Danny Yates Must Die. Stephen Walker

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       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 СКАЧАТЬ