The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension (16 page)

A tremendous storm had arrived from nowhere, smashing windows and uprooting trees, bringing down power lines and plunging the entire city into darkness. But Fanny still hadn’t been snatched up by the ferocious winds and whisked over the nearest rainbow, an omission that caused her much sadness and irritation.

As she stood near her window gazing at the incredible downpour, she dreamed about the wonderful land rumoured to exist on the other side of that arc of multicoloured light, a realm of magic and romance, perfect for a lonely girl no older than seventeen summers who loathed the grime and violence of her present environment.

Her lips quivered and she began to weep.

It was at this very moment that an apparition materialised in her room and tapped her gently on the shoulder. She turned in surprise to behold a burly figure in a pink dress. “I’m the good witch of the south, so cheer up and stop blubbering.”

“But you’re a man!” Fanny protested.

“Aye, and I’m from up north, but discrimination based on gender and origin has been outlawed in the workplace. You want to leave this city and go somewhere special? Well I can help!”

Fanny nodded eagerly. “I hope to find…”

“I know! Listen closely. All you need to do is follow the Yellow Sick Road. Can you do that?”

Fanny frowned. “I don’t understand.”

The witch rolled exasperated eyes and spat on the carpet from the side of a grizzled mouth. “The torrential rainfall has burst the sewers and all kinds of human waste is floating down the flooded streets. Soon be a hepatitis outbreak and jaundice is one symptom of that disease. Turns people yellow. Visit all the worst cases and that’s the Yellow Sick Road. Follow, follow, follow!”

Fanny winced. “Is there no other way?”

“Nope, and I’m leaving now. Wait for the epidemic to get going before setting off. As for the lion, the scarecrow and the other one, personally I wouldn’t bother with them. Bye!”

“Wait! What’s your name?” she cried.

“Petal,” said the man.

The answer was unconvincing but she accepted it. Then he vanished as inexplicably as he had come.

In this grotesque city ordinary days passed slowly but her impatience now made matters worse. Yet Fanny listened carefully to the emergency broadcasts on her portable radio for the announcement of the anticipated hepatitis outbreak. When it came she pulled on a pair of waterproof boots and began her magical journey.

For a month she wandered the wards of the local hospital, an edifice that suffused from every window of its decaying façade the bleak twilight with the multiple migraine flicker of cheap fluorescent bulbs, but not one victim of the affliction ever showed a particle of gratitude for her kind words and soothing hands.

The nurses were also hostile to her presence, suspicious of her motives and jealous of her beauty. Fanny had to remind herself that the Yellow Sick Road wasn’t meant to be an easy path to tread and that only an attitude of extreme stoicism would serve to propel her down it right to the end. Her pretty teeth gritted.

Once she came to a fork and didn’t know how to proceed. Hepatitis A to the left, Hepatitis C to the right! Which way? Then a scarecrow in a nearby bed came to her assistance. He wasn’t really a scarecrow but a drug addict whose habit had destroyed his intelligence to the point where it could be said he had no brain. Yet he still possessed enough wisdom to inform her:

“Hepatitis B is the one to watch for! When combined with Hepatitis D it has the highest mortality rate.”

She thanked him and moved on. Later she met the lion, but he wasn’t real either, just a normal human coward, too scared of reprisals to report his rapist neighbour to the police. Yellow eyeballs followed her movements, undressing her with fevered stares, covering her body in the custard pus of moral contagion.

At no point did she come across the tin man.

Fanny also visited the sick and dying in their own homes. In basement flats and cramped attics, in narrow rooms with curtains always closed and faulty gas heaters leaking carbon monoxide into the damp air, she did what she could to provide comfort.

Malnourished babies and whipped dogs whimpered from inside locked wardrobes, fat ugly wives boiled eggs and underpants in the same pot, the verbal abuse she received from feeble but vicious terminal patients often reduced her to tears, but Fanny never abandoned her quest. Her need to escape forever was too strong.

Finally she caught the disease herself…

She lay on her own bed and wondered if Petal had betrayed her. Was it really going to end like this? Then she felt her soul rising out of her body, bursting through the roof, floating higher and higher. In front of her curved a rainbow and she glided over it. Then began a long descent and everything went black.

Fanny awoke. With an effort she climbed to her feet, her movements producing a clanking noise: she was encased in metal. Then she realised the truth and clapped for joy, sparks flying from fingers and palms.
She
was the tin man! It was all so obvious now.

She was in some kind of shack. Gruff voices came from outside. “Ned Kelly! We know you’re in there!”

Then she was through the door and in the sunlight. As bullets slammed into her head and chest, bouncing off her homemade armour but causing lethal shrapnel to penetrate her brain and heart, she realised that not only had she reached the land of her desire but was about to become one of its most famous historical figures.

Unfortunately it was the wrong Oz.

Far from the crumbling urban jungle, way down south in the tropic sweat of Africa, a real jungle of creepers and wild beasts and lost cities awaited Fanny. She knew she was destined to travel there and meet a strong noble man raised by strange apes and fall in love with him and become his wife because her daydreams said so.

Yes, she had watched too many Tarzan movies, but she was seventeen and highly impressionable. She was also lightly freckled and deserving of the passion of a rainforest lover.

But no genie, fairy godmother or good witch seemed inclined to help her achieve this particular ambition, so she finally decided to organise the escape herself. She found a badly paid job in a corner shop that catered to aggressive unemployed alcoholics and she endured their crude behaviour and insults until she scraped together enough money to pay her airfare out of this depressing city forever.

While she stood in the bus station waiting for transport to the airport, a voice from nowhere cried, “You’re making a mistake, Fanny! Please don’t get on the bus. Listen to me!”

“Who said that?” she wondered.

“I’m your author, Fanny,” came the reply, “and because nobody else is available to advise you, I deemed it best to turn up myself and warn you of the dangers that lie ahead.”

“You mean I’m just a character in a story?”

“Yes,” I said truthfully.

“Why shouldn’t I go to the airport? There’s a plane waiting to take me over the equator to an ancient land where a primeval man will hold me in his brown arms and kiss me…”

“I’ll tell you why, Fanny,” I interrupted, “and it’s very simple. In tales of this type the most ridiculous things always happen, so if you get on the bus I can guarantee the plot will compel it to take a wrong turning and go to the spaceport instead, where you’ll accidentally board a spacecraft and be blasted into outer space.”

She widened her eyes. “Really?”

I nodded. “Yes. This spacecraft will then be caught in a timewarp and you’ll land on a future version of Earth, centuries after a nuclear war has destroyed human civilisation. Only the top half of the Statue of Liberty can survive such a war. The devious talking apes that rule the planet will capture you and use you for unseemly experiments. There will be lots of outraged grunting — by you!”

Fanny considered this carefully and frowned.

“I want to be loved by an apeman with the emphasis on ‘man’, not by an entire planetful of real apes, which sounds singularly painful, so I’ll take your advice, but I’m disappointed at giving up a daydream inspired by the Tarzan franchise.”

“Don’t worry about that, Fanny. As your author I’m in the best position to make special arrangements. In fact I’ve already done so. At the docks a tramp steamer is waiting to take you to your destination. Much safer to go by ship! A certain Mr Denham is your contact. Just mention my name and he’ll provide your every need.”

“But I don’t know your name!” she protested.

“Look on the cover,” I said.

Then I waved farewell and left her to her own devices. Normally I enjoy putting characters
into
terrible situations, not taking them out, but Fanny is an extraordinary case and I was happy to save her from a horrid hairy fate in a chattering simian future.

She walked to the docks and a man greeted her. “Hello Fanny. We’re ready to set sail immediately.”

“Thanks, Mr Denham,” she answered.

“Call me Carl,” he said.

She crossed the gangplank to the deck and shortly afterwards the ship set off over the rough sea. They sailed south for many weeks, then turned to the east. A hulking landmass loomed to one side, and Fanny felt sure it was Africa, but they continued past it. The weeks became months, storms emptied her stomach of every morsel of food she managed to swallow at mealtimes. She turned green.

Eventually she took to her bed. “When will we reach the jungle where Tarzan dwells?” she gasped to Carl Denham. He had gone below to visit her. She swung in a hammock and dried vomit caked her slobbery mouth and heaving chest.

“What are you talking about? Our destination is Skull Island, off the coast of Sumatra. We’re going there to capture a giant ape by the name of King Kong, to take him to New York and put him in a Broadway musical against his knuckle-dragging will. By the way, did you know that ‘kong’ is the Danish word for king? In Denmark, King Kong means Kong King. How pointlessly silly is that?”

“My author tricked me!” Fanny hissed.

“He probably didn’t know. But don’t worry, I’m sure that when we get King Kong to New York and he escapes, which is inevitable, and kidnaps you and climbs the Empire State Building with you gripped in one hand, while flimsy biplanes try to shoot him down, you’ll be perfectly fine and come to no ultimate harm.”

Mr Denham must have possessed a gift of foresight, for most of what he mentioned actually happened. On Skull Island, the gargantuan ape in question fell in love with Fanny and tickled her whenever the opportunity presented itself, but he was captured and transported to Broadway. Seems he wasn’t cut out for the stage, for on his opening night the flashbulbs of the photographers sent him wild and he broke his chains. More actors in more musicals should be put in chains, in my view. Anyway he snatched Fanny and went off with her.

Up the side of the Empire State Building he climbed. Flimsy biplanes were scrambled, but not like eggs, and safety catches were removed from loaded machineguns. But Fanny wasn’t scared. She recalled what Carl Denham had told her. The massive ape would certainly put her down on the observation deck at the summit of the skyscraper before swatting at the planes. She would be safe while he was riddled with dum-dum bullets and sent plummeting to his death.

Then she could be rescued without injury! But why was the skyscraper rumbling? What did it mean?

At this point I feel obliged to include a scene from a meeting that took place in 1929 between the three architects responsible for the building’s design. Shreve, Lamb and Harmon are sitting around a table discussing how strong to make the structure.

“Best to take every eventuality into consideration. I insist we make the frame tough enough to withstand the weight of a 50-foot ape, just in case one decides to climb it. I hate to think of our skyscraper collapsing under the strain of a vast primate.”

“Agreed. But shouldn’t we make it a little stronger than that, strong enough to take the weight of an outsized ape
plus
the weight of a slim, pretty kidnapped woman?”

“On no account! To err on the safe side is one thing. To be ludicrous and whimsical is another.”

“Just the weight of a solo giant ape then?”

“Yep. Just that.”