The
latest issue of Penicillin magazine contains my short story 'Jamie Dodgers' in
which the memory of a sexy sea siren called Jamie threatens to disrupt an
amateur dramatics group...a cure for rabies is also involved. Penicillin 222
can be downloaded here, or alternatively you can read the story below. Don't have nightmares.
Jamie
Dodgers by Gavin Whitaker.
The Village Hall had seen better days,
smelling of the unholy threesome that was damp, dust and digestive biscuits,
still no one but Nigel Bagshaw seemed to notice. It was 1974 and amateur
dramatics group 'The Players most Priestley' had spent weeks transforming the
space into a 1940s airfield: sandbags stacked like graves, a mock Spitfire wing
splintered from balsa, and a battered wireless crooning Vera Lynn between
scenes. Tonight was the premiere of the play "The Brave who did not Bend”
their earnest tribute to those who fought in the second world war, penned and
directed by Aubrey Hargreaves, who had never forgiven history for rejecting him
before he could even play a role in it. Aubrey had been eighteen in 1940,
slender and sharp-featured, with a high voice that commanded second looks. When
he presented himself at the recruiting office, full of patriotic fervour and a
secret longing to be among men in uniform, the medical officer had taken one
look, and said "I'm afraid you're too light on your feet for the service,
old chap" sarcastically adding "why don't you try to help the war
effort in another way, like taking up knitting".
What an
absolute bitch, Aubrey had
privately thought, his papers had been marked “unfit" and Aubrey knew why.
The army didn’t want men who loved other men, didn't want queens even if they
were willing to die for their King. The rejection burned deeper than any wound
he might have earned in battle; resulting in a lifetime of directing village
plays, mainly about young men in uniform and the heroism Aubrey was never
allowed to share.
However Nigel Bagshaw—postman by day, thespian
by delusion—carried his own ghosts from a different era. In 1960, during
national service his commanding officer, Captain Ivor Dodgers, had made his
life a living hell: endless punishments, verbal floggings, and nights scrubbing
decks until his hands bled. All these years later Nigel could still hear
Dodgers' voice bellowing "get on parade, you great big, useless
turd", "dirty sod, you'll go blind doing that or end up in a mental
asylum" and "Bagshaw, you're only fit to sweep the bleeding
streets". The Captain’s paranoia had grown worse after he began to suspect
his young wife, Edna, of infidelity. Dodgers fixated on Nigel, convinced the
quiet, watchful rating was secretly rogering Edna. Nigel knew better. He had
never had the pleasure of Edna —never even been alone with her—but he had
overheard the whispers in the barracks, seen the knowing smirks. Edna was a
right goer, a bloody nymphomaniac in fact. She had been entertaining two,
sometimes three of the other lads at once, wild, laughing matings in the
married quarters while Dodgers was away on exercises. Nigel kept silent, but
silence was enough to feed the Captain’s jealousy. That dark, stormy night off
the Cornish coast, when Dodgers insisted on he and Nigel setting out to sea in
a small boat—just the two of them—Nigel was certain the Captain meant to kill
him. He saw murder in Dodgers’ eyes, felt it in the way the man’s hand lingered
near his coat pocket. Nigel struck first. As thunder cracked and waves lashed
the hull, he seized a rusted fish knife, tackled the Captain from behind and
slit Dodgers’ throat in one ragged stroke. Blood sprayed hot across Dodgers'
face, black in the lightning flashes—thick arterial ropes that painted the
gunwale and dripped into the sea in steaming ribbons. Nigel heaved the
twitching body overboard, watching it vanish into the churning foam. He
panicked; he hadn't really thought this through at all. Would the sea keep his
secret like a trusted mistress? or would Dodgers' corpse incriminate him by
washing up on shore a few days later? Suddenly the sea turned red around the
small boat, multiple crimson bubbles rising to the surface as something feasted
below. Sharks? wondered Nigel...no surely we don't have sharks in Cornwall,
perhaps Piranhas...no, don't be such a silly sod, Nigel told himself. He
had to know what beast or beasts had come to his aid, then he saw them clearly
for the first time, horror set in as shapes rose from the depths. Several sea
sirens, their scales iridescent and jagged, swarming around Dodgers' corpse. Blimey, they're starkers, Nigel thought,
totally bleeding naked. Sure, he'd
seen a girlie magazine before, even copped a feel of Doreen in the back row of
the local fleapit, but these birds were something else. Truth be told, Nigel
had never seen a woman totally naked before, nor had he seen a woman tear into
male flesh with needle teeth, ripping it in bloody chunks. Nor had he seen a
woman tear a liver free, shred lungs into pink froth, or pluck out a
still-beating heart and devour it in glistening bites.
I
clearly still have allot to learn about women, Nigel thought.
A mixture of fear and arousal overcame him, as
could only be expected from a man who suddenly found himself surrounded by
naked birds who were also bloodthirsty cannibals. He ran to the opposite side
of the boat and retched into the sea. Then he saw her—perched on a jagged rock
amid the storm. Her pale skin glistening with saltwater sheen, shoulder-length,
reddish-brown hair with soft curls framing her face, a strong jaw line, full
breasts heaving with each sultry breath, nipples hardened against the cold
wind. Her curves were hypnotic, hips flaring wide in invitation, the promise of
ecstasy and ruin.
'My name is Jamie'... he could hear her
seductively say that in his head, though he wasn't sure if she had actually
spoken those words in person. Her eyes like shattered peridot fixed on him,
lips curved in a lascivious smile that parted to reveal sharp, pearl-white
teeth. She called out in a voice that pierced the gale: “Murderer… Murderer…
Murderer…”
Over and over, her laughter mingling with the
sirens’ feeding frenzy below. Her throaty, erotic moan stirred unwelcome heat
in Nigel’s loins even as terror gripped the rest of him. He rowed away, leaving
behind a bloodbath of apocalyptic proportions, but the sea siren's accusation
haunted him through the decades. He imagined her whispering to him in
rain-slicked streets, saw her nude form flickering in steam-fogged pub windows,
then there was the odd looks he'd gotten from birds over the years, when,
during sex, he cried out the name 'Jamie'. The memory of her full breasts
threatened his sanity, thoughts of her hips grinding in slow, teasing circles,
mentally branding him anew each time with a mix of lust and dread.
The Village Hall was packed. From behind the
stage curtains, Aubrey smiled, peeking at a large crowd, some members of the
audience had even travelled from as far away as Scunthorpe to see the play.
There were old men in blazers pinned with tarnished medals, their wives in
wartime coats frayed at the hems, grandchildren fidgeting about, brought
against their will for “a bit of culture.” Aubrey hoped that an encounter with
amateur dramatics might steer the younger members of the audience away from
watching too much television, mugging old ladies or taking up glue sniffing.
Backstage, Nigel tunelessly wailed away in an infuriating and loud fashion, for
not only did he fancy himself as a masterful actor, but he also thought he had
what it took to be a great singer as well. "Mark my words, one day I'll be
as big as Barry Blue and Zenda Jacks" was something told to all of the
Players most Priestley, and believed by none of them.
"I bet you didn't know I could sing like
what they do in opera, Aubrey" said Nigel as he walked past the fey, limp
wristed theatre director, not waiting for a reply.
"Well, I sure knew you weren't a fucking
actor" Aubrey muttered to himself.
The lights dimmed. The curtain shuddered
upward. The play demanded atmosphere, and Aubrey was determined to give his
audience some showbiz razzmatazz. To evoke a battleground, the Players Most
Priestley had borrowed a fog machine from a shuttered pantomime troupe. Aubrey
had also been delighted when in the basement of the Village Hall they had
discovered a sealed military drum, the perfect prop for his play. Unbeknownst
to the Players most Priestley was the fact that the sealed drum contained a
deadly gas, the discarded result of a long forgotten attempt by the government
to find a cure for rabies.
Onstage, Squadron Leader Alistair Thorne
(Nigel in a cardboard helmet) built to his big speech about a fallen comrade,
which in the context of the play he had come to deliver to the truelove of
Thorne's decreased friend. Nigel had rehearsed the words in his head many times
over “They found him at first light, expired on the battlefield. Poor Digby. He
was killed by a German paratrooper". Nigel's eyes flicked to the audience,
anticipating the big dramatic moment in the play when they discovered Digby's
tragic fate. Nigel scanned the dim rows. There—third row centre, amid the sea
of grey hair and horn rimmed spectacles—a figure that shouldn’t be there. Pale
skin glistening like wet kelp, her body arched mockingly in a pose of raw
seduction, full breasts thrust forward, nipples erect and begging for his
touch, dripping with an otherworldly allure that made Nigel’s pulse throb with
forbidden desire. Eyes glowing faintly green. Jamie. Totally bare...the shameless
hussy...worse still she was dripping water all over the floor of the Village
Hall. Jamie leaned forward, lips parting to deliver the words only he could
hear: Murderer… Murderer…Murderer—her voice a husky whisper that caressed his
ears like velvet, promising pleasures that would drown him in ecstasy. Nigel’s
throat seized. Panic flooded him, the storm’s chill resurfacing in his veins,
mingled with a shameful arousal. Then, fighting against what the audience
assumed was stage fright, Nigel said the words...“They found him at first
light, expired on the battlefield. Poor Digby. He was killed by a German
parrot.”
Laughter erupted, sharp and unwelcome from an
audience hit directly in the funny bone with the mental image of an evil
parrot, driven by Nazi ideology, squawking 'Heil Hitler' before flying kamikaze
style at poor Digby. An elderly, former wing commander rose in his seat,
shaking his fist at the stage, “What disrespectful rot this is!” But Nigel
stared, transfixed, as Jamie’s nude form dissolved into shadow, her whisper
lingering: Murderer... Murderer… Murderer—her
imagined touch ghosting over his skin, fingers trailing fire down his spine.
Nigel stumbled around the stage, accidentally knocking over the sealed drum.
Yellow-green vapour billowed from the stage, thick and oily, cascading into the
stalls like a tidal wave of rot. At first, the crowd thought it theatrical
flair, as they'd come to expect from Aubrey Hargreaves. Then Mrs. Prudence
Protheroe in row three convulsed, her spine arching until her vertebrae cracked
audibly. She clawed at her throat, nails gouging bloody furrows through
wrinkled skin. Her mouth gaped in a silent scream before a geyser of
blood-streaked bile erupted, followed by her stomach and intestines—slick,
glistening ropes that slithered out in pulsating loops, splattering hot across
her neighbours’ laps. Her husband beside her inhaled the gas and his face began
to melt: skin bubbling and sliding off in translucent sheets, exposing raw
muscle that twitched and wept crimson. In blind agony he dug his fingers into
his own cheeks, ripping downward in long strips, peeling his face away to the
bone in wet, sucking sounds, teeth clacking as the lower jaw hung by threads of
tendon. Panic ignited. The former wing commander clutched his abdomen as his
intestines burst through the wall of his belly in a sudden, wet explosion—coils
of purple-grey bowel spilling over his medals in steaming heaps, blood pumping
in rhythmic spurts from severed vessels. An old woman nearby shrieked as her
eyes liquefied and burst, thick yellow fluid mixed with blood spraying in arcs;
she raked her nails across her own scalp, tearing away hair and skin in bloody
handfuls until skull gleamed white. Children screamed as beloved grandparents
disemboweled themselves—fingers plunging into softening abdomens to haul out
livers and spleens in quivering masses, arteries severed and fountaining dark
red across the seats. Faces disintegrated under frantic claws: eyelids
shredded, lips torn to ragged ribbons, tongues lolling in shredded mouths as
victims tried to scream through collapsing throats. The floor became a
slaughterhouse —gallons of blood, bile, and liquefied organs mingling into a
viscous lake that lapped at ankles. Bodies slumped half-eviscerated, ribs
cracked open like wet cages, hearts still fluttering weakly amid exposed
cavities. Thinking fast, Aubrey made for a cardboard box containing gas masks
for the play, distributing them to the Players most Priestley as they scarpered
around backstage. Aubrey then yanked the fire alarm; it wailed like a siren’s
call. The curtain went down, trapping the audience in a fog-shrouded tomb. By
the time the fire brigade breached the doors, forty lay dead, bodies twisted in
grotesque tableaux: torsos flayed open, entrails draped like garlands, faces
reduced to glistening skulls half-covered in hanging meat, pools of blood and
viscera inches deep across the floorboards.
Hours later, amid the flashing lights and the
stench of death, Nigel sat on the edge of the stage, gas mask in his lap,
nearly catatonic. Over and over he repeated: “German Parrot… German
Parrot…Murderer....Murderer...Murderer”.
The siren...her call...Nigel's memory returned
to that night, recalling details in more clarity than ever before. Long
forgotten, long hidden memories. Captain Dodgers had brought aboard a crate of
rusted drums marked with hazard symbols, the leftovers from an attempt to find
a cure for rabies. Dodgers had taken a backhander to ensure they met with an
illegal, deep-sea disposal.
“Get rid of them, do it bloody well now
Bagshaw,” Dodgers had barked. “No bleeding questions. No bleeding records.”
They had heaved most overboard, the heavy
drums vanishing into the black water with hollow splashes. Neither man could
have suspected that their actions would cause gross offense to a sisterhood of
sea sirens. Nigel, convinced the whole exercise was a ruse to isolate and
murder him, had waited until only one drum remained. Then he had
struck—slitting Dodgers’ throat in one ragged stroke. In the panic of escape,
Nigel had forgotten about the final drum. He rowed to shore, hid it in the
basement of the Village Hall under a pile of old hymnals, and buried the memory
of the drum as deep as the captain’s body. He never thought of the drum
again—until tonight. Why tonight, of all nights had Jamie and Dodgers decided
to haunt his memories. It was if Dodgers had risen from the grave to thwart
Nigel's acting career...aided and abetted by that trollop from the sea.
A young constable named Harris approached
cautiously, notebook in one hand, a packet of biscuits in the other—pilfered
from the neighbouring tea room where Aubrey and the rest of the Players most
Priestley were being comforted.
“Mr. Bagshaw? Nigel? Here, have one of
these" he produced a packet of Jammie Dodgers "Might settle the
nerves a bit.”
He held out the biscuit, red jam glistening in
the middle like fresh blood.
Jammie...Jamie...Dodgers!!!
The names collided in Nigel’s shattered mind,
the captain’s bloodied throat flashing before him, the secret he had kept about
Edna’s real lovers, Jamie’s naked accusation rising with it—her body writhing
in his visions. Murderer… Murderer…With a guttural cry that echoed through the
ruined hall, Nigel lunged. His fist drove upward in a savage arc, connecting
squarely with the policeman’s groin. Harris doubled over instantly, a
high-pitched wheeze escaping him as he crumpled to the floor, knees drawn up in
fetal agony, hands clutching protectively over his bollocks. His mind
overwhelmed by fears of never being able to achieve fatherhood. Nigel didn’t
look back. He vaulted from the Village Hall, shoving past stunned paramedics,
and vanished into the fog-shrouded night. The government inquiry predictably
covered up the rusted drum and it's deadly contents. Nigel was never found. Three
nights later, on a moonless tide, a lone figure walked the shingle at Priestley
Cove. Nigel, barefoot and coatless, waded into the black water until it reached
his waist, his chest, his throat. The cold no longer bit; it welcomed him like
an old friend. Jamie rose first, naked and radiant, her voluptuous form
undulating with predatory grace—breasts full and swaying, nipples taut with
hunger, drawing him in with a siren’s primal allure. Her sisters circled
beneath like pale shadows, their own nude bodies twisting in eager
anticipation, tails flicking sprays of foam. She smiled—no longer accusing, but
ravenous, her tongue darting out to taste the air, lips plump and parted in a
moan of desire. They had waited decades for this meal, patient as the sea
itself. Dodgers had been an appetiser, snatched too quickly. Nigel was the main
course: guilt-marinated, tenderised by years of torment. He did not struggle as
webbed claws raked his clothes away and needle teeth sank into living flesh. Skin
tore in long strips from his back and thighs; muscle parted with wet, sucking
sounds as chunks were ripped free and devoured. Blood poured into the water in
thick clouds as arteries were severed—femoral, brachial, carotid—each bite
sending fresh gouts spiraling into the dark. His abdomen was split open,
intestines hauled out in steaming ropes and fought over, liver torn free in a
hot, slippery mass. Ribs cracked like kindling as they burrowed to the heart,
still beating, still trying to pump what little blood remained. Jamie’s mouth
latched onto his throat, her breasts pressing hot against his chest in a final,
twisted embrace, her body writhing against him in ecstatic feeding, the line
between consumption and carnal union blurring in the bloody froth. He was worth
the wait.
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