Once upon a time, a mysterious time that exists through a window in your mind, a time that seemed, to those present, exactly like now does to us, except their teeth weren’t so clean and more things were wooden, there was a town called Hamelin.
The people of Hamelin were a pompous bunch who loved themselves and their town so much that if it were possible they would have spent all day zipped up in a space suit smelling their own farts. But space suits hadn’t been invented in their dimension so they couldn’t.
Instead they held endless puffed-up competitions and parades to see who grew the best vegetables or had the nicest garden, or whose pig had the prettiest teats, but the most prestigious of the contests was the annual pageant for The Most Gorgeous Child in Hamelin.
The pageants were a good way of checking that things were nice and neat and normal. The Hamelinians liked things nice and neat and normal. They liked Hamelin the way it was: tidy and trim and controlled. They didn’t like anyone or anything coming in to Hamelin and upsetting its perfect borders and lines. Not ideas, not strangers, not animals. If they needed new people, the Hamelinians thought, they’d make them themselves: Hamelinian children, perfectly fashioned in Hamelin.
Now if you ask me, the children of Hamelin were a wretched posse of pink-cheeked snot-sacks;
guzzling chocolate and gurgling lemonade,
belching up grog with
pockets full of mulch
and bottoms
full of stink.
There wasn’t a kid in Hamelin I’d go near with a ‘gorgeousness’ trophy unless it was to
bosh ’em over
the noggin.
Alright, okay, I’ll be honest,
as honesty is meant to be
SO important, of all the town’s
children there was one
I wouldn’t love to slug in the
guts with a wooden hammer.
His name was Sam and he had
a gammy leg, that is to say it
was all withered and thin like
a sparrow’s leg. Lame you’d
call him in Hamelinian.
Sam had just turned up on
planet Earth with a deficient
limb, he popped out his
mum and the Hamelinian doctors
informed her sniffily that
Sam was odd.
“I shall love him just as much or maybe more,” she chirped. The doctors, unprofessionally, it should be said, rolled their eyes.
“There’s a place for kids like him on the outskirts of town; for naused-up nippers with bulging eyes, with skin too yellow or blue or not pink enough, with thin legs or too much fingers. We can fling him in the cart and he’d be there by tea time,” said the top doctor, checking his giant, fancy watch that could do things he never needed it to do.
Sam’s Mum, even though she’d lived in Hamelin for ages and knew people could be right divs, was pretty appalled.
“No way! I love this lad! He’s stopping with me. His name is Sam,” she pulled Sam in all tight like a jacket potato.
“Maybe he’d be happier in a bizarre depository for unfinished kids on the outskirts of town,” said Sam’s Dad, who was tugging on a fag out the window, just below the ‘No Smoking’ sign.
Sam’s Dad was a man who found it hard to love people because his parents were a bit aloof and self-involved. We should be empathetic, that means try to understand and not judge him, but I feel so bad for little newborn Sam that I think I’m just going to cut the swine right out of the story.
There. We’ll never see him again.
Luckily Sam had his mum and she more than made up for having one leg a bit thinner than other people’s legs and even thinner than his own other leg.
“Sam, you are perfect as you are, a perfect expression of the love I feel for you. I wouldn’t change any aspect of you because I wouldn’t want to tinker with perfection.” Which was a nice thing to say and gave Sam a lot of comfort and peace inside, which he needed because whenever he went outdoors all the other kids in Hamelin were total jerks to him.
When he was small and learning to walk he’d hobble along on crutches trying his best to join in with the turd-kicking puke-buckets of the town, but they’d always holler the vilest abuse at the lad.
“Bog off Sam, you twig-legged oddball!”
“Yeah! Go limp off into a ditch.”
“You are a nobody and you’ll never amount to nothing!”
Whilst this hurt Sam in his little tummy he’d never show it. He’d fib and say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” That actually encouraged some kids, who took stuff too literally, to throw stones at him. I’ll have to think of a better comeback, thought Sam, rubbing the bump on his head.
By far and away the worst of the booger-scoffing, stone-throwing Hamelin tot-rotters was Fat Bob. He was a rotund sphere of chocolate-coated self-regard. Probably because he had won the most Gorgeous Child pageants, not to mention a series of less important but still prestigious contests – loudest burp, for three years running, wettest fart, district finalist, and the Hamelin beige rosette for slickest poop.
This last gave him such pride that he wore it emblazoned on his chest most mornings and once, on half term, when emotions ran high for Fat Bob, he was so eager to get the thing on he’d pierced his own rubbery nipple with the pin.
He usually wore a sailor suit, like Donald Duck’s one but with underpants on, he had one gold tooth, very scabby knees and his cheekaboos were so rosy and plump that if I thought I could get away with it I would prick ’em with a fork. Fat Bob, like a lot of bully-boys, ran with a gang. That way he didn’t have to face up to his own feelings or the quiet sobbing in the corner of his mind, he could live in the colourful din of the day creating a racket with his crew, scorching the elegant beauty of the moment with chants and marches.
Gretchen, who was usually in his orbit, adored Fat Bob. The cheeks, the rosette, the blooming circle of blood around his right nipple, all to her seemed like the marks of a good sort.
Now, Gretchen is what you’d call gorgeous. Tall, tall like a tower in Castilla with a donkey being shoved off it (they do that, you know), dark blue eyes like the deepest oceans where people dump their rubbish (this also happens) and her hair a tangled meadow of gold that had no obvious connotations of cruelty or irresponsibility. I have to admit, she had great hair.
Dennis hung around Fat Bob too. Dennis was so unremarkable that he pretended to be whatever was required of him in any given moment just to fit in. Look at the drawings of him – he’s always different. See.
Today was a special day for the townspeople, the most important day of their year. It was finally, after 364 of the most boring days imaginable, time for The Most Gorgeous Child in Hamelin pageant. In Hamelin they don’t have Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed so there was no Christmas, or any of that. They pretended to worship a goat called Ezra who jumped off the sun and created all the galaxies by sicking up chocolate milk and spinning it into planets. It’s a daft belief system, but the Hamelinians didn’t mind because they only paid attention to the bits that suited them. On Ezramus Day the townspeople sat around and told stories about why they were the kindest person in Hamelin. It’s pretty lame. For them, The Most Gorgeous Child in Hamelin pageant is the big one, a chance to really let rip and enjoy life.
Today everyone was really feeling the vibe – there were banners, fireworks (which in the daytime are just invisible explosions), stalls selling amazing candy and lamb legs dipped in sherbet (a Hamelinian delicacy), local news crews bustling and smiling (Good Morning, Hamelin! Get Your Perfect Bottom Out Of Bed!), everyone’s hair was immacul
ately combed and their clothes were ironed so straight that they were scared to move.
The parents that had children in the pageant, like Fat Bob’s Dad, Gretchen’s Mum and a bunch of others, stood around licking lollipops, sipping hot wine (a treasured tradition) and bragging about their vile brats.
“Bob is so delicious,” said Fat Bob’s Dad, proudly watching as his son pushed a wasp into a baby’s open mouth. Fat Bob’s Dad dressed as if he was twenty-five years old, which he wasn’t, and as if he worked in a shop selling Italian menswear, which he didn’t. He sluiced down his hot wine as if he thought it needed to get in his guts quickly before someone else nicked it. He gurgled on about his nasty son.
“He’s so strong and sensitive,” mused Fat Bob’s Dad wistfully, as if he was talking about his boyfriend and not his son, “and his hair smells as sweet as great Ezra’s breath.” Only the vicar really minded that the name of Ezra, the goat that the Hamelinians had built a self-serving religion around, was being used in such a trivial context and he couldn’t say anything, he had too many secrets. No one else in Hamelin cared much about using Ezra’s name in vain, they only cared about things that give you a buzz or get you attention.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be in the pageant, Sam?” asked his mum. “No thanks, I don’t stand a chance, what with one leg being thinner than the other. Also I don’t want to hang out with that lot, they’ll just bully me.”
“I wish Hamelin was different,” she said. “I wish people were less concerned with silly things. Today on my way home from the graveyard I’ll get you a rosette that says ‘Perfect Boy’ – how about that?” she said with a laugh as she hopped on the tram to work.
“I appreciate the thought, Mum but I’d sooner have some bird seed or a biscuit or a bag of springs.”
Sam wasn’t too bothered about trinkets. He felt a bit sad that his mum had to work when everyone else was on holiday, but she had to for financial reasons. Especially since I made Sam’s Dad disappear.
Sam’s contemplation was interrupted in typical fashion when Gretchen, Fat Bob and Dennis, who, at great personal expense had re-animated some road-kill with cogs and twigs and primitive electronics. Sam looked at this ingenious new threat – a mangy rabbit, a headless badger and an inside-out fox.
The trio of adored wretches chortled as they set their mechanical woodland zombie army after Sam.
He sighed as those who know suffering do when a new horror is unleashed, and swung with gymnastic efficiency between his crutches and headed to the hills.
It was as if some magical being who lives in the sky and the trees, the rivers and beneath our thoughts knew the people of Hamelin were no good, for on this day, their most cherished day, without warning, a gang of rats bowled into the town and began causing a right rumpus. I assure you that these were no ordinary rats. They were as big as cats and afraid of nothing. They were oily and slick and wore eye patches and carried flick-knives and could machine-gun butt-pellets out of their egg-holes whenever they fancied.
Even though they called themselves an anarcho-egalitarian rat collective (that means there’s no rules and no one’s in charge), in reality Casper was in charge. He had too much fur on his body and none on his head – he looked like a pink egg made of skin in a Turkish wrestler’s armpit. In his constant attendance were a pair of ratty twins – Gianna and Paul – who were both his wives. In anarcho-egalitarian rat-collectives polygamy (more than one wife) is common.
It’s not as common for one of the wives to be male but these rats were real badasses.
They lived mostly on land but they were like hairy little villains of the sea.
The complacent, lazy folks of Hamelin had no idea how to cope with this new menace, they were used to the easy life and didn’t like trouble or confrontation. Especially not with opponents that couldn’t be easily crushed. Especially not on this day, of all days, a special day, a time for fun, celebration and gorgeous children.
“What shall I do?!”
sobbed the startled butcher as a greasy rat pizzled a pint of warm, yellow belly fizz onto a pile of sherbet-covered lamb legs.
“This is unholy!”
squelched a washerwoman as a skinhead rat slashed up her pristine ‘Go Gretchen’ banner with his claws.
“This is twisting my melon man!”
yelped Fat Bob’s Dad as the twin rats daubed ‘We Rule’ on Fat Bob’s fat face with a spoonful of their own bum custard.
The rat gang were on a crazy trip – remember these guys have no rules – they play with matches, Casper torched a climbing frame in the school playground.
A baby rat, who should’ve been asleep but had no rat bedtime, jazzed himself dizzy until he was sick out of his bottom all over The Most Gorgeous Child in Hamelin trophy!
Three rat Siamese triplets joined at the hip and chanting hip-hop rhymes poured sugar into the tanks of all the wooden cars in the car park where the pageant was being held! The cars all chugged into a sweet stew of sticky nonsense. A TRAFFIC JAM!
The rat twins that Casper married were actually brother and sister and none of the other rats ever even mentioned it.
Mind you, Casper was volatile. These lawless, filthy, scumbag rats were rearranging Hamelin with nothing in mind but mad rat urges.
They used their rat
egg-hole-poo-gun-machine—
bums to rat-a-tat-tat the
pageant into a dung-covered
muck-hurricane.
They used their vicious little-lellow
claws to rip up all the posters.
They smashed shop windows using stones
and sticks that were lying around from
when Fat Bob and his gang had been
bullying Sam earlier.
The Hamelinians fled squawking like crows. They hissed like cats.
They whined like dogs.
One bloke done a poo by a lamppost like a tramp. To be fair it was Jeff, who had been homeless for five years since his wife left him and his army pension was cancelled. Still it added to the escalating sense of chaos.
The people scrammed in cowardly haste to what had been their perfect homes and bolted the doors and pulled down the metal shutters (one of the only metal things in Hamelin were the shutters). The place was battered and broken and mangled and the rats would not abate.
Sam was high on a hill just outside of town, feeding the sparrows that lived there. He watched and wondered what it all meant.
The panicked townsfolk decided something must be done, so a committee of the Hamelinians with the loudest voices and the worst breath was formedand they went to confront the Mayor. Noreen had been mayor for a month and the job had helped her feel a lot better about herself as she’d always been the spindliest of her nine sisters. Plus she was a spinster (not yet married), and there’s only so much spin a person can take. At least now she was mayor – a high-status job that made her feel better about her knees and lack of husband. But now the Mayor had a crisis on her bony hands. She smoothed her silken sash that said ‘Mayor’ on it in massive neon letters.
“This is unacceptable,”
whispered a spy.
“Do something or we’ll go out of business!”
bawled a candlestick-maker.
“I knew we shouldn’t have a woman for a mayor,”
said Sexist Dave, sensing an opportunity to advance his own agenda – sexism, which is when you think boys are better than girls.
The slick, bandito rat gang even had the gall to show up at the town meeting where they were being discussed. They gnawed people’s heels as they spoke, and squealed and burped over the Hamelin town song. They jived and danced on the Mayor’s table as she frantically tried to maintain order. Casper plucked her thick, false eyelashes and made himself a kind of grass-skirt and did some hula dancing. These rats were up for anything.
Sam stayed away from the meeting. Fat Bob and his cronies had given him a real beating earlier. Gretchen had distracted him with her mesmerising beauty, wh
ile Dennis lathered his crutches in honey. Predictably some bees came wading in like a yellow and black cloud that rained stings instead of droplets and things could’ve got real bad had it not been for the fortunate arrival of three rats driving Sexist Dave’s wooden moped (sticker on back reads ‘Get behind me, ladies – it’s where you belong’) forcing Hamelin’s most repulsive earwax-lickers to leg it.
Now Sam, with sticky palms and so many stings his face was as bumpy and cratered as a little red moon, stood and looked through a dirty window at the mayhem within the town hall. The Mayor was crying so hard that bubbles of snot were forming in her nostrils and floating off before popping on the ceiling. Fat Bob was sniffing at the rat-muck graffiti on his own smelly forehead, which bent his face into a peculiar shape like a chubby banana. The rats ruled like a furry flood, snickering and giggling.
The people of Hamelin were desperate.
Children, I wonder if you’ve ever had a dream that felt so real that when you awoke there was a moment of confusion before you could screw your head on, certain of who you were and eat your eggs or cereal or bogies. The townsfolk now lived in a dream of scribbled chaos from which they yearned to awake, they were lost in fear and doubt.
Then, sudden and exciting like a slash of glistening wee-wee on a blanket of fresh snow, the thick rat-breath air was sliced by the sound of the pipe.
That means when a situation demands it, the right person – it could be a woman, despite what Sexist Dave would tell you – will appear.
This was the hour and in this case the man was a Piper.
A Pied Piper.
This Piper had just sidled into the hall. Only Sam had noticed him. The Pied Piper didn’t think much about silly things like man or woman, black or white, day or night. His Pied Piper mind lived beyond all that. Beyond opposites.
His clothes were a patchwork of black and white, and his eyes were chequered, I suppose to make this point. He was not happy and not sad. Not good or bad. He was neither ordinary nor magical. He was like nobody they’d ever seen before. The room fell silent but for his strange music. And for the first time since they arrived the rat gang looked nervous.
Sam watched this man with quiet regard. Sam was more awake than the other kids because he spent more time alone, reflecting. He knew the Piper must be special.
Russell Brand's Trickster Tales Page 1
