BEING SLOW OFF THE MARK

Now then, who's the prime minister in this little piece of insanity?

I was slow off the mark, and knew it.

The girl was ravishing ... there could be no doubt about that ... and she said she thought I was a sprout. There’s nothing nicer than being called a sprout by a ravishing girl with long golden tresses of magical hair, breasts to die for ... and a smile made of honey.

Sprouts and honey … that’s what I call some combination. Like black treacle and pork chops. Delicious, if you like that sort of thing, which I don’t.

But I was slow off the mark, and she strolled off, into the shadows where all sorts of nightmares lurk, and there was only one thing I could think of doing, and that was following her.

She sauntered round a blurred corner, hand in hand with an octopus, and being hand in hand with one of those fellows is being over-occupied, you can take it from me, I was watching her….

Things are likely to get weird, I thought pessimistically, and they were.

The girl from my dreams ambled into a corner house and closed the door behind her. It would have been okay by me but that corner house had a big sign over the door, one that read “PRIME MINISTERS ONLY” and I’ve always been one for obeying signs, so, not being any kind or prime minister, I kept the legal side of the door and settled down to wait for her to come back out. Fortunately I had a blanket to sit on because the ground was both cold and hard. I could take the cold and I could take the hard, but put the two together…?

It was a long wait … a fortnight or so at my best reckoning … and when she came back out she had changed.

Of course she had, you might say, a fortnight’s a long time to wear the same clothes without changing out of them! But it was more than her togs she had changed. Her hair was a different colour, not the long fluid blond I had first noticed but a sort of dark almost misogynistic charcoal colour, and her smooth skin had become wrinkled and tarnished as if with stupendous age. Yet she was still ravishing, and I loved her.

She was still in the company of an octopus, but it was dead. Very dead as it happens, and smelling foully of dead fish like you’d expect a deceased octopus to smell. Yet she held it affectionately by the hand and walked on, not even casting a single glance in my direction. You know, I might as well not have been there for all she was bothered, and I am a pauper, you know, not that being one of those should be an obstacle. After a few yards she paused, and I had to struggle to prevent myself from standing up to follow her because the last thing I wanted was for her to think I was stalking her, because I wasn’t. Following isn’t stalking. Is it?

“Just let me go,” complained the dead octopus, and she stared at it with what I can only call a vindictive expression on her lovely face.

“Why?” she asked in a voice so clear I could hear its every cadence, not that there were too many cadences, not in a single querulous word.

“Because I want to rest in peace,” replied the octopus in a voice I could only describe as dead. Yes, the dead octopus had a dead voice, and that was, I suppose, only to be expected.

Trying to remain insignificant, inconspicuous and quite ordinary I gathered my blanket surreptitiously to me and struggled to stand up. Now, you will realise, I hope, that when a fellow’s been sitting on a blanket which is the only thing between his own bony bottom and a cold, hard surface it might take a bit of time and oohing and owing and general groaning before he feels comfortable again.

The delectable angel must have heard because she turned and looked at me and scowled in a beautiful way.

“Are you stalking me?” she asked, “is that what you’re doing, you scruffy little very ordinary man?”

“Of course I am!” I replied, “who wouldn’t want to stalk such a ravishingly beautiful creature with breasts to die for and hair like cascading … like cascading … like cascading coal,” I answered weakly

“I mercy me,” she cackled. “Then I’ll give you a ride!”

Maybe it was only natural for a lonely fellow like me to misunderstand the context of her use of the word “ride” because I immediately assumed she meant I could couple with her in an act of delicious carnality so I started undoing my flies, but no, that wasn’t her meaning at all.

From under her voluminous skirts she produced an old fashioned besom broom and, grabbing me by my lapels, forced me to sit on it. And aching cheeks are far from conducive to a healthy sex life, you can take it from me!

I’d never sat on a broomstick before, and this one was knobbly and made my withered posterior cheeks ache within seconds of them being on it.

“Sit still!” she commanded.

“You better had,” urged the dead octopus, “you most certainly better had! She can be a harridan when she’s riled!”

“This is becoming a nightmare,” I murmured softly into her ear, hoping she would interpret the soft tone of my voice as something affectionately becoming.

“Becoming?” she asked. “Why becoming?”

“Because it feels that way,” I replied frankly.

“You’re a cuckoo!” exclaimed the long deceased and decomposing octopus, one of its eyes falling out and landing on the cold, hard ground with a squelch.

“You could do with my blanket,” I told it.

The angel of my dreams shook her head and along with a few dozen crinkly grey hairs a handful of lice fell out and landed on the ground, protesting their innocence. The octopus took one languid look at them through its remaining eye and finally decomposed completely.

“I wondered when he’d get up of following me,” sighed my angel, unbuttoning her blouse so that the fresh air could get at her gnarled bosom, “come on, beloved one, we’re off!”

And we were. On the broomstick into the sky where, somewhere or other, and somehow, one world collided into another and, mercifully, the adorable maiden became a witch and I transmogrified into her cat, sitting in front of her on the stalky bit of her broomstick with the wind in my face and her horrendous cackle, just behind me, splitting the sky for ever.

“That’s better than politics,” I whispered, and she cackled again.

© Peter Rogerson 04.12.16