Read Online Atom by Steve Aylett - Free Book Online

priorities, as you’ll know. And what dumbfounded him most was that the office of mayor seemed always to be snagged by a fool resembling a drumfish in a big scarf, you know? So he decided to kill the mayor and take his place. “I know some of the fraudulent generalities required,” he thought. “All I need is a clean shirt and a set of eyes that close without appearing to.”’
    Way behind Turow the bar’s darkness shifted like an orchestra pit of giant insects.
    ‘Transparent lids,’ muttered someone. ‘Like an owl.’
    ‘I guess, Hammy. So the cook knew he’d be suspected if he poisoned the mayor and therefore decided to shove him off the balcony during a speech. The mayor had the sense to realise he was in danger but lacked the rich imagination to avert it, choosing his duty over his rights. And we all know the difference between a right and a duty?’
    ‘You certainly don’t expect me to comment,’ said Turow from the crash position.
    ‘A right is something we want to do and for which we receive no thanks,’ continued the barman, ‘while a duty is something we don’t want to do and for which we receive no thanks. The mayor went out to gurn at the masses and, as one does on these occasions, the cook pushed the drab official into the crowd, where he was crushed like a walnut in a franking machine. The cook was elected to mayor and hailed the heavens with his laughter.’
    Don Toto stopped cleaning the glass a moment, frowning into the middle distance, then continued.
    ‘However, the townspeople began to blather about a weird scuttling creature they were glimpsing and Atom’s Pa - now the mayor - suffered a gnarly fear. Putting together certain facts he realised that just before the murder, the mayor had burnt an advance denunciation of the cook into the carapace of a landcrab which the cook had left fully alive on a platter, like how the French leave lobsters lying around the place sniggering and so on for hours before toasting them, you know. The mayor had then set it loose.’
    ‘Excuse me, did I hear you correctly?’ Turow said drowsily, looking up with dawning and tortured amazement. ‘You say that certain facts led him to think all this? A landcrab? Which facts led him, or I might add you, to believe this fable?’
    ‘Not least the mayor’s bellowed remark to the cook that he knew he was trying to poison him, the mayor’s subsequent meddling with a butane torch, and the fact that the crab was missing after the murder. In fact probably the mayor believed the crab itself contained poison and would therefore provide proof positive when it was captured.’
    ‘But ofcourse. How could I have been so foolish.’
    ‘So there was a giant landcrab skittering through the black alleys,’ Toto resumed, ‘scrawled with damning evidence. Thoughts of the beast haunted the new mayor’s every instant. Okay so finally he went mad, the pleasure of which was so intense that everyone remarked upon his improved spirits. To escape the anticipated trial he resolved to oblong himself, so that when the crustacean was finally snared, his own death would be blamed on the new cook, a guy of whom he was rightly suspicious. In the event the new cook ventilated him anyway and made it appear to be suicide, taking his place as mayor.’
    ‘Unless I am sadly mistaken, the hero of your story is now dead.’ Turow fumbled in his jacket for a cigarette.
    ‘By now rumours were circulating that the alley crab had some profound message on its back, okay? But even in those days the cops avoided anything likely to imperil their ignorance. The beast was bigger than ever, and at people’s approach it’d rear up, brandishing fully its serrated claws. Despite the creature’s habit of scuttling sideways the curious few were bent on a head-on confrontation and so the message on its back remained unseen by those to whom it would mean a damn. The truth’s generally left alone - like the samurai-faced crabs of the Inland Sea which