Mischief for Both of Them

"Time to swallow, Mr. Scroop." 

And they gulp down each other's labels. 

She clasps her drivishes together. 

"Well, Mr. Scroop, what can we do to impose mutual discomfort?"

His eyes widen. 

"Oh, no, Mr. Scroop, you have to discomfit me, and I you. There is no question about it. Or do I have to refer you to the instructions again?" 

She hugs him. Their chaperoon cloths abrade each other again. 

"Don't fear, Mr. Scroop, they will stand up to the wear and tear because of the extra density imbued by the salts of metals, just like your gibberel. A suitable example of treatment, Mr. Scroop. Things have to be treated first, to make them suitable to be used by the world at large. Just like people. 

Her aura mists over. An angry male voice: "Well, it's your own fault. Your bloody mother's bloody spoiling you." 

She pushes her head against his chest, and digs her ear-impairings into his skin. "Oh, Mr. Scroop, time to inflict some punishment. And time for it to fit the crime." And she bends him to a right angle of flesh over the table, honeys his rear, blows out a candle, and pushes it in with her drivished-together hands, and clumsily drapes in more honey to a point past the no return. "Take it easy, Mr. Scroop. Breathe in. Or breathe out. But remember to breathe." And the wax from the penetrating candle drips down onto her hand and burns it. She sings a rising scale of pain and then she smiles. He is gasping with pain. She says "Yummy Gummy Bummy, Mr. Scroop." He almost-screams in his agony. She works the rhythm into her incantation…"Yummy gummy yummy bummy." He is suddenly gasping with pleasure. "Oh, Mr. Scroop, you naughty boy, this is supposed to be mischief for you, not indulgence! We'll have to crank up the pain somehow! Let's see now." Her booted foot forces him against the table "Gummy bummy yummy gummy." And his own fleshy candle is now grazing the splintered wood, pus-blistering within the friction. "Gummy bummy yummy gummy." …and eventually it leaks like a blurted secret. "Oh, Mr. Scroop, it's an old trick that once again has not failed. Not uncharted territory, Mr. Scroop, I suspect. But perhaps you've forgotten." 

An angry male voice: "Where the hell are you going now?" "Out to town. Try and stop me. And if you try and lay a finger on me when I come back, I'll fucking kill you." 

The smell of a filled nappy oozes in and oozes out, leaving an artificially scented smell. 

Her aura clears. Medium-shot: hands around the backs of necks in an alleyway. Lips meeting. A male hand reaching lower. Caressing a flat stomach. 

His aura clears. Long shot: a claustrophobic enclosure between two long lines of houses. An altercation between two youths. One of them red-headed. The other bulky, but somehow artificially so. 

She says "But that still poses the question, Mr. Scroop: what extra mischief shall I suffer? Ah, I know!" And she removes a wormcloth bag from underneath the lid of her opera hat, and she removes a pewter container from the wormcloth bag. And from the pewter container, she removes several ticks, and places them against the skin of her upper thighs, next to her twin scars that are like spiralled fossils, and they seem to shine like diminutive dark stars in a negative night sky. "There, Mr. Scroop, a nice little box of ticks. I'm sure that we can have some pain-fun with these." And she picks up some of them, and places them on his skin. "Ooh, Mr. Scroop, an even number - we can't have that." And she prises one out, puts in her mouth, bites in two, and puts the other half in his mouth. He tries to resist. "No, Mr. Scroop: shared riparian rights; shared riparian rights."

Close up: a female hand caressing a stomach. The stomach is larger.

Close-up: two male hands reaching out for each other, and grasping, like a mutually compliant pair of flesh handcuffs. 

He reaches out, licks up a tick, and twangs the strings of her stockings, and the balance of sound in the room is disturbed, creaming the atmosphere with streams of discords, and clearly provoking a clench in the scoured region below his ribcage, like something inside him weakening and thumping to be let out. And for each of his clenches, she obviously feels an echoing wince. 

The room briefly releases the sound of a baby crying. 

Close up: barefist. Bone against flesh. And the fist creates a scar and the scar has the appearance of permanence. 

"Now, then, what else, Mr. Scroop? She places both her hands on the uppermost of the three stripes on her chaperoon and a swarm of bats, all different sizes, shapes and colours stretch-scream out of their confinement. 

His aura mists over. A young male voice. "Want some more, do you? Come on, get up. Get up, and put your fists up, or fuck off home, but if you do, never insult me in the street again. Understand?" 

They both clench, as if acid were flaking through their stomach linings. A bat swoops, edges a tick out from her skin with its teeth and wafts away. 

His aura clears. Medium-shot: a red-headed youth rising from the floor and slinking away. 

And the bats swivel-swoop around the room, tick-diving, food-diving, flicking out the speckles of thigh-blood, launching at the skin-burrowers, tooth-prising out the small dark wrigglers, gulping them down, and then launching themselves at the unbaited wall, trying to embed themselves, but they are snap-trapped at every interval and life-crushed to limp toys beneath the sprung wires.
TRAP-SNAP-A-TRAP-TRAP; TRAP-SNAP-SNAP-SNAP
SNAP-SNAP-TRAP-A-SNAP; SNAP-A-TRAP-TRAP-SNAP
SNAP-A-SNAP-TRAP-A-TRAP; SNAP-A-TRAP-TRAP-TRAP
TRAP-A-TRAP-A-SNAP-A-TRAP; SNAP-A-SNAP-SNAP-TRAP
SNAP-SNAP-TRAP-A-SNAP; SNAP-TRAP-A-TRAP-SNAP
SNAP-SNAP-A-TRAP-A-TRAP; SNAP-A-TRAP-SNAP-SNAP
SNAP-A-TRAP-A-SNAP-TRAP; SNAP-A-SNAP-SNAP-A-SNAP. 

Her aura mists over. A man's voice. "You do realise that we'll have to have the child taken away, don't you?" "No you won't." 

His aura mists over. A man's voice: "Hey, you – we want a word with you. We need to have a disciplinary discussion." 

A man's voice: "Well, you've torn it now. Did you not know who his dad was? Well, them doors are closed to you now, so I don't know what we're - I'm - going to do with you." 

Her aura clears. Close-up: a hand reaching for a jug on top of a dresser and removing a banknote. 

His aura clears. She sees an official throw two coins. He examines them. She sees two youths, handcuffed left hand to left hand as a result. 

They both recoil, but she recovers, and says "Short violent lives, Mr. Scroop: short violent lives. However, I do believe that they like moths as well – even diurnal ones like you - so perhaps you'd better be careful. But imagine what size a bat would need to be to eat you, Mr. Scroop, and imagine what size the snap-trap would have to be to accommodate it. Nevertheless, all things are possible in here, I do believe. But let's have a look, shall we?" And she reaches over, and unties the bindings on the multi-dotted false skin of his chaperoon, scratches his back with her finger impairing at the same time, drawing blood. And she loosens her chaperoon, and lets him do the same to her, before she tightens them both up again. 

They both flinch further. She reaches for the wormcloth bag, and this time removes a larger, wooden box, and, lifting the lid, releases a blur of moths, spotted with the same colours as his chaperoon. They fly to his ragwort garland, instantly attracted to it, and hover around it: malevolent satellites. 

Long shot: a highway travelling away from a city. Close up: a stretched out thumb. 

And a second stripe of bats wafts out like a frayed, poisoned cloud and falls back onto her, and they crawl all over her, four-footing like shrunken cattle, foraging for parasite-fodder, tooth-sucking at her flesh for morsels, but finding nothing. And then they extend their attention to him, crawling down his gibberel cable and locating the moths on the garland before gorging themselves bloodily and strewing pollen in every direction before flying away to their destinations. 

TRAP-A-SNAP-A-TRAP-A-TRAP; TRAP-A-SNAP-TRAP-SNAP
TRAP-A-SNAP-A-SNAP-A-SNAP; TRAP-TRAP-SNAP-A-SNAP
SNAP-SNAP-A-SNAP-A-SNAP; TRAP-SNAP-SNAP-TRAP
SNAP-A-TRAP-SNAP-A-TRAP; SNAP-A-TRAP-TRAP-SNAP
SNAP-SNAP-TRAP-TRAP; SNAP-A-TRAP-SNAP-A-SNAP
TRAP-A-SNAP-A-SNAP-SNAP; TRAP-A-TRAP-SNAP-A-TRAP
SNAP-A-SNAP-A-TRAP-A-SNAP; TRAP-TRAP-TRAP-SNAP. 

Medium shot: two men, fattened by age. One of them beckoning. "Hey, you – we want a word with you. We have a business proposition." 

His aura mists over. A male voice: "So you think you can do it, do you? Well, that's see how hard you really are." 

Medium shot: the thumb stretched out on a highway that was travelling away from a city. An approaching car. 

And the walls are soon splashed red with solidifying clouds of bat-blood. 

Close up: a female hand caressing a stomach. The stomach is larger.

Medium-shot: a young girl getting out of a car outside a railway station. 

She sees an official throw two coins and examine them. She sees two youths, handcuffed right hand to left hand as a result. 

Close-up: a hand proffering a banknote and receiving a railway ticket and some change. 

And she releases the third and final stripe of bats. And at this point it is clearly just too much, and a bald-headed man in an ill-fitting wig and a well-fitting chaperoon kneels clumsily in the corner, downing the cable of his gibberel towards him, and vomits. And the replacement bats swoop down and swallow fragments of spewed berries and clean up everything he has expelled before greeting their boundaries. 

TRAP-TRAP-A-TRAP-A-SNAP; SNAP-TRAP-A-TRAP-SNAP
TRAP-SNAP-A-SNAP-A-TRAP; SNAP-A-TRAP-A-SNAP-A-SNAP
SNAP-TRAP-SNAP-A-SNAP; TRAP-A-TRAP-TRAP-SNAP
TRAP-TRAP-TRAP-TRAP; SNAP-SNAP-A-TRAP-A-SNAP
SNAP-A-TRAP-TRAP-A-TRAP; TRAP-SNAP-A-SNAP-TRAP
SNAP-TRAP-A-SNAP-SNAP; SNAP-SNAP-A-TRAP-A-SNAP
TRAP-SNAP-TRAP-TRAP; TRAP-A-SNAP-A-TRAP-SNAP. 

His aura mists over. A man's voice: "You still want to do it? Well, I suppose I'd better let you. Trouble is, you're just made differently; just like him. 'Carved out of different flesh', he calls it." 

And the wall is now peppered and papered with snap-trapped puke-engorged bat corpses, and his wig & garland have come off. And the last bat flies in to the last trap and there are no more bats to emerge and no more traps to be filled. 

She sees an official throw two coins. He examines them. She sees two youths, handcuffed left hand to right hand as a result. 

He straightens up and looks at her aura. Long shot: the fading sharpness of three sets of hills in the distance. Middle-shot: a teenage girl struggling in her walking shoes through the clag of the peat with a heavy rucksack on her back. And his eyes seem to betray some recognition. 

She looks at him, and reaches for a wormcloth rag. "Oh, Mr. Scroop, you've gone and got puke all in your gibberel! Here, let me clean you up! No, don't try to speak, whatever you do. The electricity will just fry the spewed bits onto your face." She replaces his wig and his garland. 

They both grimace. And they fall on each other. And it all goes blurred, and nothing is coherent, wrapped as they are in filaments of each other's stickiness, drowning not choking, choking not drowning, abrading each other, fishnet against fishnet, captor scrape against captor scrape, conjoining in the sick dance of predator-eat-predator-eat-predator as their collided worlds smash and revolve in play of sickness in the sick room, carving each other's flesh with teeth stained like wounds and fingernails blackened as a poisoned work environment in the guttering light just as they are carving and siphoning each other's brains with their power. And knowing it, and shuddering around in relief, and becoming gummed-up in each other, becoming transparent, their hairs retracting themselves into their bodies which become smooth and clean as a result, and they are draped over each other, stiffened a-midriff by their chaperoons, but otherwise invertebrate. 

He can see the way that involuntary little cringes and recoils interrupt her straightforward passage as she tramps along and he knows that she is remembering something at that instant. And his eyes grow puzzled, as if he himself doesn't quite remember what. 

They both cringe. She rests, with yesterday's confetti in the counterpane of hair sprawled out across the wing of the sofa, moving her fishnetted legs like a cyclist decelerating after crossing the line, the strokes getting shallower and gentler. She takes a deep breath. He shakes some of her confetti from his wig. 

Medium-shot: a young woman, trudging over a door mat, confronted by a harassed looking older woman. 

And the drones deepen and resonate the walls and a wind seems to creep in, like a distant relative with dirty feet, but then it soars and roars around the room, mingling with the drone and distending their auras and just as suddenly subsides. 

A piercing clang strikes out from the speakers and his clothes fall down, the hanger coming free from the chain. 

Medium-shot: the older woman looking at the rucksack. She speaks. "It looks heavy." A younger woman's voice: "It might be heavy, but not as heavy as somebody's hand." 

Her aura mists over. An older woman's voice. "You do realise that you can't keep it, don't you?" A younger woman's voice: "Yes I am."

Medium-shot: a youth, a boy still almost, and he is naked to the waist, and he has scratch marks on his torso, and he is standing in front of a mirror, reading out loud from a book gripped in his left hand. His right fist is clenched. He punches his own face, looking in the mirror all the time. "Say no to the mines. This is good. Say no to the steel works. This is good. Say no to tradition. This is good. Say no to the culture. This is good. Say yes to the ones who are carved out of different. This is good. Say yes to the fighting of different flesh. This is good. Say yes to violent stupidity. This is good." 

A man's loud voice on the other end of a telephone, clearly audible in the room. "You couldn't even look after her well enough to prevent her getting pregnant." 

She sees an official throw two coins. He examines them. She sees two youths, handcuffed right hand to right hand as a result. 

The aura mists over. A voice only. "You can't believe how fantastic this is, compared to being underground all the time." 

She says "So there we have it, Mr. Scroop; we've beached each other, and we've each wet each other. As ever, riparian rights, Mr. Scroop, a continuity of mutually assured dampness." 

She drapes the cleaning-up cloth on one of the traps, then somehow, a switch is flicked, and the wall tips over and is clean again, and again there are 168 unsprung traps in three vee-shapes. 

She sniffs at the candle, and relights it. 

She unlinks her drivishes. 

She replaces his clothes on the hanger, and hangs it up again. 

She takes him by the face with her hands and stares into his eyes.

"Exhausted, Mr. Scroop, or do you want another go? Would you like another little burlesque tart, and another little drink, Mr. Scroop? Remember that if you do, and we draw the same instructions, we will do the same thing again, and you won't remember it. I shall remember, but I shall pretend I don't. Of course, if we make another journey, a different journey, we shall probably discover more about both ourselves and each other. So, tell me, Mr. Scroop. I know that you know how to move your head, so tell me with your head, Mr. Scroop: tell me with you head. "

Choose:

He shakes his head.

Or:

He nods his head.

They return to the table, and each grabs a tart, gently picked up with his restrained and her unrestrained hands, and each devours their own. Easily.

She pours spirit into their glasses.

She says "Up your brain again, Mr. Scroop. Time to taste the treewormy medicine one more time," and they down them in one, she left handed, he two handed.

She pulls the label from her mouth and hands it to him, pushing it into his drivished hands.

She pulls the label from his mouth and examines it.

Choose:

She checks his label. The word "indulgence" crossed out, the word "mischief" intact. He checks her label. The word "mischief" crossed out, the word "indulgence" intact.

Or:

She checks his label. The word "mischief" crossed out, the word "indulgence" intact. He checks her label. The word "indulgence" crossed out, the word "mischief" intact.

Or:

She checks his label. The word "mischief" crossed out, the word "indulgence" intact. He checks her label. The word "mischief" crossed out, the word "indulgence" intact.