Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help (2 page)

After collecting himself, Stuck Stu would bow dramatically, to an enthusiastic ovation.

Deeply Damaged Dave was, next to Kelvin, Milrose Munce’s closest friend among the dead. They had bonded in their mutual love of unstable chemicals: in particular, substances (like Stu) that could be made to explode in exciting ways. Dave, had his life not been cut woefully short, might have made a brilliant scientist, or criminal.

Dave’s demise was a consequence of his desire to test the reputed powers of rubidium, a substance said to be capable of producing truly exquisite eruptions. This was not something students were encouraged to test in the school lab, so Dave—and this moral error cost him his life—had quietly put a glass ampoule of rubidium in his pocket, intending to do the experiment in the quiet of his own living room.

Rubidium does indeed explode in breathtaking fashion. And it is easy to set the stuff off: all you have to do is soak it in water. Which is why it was so very sad that Dave got caught in a torrential downpour on the way home from school with that stolen rubidium in his pocket. In his anger at becoming thoroughly soaked, Dave had punched himself in the hip—a peculiar but typical gesture, usually harmless, which in this case broke the glass ampoule. And the rest is, as they say, history. As was Dave.

Milrose was also fond of Toasted Theresa and Floating Phil, lovebirds who had died, as lovebirds do, within minutes of each other. What was peculiar—and adorable—was that both had died by accident, at opposite ends of the building, without either being aware of the other’s passing: Theresa caught fire in the chemical storeroom, just as Phil was swallowing much of the pool.

And then there was Bored Beulah, who had fallen asleep and into a vat of hydrochloric acid. She was an amusing if deadpan ghoul. Beulah was not the sort to put on a show, but she was nevertheless entertaining, in a bored sort of way. “You’re too lively for me, Milrose. You should learn to be cool. Study Kelvin. He’s a cool dude.”

Milrose had always suspected that Beulah’s studied ennui was in truth a facade for a complex and probably fascinating personality, but he had never had any
success in piercing that surface. People who practise cool tend to be deeply shallow, but Beulah gave the occasional indication of being very much the opposite. It was the look she would give Milrose sometimes, when he said something perceptive (which he did more often than he recognized). Beulah, although her own person was impenetrable, seemed capable of seeing right to the hidden centre of others—even people like Milrose, who still had flesh.

The dead were not entirely sure why Milrose could see them. Ghosts are of course capable of making themselves seen or heard by anyone—this is necessary in the ordinary process of haunting—but they reserve this talent for special occasions. Even the dimmest dead thing understands that if everyone were haunted on a regular basis, it would reduce the impact of the experience. In fact, ghosts generally choose to reveal themselves only to people who do not believe in ghosts. This tends to be the most effective way to inspire handsome hair-whitening panic.

After years of study, certain living humans can learn to see ghosts—professional exorcists, for instance. Milrose, however, had simply been born with this peculiar capability. Some people can put a leg behind their head; some can extend their tongue halfway up a nostril; Milrose Munce could see ghosts.

Not that these ghosts were much to look at. What little flesh Beulah retained, for instance, was
not
healthy
flesh. And Toasted Theresa was even less likely to win any beauty contests, as the chemical fire she had chosen to ignite had been impervious to fire extinguishers, and it had taken a couple of hours to put her out. Floating Phil was probably as fetching as any bloated corpse, but Deeply Damaged Dave was simply not enjoyable to look at; after all, he had damaged such an intimate and necessary part of his person. Milrose did not require his friends to be all that good looking, though, and he had quickly grown accustomed to the collective appearance of this crew—a sight that would have sent less tolerant boys screaming for the horizon.

Milrose, in fact, preferred these appalling spectres to living students, and confined most of his social activity to the third floor. And he was as happy there as any boy might be in the company of loyal, unpresentable companions.

A day in the life of Milrose Munce was like a day in the life of any ordinary sarcastic youth, if you discount the ghosts and explosives. School began every morning with homeroom, during which the class was told things that Milrose almost never needed to know, generally involving sports.

When homeroom ended with a vicious bell, students were ejected to wallow through a carefully
scheduled morning of higher learning. The majority of these students would rather not learn—and the majority, as a consequence, did not. Milrose Munce, however, enjoyed school. He tried not to admit this to anyone but his friends on the third floor, most of whom had also enjoyed school until it cut their lives bitterly short. But among the living, it was not considered admirable to find school anything but a hideous burden.

His fellow students could tell that learning was not much of a burden to Milrose Munce. He did it far too easily, and never looked nearly miserable enough. And his misbehaviour in class—which was prodigious—was clearly a result of having mastered all of the work much too quickly, thus triggering an episode of intolerable boredom.

The lesson being thrust upon the first class today, for instance, concerned the Azores. Now, Milrose might easily have been fascinated by the discussion of a Portuguese community stuck on a sprinkling of tiny, lonesome islands in the very middle of the Atlantic Ocean, except that he had already gone through a short Azores obsession, and knew far more about them than Mr. Colander, the geography teacher. Hence, Milrose was bored out of his brainpan.

Because he was in an especially evil mood, Milrose put up his hand to announce this.

“Yes, Milrose?”

“I’m bored.”

It was difficult for Mr. Colander to respond to this. Milrose had made the announcement so politely that it was not easy to identify it as misbehaviour.

“Thank you for your contribution, Milrose.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

The second period of the day—nominally devoted to Phys. Ed.—was usually a good time to laze about the third floor. After years of dire school rankings in Physics and Chemistry, the school had decided to hold science classes only in the afternoons, after the students had fully woken up. This left the labs open all morning for Milrose to lounge uninterrupted with his friends. Phys. Ed. class, which Milrose rarely attended, lasted an hour and a half, after which his classmates would spend fifteen or so minutes removing their sweaty clothes in the dim grim locker room, showering briefly in the fungus-bearing shower room, then dressing for a dose of poetry in the English room. Today, that gave Milrose plenty of time to assist Deeply Damaged Dave, who was always keen to further his investigations into the complex art of blowing things up.

It must be stressed that Milrose was not evil. He did not have any desire to blow
people
up—not even the
people he truly disliked. Nor did he have anything in common with those boys who set buildings on fire, or take assault weapons to school, or torture small animals. He despised these types. He simply had a healthy interest in watching objects fly violently into random pieces.

Deeply Damaged Dave had devoted a great deal of his life—and pretty much all of his death—to the study of this art. Meeting Dave was, for Milrose, a life-altering event. Dave was his mentor. His guru. Deeply Damaged Dave knew the kinds of things that eager young villains like Milrose were desperate to know.

Dave himself was eagerness personified. In fact, if Dave had one flaw, it was this: that his great lust for swank combustibles and glorious catastrophe often resulted in displays somewhat more dazzling than he had in mind. “Why don’t we add just a pinch more of this,” Dave would say, with scientific glee. “Just to see what happens.”

And what happened was always predictably unpredictable.

Today, Dave—not satisfied with what he had learned so dramatically about the properties of rubidium—was keen to investigate the effects of potassium when combined with water. Milrose already had some knowledge of these extraordinary effects. The Chemistry teacher used to be Mr. Juan
Perdido, one of the few teachers with a genuine sense of humour. One gorgeous day he had devoted a lesson to the properties of this nicely dangerous metal.

Now, potassium tends to go bad when combined with air, so it’s necessary to keep it at all times immersed in mineral oil. It doesn’t like water, however. Like rubidium, potassium—when dunked in water—explodes. During the course of his lesson, Mr. Perdido had pretended to accidentally drop a large chunk of potassium into a beaker of water. He stared at the beaker for a moment with a look of exaggerated terror. “I thought that was mineral oil. Duck!” Upon which the students had hurled themselves beneath their desks. There was a long silence, which Mr. Perdido brought to a close by saying: “Boom.” The teacher had enjoyed a good laugh; among the students, however, only Milrose had joined in the merriment. The rest complained to their parents, who arranged to have Mr. Perdido deported.

Milrose had been the only student not to duck, and he was disappointed when deprived of what had promised to be an excellent explosion. Today he hoped to remedy that.

Being the careful, philosophical soul that he was, Dave began by investigating the effects of very tiny amounts of potassium. Quickly, however, this proved tiresome: the potassium would sizzle, but nothing truly
interesting
happened. And so, as he usually did,
Dave caused the experiment to rapidly escalate, until they had fractured a test tube, atomized a small flask, and—for the grand finale—conveyed an impressive beaker to that place into which glassware disappears when it departs this life. Milrose had fully observed this time, but had taken the precaution of doing so from the back of the room. For Dave, being stuck full of shards of beaker was hardly an issue (after all, he had damaged himself in far more serious ways in the past).

“And now,” said Deeply Damaged Dave, “we shall fill the entire sink full of water.” He turned on the tap, disappeared into the storeroom, and emerged with a giant container of potassium.

“Brilliant,” said Milrose.

“This will be true science,” said Dave.

“We shall learn from this,” said Milrose.

“We shall become wise,” said Dave.

Just as he was about to uncap the container in preparation for dumping a massive chunk of potassium into the filled sink, the doorknob rattled. It turned as well, but the door was stuck, so Dave had a moment to spirit the potassium into the storeroom, with great regret.

The door finally popped open, and in peered Mr. Shorten. Mr. Shorten was perpetually furtive, as if he expected an assassin around every corner. Milrose suspected that Mr. Shorten had been a spy
during some war or another, and had in fact survived numerous attempted assassinations. How then, pondered Milrose, could this man have become so tedious? If Milrose had been a spy, always one step ahead of murderous enemies with accents, he would surely have become even more interesting than he already was. Of this he was certain.

When Mr. Shorten spied Milrose Munce standing awkwardly at the rear of the class, the teacher released a tiny “eep” and instantly retracted his presence from the doorframe. A moment later he was again peering—perhaps now half convinced that Milrose was not a trained assassin. He squinted. No, this was clearly Milrose Munce: obnoxious, ill behaved, but hardly murderous.

“Munce, what are you doing in the lab? Chemistry isn’t for three hours.”

“Oh, uh, just … doing some extracurricular experimentation.”

“Some what?”

“Adding to my education. Private boy-genius stuff.”

“If you are a genius, Munce, I am a monkey.”

“Well put, sir.”

Mr. Shorten stopped for a moment in an attempt to determine whether he had been insulted. He decided that he had, but then it was necessary to determine whether Munce had insulted him or
whether he had inadvertently insulted himself. Mr. Shorten could not make up his mind, so he decided to let it pass.

“And your experiment, Munce? What have you been discovering about the mysteries of nature?”

“Well, sir. I filled the sink full of water. As you can see.”

“Yes, I can.”

“Amazing, isn’t it.”

“Isn’t what?”

“The sink, Sir. Observe how it holds the water.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I find it fascinating.”

“You find
what
fascinating?”

“How the water remains in the sink, sir. How the sink does not melt, despite being thoroughly soaked. Now, if this were a paper bag, sir, it would accomplish no such thing.”

“Munce, if you are a genius, I am an eel.”

“Nicely argued, sir.”

After this exchange, Milrose Munce excused himself, as he had only moments until English class would begin. He glanced back to see Mr. Shorten gazing thoughtfully at the sink.

Milrose, given that he very much liked to talk, and saw language as a useful weapon of sorts (if not quite as effective as potassium), should have been utterly
thrilled by the subject of English. Unfortunately, the subject was taught on the second floor, whose residents had given Milrose an allergy to all things poetic.

Nevertheless, Milrose did enjoy reading literature, as long as it wasn’t—strictly speaking—poetry. Shakespeare, for instance, was too much fun to be poetry. This week they were studying
Macbeth,
which featured astonishing amounts of gore and culminated in a fine beheading. A couple of weeks ago it had been
King Lear;
Milrose had been especially impressed by the scene in which Gloucester’s eyes were forcibly removed. Yes, Shakespeare was a genius, concluded Milrose Munce (which was not his most original conclusion).

Even more exciting than English was Lunch. Lunch, though not technically a class, was educational.