10. THE GROTESQUE'S TALE

We reach the final chapter...

“And now for the final lesson,” smirked Dingleboot, “now for the moment of realisation...”

“I realise that the Tomkins woman was an evil old bat,” grunted his pupil, “I realise that she dismembered real people, that she lied and cheated, that she did so many evil things that I’m wondering why His Satanic Reverence isn’t dealing with her. Why is it you?”

“Ah, but sometimes things aren’t quite what they seem to be,” sighed the Deity. “Live a little longer and you’ll understand that much. Just look into that room where they’re gathering and, I say, who’s the newcomer?”

“I dunno,” mumbled the pupil as he looked down.

There was a newcomer standing in the lounge doorway, and he was possibly the ugliest man any of them had ever seen. One eye was conspicuously lower than the other, for starters, and if that disfigurement wasn’t enough his nose was twisted so far to one side it looked as if he hadn’t got one when viewed from the other. And some wasting disease had consumed part of his face, bone structure and all. Yet despite the grotesque nature of his deformities they all knew instinctively that before them stood a good man.

“Welcome, friend,” said the librarian, “I seem to recognise you...”

“Maybe you do,” grinned the newcomer. “Let me introduce myself. I am Mort Tomkins, and I have come here to put the record straight.”

The midwife paled.

“Mort, you say?” she muttered, “and Tomkins?”

The grotesque nodded. “It was the name you gave me when you thought I was no more than a scrap of death,” he murmured. “Not that I can remember so far back! But I have been told, and my twin sister delighted in taunting me about it, that when I was born it was assumed that I was the personification of death. So I was called Mort, and yet my birth was never registered as that, or as anything actually. My beloved mother let it be known that I failed to take my first breath and was disposed of along with all other unwanted flesh in the incinerator at the hospital where I was born whereas, in truth, I was never actually dead, but taking my time when it came to breathing, and my life was discovered just in time! So here I am with my story, for it will conclude your debate and remove any sense of guilt any of you may feel when it comes to the tragic ending of my sister.”

“How can we be sure…?” began the judge, but the midwife waved one hand as if to throw his question to the wall.

“I would know that face anywhere, for I was the first to look upon it when it was a scrap of what I thought was death, and it is the same face. The very same, though aged, and I’m sorry that the decision I made regarding your condition wasn’t more considered.”

The grotesque smiled warmly at her. “It was a natural reaction to the ugliness you pulled from my mother’s womb,” he said with a chuckle. “But I am here and must tell you how my twin sister died.

“We read it in the papers,” the dustman told him, hoping to save him from any unnecessary pain that the retelling of the story might cause to so ugly a man.

“Ah, but that was in the Daily Mail, and we all know that newspaper’s penchant for twisting facts until they become lies,” said the grotesque. “No, here is the true story, and I swear at it with every fibre of my being.

“I had long been aware of two facts. Firstly, that my sister was my twin and secondly that she was exceptionally beautiful. I doubt I have ever been in the presence of a prettier or more attractive lass as I’ve been growing up, and she made great profit from her beauty in the full knowledge that I was by far the uglier twin. No, don’t protest! I know my fate and that as far as looks go I lost out long before I was born!

“And as time passed and we grew older I realised a third thing. Whereas I did my best to please as many people as I could please (and that wasn’t so many seeing that my parents had me as virtually a prisoner in my own room, unregistered at birth, never enrolled in a school and as far as the world was concerned, not existing.) But my natural desire was to know that when I left the world I would have added positively to improving the ways of man and beasts alike. Even as a child I wished for that! And my sister was the exact opposite. All she wanted was advancement and riches for herself. It was the major factor in her personality, and one I deplored.

“But she was my twin and somehow, don’t ask me how, the two of us were connected. I sort of knew what she was thinking, sort of experienced some of her pleasures even they they were normally contrary to what I looked upon as pleasures, and when she beguiled young men by flaunting herself before them, by being no more than a nymphomaniac minx in the way she dressed and the means by which she used cosmetics to turn her own natural beauty into something less than beautiful, when she did those things I felt a wounding deep inside me because I knew she was better than that.

“It was when she started mutilating her conquests that I knew things would have to stop...”

“Like this?” asked the pastor, holding up a hand that had a finger missing.

“Or this?” asked the librarian, holding up his own mutilated hand, “for I rue the time she came to my workplace for books on domination, and I agreed to assist her...”

“And to my shame,” mumbled the gambler, “to my very shame I bet her she wouldn’t be able to do this...” And he removed a shoe and a sock and displayed a toeless foot.

The Grotesque nodded. “And there were others,” he said. “I decided it would have to stop when she crept into my room at the dead of night and amputated my genitals. The pain was excruciating, I can tell you! And being a non-person, not existing anywhere on any records, I could not seek for medical help and I almost bled to death!

“It was then that I knew what I must do. It was then I decided that I must teach her a lesson. And it must be spectacular. I wanted her to suffer even though we still had that mysterious connection between us, the force that ties some twins to each other.

“So I drugged her and when the toxins had bent her will to mine I bade her climb to the top of a pole high above a castle wall and tell the world what an evil b***h she was. I even arranged an audience for her, spreading news of a great event so that crowds would gather there. And I gave her a script to recite, and she was so under my will that she had no way of not obeying me.

“So she made her announcement.

“’I am going to ascend to Heaven because I’ve been a deceiving and lying old tart,’ she cried out, “I am going to mount yon spike until I reach the top, and you will know by my actions that I am nearer to God than any of you lot, for my life is worthless and I see that now, and any life stripped of value might as well not exist.’

“And that was meant to be that. She was meant to climb back down the pole, utterly destroyed by her own words with the Daily Mail reporter taking them down, syllable for syllable. Then, I supposed, she would disappear from public view and hopefully mend her ways.

“But she slipped as she climbed back down, and you know the tragic rest.”

“By gum,” whispered the Judge, “I’m glad I don’t have to pass any kind of judgement about the rights or wrongs of that one!”

“So why are we all here?” asked the prostitute,

“Oh, that’s easy,” smiled the Grotesque. “Each and every one of you believes he has a reason to blame him or herself for what happened to my sister and I wanted you all to know that if guilt lies anywhere it is solely with her. Bit by bit from the moment she was born she absorbed evil and rejected good. Nobody did it for her: she did it for herself. So your consciences, my friends, are clear.”

There was a thoughtful silence. A clock could be heard ticking. Night was falling. A mist started swirling outside the uncurtained windows.

Then the Westminster arms and its occupants faded finally from sight and the deity’s pupil faced his Master.

“Well, serve her right,” he said. “What’s next?”

THE END

© Peter Rogerson 29.09.18