Estranged Reflections IX
“Oh, noooo” chocoholic part-time exorcist Father Boris (pronounced Bah-reece) Alt staggered backwards across the cell as the emaciated body of Fraulein Michel levitated five feet above her ill-made bed. She uttered a stream of barbarous, incomprehensible speech: “Nagavithi-girtabkitab-al-uhudcamazotznepenthe-wexnaelgegernefaerpingalucidemildebigogmagogshukkothtetahatiaur-hekaushichirionbollocksysgygroth. . .”
Because TV violence incites crime nations face global extinction. Maybe, just maybe…
Look again.
I shook my head.
“Could you run me cold bath?” I asked, fearing a vision of The Spear Nosed Bat Totem against the night sky.
A Fascine dumped a bundle of rods and barbed wire into a nearby shop doorway. I just lay there my head in a whirl. Then I heard the phrase “And stick these spangled feathers in thy hat…”
I looked up and there she was…
She grabbed my hands, she ushered me in – a streetwise Empress Josephine. Clearly a baby doll won’t do. She was flashy, trashy, upbeat and dazzling in her minimono kimono; a geisha for the twenty-first century, a futuristic beauty covered in white diamonds decadent against her pale skin.
This was no longer ‘real life’, mad Shukkoth laughter carried on the Solar Wind. What does it all mean? You may well ask!
No longer a Neanderthal male stereotype loathsome Face-Ache Flapper, the Groper of the Yard, is well into a malodorous transformation: hands and legs turn into multi-mouthed, sucking, lenticular appendages, trench-coat turns into an iridescent exoskeletal carapace. He, she or it leaves a glistening trail of silver slime up the staircase, eyes on stalks and money in the bank.
“Filthy, lousy lezzie scum!” it screams, the sound of its voice like nails scraping glass.
Images of bullying, rape and vicious interrogations spatter the airwaves: evenings of lust and pain in smoky basement venues with a heavy use of woodwind, brass and percussion.
Holed-up in her wardrobe, hiding behind a rack of fake leopard skin overcoats, smelling of mothballs, waiting for the end of everything, wearing fatigues and a jauntily tilted beret, her pulsating crystal ball gleaming among the sheets on the four poster bed, Sister Marie imagined herself at a chi-chi cocktail party in Deptford.
Even as the foul smelling ooze began to creep under the bedroom door to the sound of a hilariously over excitable soundtrack, she materialised at the bar. Talk us through what happened.
Everyone was there of course, everyone that is ‘cept Ron. There was Carl and Lorna, Brad and Beryl, and Nancy Bosch. There was Laszlo ‘Beach Bum’ Zednick with Sharon, there was Hans and Gerda in kinky black uniforms and Vince going on and on about his psycho mum. The ghostly image of my Aunt Ada beckoned from the shadows, more nauseating than Shirley Temple growing up in scary times.
Surgeons helped themselves to parts of women’s bodies. Photographers and their muses showered down like confetti at a wedding party. As usual she ended up squirming and pinging the elastic. This was self-mutilation expressed through clothing.
Somewhere in Kettering Brad said “So cast the runes, sweetheart, we’ve got to get him back.”
Karen looked startled.
“They must be here somewhere,” she gasped, rummaging through the junk in her handbag.
As it so happened, Vince had violently translocated from Bayswater to a rubbish-filled blue telephone box in Leicester Square (clunk). This was The Winter of Discontent. An out-of-work gravedigger explains his plans for a chain of brothels in Amsterdam and glass-walled bistros in Birmingham (where else). Vince attended a black-tie dinner beneath a magnificent Rubens ceiling.
“Die yuppie scum!” snarled the guard charging into the banqueting room waving a street-sweeper. Boys will be boys.
The American public gasped in disbelief. It was a volatile era after seventies fashionability and eighties oblivion: max chat, backchat, chat away, reach out for instant contact and connections, lots of babble such as ‘gaga’ and ‘dada’. It doesn’t mean anything, but it keeps the canary happy.
Ask your health visitor for advice. This is not some Boys Own adventure. Innocent bystanders were confronted with ugly home truths and plied with booze and pills, a macabre marriage of dark flashbacks from the dim and distant past.
Then The Thing came on through. Next door’s dog went into a barking frenzy as the Face-Ache Monster kicked in the door. A vast hole opened up in the Op Art carpet. Overhead an asteroid collided with a Northrop XRB-49A.
“These babies are huge…” said the pilot exploding continuously in his glow-in-the-dark T-shirt.
Unwelcome guests established a foothold in a bloodthirsty future. Nerve jangling and engrossingly over-the-top, the scenario is labyrinthine, and non-believers can only try their best. After-burner flames flared from exhaust ports. Leave the mysterious lights, head for home and examine their warped psyches and hateful peccadilloes.
The camera never captured the image of John Thomas as his astral time bomb booby trap engulfed the vile apparition before any damage was done. The crystal ball vanished through the floor… amplification of recent domestic horrors, shocking detals and dastardly spies.
The ‘visitor’ had returned.
Too late
AC Evans
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