Kimberly's Capital Punishment

by Richard Milward

  Forcing down the last of the fruit salad, I watch Mr Smith methodically counting his riches on the breakfast bar. Despite losing nearly two grand and his prize-fighting primate, Mr Smith has a lot more money hiding around the caravan. The double mattress is stuffed with ten-pound notes; the sofa sits on the fivers; and the tin marked TEA contains the coins. (The tin marked COFFEE contains Mrs Smith’s Valium.)

  After Mother’s funeral, the brats come back in to annoy their father. It’s difficult squeezing the twelve of them into the caravan, despite it being designed by space-efficient Germans. There’s a whole convoy of VW caravans parked around the Funland, doubling up as kids’ bedrooms, cupboards-on-wheels or car-alarmed bank safes.

  ‘Get the feck out of here, or I’ll turn youse into Human Torsos!’ Mr Smith yells, reaching for a butter knife. Mr Smith doesn’t like humans being in the same room as his riches. He finds humans untrustworthy – especially his own kids.

  The Smith spawn scatters, charging back out of the van to play on the rides. I wouldn’t mind having a wander about myself but, so far, I’ve had no respite from the leash. My left leg aches under the steel anklet. I can see the oscillating lights of the rides through a small crack in the door, but the lead only stretches as far as the Pluck-a-Duck, just eight metres from Mr Smith’s van.

  I clamber along the top of the settee to get a better view of the Ferris wheel. Once Mr Smith finishes counting his riches, he pours his coins and notes back into their hiding places and pops a couple of Ritalin in his mouth. He goes for a piss in the shower/toilet cubicle, humming a tuneless Celtic carny song. While he’s away, I pick furiously at the screws in the anklet, though my baby teeth hardly leave a mark on the metal.

  When Mr Smith comes back, I try to look nonchalant, like I haven’t been fiddling with the leash. I try out a passive facial expression, gazing out at the twelve shadow-faces stuck to the Ferris wheel.

  ‘You’re gonna be my star fighter, aren’t you, Nails?’ Mr Smith says, slumping beside me on the settee. I squeak in the negative, but he doesn’t understand monkey.

  Mr Smith and the lads have taken to calling me Nails in anticipation of me being a ruthless dog-murderer. Despite me being born male this time, I’ve been trying to come across as an effeminate pansy – picking daisies, throwing the girls’ make-up about, wearing Miss Smith Number 5’s dresses – but they still seem convinced I’ll be a bloodthirsty barbarian in the pit.

  Drunk on pills, Mr Smith puts his fists up, throwing the odd pretend punch at my face. I hoot, ‘Yook yook yook,’ hiding behind the curtains, acting like a wet nelly.

  ‘It’s time to beef you up again, matey,’ Mr Smith slurs, rummaging through one of the drawers. I quiver behind the floral fabric. I can’t stomach another man-sized fruit salad. Whining, all I can think to do is cack in my hand and throw it at Mr Smith in protest. Unfortunately, his back’s turned, and my shit just bounces silently off his checked shirt, wasted.

  I cower in the corner of the windowsill, dreading more rotten melon and bruised banana. However, instead of fruit, Mr Smith has something far less appetising up his sleeve. In one swift motion, the gypsy grabs my feeble right leg and stabs into it with a syringe. My head feels faint as he pushes the plunger, firing fiery ice into my thigh. I screech, eyes wider than ever. I want to lash out at Mr Smith with my baby-nails, but I don’t want to break the illusion of weakness and cowardice. Instead, I leap jelly-legged behind the opposite curtain, ‘yook yook yook’ing and shaking with confusion. I feel like a red ghost’s running wild in my veins.

  Mr Smith coughs, putting the empty syringe back in the drawer. Then, he starts chopping up fruit again.

  I wish the Smiths wanted me to wear a fez and juggle peanuts, rather than pump me full of anabolic steroids. For the next couple of years, I undergo a punishing fortnightly routine of muscle injections and sparring sessions with Master Smith Number 4, the Smiths’ six-year-old boxing enthusiast. At first, I carry on the pansy act, refusing to scratch Master Smith while he jigs around me with oversized boxing gloves. However, after a few months on the juice, my haywire hormones cause me to see red on a regular basis. I become partial to clawing and biting people. Before long, I’m enjoying causing damage.

  Partly, the angst comes from sexual frustration – I never realised just how rampant males can get. It makes sense now, all those weekly lovers fighting over me when I was a human. The combination of roid rage, sexual awakening and a lack of primates to groom causes havoc with my brainwaves. I keep having dreams about juicy, red, distended arses. I keep rubbing my groin against the Smiths’ furniture, howling, and throwing around heavy objects. On the one hand, Mr Smith’s frightened of me now, putting on an old welding mask before giving me my injections. On the other hand, he seems more loving towards me too, convinced I’m going to win him lots of filthy lucre in the pit.

  Despite wanting to either rip the head off or shag the arse off anything that moves, the idea of facing a snaggle-toothed pit bull terrier still worries me. I don’t mind sparring with Master Smith Number 4, since he doesn’t have a nasty bite, or long nails. Out on the lawn, me and Master Smith are fairly evenly matched, provided I’m not let off the leash. As yet, I’ve only given him a few superficial facial wounds.

  While the Smiths do have their own terrier, I’m banned from fighting it, for fear of giving it a heart attack. The terrier, Max, is elderly now, though he used to be a champion ratter back in the nineties. I wish I’d been introduced to Max two years ago – he might’ve saved me the hassle of swallowing all those rodents, and I might’ve been reincarnated as a cheery, beach-dwelling, crab-catching capuchin monkey instead.

  On the first of June, after a slow springtime trawling the Smith Fairytale Funland around the gloomy seaside resorts of Great Britain, we return to the Capital to set up in Finsbury Park. Much to the Smiths’ delight, the sun comes out the day we land the vans and caravans. Mr Smith takes the credit for the good weather – apparently, he used to promote himself as a mystic or magician, but nowadays his superpowers come in pill form.

  While the Ferris wheel goes up, I’m let out of the van to spar with Master Smith Number 4. Number 4’s the fifth-youngest of the clan – he’s one of nine currently suffering from head lice, hence his skull’s shaved bare beneath the red headguard. He’s improving as a boxer, though his knuckles show through the front of his gloves, where I’ve been biting and lashing out with my nails. I’m not on good form this afternoon – I can sense the Capital Zoo is nearby, and I can’t stop thinking about bulbous red bottoms. In a way, Master Smith Number 4’s scarlet gloves look like a female baboon presenting herself. I wank into my hand and chuck it at Master Smith, forfeiting the sparring session.

  Oo oo aa aa ahhhhh, the relief!

  Later in the evening, I skulk around the caravan with a few of the youngsters, listening to the fair fill up. As the sunlight turns from pink to navy blue, the neon lights turn from pink to vivid crimson, burning holes through the sky. I force down another man-sized fruit salad, then sit grooming myself halfheartedly, thinking of mandrills. I wish I had a mate to pick the lice from my fur – I don’t want the Smiths to shave me, or waste the special shampoo on me. From across the caravan, Master Smith Number 4 plays cards with Number 3, glaring at me now and then, between hands. He didn’t appreciate the monkey spunk. Apparently, it took three goes in the toilet/shower to wash the taste away.

  I spend the rest of the night dozing under the settee/folding bed, amongst the legs of the Smith girls. I’m halfway through a dream where I’m a dominant male in the jungle, with a harem of lusty females and a tray full of Pina Coladas, when Mr Smith bursts into the caravan, making us all jump. I bomp my head off the bottom of the settee/bed. Mr Smith seems in high spirits, drunk on his Ritalin, slurring, ‘Oh, my lovelies! My lovelies! Look at you, look at you …’

  Glancing up from the cards, Master Smith Number 3 asks his dad/uncle, ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘Good news!’ Mr Smith announces, squeezing in
between the girls. ‘I’ve scored an opponent for Nails. That Staffy from Smith’s Used Cars. The one wot got his mother. Grudge match. Tuesday week. Fecking hell, get in there, Nails!’

  In my dream, the arses turn back into scarlet boxing gloves, and pummel me senseless.

  The night before the big fight, it pisses it down. Mr Smith’s in a foul mood, pacing around the half-empty Funland with a face like thunder and a mouth full of tablets. In a desperate attempt to keep his finances in the black, Mr Smith puts tickets for the monkey-baiting on ‘general sale’ – in other words, he whispers to suitable folks getting off the teacups, ‘Fight tomorrow night. Dogfighting with a twist.’ After half an hour of unsuccessful whispering, he comes back into the caravan, scowling, with empty pockets.

  The rest of the clan have crammed into the caravan, treating it like a night off, slurping bottles of continental lager instead of manning the rides. With my belly in a twist, I lurk in one of the overhead cabinets, away from the incoherent chatter of the Smiths. The boys keep thumping each other and arguing over the cards, while the girls linger round the kitchenette shyly, topping up the boys’ drinks.

  As the evening wears on, the booze helps alleviate Mr Smith’s foul mood. He makes a string of slurring phone calls to his traveller pals and relatives, taking bets for the bout between ‘Nails, the Smallest Dogfighter in the South East’ and ‘Patty the Staffy’. In between the calls, he throws limp punches at me, ordering me to ‘smash shit oyt that fecking mongrel’.

  I don’t fancy my chances at all, but at least death means I won’t have to spend another night with the Smiths. I think the time’s come again to zip my consciousness up in a different animal skin.

  Over on the double bed, Mrs Smith snoozes in sweet, Valium-spiked slumbers. She looks so peaceful amidst all the chaos of the caravan, snoring now and then when her dreams get exciting. For a moment, my thoughts turn to my own mother. While I’d love to gain vengeance for her death, I can only see one outcome: Patty dining on woolly monkey mincemeat.

  To give me some exercise prior to the fight, Mr Smith extends my leash twenty metres, uncoiling the chain from around the towbar. He force-feeds me a chunk of brown apple, then boots me out of the caravan before my diarrhoea sets in. I’ve had the trots ever since I found out about the fight. The combination of nerves and a fruity diet has resulted in a lot of sloppy droppings cropping up around the caravan, much to the disgust of Mrs Smith and her vacuum cleaner.

  It’s pleasant out, even when it’s raining. The extra twenty metres take me all the way past the Pluck-a-Duck, and up to my favourite tree: this haggard old hawthorn, with plenty of branches to hang from and hollows to hide in. My favourite tree just about makes up for the loss of my favourite rock. Feeling the coolness of the wet grass between my toes, I scamper through the dark, glum Funland. Everything’s switched off now the punters have gone home, and I feel free as I speed through the trees, despite that bastard chain clamped to my ankle.

  Clambering up the antique trunk, I spray the odd bit of piss here and there, to warn off intruders. If I wasn’t so bloated from the fruit salads, I might’ve been tempted to munch a few of the bugs and spiders marching round the woodwork. Instead, though, I just curl up next to them in a large hollow, once the chain goes taut, three-quarters of the way up the trunk. Hiding my head from the drizzle, I can just about see the Capital twinkling through the thick fluorescent fog of the lampposts. I try waving my arms and legs for help, but the Capital ignores me. No one wants to save me tonight.

  Surrounding the Funland, there’s a 10ft-high steel fence, erected to keep unpaying customers out, and ungrateful dogfighters in. If only I had a pair of metal clippers to remove my shackles, I’d easily scale that fence from here. Despite its blurred outlines, the Capital looks beautiful and inviting on the other side, humming with the millions of animal romances, all firing off simultaneously in its many parks, bedrooms and nightspots.

  I can almost smell those red, bulbous arses waiting for me in the Capital Zoo. Frustrated, I scratch frantically at my lice and scabby track-marks, then scratch frantically at the anklet. The screws still won’t budge. Apparently, Great-Grandfather Smith used this leash in the sixties to restrain the Gentle Giant – 16 stone 2 ounces of man-sized brute force. The Gentle Giant wasn’t so gentle after a few weeks of captivity in the cake factory but, nevertheless, he never broke free from the leash.

  I meditate for a few minutes, praying for some way to avoid the fight tomorrow night. I rock back and forth in the hollow, visualising my favourite tree collapsing on the Smiths’ caravan, killing everyone inside and conveniently snapping off my shackles.

  Come midnight, the Smiths are smashed, but not in the sense I was hoping. The youngsters have been knocking back a large bottle of vodka, cackling and gurgling as they charge out of the caravan to get high on the Ferris wheel. Master Smith Number 1 makes a wager with the others, to see who gets sick the quickest on speed 10. Shuddering, I watch the Ferris wheel spark to life, like a huge eyeball winking three or four times before waking up. As the kids spin themselves into distant dots then humans then distant dots then humans then distant dots then humans dots humans dots humans dots, I clamber back down from my favourite tree, to get some peace and warmth in the caravan.

  As usual, Mr Smith’s still indoors, sitting at the breakfast bar, mumbling to himself, re-counting his pennies. In between gobfuls of ale, he seems to be saying, ‘Duck, keep your guard up, loosen him … loosen him up with your jab …’

  I hop quietly onto the curtain-rail, taking care not to disturb Mr Smith, or wake Mrs Smith from her spreadeagled slumbers. To Mr Smith’s left there’s a lined notepad covered in sums – bets for tomorrow night. It looks like my odds to beat Patty are placed at 10–1, which is odd. The way Mr Smith’s been talking, I thought he’d have me down as favourite. I’d gladly take a fall in the first round, if that’s what he wants – except that taking a fall in monkey-baiting means certain death.

  The blood-red memory of my mother being butchered haunts me again. I pull the closest facial expression I have to a sulk, peering down at the tubs of Mr and Mrs Smith’s prescription drugs, lined up on the breakfast bar. Taking care not to make a sound, I lasso the COFFEE tin of Valium with my tail, and lift it to my perch on the curtain-rail. It takes me a while to unscrew, biting and clawing at the fiddly lid, but, fortunately, Mr Smith’s too occupied with his pennies to notice the creaking and cracking of plastic. Not only that, but he’s too intoxicated to notice me dropping blue capsule after blue capsule into his frothy ale. With the precision and dexterity of a champion darts player, I time the audible PLOPs with the audible CLINKs of pound coins being stacked. I get so engrossed in the game, by the time Mr Smith reaches for a slurp of ale, I’ve filled his glass with at least eleven Valium, each one in a different stage of dissolution.

  Hopping back off the rail, I seek refuge underneath the settee/folding bed, hoping Mr Smith doesn’t notice the strange, bluish taste of his ale. I can feel my heart pounding beneath my pecs. Fortunately, Mr Smith’s guzzled so much ale and Ritalin, he fails to spot the neon plankton in the bottom of his tankard. I bare my teeth as he takes another big gulp, then another, then another, then another.

  Twenty-five minutes later, Mr Smith is comatose, face-down on the breakfast bar, with the glass cradled limply in his right hand. In the distant night air, I can still hear the Ferris wheel cranking and cackling, yet to make any of its victims vomit. Without any further ado I leap onto Mr Smith’s worktop and yank the full bags of coins from the TEA pot, as well as the reams of banknotes stuffed in every nook and cranny of the van. In the next ten or so minutes I manage to grab about £4,000 worth of the Smiths’ riches. Scampering back and forth from the caravan to the wood, I stash each of the moneybags in the hollow of my favourite tree, while my tail twitches with glee.

  A minute later, I’m yanking the last of the tenners out from under the mattress and Mrs Smith’s deadweight body when, suddenly, the twelve Junior Smiths come stu
mbling back into the caravan. One of the lads, Master Smith Number 3, has sick all down him.

  At first, the Junior Smiths don’t notice the stolen money. First, they notice Mr Smith, not breathing, with no pulse, face-down on the breakfast bar, with the glass cradled limply in his right hand. Then they notice the smashed open tub of Valium/COFFEE on the Formica. Then they notice Nails, the Smallest Dogfighter in the South East, with almost £500 of the Smiths’ riches in his mitts.

  ‘YOU FECKING …’ Master Smith Number 1 screams, not sure what to call me. The five Miss Smiths contort their faces in various states of anguish, gathering round their dead father. Dropping the bag of rolled tenners, I leap out of the caravan, adrenalin kicking me headlong over the moonlit grass. I manage to scrabble twenty-eight metres from the caravan, at which point the leash goes suddenly taut and the seven Master Smiths grab me and start laying into me. I squeal, protesting my innocence in incomprehensible monkey-language.

  ‘Yook yook yook,’ I hoot.

  ‘Fecking cont!’ Master Smith Number 2 yells, booting me in the head.

  My best fear-face does nothing to curb the violence. While the Smith boys carry on strangling me and stamping on me, gradually the leaves of my favourite tree become glittering rhombuses, then oscillating kaleidoscopes, then purple ink blots. I feel myself slipping away.

  I don’t even have the chance to squeak, ‘OM ĀH HŪM, OM ĀH HŪM,’ so squashed is my voice box. I’m not sure how it’ll affect my karma, accidentally-on-purpose killing an oppressive gypsy and hiding his money up a tree. Surely, though, I can’t be dealt worse tarot cards than these.

  My eyes roll back into my skull as the bright Dharmic void engulfs me again. Despite me being the so-called Smallest Dogfighter in the South East, against all the odds I feel myself becoming smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, as I’m sucked into the sunkissed portal. When I finally reawaken, I’m greeted by the most godawful stench.