Mr Landen Has No Brain. Stephen Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ wheelie bins over in his quest for carrots.

      Across the room from her, Teena gazed out through the hole and watched his rampage. Still holding the shroud she’d had him hidden under before his grand unveiling, she enthused, ‘Is he the best boyfriend you’ve ever seen or what?’

      Mobile home? Sally’d been in smaller mansions. ‘Teena, he’s a rabbit. He’s a seven foot, talking rabbit.’

      ‘A super-evolved talking rabbit,’ Teena corrected her.

      ‘He referred to me as “female”, called me his rumpy-pumpy boing-boing toy–’

      ‘Which some would find flattering.’

      ‘–and is more interested in carrots than in me. And you think that’s a great boyfriend?’

      Teena rolled up the shroud and cast it aside. ‘His attitude leaves a little to be desired but whose boyfriend’s doesn’t?’

      ‘Yours, according to you.’

      Teena raised a suggestive eyebrow. ‘Sadly not every woman can have a Man Who Does.’

      ‘Just how desperate do you think I am that I’d go out with a giant rabbit?’

      ‘At the risk of sounding insensitive, Sally, you must face facts.’

      ‘What facts?’

      ‘You’re not an attractive woman and can’t afford to be choosy.’

      ‘Piss off,’

      Knuckles on hips, Teena gazed at the floor and smiled bitterly to herself. She was five foot ten, nineteen years old and – according to her – sex on legs. She was wearing cut-off-at-the-knee jeans, and a red vest cut just high enough to bare her pierced navel. If she had hair, Sally’d never seen it. It was hidden beneath the mass of starched polka dot rags that now hung half-obscuring her oh-so-lovely face. Teena said, ‘Well, how’s that for gratitude.’

      ‘Gratitude?’ Sally’s mind boggled.

      Teena looked across at her. Her perfect left hand dragged the polka dot rags away from her perfect face and tucked them behind a perfect ear. ‘I slave away during my holiday, super-evolving life forms for you–’

      ‘Life forms? Plural?’

      ‘I also have a cockroach and a rubber plant I’d like you to meet.’

      ‘Good God.’

      ‘But you throw it all back in my face. Yes, as men go, they’re not that great, and in the rubber plant’s case it’s not all that male, but you have to appreciate that my techniques are not yet perfect. I’d love to create a Brad Pitt for you but I’m no goddess, I have my limitations. I did my best for you and that’s all that matters.’

      ‘Teena, for the last time, I’m happy as I am. I don’t want you trying to make me boyfriends.’

      Teena rolled her eyes in a way that suggested disbelief.

      ‘You really want to help me?’ said Sally.

      ‘I only do these things for your benefit.’

      ‘Then repair that hole and recapture that rabbit. Then un-super-evolve it and its mates back to how they should be.’

      ‘But–’

      ‘And if you make one more attempt to find me a boyfriend

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘I’ll kill you.’

      Sally slammed the mobile home’s front door behind her and stood on its top step, counting every conceivable way of killing Teena. There were a hundred and eighty seven. She looked at her surroundings; the caravans, mobile homes and wailing seagulls that made up Wyndham-on-Sea’s largest caravan park. Just nineteen, she was its youngest ever manager. And, apart from one highly noisy resident, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

      Three days earlier there’d been souls in sight, two of them, when the world’s biggest mobile home had pulled into camp, a gleaming white double decker the length of a Eurostar, the sort of thing the Rolling Stones would refuse to take on tour because it was too ostentatious. In the passenger seat, all long limbs and gleaming shark grin, had sat Teena.

      The driver was her assistant, Mr Landen, a small man who made vroom vroom noises as he drove.

      He’d said Teena was the world’s greatest scientific prodigy all grown up, engaged and determined to have one last week of dullness before settling down to a life of marital excitement. And this particular stretch of North Yorkshire coastline had struck her as being as dull as they come.

      Teena had said she was a total babe. The last four years running, she’d won the New Scientist Playmate of the Year Award. And while she didn’t approve of such things – they demean women and trivialize their contribution to science – that didn’t stop her pulling on her shortest, lowest-cut dress and turning up to collect them.

      Now she was out to find Sally a boyfriend. It was to do with pity; it wasn’t fair for other women not to share the pleasure she’d found. Teena never used the word love.

      Resigned to another five days of the woman, Sally descended the mobile home’s three metal steps, turned left and headed for her managerial offices, a low flat roofed building that incorporated her living quarters. On the way, she ignored that one resident in sight, the giant rabbit whose front-half was now trapped in a wheelie bin. For a master of the night it didn’t seem too bright but few people in this place did.

      She reached her offices and grabbed the door, ready to enter.

      But then, reflected in the door’s wire-glass, she saw them …

      … the spinning moose heads of Bab’s Steakhouse.

      ‘Hello?’ Sally stuck her head round the front door. ‘Anyone here?’

      No reply.

      So she entered the dining area and took a look around. The moose heads of Bab’s Steakhouse, a low, purple building directly facing Sally’s offices, had only spun once before. She hadn’t expected to see them spin again before the restaurant’s grand opening, which wasn’t for another five days.

      According to her Uncle Al (the caravan park’s owner), when those heads started spinning, the public would gasp in awe at their majesty. No one would be able to resist going in.

      But at the try out, as soon as the heads had started up, the antlers had flown out with such force they’d decapitated the grinning shop window dummies meant to represent enthralled bystanders.

      When she’d last talked with her uncle, he’d said that after a long and involved search he’d just hired the cook, a sterling woman with a wealth of experience – some of it involving cookery. And, though the steakhouse wasn’t technically a part of the caravan park, despite being slap bang in the middle of it, Sally felt she should introduce herself.

      But this was the most disturbingly decorated restaurant she’d ever been in. She СКАЧАТЬ