AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the last episode, Wong begins to stir as everyone else turns savagely on the Vice. The crowd at Ddwwchllyff's surprisingly proximate manse continues to swell, as the cast of characters try to squeeze into the antepenultimate chapter...
The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 71

Wonce Peppet was a miserable bastard just like his miserable brother had been. But his brother had been the lucky one – he’d died first. Wence Peppet wouldn’t have to live in a world where there was no one exactly as miserable as him. Wonce would. Wonce was staring at decades of unaccompanied miseration. His brother’s good fortune made him all the more miserable, so in the end, his and his brother’s miserableness were no longer on a par, Wonce’s being of longer duration. This would have gratified Wonce, but gratification, satisfaction, vindication – these would have lifted the veil of gloom swaddling him like sackcloth, could even (in a worst case scenario) put a spring in his step. Peppets weren’t built to be steppers, let alone springers. The Peppets were a breed of slinkers genetically predisposed toward creeping, skulking, scuttling, sidling and sloping. Nonetheless, they get where they’re going, unforeseeable death-dealing student bodies aside, and when they get there they hand over the suitcase, but not before they have a peek inside. Such are the Peppets – a miserable, trudging, predictable tribe. Easy pickings for an assassin, in other words. And yet, unlike all of their forebears, this was not to be the fate of the last two Peppets on earth. Wence Peppet had already died a natural death in a flukey accident and Wonce Peppet, slipping behind a handy Buddleia to have a peek inside, would fare no better. Damn it…

Events elsewhere went unlargely unreported. Meanwhile, in the rear of a local take-away food outlet… The shuffling figure shuffled predictably into the kitchen area. Wong did not outwardly acknowledge the figure’s arrival, instead he continued to stir the curry-like mix in the pan on the stove by the freezer in front of him in the room. The figure coughed affectedly to try and rouse Wong’s attention. Wong wasn’t going to succumb to such an overt attention-getting move: he stirred some more.

The figure shuffled further into the food preparation and ingredient storage area, almost forgetting to affect his false mobility impediment. Finally he decided to speak. ‘Mr Wong, I have a new shipment that you may be interested in.’

Still no overt recognition from the older man. Having began, the shuffling figure figured he had little to lose by continuing.

‘Very rare Mr Wong. Exclusive in fact. I could make you leader in the market with the products I have to offer.’ This was all just standard patter. Wong heard such sales pitches twenty three times a day. He was set to request the violent removal of the heavy footed figure when the interloper spoke once more. ‘Wolf hair Mr Wong. Genuine Tibetan wolf hair rugs. Antiques no less.’

Had he had the physical ability to do so Wong would have pricked up his ears. Wolf hair rugs were almost a myth. People would speak of such things and tell tales of them in olden days gone by, but no one in living memory could recall ever actually seeing one. Almost no one. Most people dismissed the very notion of wolf hair rugs as pure fiction. Pure, badly written fiction. Nevertheless, any serious rug dealer and carpet connoisseur, which is how Wong liked to regard himself, always hoped to one day own a genuine wolf hair rug. The prospect of an antique rug, or rugs even, was a bait Wong could never resist.

He had to go with the figure to get to the goods, this much he was told! Anymore remained reasonably untold at this stage. And so it was that the curiosity gripped Wong came to be with the miserable bastard rug dealer, the two of them in some kind of garden of some sort of large house.

And what of Schumacher at this time? The VICE CHANCELOR OF THE WELSH UNIVERSITY wondered why he’d wondered this. Who the devil was Schumacher to intrude upon HIS thoughts – for that matter, who the devil was Schumacher? The VICE CHANCELOR OF THE WELSH UNIVERSITY summoned everyone else. She might have been any where between nine and ninety, but she was smart for her age and still sharp as a tack. A vague notion triggered by the ‘mines’ had caused her to drift out of the room on the undertow of an inchoate idea of finding Schumacher to warn him about something. She’d make something up. It would be more fun than sitting here bartending for his majesty. Thus it was that the VICE CHANCELOR OF THE WELSH UNIVERSITY was momentarily alone at that final fatal foggy time of day in olde Caerdyff towne. ‘MY towne!!’ The VICE CHANCELOR OF THE WELSH UNIVERSITY possessed. Spittle flying, his brow popping sweat beads, he wildly swung his arms, a longbow and a nailclipper, in an all-encompassing arc causing many objets d’chambre to, how do you say? decompose?

Schumacher knew nothing of what was transpiring at Wong’s dining facility – the meeting, conversation and subsequent journey and arrival in a garden; in fact, he considered Wong to be purely apocryphal. He was hiking upwards alongside Rhoda, listening in facination to her long legs as she sashayed along on her shapely story. Well, just a theory really, but she was, she was almost certain, at least fifty-percent sure she was right, putting the odds in her favour.

In her favour! bitterly echoed Sunny Quito, wordlessly. Jealousy reared its ugly legs and kicked him in the balls. He’d not really thought of Rhoda at all until this slick lawyer type showed up with his high profile, a prominence so handsomely salient against Sunny Quito’s flat two-dimensional character. Muttering darkly, he kept his emotions concealed as he inserted himself between them, giving Schumacher a bad papercut in the process.

The three of them now stood at the foot of the gravel-voiced drive. Plenty Capable had gotten her passengers safely back to the highest point in Cardiff and then collapsed, clumsily foreshadowing the fate of the city as Short Mat Bowls reconnoitered the grounds with his trusty mole. Wong’s people had disappeared with a cart wheel down a long shaft that ended in a pinpoint of light they called a bei-jing. Erm was taken with a rapturous, holy, all-seeing vision of mankind as a sort of flamethrower. It slowed his progress down the ladder propped up in the veranda well, but he didn’t mind. His troubles would come when he realised he was permanently out of Beer©.

Dr Snought had lived a broadly undistinguished existence for most of his life. When born he briefly held the title of World’s Youngest Person, but that was snapped away from him some two seconds later by a child in Panama. He was a timid man. A cowardly figure. These were traits that had served him well to date. Kept him out of trouble and away from harm. But it couldn’t last.

And so it didn’t. Anything that seems to good to be true, his father used to tell him, isn’t. And anything that seems it isn’t is. Snought’s father was an idiot. The man had held the post of idiot in the local village of ‘Somware’ since it had been handed to him by his own father one Sunday afternoon. Snought was a major disappointment to his father as he shunned the family business and went off to get a PhD™and be an educationalist®. Snought was not interested in holding posts – manual work had never appealed to him. And so it was that he embarked on a long and lustrious academic career. A career that was to find him cooking the books in the Welsh University. A career that was coming to the boil rather quickly.

Snought remained hidden in the bushes until he moved on. He crept from the hedgerow and crawled across the flower beds beyond. He was enjoying being out in the fresh air again – the birds were chirping, the grass was growing, all the trees seemed to be sinking into the soil? Never mind, he was enjoying himself now all those months locked away in his office had not been fun. Nevertheless, as good as it was to be outdoors once more, Snought had a feeling that he really shouldn’t be there. He couldn’t quite say where that feeling came from but he suspected that the sight of large wooden signs every 10 yards declaring:
You really shouldn’t be here!
and also mentioning that:
We’ll shoot first and we won’t ask any questions later!
had something to do with the notion.

Much has been written about the apparent tacky demise of this once average academic. Most of that has since been deleted due to a technical error and the ever present threat of legal action. It can be reported that Snought did indeed come to a sticky end. Noble. Dignified. Honourable. Just three of the words that were not found in an obituary to the man that was Snought. Having single handedly invented a whole student body, and then spent years overseeing the educational development of those students, he had become rich. Plundering innumerable funding streams and tapping into various grants and bursaries had given him a large sum of cash, hemorrhoids and a bad dose of paranoia. It had also sent him somewhat mad. It is not a term much used in these seemingly enlightened times but no word other than ‘somewhat’ comes close to the truth. As for his mental state – he was madder than an bucketful of burros with Silly Ass Disease.

It truly was a deceptively luxurious mansion. Located far out on the outskirts of the city Ddwchyllff had been lucky to snap it up for such a good price. Sure, there was all that talk of it being so cheap because it was next to the local asylum, but in all honesty they were generally pretty good neighbours. There hadn’t been any serious escapes in weeks now, not since that mass break-out from the Graceland wing. But those guys were mostly minimum security and besides, Ddwwchyllff liked having them around. Then there was the surveyors report which had hinted at there being ‘subterranean anomalies’ beneath the foundations of the place. But those surveyors will say anything for a quiet life. Ddwwchyllff happily dismissed the above talk and bought the place anyway.

Snought knew nothing of subterranean anomalies. He wouldn’t know a subterranean anomaly if he accidentally crawled into one whilst lurking in the pleasant gardens of a deceptively local mansion. So he did, while he was. He just didn’t know it. And to think, it had all seemed too good to be too true. Maybe his father wasn’t such an idiot after all. Maybe.

Snought’s body was never found. If it had been found it would have been found covered in a toxic mixture of black gold and concrete. It would have also been found desperately clutching fistful of long cylindrical drinking tubes, wearing a windproof coat and sporting a surprised expression. But it was never found.*

*Once more the reader is advised against pursuing the matter any further – Ed.

Psychohistorian's note: re "Wonce was staring at decades of unaccompanied miseration" -- It was a fine line – being miserable was almost an enjoyable state for Wonce to find himself in. That would never do. He simply couldn’t allow himself to gain pleasure in his own misery. North Carolina was an enjoyable state that Wonce had once found himself in, but the day trip to Kill Devil Hills was ultimately a disappointment…luckily.