Botchi

Cosatch McMillan packed his trunk as neatly as he always had, placing the ionizer square to the pump-valve. His manuals were always hand-written by his man in Three Mile Ford, the jet-black prism on the north exit road, en face Harry’s Place. Acting on a whim, he had decided to hit the road and cross the county border, desperate to seek an answer. His hypothesis had seen him concentrate on page 36 of his inked commandments, which beckoned him to abandon Gabbler’s Ethic if he were ever to succeed.

Several years ago the pain had begun. The chromium plate in McMillan’s head had slipped perpendicular to Welko Point, placing uncalled for pressure on his frontal lobe. Prudence would have sent him to a quack, but reticence held him back. During a break on a lecture he was giving on Post-Gastual Reems at the Nuremberg Institute Of Personification, he slipped off to the rest room to relieve himself of a massive build up of sexual frustration caused by Erika “Debs” Harkark in the front row, who persisted in picking at her left ear with a Boonz the Pole commemorative pencil, an act that drove Milly wild with lust. This girl seriously punked his paste. Pumping away over the thought of doing all manner of legal and illegal acts with Erika, he slowly began to realise he was telepathically transmitting his fantasy directly to her.
“It must be the chromium plate in my head which slipped that has caused this most strange of phenomena to occur. I shall refrain from getting it amended, as this could prove very useful.” Erika told him to stop thinking of her in that way immediately, else she’d have him knee-capped by her gout-ridden father. “But Erika, have you forgotten about that night already, when chance was replaced by folk, and the sweet chordal progressions held all in a trance; we had but little choice; to indulge in a primitive act of sordidness was the only way to fathom the momentous moment. Oh, how the flocks danced their merry two-step, how the skies wept at our pity…our pity…our…”
“Stop it at once”. Erika motioned with her arms furiously when bellowing this. “You are a wretched beast who has forgotten the ten gentlemanly commandments that the laziest of your fathers never thought to teach you. You are an insolent pig who may rot in Amsterdam for all I care, now beat it.”
With this Cosatch shuffled sideways out of the nearest door, attempting to moonwalk as a last resort of impress, but instantly recognised the embarrassment he had just served himself. Erika turned, clutching her well stocked folder, and left at the opposite end of the room. That was the last Cosatch saw of her.
“But wait, with these fresh powers of me I can roam the land and telepath my disgusting thoughts to all and sundry, and perhaps I will discover people who think likewise. Filthy dames who will wash my car and read me law, a degraded…”
At this point McMillan realised he was thinking aloud, and his confident moonwalk reduced to a shrinking stride, bereft of charm. With ever decreasing ideas of dignity, he clambered into his sporty two-seater and clicked the ignition key into place. A satisfying roar answered his questioning, and the teak accelerator responded to his driving plimsolls, a partnership that had begun to understand each other fully over time.

The battered remains of the rubbery sole bore testament, yet McMillan refused to invest in replacements. There were bigger pilchards to poach. The nagging need for an answer to the conundrum that had presented itself was still no nearer, and the tangent of dirty girls still played heavily with his processes. The mischievous implants of desire oscillated sharply, blunting his logical progressional outlook, and set obstacles. Perhaps the old man selling despair on the corner would have an answer: he was old, therefore wisdom must be abundant.
“Hello old man, do you have the answer?” questioned Cosatch.
“I have many answers, but they yield little without belief in my orb”, replied the man, pointing directly at a brightly speckled spinning orb that hovered some five inches off the unevenly cracked paving.
“What the Hades do you have there, old fellow, ’tis magical in its honesty of motion, yet I perceive its wit to be of a sabre-like standard, punishing yet educational, sporting yet grimy in its pursuit of tricks.”
The old man stared blankly at Cosatch, engineering an initial analysis that pleased him not. Who was this cod-philosopher, guessing wildly at the functions of his great sphere? This imbecile could not possibly fathom the abilities of his structural masterpiece, and why did he finger his ears in such a revoltingly violent manner? The old man could do little except look away and try to ignore the fool until he was aware of his disinterest. An arduous task he was not prepared for, but he received. Three hours passed as Cosatch inspected the orb with childish wonderment; the last time an object had attracted this much concentration was as a nipper, suckling on his mother’s left teat. The stares were fragmented by monosyllabic coos of thumbs up; Chinese water torture, each sound grating the old man’s soul with increasing magnitude. He toyed with the idea of legging it, but remembered the orb, which would probably have to be wrestled from the goon’s grasp the minute he tried to dislodge the partnership. As dusk fell, the old man’s patience fell also. There they stood, one concentrating fully upon a speckled orb, one facing the other way, hands in pockets, pipe in hand. The old man hadn’t sold any despair, only to himself, and his outlook was bleak. Mists rolled in with the night, hijacking the darkness, adding a wispy category to the atmosphere. Of course, the old man didn’t give a flying fig and wanted out, but the test of stamina had begun.

Tampering with his shag, the old man prized several entwined strands of the finest darkness from the somehow grapefruit coloured envelope he always found his tobacco in. Twirling his fingers as though testing the elasticity of his cherished black, he skilfully manipulated the sodden mass into a flammable cone via clay, and put the worn mouthpiece of his archaic companion into his pursed mouth. The mist thickened as he struck a match against the threadbare man-made fibres of his sole, igniting his pipe. Breathing deeply, the smoke proved a worthy antidote to the impending chill of night. Turning round purposefully, nicotine fuelling the desire to be pinpoint, the old man rationalised his argument. He needed to get home to his sick parakeet, he had left a whole host of electrical appliances on, the leather on the arms of his easy-chair needed preparation for the storm of Galilee that was forecast to come a week next Wednesday. Which, oh but which, argument would be the best to ignite compassion and discernment within the strangest of strangers, the lamentable figurine squatted uncomfortably thereover? As the old man utilised tired eyes to focus on Cosatch, he saw that he was consulting a tatty notebook, half pages torn out, some loosely flapping in the slight breeze that was now accompanying the general winter, and noticed that his gaze was transfixed on page 36. Whatever that page held within its text, the old man was sure that it could not be aiding the irregular one in any way at all with the understanding of the orb.

Twenty birds circled the scene, diving and fanning in precise formation, one they must have practised at length when bored with their miserable city lives. The old man, by now shaking with channeled rage, but held back by his physical deformities, soothed his anger by observing the curvaceous swoops of the flock on high. As they dived westwards, their path of flight scythed through the vision of where Cosatch had been squatting, but he was no more. He was nowhere to be seen, and the orb hovered, spinning quietly to itself in the dead of a cold, wintry night. The old man was relieved to pack up his treasured shape and go back whence he came.

Tomorrow would be a better day.

Next chapter…