Norman marvelled at the methods of torture employed, although he did think that some of the electrical apparatus used could have been improved upon.
“Although I won’t waste my time writing to tell them,” Norman said to himself. “Because they probably won’t answer my letter.”
But now Norman realized that he had a very real problem on his hands. What was he to do with these videos? I mean, he could hardly hire them out.
Not without titles.
And when it came to little movies, these ones all had the same plot.
Norman put his mighty brain in gear. Snappy titles, that’s what they needed. Norman at once came up with OUCH!: THE MOVIE. This was good because it allowed for OUCH! II: THE SEQUEL. And also OUCH! III. In no time at all Norman was into his stride.
He followed up the OUCH collection with the NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL TORMENT series and he even managed to cut together a blooper tape of humorous out-takes. Torturers slipping over in the blood and accidentally electrocuting themselves and so on.
Norman toyed with the idea of calling this one CARRY ON UP MY BOTTOM WITH THE ELECTRIC CATTLE PROD.
But that was a bit too long.
Norman earned his money back on the videos and he made a bit extra besides. They didn’t prove popular as family viewing, but they attracted a certain following amongst a certain type of male.
The police raid at lunchtime had come as a bit of a shock. He’d noticed the police presence, just up the road outside the Flying Swan, and when a couple of coppers came into his shop to buy sweets, Norman had asked them, in all innocence, whether they’d like to join his video club.
And now here he was in a police interrogation room at the Brentford nick. An interrogation room that looked strangely familiar. Norman sighed and shifted uncomfortably. The metal chair was cold on his naked bum. The electrodes were pinching his nipples.
Norman hoped that they’d soon let him go. After all, he’d answered all their questions. Several times over. He’d said all the things they’d expected him to say. That he was an innocent victim of circumstance. That he’d bought the videos from a stranger he’d met in a pub. The policemen wouldn’t keep him tied up around here much longer, would they? Sitting on cold chairs gave you the piles and Norman didn’t want those.
And he had too much to do. He had to get back to his workshop and see how his horse was coming along. He’d left the DNA gently cooking in a nutrient solution on the stove, and although it was only on a low light, it might all end up stuck to the bottom of the saucepan if he didn’t get back soon to give it a stir.
Norman sighed again and made a wistful face. If only there weren’t so many complications, he thought. If only we could live our lives in little movies.
As chance would have it (or if not chance then fate, and if not fate then who knows what?), there was something closely resembling a little movie going on in Norman’s kitchen workshop even as he thought and said these things.
It was a little B-movie, although the special effects were superb.
If there had actually been a script for this movie, it might well have begun something like this.
SCENE ONE
Interior: Norman’s kitchen workshop.
Camera pans slowly across small and shabby room. We see bundles of newspapers and magazines. Cigarette boxes, cartons of soft drinks, all the usual stock of a modest corner shop. We see also a sink piled high with unwashed dishes and a work table. Here we find evidence of scientific endeavour, test tubes, retorts, a scientific journal open at a page about cloning, a box of Meccano.
Camera pans towards a filthy stove (1950s grey enamel), where we see an old saucepan. Its contents are boiling over, a thick green liquid is bubbling out. We follow the course of this liquid as it drips slowly down to the floor (ancient lino). Here there is movement, as of things forming and moving.
Camera pulls back rapidly, rising to view the room from above.
And we see them. Dozens of them. Racing round and round the kitchen floor. Leaping over discarded cans and flotsam. Tiny horses, no bigger than mice. Galloping around and around and around.
Music over: the Osmonds, “Crazy Horses”.
Of course if it was a little B-movie it would need a title. It would have to be one of those The Thing from Planet Z or The Beast from the Bottomless Hole, or even The Scotsman Who Lives on the Moon sort of jobbies.
Norman could no doubt have thought of one. Invasion of the Tiny Horses, perhaps, or Night of the Stunted Stallions. That sounded better.
But as Norman wasn’t in his kitchen, he wasn’t going to get the chance.
So knowing not the wonder of it all, Norman sat in the steel chair in the interrogation room in the Brentford nick and fretted and fretted and fretted.
And in his kitchen workshop, the tiny horses galloped around and around and around and around.
And around.
(Or, How Elvis Presley failed to heed the voice of Interplanetary Parliament and so condemned Planet Earth to destruction.)
To be sung in the voice of Early Elvis.
The alien say that the truth will make me free.
The alien say that he knows the inner me.
But I don’t care what the alien say.
All I wanna do is rock ’n’ roll all day.
Wop bop a loo bop wham bam hip hooray.
The alien say it’s a karmic symbiosis.
Divinely inspired cerebral metamorphosis.
But I don’t care what the alien think.
All I wanna do is take drugs and drink.
A wop bop a loo bop wham bam kitchen sink.
(middle eight)
The alien reckons that the future beckons
And the end is drawing near.
Throw away our bombs before the holocaust comes.
His message was loud and clear.
The alien say we’re destroying the eco-system.
The alien say we should call upon cosmic wisdom.
But I don’t care who the alien calls.
All I wanna do is screw young girls.
A wop bop a loo bop wham bam string of pearls.
(another middle eight)
The alien thinks that humanity stinks
And we’ve blown it all to hell.
The message is grave, but he can still save us
And he chose me to tell.
The alien say the galactic federation
Has condemned this world to a swift annihilation.
The alien said I should pass it on.
But I forgot his message when I went to the John.
Wop bop a loo bop – Where’s the planet gone?
Thank you, ma’am.
7
Elvis should have called it quits way back in ’77 when he had his first heart attack. He was never quite the same man after that. He wandered around Gracelands, clutching at his head and talking to himself and telling those who would listen that he was having revelations. Clearly the King was two strings short of a Strat.
His latest offering, a stream of semi-consciousness rambling over beefy drum and bass, pumped now out of Sandy’s behind-the-bar sound system, making any form of conversation in the Shrunken Head just that little bit more stressful.
It was now almost nine of the night-time clock and Jim Pooley took another elbow to the ear.