fumes belched from his bucket’s eye slits.
When Danny stopped coughing, following the smoke’s dispersal to all quarters of the hospital, the esoteric entrepreneur slammed a grocery box down onto the boy’s chest and boomed, ‘Oh, perfidious betrayal!’
Another cloud swallowed the man. And, with a final flourish, he was gone.
Coughing one last cough, Danny tipped the box toward him for a better look. Its contents rattled.
This was trouble.
Big trouble.
The Dr Doom Detection Pen was a cheap, see-through biro available at any stationer’s. It didn’t even write properly, failing on every other word. And the snot-green mug with the not-quite-on-right handle and full length crack? In what way could it ever be connected with the Green Hornet? The Deluxe Spiderman Webbing (snare any villain in seconds) was sellotape. But not good sellotape.
Danny dropped the biro back into the grocery box, with the rest of the junk. It was his property – Osmosis had always insisted – freebies from a sales rep who’d arrive once a month, dispense rubbish then depart without selling a single comic.
And there were the rats, two. He’d rescued them from the broom of the girl who ran the takeaway next door. She’d screamed hysterically when told he’d be keeping them because he’d felt all shops should have a pet. Each rat had had a five-pound note in its mouth, as though they’d entered the takeaway planning to buy a meal.
Osmosis had pooh-poohed the idea. ‘Daniel, my boy, rats rarely appreciate the value of money.’
Regardless, Danny had put the notes in a piggy bank on the counter, doing it in front of them so they’d know where it was should they need it.
Now he checked the grocery box. Inevitably Osmosis hadn’t returned the money with the rats. In the box, their noses twitched up at him. And he knew they deserved better than being squashed by broom heads, or having their money stolen by over-theatrical shop owners, or being unacceptable in hospitals when cuter animals would be welcomed as therapeutic.
Right!
That was it.
He looked around. No one was watching.
Sitting up, he placed the rats on his lap. Tearing four thin strips from the box, he bit required lengths from the ‘Spiderman Webbing’, and taped cardboard to rodent ears. He pressed their new, longer ears on securely, to resist high winds.
There.
That was better.
Now they were rabbits.
Blam! Danny jumped.
Blam! Danny jumped.
Blam! Danny jumped.
Blam! Someone was firing a shotgun in the nearby woods. Another fired, then another, and another, till it became a chorus of hastily discharged pellets, each blast nearer than the one before.
And Danny knew all too well what it meant.
No time to waste, he placed his rattits back in their box, giving them one final stroke. Then he looked around to see if anyone official looking was watching. They weren’t.
Since he’d awoken, not one member of staff had paid the slightest attention to him. Initially they’d all been gathered around the bed by the door, watching its occupant perform his card tricks. Their presence had deterred Danny from trying to leave.
But, fifteen minutes after the card trick man’s death, they’d finally realized there’d be no more tricks from him and all the prodding in the world wasn’t going to change that. So, bored, they’d gravitated to the bed furthest from the door.
That was his chance.
Now the man in the bed furthest from the door was showing them his magic tricks. Constantly smiling he produced doves from nowhere and threw them into the air. In mid flutter they transformed into much needed medical supplies which clattered to the floor around him, whereupon he donated them to the hospital.
The act elicited gasps and applause from the entranced nurses, doctors, surgeons and accountants. The man didn’t even have the decency to look as unhealthy as Danny looked when healthy. But Danny’d figured it out; in this hospital, attention given related directly to entertainment value. Good; because Danny Yates had no entertainment value.
He leaned to one side and placed the rattits’ box on the floor. Now the man produced bunches of flowers from behind a doctor’s ear, handing them out to delighted nurses who sniffed at them and blushed coyly – even the male nurses. Now he handed flowers to the surgeons. And they blushed more than anyone.
Danny turned off the tap attached to his arm. He unplugged it then carefully slid it free of his vein, relieved to see the limb didn’t become an opened sluice discharging liquid by the gallon. He licked the one drop of purple liquid that formed on his arm where the tube had been. It was Ribena.
Throwing back the sheets, he climbed from the bed as more applause erupted behind him.
A small cabinet stood by his bed head. Inside, he found his clothes folded into a neat pile, trainers on top.
Casting furtive glances over his shoulder, grocery box and clothing in his arms, the unnoticeable Danny Yates made his escape, as the world’s most entertaining patient sawed himself in half.
The Great Osmosis sat in the dressing room of a closed down Working Men’s Club. Where once he’d heard the babble of club members awaiting the next act, he now heard silence.
And it didn’t matter. He no longer needed the applause of fools. Holding his bucket steady on his head, he sat before the huge wall mirror. With the softest of cloths he polished his precious pail. When that pail gleamed with all the vigour of Lancelot’s armour, he put aside the cloth. He placed the lid on the polish. He twisted tight its tiny latch. And he leaned forward, eyes narrowing to better admire the bucket.
In that mirror’s cracked reflections he glimpsed the past …
… March 28th, 1984. In that club, a novice magician donned his white gloves and marked his debut by making his pretty young wife disappear.
He’d been trying to saw her in half.
Confused, but hiding his desperation, he looked beneath the cabinet. He looked above it. He checked either side of it. He checked inside it. He checked beneath the curtains. He checked above the curtains. Still he found no sign of her.
Accompanied by boos, jeers and beer glasses hurled from the audience, he fled the stage, in tears.
When he got backstage and sobbed against the wall, what did he see by the fire extinguisher? Nothing less than his new bride kissing the club secretary. She spotted him. She threw back her head and laughed.
Days later, jobless and wifeless, he sat by the ring road and cried into a bucket – the only thing that could never betray him. And he knew what he must do.
He stood up, donned that faithful bucket so he wouldn’t see the onrushing traffic, and said goodbye to the world.
He stepped forward.
But, as he was about to step into the road, a miracle happened. A comic book blew onto his bucket. It was Man Fish, the last ever issue, where the soon-to-retire artist had finally granted El Dritch his deserved victory. Oh the writer had tried to hide Man Fish’s defeat, with captions that claimed being torn in half, and squashed by a mountain, was part of Man Fish’s master plan. Osmosis knew better.
His new career began with the founding of a small comic shop on that very site. He kept it spotless. Herbolt Myson was added to the stock, then model kits, then posters; all things that in childhood had given Osmosis hope of escape.
And a new dream