fighting to keep his eyes open.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. You need to recover here in our lovely health facility,’ Brown said, adjusting his handkerchief before training his gaze on Terry. ‘You can stay as long as you want. Maybe even indefinitely.’
Brown turned abruptly and swept out of the room. His two underlings followed without a word. The key turned in the lock with an ominous clunk.
Terry tried to sit up. His muscles refused to cooperate and his tongue felt thick and furred. Images of the carnage seeped into his mind as his thoughts unfurled. To ward off the horror, he tried to conjure up Dorota leaning over the bar to hand him a view of her lush Eastern European cleavage, a cool pint of lager and a big smacker on the lips. He couldn’t hold her together, and she mixed in with the dark memories crowding his dwindling consciousness. Her breasts became swinging udders, her face elongated and her skin turned a mottled brown. The beer fell from her hand, which had turned into a hoof, and her mouth, which had been moist and welcoming, morphed into a gnashing maw that followed him down into a reprise of his drug-induced stupor.
5
Udder madness
Geldof, Nadeem and Stewart, the founding, and only, members of Maths Club, sat quietly in the corner of the playground, as far away from the seething mass of football-playing, hair-pulling and gum-chewing kids as they could. Geldof took a bite from his falafel wrap and ran a hand over the shiny hard cover of the new edition of
Maths Puzzles for Geniuses
, which had required two months of saving to purchase.
That he had any pocket money to save was solely because Fanny had been forced to abandon her attempts to institute a barter system in Glasgow the year before, after an irate teller in John Lewis called the police and asked her to remove the massive sack of dirty carrots she had dumped on the till and to return the bra and knickers she had tried to purchase with said carrots, and had then pulled on over her clothes in protest when she was informed money was the preferred currency in the store. Chalk up yet another great memory for Geldof, who had stared at his shoes, hoping Buchanan Galleries would collapse and bury them all under a pile of glass, steel and concrete.
There was something special about the moment when you cracked the spine on a new book. Geldof didn’t want to rush it, even though Nadeem and Stewart were crowding forward, licking their lips in anticipation. He imagined it was like taking a young maiden’s virginity, although he was a bit hazy on whether the noises would be similar. He took hold of the front cover with thumb and forefinger and teased it open. There was a collective sigh as the spine crackled and the book fell open.
‘What is the first rule of Maths Club?’ Geldof asked portentously.
‘You do not talk about Maths Club,’ the others intoned.
Yes
, Geldof thought,
because our heads would be down the toilet quicker than the 1.29 seconds it takes light to travel to earth from the moon if we did
.
He inspected his friends, who looked like they were trying to outdo each other in the scrawny and spotty stakes, and nodded. ‘Then we are ready to begin.’
As he bent his head to the book, a shadow obscured the weak light trickling through a break in the grey clouds. Nadeem and Stewart squeaked in unison. Geldof looked over his shoulder to see the Alexander twins standing above him, their stocky arms crossed over their equally stocky chests.
Yegads!
thought Geldof, who was experimenting with medieval swear words to see if they made him any cooler.
While the twins had swaggered forth from the same cursed egg and had identical massive brown eyes – which they used to disarm teachers when caught in acts of playground brutality – slug-like lips and jutting chins, their robust lifestyles had led to some differences. Malcolm’s nose had been flattened when he picked a fight with a small kid from another school who turned
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. You need to recover here in our lovely health facility,’ Brown said, adjusting his handkerchief before training his gaze on Terry. ‘You can stay as long as you want. Maybe even indefinitely.’
Brown turned abruptly and swept out of the room. His two underlings followed without a word. The key turned in the lock with an ominous clunk.
Terry tried to sit up. His muscles refused to cooperate and his tongue felt thick and furred. Images of the carnage seeped into his mind as his thoughts unfurled. To ward off the horror, he tried to conjure up Dorota leaning over the bar to hand him a view of her lush Eastern European cleavage, a cool pint of lager and a big smacker on the lips. He couldn’t hold her together, and she mixed in with the dark memories crowding his dwindling consciousness. Her breasts became swinging udders, her face elongated and her skin turned a mottled brown. The beer fell from her hand, which had turned into a hoof, and her mouth, which had been moist and welcoming, morphed into a gnashing maw that followed him down into a reprise of his drug-induced stupor.
5
Udder madness
Geldof, Nadeem and Stewart, the founding, and only, members of Maths Club, sat quietly in the corner of the playground, as far away from the seething mass of football-playing, hair-pulling and gum-chewing kids as they could. Geldof took a bite from his falafel wrap and ran a hand over the shiny hard cover of the new edition of
Maths Puzzles for Geniuses
, which had required two months of saving to purchase.
That he had any pocket money to save was solely because Fanny had been forced to abandon her attempts to institute a barter system in Glasgow the year before, after an irate teller in John Lewis called the police and asked her to remove the massive sack of dirty carrots she had dumped on the till and to return the bra and knickers she had tried to purchase with said carrots, and had then pulled on over her clothes in protest when she was informed money was the preferred currency in the store. Chalk up yet another great memory for Geldof, who had stared at his shoes, hoping Buchanan Galleries would collapse and bury them all under a pile of glass, steel and concrete.
There was something special about the moment when you cracked the spine on a new book. Geldof didn’t want to rush it, even though Nadeem and Stewart were crowding forward, licking their lips in anticipation. He imagined it was like taking a young maiden’s virginity, although he was a bit hazy on whether the noises would be similar. He took hold of the front cover with thumb and forefinger and teased it open. There was a collective sigh as the spine crackled and the book fell open.
‘What is the first rule of Maths Club?’ Geldof asked portentously.
‘You do not talk about Maths Club,’ the others intoned.
Yes
, Geldof thought,
because our heads would be down the toilet quicker than the 1.29 seconds it takes light to travel to earth from the moon if we did
.
He inspected his friends, who looked like they were trying to outdo each other in the scrawny and spotty stakes, and nodded. ‘Then we are ready to begin.’
As he bent his head to the book, a shadow obscured the weak light trickling through a break in the grey clouds. Nadeem and Stewart squeaked in unison. Geldof looked over his shoulder to see the Alexander twins standing above him, their stocky arms crossed over their equally stocky chests.
Yegads!
thought Geldof, who was experimenting with medieval swear words to see if they made him any cooler.
While the twins had swaggered forth from the same cursed egg and had identical massive brown eyes – which they used to disarm teachers when caught in acts of playground brutality – slug-like lips and jutting chins, their robust lifestyles had led to some differences. Malcolm’s nose had been flattened when he picked a fight with a small kid from another school who turned
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