LITMIR.BIZ

       one

      ‘Just look at that; Superman’s breaking twenty-eight laws of physics. And it’s not even noon yet.’

      ‘Doesn’t bother me. I’ll be dead within fifteen minutes.’

      Teena Rama raised a Dan Dare eyebrow. She stood in a doorway, looking across a tiny shop at a boy up a ladder. His back to her, T-shirt half hanging out, he stapled comic books to a wall, finding an assassinal rhythm any supervillain would envy.

      Kerchung. There went Superman.

      Kerchung. There went Spiderman.

      Kerchung. There went Batman.

      A Doc Marten back-heeling the door shut, she clomped down three wooden steps then browsed among tight aisles of comics, model kits and ‘cult collectables’. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘how do you reckon you’ll be dead within fifteen minutes?’

      Kerchung. ‘This is an industrial stapler,’ he said, ‘used for fastening tank parts together. It’s unbelievably dangerous in the wrong hands.’

      ‘And are yours the wrong hands?”

      ‘Completely. By the time I’ve finished stapling the most expensive stock to the walls, there’ll be so many holes around the entire place’ll collapse.’

      ‘So hadn’t you better stop?’

      ‘I don’t want to. That’s what three years working here does to a man.’

      ‘It doesn’t seem that bad,’ she said.

      ‘Do you have nightmares?’ he said.

      ‘Never.’ She took a battered paperback from a rack by the window: Herbolt Myson, Victorian Sleuth. While speed reading it, she told the boy, ‘I have a recurring dream about an angel dispensing knowledge to the peoples of the world, who are all like children not understanding the simplest of concepts. I try to see her face, knowing she must be the most beautiful thing in Creation, but can’t get her to look at me. Then, just as I’m waking, she turns my way.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘And she’s me.’ She returned Herbolt Myson to his rack, after three chapters, deducing the Pennine Hell Hound to be Sir Charnwick Hoyle in a five-shilling dogsuit bought from Mlle Beauvoir’s theatrical costumiers. When she abandoned the tale, Myson was still pondering the odd nature of the hound’s woofing; quite unlike any Hell Hound he’d ever encountered.

      She glanced across at the boy. He still had his back to her. She said, ‘You do know you’re allowed to look at me?’

      ‘I won’t be looking at you at any point in this conversation.’

      ‘Because?’

      ‘No offence, but you’re bound to be gruesome.’

      She inspected one of her dreadlocks. It needed re-dyeing. ‘I suppose I could have made more effort with my appearance today.’ Then she flicked it aside. ‘But it never occurred to me that any man I’d meet in a comic shop could afford to be choosy.’

      ‘I have a nightmare,’ said the boy. ‘It’s about shelves. I’m here, stock taking, and the racks come to life – oh quietly at first, so I don’t notice. And as I work, they creep up on me, nudging each other with wooden elbows, sniggering stupidly among themselves. Then one taps me on the shoulder. I turn. And they’re encircling me, like Pink Elephants on Parade. They close in on me, crushing me, smothering me, falling on me, killing me. And I wake, screaming, to discover I was awake all along. Well; today I’m killing that dream.’

      ‘Even if it means killing yourself?’

      Kerchung.

      ‘Have you considered a holiday?’ she asked.

      ‘They come along with me.’

      ‘Who do?’

      ‘Shelves – on holiday.’

      ‘But not really?’

      ‘Yes, really. I sit on the coach, looking forward to a good time, then I look around. And they’re filling all the other seats, reading newspapers, smoking pipes, one leg flung over the other. Little baby shelves kick the back of the seats in front and get told off by their mother shelves.’

      ‘I see.’ Choosing to lighten the subject matter, she pulled a comic from a low rack. ‘How much is this Fish Man. He Swims?’

      ‘One pound seventy-five.’

      ‘And this Hormonal Fifty?’

      ‘One pound seventy-five.’

      ‘And The Human Leech?’

      ‘One seventy-five.’

      She placed them back on the rack, none containing the information she needed. On tiptoes she scanned the rack’s upper reaches. ‘None of your stock seems to have a price tag.’

      ‘Osmo’s orders. He says, “Daniel, my dear boy, we are tigers in the jungles of commerce. Customers are our prey. Keep them confused, disorientated. Show

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