You have to get up early in the morning to go to school.”
Pete said nothing and glared at his father. Peter Smith looked prematurely old: tired green eyes, face lined like tanned leather from too much drinking, and streaks of grey in his dark hair. But it was evident that he had been quite handsome when he was younger.
“I worry about you, Pete!”
Something, maybe the tone of his father’s voice, irritated him. He almost said, Why? You never cared before!
The gargoyle outside their window glowed red in the neon light from the bar across the road. A police car drove by, siren wailing.
“I know I haven’t been much of a father, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t try to be a good one now,” Smith said at last, his shoulders sagging.
“Ten?”
“Nine.”
Pete sighed as he went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. It was going to be difficult to be back by nine on Friday evening. They would have to work fast.
“He looks quite handsome in black.” Freddy inspected Sticks’s limp frame after they had shaken him from the black plastic bag in which they had carried him. “Pity it’s not leathers, though. It would be more suitable for this dump. And a few piercings would be nice.”
“Now to get this contraption going.” Pete strapped the whatsit to his forehead. For a brief moment nothing seemed to happen, and then the vertigo hit him. Things went black. It was as if his eyeballs were sucked from his head and thrown on the ground.
His vision came back slowly. He saw himself standing among the garbage cans and dirt in the dark alley behind the Putrid Poulet with the green-lit, whirring whatsit on his head. He was seeing through Sticks’s eyes.
“Okay, it’s working!” shouted Squeak from his shoulder.
Freddy jumped with excitement. “Get up and go for it!”
Pete tried moving his hand. He saw himself moving his hand. Then he turned Sticks’s head and looked down. The automaton’s hand was also moving. He concentrated. Sticks slowly stood up from the cardboard box on which they’d seated him.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” said Sticks in Pete’s voice and walked a few steps. Then the automaton lost its balance and fell in a tangle of broomsticks and black jeans.
“Now look what you’ve done,” said Freddy. “He’s lost an arm!”
Pete took the whatsit off. He reeled as his point of vision was flung back into his own head. Nausea rose in his chest. He sat down on a dustbin. When he felt better, he bent down and examined Sticks. The automaton had indeed lost an arm: The wing nut joint of the right elbow had come loose.
Pete fumbled in the sleeve of the jacket and fixed it. He took a deep breath. “Here goes!” he said as he strapped the contraption to his head again. The vertigo struck, but he was ready for it this time.
The Putrid Poulet was everything Freddy had said, and more. Dark, with flashing coloured lights illuminating hordes on the dance floor and at the bar. Laser beams cut through clouds of cigarette smoke. The music was deafening.
Pete could feel Sticks’s wooden frame vibrate with every beat of the bass. It gave him a headache.
He manoeuvred the automaton around the dance floor and through the sweating throng to the bar. Maybe the barman knew Rose. In the movies they always knew everybody. This particular barman had a huge copper ring in his tattooed nose.
Pete tried to attract his attention. “Excuse me …”
The next moment the nose-ringed barman thrust a paper cup into the automaton’s hand.
“I did not …” began Pete.
The man held out his right hand and showed four fingers with the left.
“Pay him!” Squeak shouted from inside Sticks’s cardboard chest.
Pete panicked. Nobody had thought about bringing money. Nobody had any money anyway. He looked around for an escape route. Then someone next to Sticks handed the barman some money. Pete turned Sticks’s head to his benefactor.
It was a woman. Black-and-white make-up with a shade of green around the eyes. There was a safety pin in her left cheek. She winked, leaned over to Sticks and shouted in his ear, “It’s on me, Elvis!”
Pete moved Sticks’s lips into a smile. He had no idea what to do, so he lifted the cup and emptied it into the wax mouth. A wet sensation spread across his chest. He looked down. The wax head had no throat, and all the liquid just ran over his chin and onto his jacket. He felt the woman sidling up to Sticks.
She smiled sweetly, wiggling her safety pin. “Like to dance?” she shouted.
Pete was at a loss. He would never find Rose. The club was too dark and crowded. He could bump right into her without seeing her. He steered Sticks after the safety pin lady into the mob on the dance floor.
Dancing was the one thing that was easy. No co-ordination required. Just concentrate on keeping the automaton upright, and shake your body. Piece of cake.
“There she is!” shouted Squeak. He was peeking through a hole in the back of Sticks’s jacket.
Pete scanned the crowd on the dance floor. “Where?”
“Behind you!”
Pete turned the automaton’s head a hundred and eighty degrees. “Where?”
Somebody screamed. He turned the head another hundred and eighty degrees to see what had happened. It was his dancing partner. When she saw Sticks turning his head a full circle, she fainted.
Pete bent the broomstick body to help the safety pin girl.
Squeak scrambled inside the automaton’s chest to get a better view. “Purple make-up and spikes on the head. Quick, she’s moving away!”
Pete turned the wax head again, and this time he recognised the school’s caretaker. Then he moved the automaton’s body, but in trying to do too many things at the same time, he lost control. Sticks crashed into the crowd, and when his head hit the ground, it came loose and rolled a few paces away from the body. Pete stared up from the dance floor at a circle of shocked faces. He saw Squeak emerging from Sticks’s chest where the neck should have been.
The little mouse grasped the bracket at the end of the wax neck. “Help me, dammit!”
Pete moved the automaton’s right hand. He grabbed at the head and missed.
“More to the left,” yelled Squeak.
He concentrated and got the head by the black acrylic hair. With Squeak guiding, he shoved it back onto the shoulders. Then he made the automaton stand up.
The dance floor was in total chaos, screaming faces and milling bodies everywhere. A few people had seen what had happened and believed their eyes. They tried to escape from Sticks as quickly as possible. More people knew that they had seen something terrible, but did not quite know what.
