AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the previous episode, the Vice works himself into a rage over Peppet. Now, Smithy enters his presence.

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 37 continued…

Everyone else in the room stood motionless.

“Well, what is it?”

“The reason I came in sir, your two o’clock appointment is here. Smithy.”

“But it’s half past five!” exclaimed the incredulous Vice-chancellor.

“Yes sir, he said he didn’t want to be late.”

“Very well, I’ll call for him in a moment. I’m having tea and cake first.”

One china cup full of Earl Grey and an iced finger later…

“Smithy! Come in. “ the Vice’s voice crackled over the anachronistic tin can on a wire.

There was a problem, thought Smithy; the voice should have resonated, not crackled. Was the Vice on fire? Hurriedly, Smithy submitted to the cavity search and as tradition demanded, walked backward through the door into the Vice-Chancellor’s office.

The Vice’s chambers were warm and dismal; dusky-dark walls loomed in the gloom of the dim beamed doom of the rhomboid tomb in the lambent light of the torches in the night, as they guttered and flared in their overwrought polyglot sconces. The visitor was invited to stand behind a chalkline on the floor and listen to the Vice-Chancellor crouching murkily behind his bullet-proof partition. But the acoustics muffled the slightest sound, and listening to Vice-Chancellor crouch required tremendous concentration.

As reported earlier, the acoustics muffled the slightest sound, and listening to Vice-Chancellor crouch required tremendous concentration.

Suddenly the Vice-Chancellor’s voice rang out:
“Have you ever killed a man before, Smithy?”

The Vice rose to his full height, which he liked to think of as five storeys tall as the top of his enormous head came to the bottom of the fifth floor window of the Exact Centre for Neonatal String Theory and Macrame` Research .
Nowadays, this held true even when he was standing outside the building. He liked to think of that too, but something about it troubled him. He was growing so fast. Maybe it was due to the cakes. He wanted a cake now.

“Bring me a cake!” he bellowed just as Smithy was answering “No, never” to the initial inquiry.

An infamously Vice-Chanslorian silence ensued. This was because the Vice had gone to the cafeteria. Cakes later, he returned to hunker down once more.

He observed Smithy, looming large behind the chalk line holding, what’s this? A cake?

“ Put the cake on the floor and slide it toward the desk -- and don’t make any sudden moves,” chancelled the Vice.

Smithy carried out this command. As the cake neared the desk, a small flap in the bottom of the bulletproof partition opened, something flashed out and the cake was gone in a Twinkling®. Smithy remained kneeling, awaiting further developments.

Hunched over behind his desk, the Vice admired the cake: this Smithy should be rewarded. How had he or she known he’d wanted a cake? “I’d like to send you a token of my appreciation. What is your first name, Smithy?”

“Devilish”

“That’s a hell of a name,” thought the Vice enviously. “You will be appropriately rewarded for your attendance upon my every whim. You may leave.”

As Devilish Smithy stood, the Vice’s voice asked, somewhat more plaintively this time: “Have you ever killed a man?”

“Which man?”

“No, not him. The man who kept saying What.”

“I don’t know.”

“EXCUSE ME? HOW CAN YOU ‘NOT KNOW’? EITHER YOU SLEW HIM OR YOU DIDN’T!”

The Vice was really a capital fellow, thought Smithy, asking aloud, “What is his name?”

“Aha! What’s his name! It’s you!” shouted the Vice! “Imposter! Where is the real Medium Running Water?!” -- a glint of insane cunning pierced his ophidian eyes -- “And where is Sonny Quito?”

“Ecuador?” ventured Smithy.

“Wrong! Luxemburge!”

The Vice-Chansellour, moving with lightning speed, picked up an ox containing the letter X, a letter Dr Suess contends “is very useful if your name is Nixie Knox. It also comes in handy spelling ax and extra fox.”

Well, the Vice-Chanceller might not have an ax but he did have an ox and it was aimed right at Smithy and moving fast.

Smithy cryptically dodged onto a vial in vain (5 letters*). Immediately, a red viscous liquid appeared on the clothing of everyone else in the room save the Vice-Chancellor’s, his garments and cake spared thanks to the bulletproof you-know-what.

Smithy, heels dragging, departed, left with the aide of everyone else and everyone else and the Vice’s gaze fell upon the cake anew. It was a lovely cake, decorated with sugar rosettes and squiggles of chocolate syrup on top, saying, “Eat me”.

The Vice Chancelor froze. That imperative voice – it was/was not the Cardiff Grandma.

*answer: to no avail. Smithy is morbidly inconvenienced by the ox (your joke here)>.