Strange Reflections III
Well, what the heck?
Turning down a chase with a sinister cop on a motorbike (another set-piece, another prescient career resume, another blend of courtroom drama and The Mystic) clad in spotless white lingerie, Sister Marie, The Rogue Astronomer, conjured up spooky spectre John Thomas from his closet hideaway.
The angry spook wears a Quaker hat and has a canary on his shoulder.
A disabled girl inflicted the wound on herself, officials said yesterday.
“I knew where I was, but I was dazed and I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t scary – it was just annoying really…”
Unusually lucid the canary said “Da…Da…Da…” which we all knew meant “Yes…Yes… Yes…” in Rumanian or was it?
In 1990 a man died in his flat. His body was found last week. He had experienced strange dreams of a crushing tidal wave sweeping everything and everyone away in a festoon of brilliant ghostly special effects:
secret weapons? Was that the gearstick? You hot rod pin up, do you have a photo of your hunk?
Someone shouted “Reduce crime, destroy porn, stop all wars or face global extinction by a giant asteroid.
The canary said “Da…Da…Da…” .
The house of the Lord has many rooms but surely I can wipe him out of my life? Solve the clues and write to us. Make good by infiltrating a Slab City ‘mob family’. Get soaked by the pouring rain. Balance on a window ledge outside Lorna’s apartment, have a peek when she takes her clothes off.
“Yes,” she nodded, “I had a wonderful time. In fact, I sometimes think I could do with a transplant just to keep up with him.”
Dr. Ward consulted a workshop manual, looking out for an ironic cameo.
Seeing Sharon so pleased I suddenly knew I couldn’t oppose her. Road signs swept past in a blur. My heart flipped. Some habits die hard. Nothing unusual there, you might think. Her pavlova had a tempting home-made look.
“Murder, blackmail, obsession: slowly I found we had other things in common. Now Laszlo and I plan to wed this year, then we’ll be a proper family.”
What does that make her?
“I never make the first move. I always feel incredibly nervous in front of a crowd; you might ladder a few stockings – but it’s definitely worth it.”
Enter a woman who had tried to poison her family with metal polish. She was described by the clerk of the court as ‘a bit of a goer’, a blunder while travelling to a convention of escapologists in another unknown zone.
Mr. Oliver Martin QC, prosecuting, said
“People must pray, beg God for mercy on their knees to stop the fireball asteroid. This trial is not a super day out at Alton Towers, this trial is no isolated phenomenon, this fiction has a strange reality, this burlesque epyllion is the cat’s whiskers, the performances of the four actresses are simply outstanding not to mention the jazzily noirish score.”
In a newspaper interview, in 1983, Brad claimed that Beryl was from an unknown zone. Blood is not always thicker than water. The longest most people stay is two years and it’s not uncommon to drift. There are a million transactions in the naked city.
In the viewing room John Thomas removed his hat and shrugged. People may snigger, but let them. He leered at a couple of girls wandering about at night in crop tops their miniskirts halfway up their bums. The canary said “Da…Da…Da…” It was then that I realized that Brad was not the shameless schmoozer I had thought he was – road signs swept past with minds of their own.
Feeling relatively relaxed Marie the astronomer removed her underwear and stood naked in front of the mirror. She glanced round the room: blowy white drapes, heavy eclectic furniture, dunked cigarette buts, a snake pit of wires. It was the incarnation of monastery chic and badly-lit social realism. She pouted for the camera and apologised for the quality of the sound. “Well, you little rogue, what do you want to be when you grow up?” asked the angry spook. “Oh, nothing”, was the reply. “Politics is silly, religion is rubbish and the rest is bread and circuses.”
Then things changed, or I changed. What was she thinking as she looked into the mirror? She thought: “I don’t want to live under a state of siege any more than I want to live in Slab City, sheesh!” Her eyes shone with happiness. The pool was surrounded by a high metal frame. In the centre of the room was a computer-generated plastic model of a skull: “Da…Da…Daaaah…” screeched the canary.
Oh well, what the heck?
AC Evans
.