Badger - Tapioca of the gods Part Two

It was during the long, hot summer of last year that David Kelman
first noticed his grip on reality slowly diminishing and the heavy hand
of insanity edging its way up his back like a crazed blood-drinking
bloated badger with its eyes set on his jugular. At least, the summer
was hot in comparison to the summer that had proceeded it. And, indeed
the summer that had gone before that one. And the one before that. In
other words, it was not particularly hot and yet many people still
found the need to strip off to their underwear and fan themselves
constantly saying "Gosh, isn't it hot?" No. It wasn't. It was one of
the peculiarities of British people who somehow felt validated after a
9 month winter in proclaiming how warm it was on a day when it only
rained twice. It was also a peculiarity that fascinated the
Encyclopaedia Brothers - two door-to-door salesmen with blue skin and
twelve arms each who originated from the Horsehead Nebula. They knew
what it was to be hot. To heave a mountain of books from one door to
the next, all of which had to be sold by 6:00 pm or suffer the wrath of
the almighty General Zarnk and his disintegration booths. All this
under the quad-suns of Gatraphon major - now THAT was hot. We shall
learn more of them later but at this precise moment they have no
bearing on the story whatsoever.
Anyway, back to David. The loss of sanity was not something that had
ever particularly bothered him. It seemed like something that only
happened to other, more unusual people. This was perfectly
understandable when it was taken into consideration that David was a
man for whom the words 'utterly average' didn't even begin to describe
the path of......utter averageness his life had lead him along. He was
in his mid-thirties, of average height and average build, and lived in
an average-sized flat in a fairly average part of town. This sort of
thing simply didn't happen to that sort of man. At least, it wasn't
supposed to.
Neither was David sure what had brought him into this psychiatrist's
office with its chintzy, faded decor and battered Parker Knowles.
Perhaps it was his curiosity...perhaps it was his unflinching
determination to discover once and for all what was happening to
him...or perhaps it was the letter of recommendation the doctor had
handed him a week earlier and now laid crumpled in a little brown ball
on his lap. David had always been wary of psychiatrists. His fear could
by no means be classified as a phobia, but more of a sensible feeling
of mistrust that had been sparked off many years before when he had
stayed up until 2am watching "Rampage of the Killer, Crazed Shrinks" on
Channel 4. He thought that this was something that he should perhaps
tell the psychiatrist, but was really quite sure that it was an
irrational fear that he had come to terms with himself. Besides, he was
too afraid that it would result in him having his head cracked open and
brains sucked out. Television had always affected his mental state on
quite a profound level, so much so in fact that ever since witnessing a
particularly harrowing edition of Ground Force, he harboured an
irrational, almost maniacal fear of water features with their
hideous...constant....babbling. He visibly shook himself free of this
destructive water-feature dominated pattern of thought. So visibly in
fact that the psychiatrist (whose name was George Taplow) interpreted
it as being a nervous twitch and put a small tick down on his
clipboard. George was an elderly man who had the sort of face that was
impossible not to pity. Several strands of black, dyed hair appeared to
burst forth from his head in all directions, but were withstrained
desperately by his mottled scalp.
George thought that he was having a reasonably good afternoon up until
this point - a husband who had started to find poodle grooming
preferable to sex, an elderly lady from Cheshire who frequently mistook
a sandwich-toaster for her estranged son and now this person who was
either in need of a great deal of help or wasting his time
entirely.
'When did you first notice this?' His gaze transfixed David's through
sellotape-repaired glasses which refused to stay in the same place on
the bridge of his nose.
The question seemed to casually float around the room and David
followed its wispy, invisible form until he found something visible to
look at.
'Are those your fish?' he asked. He had never been particularly good
at spontaneous conversation, at least in a coherent sense. He was well
aware that the line of conversation had not naturally progressed to the
tropical fish tank in the corner of the room, but on the spur of the
moment David had seen it as an ingenious way of changing the
subject.
'You like fish?' George asked, desperately trying to discover
something about his patient that could make up another tick on his
clipboard, even if it was just a love of marinelife.
"Umm...eating or watching?" David asked. He knew it was a stupid
question, but it had already left his lips before his brain had had
chance to close them.
"Either" said George, brushing a piece of cotton from his lapel.
".....Yes." said David.
George frowned and glanced up
"What?"
"What....?"
"Yes....what?"
David looked confused.
"Do you like eating them or watching them?"
David darted his eyes around the room...
"Weather's been warm, hasn't it?"
George leaned forwards slightly, "Do you know how many dolphins get
caught in tuna nets each year?"
David felt his palms wetten with sweat. He felt he was being
challenged with this question...perhaps the psychiatrist blamed him for
the reduction in the numbers of the dolphin species. There was no
reason why he should, but David being of a naturally guilty disposition
felt that this was indeed the case.
"Not...usually this humid...."
"You'd never eat another can if you knew"said George, half to himself.
He examined his clipboard silently for a moment. And then a moment
longer. And then a few more moments. David fiddled with his doctor's
letter and shuffled uncomfortably in his chair.
More moments of silence. David hated silence. He avoided it wherever
possible...even when at home he needed some sort of distraction, some
other noise than the sound of his own pulse in his ears, even if it
meant watching Ground Force with its water
features....those.....terrible....water features....but right now the
sound of his own pulse cascading through his head seemed deafening.
Like having a pneumatic drill hammering away at each ear-lobe which, as
anyone who on the off-chance has ever experienced this will tell you,
is not an entirely pleasant sensation. His pulse quickened and beads of
sweat broke out on his forehead and trickled down his face. He needed
air. Now.
George, completely unaware of his patient's rising panic, examined his
cuticles and quietly hummed a carpenter's song.
"Hmm...hmm..hmmm ...top of the world...lala...down on
creation..."
Pulse racing faster......
"Mmm mmm only explanation I can find..."
Need to get out.....
"Mmm mmm...love that I've found, ever since you've been
around..."
"AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

David's throat immediately protested at being mistreated so
violently.

silence.

no singing.

no questions.

nothing.

David slowly opened his eyes.....the pulse in his ears gradually
subsided. His sweat-soaked shirt clung to his back in a soggy clump. He
blearily glanced around the room.

Fish......normal.

Books.......normal.

Psychiatrist.......

Motionless.

David sat still for a while. George sat still for quite a while
longer. David had never seen a dead person before, and at this stage he
was still not aware that he suddenly had. He felt he should apologise
for such a deafening outburst.
"I'm....I'm....sorry for shouting"
George, for several very good reasons, did not reply. His unmoving form
just gazed emptily into space, his clipboard laying uselessly on his
lap.
David shuffled uncomfortably. Perhaps the old man was hard of
hearing...
"I said, I didn't mean to make you jump".
Unbeknownst to David, he had made him jump. Roughly a foot in the air
in fact. It would have not doubt hurt George's posterior landing back
down upon an unpadded Parker Knowle from 12 inches, but luckily (or
unluckily depending on how you see it) he had suffered a major coronary
somewhere midleap. It was the cigars that had killed him. His wife had
told him time and again...get rid of those things before they become
the death of you, they're no good for your ticker. Well, whether they
were good for it or not had now become a point of irrelevance as his
ticker had quite definitely stopped ticking.
George gazed down on his own motionless form from the ceiling.
"I don't look particularly well.." he thought. This was very
true.
"I must be....dead..." This was even truer.
There was something very strange about his office. He looked upon it
with the same familiarity he always had but it appeared
somehow...different. Distant. It didn't smell of cheap cigars and shoe
polish, in fact it didn't smell of anything at all. At this point
George did not find it strange that he had suddenly become a
disembodied spiritual form and was currently hovering several feet
above his own corpse. At this point, the absence of smell seemed far
stranger. George went to scratch his own head, but found that he no
longer had any hands. Or a head. He was just contemplating this
predicament and the fact that he wouldn't be home in time for
Crossroads when he found himself with the need to contemplate something
very different indeed - if he was dead, and therefore not alive, then
where the hell was he? His office slowly faded away into a grey mush
and was replaced with a long, dark tunnel. Now, this was something he
had heard of. At uni he had had a particular interest in the part of
his psychiatry course that dealt with near-death experiences...well,
perhaps not so much an interest with the course as an interest in the
pretty little brunette called Michelle who sat in the front row with
her bra-straps showing. This was all a very long time ago but George
could recollect in between bouts of hallucinogenic experimentation two
important things - firstly that the pretty little brunette had turned
her pretty little nose up at the prospect of a drink after the lecture,
and secondly that near-death experiences were often categorised as
featuring a long, dark tunnel with a brilliant light at the end and a
general sense of euphoria.
George looked ahead of him at was most certainly a long, dark tunnel.
Very long and very dark...yes, this was quite obviously a capaciously
long and copiously dark tunnel. He then looked at the brilliant light
at the end...at least he would have done if it had been there. There
seemed to be very little in front of him other than a tunnel with its
long and dark properties.
"Ah..." thought George, "that's interesting."
The next thing he noticed was a relative lack of any feeling that
could be classed as being even slightly euphoric. He felt rather
excited at being where he was....but there was very little euphoria
mixed in with that. In fact, he had experienced more euphoria the last
time he had witnessed his local carpet bowls team win 27-0 on a wet
Wednesday afternoon.
"Perhaps," thought George, "that is because this is not strictly a
near-death experience....I mean, I'm not actually near death, am I?
I've been near death and now I seem to have sailed straight past it, so
this in fact could be termed as a 'post-death experience'" he was quite
satisfied with this woefully inaccurate explanation and was attempting
to pat himself on the back with an arm that no longer existed when he
felt himself smash face-long into something very hard. The impact would
most certainly have killed him if he had not already been dead.

David slid off of his chair and cautiously approached George's corpse.
He was quite obviously dead, but David figured that he should make sure
so as to not offend him by leaving without paying.
"Mr Taplow....?"
Still no reply. David picked up a biro from George's impossibly
cluttered desk and gently prodded him. No response. He was dead. Dead
as a dodo smacked over the head with a welding mallet. Still, David did
not give up hope. He picked up one of George's limp hands and attempted
to check for a pulse by squeezing his fingers. Even if he had had a
pulse, David would have almost certainly never have found it by doing
this. His lack of medical expertise was particularly embarrassing as he
had taken a first-aid course at night school barely three months
beforehand, but he consoled himself with the fact that he had missed
the resuscitation lectures on the account of being extremely,
constantly drunk for three weeks. Of course, this was not the excuse he
used-as far as he could recall he had said that his Dalmatian had
died....or Labrador...or tortoise...or something. Whatever it was it
had gained him a great deal of sympathy from the rest of the
group.
So, here he was. In a psychiatrist's office with a dead psychiatrist,
clutching a biro that belonged to the dead psychiatrist. The enormity
of the situation suddenly overwhelmed him, and he flung open the door
of the office and staggered into the waiting room. The fifteen-or-so
minutes immediately following this became something of a blur, but he
vaguely recalled saying something about booking another appointment to
the receptionist, staggering out onto the street and finally collapsing
in the middle of St. James's park.
The only person more disturbed by these events than David was the poor
soul in Dr. Taplow's waiting-room who had witnessed him tumble out of
the office looking ill and confused and had consequently quietly wet
himself at the prospect of being called in next.