Letters Never Sent IV

 

To recap, as of 21st August, 2014, I adopted the practice of saying exactly what I felt needed to be said when engaging with others through social media, and then not saying it, deleting the words I'd written in the comment box, the email or whatever, having copied them to a notebook document on my word processor. This, I find, has saved a lot of arguments because it gets it out of my system without my having to point out that the person with whom I am attempting communication is full of shit. It also leaves the other party free to continue subscribing to whatever bollocks inspired my response. I've taken great pleasure in composing some of the responses which follow and find many of them entertaining in their own right. You may disagree. Too bad. It's been a quiet week. You'll read it and be thankful.

I didn't like the Tory party when they were shitting directly into my open mouth and then sending me a bill for it, and I don't like the fuckers now.

***

Hooray. The two sappiest things I loathe more than anything else once again combined into a twinkly Kinkade-esque whole by holding a flashlight beneath ones chin whilst listening to a Cure record (and not the good one either, which was Faith, by the way). This could only be improved by the addition of a soundtrack by Murray Gold.

***

Clearly I had my wires crossed, for which I apologise. In the event of my detecting a slightly defensive tone here, I might remind you of occasionally sweeping statements you have yourself made about Americans with guns, with particular emphasis on Texas (as I recall, you told me I was misinformed, despite my actually living here).

***

Yes I know Adolf has a lot of detractors but goddammit will you just look at what that no good Goebbels is doing for a second. The man described drinking bleach as an interesting idea, and I've watched the clip and no, he wasn't joking. He said it because he's a moron and was genuinely impressed at having had a thought, which was still a bad thing last time I looked - not simply a different state of mind. He's not qualified to look after an elementary class let alone a country because he's a moron. He doesn't understand basic stuff. I don't get what extenuating circumstances mean that this doesn't have to be the end of the argument. For what it's worth I don't really trust any of them, but having one who can at least tie his own shoelaces would seem preferable. Please pardon my admittedly indirect response.

***

Poot was the only one I liked, to be honest, and the only one which didn't feel like a Viz cash-in to me, and Jon Marks remains my all-time favourite cartoonist for that sort of thing, above even the Viz kids. If Viz was the Beano then Poot was Buttons. All I can remember of Brain Damage was Everard Headbutt or something like that.

***

I have no problem with the guy, just that one particular book because it's crap, lazy and features emo Time Lord teenagers just like Buffy on the telly, among other boringly obvious things, the sins of which may well have been down to Anghelides for all I know (although if they were, I guess Cole didn't see them as sins); and I probably tend to overreact due to all those years wasted on Gallifrey Base getting into arguments with idiots who can't tell the difference between writing and merely having a particular logo on the cover. Favourite example, in the Who books section a few years ago regarding Señor 105:

I'm curious, but aren't they a bit pulpy?

What the fuck? You mean as distinct from all those Schopenhauer-esque adventures of that mysterious traveller in time and space known only as blah blah blah? This is why I avoid anything describing itself as fandom, and particularly forums.

***

As a resident of Texas, I've been suffering from hero-overload for a while now. Sorry to hear it's happening over there too.

***

Most of the comments relating to the murder of George Floyd I've seen thus far this morning seem to be thoughts and prayers for the guy who owns Target, so I'm shutting up about it from this point on because it's clearly a waste of time. If you're sat there feeling upset about the welfare of millionaires, then there's no reason for us to know each other.

***

Ah yes, the bunch a certain self-important Who twat and professional north described as charming before flapping off to post about writing She Ra fan fiction and making it as gay as possible, apparently so as to teach me a lesson for describing Bronies as a bunch of arseholes due to my being a fully grown man.

***

Also, the logic of I'm now definitely going to vote for Trump because some libtards/snowflakes/lefties called me names on facebook suggests, Maria, that you probably shouldn't be left in care of animals or children, let alone anywhere near a voting booth. Perhaps if you make some effort to achieve cognitive abilities closer to those of an adult, you might find life not only easier but a lot less frustrating and be less inclined to lash out at strangers as you've done here. You're welcome.

***

I respectfully suggest there are many, many reasons why people dislike, even loathe Trump which, to dismiss as hatred or even media brainwashing is 1) somewhat insulting and 2) additionally suggests a fairly basic inability to understand either people as a whole or any findings which conflict with one's worldview.

***

I've never been wild about the north of England, I'm afraid - excepting a few stretches of breathtaking landscape. Every single day I've spent north of Birmingham has been characterised by people telling me how down to earth and friendly they are, over and over, and how much they hate everyone from the south (too fancy, unfriendly etc. etc.). It's the only place I've ever been where people introduce and then immediately volunteer information about themselves like characters in Chigley. My name is PC Scuffer and I like to arrest people and put them in jail.

***

I'm sceptical. Had they ever done so much as bought a Medway hamburger to share between the four of them I'm sure they would have been mentioned on every third page of that book about music in Medway, the one which mentions Tim Webster once and the Libertines about a million times.

***

I must admit I was sceptical of your statements here, Mike, but having looked at your page and seen the flags - the ISIS one in flames and the confederate thing, I realise that you're a man who thinks for himself, who looks beyond the headlines, and who follows no leader but the truth. What food for thought you have provided here today.

 

***

A lot of this seems difficult to predict, but these are as good as guesses as any, I'm sure. One element which I don't know whether you're really seeing over there, is the sheer level of contempt for Trump which seems very much out in the open and widespread in a way which it hasn't been during the last four years. Even Fox News has been giving him funny looks from time to time.

***

For fuck's sake, equating Stalinism with Marx is like equating Hitler with Darwin, even though I appreciate that it's nice because it fits the argument wherein Nazis somehow aren't the bad guys. Where in Das Kapital does Marx propose an upside down hierarchy? (and God how that sounds like something a nine-year old would come out with, see also reverse vampires). The idea is akin to Hitler cackling over how evil he's been. Books and angry nutters ranting on YouTube channels are not the same thing.

***

I know. That's why I'm not an advocate of everyone having guns just because, or even anyone necessarily having guns. You asked a question so I answered in conversational spirit. I didn't realise there would be homework too.

***

Nothing more Texas than being run off the road by a big beautiful pick-up because some yahoo just can't get from A to B without doing it in something that's fifteen foot wide resembling a super-inflated child's toy that should probably have a twenty foot bright green bunny sticking up from the rear to go with those cute fat tyres designed for off-roading but which mostly just take our boy down to the store for another case of fizzy kid's drink beer.

***

While being reluctant to stir anything up, I had a look at his page upon which 1) he's now crowing about having been unfriended, because apparently that means he was right, and 2) he gives his location as King's Lynn, Norfolk, which tells me everything else I need to know about the guy.

***

Someone once submitted my name in the fan art category of the Hugo Awards. I'm not sure I've actually spoken to him since.

Merry Christmas Again

He spent Christmas in rehab, a whole month on doctor's orders. This is because the doctor claimed that he almost died four times during treatment. The treatment began immediately following his having been flown back from Mexico. He went to Mexico for a week, on his own and apparently spent the entire time drinking. Given his recent medical history, it sounded a little like a suicide attempt on some level, going out in a blaze of boozy glory, that sort of thing.

He's not a bad guy but he's obviously an alcoholic. He's younger than me, and yet his eyes are going and he's had two hip replacements. His optic nerves were somehow not long enough and were being stretched to capacity within his skull, requiring expensive and complicated surgery, one at a time with the eyelid sewn shut so as to allow the eyeball to recover. Even without the inherited propensity for alcoholism, you can see why the man might drink.

So he was in rehab until after Christmas and we figured that at least we'll be spared the usual dog and pony show; but no. He's out, he's not drinking, he's attending AA, and he wants to do Christmas this Saturday even though it's January.

Well okay.

It will be just us - the boy and his three parents. I'm the stepfather in this picture.

He looks well, or at least better than last time, given that I don't have much contact with the man. He still seems a lot bigger than has been commemorated by my mental model, formed around ten years ago; but he's actually mobile, walking without crutches, and his face has returned to ordinary human complexion. Last time we met, he looked about ten years my senior but I guess rehab has done him some good. Nevertheless, his head seems big and round, almost like a puffer fish, and with that downturned mouth I can't help imagining fins sprouting from just below his ears and his head swimming away, glub-glub-glubbing up towards the ceiling like something from a nightmarish version of Finding Nemo.

Being heir to a fortune, he's never wanted for helpers and hangers on, and this once omnipresent entourage seem at least partially responsible for his drink problem. He's a social guy, an entertainer, kind of an arsehole but one that's very, very difficult to dislike no matter what he does because at the heart of it, he really does have the best of intentions. This is why he's big on Christmas and why we're having this belated version, because even before rehab he had a closet full of stuff he'd bought for people, for more or less anyone he ever said hello to; and the problem is that he wasn't around to wrap any of it so the wrapping was delegated to one of the entourage. She wrapped everything in the closet, including things he'd bought for himself but never got around to taking out of the box, things for the kitchen and so on; and with no clue as to who any of the legitimate presents had been intended for. We have a tree with a pile of boxes in wrapping paper at the base. He knows some of them by shape, but mostly it's a mystery. We're just going to have to open them all.

He really doesn't need to buy me anything - not least because I'm the guy who nicked his wife, for fuck's sake - but he always does, and it's usually something English because I'm from England. This year it's teabags - a gift set of artisan teabags, Earl Grey and all the usual suspects.

'You still drink tea, don't you?' he asks, concerned.

'Yes,' I smile broadly like Ralphie in A Christmas Story - probably twice a year but never mind.

He always buys my wife hot sauce and novelty corn holders. The novelty corn holders are in sets of eight - plastic things you stick on the ends of a corn cob while eating so as to circumnavigate the misery of greasy fingers. We have a garage full of the fucking things because, as with tea, we probably eat corn from the cob maybe twice a year. The hot sauce is usually of the kind consumed by idiots on YouTube who treat it as a competition. It's the kind of thing with which one might spice one's fajita if you have tattoos and don't really give a shit about flavour. I remember once trying a few drops from a bottle of something called Total Insanity and it rendered my taco fully inedible. It may as well have been bleach.

He always buys my wife corn holders and hot sauce for a joke, the joke being that he always buys my wife corn holders and hot sauce; but not this year.

We open books about animals and marine life - which turn out to be for the kid - no less than four life jackets, and a variety of blenders and kitchen utensils, none of which had actually been purchased as Christmas gifts. It has been a thoroughly bewildering morning, and less than a week later I can't remember what anyone got, aside from the teabags and books; but it was still better than the scheduled version, with neither hot sauce nor corn holders anywhere to be seen.

Frankly, we're all just glad that he's alive.

The Walk

A couple of years ago my wife and I went to a talk given by Danny Trejo. Amongst that which he shared with us was a piece of advice - if you have children, make the effort to peel the tablets, laptops and smartphones from their faces and go walking with them, just once a week. Make it a regular thing, a local park or out in the country or wherever so they will at least have something to look back on which didn't require an internet connection, now that the family evening meal is apparently a thing of the past.

It seemed like good advice. We tried it once or twice and then fell out of the habit, which was a shame because it had been fun.

We're now almost a year into the pandemic, which hasn't made a lot of difference to me, but working from home has made a big difference to my wife - specifically that she's not keen on it; and a huge difference to my stepson who, to put it diplomatically, is now a different shape to what he was this time last year due to his schooling having occured under the exact same conditions as everything else he does, and almost everything else he does is game related, punctuated with two or three daily trips to the kitchen for hot dogs, noodles or diet soda. Therefore, during one of my infrequent - or what I hope are infrequent - non-specific meltdowns brought on by the general crapness of whatever was bothering me that month - my customary and another thing coda focused on Junior, specifically on his recent Cyril Smithification, as I believe is the recognised medical term. I don't care what the weather is like, I probably fumed, every fucking Sunday like we said we'd do whether we feel like it or not, and no exceptions to the rule. This ends here.

I didn't actually say this ends here because it's something generic action heroes in shit films tend to say when their dialogue is written by someone with no actual talent, but had I done so, this would have referred to the kid's lack of exercise; and the maddening fact that he's clearly well aware of needing more exercise, or at least some exercise, or at least that his Cyril Smithification can hardly be viewed as a positive development, and yet he does nothing about it of his own volition; although to be fair that's probably because he's a kid and that's how they work. Anyway, the point is that it was clearly down to us to get things moving.

Our first few outings were to Salado Creek, and the very first one was to the wild stretch between Nacogdoches and Wetmore. The boy was taking part in some birdwatching exercise organised online by the local zoo, at which he volunteered back before the pandemic. Kids all over the city would be spending the day outside, then checking back with lists of all the birds they'd spotted, and our boy is particularly fond of lists and nature, so any chance to combine the two and he's first in the queue. We stopped off at Walmart to buy wellington boots so as to reduce the possibility of being killed by poisonous snakes while crashing around in the wilderness, then headed off for Ladybird Johnson trailhead. From there we walked the length of Morningstar Boardwalk - which is about a mile - then went off road, so to speak. Being a creek, the land is prone to intermittent flooding punctuated by spells sufficiently dry as to allow for everything to turn into meadows and woodland, albeit meadows and woodland of a wild and uneven composition. We spent about thirty minutes making slow progress through the long grass, doing our best to avoid potholes while spotting birds, by which point the kid said he was exhausted, with some justification, and so we came home.

More recently, now that it's become a regular feature of our Sunday afternoon, we've stuck to the boardwalk, adding a couple of hundred yards each time before we turn back, so we're nearly at Wetmore where the trail dips under both the highway and the railroad. I can write railroad without it being an affectation because I live in America. The boy has theorised that we'll eventually make it to the Canadian border before we turn back, although hopefully he'll have moved out by that point, even if only to a retirement home.

After a couple of trips to the boardwalk, working up to a distance of about three miles, we switched to the land bridge at Phil Hardberger Park, mainly because they'd just finished building the thing and we wanted to see what it was like. It's essentially a field built across the top of a highway so as to allow deer and other critters to cross from one bit of park to another. Unfortunately, half of San Antonio had the same idea so it felt a bit like a cinematic exodus of some description, as though we were all going to see where the saucer had landed. Our first expedition to Phil Hardberger Park, some years before, was distinguished by our progress being momentarily halted by a massive snake crossing the path. It was about ten foot long, or something in the vicinity, and was taking its time. My wife still swears that it looked thoroughly inconvenienced by us, and I provisionally gave the snake the name of Snakey, for the sake of argument. Our first expedition to Phil Hardberger Park is therefore remembered as the time we met Snakey the snake, so this latest occasion was a bit underwhelming.

Last weekend we switched to Holbrook Road, which actual runs parallel to Salado Creek for a couple of miles. We parked by the Thai place on Rittiman, then walked down the feed road to Holbrook, mainly so we could look at the goats in the adjacent field. The male may be the biggest goat I've ever seen, and they were hanging out with a donkey on this occasion. Naturally this inspired the kid to one of his monologues - fun facts relating to goats, each one interspersed with a pause then let me see, what else is there? Most of it is stuff my wife and I already know on account of the fact that we both went to school, but occasionally he'll throw up something we hadn't heard before; plus it's nice that he's actually interested in something.

We pass the Black Swan Inn. 'Can you guess what happened there?' my wife asks.

I assume she's referring to the battle of Salado Creek which is commemorated and described by a stone memorial just on the other side of the inn's driveway, but I say nothing.

The kid doesn't know.

'That's where your dad and I got married.'

She means her first husband, obviously. I've seen the photos of the wedding, which occurred even before I owned a passport, let alone had any idea that I would end up living in Texas.

The kid mentions something about how swans are able to break a human arm.

'Here come the swan facts,' I say, but no-one hears me.

The boy tells us about swans for the next fifteen minutes. I don't really mind because the dispensation of information is what he enjoys most, even when we already knew what he's just told us; and I know he's begun to look forward to these Sunday outings, just as Danny Trejo promised; and because we know that one day we'll all be glad we did this, because we're glad that we're doing it right now.

Tony

Maisie, our second rabbit, died on Friday, roughly two months after Charlie, our first rabbit. We both felt terrible beyond my ability to describe how we felt. On Saturday we went to a plant nursery. I bought a small pot of rosemary and an esperanza plant with which to mark Maisie's grave. I'd marked the place where I buried Charlie with a chrysanthemum and one of the small wild petunias which grow hereabouts and which he liked to eat - something for him to munch on in the bunny afterlife, I told myself.

I buried Maisie on the north side of our garden because there wasn't much room near Charlie. Taking her little body from the carrier in which she'd come back from the vet and placing it in the ground nearly killed me. As with Charlie, I covered her grave with small stones, like a tiny cairn, so as to discourage anything which might try to dig her up but also to channel water to the roots of the rosemary and the esperanza to some extent. Maisie had liked rosemary when we gave it to her.

This left us with an empty hutch sat in the front room, lifeless and silently reminding us of death. Could we not have done something more for our rabbit? it seemed to ask. We could move the hutch out onto the back porch, but it would still pose the same horrible question; as I had built the thing myself, we weren't chucking it away; but it wasn't going to be a problem.

Someone on facebook had sent Bess a message. The woman had found a baby rabbit and was unable to look after him. She had two large dogs and desperately need to find a home for Tony. We already liked the name she'd given him, so on Sunday we drove out to Westover Hills. The woman came to the door with the bunny in her hands. He was tiny, about three months old and mostly white with black spots, a hotot like Charlie had been; and the patch on his nose resembles the silhouette of a bunny. She had found him at some fast food joint, presumably dumped as they always seem to be.

We could hear a little boy crying elsewhere in the house along with dogs barking.

'He doesn't want to let Tony go,' the woman said as I took this tiny bundle of fluff from her and held him to me. He looked a little bewildered, but not unhappy.

A small tearful boy came to the door, red-faced.

'You can come and visit whenever you like,' I said.

'Mom, can we go and see Tony?' the child pleaded.

'Sure, we can.'

'We like the name too,' I added. 'So he's still going to be Tony.'

'That was his idea,' the woman said smiling at her child. 'It's short for Antonio.'

'Antonio,' I laughed. 'I like it.'

'As in San Antonio,' she explained with a roll of her eyes.

We'd bought a pet carrier but Tony sat on my chest for the entire journey home, seeming neither skittish nor particularly spooked by this whole experience. He settled in fine, and learned to ascend the stepped ramp in his hutch within about four hours where it took Charlie about a week. He learned how to hop up onto the couch almost straight away and has already made friends with most of the cats. Junior sent photos of Tony to all of his friends, one of whom commented that Tony's bunny-shaped nose patch is sort of like me getting a picture of myself tattooed on my face.

We'll never forget Charlie or Maisie and we still miss them every day, but Tony is helping.

Maisie

Maisie was our second rabbit. She turned up in the garden of some friend of my wife. They weren't able to catch her so they called us, because apparently we're bunny experts now. The thing was, they were moving and the new occupants were bringing a couple of large dogs with them. Bess went over and said that Maisie hopped right up to her.

We already had one rabbit, namely Charlie, so we kept Maisie in the growing frame in which we'd kept Charlie while I was building him a hutch. Charlie had been named Maisie until we realised he was a boy, and Bess had liked the name. I'd made the growing frame of wood and chicken wire so it was fairly hutch-like anyway. Charlie was male and hadn't been fixed, and Maisie was female so we had to keep them separate. Occasionally they would snoof each other through the chicken wire, and I imagined a happy future for the two of them playing together outside, hopping about in the run and doing bunny stuff once they had been fixed; but as I wrote in Farewell to Charlie, it wasn't to be.

Charlie's death was devastating, but Maisie helped us through the worst of it. That said, we were worried about her. She had pasteurella, a respiratory condition in rabbits which can either be fatal or never really amount to anything, but is something they're stuck with and which can be passed on if they have it. She suffered sneezing fits and seemed to be putting on weight only very slowly. She was about eight months old when we got her, so the vet had reckoned. Her fur was a testimony to her time spent living rough and the individual vertebrae of her spine could be felt in her back.

A month or so passed and it seemed like she was sneezing less and less, and she started to fill out and seemed happier until, one day I noticed I could no longer feel the knobbly bits of her spine, and her fur was softer, and she seemed livelier and would tear around like crazy in the run outside, sometimes so fast she'd popcorn up into the air, as it's termed. She had about two good weeks, then we heard a sneeze. Her appetite went right down and she seemed listless.

Bess took her to the emergency vet and came back with a course of antibiotics. It was an infection of some description. Another couple of days passed and we found blood in her urine. Bess found another vet specialising in bunnies, because we weren't going back to the fuckers who had killed Charlie.

The vet said it was her heart. It stopped and started, which was unknown. They x-rayed her and found her insides were all messed up, congenital deformities of such severity that it seemed incredible that she could have lasted so long as she did. She was probably never destined to have a long or happy life.

Two months after Charlie, at the close of an unusally shitty year, this really stuck it in and twisted it around.

She helped us though the death of Charlie. She was a delight and had a completely different personality to him, more gentle and she liked to run up my chest and lick my nose with her tongue, which was weird but adorable.

She was our chocolate bunny and she was beautiful.

Brad and Tabitha

Every Tuesday evening we feed feral cat colonies in our part of San Antonio. It's a voluntary thing on behalf of our local Feral Cat Coalition, which is an official body recognised by the city. It has been established that it's better to stabilise feral cat colonies than to just round them up and gas them, as certain joyless cunts seem to think would be preferable. Stable colonies are easier to neuter and prevent incursion by wilder, un-neutered cats. Our local colonies are mostly tended by Susan and Randy, who do a lot for the local feral cats and deserve at least one night off a week, so that's where we come in.

We have seven colonies we visit, leaving food and water at each. It takes about half an hour at most. There's a colony on our route at an apartment complex which we don't touch because a local cat-hating nutcase has occasionally threatened Randy and Susan with a firearm. They didn't feel comfortable about asking us to cover that spot.

Nevertheless, we've had a similar flare up elsewhere, albeit one without any firearms. The colony is usually referred to as the double gates. It's waste ground behind a chain link fence with locked gates. The owner let us have a key so we could get in and feed the cats - one of the larger colonies, ten cats or maybe more. Unfortunately the land has been sold, so now we have to feed the cats on the verge in front of the fence because no-one seems to know what the new owner is doing; but it's a quiet street so it isn't a problem, or it wasn't.

We park on the verge and get out. Bess has milk containers filled with water. I have a bucket of dry cat food and a scoop. We stumble into the bushes to find the usual spot as black cats emerge from all around. We stumble because it's seven in the evening in November and is dark, and America doesn't seem to have gone for street lighting with quite the same enthusiasm as my country of origin.

'You shun't be feeding those cats,' we hear yelled from a house across the road, and yelled loud because he wants us to hear. He sounds drunk. 'Y'all are idiots.'

Bess and I are both shocked. We didn't expect this. I experience a sudden adrenaline rush, getting ready for a fight. 'Oh fuck off,' I call back, because it's cold, dark, and I'm not shouting the entire first paragraph across a street at someone I don't know.

'Y'all are encouraging wild animals and vermin,' he bellows with more feeling. I guess he didn't expect to be told to fuck off. Over the months, we've worked out how much food to dish out so that the cats get fed without leaving any surplus, but it hardly seems worth arguing the point.

Now his wife joins in. 'Y'all should be getting them neutered not feeding them. Y'alls are idiots!'

I can see where the house is but I'm concentrating on dishing out the food and getting out of there. Bess later tells me the two of them are hanging out of a window as they shout at us.

'We do get them neutered!' I call back.

We don't personally, but Randy and Susan handle that side of things fairly regularly. The problem at the moment is the coronavirus outbreak has limited the availability of spaces at animal clinics for those participating in the trap-neuter-return program. Anyway, the point is that the cats are neutered, even if it's not all of them or straight away.

'We do get them neutered!' I called back, in case you had forgotten.

'No y'alls don't!' bellows the male voice. It's hardly what you'd call a coherent refutation.

'Okay,' I say.

Stupidity makes me angry, because there's been too much of it on display this year, and often somehow presented as a mark of character. I shout back. My voice probably wavers and cracks but I'm past caring. 'We feed the cats. We trap then when we're able. We neuter them but it doesn't happen all at once,' I yell, or something to that effect, then add, 'it's not that fucking hard to understand, you stupid wanker.'

This is how I remember the exchange, but the moment was heated. In any case, by this point we're done. We get back into the car and head for the next colony. Later we pass the house and take their license plate. Bess engages in her usual detective work.

Their names are Brad and Tabitha. They're renting. One of them was born in 1985 but I can't remember which one. They're both sort of young, or younger than we are. Cops were recently called to a disturbance. They were both drunk, Brad sat on the porch, Tabitha out in the yard yelling about how she has the best vagina in all San Antonio - or words to that effect - and somebody had better come and get some of it, an address delivered as the kid, or possibly kids, looked on with their father. They've been yelling at Randy and Susan too, it turns out.

I'm dreading our next encounter, but the house is dark and silent the following Tuesday, and the same the one after that. They've also left Randy and Susan alone.

Maybe it's not that fucking hard to understand shamed them into behaving themselves, although it seems unlikely.

Peter Roger's Alien

'What? You want me to go in there?' Albert Twiddle's nostrils flared behind his visor as he pointed ahead with a gloved hand. 'You must be joking!' Beyond the alien arch lay a murky interior, fog shrouding a floor space covered in something fungal, something grown - row upon row of fleshy spheres looming up from the mist in neatly ordered lines.

Sergeant Rumpo rolled his eyes and took another puff on his fag. 'Oh for Pete's sake,' he expectorated as his domed helmet once again filled with a pearl grey cloud, obscuring his vision. There was a whir of servomotors as the suits systems sucked out the smoke, revealing him now blinking and red-eyed. 'I don't know what you think we're paying you for, Twiddle, because it certainly ain't your sunny disposition. Now do your job and get in there and have a butcher's for us like a good boy.' He grinned a wrinkled grin and patted Twiddle on the head.

'I'll thank you to keep your filthy hands off my helmet. I shall be speaking to my union rep about this.'

'Oh blimey.' The Sergeant shook his head, and pressed the stud upon his chest unit which redirected his radio communications. 'Bernard, I believe one of your colleagues would like a word, if you can spare a moment.'

A third man trudged up from behind, from where the rest of the team were milling around the loading ramp of the drop ship. He stood almost seven feet tall, dark piercing eyes in a great bald dome of a head glaring down from behind his visor. 'What?'

Twiddle pulled himself up to his full height, which failed to make much of a difference. 'He wants me to go traipsing around in that, that,' - he flapped his hands towards the arch - 'whatever that is.'

'So?'

'There might be something horrible lurking in there. I don't like the look of it. Something might get hold of me.'

'You should be so flipping lucky!' The Sergeant dispensed laughter, hyak hyak hyak, which seemed to hang in the air - or at least the ambient methane-hydrogen mix - like an expensive cheese.

The seven-foot man turned to Rumpo. 'I thought you was going to tell me he had a complaint about the tea in the canteen.' He went back to Twiddle, his giant face suddenly taling on the appearance of an anxious child. 'Here - you ain't got a problem with the tea, have you?'

'The tea is perfectly adequate,' Twiddle reported with a trace of acid. 'What concerns me more is the possibility of extraterrestrial ghoulies.'

'Don't they like the tea in the canteen?' Bernard turned as though to address those behind him, although they were all still back at the ship, several hundred yards away. 'Brothers, it is with great regret—'

'Oh put a sock in it!' The Sergeant pressed another stud on his chest unit, this time cutting radio communications to the taller man, whose mouth now opened and closed in silence as he continued to hector an oblivious audience like a huge pink goldfish in a bowl he'd long since outgrown.

Rumpo rounded on Twiddle once again, the face behind the visor wrinkling with resolve. 'Now you get in there and do your job like you're paid to do, or it won't be the extraterrestrial ghoulies you have to worry about.'

'No need to be like that.' Twiddle stepped back a few paces, shocked by the vehemence of the command.

'And tie your blooming laces,' Rumpo added. 'If there's ghoulies, you might at least try to make a good impression!'

Twiddle turned and stood staring at the arch, then stepped forward with a shrug. He'd been down the Bayswater Road on a Saturday evening, and whatever lay ahead could hardly be worse. As he walked beneath the arch, his booted feet entered the low level mist into which he began to sink as he went down a slight incline towards the rows of spherical growths. Another step and his foot caught on something. He stumbled then quickly righted himself.

'Oh fiddlesticks!'

Remembering his untied lace, he gazed down into the mist now swirling about his knees. Just behind, one of the fleshy orbs projected its wrinkled peak. There was something horribly familiar about the folded skin - and Twiddle realised he was now thinking of it as skin, or at least something akin to a reptilian hide. It seemed almost to glow and pulse from within, but it was difficult to be sure, peering through the visor with one's own fizzog reflected back like in the hall of mirrors at a funfair.

He shrugged, sat down, and sank his gloved hands into the mist, feeling for the errant lace. He could hear voices raised in the communications relay within his helmet, something about readings, signs of life, and Lieutenant Dimple complaining about his blooming waterworks as usual. The man really was dreadful. Heaven knows what use they thought he'd be out here so far from Earth.

As Twiddle felt the lace through the tech-sensitised fingers of his space gloves, he failed to notice tremors running through that upon which he was sat, mainly due to the thick padding in the rear of his space suit. Then suddenly, all within the margin of a split second, he found himself unseated and propelled violently forward as something horribly biological resembling a crab forcibly set up shop inside his bottom.

'Oh my word!' he expectorated violently, mouth twisting and eyes bulging as though trying to escape the confines of his head.

***

Bernard looked up from his spotted dick as applause rippled around the canteen. Twiddle came in, helped by Nurse Jeffries. He was walking a bit funny, which was hardly surprising under the circumstances, but he seemed to be wearing a faint smile.

'Blimey! We all thought you was a goner!' Bernard hooted, getting up to pull back a chair so that his colleague could sit. 'You should have seen that thing, it was right up—'

'It wouldn't be the first time, believe me.' Twiddle batted the air with a dismissive hand. He sat, still evidently fragile. 'What a palaver. I could eat a horse!'

'I think it's sausage and chips today.'

'How are you, boy?' Sergeant Rumpo came up behind to deliver a hearty slap on the back. 'All ship shape, I hope?'

'Please,' said Twiddle. 'I'd rather not think about anything nautical just now if it's all the same.'

'Here you are, love.' Nurse Jeffries set a tray down before her patient. 'Eat it all now, got to keep your strength up.'

'I'd rather not think about anything being kept up, either,' Twiddle groaned. 'Thank you, Joan. Very kind, I'm sure.'

Bernard watched his colleague tucking in. 'The grub's very good today,' he said happily. 'Miss Rhubarb certainly knows her way around a sausage.'

'That's what I've heard too,' Sergeant Rumpo added with a chuckle, sending a wrinkled wink across the room to where the Chef was clearing away a serving tray of toad in the hole.

Twiddle submitted a demure belch to the conversation, such as it was, with a slightly pained look upon his face. 'Oh dear. I don't like the sound of that.'

'Manners,' said Rumpo.

Twiddle clutched his stomach with a look of horror. 'Oh my goodness. It must be something I've eaten.'

'Well, you been in bed with a space lobster stuck to your harris since Tuesday,' explained Bernard helpfully, although not so helpful as he clearly imagined. 'Nurse Jeffries brought you stew and dumplings last night but I don't fink you had none of it.'

'Nothing wrong with Miss Rhubarb's dumplings,' added Rumpo.

'What's that about my dumplings?' called the Chef from across the canteen, a frown having made its way onto her brow.

'Nothing,' the Sergeant called back. 'We was just saying how nice they are.'

'Oh crikey,' wailed Twiddle as an extraterrestrial ghoulie effected its entrance by means of his exit.