Who, indeed, has been resurrected from Hell in this short piece by Kanthé. Oh yes, we’re getting Halloween ready here. Mwah-ha-haaaa. Enjoy…
I walk the streets of my old hunting ground and I can barely recognise the place. There are towering buildings and odd motorised vehicles everywhere. A constant hustle and bustle around me. Strange exotic smells and people of every discernible hue. Signs and lights and noise everywhere.
I feel lost.
There are a group of people standing on a street corner and they are looking around as lost and bewildered as me. Some are looking through flat little thin wafers in single different colours and clicking away. Sometimes with little lights flashing away. Some are talking to others with these…devices. I am confused.
I approach them and they all look and stare at me. I stare at them. There’s a plump girl with pink hair and black lip-stick; wearing hardly anything at all. The boy next to her is wearing a torn vest, ripped trousers and a shaved head. Looking like a skinny bag of bones. No one looks at them – but they are pointing and whispering about me. As if I’m the man out of time and place. I am affronted by their rudeness.
I am wearing my best top hat…long dark cloak and white gloves. Like I’ve just come from the Opera House in Covent Garden. I even popped into Mitre Square – I recognised the area where it happened; and I have my medical bag with me – just in case…but there is no cover, no shelter anymore. My Work remains…undone.
There is a fat old man in the centre of the crowd pontificating, and they are only half-listening to him. He suddenly mentions my name…my nickname. I turn around astounded. Someone sniggers and calls me Leather Apron. Idiot men and a gaggle of Strumpets and Whores making fun of me! Me??!!
I am incensed. A red mist descends. I’m not the kind of man who takes criticism well. I know the Queen, you know – treated her many times. I’ve rubbed shoulders with the hoi polloi too. Everyone makes grand claims about my identity but they are all clueless. Some even say that I gave Birth to the 20th Century. But look at how your degenerate modern life has turned out. A fresh reign of blood needs to come to wash away the flotsam and jetsam off the street and into the gutters where it belongs.
Windsor Writers' Group 