The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble (6 page)

Peter saw the glass slip out of his own hand as his entire body went numb. His heavy eyes looked at Hobble – he'd given his guests a drink, but hadn't had one himself.

* * *

‘Your jottings fascinate me,' Hobble uttered as Peter lifted his head up. At first he saw the older man flicking through his notebook, then behind him some ghastly headless body hanging from a hook attached to the exposed neck. Seams ran all across it, a mishmash of skin and parts from umpteen women stuck together to make up this dreadful yellowy blue carcass. He looked around the darkened room, but could not see Molly.

‘Where is Molly?' Peter demanded, struggling to free himself from weighty chains.

‘The Space sounds so wondrous – and immortality, what an honour,' he carried on, waving the notebook about, ignoring the captive's question. ‘I do believe I have lured in and captured the correct candidate.'

‘Candidate?'

‘The perfect female body,' Hobble insisted, pocketing the notebook and stepping over to the sagging meat and flesh, ‘but with a male brain –
your
brain, Peter. I set up the reward in order to lure the cleverest here in order to harvest their brain for my experiment – if they were clever enough to work out the truth, they would make the ideal candidate.'

‘But I didn't work out the truth, I thought Darren did it,' Peter gulped, his mind now full of ghastly images of Hobble committing the crimes. The Space was a little too late on that one.

‘Immaterial – your writings are enough to convince me of your superior brain.'

‘Thanks,' Peter mused, ‘I think… So, my head and a woman's body?'

‘No, no, just your brain. I already have a head, a fresh one too,' he grinned as he bent down and reached into a bucket full of reddened water, lifting out Molly's severed head by her lovely long wet hair. The most agonising pain hit Peter's chest, plunging into the pit of his stomach like a fireball hitting Earth's surface from outer space. ‘She has a beautiful face,' Hobble continued, lifting the head higher and swinging it so that the face faced him. ‘It will take a careful cut at the back of her head to remove her brain and replace it with yours so as not to damage this face. Tis the face of my future wife.'

‘What about the wife whose breasts you removed?' Peter sighed to himself, all of humanity now a sick perversion in his eyes, as he looked over at the headless body hanging there. The dark yellow breasts were big, but sagged and hung there in sullen depression. He didn't know whether it was the angle he was positioned at or not, but from where he was looking they seemed to have been attached in an unbalanced fashion. The left one had been sewn on far higher than the right.

Hobble, meanwhile, had dumped Molly's head back in the bucket and was caressing the body's nipples. ‘Her breasts were stupendous – the rest of her horrendous,' he trilled. ‘I kept her best bits, and got rid of the rest.'

Right then a side door opened, and in walked Willemina. Silently she floated up to Peter, her sad brown eyes looking him up and down. Her mouth creased as she reached out and placed a hand on his chest, some flicker of emotion he could not read playing on her spotty face.

‘Your father is a cruel murderer of umpteen women,' Peter pleaded, ‘only you can stop him.'

She looked up at his lips as they moved, but didn't seem to register the words bursting forth.

‘Futile, my friend,' Hobble called from across the room, ‘although my daughter
is
taken with you.'

‘I sense an unused body,' she suddenly said in a deep whisper. ‘All human desire held back and wasted…' her hand rubbed at Peter's chest, moving up to his throat, ‘or put aside and saved for the right woman.' Her boney pink fingers came to rest on Peter's face as she caressed his sunken cheek. ‘Father,' she let go of Peter and turned to Hobble, ‘I want to keep this one as my husband.'

‘Very well, you may keep his body; but I require his brain.'

‘Tis the brain I wish to possess more than anything else of his,' she called back. Hobble did not look pleased. ‘Father, I think it a little peculiar that you wish my new mother to have a male brain.' She folded her arms and smirked. Peter just stayed fixed behind them, withdrawn and aghast at these weirdos.

‘A man's brain is far superior to a woman's, my dear,' he said softly as though speaking to a child, coming to her and placing an arm across her shoulders.

Willemina's face scrunched up as she gritted her teeth, but she did not vocally disagree with her father. Instead, she wriggled out of his clutches and turned back to Peter. Hobble grinned with apparent victory and moved back over to his new wife, taking the bucket with Molly's head in with him. His back now turned to the pair, he lifted off his sword from a hook on the wall and pulled a cloth off a large stone. He made himself busy sharpening his weapon as Willemina stared intently into Peter's eyes. He looked back, at first seeing nothing but warm brown eyes that felt icy and evil. As he continued, and time seemed to freeze, she in turn did become warm and full of something Peter couldn't quite get to. He briefly flicked his eyes over to Hobble, whose movements had frozen in a mist and appeared much further away now.

He thought about Darren using The Space for his own ends, and now threw his mind into Willemina's. She stood still, as before, looking back at the man she wanted as her husband. Her mind was sectioned in ceaseless layer upon layer of conflicting behaviours and motives, but, her hopes and desires were singular and focused in one area – the want and need for love and acceptance from her father, and the willingness to do anything to maintain that. And yet, there now came a new spark, one which Peter knew instantly represented himself. There stood the two opposing sides, one for Father and one for the new man in her life, the merest of space still just separating the two. Father's side had advanced, ready to quash Peter's. It was up to the latter to arm his own in her mind and destroy the opposition. He pulled from her mind, put aside The Space and realised he could do this alone.

‘I am your future,' he whispered to her. She leant closer, their faces almost touching. ‘I will be the new man in your life. I love you.'

She kissed him and he reciprocated, wishing he could reach out were his body not bound. Suddenly her hands reached around to the lock keeping his chains fixed. She pulled a key from her pocket and winked, sticking it in the lock. Before she could turn it, her head shot away and Peter found himself covered in blood as it squirted from her exposed neck. Behind her, with his sword, stood Hobble. He put the weapon down and went across to pick up his daughter's head as her body dropped against Peter. He pulled back as much as he could and it slid down between his legs, slumping half on the floor and half on him. The blood kept pouring out in his lap as Hobble placed the head on top of his new wife.

‘Why did I not think of this before? My own daughter – beautiful
and
with the necessary intelligence to keep her brain intact.' He kicked the bucket with Molly's head in aside, and it tipped over and spilt out across the floor. The head came to rest upright, the features looking pained and frustrated. ‘You are no longer required, Peter Smith,' Hobble sighed in relief as he stayed fixed in wonderment at his completed invention.

* * *

Peter had no idea how little or how long had passed in time down here – he simply knew that his own life was about to come to a close. Not by Hobble, but by the curse of The Space's gift. It could be yet another day or two, or it could seconds. He'd lost track, but he didn't care. He was ready to leave this time and this place and hopefully never come back to humanity. But, he knew that simply wouldn't be the case. He'd be reborn again in a future that brought yet more pain and hardship. If only to forget what had gone before in past lives would be a gift – to never remember The Great Collective and The Space would at least aid in some form of quiet normality.

Up ahead, Hobble busied himself putting the finishing touches to his new wife – she now had a head, and was no longer hung up. She lay flat out on a wooden bed which Peter had witnessed Hobble construct; now and again, as her “husband” mopped her brow or checked for a pulse, a bit of skin would flap open or a finger would fall off. The manufacturer of this thing was quick to repair the fault, and so it went on. Luckily it was cold in here, but decay had certainly been occurring – Peter could smell it. Flies occasionally buzzed around when Hobble left the door open for any length of time (which wasn't often), but apart from that fresh air didn't seem to want to come in here. Nothing would want to come in here.

‘Use The Space,' Hobble suddenly cried, waving Peter's notebook in his face, ‘bring her to life with your magic.' Peter simply didn't respond.

As Hobble lay down in bed next to his creation, the big upright box appeared and obscured Peter's view of them. With It came the thin, plain woman. Her blonde hair hung over her face, hiding any features which Peter may have recognised. He thought back to the first time he'd seen her – he'd called out, asking who she was. He knew even less about her this time, yet she was perfection in his mind. She was patiently waiting for him in the future, ready to give him the life he so desperately wanted. Then, the image of Stephen appeared by her side and took her hand, smiling at Peter as he felt the heavy pulse of death rush through him. He slumped in his chains, down in Hobble's dungeon, dead.

* * *

‘We are The Great Collective, we are the controllers of humanity's destiny,' Darren addressed the gathering in their meeting hall deep beneath Myrtle Forest. Amongst the group stood Stephen, Jim and Anthony. ‘If we work together we can utterly dominate the entire world.' A roar of jubilation and agreement reverberated around the room, shaking its very stability – clumps of the earthen walls plummeted down around them as the cheering continued. There was no conscience, no Peter Smith, to stop them now.

I am a difficult person. I am afforded good looks, which gets me the attention of many a female – equally, I am disfigured inside where no woman, or even medical person, could see. My troubling nature has landed me on this ship as a fag of a slave, mopping up after the pompous ‘higher' men and generally being a lackey. My family's own moderate wealth has at the very least delivered me on board a survey voyage and not some ghastly war effort. Perhaps that is a sadness, as I feel even less purpose aboard Beagle as I did ashore. I keep no check on our location, and take no interest in the survey itself – my only mental stimulation is the going over of my own thoughts. They are a sifting through of two main events in my life: the final straw that broke my family's patience and led to my presence here, and a recurring dream I have of a large upright box emanating a powerful force and a rather plain yet alluring blonde woman coming either from within it or alongside it. Both are, what you might call, a bloody bind. Let me tell you about how all this began – sit back and savour this wonderful recounting.

The two events, though separate, could be construed as linked. The latter – that of the woman and the box – ultimately resulted in the former – the final straw. No straw was actually broken, but to describe the breaking of something is getting somewhat near to what happened. Yes, the woman in my dream, let us begin there. As I say, from what my sleeping vision would allow me to see of her when I first saw her, she was at first glance rather plain. I have, in the past, judged very much on first looks – they can be a good indication of many things about a person; a rogue and a ruffian can be quickly picked from a gathering of otherwise educated and wealthy individuals. This plain woman – I could not ascertain her place in society at all. Her drab white garments merely allowed a bleeding of colour from her pale face and long, thin, blonde hair. I wanted to get to her, but could not. She was but a figment of my slumber. That is when I struck at the idea of tracking her down in the waking world – that was my only way of getting to her. To say I found her would be to mock both my wonderful dream and give credence to the person I thought was her. The woman I came across was very similar indeed to the one I'd envisaged and I set my sights on her. What followed, of course, will be of interest to the men who say they cannot form tears. Let me tell you, men can cry – especially when their manhood is compromised.

There was absolutely no point making a play for Lauren. So many boys, and then young men, had tried and ultimately failed to succeed with her. She was having none of it – nothing whatsoever. Gossip was she'd never even allowed a boy to kiss her, let alone do anything else. She never lacked attention, either, in fact far from it. In her younger days there was a healthy queue of boys eagerly waiting to have their go at breaking her cold hard starvation of romance. But, no, none of them ever succeeded.

She was not the most beautiful of women, but she was not ugly either. Slim, almost unhealthily so, and rather pale with a pointed nose, her blonde hair remained tied up in a tight bun atop her head. Nobody ever saw her with her hair down – nobody ever saw anything more of her than what she wanted to show – her pale face, and her pink hands. The rest lay hidden beneath a small ever-circling collection of bland baggy white dresses. The fact she was so neglecting of her sexual nature was the key pull for all these men, including myself. Would I be the one to break through? The challenge was enticing. And, the mystery of what she was capable of in the bedroom was instantly alluring.

Eventually, of course, as the years went by – and they did, quickly – the interest men showed in her wained. One man whose interest in Lauren never abated was myself. I say man, but I was more a boy. I'd known her since I was a very little boy – she was already a woman by then. She had almost shown me affection… once. Our hands had brushed together when I was out playing with some other boys one summer's day. She was briskly making her way through the village, undertaking some business nobody else was privy to. She had paused, our eyes had met, and I had fallen head over heels in love. The years passed, of course, and I grew into the handsome devil I am now. Never did I give in to the affections of the women who flocked to my feet. No, I wanted the woman I had had visions of during slumber. It was not until a moment of epiphany that I realised they were one and the same – the woman from the box was Lauren. She
had
to be. However, I was puzzled – the woman in my dream had her face shielded by her hair, yet Lauren's face was clear to see. It was all that could be seen of Lauren's. I felt that I saw everything but the face of the one in my vision, so to place Lauren's there instead was the perfect solution. I now wanted her even more than before – she was all I thought about. All she thought about was… well, nobody knew. She had never let anyone in, never dropped the barricade she'd thrown up around herself.

I began to experience my dream more and more, until I could envisage it every time my eyes sealed shut. I would think about that dratted cold woman every single day too during my waking hours. I had no release from this desperate situation I'd let myself spiral into. Lauren, too, seemed caught in a trap that I just couldn't see her breaking free from. The absolute only solution was my interference, nay, my help in her life. But, for all the outside world she just did not have the sexual urges that I did. No – to all intents and purposes she appeared completely asexual. This began to drive me mad, and I started setting out all kinds of plans. Firstly, I was going to construct a purpose-built dungeon in which to house Lauren as my sex slave, then I was simply going to pluck up the courage to just ask her for a courtship and see where things went. Eventually I decided upon breaking into her house and ‘think on my feet' when there.

One night I did just that, dressing up in my best clothes and heading over to her house in the very early hours. Creeping around the back, I put my muscles against the door and forced it open. Utter silence hit my ears inside, and so I gingerly moved about in the darkness. All of a sudden, however, a heavy weight came crashing on the back of my head and I dived straight into the first silent sleep I'd had in a long time. No woman, no big box; just emptiness.

* * *

I wakened with a splitting headache. Keen I was to clutch it to in some way try and ease the pain, but it was no good – my hands were bound tightly above my head. I tried to rub my head between my arms, but quickly I grew tired and concentrated more on how sore my hands and arms were becoming. They were supporting my entire body, as my dead weight hung there supported by them. I felt cold and looked down to see that I was naked, my penis drooping like a new sausage slipping out of a butcher's hands. The room was dull and dreary, the faint smell of grease permeating from the cooking stove ahead of me. On top of it sat a filthy shallow pan. Suddenly, the door ahead opened and Lauren walked in, going over to the stove and lighting it. She moved the pan about, loosening the hard grease within as the heat from below melted it. I stayed silent, just watching in awe as she went about this basic task. Was this to be our first meal together as a loving couple?

Without a single word uttered between us, Lauren brought out a knife and stepped up to me. I looked at her – the first time I'd seen her this close in a long time – and felt utterly terrified. She took hold of my penis and slashed it clean off with the knife. I couldn't feel it, I was in complete shock, watching on as she tossed the severed object into the frying pan and cooked it. Blood bubbled and spat and my penis became all burnt and hard. When Lauren decided it was cooked enough, she removed the pan from the stove and pricked my cooked penis out with a fork. She marched back over to me, opened my mouth and forced it into it. The searing heat of it at once burnt the inside of my mouth, and then choked me as Lauren forced it further down my throat with the fork. She stepped back, smiling, as I writhed in agony and jerked my neck back and forth to try and dislodge the charred remains of my manhood. Blood poured out of the stump betwixt my legs and I felt no more air enter my lungs.

It was a few minutes more before Lauren's smile turned to a frown as she perhaps became upset at my lack of death. I too was puzzled why I had yet to succumb to this torture. She grabbed hold of the knife and buried it into my chest, leaving it there, as I again wriggled and writhed in pain. Still death did not come. My attacker began looking very stressed and overwhelmed with the situation, for the first time ever letting her hair down as she pulled at it. It hung completely over her face, concealing it, as she lunged forward and pulled the knife from my chest. Frantically she thrust at her own chest with the weapon, stabbing herself a dozen or more times as I carried on choking. Soon she fell in a heap, throwing the knife at me with her last ounce of strength and clutching at the wounds on her chest. She fell backwards, hitting her head on the stove and rolling forward onto her side. I stayed, hanging there, the choking a constant sensation for a week or more as Lauren's body rotted in front of me.

It was not until the stench of her decaying corpse, which had so filled my own nostrils for endless days, raised some villagers that I was freed. My body was completely drained of blood and the sorcery of my survival was quick to fill their minds. I was indeed lucky to survive – they sealed the stumpy wound that was once my penis with salt.

* * *

So here I am, on Beagle, with no penis. I think constantly of Lauren, the woman who I saw in my dreams and fell in love with only to watch her kill herself and turn to a maggot-eaten pile of stinky sludge. She was the never girl – the only penis she had ever touched was the one she'd quickly dashed off with a knife and cooked. In some ways that drew me closer to her; she had been able, right at the end of her life, to touch a naked man. I am that man, and it was worth losing my penis over.

To try and give my life meaning this far along is utterly pointless. I just repeat what I have done the previous day, and follow orders. My very brief moments of rest are used up, as I say, with thinking over my past. I say past, but it would feel more natural to say pasts. It sounds perfectly mad to surmise that I do not feel this has been or will be my only life. I have been unable to get to the bottom of the idea, but I do feel that I have been here, on this Earth, before – and will be again. I sense that I know things and have many other life experiences, but cannot completely remember. It is an aching sort of feeling. I am wholly alone in these thoughts, with not one single friendly shipmate to discuss them with. I have only briefly come close to making a friend, but I scuppered any burgeoning connection. Charles his name is; one of those geologists who think they see things that aren't immediately there. That's what initially drew me to him. Our first conversation, though on a subject which bored me, was nonetheless an enticing link back to my own niggle of an unreachable memory.

We had come ashore some peculiar island inhabited by weird creatures I had never seen before, and cared not to really look at. My mind was insular, my vision warped. ‘All of these animals I have studied,' he called out to me as I passed, ‘are both similar and different in equal measure.' I yawned, but stopped.

‘What do you mean?'

‘This giant tortoise,' he went on waving his hands at one, as though I should have known what he was trying to tell me.

‘Big, isn't it,' I responded glibly.

‘Very big, and yet I have seen other adult tortoises in other parts of the world which are minuscule in comparison.'

‘And?' I pushed, tiring somewhat at his lack of clarity.

‘Where the tortoises are small, the food is less and their predators more. Here, I see no natural predator and the food is abundant – both may have shared a common ancestor, yet have adapted to their surroundings.'

He trailed off, turning from me in excitement and darting away. I mused more on his motivations than what he'd actually said, likening his search for something to my own. My life here, right now, is on hold; shut off and without merit. I am travelling the world, but feel separate from it. Half the man. No, quarter the man. It is as though there is more of me out in the distance somewhere – both similar to me and just slightly different – not remembering who I have been or who I will become.