The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (22 page)

“That’s the way to do it, Joan,” Punch said. “That’s the way to do it.”

“Alice,” Joan said, renaming herself.

Punch’s stick faltered mid-slapping Stijn across the back of his head. He rubbed his temples. “Yes, that’s the way to do it.”

Judy stood in the alleyway where she had emerged from Hell. A ragtag woman stumbled behind her, made from the head, arms and torso of a girl who Judy had dragged from a white van, the legs made from a man she had found sleeping beside a grave. Seemed if she kept most of the original person, she could make monsters. Although, the construct she’d attempted to make from the man’s head, body and arms, adding the girl’s legs, had stumbled and dropped into a gutter, falling into two parts but that was men for you.

Rain lashed Judy. The wind knocked the girl into a bin and pinned her there. Judy dropped to her knees, pressed her eye to the hole (not much more than the size of a penny piece) and tried to peer into Hell. Rain dripped through, raining into the empty cavern. Her little finger dug into the hole, as if plugging it. She should return with tools and prise the cobblestones apart. Goddamn, she was Judy, wife of Punch, resident of Hell these past seventy or so years. The ground should crack at her will.

Behind Judy and offering the world a sigh, the girl fell apart. Raindrops formed tears. Judy scooped up the girl’s remains and threw her into the bin. Hopefully the corpse wouldn’t be discovered until after the rubbish collectors had removed the bin contents from the scene. It wouldn’t do to have police tape barring the both significant and insignificant entrance. She needed somewhere to drop Punch back into Hell. Call it divorce.

Once she’d found him. He was close. The stink of Hell dogged his steps, stronger than it had hers, but then he (back then) had been twice the monster. His viciousness had lessened with the boredom of Hell while hers had increased.

Correction, she was always twice the monster for she would willingly murder love.

On the main thoroughfare, so different from their day—apple trees uprooted and brook hidden beneath concrete—a girl stood outside a confectioner’s window, finger tracing the array of cream cakes within. With a purple coat, vibrant red hair, and a sausage dog, wearing a tartan coat, darting about her ankles, tying them together with its orange lead, the girl was the embodiment of life. From the sway of her skirts, the reflected flick of her tongue across her lips and the tap of a tangled foot, the girl made everyone else fade to grey streaks rushing here, there, nowhere.

This girl would tempt Punch as another had once done. He could never resist beauty.

Judy stood beside the girl. Judy’s beauty had faded into crags, grey hair, and a twisted snarl of a smile, never to return. Even if she stole this girl’s face, placed its smooth, pale pallor over hers, it would end up wrinkled and torn and as ugly as ugly could be. Judy did not embrace vanity. Power drove her. She reached out, wrapped her fingers around the girl’s. The girl tried to pull away and the sausage dog yelped between them.

Rosy cheeks blotted the girl’s face, spreading to rage, but she couldn’t pull away from Judy.

“Let go of...”

Judy slammed her forehead into the girl’s, causing the girl to fall limp in her arms. The supposed ever-faithful dog freed itself from the tangle of lead and legs and scarped down the street and into oncoming traffic. Judy bundled the girl into her arms. A slip of paper drifted from the girl’s coat pocket. Judy snatched it.

A theatre bill for a puppet show at The Theatre of Foolish & Harmful Delight. Judy loved a pantomime. Punch loved to see folk manipulated.

“Perhaps you will return Punch to me without aid of your beauty.”

Judy dropped the girl. She fell as ash. Burnt by the residue of Hell’s fires that clung to Judy’s skin, leaving them both ashen.

Folding the poster, Judy placed it in her pocket, headed toward the theatre. With each step, her heart palpitated. On the right track at last. She knew if she held onto this world, if she carved her way through it, then she would find the route to Punch in the turn of a dead woman’s bones.

The Theatre of Foolish & Harmful Delight stood on a drab corner far away from theatre land. Its awning hand-painted in an attempt at calligraphy. Rain had washed the words into a blur. Dirt covered brick and windows. An audience departed, huddling into raincoats or popping umbrellas to attention. A dour lot, their mingled grumble offering their dissatisfaction.

What had tempted the audience to attend in the first place? Cheap sets or much talked about show? Again, Judy examined the flier. It offered something about a ‘living doll’ and ‘a freakish extravaganza of dance’. Nothing within it to even tempt a former of resident of Hell to attend. Judy cut through the audience, adding her own dissatisfied grumbles and further increasing the audiences. She moved plague-like amongst them. The brush of her arm caused them to slump, to slink away, allowing the rain to drench their skin, and not care if pneumonia ended them. When the crowd cleared, she found him.

“Hello, Punch,” she said.

After a lousy performance, Stijn stomped on Rasputin’s back until Rasputin’s spine broke. Now he’d have to find the man a new spine. Joan twisted her chains until she hung far above him. He’d invest in a hook to ensure she never escaped his reach. Blood dripped from where the chains cut into her wrists. His theatre was dismantling. Punch and Judy, his captors in Hell, had found each other. God knew what trouble that meant for Stijn.

With Rasputin groaning on the stage and Joan doing her best to avoid him, Stijn settled back into the loneliness he’d known in Hell. Didn’t matter how many people he built, it all amounted to the same thing—they wanted nothing to do with him. The consequence of being a monster, he supposed.

He needed to rebuild his gumption, having become settled in this theatrical life, and carry his players to somewhere far from Punch. Sure, Punch would find him again, eventually, but in the meantime he would avoid a premature ride along the River Styx. Problem was, he didn’t want to leave the theatre. Why should he? Punch and Judy had ridden his coat tails out of Hell and not vice-versa. They had no power here. Except, the all-intimidating size of them and the fact they could tear him apart and secure his head in a box. Stijn shuddered.

From above, Joan spat. It hit him in the nose, dribbling onto his pointed chin.

“I’ll break you too,” Stijn said.

He’d break them all. If he was to be alone then better to be lonely without spectators. He’d not allow the audience to laugh at him. Digging into Rasputin’s pockets, Stijn removed the keys that unfastened Joan’s chains. The spotlight glinted off them. Now she stopped twisting higher and higher. Now she dropped a little.

Stijn fell to his knees. When had he become this monster? He wiped snot from beneath his nose. Although, he must have been a monster to have wound up in Hell. If only he could remember his life. People and places. Find the original man. The boy without sin.

Hold on tight
, he’d said to Joan on their flight from Hell, her teeth biting into his calf. He’d thought her an ally in his despair.

The key dangled between his fingers. “There are worse places to be.”

“There are better.”

“Are you sure about that?”

How could she be? Joan knew nothing about the world they’d landed in except for snippets gathered from the audience’s conversations. The world would terrify her. It terrified him. The key dropped from his fingers with a clang.

At the back of the auditorium, Sir Neville asked, “Tickets, please.”

Grabbing Rasputin’s arm, Stijn dragged the puppeteer off the stage. The puppeteer groaned with each bump of head and back against the stage. Stijn would begin again. Build a new puppeteer.

“One by one, the arms are gone. Two by two, now what does he do,” Stijn sang, shoulders aching as he dragged Rasputin’s load to the basement workshop, to the place where the stage trapdoor opened and dropped the unsuspecting. “Whistle while I work. All work and no play makes Stijn a dull boy. An unhappy Stijn means folk will be broken. But they’re not people, Stijn.”

Even he didn’t believe that last comment.

Joan hadn’t realised she was holding her breath until all sight and sound of Stijn had dispersed. She’d twisted her chains so much that it proved a bugger to untangle them. Her arms ached from the tug and pull. She’d dropped a few inches, but her feet swung at least a dozen more above the stage and the key remained too far away. Her cheeks burned.

Although Sir Neville had led to her recapture, she called out to him. “Sir Neville, if you please. Sir, Neville.”

The foolish man didn’t move. Perhaps, they’d reprogrammed him to no longer interact with the players, with her. If so it made Sir Neville sound more machine than man, whereas Joan was certain a man lay within him, that his brain, like hers, was human. They were both machines of sorts. Manufactured things. Did it matter what they were made of?

“Sir Neville.”

In reply, Sir Neville pushed open the auditorium doors and disappeared into the lobby.

“Useless man.”

In the lobby, Sir Neville began gibbering about tickets and cancelled shows, but it was the voice that answered him, which caused Joan to shiver. Mr. Punch.

Joan struggled with her chains. She wouldn’t be torn apart without offering a fight. Even unshackled, the advantage would be his, but at least there would be fight on her part. A shard of wood broke free of the flies. Joan swung to her left, avoiding its sharp prick. The shard stabbed into the stage. A crack ran across the beam from which her chains dangled. Gripping her hands around the chains, ignoring the pain that smarted and burned her wrists, Joan began to pull metal and beam with all she had. Before she could register its full weakness, the beam broke and Joan dropped with a thud-clang. As she scrambled for the key, the auditorium doors opened.

Dragging her chains with her, Joan hid to stage left. The key slipped within her fingers. Sweat dripped from her forehead, dripping into her eyes, blinding. What was up with her? She freed her ankles. Footsteps pounded down the auditorium steps. She’d never get free in time.

“Hello.”

Think. Do. The shackles dropped from her left wrist. The right proved more difficult. As Mr Punch’s shadow cut across the stage, the final lock clicked open. Joan laid the remainder of the chain on the floor, her fingers shaking, afraid of making the tiniest noise. The worst thing would be to betray herself.

Light picked out Mr Punch. He looked up at the broken beam. Despite his looming presence, the stage looked empty. Her stage. She’d known no other place for as long as she could remember.
Move, Joan. Move.
What was up with her? Maybe she didn’t belong in the real world. After all, she wasn’t a real girl.

A monster made of dead people.

One of the dog’s snapped at her ankle.

“Who’s back there?” Mr Punch asked.

The dog’s feet caught in the chain. It yelped. Joan took its distress and Mr Punch’s curiosity as her cue to leave. She ran into the backstage maze with its corridors of cupboards and dressing rooms. Rope dangled from the ceiling and old scenery perched against walls; fading images of hills, valleys and a prison cell. How apt. The dog let out a howl and Mr Punch muttered something that she couldn’t make out. New sound seeped backstage. Sounds of an audience. The theatre was opening. Sir Neville would be collecting tickets for an empty stage. She should turn back, enter the stage from the right, and drag Sir Neville with her. This time she wouldn’t ask for his help; she’d offer her own.

She headed back to the stage, peeked from behind the drab curtain. The audience shuffled between the rows in confusion with no Sir Neville to guide them. Had he escaped? Damn him. She could escape in the disorder, if no one recognised her. Trouble was, most of their patrons were regulars and she sort of stood out. She’d no idea what brought the same folk back to watch a pathetic puppet show. Someone pointed causing those around him to stare at the stage. Joan slinked back into the shadows. Boots began to thud within the auditorium. Their impatience would draw Stijn.

A green exit sign blinked. Sparks flew from its unstable bulbs. Escape. The door stood ajar, sunlight cutting across the threshold. She hadn’t seen sunlight in so long it seemed a dream. A false memory. After all, she wasn’t a... real... girl. Didn’t matter. She had to leave.

Something glinted on the floor by the door. A cracked monocle. She approached it with soft, slow steps. Sir Neville would have left by the front door and not the stage door. It would be someone else’s monocle and, even if it was his, it meant he’d left. She should be glad about that. No, she should be angry at him for running away when he’d stopped her leaving and caused her to be re-captured but it was hard to hate a man with a metallic glint to his chest and an enlarged, visible heart. She stood in the sunlight, almost outside.

Run
, her heart urged.

Run
, her brain demanded.

Joan picked up the cracked monocle. “Did you run, Sir Neville?”