you want to go. Just twist the throbbing knobs on the frame and say a magic word.”
Fanny widened her eyes. “Abracadabra?”
The woman clenched her fists and sneered. “Why are you such a dork, Fanny? That’s not the right magic word. It’s much longer and complicated than that, I’m afraid. Shall I say it?”
Fanny nodded eagerly while Scary Poppins took a deep breath. Now it seemed her corset might burst in a kinky cataclysm and destroy the rest of the house. The local air pressure dropped as the vast inhalation continued and the brick walls began to groan, but finally enough nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide had been transferred into the woman’s lungs to render possible an utterance of the word.
“Supermuthafuckerbuggerscabbydiplodocus!”
Fanny was shocked. “The sound of that is something quite atrocious. Especially the motherfucker bit.”
Scary Poppins conceded this fact. “But it works.”
Fanny blinked and said, “I can’t wait to try out my new flying bed. If I ask it to take me to the Evening Star, will it obey my wish without cutting me in half? I’m more cautious now than I used to be. On second thoughts, as I’m making my mind up, I’d rather travel to the Land of Make Believe. Do you have any advice for me?”
Scary Poppins nodded. “Try not to make stupid references to the lyrics of awful songs. That’s my first recommendation. The second is to bear in mind that your bedstead is a male and hasn’t been gelded. Right now, it’s not the mating season, so you should be safe even if it meets a female bed on your travels, provided you don’t inflame its desires with saucy talk or sensuous gestures. Understand?”
Fanny smiled sweetly. “I’ll be pure.”
“Off you go then. And good luck. I’ll look after the house while you’re gone. I promise not to turn it into a brothel that specialises in bondage. Be a prudent girl and run along now.”
Fanny did so. She went back upstairs into her bedroom and climbed on her bed, then she uttered the magic word and twisted the throbbing knobs. At first her awkward grip wasn’t firm enough but she persisted and finally the desired result was achieved.
But it didn’t happen quite as she expected. First an enormous Gatling gun barrel protruded from the front of the bed and fired point blank into her bedroom wall. Although Fanny was mostly ignorant about weapons technology, she realised that this deadly automatic cannon was capable of discharging 30mm depleted uranium armour-piercing shells at the rate of 3900 per minute. Outstanding!
The wall was soon reduced to rubble and the bedstead roared through the gap, almost as if it was powered by a pair of General Electric TF34-GE-100/A turbofan engines, each developing 9250 lbs of thrust. Clinging tightly to the mattress, Fanny whispered into her pillow, “To the Land of Make Believe!” and the bed executed a sharp turn and accelerated away towards the blushing sunset clouds.
Everything should have been fine from that moment…
Unhappily for Fanny, the book she had dropped earlier had slid under her bed to a point exactly below the heirloom’s visual organs. And it was a volume of love poems, the sort of palpitating mush young girls are often inclined to force into their heads. The bed had read the poems and though they were gentle rather than saucy, they had turned its mind to notions of romance and physical passion.
So when it flew over a bed showroom in the centre of the city, it was overcome with lust at the sight of the female beds displaying themselves so provocatively in the windows.
Into a steep dive it went, carrying Fanny with it, and smashed straight through the glass. Fanny screamed! But she survived the impact and her relief was tangible. She began crying and laughing at the same time, but her bed had forgotten her existence and set about satisfying himself with as many sexual partners as possible.
These female beds had waited years for a lover!
In bed society, it’s the females who usually mount the males. So Fanny was slowly smothered to death by the selection of eiderdown hussies that now formed an insatiable queue.
6: Fanny of the Opera
Fanny thought she could hear music coming from downstairs when she lay awake on her lonely bed. It was the last day of her seventeenth year and her febrile imagination led her to assume that an unjustly disfigured genius was playing his organ for her. But how had he got into her house at night and when did he plan to leave? These crucial questions needed answers. So she rose and dressed.
Yes, the swelling notes were emerging from her cellar, a place she had never been, so it was with some trepidation that she turned the doorknob and went down the stone steps. She had forgotten her torch, but that didn’t matter because she gradually descended into a vast cavern that was softly illuminated by hundreds of candles and the floor was a lake that sparkled like treacle dusted with ground glass.
On the other side of that subterranean oval of mystic water sat a figure directly from one of her sentimental daydreams. His black cape and mask concealed his form and features, but somehow he radiated a passion that was both appealing and alarming. His organ rose directly out of the pool like the summit of a volcanic island and his stool bobbed on the wavelets like a buoy anchored to the seabed.
“I never expected to find this here!” gasped Fanny. Then she covered her mouth with a dainty young hand.
But it was too late. She had been heard!
The organist broke off one of his arpeggios and slowly turned to face her, then he gestured at a boat waiting at the bottom of the steps, a pedalo in the shape of a silver swan. Fanny stepped onto it, sat down and guided it across the lake to his side. There was no room on his stool for her, so he lifted her up and balanced her on his knee. Fanny said nothing but arched an eyebrow to a questioning altitude.
“I’m going to turn your cellar into an opera house,” he said.
“Wonderful!” she replied.
“You really don’t mind?” he cried.
“Of course not. But who are you?” she laughed.
“An abused genius, a composer of immense talent who was scarred by a jealous rival who turned my tragedy into a sordid example of musical theatre, into a second-rate vaudeville show! My name is Erik and I was handsome until my face was splashed with acid and I became known as the Phantom of the Opera, and I have never been in love but now you are here I’d like to give you an organ lesson…”
While he spoke, Fanny abruptly shifted her weight to achieve a more comfortable position on his knee and her arm involuntarily flew up and knocked his mask off. To her astonishment there was a much heavier and more ponderous mask beneath it.
“I don’t understand!” she spluttered.
“Fanny, I lied about my identity,” the man said. “Actually I’m the Man in the Iron Mask and I’m imprisoned in this dungeon because of political intrigue that isn’t my fault. I’m like the Count of Monte Cristo but nobody can see my face. It’s not ugly or anything, but the rules mustn’t be broken. Could you ever love a fellow who…”
Shifting her weight a second time, because her new position was even more awkward, Fanny accidentally knocked this other mask off. Beneath it was a third mask, a cloth mask.
“I recognise you from the films!” gasped Fanny.
“Glad to meet you,” said Zorro, “but you must promise never to reveal to anybody that my true identity is Don Diego de la Vega. And don’t ever call me Don, because that’s a title, not a real name. I can’t give you organ lessons, Fanny, but if you’d like to learn how to handle my rapier I’m sure we can come to an arrangement…”
Overbalancing on his knee, Fanny fell forward and steadied herself by reaching out with her hands, but she ended up pulling off Zorro’s mask to expose the foppish features of a dandy. His chin was powered, his cheeks rouged and he wore carmine lipstick. “Who are you?” cried Fanny as she recoiled from his pungent perfume.
“Who? I’m the Scarlet Pimpernel and…”
But Fanny had already realised that his entire face was a rubber mask and with a howl of despair she wrenched it off to expose a head swathed in bandages. These bandages rapidly came loose in her hands but nothing tangible appeared beneath them. Somebody was there, for sure, but light passed straight through his flesh.
“Are you The Invisible Man?” groaned Fanny.
“That’s right. And now I plan to abduct you and do strange things with you, because the original Invisible Man wasn’t a very nice person. Go and read the book if you don’t believe me…”
But Fanny reached for a pot of paint and threw the contents over him. It may seem highly contrived that she could do this at a moment’s notice, but pots of paint are always kept in cellars. It’s a universal law. And this particular pot of paint had been standing ready on the lower keyboard of the organ all the time. So it’s not really that contrived. The paint covered the crown of his head, spread over the rest of his face, then poured onto his torso and coloured in his outline. An abominable outline it was, too. Sneezing paint out of his nose, he said, “I admit it. I’m not The Invisible Man. I’m Andrew Lloyd Webber…”
“Who’s he?” blinked Fanny.
“The jealous rival I mentioned. The one who disfigured the composer. Have you forgotten already?”
“But you have webbed feet and hands…”
“Of course. That explains my surname. You really are silly sometimes, Fanny. Now give me a kiss.”
“Ugh! Wait a moment, your tongue isn’t human. I don’t think you are Andrew Lloyd Webber at all!”
“That’s right, Fanny, I’m not.”
“Who are you, then?”
“The Creature from the Black Lagoon!”
Pulling off his final mask, he seized her and jumped into the lake and dragged her under. Fanny struggled but her efforts were in vain. She felt her lungs fill with foul water, oily liquid that tasted of rotten fish and the groin sweat of retarded baboons.
It was indeed the last day of her seventeenth year, but not because she was going to turn eighteen tomorrow…
7: Pussy in Boots
Fanny lay awake at night listening to the traffic of the big city. If she tried hard enough, using the power of her adolescent imagination, the incessant hiss of cars outside her window sounded like the surge of gentle waves on a faraway beach. This soothing effect was regularly spoiled by thieves in stolen vehicles who squealed their tyres on the bends as they endeavoured to evade pursuit, knocking down elderly women returning late from bingo and gin like blue-rinsed skittles; and leaving them, bleeding but still alive, to be crushed by the siren-wailing cops.
It was a terrible environment for a romantically pure young girl to find herself in. Still only seventeen years old, poor Fanny was desperate to get out of the misery, to escape forever the crumbling tenements, the violence and drunkenness, the filth, squalor and terminally imbecilic populace that perpetually wandered like shell-shocked shell-suited zombies from bleak benefit office to inane daytime television sets and back again in mindless hopeless loops. She was a sweet fairy; they were scum. She simply had to flee. But what could she do about it really?
She lacked funds, influence and luck; and her only friends were poems and cats. Why couldn’t she visit a genuine tropical beach instead of being forced to pretend that cars were surf? Even to be marooned on an island would be welcome to her; and unlike that Crusoe chap she wouldn’t ever strive to return to so-called civilisation. Any island would do, provided it was a warm place remote from Burberry baseball caps, gangsta rap, gang rape, crack, crystal meth, soccer violence, housing benefit fraud, spitting, swearing. Anywhere other than Swansea!
Stray cats often came to visit Fanny. Many were injured and mutilated and still had airgun pellets or heroin syringes stuck in their flesh. The vile yobs that occupied Housing Association properties through the city honed their torture skills on innocent beasts as well as on kidnapped infants and asylum seekers. Fanny cared for the furry creatures; and as she did so, she recalled an old fable that was turned into a pantomime in her girlhood. It was about a cunning cat that helped its master. What was that cat’s name? Now she remembered! Puss in Boots…
Yes, that was it. He would be certain to help her to achieve her heart’s desire, that wise booted feline! Unfortunately, he didn’t actually exist. Or did he? There was one way of finding out. Every time a cat came to visit her, she whispered a message in its ear before it went off again, a plea to that magical Puss. Most of these cats were slaughtered by chavs and other worthless vermin
, but a few animals might get through to their legendary leader. Her message was simple and direct. Please help me escape! Please shipwreck me on an island! Any island!
One night, Fanny discovered that her message had indeed got through and that her petition had been answered positively. As she lay on her bed, it began rocking back and forth and the carpet swirled like ocean currents. Her bed had become a ship and the carpet a sea! Now a mighty storm was brewing and the bed lurched awfully. Fanny clung to the duvet, but it was no use. One more convulsion and she was flung off. She landed on a hard surface and looked up anxiously. She was no longer in her bedroom and a strange woman was standing above her.
This woman was an elegant redhead, completely nude save for a pair of thigh length boots fitted with bizarre attachments, miniature whips and manacles, nipple clamps, gags and ropes with pre-tied shibari knots, all on retractable robotic arms. She stood with one hand on her hip, shaved pudenda thrust aggressively, alluringly forward; moist, hungry. Then she licked her mouth lips. Fanny blinked.
“You are Puss in Boots?”
“Oh, I see. There has been a minor clerical error.”
“Who exactly are you then?”
“Diana the Rig. No, not Diana Rigg, the iconic actress who starred in The Avengers, even though I look exactly like her. No, I’m an oil rig and I live in the North Sea, but I can adopt human form. I can grant wishes too. So I brought you to this island.”
“This isn’t an island but a high street shop!”
“It’s a high street shop on an island,” corrected Diana the Rig. “Really, you should be more grateful, Fanny.”
“No, I’m disappointed. It’s Boots the Chemist. And you must be Pussy in Boots. My request was misheard!”
Diana the Rig shook her head, her auburn hair swinging like a metallic clitoral hood under the stimulus of powerful electromagnets, whatever the hell that signifies, and said, “No, it’s not Boots the Chemist. The shop you allude to was founded in 1849 by John Boot but sold to the Yanks by his descendant Jesse in 1920. Look out of the window, Fanny. See the olive trees? This shop is Boötes the Chemist. In Greek mythology, Boötes was the herdsman who drove the oxen in the constellation Ursa Major. Those oxen are tied to the polar axis and keep the sky rotating. He was also the fellow who invented the plough…”
