Read by Lucy Mabbitt: listen to podcast here (third story)
The chanting rises to a frenzied, animal pulse, like an Army cadence call, or gorillas booming across humid jungles. “DOWN. IT! DOWN. IT!”
I shudder. They’ve all downed it. And now I’m last one standing. Fists pummel the table, startling the crested cutlery. The tinsel on the ancient, panelled walls trembles. “DOWN. IT! DOWN. IT! DOWN. IT!”
Wolf-howls, bird-screeches, war-cries. “Come on you pussy!” bellows Pog, rugby-top straining, face red as a beef-tomato. “DOWN IT!”
I raise the stolen traffic-cone, stare into its mixture of mulled wine, cider, curdled eggnog and mashed mince-pie. The name of this unearthly concoction is Santa’s Nutsack.
I down it. I chug that booze like Thomas the fucking Tank Engine. Then I wipe my mouth, clap the cone on my head, and pump my arms.
Dead silence. Then the dining-hall erupts.
“LEGEEEEEND!” cries Vinnie, smacking me harder than one of her lacrosse-balls. And the cry goes up:
“ONE. OF. US! ONE. OF. US!”
I grin through tears, desperately trying to keep the Nutsack down for the required sixty seconds. Worth it, I think. This is the stupidest and the most important thing I’ve ever done.
“All right ladies,” My voice is a barbed-wire rasp, like I’ve just fellated Satan. “It’s time for the Prank of Pranks. Let’s steal that fucking skull!”
*
I first heard about the Bosscrones Ladies’ Alcohol Appreciation Society from my brother Bertie, in his third year at Wigston. Wigston Uni is the unofficial Oxbridge for idiots: full of wealthy toffs too stupid and not rich enough to bribe their way into the real place by sponsoring a library or whatever. Wigston’s sprawling campus is a former stately-home gambled away by the Third Earl of Leicester, so it fills the gap nicely.
I’m not an idiot, by the way. I just like to fit in.
Wigston’s had a not-very-secret men-only drinking society since Georgian times called the Skullers, notorious across the Midlands for their so-called “rumbles”, where members get shitfaced and act like a bunch of toddlers on crack. Their prize possession is a drinking-sconce made from the Third Earl’s skull: hence the society’s name. Legend claims if you drink from it on the Winter Solstice, it grants your dearest wish. And Skuller men, despite or perhaps because they don’t exactly top the intellectual pile, have a suspicious habit of becoming Prime Minister.
After several deaths from alcohol-poisoning in the 80s it looked like the Skullers might dissolve, but then the 90s dawned and Wigston, the last all-male university in England, was forced to admit women. Who, of course, immediately started their own rival drinking-club: the Bosscrones.
“Sounds like Little Mix meets Mumsnet.” I said to Bertie. My big brother, as newly-elected President of the Skullers, was taking a university-sanctioned “rest week” to recover from a Skullers versus Bosscrones Triathlon. You have to drink three pints of port, eat three kebabs and start three fights. The girls had won by a comfortable margin.
“I wish,” he groaned from under the kitchen-table. “These chicks are wild. Every bar in Wigston’s terrified of their Friday-night pub-crawls. They cause more damage than the Skullers, it just gets hushed up cos all their dads are cabinet ministers.”
“Really? You should let them join. They sound perfect.”
Bertie raised a shaking hand. “Can’t do that, Cassie.”
“Why not?”
“Tradition,” he wheezed, face the colour of damp plaster. “You’re a girl. You wouldn’t understand.”
I frowned at my A-Level Politics textbook. Suddenly it seemed a lot of effort to bother passing my exams. After all, Bertie hadn’t, and Mum still cherished a rose-tinted conviction that he was destined for high office. And last night he’d been chundering into the same gutter as the Chancellor’s daughter, so maybe she was right? Maybe what I really needed in my life was fewer ballots and more benders?
In fact, screw Oxbridge: it sounded like I could meet all the right people at Wigston. Why work when you can network, eh?
*
But Bosscrones has strict entry requirements, which is why Pog, Vinnie and me, the three newbies, are now crawling through a drainage-tunnel on our way to kidnap the legendary Skull Sconce. Bertie let slip that it’s kept in the Skullers’ not-very-secret Chamber of Treasures, aka a disused cellar underneath the University Library. Apparently the Skullers chose to meet here because they’d never be disturbed: no true Wigston man would ever be seen dead entering a library.
It's damp and mouldy-smelling and extremely cramped down here, especially with Vinnie’s lacrosse-skirted arse in my face and Pog behind me puffing like she’s giving birth.
“Why’d we have to break in this way?” Vinnie whines, whisking cobwebs from her hair. Lady Lavinia, always the princess.
“Because,” I sigh, “it’s the Skullers’ Solstice initiation-ceremony tonight. Bertie and his inbred gimps are in the cellar all day putting up fairy-lights and sharpening axes or whatever nonsense they do. We have to sneak in from behind or we’ll get caught.”
“I heard the newbies have to shag a turkey,” offers Pog. “A dead one, I mean. Then they roast it and eat it.”
I grimace. “How festive.”
“Might be a goose, actually. Take longer to roast though.”
“Uh huh,” I say, studying the labyrinthine map by the light of my GoPro. I photocopied it from the Town Hall archives: it shows the Victorian network of tunnels around the Uni buildings. My head’s swimming from the aftereffects of Santa’s Nutsack, and I’ve got a horrible feeling I’ve been holding it upside-down.
Vinnie halts at a junction. “Which way now, boss?”
“Or maybe,” Pog muses, “it’s a swan.”
“Shut up Pog.” I snap, hoping we’re in one of the cellar-vents and not the sewage-overspill tunnel.
“It can’t be a swan,” objects Vinnie. “Only the Queen’s allowed to shag a swan.”
Pog gasps in disapproval.
“May she rest in peace,” Vinnie mutters contritely.
“Ladies! Please! Some of us are trying to pull a heist!”
Vinnie pouts. “Which way, then, genius?”
“Left,” I point with confidence. I’m almost sure that’s right.
*
Twenty minutes later we’ve reached the chimney of the underground fireplace where the Skullers keep the sacred skull-sconce. Bertie told me they’d turned it into a cupboard, with steel doors and a triple-lock. The last thing they’ll expect is a thief to come in from behind, or above.
The chimney was blocked up a century ago, but it once vented into the tunnels we’re in, and by chipping out some bricks and wriggling down the flue, I’m pretty sure I can Mission Impossible this motherfucker. Pog and Vinnie are too broad to get down, of course: they’re here because they’re strong enough to pull me back up.
And, frankly, because we’ve all three reached the point where hope’s run out, and we’re desperate enough to wish on the skull of a syphilitic, alcoholic aristocrat, since that’s the only way we’ll get what we want. Vinnie needs to lead Wigston’s Varsity lacrosse-team to victory for the first time in a generation. Pog’s on her second retakes and terrified of failing her exams again. As for me, I have a special request, and a hunch only the Third Earl can grant it.
I’m halfway down the narrow, ancient chimney-flue, covered in soot and muttering like some sweary reverse-Santa, when my bloody phone rings at top volume. I stab it wildly: if it weren’t for the safety-harness nicked from the Climbing Club I’d be a goner.
I dangle, breath held, hoping my heart doesn’t explode and pondering the irony of getting better reception underground that in my Uni bedroom. Why does Mum always choose the worst times to call? The voicemail notification pings. She’ll text me in a minute too.
At last, my questing tiptoes brush the top of an ancient cabinet. This must be where they keep the sconce. My GoPro shows polished brown wood gleaming through a thick layer of dust and grime. Bertie said the Skullers only remove the Earl from his resting-place once a year. Poor bugger: maybe he got around too much in life, granted, but such a social cranium deserves more than just an annual outing. Bosscrones will certainly show him a good time if I can bust him out.
“Touchdown!” I call softly, and the girls poke thumbs-ups through the hole in the chimney-wall twenty feet above. Now I just have to liberate the skull, the girls will haul me back up, and we’re golden. I’ve brought my skeleton-key and scoured YouTube for how to open locks; I’m not expecting it’ll be easy.
But, appallingly, it is. Seems security isn’t the Skullers’ strong point. Nor is taking care of priceless ancient objects, or even washing them up properly. I find the hallowed skull-sconce stuffed in an unlocked bottom drawer, carelessly wrapped in a Tesco’s Bag-for-Life (now that’s irony). And I’m fairly certain those are Pringles crumbs clinging to the silver-lined bone of his noble brow.
If a skull can look pissed off while grinning, this one does.
“Oh mate,” I say with feeling, “I really am rescuing you from a fate worse than death, aren’t I? Let’s get you out of here.”
*
We emerge into frozen midnight air from a snow-covered manhole thirty feet behind the library. Like filthy, awkward ninjas, we vanish deep into the forest that encircles the campus, and prepare the ritual. We find a moonlit clearing and I drag a wobbly pentacle in the snow.
This had better bloody work.
First, Vinnie rolls us a fat spliff: this isn’t part of the ritual, but we need it and I suspect the Earl would approve. Pog wedges it between his ancient teeth, and I just barely restrain her from taking a selfie. I stole Bertie’s Skuller robe out of the washing-basket at home, so Vinnie, who goes first, is dressed for the part. She lifts the wine-bottle over the skull-sconce and is about to pour when I yell:
“Stop!”
“What?”
“Is that prosecco?”
Pog and Vinnie exchange guilty glances.
“… yeah?”
“It’s supposed to be ‘wine redde as the Devill’s blood’, you spanners!”
Vinnie stares at me uncomprehendingly. “But … prosecco was on special offer …”
“Can’t argue with that,” Pog says loyally.
“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter, sharing a disbelieving look with the hollow-eyed Earl. “Haven’t we got anything else?”
“Lucozade Sport?”
“God, all right then.” I snatch the bottle and fill the Earl full of booze, not for the first time. “Sorry about this, fella.”
“Quid laborare potes ipsum…” Vinnie reads the ritual text off her phone, swigs, swallows and swears never to reveal her wish, although obviously we all know it, unless she’s changed her mind and Harry Styles suddenly proposes.
Pog does the same.
But when I lift my phone to recite, I see seven missed calls from Bertie and an avalanche of WhatsApps.
Yo Cass, you seen my Skullers robe? Need it for tonight LOL.
Seriously Cass, I NEED that robe. Where is it?
Is this a Bosscrones prank? So childish (little-girl emoji)
JFC DID YOU STEAL THE SKULL?
Give it back Cass. I will give you literally anything!
I found the ransom-note. What do you mean “hostile takeover”? CALL ME
I grin and delete the lot.
Then I read the rite, drink, and wish. Who knows if it’ll work, but a little Solstice magic suddenly feels possible.
Poor Bertie. Shamed and schooled, bested by a chick. But what the hell, it’s Christmas: if he’s learned his lesson, and the Earl’s skull gets the star-treatment he deserves from now on, I’ll return it. On one condition: Bertie resigns, and I become first female President of the newly-combined Skullers & Bosscrones Society.
That’s not what I wished for, by the way. That’s just a bonus.
Becoming Prime Minister though … now that’s a Christmas wish worth making. And maybe it’s the weed, or the booze, or a rogue glint of moonlight on silver, but I could swear I see the Earl wink.
(c) E. P. Henderson, 2022
Lucy Mabbitt is an actress from Derbyshire in the East Midlands: she is a graduate from Guildhall school of Drama and is based in London. She recently appeared in Whispers into the Groundat the Canada Water Theatre for Beardance Theatre Company & played Eloise in Gambit for Exeter Fringe at The Northcott Theatre (2021). Lucy previously read “Just a Nice Family Christmas” in 2021 & "Kaleidoscope Girl" for October’s Skull & Crossbones.
E. P. Henderson’s short fiction has appeared in MTMand Error 404, been published by Arachne Press, and been read live by Liars' League in London, Hong Kong and New York. She has never stolen a skull as a drunken prank (honest).
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