Excerpt 122:

Women and Children First

It looked like a staged scene, everyone waiting for the clap of the clapperboard for proceedings to begin, but it was a gavel’s strike struck by the recumbent mayor that initiated affairs, the moment the last tray of empty dishes had been removed by community service locals, clad in rakishly humiliating uniforms with lipstick grins painted on their faces; this wasn’t physically actual or literal in any way, but a metaphorical example of the big D’s attitude to whom he saw as the little people of Great Sudlow-On-Russet. As perceived from an eerie of a giant ear that heard everything, lined with saw dust…etcetera…ad infinitum…

Lord Draco was advisored up, levering himself upright in bed, adjusting himself and the pillows into a nest-like agreement of fleshy-boned pillowship. It was early and the conspiring dark occupying the other side of the windows was being called back to whence it came via a lingering that suggested an intention to catch and gather snippets of the conversational chatter that was about to be aired. 

‘The people, per se, are revolting,’ Draco ensplurged, Dracolike, revealing more about himself than the duvet ever would.

‘They are no threat your honour,’ intervoiced a trusty senior advisor, rising above the apparent silliness of all those present, standing around; semi-standing to relaxed attention, wearing pyjamas, still baring signs of neat packagery; purchased especially for this meeting session, to be retained as souvenirs of this auspicious occasion.

‘We concur the threat level is down there with the peat.’

‘Meaning?’

‘It’s low to negligible.’

‘I can see in their faces, in their facial semaphore…coups, revolts and insurrections, the intent of them, flagged up, flapping about on shakily entitled poles of wanton mutinous uprising…’

‘If they present an insurmountable worry to you, sire, we could kill them all. We don’t need any of them. The models play out favourably.’

‘I still need to be brought up to speed on that peat comment. But hey! What models?’

‘The slaughter models, Mr. Mayor, sir.’ Spoken as if: obviously its the goddam slaughter models; who doesn’t know that? But ended with a knee-bruising, crawling reverence that stalled the nose dive, enabling normal flight to be resumed.

‘Good, good…’

‘Not a good idea. A mayor of a village is a “thing”, the mayor of an empty space could be seen, at the merest, as a Quixotical pursuit,’ suggested a cravat-suave, even in cravatless pyjamas, senior advisor advised, chucking a literary inspired peace-grenade from the Left.

‘Mmm,’ His Utter D-ness interjected, sounding somewhere between, and including, a throaty mewl and a chesty moo.

‘What are you thinking, Bossman?’

‘“Bossman”, I like it. I’m thinking, forgive me, windmills, a pursuit of armour, perhaps, haha, good old fashioned windmills… Now, advise me, can we get sight of notes, cheats, explanatory data, regarding the great Spanish novel itself, if it is the book I am thinking of, and delve into the philosophical nitty-gritty, before dismissing, or maybe adopting, the Quixotic route. I like the idea of it…it sounds quick and…exotic.’

‘Killing just for the sake of it…’ said the advisor in the dark pyjamas, both, not wanting to sound like a stuck record, and, being caught in an explanatory revolving door, to a foyer full of thought-mass no one cared to visit. ‘Killing has its place, and let’s face it, if it is legal by some strange twist of power, why not?’ he stated, modelling himself on Dr. Death, protagonist and antagonist in an unpublished novel only he had ever set eyes on… But to his own alas he was drilling alone into water with extraneous, unheeded wordbits… I think he even farted at that point, not helping his cause; if anything casting an evil shadow.

The following silence: either disbelief or agreement, or perhaps, an earthy, fiery, airy admixture… Odourlessness dismissed the fart sound as a strong enough explanation. He’d have to bring it up again soon, strike while the iron is hot…etcetera…

As the light was slowly filtered through the slippery dust of darkness nobody over thought the process of death and rebirth, because they could. Not saying anything felt like a contribution to life’s splendid brevity. And, anyway, it was light by then and dark had passed into history.

In a general outside work way, all Draco’s advisors had lost, in passing, grip of the slippery slope of momentary conduct and were clutching at free-fall scenarios, bracing for impact. Impact had no way of lessening itself even if it wanted to extend such frippery. An army needed to be raised from the good people of Great Sudlow-On-Russet, but not from adult males; an early law banning them from violence or even peacocking violent intent could not be rescinded in time for the coming action. The advisors and their assistants and their assistant’s helpers bashed out a template for a selection process; the Right were a destructive force the world did not need right now. Assembled in a town square built for the purpose, the women and children of fighting age would be asked: ‘Anyone who has heard of Marx move over to the Left-hand side of the square.’…

Dissolve to actual template actuation…

‘The Brothers?’

‘No, Karl, I believe he was an only child.’

‘Figures…’

‘I understood Marx had three sisters and two brothers…’

‘Are you thinking of the Marx brothers?’

‘Wasn’t he a psychotherapist? Oh, no, sorry, that was Freud.’

‘The Freud Brothers were an act but never really made the big time…they were pretty risible.’

‘I saw them at the Russet Valley fete a few years ago….were they mean’t to be funny?’

‘QUIET IN THE RANKS!…though technically you are not ranks, not just yet, but we must start how we intend to…you know… And those who have a sneaking regard for Hitler to the Right…’

‘Which Hitler?’

‘Adolf!’

‘Couldn’t stand him, but I felt a bit moorish for his dada.’

‘Everyone in the affirmative category, slyly edge over to the Right hand of the…and you… Second thoughts, any Hitler will qualify. SLYLY EDGE, I said! Edge slyly…’

…Fade out…

…Fade in…

Tiny Guy’s veteran administrative complex intimates had arranged for the militiamen to rest easy in the sanctum of a private girl’s school that, over numerous seasons, had never sailed forth from its embryonic port of antiquity. The nodes of natural energy that were the girls had long gone; off, mainly to indulge in better things, to become dominant and/or submissive forces in a world that was sinking into a grave-bed of its own making. To leave the world with a more limited damage than they found it. 

The staff had been retained by rafts of steel reasons with cast iron knobs on. The career paths they’d once inexorably skipped along were now revealing lumps and bumps of evidence of prior control and the fashioning by system puppeteers to such a degree that the real world had become an anathema and the school buildings their only proven place of safety: the only games room where bullies were banned. The peripathetic pedagogues had wandered the halls and corridors in semi-haunted off-gaits, in oblivious retirement from life’s battering-ram for years…until…

The Head, a small frail person of indecipherable gender; always gripping a cane that was never there, called the others to assembly: action stations sounded, a system purchased from a boatyard where a submarine had gone to be dismantled. Among headpain and earsplosions, wasted musculature and screaming tendons propelled bodily units to the place of instruction for reprogramming.  ‘You’ll all be on the ball in time for kick off,’ the head spouted… ‘And, my children,’ (there were no such aged humans present) ‘hush! Hear me like a hawk; take heed and give heed your utmost. A bus load of uncouth fiends of counter-culture has arrived, unexpected, yes, but factored-in to unlikely scenario development models? Also yes! We are physically, if not contractually, at their unwitting mercy…’

‘Mercy, mercy, me. Mercy, mercy us!’

‘You know what happens when uncouth “Counters” come in contact with forthrightly proper propriety?’

‘No!’

‘No, no one does.’

‘This then, is experimental?’

‘Experimentation is the master—‘

‘Bill!’

‘Sorry!’

‘I want you all to take notes, compare and study events as they unfold… I want you to refold them into a sanity that knows no madness… Good,’ the Head surveyed the body of staff… ‘and I will see you all back here with the findings when it is over. Good luck and thank you for the lives you have so gracefully donated to this establishment and the Establishment just behind and way above this establishment.’

‘Speech!’

‘This, is, not a time for speeches,’ etcetera…ad infinitum…fade out…

…fade in:

A ‘C’ road. A wall. A gated driveway entrance.

The sign above the gate to the road read ‘either abandon all hope’ or ‘money makes posh’ or ‘here come the girls’…it was written in a part-language that borrowed and stole; giving back only vital meaning that would have communicated the original intent. It was a conundrum that winked at strangers with creepy over-familiarity.

Rebranding had already started by the time they’d arrived in the austere driveway, at a site for what they concluded was a posh place for posh children to be poshed up in, so they’d could posh it up for the rest of their lives under the delusion that the posh were in some way qualitatively superior to the unposh; general hoylypolloyly poshlessness. The busload pulled up outside the austere front entrance, that had a sign telling the inconvenient party invasion to use the even more austere side entrance round the back. And enter the austerest refectory-cum-processing hall any of them would likely ever encounter.

Their vulnerability cloaked in the protection of under-construction rebranding: rebranding aimed to take them, the visuals and optics, from footballified militiamen to gentlemen-warriors with directional psychopathic ballistic propensities… But progression stuttered upon a lip of latent misintended regression with ‘jokes’ that swarmed like sick flies around the corpse of ‘school’ and ‘girl’ and ‘schoolgirl’ ‘humour’. None of which would benefit anyone by being repeated here.

…Fade in: The Head admired greatly the sounds that resonated about the hall, as he reluctantly brought his epic soliloquy to its closing throes of tedium:

‘You were once teachers, you have been cleaners with the burden of maintenance duties for too long, now is your time to be students… Students, I say! To teach these people nothing but what you want them to learn… And to learn all you can from them, about counter culture, losing, squabbling and eating dirt for supper with just a hope fritter to break the long sleepless night’s fast…burst the bubble…imbibe the grit of the working person’s lot… Create an umbrella that can be used as a parachute to land in enemy territory and infiltrate, infiltrate until you know everything and the enemy becomes our dear dumb acquaintance who knows nothing, not even the perception to decipher the smirk we wear, proud as a coat of arms, in relation to their quaint existential persistence.’ 

The Head did not get the reaction he’d pre-mentalised…They became torn and ripped by emotional intervention; on the one side they feared a terrible intellectually slutty invasion, and on the other, people, outsiders to welcome and interact with… What news would they bring, what updates about society and culture? The teachers, as the Head had expounded, were now students who were ready for the teacher: (the gentlemen of conquerable dubiousness, perhaps, God forbid), to appear.

A perfect storm in a fractured tea cup or a light breeze in a perfect cup thrown in competition… Time would tell, time held all the cards. Time’s units marked everything, scarring with ad nauseam teasing etcetera…ad infinitum. 

The Head’s room became a catastrophic ship chaos onboard the Enterprise and he, the Shatner, Kirk, ineffectually shouting ‘cut’, was left wondering if they’d survive to film another season.

While in Great Sudlow-On-Russet, the tumbleweed had collected in the corral.

The men, so called, had to accept the wearying malicious benevolence that had been thrust upon them; emasculating, testosterone shrinking. No one in general knew that a frequency was being transmitted from the Ball and Socket that forced the male minded to look toxically at themselves with, and in, shame and guilt; they could not form a self-worth status significant enough to take meaningful executive action; and, they pondered: whose fault was that; we told us so…  The womenfolk and childrenfolk went off for daily war training while the males waited and watched, clutching tangled strands of hope, revelling in palliative fantasy strategies; peeping round curtains, feeling sorry; being victims; revelling in it. The bells tolled and tolled for them, the bells…told…them…