what was that by the window? An iron maiden?
Sally pushed open the black, round windowed door that linked the dining area to the kitchens. ‘Hello? Anyone here?’
Still no reply.
She saw a small, white kitchen kept in a state of psychotic tidiness but she saw no cook.
She stepped into the kitchen.
Then someone hit her over the back of the head.
‘Touch your toes, female, and you shall learn what it is to be brought to ecstasy by a supreme master of love making.’
‘Thank you for your generous offer but since I’m an engaged woman and I forgot to give you any genitals, I don’t think I’ll bother.’ Having finally got him back into her mobile home, and out of the wheelie bin, Teena stood Lepus before her. Mr Landen was hugging the rabbit’s right leg. He was four foot tall, his flat head was as wide as his shoulders, and he had no neck. His one huge eye and one tiny eye gazed adoringly up at the rabbit as he stroked its leg a little too fondly for her liking. Still, she should have been grateful that someone was taken with the thing.
And perhaps Sally did have a point about Lepus but the situation might yet be saved. She said, ‘If you’re going to impress Sally into wanting you as a boyfriend–’
‘Oh, no, I don’t want to be her boyfriend,’ said Mr Landen in a voice half Peter Lorre, half childlike, ‘I’m happy with my bunny.’ And he rubbed his cheek against its fur to prove it.
‘I was talking to the “bunny”,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ He stroked on.
She told Lepus, ‘If you’re to be her boyfriend, you’ll have to smarten up your act.’
‘Smarten up–?’
‘No more sexual boasting. And a little more style.’
‘Style?’
‘Young women like style. It shows a man’s more than an animal. And to help you achieve that style, I bought you something to put on your head.’
‘Is it a carrot?’
‘Generally speaking, wearing a carrot on your head isn’t stylish.’
‘In rabbit circles, only the king rabbit gets to wear a carrot on the head. The rest of us must watch in envy as, once a week, he parades before us beneath his carrot.’
‘How quaint. But I think you should settle for this.’ From behind her back, she produced the black fedora she’d been hiding.
He studied it, nonplussed. ‘And what is this?’ He sniffed at it.
‘It’s a fedora.’
He nibbled its edges.
She said, ‘If you want to be a master of the night, you could wear that and a monocle, and perhaps carry a silvertipped cane. Let’s see how it fits.’ She stepped forward, yanked it from him, made sure the nibbled side faced the back and, stretching on tiptoes, attempted to place it on his head at just the right tilt.
‘Run, bunny, run!’ Mr Landen urged. ‘She’s trying to strangle you!’ And, half barging the startled rabbit over he pushed it toward the closet in the far wall.
Teena watched them flee. ‘Mr Landen, you can’t strangle someone with a hat.’
Half pushed, half running, Lepus said, ‘Quiver, female, quiver, for I am heading for a cupboard.’
‘Mr Landen?’ she asked still holding the hat.
They ran into the closet.
They slammed the door.
And she heard them lock it from the inside.
Then there was silence.
She watched the closet door, baffled. If she hadn’t known Landen was Britain’s leading brain scientist – herself excluded – she’d think him a complete moron.
Lepus’ door-muffled voice said, ‘Quiver, female, quiver, for now I am in a cupboard.’
Some days weren’t worth climbing out of bed for.
Why did her head hurt like a squashed melon?
Why could she smell cooking?
… And why could she hear a knife being sharpened?
Bleary eyed, Sally pulled her hair away from her face then checked her watch. Slowly, slowly it came into focus.
Two hours?
She’d been out cold for two hours?
And where was she?
She raised her head to look around. She recognized those white walls and that psychotic neatness, those gleaming utensils and polished cupboards. She was in the restaurant kitchen, lying face down on its table. Above the sizzle of simmering liquid a woman’s voice trilled,
‘Some day my prince will come.’
Then Sally noticed; each of her own fingers wore the tiny chef’s hats that self-satisfied people put on chicken legs to make themselves look like real cooks. She looked down. Her shoes were gone and her toes had been decorated like petits fours.
And her face …
Her face had been basted?
She looked up again and winced, the movement making her head hurt even more.
Five feet away, in red PVC boots, a G-string and PVC corset, a woman stood over the cooker. Her back to Sally, she stirred the contents of a deep pot, her black hair hanging down to her waist. Finished stirring, she tapped the ladle three times on the pot’s rim then placed it beside the biggest meat cleaver Sally’d ever seen. She took a box of salt, broke it open and emptied it into the pot. Her velvet voice told Sally, ‘Don’t mind me, naughty girl. I’m just here to cook you.’
That was what she thought.
Before the woman could react, Sally was off the table and out the door.
‘Uncle Al?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me; Sally.’ The moment she got back to her offices, before she’d even got her breath back, she was on the phone to him.
And
