Silly Buggers (Part One)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

Billy and Flopsy, who had been an item for several months, and Mouse, Flopsy's best friend, had been sitting in a clearing on the edge of a wood known as the Dingles for almost three hours drinking cheap white cider, smoking Skunk and eating the handful of magic mushrooms that they had collected from the adjoining cow pasture. Billy had fallen asleep as he often did when he was high, especially if he was pissed as well, and he lay flat on his back snoring his fool head off. Flopsy threw half a dozen thick branches onto the camp fire and lit a cigarette.

“Let's take all his clothes off and hide 'em,” Mouse whispered, though she needn't have bothered lowering her voice because the Dagenham Girl Pipers in full swing marching up and down playing the bagpipes and beating their drums would have had a job waking Billy.

“Naah, you daft bitch! Billy's my true love, he's my pumpkin, we'll do no such thing.”

Mouse wasn't the girl's real name, of course. Her real name was Janice, but she insisted that everyone used her nickname because that was what Flopsy did (Flopsy's real name was Georgina, and she hated it with a vengeance). Mouse modelled herself as closely as possible on her friend, but she didn't have much of Flopsy's intelligence, charisma or looks. Flopsy was a real beauty, a right corker, her dad called her, and she was tall, slim and unusually bright. She was way too good for the likes of Billy Williams, her parents were always telling her, and once she saw sense and ditched him she had the capability to really make something of herself. Mouse, on the other hand, well, Mouse was Mouse. The kids at school called her the Honey Monster, which was why she rarely bothered attending any more. A lot of folk wondered why Flopsy hung out with Mouse, but they had been friends since primary school, and they genuinely liked each other.

“Let's draw him a beard and moustache and some specs, then, I've got a marker pen in me bag.”

“No!” Flopsy said. “It's indelible, it won't come off.”

“It will if he scrubs it hard enough – by the stink of his pits he could do with a good scrub.” (You need bloody talk, Flopsy mused). “How about puttin' a bit of make-up on him, then, an takin' a few pics to stick on Facebook?”

“Yeah, OK, that'd be fun.”

Flopsy and Mouse were so embroiled in making Billy look like a cheap strumpet and giggling their heads off in the process that they failed to register the approach of the tall, pale man and his two diminutive accomplices along one of the many winding paths that criss-crossed the Dingles.

“Hellooo, ladies!” the man said much louder than necessary in a disturbingly high falsetto, doffing his black, wide-brimmed hat, his unexpected appearance making the girls jump. He was dressed all in black, a neat black suit, shirt and tie and impossibly shiny shoes, and apart from his unusual headgear and his deathly pale complexion he looked like he had stepped out of the pages of a catalogue. “Good afternoon to you.”

“Oo the fuck are you?” Mouse said. “And why is your face so white? You look like a bloody mime artist. No, come to think of it you look like that weirdo that did those autopsies on Channel Four a while back, the one that dissects bodies and covers 'em in resin and makes a bloody fortune exhibitin' them.

“I, my exceedingly plump, gateau guzzling friend, am Gunther von Harsehole, the famous German anatomist, and these small but highly trained gentlemen are my faithful assistants. We've come to dissect yonder corpse.”

“What are you talkin' about?” Flopsy said, eyeing the two tiny, almost identical men, who were barely three feet tall. The Mini-Me's looked vaguely oriental, and they were completely hairless with no eyebrows or eyelashes. They were wearing white laboratory coats that reached almost to their ankles, and each carried a dark leather briefcase. “What friggin' corpse?”

“The corpse that you and your clinically obese friend are carefully painting to give the impression that it still has life, a curious human custom. Firstly we need to determine the cause of death, then it is our duty to harvest the lady's soul before it flies away out of reach. We can't have that, can we? I wish it was the fat one that had died, mind, I could tan her abundant hide to make covers for my journals – there are a fair few of them, because I'm a very busy man. Maybe I'll skin her anyway.....”

“Look,” Flopsy said. “Billy isn't dead, you idiot, he's sleeping off too much booze an' drugs, that's all. An' he isn't a lady – we were just makin' him up for a laugh. And stop makin' nasty comments about Mouse's weight, you bastard, it ain't nice, an' she doesn't bloody well like it!”

“A laugh,” the big man said slowly and deliberately. “As in 'ha-ha.' I see..... It's our duty to say whether or not the alleged deceased is really deceased, sleeping off an excess of stimulants and/or narcotics or simply feigning death because the silly woman has a kink about being dissected while she's still alive. Would you mind getting out of our damned way so that we can get on with our job? If you agree to leave right now you're free to run away into the sunset, and you'll never see us or your dead girlfriend again. Well, you can run while the beached whale waddles laboriously and, I have to say, rather comically, and quite possibly suffers a cardiac arrest after a hundred yards or so, the sweaty fat fuck. This is a once only offer, ladies - don't miss out whatever you do, because it'll never be repeated.”

“Mate, I don't know what you're on, but I don't want none of it,” Flopsy said, throwing the stub of her cigarette into the fire and clambering to her feet, which was when she realised how big the man was. He was at least six foot six, maybe taller, but he was very thin, almost to the point of being cadaverous. He reminded her of the pictures of concentration camp survivors that the history teacher had recently shown her class. “If you don't piss off an' leave us alone I'm gonna call my dad, he's just over in that field throwin' the ball for our dog, Prince, a big, fuck-off German shepherd that'll have your arm off as soon as look at you.”

“Oh, come on, young lady,” Gunther said, a crooked smile spreading across his pasty face. “Don't expect me to fall for that lame trick. How old are you, little girl, fourteen, fifteen? You really think I'm dense enough to believe that your middle-class, squeaky clean daddy's close by while you're hiding in the woods drinking alcohol and addling your mind with illicit substances? Silly child..... Come on, get out of the way and hand over the corpse, otherwise we'll be forced to take you two as well. It's not your time to die, either of you, though looking at Miss Porky here she doesn't have long in this world before she gorges her cretinous self to death. Believe me, you wouldn't like the damp, frigid, sunless place that we call home. You said you have a dog with you. Fine, call him over, see if he's a match for my faithful hound. Phileas, come to daddy!”

“Think you're a bit of a comedian, don't ya?” Mouse mumbled self-consciously. “Keep your insults to yourself, they're not funny, you long streak of camel piss.” The undergrowth beneath a stand of Silver birch parted, and a creature only vaguely resembling a dog ambled into the clearing.

“Come here, Phileas,” Gunther said, and the animal plodded to his master's side. It was wide and low-set like a bulldog, and maybe twice the size of Flopsy's quite real German shepherd, who was probably asleep in his basket at home rather than frolicking in the adjoining field.

“What the fuck is that?” Flopsy said, eyeing the shaggy grey creature's massive skull with its long crocodilian muzzle and deep-set yellow eyes. “It ain't a dog for a start, not any breed I've ever seen, anyway.” Phileas opened his cavernous mouth and yawned; it was lined with huge, ragged teeth, and his breath reeked of rotting flesh.

“We refer to Phileas's kind as dogs,” Gunther said, “though they evolved somewhere far from this tawdry place – I'm sure you've heard of parallel evolution. They are used for most of the same functions as the creatures that you call dogs, and they come in all shapes and sizes. This one is a guard dog, as you've probably guessed from his appearance. Now move away from the corpse, Little and Large, it's my property! If you refuse I'll order Phileas to hold you while my assistants secure you for treatment, and be warned, sometimes they get a little carried away.”

“I would do as Doctor Harsehole says if I were you, bitches,” one of the little men sneered, “otherwise it's curtains.”

Phileas approached the two girls and growled deep in his throat, baring his huge teeth. “Oh, fuckin' hell,” Mouse cried, an involuntary spurt of urine trickling into her knickers as she crawled away from Billy.

“All right, we're moving!” Flopsy said, looking into the monster's yellow eyes. “Can we, erm, can we still go? You said earlier that we were free to go.....”

“Oh no,” Gunter growled. “Oooh no no no, that offer has long since expired. You had your chance, my pretty, but you blew it. Big time, I'm afraid - fail of fails, blunder of blunders, cack of fucking cacks. Disobeying instructions can have rather serious consequences, you know.”

“Please, mister,” Mouse sobbed, attempting to dry her tears with the back of a pudgy hand.

“I said no, chubby cheeks,” Gunther replied softly. “And I mean no. Which part of the word 'no' don't you understand, you blubbery harlot? If you try to escape Phileas will take great, bloody chunks out of your wobbly buttocks and your ten or more amusingly pendulous bellies. And as for your scrawny friend, well, he'll snap her like a twig, he'll most likely crunch her up and swallow her lean carcass in five minutes flat. You're watching this fascinating procedure even if I have to sew your eyes open, you dozy shits..... Fungus, Fickle, tie down the deceased and strip off her clothes - you know the crack.”