CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: DRAWING TOWARDS AN END

Anne Boleyn becomes the woman she should have been and the Janiror takes conrol of Stroggleoff (with the help of Miss Bustthruster.

The Janitor, with his wriggling mass of hair motivated by some unseen and possibly insecticidal power, let his pale eyes roam over the group of astonished people standing in the Professor's office. The black-leotard-clad girls whimpered when they saw him, the naked beauty with the pert breasts and features reminiscent of Anne Boleyn shivered, and Professor Stroggleoff looked as though he was about to assert himself yet again.

“That's quite enough!” rapped Griselda, seeing that something needed to be said and wriggling her bottom so that her tiny skirt seemed to dance of its own accord, making Lucifer force one hand deep into his trouser pockets with embarrassment. “If there's one thing I've had enough of it's janitors who don't know their place!”

“This is all too much for me,” sighed the ancient Anne Boleyn, weakly. “I don't know what's going on and my old bones do ache! I could really do with a tonic or something.”

“There ain't none!” snapped Stroggleoff, spitefully. “That tart drank it,” he added, pointing at Griselda.

“Oh woe is me,” wept the dusty old woman. “I wish I was young again, and carefree and lovely, like I ought to be.”

“Then become yourself!” almost shrieked Griselda in an uncharacteristic burst of anger, and she muttered something darkly under her youthful breath, discrete syllables conjured into being with a reference to tickling t*****s and a few mysterious shapes. with no obvious meaning and filled with harsh guttural consonants.

Anne Boleyn felt herself begin to quiver, and smiled.

“That's better!” she sighed, but instead of growing younger she proceeded to grow even older. Her flesh seemed to wither on her frame, her skin became more wrinkled than a very wrinkled thing. Her lips, once her finest feature, became like two lines of string that had somehow got stuck onto her face, and then even they shrivelled as the string became cotton thread, and she fell into a pool of dusty bones on the floor.

“She's dead!” shouted Constable Lockemup. He turned to Griselda, doubt in his eyes. “I might think you're God's gift to my policemanly private parts, but you've just killed the woman!” he said. “And to think, I'm a copper bound to uphold the law, decency and honesty! Griselda, you don't do things like that, do you? I thought I loved you for yourself, but if yourself is a killer...”

“I never killed her!” muttered Griselda darkly. “You've been here for the past goodness-knows how long and you saw what happened. That bag of bones was Anne Boleyn, wife of a Tudor king of England who lived his fat life before any of us were born, and she was well old!”

“But she was alive...” he protested. “Life is such a precious thing.”

“No it isn't and no she wasn't. This old fraud Stroggleoff had kept her artificially young for pervy purposes of his own, and all I've done is put things right! What you see now is what nature decreed should be!” she snapped. “He'll have to find another cushion for his dreaming head, and we'll bury her dust in the garden!”

“My poor little Annikins is dead...” moaned Stroggleoff, “the poor dear angel, the sweet young thing … and all I wanted in all my life was another moment with her in my arms, another breath from those angel lips, another scent of her sweet young flesh...”

“She's dead,” said Griselda, flatly. “Like she should have been ages ago.”

“Oh well. I suppose it had to happen some time. Can't be helped.” Stroggleoff seemed to shrug off the demise of his beloved as if it was very little indeed. Then a light entered his eyes and he said, “I've still got the clones I made of her... they'll be my comfort as the years grow long.”

“Have you?” asked Griselda, knowing that something else was almost certain to happen. She had nothing to do with it, no magic or spell on her part could have caused the shrivelling of the three leotard girls and the naked clone of Anne Boleyn. But shrivel they did, the four of them, fairly slowly yet fast enough to deceive the eye. To start with they were vivacious young teenage athletes, apparently ready and willing to do the kind of things that leotard-athletes do, then they began shrivelling.

“They're the Boleyn woman too,” observed Griselda. “They are her flesh, in a way. When she dies, they die. You see, they're not really people in their own right but extensions of someone who should have died centuries ago anyway! They stayed alive while she lived and while at least one of them had the essence of Anne Boleyn inside her, but now there's no Anne, so no them.”

“But I'm me...” protested the naked one, her beautiful breasts with their pert n*****s sagging before Griselda's eyes and shrivelling like one of those plastic bags Mr Birdseye sells his fish-in-sauce in once they've been boiled.

“I sympathise with you, I truly do,” said Griselda, honestly, “but you've had a life you should never have had. Not much of a life I'm sure, spending all your hours in this wretched antiquated old University, but at least you've had a bit more than the nothing you should have had.”

“And only that old fraud to comfort me during the darkest hours...” she moaned, her voice beginning to sound old and feeble as the sentence finished.

“My sweet little angels!” wept Stroggleoff. “Now who am I going to have to cuddle me at night when the cold winds blow?”

“There's always me...” began Miss Damienne Bustthruster, the unsavoury Mistress of Comparative Religions, who had remained silent for so long. “I'm quite amenable,” she added, fluttering her eyelashes and breathing toxic breath in his direction. “I sometimes feel a woman's needs … a hot throbbing man besides her as the North winds blow across the moors....”

“Pity there aren't any m-m-moors here, then,” muttered Lucifer.

“And I'm prepared to bet he was neither hot nor any part of him throbbed,” whispered Lockemup, darkly. “And don't forget, you old fraud, that you're under arrest!”

“I think we can sort that one out,” put in Griselda. “If you arrest him, my darling little Constable with the unbelievably wonderful willy, if you arrest him you'll have to come up with a charge that the general public will believe, and that might not be as easy as you think.”

“Bah!” snapped Stroggleoff.

“I know,” beamed the Janitor, suddenly all happy and carefree and the jolliest man in the room. “He can become Pope just as he wants, and I'll be his Chief Whatever-it-is Archbishop to keep him towing the line. I'll be there when he prays...”

“Popes don't pray!” snapped Stroggleoff. That's why they're there, not to pray but to make sure everyone else does! They get out of stuff like that by wearing a daft hat and frowning at everyone.”

“You'll pray,” decided Griselda with a grin. “You'll pray like no Pope ever prayed before, and if you don't my dearest friend Mr Hagman the Janitor will be just behind you with one of his crooked sticks ready to administer corporal punishment on your bony backside!”

“That would be fun, my dearest...” whispered the Janitor, looking gratefully towards her.

“You can't go around beating Popes on the bottom!” protested Professor Stroggleoff, indignantly. “It just isn't done!”

“Who can't?” leered the Janitor, and a tuft of his hair leapt a good six inches into the air.

“Good. Then that's settled,” grinned Griselda. “Time, methinks, for a good night's sleep before it's morning.”

Just as she said that a first shaft of the rising sun poked itself through Stroggleoff's office window, and they all groaned.

“Too late,” sighed Griselda. “Come on " let's all get to our beds and have a lie-in, or we'll be fit for nothing come the new day.”

And she muttered a few wordless syllables which she hoped would have just that effect. And it did seem to be working as the small group split up and went their separate ways to their own corners of the ancient building. But Griselda noticed, with a grin, that Miss Damienne Bustthruster was guiding Stroggleoff towards his bed with what could only be described as a leer on her harsh face.