Read Online Snuff Fiction by Robert Rankin - Free Book Online Page B

true. Norman was a much nicer fellow. In fact he had become our bestest friend and looked upon the Doveston as something of a mentor. Whether this had anything to do with the professor’s story is anyone’s guess. I suspect that it had more to do with what happened a day or two later.
    It seems that during Norman’s ffight from the professor’s caravan he somehow dropped his keys. Someone had picked them up and that someone had let themselves into Mr Hartnell’s corner shop during the hours of night and made away with several cartons of American cigarettes, leaving the keys behind them on the counter.
    Norman, who had not told his father either about losing his keys or visiting the fair, seemed likely to have had the truth beaten out of him had not the Doveston intervened on his behalf.
    The boy Doveston told the elder Hartnell a most convincing tale about how young Norman had saved an old lady from being robbed in the street, only to be set upon and robbed himself
    When pressed for a description of the villain, he could only say that the man wore a mask, but had ‘much of the gypsy about him.
    Looking back now across the space of fifty years, it seems to me that the professor’s tale was not told for Norman’s benefit at all. Its message was meant for the Doveston. The professor was right when he said that ‘Maybe it is better to search than actually to find.’
    The Doveston searched for fame and fortune all his life; he found both, but was never content. But the search itself was an adventure and I am glad that I shared in it. Much of it was fearful stuff As
    fearful as were snakes and beetles that bit, but there were great times and long-legged women and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.
    ‘All’s well that ends well, then,’ I said to the Doveston as I took out my fags.
    ‘It’s not a bad old life,’ said the lad. ‘But here, don’t smoke those, try one of mine. They’re new and they glow in the dark.’

6
    When I was young, I kissed my first woman and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. Believe me, never since have I wasted any more time on tobacco.
    Arturo Toscanim (1867—1957)
    I awoke one morning to find that I had lost nearly ten per cent of my sense of colour, sound and smell. The wallpaper seemed to have faded overnight and the noise of the day appeared duller. The normally rich and wholesome tang of frying lard, rising through the cracks in the kitchen ceiling to enter my bedroom between the bare boards, had lost its fragrant edge. But I noticed another smell, creeping out from under my sheets. The brimstone reek of sulphur.
    I stumbled from my bed and blinked into the wall mirror. My ruddy if disease-scarred countenance looked pale and drawn and eerie. Fuzzy whiskers fringed my upper lip and large red spots had blossomed on my chin.
    My attention became drawn to my pyjama bottoms. They were sticking out oddly at the front. I undid the knotted string and let them fall.
    And beheld the erection!
    Shafts of sunlight fell upon it. Up on high the angels sang.
    ‘My God,’ I said. ‘I’ve reached puberty.’
    Well, I had to try it out and so I did.
    Five minutes later I went down for breakfast.
    My mother eyed me strangely. ‘Have you been playing with yourself?’ she asked.
    ‘Certainly not!’ I replied. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
    My father looked up from his
Sporting Life.
‘I think it was the loud shouts of “I’ve come! I’ve come!” that gave it away,’ he said kindly.
    ‘I’ll bear that in mind for the future,’ I said, tucking into the lard on my plate.
    ‘By the way,’ said my father. ‘President Kennedy’s been shot.’
    ‘President who?’
    ‘Kennedy. The President of the United States. He’s been assassinated.’
    ‘My God,’ I said, for the second time that day.
    ‘It’s a bit of a shock, eh?’
    ‘It certainly is.’ I ran my fingers through my hair. ‘I didn’t even know they had a president. I thought America was still a