Read by Ray Newe (fifth story in podcast, at 1h 9 minutes, here)
‘Would you give it a rest? All your moaning is doing my head in.’
That was Khalid the Cabbie, a vaguely sketched proposal for the lead character of a 1980s sitcom. Like all of us he was an idea that never made it further than the initial stage of being dreamed up. In my opinion my moaning was justified. I had a right to moan.
I should never have been here in the first place. Unlike Khalid, I'd been a genuine contender. I could easily have had my own graphic novel series, maybe even a movie franchise. They’d given me a fully plotted back story.
I had even been given a name with the requisite alliteration: Professor Peter Pilkington. The writer named my super-powered alter ego ‘The Swarm’. The artist gave me a fantastic yellow and black Lycra outfit and a visor that resembled a wasp's bulbous eyes. I was ready to rock. Once I hit the newsstands there would be no stopping me. Zap! Kapow! Keblam! And all that.
But they couldn't decide whether I was more cut out to be a superhero or a supervillain. Heated arguments took place between the writer and artist. I was trapped in development hell while they tried to thrash it out. In the end they gave up on me. Can you believe that? Consigned me to the scrap heap. Sent me where every damned thing gets sent. That barren limbo where abandoned ideas are unceremoniously dumped. The graveyard of unfulfilled dreams.
‘You're not so special,’ said Khalid. ‘I was going to have a black cab. There would have been a storyline featuring a different passenger each week. There’s a notebook somewhere full of one liners and witty dialogue.’
We were in The Hobbit's Arms, part of a shelved idea for a themed pub chain with a Lord of the Rings vibe. The food in there is terrible. All these disastrous recipes from wannabe celebrity chefs that taste as appalling as the bizarre ideas behind them. The music on the jukebox is no better, snatches of unfinished melodies, verses with no chorus, choruses with no verses, guitar riffs full of underdeveloped promise.
When you first arrive in the graveyard of unfulfilled dreams you drift around aimlessly. Then suddenly, without any warning, you find yourself clumped together like iron filings; magnetically drawn to strange bedfellows you would never have associated with had your idea been given time to properly flourish.
In addition to Khalid, my little group was a motley bunch.
Doctor Why, a crusty old time-traveller whose time machine was crammed into a red telephone box, patently much smaller on the inside than it was on the outside. Bowler-hatted Lady Emma Steed, an aristocrat, who, along with her butler Mr Peel, was supposed to part of a crime fighting duo called The Revengers, till the whole thing got turned completely on its head. Finally, the diminutive, endlessly stoned Hubert the Hare, a proposal for a psychedelic late 60s underground comic strip. He was dressed in a tie-dyed tee-shirt and faded loon pants and was only able to speak in clichéd timeworn exclamations.
Cool! Groovy! Chill out, man! Tune in! Drop out!
‘I had this idea …’ I said to all of them.
The song playing on the jukebox was “Merseybeat Sunrise”, an earlier discarded version of something else that went on to become an anthem about entirely different place at an entirely different time of day.
‘You don't want to go getting ideas,’ said Khalid, jangling the keys for the cab he'd never actually drive. ‘In my experience ideas are generally a bad idea.’
‘I had this idea,’ I went on, ignoring him. ‘Maybe I needed a Nemesis. Maybe if they'd given me a Nemesis the premise they'd dreamed up for me would have come to full fruition.’
‘Cool,’ said Herbert, bloodshot eyes rolling around in weed-intoxicated circuits in their sockets.
‘I thought my Nemesis could be called The Exterminator,’ I continued. ‘I thought he could be like this turbo charged comic book version of pest control. And he'd have this toxic gas that could overwhelm my swarm of wasps and render them impotent so he could attempt to exterminate me.’
Doctor Why sighed wistfully and gripped the lapels of his shabby morning coat. ‘I wish they'd given me a Nemesis that was out to exterminate me.’
‘Thoughts like that can have dire consequences,’ warned Khalid. He turned to Lady Steed. ‘What do you say, milady?’
Beneath the brim of her bowler, Emma Steed raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. She took a sip of her Rivendell Mead and winced at its atrocious flavour. ‘I say it'll all end in tears,’ she replied.
'Oh man,' groaned Herbert, ears flopping as he buried his paws in his furry brow. ‘Heeeavy. Too heeeavy.’
*
They were right of course. Forgotten ideas like me have no right having ideas of their own. A dream isn't supposed to dream. What I accidentally created out of my misguided stupidity, was a belligerent teenage oik.
‘Give me the formula for the toxic gas,’ he demanded as soon as he gained sufficient substance. ‘I want to exterminate you right now.’
‘I don't have the formula,’ I told him. ‘You were just a vague idea. I didn't go into that level of detail.’
He pouted and folded his arms over his chest. ‘You must have the formula. You're a Professor. Professor Peter Pilkington.’
‘Professor of entomology,’ I reminded him. ‘Not chemistry. Even then they only peppered my knowledge with enough of the basics to carry my back story.’
‘This is so unfair!’ he wailed and stamped off.
There came the slamming of many doors. Up until that point I hadn't even realised that I had any doors. But apparently, I did. And plenty of them.
He came back a couple of hours later employing a new tactic. ‘If you don't give me the formula for the extermination gas, I'm going to hold my breath till I explode.’
‘Go ahead,’ I told him. ‘Fill your boots. See if I care.’
‘This is all your fault!’ he complained.
‘Get used to it,’ I said. ‘You’re an unfulfilled dream. Them’s the breaks.’
‘I hate you!’ he screeched. ‘I wish I was never born.’
‘Believe me, the feeling is mutual,’ I called after him as he stomped off again.
More doors got slammed.
Another couple of hours went by before he came slinking back again. He was sullen and red-eyed from all his petulant sobbing. ‘You dreamed me up,’ he said. ‘You have a responsibility to nurture me. You can easily dream up the formula for the toxic gas.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t. My imagination doesn’t stretch that far.’
‘OMG,’ he groaned, clenching his fists, and trembling with childish rage. ‘You are so useless. Whoever heard of an exterminator who can’t exterminate because he hasn’t been given the proper equipment?’
*
The gang at The Hobbit’s Arms were less than sympathetic.
‘I warned you,’ crowed Khalid the Cabbie. ‘But would you listen?’
‘This turned out far worse than I expected,’ said Emma Steed.
‘Bad trip,’ said Hubert, looking decidedly paranoid.
Doctor Why rose to his feet and gripped his lapels. ‘My dear boy,’ he pontificated. ‘You are in a dilemma entirely of your own making. Only you have the wherewithal to extract yourself from this situation.’
‘Thanks for the reminder, granddad,’ I said as he took his seat again. ‘I’ve jumped right out of the frying pan into the proverbial fire.’
‘There he goes, moaning again,’ said Khalid.
Over in the corner the brat was sullenly fiddling with one of his contraptions. He’d taken to collecting abandoned gadgets and underdeveloped devices. He said it was his manifest destiny to bring about my downfall. And if I couldn’t come up with the formula for the gas, he was going to take matters into his own hands and fabricate a weapon that would do the job.
*
Weeks went by. Every one of his assassination attempts failed. The bins overflowed with discarded prototype weaponry. He sulked and threw endless tantrums. I wished I’d never dreamed him up in the first place.
‘At least you could have given me a decent costume,’ he complained during one of his frequent rants.
I looked up from the long-forgotten draft of an unpublished novel by an unknown writer that I was attempting to read. I’d been trying my best to ignore him.
‘You’ve got that cool black and yellow get-up. And that mask and all,’ he said. ‘Look at me. You put me in a school uniform.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That was the first thing that came to mind when you materialised in front of me.’
‘Couldn’t you just imagine us both back into reality?’ he asked.
The question caught me off guard.
‘What does that mean?’
‘You imagined me into being,’ he replied. ‘Couldn’t you imagine us both into reality? If we were in the real world our rivalry could really kick in. I’d finally get my chance to gas you and your mangy swarm of wasps into oblivion.’
*
I told the gang about what he said.
‘Pipe dream,’ said Khalid, dismissing the notion out of hand. ‘You couldn’t possibly imagine yourself back into reality.’
‘Not by myself,’ I said. ‘But if we joined forces. Worked as a team. Wouldn’t you like to get behind the wheel of that black cab? Pick up fares? Get drawn into all sorts of hilarious scrapes and skits?’
Lady Steed adjusted her bowler. ‘I’d relish the opportunity of tracking down my errant butler,’ she said. ‘See if the Revengers can live up to their original promise, before we were usurped by that other pair of pretenders.’
‘Dimensions are relative,’ said Doctor Why obliquely. ‘It’s all a question of space and good timing.’
‘I could go to Woodstock,’ gushed Hubert.
It was the longest sentence he’d ever strung together.
‘You may need the Doctor’s help with that,’ I told him.
*
We all trooped outside. The brat following behind us, muttering under his breath. We held hands and stared into the distance. Brows furrowed. Imagining. Wishing. Dreaming. After a while there came a flicker. The hint of something else beyond the horizon.
‘We need more power,’ said Lady Steed. ‘More dreamers.’
‘Bruh!’ cried the brat, smiling for once. ‘This is going to work. It’s really going to work. I can’t wait to finally have a go at exterminating you.’
We go on a pub crawl, visiting the entire estate of the failed Lord of the Rings chain: Gandalf’s Staff, Gollum’s Ring, Mordor’s Crack. Soon we have amassed an army of dreamers. Or a swarm of the rejected, as I come to think of it.
We see the horizon judder as huge fissures appear in the sky. The ground trembles beneath our feet. I watch my Nemesis, the Exterminator, steadily growing in stature. I can tell from the look in his eyes that the formula for an extremely toxic gas is being diligently worked out. I steel myself for the coming confrontation.
Now we hold hands and stare into the distance. Brows furrowed. We imagine. We wish. We dream.
I feel a buzzing in my blood like a thousand wasps are about to burst forth. Any minute now we will break through to the other side. Every damned thing you ever dreamed about and subsequently discarded is about to explode back into reality.
And you ain’t seen nothing yet.
(c) David Turnbull, 2024
David Turnbull is a member of Clockhouse London Writers & author of HUSks, One Hundred Predictions, & The Dragon Breath Chronicles. He is a regular contributor to online magazine Spooky Isles. His curated ‘Lambeth Fantastical’ guided walking tours explore themes of horror, fantasy & sci-fi in South London.
Ray Newe has appeared at the National Theatre, Theatre Peckham, Liverpool Playhouse, Dukes Theatre, Lancaster & Lyric, Hammersmith amongst others. TV includes Murphy's Law, Eyes Down and Brookside.
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