The Unicorn
This is a story about a magic lamp.
I expect you have heard similar stories before. You might even have watched them in marvellous Dolby colour-vision on your wide screen television at home.
I think I ought to explain, before we get started, that this isn’t exactly that sort of story. There are some stories that glow with hidden rubies. They thump along to the march of gloriously caparisoned elephants. They gleam with the seductive smiles of slender dancing girls.
This story is not like that. This is to those stories as a council estate in Blackburn is to Topkapi Palace. This is the Reduced price on eBay version. It is the sort of story that you might find in a plastic tray at the back of Age Concern, next to the cracked china rabbit and the ashtray from Morecambe.
It has even got a second-hand title purloined from somewhere else, and which really does not fit it very well at all. I shall send it back when I have finished with it.
The point is that it is sold as seen. There will be no refunds.
Once upon a time there was a boy called Alan Dean. He was fifteen years old, and lived with his mother and her new bloke in a flat above their laundrette.
Alan did not like her new bloke very much. He smelled of Lynx and beer, and watched football on the telly, and sometimes he could hear him doing sex with his mum, through the thin walls of the flat.
This made Alan feel irritable and cross.
Alan Dean thought about sex almost all of the time. Not about sex in the way that all the rest of us think about sex, in the oh-goodness-is-it-Friday-night-again-already? sort of way, but in the sort of way that he imagined the Kardashians, or perhaps Beyoncé, might do sex. There were always lots of long brown legs and interesting nipples when Alan Dean thought about sex. He knew that his mother was not possessed of any of those attributes, but still her smelly football-loving new bloke was getting a chance to Do It, which was more than Alan was, and it made him feel grumpy, and disinclined to speak to his mother at breakfast time.
When he was not thinking about sex, Alan Dean was thinking about Call Of Duty Black Ops Four, and Red Dead Redemption Two.
He was almost never thinking about his GCSE mock examinations, although he knew, in a small guilty part at the back of his mind, that he ought to be, at least sometimes.
Of course his mother, although not privy to the more interesting features of her son’s imaginative adventures, knew this perfectly well. Hence she was unimpressed when one Saturday morning, her new bloke asked Alan if he would come and give him a hand lugging their old sofa down to Emmaus, and Alan objected that he had to do his homework.
“You can do it when you get home,” she said. “I’ve got to mind the laundrette, and he can’t hardly get it in and out of the van by himself, not with his bad knee. You haven’t lifted a finger in here this week and it’s time you did. In fact you can go and get your washing right now, and all the plates and cups you’ve got lying around. There were only two mugs left when we had breakfast, and there should be six. Off you go, and put your jumper on before you come back, it’s chilly this morning.”
Alan Dean went, crossly.
The new sofa was being delivered tomorrow, and the old one had got to be taken downstairs, carefully, so as not to chip any of the new paint off the walls of the stairway.
Alan Dean dropped four sticky mugs in the sink with a clatter and appeared in the living room, where after a few unhelpful shoves, and some swearing and short temper from his mother’s new bloke, he managed to push the sofa into the coffee table.
It fell over and the lamp broke.
“For fuck’s sake,” said his mother’s new bloke. “Go and get the dustpan and brush. We’ll have a look while we’re at Emmaus and see if they’ve got any nice ones.”
This was what they did. Alan Dean went upstairs, and his mother’s new bloke went downstairs, and when they met up by the cash desk they were both carrying a lamp.
His mother’s new bloke had a tall, elegant lamp, almost exactly like the broken one now in the dustbin at home. Alan Dean’s lamp was small and squat and rounded, with some mysterious symbols painted around the edge.
It looks like this because it is relatively uncomplicated for our story’s Props Department to arrange. They would have to do a lot of scouring of second hand shops to come up with the traditional version, which I have always thought looks rather like a gravy boat.
“What the fuck’s that?” asked his mother’s new bloke. “Go and put it back. It’s filthy.”
Alan Dean glared at him.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “I want this one.”
His mother’s new bloke rolled his eyes. Kick off was in exactly forty seven minutes, and he still had to call in at Tesco for beer.
“Whatever,” he said. “It can go in your room if you like it so much. Come on, let’s get moving.”
They got moving, and when they clattered back up the still nicely-painted stairs to the flat, Alan’s mother looked at the two new lamps.
“That’s lovely, pet,” she said, and then to Alan: “You’re not taking that upstairs until it’s had a good clean, it’s filthy. Get a cloth out from under the sink. And don’t forget you’ve got homework.”
Alan’s mother disappeared back to the laundrette, and her new bloke disappeared into the living room to sit on a kitchen chair and watch the football. I am afraid he had to put up with watching Wrexham playing against Oldham Athletic, because as you have been warned, this is an economical sort of story, and Manchester City or Arsenal are way out of its price bracket.
Alan Dean got a cloth out from under the sink.
I wonder if you can guess what happens next. I would be disappointed if you didn’t, although you may need to make some allowances for the limitations of our budget.
Alan Dean rubbed the lamp, and nothing happened. Then he plugged it in to see what it might look like if it was lit, and rubbed it again.
There was a small, but nevertheless decisive bang, rather like the noise you get if you drop a plastic cup on a worktop. Then there was a small flash of light and a tiny puff of green smoke.
Alan Dean jumped guiltily and unplugged the lamp, which was rather more sensible than his mother might have predicted of him.
When he looked back there was a man sitting at the kitchen table, squinting at him through wire-rimmed spectacles, which he took off and began to rub on a crumpled handkerchief.
He was a fairly small sort of man, not much taller than Alan Dean. He was balding, with wisps of grey hair around his ears, and dressed in a tweed jacket, with a waistcoat and check shirt.
I told you this was a low budget story. Costumes are expensive, and if you want ear rings and a blue muscular torso then perhaps you should consider forking out the £89 for an annual streaming subscription. An under-dressed genie is the unfortunate consequence of meanness.
To say that Alan Dean was astonished is a writerly understatement. He was every bit as surprised as you would be to find an unexpected elderly schoolmaster polishing his glasses at your kitchen table.
There has already been quite enough bad language in this story, employed by Mother’s New Bloke, because I felt it was an importantly telling aspect of his character development. However, my own mother might read it someday, so we will not use any more here.
“Oh my goodness,” said Alan Dean. “Where on earth did you come from?”
“I am the Genie of the Lamp,” said the elderly gentleman. “I expect that you are Alan Dean.”
“Yes,” said Alan Dean. “What are you doing in our kitchen?”
Here we will employ another writerly conceit, because practically everybody on the planet knows what the Genie of the Lamp has got to offer, and so it is scarcely credible that Alan Dean does not, but for the purposes of storytelling, we will have an explanation anyway.
“I am here to give you Three Wishes,” said the genie. “Apologies in advance. I know I ought to be speaking in rhyming couplets, but I understand there is a deadline by which we have to be finished and uploaded on to the Windermere Diaries website. We are cutting it a bit fine at the moment, so I hope you won’t mind if I don’t.”
Alan looked at him blankly, as well he might.
“Whatever,” he said.
“Jolly good,” said the genie encouragingly. “Wouldn’t want to spoil your big moment of fame. Pleased to say that you’ve got plenty of choice as well. Most people generally waste the first wish getting themselves out of whatever pickle they have got into when they were getting hold of the lamp in the first place, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem here. So, then, what are they to be?”
“What are what to be?” asked Alan Dean, who was not the sharpest tool in the Black & Decker collection, which was why he really should have been getting on with his homework.
“The Three Wishes,” the genie said, putting his glasses back on his nose and looking over them at Alan, with a touch of impatience. “Here you are, three wishes, pick anything you like. Well, almost anything. No Kardashians, I’m afraid, because of import difficulties and financial constraints. Local wishes only at the moment.”
Alan’s mouth dropped open, which was not very flattering. After a moment he closed it again, and scowled, which was his habitual expression when he was thinking hard.
“Well what about Sophie Amundsen in Year Ten?” he said. “Or no, better still, what about Rachel Henderson?”
“Very good,” said the genie. “What about her?”
Alan reddened a little.
“Well…you know…” he said.
The genie shook his head.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “These days I’m afraid one can’t just hand over a girl as if she were a Big Mac and fries at a drive in window. Girls aren’t birthday presents, and you might not be exactly grateful if you were given one anyway, troublesome creatures, worse than puppies. What exactly did you have in mind?”
Alan’s pink face deepened to scarlet. The genie looked over his glasses again.
“I don’t want to hurry you,” he said kindly, “but you need to know that we only have three thousand words, and they’re running out fast.”
“I’d like a date with Rachel,” said Alan, brightening suddenly. “We could go paintballing. That would be good.”
“Certainly,” said the genie, looking more cheerful. “Did she refuse when you asked her last time?”
“Well, no,” said Alan. “I mean, she hasn’t refused. I haven’t asked her.”
The genie took his glasses off his nose and looked hard at Alan.
“Well I’d just like to know she’d say yes if I asked,” said Alan, defensively. “I mean, I don’t want to ask if she was going to say no.”
“I see,” said the genie. “You want a date with a young woman who is only agreeing because she has been enchanted into it. My charms rather than yours, as it were?”
Alan was quiet for a moment.
The genie looked at him kindly, and waited.
“What about a YouTube channel,” Alan blurted out suddenly. “You know, so people can watch me playing games online.”
“Fine,” said the genie, looking satisfied. “I expect that’s quite easy to arrange. Just a minute.”
He unearthed a mobile telephone from his inside pocket and pushed his glasses back up his nose. He tapped a few keys and scrolled up and down for a minute, his lips mouthing as he went.
He looked up with a bright smile.
“It’s really quite remarkably simple,” he said. “Look here”
Alan leaned over.
The Google page read:
Create a personal channel
- Sign in to YouTube on a computer or the mobile site.
- Click on your profile picture. Create a channel.
- You’ll be asked to create a channel.
- Check the details (with your Google Account name and photo) and confirm to create your channel.
Alan looked up.
“Well, I already know all that,” he said, crossly.
The genie looked surprised.
“You know?” he asked.
“Yeah, obviously,” agreed Alan. “I mean, everybody knows that. See. It says it there. Any idiot can read it.”
“It does,” agreed the genie. So…umm, forgive me, why haven’t you done it already? I mean, they are your wishes, and you can use them any way you like, but it does seem something of a waste of a wish, for something you could do perfectly well in – let me see – four or five clicks.”
“I don’t mean that,” Alan objected. “I don’t mean that I want a YouTube channel. I mean I do want one, except that I want thousands of subscribers. Lots of people watching it. You know.”
“Watching what?” enquired the genie, looking back at him with interest. “Are you asking me for thousands of subscribers for a YouTube channel that you have not yet even set up, never mind performed any, umm, game playing.”
Alan was silent.
“If you don’t mind my saying so,” continued the genie, “it does seem to me that if you really wanted a YouTube channel with your whole heart, you might have considered setting one up yourself already. We could get to the subscribers afterwards, if you were still interested. Shall we move along?”
In the living room there was a bellow of disappointment as somebody in Wrexham failed to score a goal.
Alan looked at the door with dislike.
“I’d like him to go away,” he said, sourly.
The genie nodded
“Well, I can arrange that if you like, disappearances are fairly simple. Seems a bit of a shame, though, I understand your mother quite likes him.”
“She does,” Alan agreed. “Don’t know why. He’s a moron,”
“Indeed,” remarked the genie, “although she will probably be sad at his departure, moron or not. Tell me, would you like him to disappear now, or perhaps hang on until after the new sofa arrives? It would be very unfortunate if your mother had to try and carry it up the stairs by herself. And I believe the fan belt on the van needs changing. You are going to have to fill that gap yourself, I’m afraid. Perhaps you should set a date by which you think you might have finished with him.”
“Right, right, maybe no, then,” said Alan, hastily. “Maybe not that. I don’t know.”
“I do,” said the genie. “That is three wishes, and they all seem to me to be complete nonsense. You are asking for an audience for a channel you haven’t created, a date with a girl you haven’t invited, and the disappearance of a gentleman who seems to me to be making your mother very happy. Really, young man, I think you ought to think about your wishes a little more carefully.”
Alan Dean looked very crestfallen.
“Well, I dunno,” he said sadly. “I can’t think of anything else.”
The genie looked thoughtfully at him.
“My dear boy,” he said gently. “I think that not having any wishes one can’t put right by oneself is really quite an enviable state, don’t you think? Rather splendid. Perhaps I should come back another time. When you have had time to think a bit.”
Alan nodded sadly.
The genie patted his arm and disappeared. Alan sat at the table for a little while, looking at the place where he had been, and went to his room to play Minecraft with his friends on Discord.
We are now, as the genie pointed out, beginning to draw near to the end of our three thousand words, and so we had better start coming to a conclusion.
Conclusions can be anything you like. Whilst drawing this one I have one eye on the fact that our lecturer at Cambridge mentioned that she especially liked the sort of bitter-sweet conclusion where the hero got not what he thought he wanted, but what he truly deserved.
I am sorry to say that what Alan Dean truly deserves is detention when he gets into school on Monday, because an observant reader will have noticed that he has still not bothered with his homework.
I would not be so unkind as to inflict upon people the ending that they deserve.
All the same, there should always be a little mystery in a good conclusion.
When Alan’s mother came home from the laundrette that afternoon, she looked at the grubby old lamp, which had made a black ring on the table. She decided that Alan had probably forgotten all about it by now, so she dropped it into the dustbin, where it broke.
That afternoon, when the football scores were being read out, and Alan Dean’s mother’s new bloke was carefully marking them off on the back of the newspaper, Alan Dean in his bedroom and his mother in the kitchen were suddenly disturbed by a yell that almost shook the house.
They both came rushing to the living room to see what was the matter.
He had eight score draws and had won the football pools.
He had won half a million pounds, which is where the bulk of this story’s budget has been squandered.
It is always important to remember that whilst it is very important to get on with life and make things happen for oneself, there is nothing to beat a bit of a leg-up. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous and is the sort of opinion that might predispose a person to membership of the Militant wing of the Liberal Democrat party.
Alan Dean, his mother, and his mother’s new bloke, all had a holiday in Blackpool, and Alan Dean won a teddy bear on the shooting range, which he gave to Rachel Henderson, who smiled, and blushed.
He filmed himself on the Pepsi Max, and dancing bravely up and down on the terrifying glass floor at the top of Blackpool Tower. He put the video on YouTube, and got three hundred and sixty two Likes, which he thought was a very good start.
The mystery that I have left behind for my readers to consider was whether or not these things might have happened anyway, or whether they were thanks to a bit of charitable extra magic on behalf of the departing genie.
We will never know.
The Princess and the Frog
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess.
I am afraid she was not an especially clever princess, although this was not important because she was beautiful. Fortunately she had a well-worn-beautiful-princess career path laid out in front of her, which largely involved passing the selection process to marry a handsome prince, after which she would graduate to become a queen.
When our story opens she was hanging about the palace gardens, aimlessly chucking a ball made of pure gold at the wall in order to catch it when it bounced back. I hope that you will not be as surprised as she was to discover that it didn’t.
This activity, I think, provides sufficient illustration to justify our first impression of her general intellectual capacity. It also gives the reader a small indication that as well as not being very clever, she wasn’t much of a sportswoman, and was rather inclined to show off.
Anyway, this is only a short story and we will soon run out of words if we begin to get swept away along the interesting byways of character analysis, so let us carry on. Beautiful but dim will do.
As our story begins, Dopey the princess was exercising her intellectual capacity to its fullest by wondering vaguely why something so pleasingly shiny as the solid gold ball didn’t bounce more effectively.
No amount of scowling seemed to make any difference, and in a fit of bad temper, which for narrative purposes could be viewed as a demonstration of her general ill-nature, she hurled it over the little wall into the well.
There was a satisfying plop, and a splash.
She had just begun to stump crossly back to the palace when she remembered that her father, who had given her the ball, had told her in his best stern voice that she must Look After It And Not Lose It Because It Had Once Belonged To Granny.
She rushed back and peered over the wall into the well, in case the ball was floating on the water, again providing us with a neat illustration of our original character assessment.
“Bugger,” said Dopey.
“Need a hand?” said a croaky voice by her elbow.
She glanced down.
There was a frog on the wall.
She was as charmed as girls usually are by green slimy things, that is, not at all. (If you doubt my word about this, you might like to try offering to show the contents of your handkerchief to the girl next to you at the dinner table.)
Princess Dopey screamed, and jumped away in revulsion.
The frog sighed.
“I can get it for you,” he offered, looking admiringly at her slim figure, golden hair and wide, guileless blue eyes. “Your ball,” he added, in response to her decidedly blank expression.
Princess Dopey thought about it for a moment. She looked at him speculatively.
“Can you swim?” she asked.
The frog patiently acknowledged that he could.
Princess Dopey drew herself up importantly.
“I command you to fetch my ball, Slimy,” she instructed.
The frog made a wheezy noise, which was in fact an ironic chuckle, although Dopey didn’t know that. She scowled at the frog.
“I command…” she began, but the frog cut her short.
“You don’t get it,” he explained, helpfully. “It works like this. You ask nicely. You could even grovel. I quite like that. Then I promise to get your ball, but only if you promise to do something nice for me. Then I get your ball and you don’t get in trouble with your father. Then you do the nice thing. Everybody wins. What do you say?”
Dopey frowned suspiciously.
“What sort of nice thing?” she asked.
The frog sat up, and looked at her.
“You promise to let me come home with you. Then you let me share your dinner and sleep on your pillow tonight. That’s it. No big deal.”
Princess Dopey thought about it.
“It’s only mashed potatoes tonight,” she said. “Not chips or anything decent. All right. As long as you stay out of the gravy. Go and get it.”
“Say please,” said the frog.
“Please,” said Dopey, through gritted teeth, and the frog dived into the water as smoothly and soundlessly as a sword slashes through a silk veil.
When he returned with the ball you will not be surprised to hear that naughty, ungrateful Dopey grabbed it out of his long, webbed fingers and pegged it.
* * *
At the dinner table that night, the King was startled when the footman opened the door and ushered in a very disgruntled frog.
“He says Princess Dopey invited him,” the footman explained, in the sort of tone that people use when they want you to know that something is definitely not their fault.
Princess Dopey confessed, reluctantly, that this was indeed the case.
She glared at the frog.
“Lift me up,” he said.
“Ewww,” said Dopey, but she picked up his cold, watery-smelling little body, and put it on the table.
The frog instantly dived into her gravy. We really can’t blame him for this. Princess Dopey had left him to hop up to the palace and argue with the footman all by himself, and it is not surprising that he felt some revenge was called for.
After dinner, during which the frog hopped into her trifle as well, they proceeded to bed. I know most people don’t go straight to bed after dinner, but this is a short story. Therefore, for the purposes of dramatic brevity we are going to cut to the bedroom. We will not waste our limited words describing an evening which the princess spent dancing and simpering with admiring young men, introduced by after dinner by the author for the purpose of highlighting her feckless vanity to the reader, and thoughtfully observed from a distance by the patient frog.
Instead, they just went to bed.
(There is precedent for this, as anybody who has ever watched A Game Of Thrones will attest.)
The frog sat on the marble flagstones and watched Princess Dopey getting undressed with a very keen interest.
“Put me on your pillow,” he said.
The princess looked mutinous.
“You promised,” he added, smirking.
Dopey reached down, but she did not pick up the frog.
She picked up the golden ball.
Then she dropped it on the frog’s head. She bashed it down a couple of times, just to make sure.
The frog was squished flat, in a nasty mess of frog-blood and slime.
The princess wiped up the remains of the frog with an extra-thick tissue, because it was a palace and no domestic expense had been spared. She dropped it down the lavatory and went to bed.
After that she lived happily ever after.
The End
FOOTNOTE:
It is an important trope of writing a fairy story that it must incorporate a moral, generally one which is useful to the ruling group of the time.
For instance: Good Girls Will Be Rewarded For Cleaning Up After Everybody Else Without Grumbling.
Or: Vanquishing Dragons (which you should know are metaphorical representations for anybody we want you to vanquish, possibly the Russians or the Labour Party) Will Get You A Shag.
Or: Expensive Building Materials Are The Best. Spend A Lot Or Wolves Will Get You (79% interest rates apply, see terms and conditions below)
Hence I felt it was important that my readers should benefit from a traditionally moralistic outcome to Princess Dopey’s story. I have had to think hard about this, but have finally come up with one which I hope will prove to be a useful and valuable piece of life-guidance.
You might even wish to share it on Facebook later, possibly overlaying a romantic outdoor picture of deer and snowy mountains.
Be Very Careful Of Naked Princesses With Golden Balls.
The Adventures of Cat-Sick Yellow and the Urban Wars*
Once upon a time, far, far away, in a place called Islington, a BBC research assistant had a little baby girl.
Of course, Islington is not very far, far away if you are only somewhere like Notting Hill, so for the purposes of this story you might like to pretend that you are on holiday, perhaps somewhere like the Moray Firth, so that you can think of Islington as being not only far, far away, but as being practically on another planet.
The research assistant bonded immediately with her little baby girl, which was fortunate really, because not everybody does. She had been a bit worried that she might not, and so she had planned a natural water birth for herself, in a paddling pool in the front room. She had quickly given up on the idea when all the squeezing and yelling started, and swiftly finished up in the local hospital with a lot of drugs, not to mention some unexpected vomiting and stitches.
Her husband had been secretly relieved about this, because he had been rather wondering about how he was going to empty a paddling pool full of blood and afterbirth, so from his point of view everything, most especially the baby, came out all right in the end.
Now, with her baby girl cradled in her arms, she gazed out upon the winter landscape of Islington and wondered what to call her.
It was January, so Snowflake or perhaps Elsa-From-Frozen might have made the shortlist, but there has not been much snow in Islington since they got global warming. The research assistant looked out on to a damp, drab world and wanted to call her new baby something evocative and colourful.
She wondered about Housebrick Brown, but quickly decided against it for fear of being suspected of some kind of complicated racial stereotyping. Instead, she gazed at the house opposite, where they had a four-by-four hybrid Jaguar running wild in their garden, and thought idly of their enviable Farrow and Ball painted front porch.
In a moment of inspiration, she hunted through Google, where she discovered that the beautiful paint was 279 Citrona Yellow, and knew that she had found the perfect name for her baby girl.
Alas, she did not live long enough to see Citrona Yellow grow up.
Her husband had become sick of living with somebody wearing endless ethically-sourced unbleached corduroy. He had not appreciated his Christmas present, being the sponsorship of a Mongolian goat which might otherwise have been eaten, nor had he enjoyed looking at the home-made Christmas decorations manufactured from toilet rolls, without glitter obviously, in case a turtle ate them later.
He was so appalled to find that he was not allowed to wet the baby’s head until Dry January was over, that in a terrible moment of passion he bludgeoned his wife to death with the ladle with which she had been stirring a pan of vegan falafael mix.
He buried her in the back garden, and taking Citrona Yellow with him, moved to Wigan, where he bought a flat cap and discovered the joys of Watney’s Pale Ale, and chips with gravy. All of this suited him very nicely indeed, except the flat cap, which didn’t, really, although it did cover his bald patch, which he liked on cold days.
It is worth noting that Wigan is still far, far away from pretty much everywhere, especially if you are on holiday on the Moray Firth, even if you take the short cut back down the A9 instead of meandering about all over the Cairngorms, so the basic premise for the story still holds good.
One day, when Citrona Yellow was fifteen years old, he married again.
His new wife was really not very much older than Citrona Yellow, and had fallen in love with her father because he had come from Islington. She had never been outside Wigan, apart from a week in Morecambe once, and she thought him the epitome of civilised sophistication. I am sorry to say that she did not take to poor Citrona Yellow at all. In fact, as the little girl grew up, she referred to her as ‘that tiresome little twerp’ and unkindly changed her name to Cat-Sick Yellow, which she said suited her better.
One evening she was sitting in her bedroom scrolling through Instagram whilst her husband was in the downstairs lavvy. He was obliged to use this one by common agreement, because of his fondness for onion rings. His wife had installed a bowl of pot-pourri and two air fresheners instead of the usual one, but they still didn’t quite mask it and she usually opened the window in the mornings despite the chill and the noise from next door’s children.
He usually took ages in there so she had plenty of time.
She had just shared some photographs of herself in a bikini at the Spray Tanning Centre when a message flashed on to the screen:
Hey boomer, just seen ur Cat-Sick. She lookin gud these days.
She stared at the screen unbelievingly.
Wot do u mean? she typed, her fingers stumbling over the words.
A little thumbs up icon and a winking face appeared.
Bruh, she sick, said the script. Hottest babe on the street. I ship with her any day.
Cat-Sick Yellow’s stepmother put the phone down and was still staring at it when her husband appeared.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s just our Cat-Sick again,” his wife said wearily. “Everybody thinks she’s so perfect and she’s just being difficult. She won’t wear her school uniform because she only wears clothes made out of recycled bamboo from somewhere with ethical employment policies.”
Her husband thought about it.
“You could bludgeon her to death,” he offered helpfully. “I did that with my first wife and it worked pretty well.”
His wife sighed again.
“The back yard isn’t big enough to bury her,” she said. “I told you we shouldn’t have put that concrete down. I wanted decking, we could have dug that up easily enough. Let me have a think about it.”
She was still thinking about it the next day when she got a lift home from the supermarket in a taxi.
She knew the driver, whose name was Paddy, and she unburdened her troubles to him.
Actually, the driver wasn’t called Paddy, he was called Akmed, but for the purposes of avoiding racial stereotyping in fiction, which of course everybody abhors, we have not used his real name. You can think of him as Paddy.
Paddy nodded sympathetically.
“I think I might be able to help you out there,” he said, helpfully. “Me and some of the lads got a bit of a grooming ring going, see, and there might be a space for your Cat-Sick if you like. Get her out from under your feet.”
“Would you really?” said Cat-Sick’s stepmother, with some relief. “That’s very kind of you. She finishes school at three.”
“No problem,” said Paddy. “We’ll sort her out for you, insh’Allah.”
Hence, when poor, unsuspecting Cat-Sick Yellow came out of school, Paddy was waiting outside in his taxi.
“Hey, get in,” he called to her, and Cat-Sick, who was an obedient sort of girl, did as she was told.
Paddy drove off with her, in the opposite direction to her house, taking her deeper and deeper into the shadowy housing estate.
“I wondered if you’d like some cigarettes and a mobile phone?” he suggested to her, after a little way.
“That’s very kind, but no thank you,” said Cat-Sick politely. “Cigarettes are very bad for you, and I have a mobile phone already. I try not to use it any more than I must, in case the 4G radiation gives me AIDS. I keep warning my stepmother that she uses hers too much, but she just tells me to shut up. She can be terribly intimidating and offensive at times.”
“Absolutely, you don’t want to take any notice of her,” agreed Paddy, encouragingly. “How about some drugs and getting your nose pierced, then?”
Cat-Sick shook her head.
“I don’t approve of such hideous self-mutilation,” she explained, “and I like to put only natural substances into my body. I can see you have a bottle of Coke in the door pocket there, and I must urge you to reconsider your lifestyle choices. Coke is terribly bad for you, almost all sugar, you know. It will rot your teeth and make you obese. You are a bit obese already and I really don’t think that sugary soft drinks can be helping. You must be at least a stone overweight. Have you thought about a vegan diet? Raw carrots make a very good replacement for sugary snacks, you know.”
By this time, they had reached the heart of the dark housing estate. The houses leaned in towards them as if their boarded-up windows were glaring eyes. Poor Cat-Sick shrank back into her seat in fear.
“I also notice you have not put your seat-belt on,” she quavered. “I understand that you are an exempt person, but I think you ought to consider not just your own personal safety but the cost to society of hospitalising you in the event of an accident.”
Paddy leaned across her and opened her door.
“Out,” he said. “Don’t bother ringing the office for another taxi home. You can just stay here, you irritating little shit. Bugger off.”
Poor Cat-Sick stood upon the pavement and wept. She had never been so deep into the terrifying avenues of council houses before, and she knew that she was lost.
The houses seemed to loom threateningly above her. Cat-Sick looked up at them and trembled. She took a few faltering steps and sank down on the pavement in despair.
She had not been there for very long when she realised that she was not alone.
A curious toddler with a runny nose, bare feet and an enormously swollen nappy stood at her side, looking at her with interest.
Cat-Sick reached out her hand to him.
“Hello, my little poppet,” she said kindly. “My name is Cat-Sick, and I am lost. What’s your name?”
The little boy said nothing, but stared at her appraisingly. Cat-Sick felt a little anxious.
“Can you talk, little man?” she asked gently, “or perhaps you are struggling with some kind of developmental delay. You need have no fear if this is the difficulty you face, there is a great deal of appropriate support available. Perhaps your mother might like to come out and talk to me. I might be able to make some constructive suggestions for her next steps on your life-pathway.”
The little boy sniffed and looked thoughtful.
“You lookin’ for number thirty two?” he said, after a pause.
“No,” said Cat-Sick in surprise. “Why do you think I might be?”
The boy looked her up and down again.
“That’s where all the agency girls go,” he explained. “If you’re from the agency, it’s thirty two you want. Just there, two doors up from the betting shop.”
With that, the little boy turned and waddled away, leaving behind him a slightly distressing waft of overfilled nappy.
Cat-Sick was alone again, but now she had a little gleam of hope in her heart.
“I wonder if the kind folk at Thirty Two are good to girls in distress,” she mused. “It could be that many young people find themselves in this sort of distressing predicament, and Thirty Two is a sort of refuge. I shall go and see.”
With that she took her courage in both hands and crossed the fearsome road, past two burned-out cars and a shopping trolley, into the deep shadow of the gasworks, to tap fearfully on the door of number Thirty Two.
There was no answer.
Cat-Sick knocked again, then with her heart hammering, she pushed the door and it swung open.
There was nobody there.
Indeed, there was almost nothing there at all. There were no carpets on the floors, and in the front room, seven sleeping bags were unrolled beside seven overflowing ashtrays and seven empty beer glasses.
Cat-Sick gasped.
She went into the kitchen.
In the sink was a pile of ancient pizza-vomit, with seven dirty plates stacked beside it. There did not seem to be a dog in the house, but nevertheless there were seven piles of what appeared to be dog poo, untidily coiled on the bare floorboards, and smelling exceedingly unpleasant.
“Oh my,” wailed Cat-Sick, looking around her in horror. “I wonder if there is any hand-sanitiser anywhere.”
She searched through all of the cupboards, and found some tins of beans, a stack of ancient DVDs with pictures of undressed ladies on the front, and a jar with a few grains of extremely dried-up coffee, but no hand sanitiser.
She did not know what to do. She had nowhere else to go, and did not have the first idea where she was anyway. She leaned against the sink and thought hard.
Eventually she concluded that the best thing to do would be to stay where she was. She would await the return of the charitable occupants of Number Thirty Two, and then explain that she was seeking sanctuary, and throw herself upon their mercy.
She could not, she thought, stay in the same room as the dog poo, and wondered what she should do.
In the end she found a rusty shovel in the back yard, and holding it as far away from her nose as possible, shovelled up the poo and carried it out to the dustbin. She did the same with the sick in the sink, and then rinsed it away very thoroughly, along with liberal squirts of washing up liquid.
She purchased a bottle of bleach from the corner shop, alongside the schoolchildren queueing up to buy a single cigarette for fifty pence each, and returned to clean the sink, and the floor and the plates and the glasses and the now-emptied ashtrays.
She was just beginning to consider interfering with the rest of the house when the front door opened, and to Cat-Sick’s very great surprise, in walked seven dwarves.
Cat-Sick instantly re-phrased the description in her head as seven very short men. She had never met any very short men before, and did not exactly know the correct way to address them, which might turn into a minefield of potential unintended offensiveness if she was not very careful indeed.
They looked at her in surprise.
Finally, the tallest of them stepped forward and looked her up and down, hard.
“You from the agency?” he said. “You’re early. And you’re not the usual sort. They don’t usually do the schoolgirl thing. Nice, though,” he added, appreciatively.
The others nodded and started taking their jackets off. One of them had even started to unbutton his trousers when Cat-Sick spoke up.
“Oh no,” she said, “I don’t really know what you’re talking about. I’m not from any agency. What agency do you mean?”
“The usual one,” said one of the very short men. “Sugarbabe Cindy And Her Five Naughty Daughters. They usually only send someone on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’ve been thinking it was Wednesday all day today. It is Wednesday, isn’t it?”
His fellows nodded, looking curiously at Cat-Sick, who shook her head firmly.
“Oh no, nobody sent me,” she explained. “I’m looking for succour.”
They looked blank.
“Never heard of that one,” said the tallest, doubtfully. “Is it like fellatio?”
Cat-Sick had no idea what he was talking about. She explained, carefully, how her stepmother had been unkind to her, and how she had arranged for a taxi to collect her from school and then abandon her in the middle of the council estate, and how lost and lonely she was.
“I wonder,” she finished, “if I might stay here with you.”
The seven very short men scratched their heads and looked at one another.
“Well, you can if you like,” said the tallest. “You’ll have to go out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you’ll need a sleeping bag.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Cat-Sick. “although I’m sure I can borrow one of yours. So, shall we become acquainted, then? My name is Citrona Yellow, but everybody calls me Cat-Sick. What are your names?
“We’re called Tyrion Lannister,” said the tallest, “and we’re dwarves.”
“Tyrion Lannister?” said Cat-Sick, blankly, because she did not watch Netflix. “What are the rest of you called? And do you mind me thinking of you as dwarves, or shall I consider you to be especially short but in no way less or differently abled than other longer men? I would be very pleased indeed to be guided by you on this, because it is not an issue I have previously encountered.”
“We’re all called Tyrion Lannister,” explained Tyrion. “We saw him on the telly, right, and we thought it was a really cool name. Only we couldn’t decide which one of us was going to be him, so after a bit we thought, why not all of us, see? It’s a good name, the best we’ve got, so we share it.”
“Indeed, it is,” agreed Cat-Sick.
“And we’re actual dwarves,” explained Tyrion. “Real dwarves, proper magical creatures. Like Asda’s Seasonal Low Price Garden Gnomes, or Elf-On-A-Shelf at Christmas. Like in fairy stories. We don’t want to be called Short Men, because we’re not, see. We’re dwarves.”
“We live here, though,” added Tyrion. Sometimes we have proper jobs and everything. Tyrion there, he had a job once working for Freddie Mercury, at his parties. Had a bowl of cocaine on his head and got to keep the leftovers. Nice bloke, Freddie Mercury. Famous and everything.”
“We’re not actually from round here, though,” remarked Tyrion. “We used to live in Rotherham till Thatcher closed the mines. We came here looking for work. Big city.”
“I see,” said Cat-Sick, faintly. “Would you mind if I just used your bathroom?”
“Oh, it don’t work,” said Tyrion. “You’ll have to go in the back yard like all the rest of us. Unless it’s raining.”
Thus it was that Cat-Sick came to live with the Seven Dwarves. She stayed for quite some time, and you might be surprised to hear that on the whole she settled in quite well.
In the meantime, her stepmother, whom we shall not call wicked, because of not wishing to inflict the self-fulfilling prophecy of negative labelling on anybody, was really quite pleased to be rid of Cat-Sick. Without Cat-Sick’s irritating vegan presence they were able to eat Fray Bentos pies for dinner every evening in complete peace and quiet, often with tinned peas and chips and gravy. Then one evening, after dinner was over and they were just tipping the tins into the dustbin because of recycling being such a nuisance, the stepmother’s phone buzzed.
Hey, gorgeous, jsyk sin ur Cat-Sick 2day. She lookin 1derful.
She stared at the telephone in disbelief. Cat-Sick. After all this time. Surely, she was dead, or at the very least, abducted by paedophiles. Where on earth could she be, and – her stepmother suppressed a shudder – what if she came back?
She texted quickly.
Cant b Cat-Sick she gon where she at?
FYI she living Corporation St, came the reply. Wiv 7 short blokes says they her fam now.
The stepmother thought quickly.
I no them at 32, she replied. Thnx cul8r.
She put the phone down in despair. Cat-Sick, still alive and well. She could hardly bear to imagine it. They were having such a lovely time without her. Surely, surely, she wouldn’t come back.
She must not come back. Something must be done.
She thought for a little while longer, and finally a plan began to shape in her mind.
The next day, when her husband had gone off for his Community Service litter picking, she rushed to the bottom of the fridge, and there she found exactly what she sought.
There, in the bottom drawer, was a bag of apples.
They were a full week past their sell-by-date.
The stepmother pulled on her Marigolds in case of contamination, and lifted them out with extreme caution. They would be perfect.
Handling them with great care, she packed them in a little rucksack with some dishcloths and shoe brushes. She peeled off her false eyelashes and tucked her hair under a baseball cap and pulled on a worn Adidas jacket. Then she set off for Corporation Street.
Cat-Sick was the sole occupant of Number Thirty Two. She had just finished clearing up the extremely sticky used balloons from the front room floor where the dwarves slept, it being Friday morning, and she was just beginning to think that she would go and talk to some of the mothers at Playgroup about nutritional choices for their children, when the doorbell rang.
There was a man on the doorstep. Well, Cat-Sick thought it was a man, but she tried not to be judgemental about these things, in order not to proffer inadvertent offence.
Now she thought about it, he did have some surprising lumps underneath his worn Adidas jacket, but it was a free and open world for everybody’s own gender experiences, and she hoped she was not forcing anybody into a position of oppressive obligation when it came to meeting society’s unfair expectations.
“Good morning, sir or madam,” she smiled helpfully. “What can I do to help you this morning?”
The stepmother put on her very best Scouse accent.
“Oh, please, good lady of the ‘ouse,” she whined. “I’m trying to get off the dole, see, and I’m supportin’ my fifteen children selling dishcloths. Will you buy one?”
“Certainly not,” said Cat-Sick sharply. “Not unless you can assure me that they have been manufactured in a factory which is in no way exploitative, or employs child labour or does not show respect for women workers. Can you assure me of their provenance?”
“Oh, yes,” promised the stepmother truthfully, “they’re my husband’s old underpants.”
“And are the fabrics responsibly sourced?” insisted Cat-Sick. “I think not today, old sir or madam. Kindly go away. I do not purchase from cold callers and do not think they should be encouraged.”
“Just a minute,” said the stepmother, desperately. “Please, beautiful young lady, let me give you something. For – erm – good luck.”
“I do not think I ought to support superstitious nonsense,” said Cat-Sick, and she was just closing the door when her stepmother stuck her foot in it.
“That’s very judgemental of you,” she snapped. “I ought to have the right to practise my faith in any way I choose. I am hurt and offended by your cold-hearted rejection of me and my entirely valid belief system.”
Cat-Sick was horrified.
“Oh, good sir or madam, I apologise from the very depths of my being,” she gasped. “I would not have harmed your feelings for the very world. Please, show me whatever superstitious junk you wish to share, and I promise I will respond with courtesy and good faith.”
Her stepmother was delighted.
With a flourish, she brought the out-of-date-apple out of her bag, carefully wrapped in half an underpant.
She handed it to Cat-Sick.
“There, beautiful lady,” she said. “Eat that and, umm, good fortune will come to us both.”
Cat-Sick unwrapped it and looked at it doubtfully.
“It’s a bit wrinkly,” she said.’’
“It’s sacred,” said her stepmother triumphantly. “Eat it.”
The toddler from up the road was watching from the pavement, since his mother had gone to meet her probation officer. She had locked the door and told him to bloody well stay out of trouble till she got back, so he had nothing much to do other than look on in horror as Cat-Sick lifted the out-of-date apple to her mouth and took a bite.
He had never seen anybody eat an apple before.
Cat-Sick fell to the ground in a dead-faint.
Her stepmother laughed with exultation, and peeled off the Adidas jacket and baseball cap, in case she bumped into anybody she knew on the way home. She dumped them on the doorstep beside Cat-Sick, and disappeared, on the 427 bus, which happened to be passing at the time.
Cat-Sick lay unconscious on the doorstep for the whole day. Several people passed, but did not interfere, insensible neighbours being not entirely unknown on Corporation Street.
When the seven dwarves got off the bus that evening, they were surprised to be accosted by the toddler from up the road.
“’Ere, misters,” he said, engagingly. “You know that bird you got at your house. Well I fink she’s dead.”
The seven dwarves rushed up the path, and indeed, there lay poor Cat-Sick. Her skin was pale, and her hands were cold, and she showed no signs of life.
“Bugger,” said Tyrion, poking her with the toe of his boot. “What we going to do now?”
“Can’t leave her here,” said Tyrion. “Police’ll be here in no time if we do that.”
“We’re not putting her in the house,” objected Tyrion. “There’s no space for a corpse anywhere. Anyway she’ll start to smell soon. What we going to do.”
“Let’s dump her in the back yard,” suggested Tyrion. “Nobody can see in over the wall. At the end so nobody don’t shit on her by accident.”
“Sounds like a plan,” agreed Tyrion, and so between them they lifted Cat-Sick and dragged her through the house, and out into the back yard, where they laid her out, beside the back gate.
Cat-Sick lay there, still and cold, among the turds and the bits of Tyrion’s old bicycle.
Time passed.
The seven dwarves had not been exactly correct about nobody being able to see into their yard, because in fact several of the neighbours had rather a good view of the end of the yard, from their upstairs windows, and after a week or two people were beginning to talk about it.
Fortunately it was not the sort of place where anybody might have considered writing to their MP to complain about the family with the dead body in the yard, you have to live on a cul-de-sac for that sort of thing to be a serious likelihood.
Certainly it would not have crossed anybody’s mind to call the police.
Still, people talked among themselves, at the bus stop and in the Spar shop and on the stairs to the deck-access, and it was not long before the short blokes at thirty two with the stiff in the yard became quite a talking point.
Time passed.
A week or so later, the editor of the Guardian newspaper, far, far away in London hung up his phone thoughtfully.
London is far, far away from Wigan, and if you are still on your holidays in the Moray Firth, then it is further still. I hope you are having a good time and have packed plenty of warm vests, whatever the season. You might like to pop in and visit Findhorn whilst you are there. They have a splendid bookshop if you are interested in mystical experiences, mostly sustained whilst under the influence of drugs, I imagine.
Anyway, the editor looked around him and bellowed for Leo.
Leo FitzRoy was twenty, and a young recruit to the Guardian’s journalistic apprenticeship scheme, which meant that he was still enthusiastic enough to come running when his name was called.
The editor looked at him appraisingly.
“Got a story come in from Bill Lord, union man in the north. Bit of gossip come his way and thinks it might be bit more than a local story. Place called Wigan. Load of weirdos got a corpse in their garden, been there a couple of weeks and the council not doing anything about it. Like you to go and take a look.”
Leo was surprised.
“Not really our thing, story like that, is it?” he said. “Isn’t it more the Daily Mirror’s sort of project?”
“You can probably get an NHS waiting list angle on it, if you give it a go,” said the editor. “Just go and take a look.”
“I’ve never heard of Wigan,” said Leo. “Where is it?”
“For goodness’ sake, you’re an investigative journalist,” said the editor. “Go and investigate. Look on Google like everyone else.”
“Second star on the left and straight on till morning,” said a sub, smirking. “Better take an umbrella.”
Thus it was that Leo FitzRoy, young, enthusiastic and handsome Guardian journalist, found himself in a second class FirstRail carriage, heading for Wigan.
He was not in the FirstRail carriage for very long. Due to a fault on the line, passengers had to get off at Watford and wait for two hours for a replacement coach. This took them as far as Birmingham New Street, where they waited for a further two hours until a northbound train could be found which still had some room for passengers.
In the end it was the early evening before Leo, tired and cross, got out of Paddy’s taxi, which had cost him the rather surprisingly large amount of £46.50, because of his London accent. He knocked on the door of Number Thirty Two Corporation Street.
Nobody answered. Leo knocked again, and eventually he heard a shuffling on the other side of the door.
Tyrion opened it.
“Ah, umm, good afternoon, short sir,” began Leo. “Or madam, obviously, I mean, do you have a preferred pronoun?”
“Are you from the agency?” asked Tyrion. “None of us in here do pronouns, ‘s a bit out of our league. Maybe it’s the nutter at thirty eight you want.”
“Ah, no, not exactly,” explained Leo. “I’m pretty sure it’s here. You see, I understand you have a dead body in your back yard, and I’d quite like to take a look. It must be very upsetting for you, were there no hospital beds available? I expect you’re quite angry about it by now, and I wondered if we might be able to help.”
Tyrion looked puzzled.
“What is it?” called Tyrion’s voice, from inside.
“Bloke selling pronouns, and going on about Cat-Sick,” explained Tyrion. “You’d better come in,” he added, to Leo.
Leo stepped over the threshold, and ten minutes later he was picking his way gingerly through the back yard, to where the body of Cat-Sick lay, now covered by an old tarpaulin.
“Neighbours kept going on about it,” explained Tyrion. “Thought we’d better cover her up till Tyrion gets round to doing something about her. She hasn’t gone mouldy or nothing.”
Leo pulled back the tarpaulin, and to his astonishment, beneath it lay the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life.
“Oh, my,” he breathed. “Whatever happened?”
“Don’t know,” explained Tyrion. “Just come back from the dog-track the other week and there she was, out cold. Found an Adidas jacket next to her. Tyrion’s wearing it now. It’s a good ‘un.”
“She’s so beautiful,” said Leo, longingly. “So quiet and lovely. What a dreadful thing to happen. Have you spoken to anybody about her?”
Tyrion looked blank. He looked at Tyrion, who shook his head.
“Not yet,” he said. “Sugarbabe Cindy said she might pop round and have a look, popular line, corpses, but she hasn’t been yet.”
“Reckon he likes the look of her,” said Tyrion, and sniggered. “Give her a bit of a tickle, mate, see if she wiggles.”
Leo drew himself up.
“I can absolutely assure you, I would never lay a finger on a girl without being quite certain of her complete and entirely informed consent,” he protested. “Such a thing is a shocking abuse of male privilege, and tantamount to a criminal act. I could not bring myself to do such a thing whilst she is lying helpless.”
“Need to do something,” observed Tyrion. “She’s been there weeks now. Bit of a poking might get her going again.”
“Medical procedure, isn’t it?” agreed Tyrion. “Young lady needs some chap to warm her up a bit. Give it a go, son. I’d volunteer myself, but she’s not my type. I like ‘em with boobs.”
Leo shuddered.
“Somebody needs to do something,” he said, with determination.
“Go for it,” said Tyrion, grinning. “Tell you what, we’re as close to next as kin as she got, we’ll sign a consent form. You can give her any old treatment you like, see if it gets her motor running again. You got our formal permission, mate. Get her turning over and we’ll even buy a pronoun off you.”
Leo gazed at the beautiful face and the still, white hands.
Then, unable to help himself, he leaned over and kissed the soft lips.
Cat-Sick coughed a little, and her eyes flickered open.
She and Leo gazed at one another, and the seven dwarves cheered in their astonishment.
Leo picked her up and carried her back into the house. This was not without difficulty, because although she had become quite slim due to the vegan diet and several weeks under a tarpaulin, he accidentally stood in something which squished on the way, and had to try and wipe his boot discreetly, so as not to spoil the moment.
Of course now you know most of the ending, which is that they lived happily ever after. Cat-Sick went back to London, which she discovered was her true spiritual home, and after a little while, was employed to do her mother’s old job at the BBC. She did not know it was her mother’s old job, but you and I know, which is enough.
Leo asked her if she wanted the Guardian to run an exposé, to be revenged on her stepmother. Cat-Sick thought about it for a while, but eventually decided that it was not necessary. She would, she decided, with a hint of uncharacteristic malice, leave her exactly where she was and she could just wait for the Government’s levelling up project to get started.
That would be punishment enough.
Have a safe journey back down from the Moray Firth.
- There were no Urban Wars, obviously. It is an Assonance.