Halloween Boris

This is the eleventh entry in the satirical series at https://www.abctales.com/collection/pandemic-tales-bojo-and-co

Halloween Boris

Thunder cracked as lightening lit up the sky like a flashbulb. Rain poured in sheets. Standing in his laboratory watching the raucous show from the weather was a tall, thin man dressed in a white doctor’s coat. His eyes turned to the laboratory and the empty operating table awaiting its next “patient”. The man sighed, taking his coat off, striding through a door into a hallway.

From a distance, the house that the man and the laboratory were in looked like a throwback to a bygone era. It was a huge, detached, Gothic mansion with a large, wooden front door; squared-framed archaic windows and a belfry at the summit which had a round window with a skylight that opened out onto the Heavens. Bats flew about in the night sky; tiny, dark blotches to the naked eye. It belonged to times of Victoriana. The doctor changed into a pin-striped suit, blue-striped shirt, a tie with polka dots and the shiniest of oxford brogues on his feet. A pair of glasses and smart, swept-over hair gave an air of impeccability.

A door-bell chimed and the tall, doctor figure slowly opened the heavy, wooden door, having stood down the butler who was on his way. Standing out in the rain were two, shifty looking men wearing grimy overcoats. One had a tall hat whilst the other wore a peaked, leather cap. Rain bounced off their headwear, deflected on its journey to the ground.

“Ah, Burke and Nohare….there you are dear fellows.”

The men stared back vacantly.

“I have another job for you. I understand that there is a fresh specimen waiting in the city. Do bring it back to me and I will reward you handsomely. Details are on this parchment.” The accent was stiflingly upper-class, words lilting on an air of copious wealth.

“Of course, should you fail…well…you saw the consequences for yourselves at the House of Commons during the vote on fracking. I am not a man to be trifled with.”

The tall man remembered fondly man-handling discourteous and troublesome MPs, pushing and shoving in a rare moment of delicious, loutish behaviour. He breathed in deeply, puffing his chest out.

“Right you are, Doctor Frankenstein Rees-Mogg. Leave it to us.” The men doffed their hat and cap respectively.

The man called Burke was better known by a different name having come to prominence as the former Health Secretary. Despite his valiant efforts to single-handedly save thousands, maybe millions of lives during the Pandemic, it seemed that he could not avoid scandal having been caught smooching a woman on security camera. Dubious deals with providers of PPP lingered in his past.

The other man, Nohare, was a balding, former Mandarin. He walked with a stoop these days, possibly weighed down by bitterness. He spoke in a low snarl and had once been the most powerful man in government. At least by his own reckoning. How he had relished being interviewed in the Rose Garden having become an icon for Specsavers and Barnard Castle. Now he was reduced to updating his blog and snatching bodies for borderline lunatics to experiment on. Most called him Dom rather than his alias of Nohare even if the latter did match his appearance.

Frankenstein closed the door, watching the two men make their way towards the waiting carriage. It was a little out-of-date for a trip through the streets of London but it was unlikely that they would be challenged, especially in this foul weather. He had been tipped off that there was a body still warm enough for experimentation. His man on the inside was someone he trusted to a point. When in contact for subversive activity such as this, neither man would use their real name. The other party was known simply as “Michelin Man” on account of his pudgy face and glasses. He was well known for his dancing antics in private member clubs. It was better this way.

The doctor wandered into his front parlour. The room was antiquated, an old-fashioned sofa was flanked by two armchairs with an old, flip-top, wooden desk in the corner. A magnificent fireplace stood astride a feature wall with brass ornaments on either side. A metal bucket full of kindling suggested that a fire would roar from time to time. As the doctor went to sit at the wooden desk to work, an almighty racket struck up. It was coming from the chimney. A body tumbled out of the flue, throwing dust and dirt into the air.

“Did you get it clean, Sixtus?” The parliamentarian pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“I did papa. The chimney is clean again.” With that, the small boy with a face covered in ash and grit shuffled out of the room, clutching a filthy brush.

Time passed slowly in the Rees-Mogg household. Servants would go about their business, upstairs and downstairs. The good doctor managed his time fielding phone calls and emails. He waited patiently for the two men to return. The storm outside rumbled on, peels of thunder making way for wild, zig zagging lightening.

In a conference room in central London, two men sit across a table in front of a stage around which, red, velvet curtains are drawn. One of those present is tall with short hair, tidily swept across his forehead. With brown eyes, a noble nose and a striking smile, the man is immaculate in blue suit and tie. They talk for hours about illicit parties, Eat out to Help Out and cakeism. The conversation twists and turns like a dagger penetrating a victim’s back. Both crave power.

As they draw breath again, the curtain close by slowly unravels revealing two coffins on stage. The tall, thin man smiles as the wooden lids open and fall to the side. Inside are vampires, rising up from their beds of earth. They are robed in dark cloaks with high collars. Looking up at the ceiling, their heads turn in unison, perfectly synchronous. Rising to stand, the creatures of the night step out of the coffins and glide to within a few feet of the men.

“Do sign this document, former PM. It’s your official withdrawal from the Leadership race. The alternative is that these lovely, former Home Secretaries – Priti and Suella – well….let’s just say it’s been a while since they fed last. They do like a juicy, innocent soul.” The rotund man signs the paperwork. In politics, integrity and trust are as rare as hen’s teeth. Those are his last thoughts as the vampiress’s loom over him, fangs gleaming in the half-light.”

The old, grandfather clock struck 10pm. Finally, the door-bell chimed. On this occasion, the tall, Victorian man allowed his man-servant to attend to the two men. He knew that they would want to enter through the back door once the coast was clear and that was precisely the request that came via his butler. He helped them with the prone body wrapped in a sheet. All three of them man-handled the specimen, carrying it to the laboratory, flopping it down on the operating table like a huge fish.

The room itself was full of strange apparatus. Large, glass tubes ran from floor to ceiling with swirling, electric currents pulsing inside. Stands of stone had plinths with glass, bell jars containing weird, foetus-like creatures suspended in liquid. Wooden shelves covering a wall had all manner of eclectic paraphernalia. In amongst the curious contents of one shelf, a small glass jar that looked like it had been used for pickled onions once had a tiny brain floating inside. The label read “Specimen: Small brain. Subject: L Truss.”

Burke and Nohare scuttled off leaving Frankenstein to secure the body to the table with leather straps. Crocodile clips attached to long wires that led to a lightning rod poking out of an open skylight were secured, clipped onto the subject’s nose. It had been a consideration to hook everything up to the patient’s nether regions given his reputation for having balls of steel. Frankenstein had decided against it having come to the conclusion that the only person who thought that the subject had this particular attribute was the man himself. Now all that was left to do was to wait.

Sure enough, a few moments later, a massive bolt of electricity streaked down from the sky, lighting the laboratory up with a glaring white light. The body under the sheet jerked in spasms. Anyone watching could have been forgiven for thinking that St Vitus Dance was at play. Dust flew in all directions from a blond thatch. After what seemed an eternity, the flow of electricity finally stopped. There was no further activity from the prostrate specimen. The doctor untied the straps, now fearing another failed experiment. Just as he was about to turn and walk away, the body stirred and rose stiffly. The white sheet fell to the floor.

The portly subject rubbed his eyes with his fingers, eyes screwed staring straight ahead. His head turned to face Frankenstein.

“Hasta la vista…baby. Good lord….is that…ummm….is that you Jacob?” The accent was old Etonian, the words crusty and well spoken.

“It is indeed, former PM. How good to have you back with us. I think you may have been rather outflanked recently by a group of vampires. Fortunately, Gove had his spies at work so we had a chance to resurrect you. I know that was done numerous times in real life but you have never made it as far as……well…..being murdered before.” Frankenstein thought about the incredibly long list of people that wanted to do this very deed but dismissed it quickly.

“No…ummm….no, I suppose not.”

“Well what do we do now?” The rotund bureaucrat had a line of dried blood running down his neck. It had dripped onto his white shirt.

“Well it seems that we are both temporarily out of a job at the moment, former PM. I recommend we wait until Mr Sunak and his entourage make a mistake. They will at some point, of course. Then we swoop in like avenging angels and take over once more.” The words tumbled out, finishing in a crescendo of sorts.

“Yes, maybe we should do just that, Jacob. Yes.”

They both sat looking at each other, smiling. As the former PM’s words trailed off, both men put their little fingers in the corner of their respective mouths and started to laugh.

If there had been a television cameraman in the room, they would have started to pan away at this stage, the two antagonists getting smaller as the image disappeared into the distance to the sound of Dr Evil-like “Muahaha….MUAHAHA….MUAHAHA…..”

The electorate paused for breath and counted the days until the next General Election. What new monsters lay in wait in the world of politics?

Image free to use at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein#/media/File:Frankenstein_1818...

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents
are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental