creep up on me, nudging each other with wooden elbows, sniggering stupidly among themselves. Then one taps me on the shoulder. I turn. And they’re encircling me, like Pink Elephants on Parade. They close in on me, crushing me, smothering me, falling on me, killing me. And I wake, screaming, to discover I was awake all along. Well; today I’m killing that dream.’
‘Even if it means killing yourself?’
Kerchung.
‘Have you considered a holiday?’ she asked.
‘They come along with me.’
‘Who do?’
‘Shelves – on holiday.’
‘But not really?’
‘Yes, really. I sit on the coach, looking forward to a good time, then I look around. And they’re filling all the other seats, reading newspapers, smoking pipes, one leg flung over the other. Little baby shelves kick the back of the seats in front and get told off by their mother shelves.’
‘I see.’ Choosing to lighten the subject matter, she pulled a comic from a low rack. ‘How much is this Fish Man. He Swims?’
‘One pound seventy-five.’
‘And this Hormonal Fifty?’
‘One pound seventy-five.’
‘And The Human Leech?’
‘One seventy-five.’
She placed them back on the rack, none containing the information she needed. On tiptoes she scanned the rack’s upper reaches. ‘None of your stock seems to have a price tag.’
‘Osmo’s orders. He says, “Daniel, my dear boy, we are tigers in the jungles of commerce. Customers are our prey. Keep them confused, disorientated. Show a dapple of movement through the trees here, a dapple there. Keep them guessing. When they are suitably frightened, pounce.” ’
‘Osmo?’
‘The Great Osmosis, my boss and landlord. He models himself on El Dritch, Menacing Master of Mirage from Man Fish. He Breathes.’
‘Don’t you mean Fish Man. He Swims?’ She referred to the comic she’d just studied, being a stranger to such things.
‘No; Man Fish. He Breathes. Fish Man was half man, half fish. Man Fish is half fish, half man. You can’t confuse the two, it’s in the swim bladders. Osmo won’t stock Man Fish because Man Fish always beats El Dritch.’
‘Sounds a well-balanced individual,’ she said.
‘Osmo wears a bucket over his head, with smoke pouring from the eye holes. He appears from nowhere, checks for dust, delivers lofty, muffled orders then disappears in a cloud of smog. God knows why he takes so much interest in a dump like this when he has his fingers in every pie in town.’
‘I believe I’ve had dealings with him.’
‘Then you know what a pillock he is.’
Now she was by his step ladder. Knuckles on hips, lower lip jutted, she gazed up at him.
Kerchung.
How old was he? Nineteen? No age at all to die, but still a year older than her, and she’d packed a lifetime into her eighteen years. ‘He seemed a little smarmy,’ she said of the Great Osmosis, ‘but otherwise okay.’
‘That’s because you’ve never had to endure a lunch hour with him.’
A comic fell from the ladder, hitting the floor. She scooped it up.
Strolling through the aisles, she flicked through pages that looked as though someone had wiped his trainers on them. Like extinguishing birthday cake candles, she blew dusty marks from paper. ‘How much is this one?’
‘What is it?’
‘Mr Meekly.’
‘Never heard of it,’ he said.
She read out the front page blurb. It informed them that Mr Meekly, 45, a man in a brown suit, was responsible for handing out tax refunds. Alone among his colleagues, he delighted in redistributing money to the populace. And he was famous for it. Upon spotting his approach, women would lean out through their bedroom windows, asking, ‘Why, Mr Meekly, are you coming to my house?’
And he’d say, ‘Yes, Madam, I am,’ even if he wasn’t, because the more money he handed out, the better he felt. And, excited, they’d rush to the door, still in their night wear, inviting him in for a cup of tea. And, though tea was all he ever received, he was content with that.
One day, a call arrived.
He was sent to Future City’s new Atomic Underground.
The underground was vital for the city to compete with Tomorrowville’s nuclear taxis, it was claimed. Some saw a more sinister purpose. They said there was no such thing as a nuclear taxi, although they could never prove it in televised debate.
The underground was still under construction when Meekly arrived. At the entrance, the foreman warned him it might be unsafe to enter the building site.
‘Nonsense,’ said the taxman. ‘A man in there deserves his money, and his money he shall get.’
So the foreman handed him a yellow helmet, two sizes too large, patted it on ‘tight’ and sent him through a gauntlet of environmental protesters. Thrown house bricks bounced off that helmet. It was a good helmet, a life saver.
Meekly climbed the barriers then descended into the bowels of the Earth. Briefcase in hand, he made his way down dusty tunnels, giving the occasional polite cough.
Emerging onto the dimly lit platform, he spotted the man he wanted. Mike Mionman, 26, knelt – his back turned to Meekly – riveting square things to a wall.
Meekly stood still. He removed his shoes, one at a time, placing them neatly to one side, then tiptoed up behind the man, smiling, anticipating the look Mionman’s face would adopt upon seeing the cash laden case.
But then …
… Disaster.
A child was loose on the platform.
Panicking, oversized helmet falling over his eyes, Meekly staggered around, arms outstretched before him, and toppled onto the track, as the Atom Bomb powered train approached on its final test run.
He took the full force.
Against all odds, Mr Meekly survived the collision; Future City did not.
And the radiation did things to his blood.
‘Now,’ read Teena, ‘when exposed to travel delays, rude staff or ill-considered town planning, Mr Meekly becomes the Human Tube Line, powerful as an Atom Bomb, obdurate as a ticket collector, stupid as the fascist government’s love of private roads when we should be travelling by bicycles
