excerpt
…whom he imagined as a kind of Superwoman figure in a metal bra, engaged in
sex with a headless robot. Underneath he wrote in big isometric block capitals
MRS BEARDSLEY’S HYPERSPACE HOLIDAY ROMANCE. It’s horribly
well drawn, I confess I uncrumpled it later. But I wasn’t going to give him
no satisfaction, I just laughed at his long crooked nose . . .
Wolfbane disappeared for a few moments and returned wearing a Viking
helmet—his old stage headgear. How he’d hidden it from Jago and his
jobsworths I don’t know. He’d also got hold of some more big cartons.
With a bow, he started to lay out his props: a shooting stick, drumsticks, a
cycle pump, a teddy bear, some eggs, a rubber dagger purchased years ago,
pre-Jago, for an abandoned course in the Psycho-Theatre of Violence. He sat
on his shooting stick in the middle of the day room and surveyed us.
“Ladypersons and gentlefolk, your attention, please. I, Wolfbane, Horseman
of Hrothgar and Steel-Fingered Guitar Hero as featured on the
WHAM-FM Dead Metal Hour, I have played the bleeding lot, all around the
motorised world, from the Arctic Circle to the forty-ninth parallel and way on
down the West Coast. I have overseen the markets of the planet. In all their
rotting meat. But you stinky darlings, you’re a very low class of audience.
Worse than dogs without cocks. You’re not family people, I feel, not family at
all. But I’m going to put on a family show for you. A safe show, no devil’s music
at all, just a few little tricks.”
He began juggling with the eggs. Grinning, he did a Groucho Marx walk
around the TV, keeping his egg grenades in orbit. Then he missed, two yolks
splattered on the rug, just missing Tanya, who yawned ostentatiously
It was cartoon time on the day room TV: Tom was pursuing Jerry with a
mousetrap; they were both being pursued down steep streets by giant rolling
cheeses, to the rhythms of a Rossini overture.
Without breaking his stride, Wolfbane bent over into Tom’s hunched furious
run, skidding around the edge of the sofa. Tanya ignored him. He screeched to a
halt, back-pedalling. He gripped his head as if he were going to unscrew it.
The jobsworths were held by now. As for the visitors—they were bloody
petrified.
He picked up the bedraggled teddybear and presented it to the Room,
front, back, and sides. Look, no tricks! Then he started to build a pyramid
with the big cardboard boxes, which kept sagging into crooked trapezoids.
Eventually the structure held.
“Watch me, party people, inmates of the in-crowd! I place Yorick the Bear
in the highest chamber of the Great Stone Temple—so! I take this magic
cloak—so!” He pulled out an old rug from under pouting Tanya, and flung it
over the heaped cartons. “I pronounce the words of power—wop-bop-a- …
Hellenic Canadian Literature 
