Hefty Waft

I went to see Marty at his offices. I'd called him earlier and told him about Bill and how I wasn't able to get the plot book back. He just hung up. I figured he'd called me over to cancel 'Badge'. When I got there, I had to wait, as usual, in the anteroom with his PA, Primula - Primula de Saveloy. I like Primula, with her chic specs and slinky svelte pelt. Ah, poor Primula de Saveloy, with her voluptuously sounded vowels and her lovely round assonance standing proud. The lovely Primula, long-suffering and sanguine as ever, the one dignified locus of sanity in Marty's empire of strange. I saw that she'd got herself an extra handbag and a set of noise-cancelling headphones. I thought it discreet to avoid enquiry.

I'd arrived early and had been killing time drinking lots of full-fat lattes at that new coffee chain - you know, the one with Hokey, the silver monkey. They tasted a bit like gravy for some reason. Anyway, after a few maximo waxibeakers, I was desperate to slash my liquistash so I headed straight for the Parmesan Production toilet facilities. The door was locked, so I paced impatiently for a minute or two outside before I heard a flush, running tap water and the lock of the door slide open. A very fat man with wrap-around sunglasses and a slicked-back ponytail of grey, thinning hair walked out, breathing noisily and laboriously through his open mouth. Awkwardly, we sidestepped together a couple of times before both going to the left of each other and, ignoring the fresh pungency, I hurriedly lifted the lid for to get done urination.

I don't know why, but I think it was more wistful dismay than outright revulsion that I felt when confronted with the unflushably turgid remnant of the last occupant. With a resigned equanimity, I covered the offending sight with a few squares of paper and hit the double-dot flush again. Noise and motion ensued but the obstinate blockage, apparently the digested residue of some meal fashioned from the super-dense degenerate matter of a neutron star, refused to budge - merely breaking into two chunks along its own critical fault line and stolidly rebounding around the pan before wedging tight with the mass of soggy paper, causing the bowl to fill right up over the rim. Outside, I heard Primula calling me in to see Marty. "Just coming," I said and, by then somewhat ruffled, I took the toilet brush and thrust it firmly into the swirling cloud of paper and non-baryonic ultrafudge. Unfortunately, so exotically compact the gutdirt was, that on the second plunge, the handle of the brush broke off and the plastic shard of shaft got sucked back down into the unspeakable mess with a loud squelching noise almost as if the defiant lump of megadump was mocking me. Primula called again and, in a mild panic, I just slammed shut the lid and hoped I'd be able to have another go at it after seeing Marty.

Marty was there, wearing his shiny silver-grey suit, sitting with his feet up on his vast mahogany desk. His Antianeiran object of adoration was perched nonchalantly on one corner, a pink tank-top stretched mercilessly over her immutable hooters, coquettishly filing her scarlet talons. The objects on Marty's desk were suspiciously arrayed - papers and files unnaturally stacked as if they had just been hurriedly piled there. Additionally, a faint hint of musky pong hung in the air, my thesis finally confirmed when I observed on the polished surface of the desk an unmistakable patch of condensed sweat, its bi-ovoid shape reminiscent of the fertile form of the Coco-de-Mer nut, only its angular edges betraying the precise provenance of such muscular buttock marks. Following my eyes, Marty noticed the moist mark himself and quickly slid a stack of files over the top to hide it, revealing behind them, as he did so, a kilo-block of Cheddar cheese, riddled with bite marks around the edge.

Stuffing the block of nibbled cheese into a drawer, he hit his intercom and ordered some drinks, offering one to me. My relationship with the lavatory still unconsummated, I politely refused and re-tensed my muscles over my insistent bladder. Primula sauntered in with a brace of bottles. "Soda, soda, sodaaghhh!" Marty exclaimed with glee, greedily snatching the bottles from his PA with strange gurglings of excited contentment like an infant being spooned mushed prunes. He handed a bottle to his big woman who wordlessly hitched up her tank-top a few inches, inserted the top of the bottle into her exposed navel and, condensing her iron abdominals, cracked off the crenellated metal bottle top with a sharp hiss of released gas. Opening the other bottle for herself in similar manner, both took simultaneous swigs before Marty leant back in his chair again, ready to hold forth. Just as he was about to speak, I noticed a look of slight confusion fall on his face and a bulge under his upper lip where he was probing with his tongue. He reached up to his mouth and plucked a thick curly pubic hair from between his upper teeth, surveyed it, shrugged, flicked it away, and began his spiel.

As the Parmy yapped on about needing to want it bad enough and not showing enough commitment, my mind wandered despondently. I noticed, for the first time, that when Marty speaks, it's not just his lower jaw which goes up and down but both his upper and lower jaws move, his whole head oscillating - rather like the muppets talk. None of what he was saying went in. I was tired of it all and just sat there watching his head flap away as he emphasised his points with extravagant hand gestures. Something caught my eye, though. I noticed that, as he was gesticulating, he was pumping away at something in his left hand. It wasn't his normal spring-loaded wrist-strengthener - it was something else - something round and red that he kept squeezing. Finally, he slapped it down on the desk and, as it uncompressed itself, I saw that it had popped back into the familiar sphere of a clown's nose.

"...and that's why we're happy to take on 'Badge' but we can't make do with the puerile scatological rantings of your story lines - we need a proper MacGuffin." He paused for effect. "A proper MacGuffin, just like this!" and he thrust forward a box file under my nose.

I opened it and looked within. "Marty, I don't understand, why do we need a value pack of industrial-grade 'Luvlube'?"

"Huh? Oh, wait. I mean, a proper MacGuffin like this!" and he shoved forward another box file, sweeping the first one aside, off his desk.

Again, I looked inside. It was the plot book - Sandy's plot book.

"Marty - how did you get hold of this? I saw Bill, but..."

Marty leaned forward and playfully pinched my cheeks between his thumbs and forefingers. "My boy, my boy, I have my ways..." He gently slapped the sides of my face with his stubby little hands and leaned back in his chair again. "I know how Bill likes to vent his juices... oy! So, we just gave him what he wanted, even - we gave him a woman, alright..." and he started giggling girlishly to himself. Slowly, it dawned on me, the truth of who he had sent to retrieve the book. Then, rolling up from beneath Marty's chuckling, I heard another sound, a sub-sound, and infrasonic vibration that sounded like laughter recorded on tape that has been slowed right down to an unsettling slow-motion bass rumbling and, glancing to the square shoulders of Marty's girlfriend, I saw them subtly shaking and realised the source of that monstrous, mirthful reverberation. My spine, from the base of my neck to the top of my coccyx, went numbly cold.

Marty then opened one of his desk drawers and I heard him rummaging in a carrier bag before pulling out a plastic punnet of plums. He leant back in his chair as his woman took one of the plums and, holding it over his gaping mouth, squeezed out the juice for him. He slurped at it noisily before casting me a glance, pink plum juice dripping down his chin.

"Crushed plums?" he offered.

"No thanks," I said, crossing my legs. She just sneered at me.

Well, I left them to their soft fruits and let myself out. 'Badge' is back and that is that - a good day, I guess, though I can't help feeling that things are getting out of control. Still, it's what I said I wanted.

Oh yes, on my way out, there was a shrill scream. Primula came out of the toilet, pale and sobbing. "Did you do that? Did you do that terrible thing?" she asked.