Thursday 1 September 2011

Chapter Twelve.....

Disclaimer - the characters in this chapter, and all of these chapters, are purely fictitious.

Beth Richards was tied to a chair in a cellar, a prisoner of the only person in the world she should have been able to trust and she was about to piss herself with excitement.

This was the front page, a new pair of laboutins, a tasteful feature in OK magazine, a concerned midnight phone call from her ex and an end to her worries about how she'd pay her homeopath.

"My life had always been tinged with tragedy," she mind-penned, "from the day my father left to the freak bowling accident that cut short my mother's life; I suffered watching my brother, whose desperation to be in the limelight manifested itself in morbid obesity - the most socially degrading of diseases, as he threw himself into the public eye. Not to mention two divorces and a full pet cemetery in my Devon farmhouse. Yes readers, mine was a life of turmoil which led straight to this very moment."


The fat fuck wouldn't know what had hit him.


…………………………………………………………………………..


"What do you mean you have your sister tied up in the basement?"


This was a bad time for hiccups to arrive, just as the whites of Bob's eyes were starting to freak her out.

Bob shrugged, "who else but the sister of the world's fattest man would go on such a rampage of hate against fat people? Besides, she's not just my sister, she's the bitch troll columnist who said you looked like a potato in a national newspaper."

Goddamn it did EVERYONE know????


Despite his obvious mental callousness, Natasha couldn't help but relate just a little bit. She still caught herself lamenting from time to time about the times she hadn't locked Sarah in the attic with nothing but spiders and a paperback copy of Flowers in the Attic, just to really freak her out. Perhaps if she had then maybe there would still be a couple of pubs left in East London where the air wasn't filled with the posturing of ironic facial haired nobbers who worked in advertising.

Then again, surely no one else's sister deserved such evasive action. Even a columnist. Even that columnist…….

"It's not forever" Bob added, in his best deflated-cake-freak voice. "It's just until we make her print a retraction and pledge her full support for our cause."


'Our cause'. Now there was a concerning term.
……………………………………………………………………

"I'm going to nail your balls to the wall," spat the emaciated Sloane. "Yours and your ugly friend's."

Natasha understood that being kidnapped was probably a bit traumatic, but was there really any need for ugly or claiming she owned balls? Again?


"I was brought here under false pretences!" squeaked Natasha.


"So the great activist speaks." Beth produced a sneer that could have melted lead. "I hope you get used to the sound of derisive laughter."


She triumphantly inspected a nail as Bob's face darkened. He turned around angrily and ran out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time, returning a few moments later with an armful of cake.


"You're forcing me to do this Beth" he thundered, grabbing a pink and white sponge and shoving it into her face like Beadle's angry ghost. She coughed and hacked and tried not to chew as three further fondant fancies bashed into her kisser.

"You're just making it worse for yourself." She gurgled like a crumb infested drain, spitting sugar crystals and gloriously imagining a Sunday supplement all to herself. Sweat broke out on Bob's forehead: "Say you're sorry!" he croaked.


From deep within the columnist a strange noise began to bubble up, like an earthquake in a peat bog. With the instincts of a cowardly oil prospector Natasha ineffectually covered her eyes with her hands, staring terrified through her fingers as a pink wave poured forth from the open mouthed ocean of Beth. It was The Exorcist in glorious Technicolor, with a rush of vom heading straight for the brother who had woken the demon, hanging in strings from the low dank ceiling, forming a sticky puddle on the floor.


Beth sat back triumphantly and raised her gore encrusted eyebrows in a stinking "fuck you". "You can't poison me with your junk food!"

Bob backed up angrily whilst Natasha considered running away, it seemed extra plausible now there was no cake left. If only it hadn't involved actual running.


Bob harrumphed and flicked a regurgitated chunk of sugar icing from his left ear lobe without a tremor, he had the Bermuda Triangle of gag reflexes. "Is that your best shot?" he taunted. "I got over the puking act when you were six."


Beth gurgled haughtily and Natasha tried not to envisage the working up of a fully functioning puking act, as Bob pulled out his secret weapon, a battered looking notebook. "I didn't want to have to do this Beth, but you leave me with no choice."


Beth gasped, her eyes widened:
He began to read, his voice softening:


"He walked into the room and noticed her sitting there resplendent in her blue grey suit. His working eye stripped her as she shivered with anticipation. "And whay might ye be?" he quizzed in a deep, Scottish dialect. Her breath came faster, he was the enemy and yet….. "I'm here to interview you Mr Brown" she breathed as a bead of perspiration worked its way between her pert breasts."

"Shut up!" screamed Beth, kicking the floor in front of her. "Where did you find that?"


Bob turned a few pages and continued to read:


"It was their love nest, their home away from home. With the John Lewis curtains she had always dreamed of as a child, forbidden by her mother, the money used instead to feed her brother's mars bar habit. He ran his hand along her thigh. "Oh Prime Minister" she sighed "Tell me more about how you stopped the recession."

A low howl started to emerge from the columnist. Beth's head rolled around on her shoulders like a toy from the 80's.

It was impossible to believe that Beth Richards had anything left to confess in her life. She had written in detail about the most intimate moments, from her anorexia through her divorce. She had slated friends, acquaintances and lovers with equal relish. But even the most painfully open people were, apparently, hiding something and this was the time you didn't want to be in a house with someone who was very good at pretending he couldn't move.


"Now organise a retraction or I'm putting everything online." Finished her brother.

The cracken, resplendent in a pile of her own vom, was finally defeated. If cake couldn't do it, then borderline stalking an unpopular prime minister would.

……………………………………………………..


Beth called her editor and arranged a miraculous retraction before telephoning her assistant and dictating a follow up column for print the next day. She would support Natasha and the whole cake movement, heralding it a celebration of natural femininity and recommending Waitrose for this season's hottest cake protests.


"And don't forget to mention the rally." Nudged Bob.

"What rally?" asked Natasha as Bob and Beth glared in snotty synchronisation.

"The national rally tomorrow - the one that's all over you website. The one in Dalston."


Oh shit.


"I have to go" panted Natasha dashing out of the madness, into god knows what.