The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble by Gareth Wiles

the aforementioned rat,’ Hobble carried on just as his male guest tried to speak. He slowly slinked across the room to Peter, undoing his red velvet waistcoat. Out flopped a coin purse on a string and the seated one watched as it dangled in front of him. ‘Your reward.’
    â€˜That is of no use to me,’ Peter responded, his hand instinctively stretching out to take it. In an instant the sight of his own outstretched hand became blurred. ‘Give it to the girl.’
    â€˜I fully intend to,’ was Hobble’s reply as he pocketed the purse and smiled.
    Peter saw the glass slip out of his own hand as his entire body went numb. His heavy eyes looked at Hobble – he’d given his guests a drink, but hadn’t had one himself.
    * * *
    â€˜Your jottings fascinate me,’ Hobble uttered as Peter lifted his head up. At first he saw the older man flicking through his notebook, then behind him some ghastly headless body hanging from a hook attached to the exposed neck. Seams ran all across it, a mishmash of skin and parts from umpteen women stuck together to make up this dreadful yellowy blue carcass. He looked around the darkened room, but could not see Molly.
    â€˜Where is Molly?’ Peter demanded, struggling to free himself from weighty chains.
    â€˜The Space sounds so wondrous – and immortality, what an honour,’ he carried on, waving the notebook about, ignoring the captive’s question. ‘I do believe I have lured in and captured the correct candidate.’
    â€˜Candidate?’
    â€˜The perfect female body,’ Hobble insisted, pocketing the notebook and stepping over to the sagging meat and flesh, ‘but with a male brain –
your
brain, Peter. I set up the reward in order to lure the cleverest here in order to harvest their brain for my experiment – if they were clever enough to work out the truth, they would make the ideal candidate.’
    â€˜But I didn’t work out the truth, I thought Darren did it,’ Peter gulped, his mind now full of ghastly images of Hobble committing the crimes. The Space was a little too late on that one.
    â€˜Immaterial – your writings are enough to convince me of your superior brain.’
    â€˜Thanks,’ Peter mused, ‘I think… So, my head and a woman’s body?’
    â€˜No, no, just your brain. I already have a head, a fresh one too,’ he grinned as he bent down and reached into a bucket full of reddened water, lifting out Molly’s severed head by her lovely long wet hair. The most agonising pain hit Peter’s chest, plunging into the pit of his stomach like a fireball hitting Earth’s surface from outer space. ‘She has a beautiful face,’ Hobble continued, lifting the head higher and swinging it so that the face faced him. ‘It will take a careful cut at the back of her head to remove her brain and replace it with yours so as not to damage this face. Tis the face of my future wife.’
    â€˜What about the wife whose breasts you removed?’ Peter sighed to himself, all of humanity now a sick perversion in his eyes, as he looked over at the headless body hanging there. The dark yellow breasts were big, but sagged and hung there in sullen depression. He didn’t know whether it was the angle he was positioned at or not, but from where he was looking they seemed to have been attached in an unbalanced fashion. The left one had been sewn on far higher than the right.
    Hobble, meanwhile, had dumped Molly’s head back in the bucket and was caressing the body’s nipples. ‘Her breasts were stupendous – the rest of her horrendous,’ he trilled. ‘I kept her best bits, and got rid of the rest.’
    Right then a side door opened, and in walked Willemina. Silently she floated up to Peter, her sad brown eyes looking him up and down. Her mouth creased as she reached out and placed a hand on his chest, some flicker of emotion he