FUGU

- an epic short story starring The Icelandic Love Corporation

By Francis McKee

1
Sunday and Sunday rain, falling in gray sheets from a low ceiling of dull gray clouds. Joni looked out across the lane and could see no signs of life. She stepped out of the house and walked down to the street. The watchtower loomed above the parked cars and wet pavements. An array of electronic eyes swept over her and Joni shivered. High on the platform, amid the barbed wire and green camouflage, she thought she could see a human blinking in the shadows. Zero contact. She kept moving - down past the train station, through the tunnel and up into the dark green parklands of the hospital. Now she was alert, looking for small signs, the telltale marks of a shy recluse. Joni wasn’t hopeful. The sky was getting darker by the minute and the rain kept pouring down. She thought of Sigrun and Eirun back in the flat, dry and warm, more than likely listening to Gram Parsons and making toast. Meanwhile, every bone in her body was damp and chilled, rainwater flooded through the gutters and there were no obvious trails to follow. She had already decided to turn and head for home when she heard the singing. "Roll, roll, roll ... Roll me over and turn me around ..." It was coming from the bin area behind the ambulance depot. A high-pitched whine masquerading as song - "this is nummm-ber five and the bee is in the hiivvve!" Joni approached a dustbin that was shaking in time to the music and looked in. The fox, stretched across a black rubbish bag, looked back and immediately stopped singing. "Joni!" he shouted, "How are you?" Soaked, with her hair clinging to her forehead, Joni appraised the fox carefully. "You’re still looking for Mort aren’t you? Still trying to get your revenge for what he did to you?", she said. "Could be. You’ll catch your death here – let’s get out of the rain." Climbing out of the dustbin, the fox led the way to a dry spot under the concrete supports of the hospital. "We heard Mort’s in town," said Joni. "He’s been seen hanging around the Shambles." "Clouds a drifting across the moon ... Cats a prowling on their beat ... Spring's a girl in the street at night ..." "Pay attention! Aren’t you curious enough?" snapped Joni. "Eirun heard that you should look for the leopard man. None of us know what that means but we thought you might. Now I’m going home – it’s too wet to stand here listening to you croak." The fox watched as she splashed off across the grounds of the hospital, a bedraggled figure vanishing into a cold, watery world. He started singing again as he made his way back to the bins, "Dirty old town ... dirty old town".

2
"It’s called A Memory of a Geisha. It’s really interesting." "But this is something that is supposed to be a secret or what? It’s a kind of a secret world?" "It’s not a secret world, but a closed world." "And how old do you have to be? Can you start training at any age?" "They start training the girls when they are six years old. And they go to schools to learn to play instruments and dance. And to serve tea – a special way of serving tea." "Yeah, but we are also learning to play instruments and serving tea and coffee. And we dance –" Sigrun and Eirun stopped as Joni burst through the door. "I went all the way to see that – that MONKEY BRAIN! And he just sat there singing stupid songs and not listening to a word!" She grabbed a towel and started to dry her hair furiously. "I think we need some more toast," said Sigrun, wielding the breadknife. "And some jasmine tea," added Eirun.

3
The fox stood outside the locked door of the Weasel Inn pool hall. This was a long name for a building that was nothing more than a fortified shoebox, wrapped in corrugated iron, squatting in the shadow of one of the area’s largest watchtowers. A slot in the door opened cautiously and two eyes peered down at the fox. "What?" "Here to see the leopard man," replied the fox. "Speaking." The eyes moved back from the slot and revealed a face tattooed with spots and shoulders with the same markings. "I was told you can get me to Mort Greaves." "Could do. Heard you’re a bit of a singer. How about a few bars of Jolene?" "Not now. Just give me Mort." "West Nile and 3rd. Green door, second floor. And don’t hurt him just because you can." The fox sighed. People just couldn’t resist. He turned and walked away from the pool hall. Above him the electronic eyes of the watchtower swivelled to track his footsteps. Behind the corrugated door, Mort stepped down from his box, shed the tattooed skin and dialled a number on his mobile.

4
"Are you sure this is the place?" asked Sigrun, staring up at the black windows of the building. "It looks completely shut." "This is the address on the invitation card and this is today’s date. It must be the right place" replied Eirun. Joni set off around the side of the building to find another entrance while Sigrun tried dialling the number on the card. It was the answering service for the Nokia sales department. Eirun, meanwhile, was pressing all the buttons at the entrance. Suddenly the door buzzed open, yawning into the darkness. When Joni returned they entered the building together and, once they found the stair lights, they headed for the second floor. The corridor was tiled pale green and the whole building had a vaguely institutional air about it. The door to the exhibition space was open and even from a distance the girls could see the beam of a projector flickering. So that explained the darkness from outside. In the room itself, the projector illuminated the scene perfectly. Svana was sprawled across the floor, her throat wide open and a pool of blood haloed behind her head. The fox was hunched over the small chicken’s body and at their arrival he turned – surprised – a feather held aloft in his paw. It was all terribly simple.

5
Mort folded the newspaper repeatedly until it was a small, thick square he could easily grip in one hand. Only the crossword remained visible and he scanned it expertly, smiling to himself as he read the clues, filling the boxes with a script as illegible and coded as a series of scrawled hieroglyphics on a discarded counting stone, answering questions that seemed to ask for more than replies in a daily cryptic quiz: ‘1 across – Is it used to pick out junk in the dark (7,7)’; ‘25 across – Radioactive element at Etna is volatile (8)’; ‘7 down – Herds free to roam can be renewed (9)’. Mort, managing the world effortlessly, shaping fates and patterning the future. He paused for a moment and then, with what seemed particular relish, attacked the final clue: ‘11 down – dying animal, once upon a time (7, 8, 9, 10, 11,12, 13, 14, 15, 16)’.

6
Smoke filled the air and the fire alarm was emitting a deafening squeal. The television, having exploded a moment before, was still on fire, its tube radiating a blue wave of light that enveloped Sigrun, Eirun and Joni. The room vanished in a white burst of flame and then reappeared, time jumping like a needle in the groove. The girls inched along the floor of an ocean, stingrays and sharks guiding their path. They stood on mountain tops straining for oxygen before falling through clouds, hurtling towards the forests below. And, just as suddenly, they were back in the room, the smoke clearing, and the alarm fading to silence. "Does anybody know what just happened?" asked Sigrun. "Spleek burrow twintail flash" replied Eirun. Sigrun looked at Joni. "It’s ok. She’s just in shock, I think." As Joni spoke, she moved around the room carefully collecting the small fish stranded, twitching and flailing, among the wreckage. "And what the hell are they?" continued Sigrun, pointing dramatically at one fish that was inflating like a ball at her feet. "Fugu. A fish of the family Tetraodontidae, class Osteichthyes, order Tetraodontiformes. Blowfish to the layman. Its liver, gonads and intestines contain a poison called tetrodotoxin, so powerful it can shut down the central nervous system in minutes. The estimated lethal dose for an adult, a mere one to two milligrams, would fit on a pinhead." "I repeat," shouted Sigrun, raising her finger in emphasis, "Someone tell me what is going on here!" "Torafugu poubelled in tongufoss," explained Eirun. "Amoeba in Las Vegas."

7
The fox was on the run. He’d been set up, arriving at the address just before the girls, finding the body and being found with the body, and then trying to escape. That hadn’t worked well. He’d thrown himself through the window, landing on the street below, bruised and covered in cuts. They’d taken him back to their flat in silence, Eirun going straight to her bedroom and slamming the door. Sigrun washed his cuts with a special soap and applied some bandaids. Joni gave him a small vodka. Then they left him in the kitchen and joined Eirun – he could hear her sobbing through the door and he left as quietly as he could. They probably realised he’d been set up but the image of him standing over the body would take a while to fade. In the meantime, he could track down Mort though he now suspected their roles might have changed. There were no safe houses but he could enter one of the city’s no-go areas and hope Mort would at least be more conspicuous if he followed him in.

8
"Strontium from Strontian. It’s used to line the cathode tubes in television sets." "And that caused the blue light?" "Yeah, and all the collateral juju. Fixed you good – bust your heartstrings." "And this way you talk now?" "Special power – like a super power. I can speak in tongues and Joni has the power of fugu, an understanding of the Japanese blowfish." "I might prepare some later – with ponzu." "So what are you saying - that you’re mutants now?" "Well, superheroes sounds better I think." "But an octopus has three hearts and that doesn’t make it a superhero!" "Doesn’t make it a mutant either." "We might be different because we have the choice to use our powers for the common good." "And doesn’t this all mean we need new costumes?" "Exactly! I thought we could have black hats with long ribbons …" "…and long white robes, like soutanes ...!" "Do your teeth glow in the dark now?" "Yes! You too?" "And what about me?" "You seem to be exactly the same." "That’s impossible!" exclaimed Sigrun, falling to her knees and pounding her breast. "Well, you can still dress up with us," said Joni, "And if you don’t mind moving I have to shave my legs. Superheroes should be smooth ..." "Do you remember how I always wanted to be Commissar X, and Joni wanted to be Ms X-Ray? Well it’s like that," explained Eirun. "And you always wanted to be Nancy Drew and she was just a human too."

9
The fox had fallen asleep behind a burnt-out car on a patch of wasteland. Under the faint sodium glare of city, he twitched and whined, dreaming like any other dog. Helicopters swooped past overhead, their searchlights pinpointing the columns of deep black smoke rising from the surrounding landscape. Sirens howled like crazed banshees, punctuating the perpetual rumble of unknown machines. And nothing jarred the dreaming fox. Across town, the Icelandic Love Corporation stepped out into the night. They wore tall black hats, banded with white ribbons that flowed back in the wind. Under the full moon, their white robes shone against the darkness of the lane. Linking arms, they almost seemed to glide down towards the street. Reaching the watchtower they stopped for a moment. Joni reached into a pocket and extracted a small puffer fish which she tossed, grenade-like, into one of the tower’s viewing slits. They were gliding down the street as the tall structure bellied out, softened to a pink fur and began to pulsate. It was going to be a long trip so Mort packed the small black suitcase this time. There were the essentials – an extendible wand, a pack of cards and a shell game. And textbooks: The Saragossa Manuscript,The Last Testimony of Margery Daw and Already Dead would be enough. Socks, underwear, a good pencil and his mobile phone. Then the more specialised stuff: an ash ra tempel prayer wheel, exploding eyelashes, mushrooms and a pair of razor sharp high heels by Louboutin. He retrieved the mobile to check on the progress of things while he rummaged for a good set of noumenal callipers. By the time the Love Corporation reached the wasteland, the fox was awake, bound and suspended by the tail from a tree that had sprung up beside the car wreck. Upside down and spinning slowly, he glimpsed the luminous image of three white witches seemingly floating in the distance. Then something that looked like a fish flew past and landed in the branches. He could have sworn it winked at him as it went by. The tree promptly sprouted velvet fingers, untied him and set him on the ground before walking off in the direction of the noisiest sirens. Mort appeared, setting down a small black case, with a certain amount of weariness thought the fox. Opening the case, he withdrew a prayer wheel and began to utter a chant – "come in on the freakyfluky, rain down your fire …" "Musha ring dumma do damma da!" countered Eirun immediately. Mort dropped the prayer wheel and gripped the fox’s head in a strange set of callipers. The fox watched the stars melt and stain the sky. Sigrun advanced brandishing a pistol but Mort just laughed as she fired. The bullet vanished on impact, indifferent to the moment. Suddenly, Sigrun understood and threw the revolver to the ground. She turned slowly as if picking up her shotgun from a table. Facing Mort, she pulled what would have been the trigger and was knocked back by what would have been the recoil from the gun. The fox fell, thankfully, to the ground as Mort exploded in a hail of sparks like a giant firework.

10
"So that was your special power – the power of mime," remarked Eirun as they made their way back through the streets with the fox. "I still feel bad though, shooting him. Even if it was Mort and even if it was mime," said Sigrun. "If he’s still out there I don’t think he’ll forgive me. I don’t even know if I can forgive myself." "Remember when we spoilt the milk in France we asked it for forgiveness." "But we don’t know if the milk did forgive us – we’ll never know ..." "Well, we can only do what we can do." While they talked, the inconspicuous fox walked over to a garbage truck and jumped in the back as it disappeared around the corner.

Francis McKee edited a book with The Icelandic Love Corporation, 2002, as a NIFCA collaboration with Diamond Heart Projects.

This story was first printed in NIFCA info, 1/2002.
www.nifca.org