The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (20 page)

Stretching her arms and legs, feet and calves hanging over the end of the bed, Judy jumped up. Yes, time to move on. The hotel manager lay on the stained brown carpet with a mint in his outstretched hand, a collection of laundered towels scattered about him. His apology for lack of service due to missing staff had gurgled in his throat as she cut through skin and muscle. Flies buzzed above the corpse laid-out in the bathtub and fought to gain access to the wardrobe where a maid’s tongue dangled from her startled mouth.

If she ripped the heads off both manager and maid, placed them on opposing bodies, would the pair walk and talk again as little Frankie had? She could build an army of mismatched people. She could become queen of this ruined land. Overthrow government, sit beside Punch on thrones made of bone and cushions fashioned from preserved hearts packed together so they had no room to burst. No need for them to return to Hell and swim amongst the putrid rot of men. Yes, she would make an army of mismatched people and if it were not in her hands to do so, she would find little Frankie and make him master puppeteer.

Rough hands twisted the manager’s head until it tore free with a splatter of tissue. She propped the head on the already stained duvet. As she opened the wardrobe doors, flies buzzed their thanks. The maid’s head formed more of a challenge. It clung to its scrawny torso. When it did pop free, the wardrobe whined, threatened to topple. Judy affixed the manager’s head to the maid’s body and the maid’s head to the manager’s body. Neither stayed in place. Wobbled, then rolled back.

Judy stomped her foot. The motel room shook. Outside, tyres screeched and blue lights flashed. No more time for her to carry out her experiments. Failed anyway. The flies buzzed at the window, covering glass and cutting out daylight. They’d bring the police direct to her room. How many were there? She couldn’t see through the blanket of flies. Damn them. Gathering a gold necklace, its heart pendant tarnished, from the bedside table (a drifting gift from Punch, in the days when they’d enjoyed Hell together, when his lips hadn’t been all snap and his mood dour), Judy headed into the bathroom. She locked the door.

The bathroom window was too small for her frame to climb through. She’d have to improvise.

Judy knocked out the glass. It landed with an alerting smash. Then she ripped out the window frame and began to knock bricks from the wall. Brick dust coated her skin and clung to her hair. When the hole was large enough for her to slip through—having taken no more than a minute—Judy climbed into the back lot and, taking gigantic strides, raced along a back alley and became lost in the maze of streets, vehicles and people.

Some leader she would make. Fleeing instead of fighting.

But, both she and Punch had long known that you have to choose your fights. She was no lamb to be slaughtered. She recognised such bleating creatures having buried several beneath a dead field with decaying apple trees.

Her cider had tasted of blood.

The Fool’s Theatre shook beneath the boom of a man’s voice. Scooting away in fear, Rasputin dropped Joan’s chains and left her standing, uncharacteristically, on the stage. The voice caused goose pimples to infect Joan’s arms. At the back of the auditorium, Sir Neville peeked into the lobby. The voice slipped through the gap between door and frame, louder, insistent. The intruder wanted to see the show. Normally, Stijn didn’t turn away paying customers. When the theatre was closed, the perverted often came for a private dance. They only ever came once, and their departure was always accompanied by screams.

Their screams.

Stijn emerged from backstage, his apron spattered with blood. Did he work part-time as a butcher?

Screams.

She didn’t want to know the truth of the blood, no more than she wanted a map of the scars that cut across her body. Joan swung from her chains, tried to kick Stijn as he raced by her, his face flustered, his hair askance. Missed.

“Don’t let him into the auditorium, Sir Neville. Keep him at a bay,” Stijn said, then shouted. “I’ll be there in a moment Mr. Punch. On my way. Nearly there, no need to...”

The auditorium doors opened, knocking Sir Neville into the wall and causing his mechanical heart to chime. Mr Punch made a magnificent and terrifying sight. His steel-grey hair brushed the top of the doorway and if the ceilings were average and not theatre-high, he would be able to run his fingers across it with no effort at all. His limbs and body were pencil thin. She couldn’t see if scars ran beneath his grey pinstriped suit which he’d accessorized with a blood-red cravat.

“There’s a whiff of decay in here,” Mr Punch said, his voice carrying to the stage. Perhaps he was of theatre stock.

Joan tiptoed as close to the edge of the stage as her chains would allow. In the orchestra pit, one of the Adams Group fiddled with a busted guitar while another clung to his saxophone as if trying to muffle its silence. At the back of the theatre, Mr Punch turned and looked towards Joan. Should she dance?

His impossibly long frame bent forward; it seemed to Joan that he would lean so far, his nose would press into her belly. She expected him to take opera glasses from his pocket—all the better to examine her with. Joan spun back, her chains twisting and lifting her off the stage. She’d climb to the flies if she could. Hide from his gaze, which left her skin cold. It did not distract his stare. Having knowledge of how to hold an audience, she should have realised it would only increase his curiosity.

“Do I know you?” Mr Punch asked.

Seemed he asked her, but Joan dare not answer; could not answer. Was he the lost relative she’d hoped would find her? If so, no wonder Stijn quaked. Joan twirled and allowed her chains to untwist until she stood on the boards.

Stijn ushered Mr Punch out into the auditorium, whispered something to Sir Neville as he passed. Just before the doors closed, Mr Punch knocked Stijn aside.

“I don’t know why I should know her,” Mr Punch said, voice reverberating about the theatre. “A funny little mangled thing.”

Mangled. Oh! He wasn’t a relative or some lost love (of course he wasn’t with his monstrous height). She was a curiosity. A freak dangling from chains. No one would ever come to claim her. No one missed her. They’d probably sold her to passing theatre folk, Stijn, and been glad to be rid. Tears trickled down her cheek. She’d thought her eyes dry, her crying done.

Crying is never done.

Sir Neville pressed his ear to the auditorium doors, but Joan could no longer hear the tumult. Stijn may have ushered Mr Punch out into the day or down to the basement. She listened, but no one screamed. Her lungs burst with her want to scream.

She twisted and turned, dislodging the fabric that bound her wrists and allowing metal to cut into skin. Tears subsided into frustration. To stage left, keys dangled from a hook. The keys that kept her locked in place. Joan swung towards them. Fingers and toes brushed the wall but not keys or hook. Still, first attempt and all that. She swung again. At the top of the auditorium, Sir Neville turned and looked towards the stage. If only he’d help her. Joan considered calling to him to get the keys but Sir Neville didn’t function as other men did and had a strange sense of loyalty. The theatre was his life.

The theatre would never be her life; it may, however, prove her death.

She swung towards the keys again. Silver glinting with promise, catching the edge of the spotlight. Joan’s fingers brushed the keys, then drifted away. One more almighty swing and by god she’d have them. Or not, by god. By her own power; there was no god here; she doubted there was a god anywhere. A fiction constructed to make the intolerable tolerable and to convince the fortunate that fortune would continue and that it wouldn’t end with soil and worms.

With a final swing, giving it her all, Joan’s fingers grabbed and held onto the keys. In the orchestra pit below, the Adams Group reached for their instruments and began to play. Their music meant to cover her escape, she hoped, its purpose to hide the scrape of metal against metal, and the clanging drop of chains. Unshackled, she fell to the stage; limbs unused to having to stand without aid. Her arms, though well defined, hung limp, exhausted, useless. This would not do. Her body could not fail her; she must escape. Joan wobbled towards the steps, felt like a rag doll, a true puppet.

Freedom tasted of dust and greasepaint. False freedom, that is. Until she made it out the theatre and far away from here, she wasn’t free, she was just escaping. Freedom would taste of exhaust fumes, kebab houses and rain. It wouldn’t be accompanied by out of tune instruments, but car horns, chatter and birdsong. The world would be both beautiful and terrifying, but it would also be whatever she made of it. The theatre had taught her that with its myriad of plays. It had also taught her that things don’t end with death.

Pain burst across her temples. No, she wouldn’t think on what happened after death. She couldn’t know. She didn’t know. She’d forgotten.

Her ankle gave way and she fell from the bottom step, cutting her knee against the edge of a chair. What was one more scar? Sir Neville didn’t rush to help. He watched. His mechanical heart ticked faster and faster, racing along. What was he to do? Nothing, she hoped. Lie. Come with her, her true hope if she was being honest. He’d never do that. Didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to persuade him though. There is always guilt in leaving people behind especially when there was no turning back.

There could be no turning back. She must run until she reached world’s end and then hide amongst its bushes. Stijn wouldn’t travel too far from his theatre. Stijn didn’t care for her that much. Did he? He used to stroke her face after a performance, kiss her then full lips. Now her lips were thin and cross and he only stopped to scratch at the scars around her neck.

By the time Joan lumbered up the stairs, passing row upon empty row and noting how shabby carpet and seats were from this angle, Sir Neville had positioned himself before the auditorium doors with his arms stretched wide.

So, he’d chosen his side. Her shoulders slumped, her heart pained.

“Puppet girl should dance,” Sir Neville said.

“I’m no longer a puppet.” She flapped her arms. “See no one works my hands and they never worked my voice.”

“Cock-a-hoop,” he said. “Totally spiffing.”

His reaction confused Joan. She suspected it also confused him. They’d never spoken one-on-one before. She’d only heard him utter things like “tickets please” and “fourth row” and “by jove, I do believe I shall have to ask you to leave by order of the management and by means of my boot to your backside”.

Despite his broad smile and seeming acceptance of her new status, Sir Neville didn’t move from the doorway.

“Come with me,” she said, holding out her hand.

No one ever held her hand. They worked them. Even when Stijn had seemed fond of her, he hadn’t held her hand or kissed her fingers. Although, there was some mercy in that for she had enough bad memories.

Sir Neville shook his head. Had he even understood what she asked?

Her hand felt extra empty.

“Are you lonelier than me?” Joan asked. She’d always thought him lucky to be amongst the audience, that he could interact with them and if he wished, pretend he was one of them. He often sat on a chair at the back of the theatre watching the show. If Joan’s role had been to collect tickets and watch the show, she would have imagined herself free. Hell, she would have slipped out with the audience and run far from here. Perhaps, if she wasn’t chained up, she wouldn’t feel a need to run. But, he should run.

“It’s a nice sunny day, not a cloud in the blasted sky,” Sir Neville said, though he wouldn’t have seen outside and there were no windows.

“Perfect day to escape. Check if Stijn and Mr Punch have left the lobby. If they have we’ll escape. They’ll never catch us, Sir Neville.”

“They’ll never catch us,” he said.

Her heart lifted, rising in her chest as if worked by a puppeteer. He held out his hand, but, before she could hold it, he held out his other hand and clasped her in his arms. Now, her heart felt as if it would explode, while his ticked against her chest, its beat rapid.

“They’ll never catch us,” he repeated. “Because we don’t leave.”

“What?” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

Hug became crush.

“No.”

Joan tried to pull away from him, but her puppeteer worked arms were no match for his metal. He’d dealt with tougher customers than her.

“Cock-a-hoop.”

They were travelling back towards the stage. Joan freed her head, neck snapping back, but couldn’t get away from him. The band continued to play their discordant tune.

“I’ll cock-a-hoop you,” she said. “Don’t you understand the concept of escape? Of being held against your will?”

He carried her up to the stage.

Joan’s voice faltered. “Don’t you want to leave?”

She kneed him in the groin, delighted to find that there he was made of man parts and not metal or wood. His brain would also be human, she was sure of that. Yet, where was his humanity? Sir Neville collapsed to his knees with a clang. His hand reached out and clasped her calf. A metallic whine screamed from his chest.

“Shush,” Joan said. “Oh, please shush.”

The band could not compete with the alarm.

From behind the stage, the two Toby dogs rushed out with their tails wagging and their jaws snapping. The dogs were made of fur, barbed wire and papier mâché. Their jaws bit into Joan’s ankles, threatening to sever her feet and leave her permanently unable to leave. She fell. Nose slammed into the boards, causing a cloud of choking sawdust.

“You can leave with me,” she said.

The dogs’ bite didn’t loosen. Nor did Sir Neville’s grip.

“He’s trapped us all. Can’t you see that?” Now she implored to the men in the orchestra pit.

The twang of drums and the beat of a torn drum formed their reply. One of them stood.

“Accept your lot,” the tramp said, placing a tambourine on his chair. “We’re lucky to be here and not there. Stijn told us. We understand. We should have made you understand too but your departure seemed dramatic and added beat to our drums. We knew you’d come back. After all, we’ve all come back from that place of worms and rot and chaos.”