29 October 2008
The Most Loathsome Man on Earth
I could not believe that my arch-enemy, Harold Loathsome, had chosen to hold our final showdown in a bell-tower. It just seemed so very cliched. Honestly, I had expected more from him. Maybe it was time I found a better class of nemesis.
And so it was rather begrudgingly that I hauled myself up the winding stairs that led to the tower, cursing Loathsome’s name as it quickly became apparent that there were far more flights of stairs than I had first imagined. Maybe that is how Loathsome intended to finish me – by wearing me out completely through such exertions, so that when I finally faced him he could cut me down without a struggle. That would be exactly the sort of twattish plan I would expect from the murderous cove.
As I continued my struggle against the stairs, another memory from my school-days bubbled forth from my brain. When I had attended St. Bumthrusty’s School for Boys, there had been a long-running rumour that the school’s bell-tower was haunted. Many people – staff and pupils alike – had claimed to have heard ‘unearthly wailing and moaning’ and some ‘ominous banging’ coming from the tower, with one teacher even claiming to have discovered some ectoplasmic residue in the room. The truth, however, was much less spectral and far more scrotal; the school’s bell-tower had merely been my favourite spot in which to hide girls from the town, whereupon we would indulge in some covert coupling, hence the frequent moaning and banging. And needless to say, that was most certainly not ectoplasm found in the bell-tower…
I smirked inwardly at the recollection, and was further buoyed by the fact that I had finally reached top of the stairs, thus ending my terrible escalatory ordeal. I rested myself against the wall for a momentary respite, but did not get to relax much before I was interrupted.
“Well, you certainly took your time,” said a rather snide, disembodied voice. Immediately I sprung to attention, my eyes straining through the murk of the bell chamber in an effort to locate the speaker. I soon picked out a top-hatted figure silhouetted against the early evening light which was snaking its way through the slats on the window of the room.
“Loathsome,” I spat.
“Lord Loathsome, if you do not mind,” the shadowy figure replied calmly. “Yes, I have a peerage now as well. I inherited it from an aristocratic friend of mine. Well, the dead have no use for such titles, you see…”
“You may call yourself whatever you wish, Loathsome,” I sneered. “I shall still only refer to you as ‘tosspot’, if it is all the same to you.”
There was silence from Loathsome, except for the sound of a match being struck as he lit himself a cigarette. I briefly caught a glimpse of one of his small, beady eyes in the match-light, before he lit his fag and discarded the match over his shoulder.
“Still the same old Likely,” Loathsome finally said. “As arrogant and up his own arse as ever. It is high time someone bought you down a peg or two, Likely. And I shall only be too pleased to take on that responsibility.”
I felt my muscles tighten as I readied myself for some kind of ruckus, but instead Loathsome slowly stepped forward into one of the few shafts of sunlight in the tower, finally revealing himself in all his foulness.
Loathsome still looked as loathsome as I remember him; he was a skinny and wiry fellow, wearing a long, dark-grey overcoat on top of a black suit, with a similarly dark top hat on his awful, greasy, straggly blonde-hair. He had a long, pointed nose, and his cruel, thin lips were contorted into some sort of wretched smile. The only change I could really observe was that he now sported an eye-patch across his left eye, leaving only one piggy eyeball free to glare at me.
In short, he rather resembled a bastard wrapped up in a cunt.
“I am glad you could make it, Likely,” Loathsome grinned. “I rather feared you were going to be late. Why, it is already ten to six, you know…”
“Why don’t you just stop wittering and make some sort of ruddy move, Loathsome?” I snapped, growing weary of his melodramatic performance.
“Oh no, Likely. No, no, no. I have been waiting for far too long to hurry this now,” my enemy responded, drawing upon his cigarette and blowing a smoke-ring in my direction. “Twenty-five years I have waited. Twenty-five years since you publicly humiliated me in front of everyone at this very school. Twenty-five years since you got me expelled. Twenty-five years since you had me exiled to Africa, to spend two and a half decades toiling in the burning sun. Suffice to say, I fully intend to really, really enjoy this moment.”
“To be fair, Loathsome, you deserved every bit of your punishment, You were, after all, a massive cock-end.”
“Please, do keep the feeble insults coming, Likely. It shall make killing you all the more sweeter.”
“You do not scare me, Loathsome. Not one bit. I have bested you many times before, and I dare say I shall do so again. You forget that I am vastly superior to you in every possible way.”
“Oh, you think so?” chuckled Loathsome, his lips parting to reveal rows of horrid, yellowing teeth. “I do beg to differ, Likely. I mean, you have been rather slow to finally catch up with me, have you not? And I do not imagine that you have any inkling as to precisely how long I have been tracking you, and messing with your over-privileged life…”
I froze. The thought of Loathsome stalking me was terribly nauseating. Why could I not be stalked by someone decidedly more attractive, and considerably more be-titted?
“I thought that would get your attention, Likely,” Loathsome jeered. “For you see, I have been following your progress quite closely…quite, quite closely indeed. And for such a long time, too! Right from the moment you opened a letter in which the writer threatened to cut you, early last year…”
My mind raced as I tried to recollect the moment in question, and then I remembered.
It was February, 1856, and I had received a mysterious missive from some lunatic threatening to cut me. The return address on the letter had led me to a house at Buckingham Place, where I had subsequently been drawn into an astonishing adventure involving murderous prostitutes and an evil old brothel-owner called Mrs. Dinklesuck. At first, I had assumed the letter had been a cryptic cry for help from one of her unfortunate clients, but this was later proven to be incorrect, leading me to dismiss the note entirely. Now, however, I could see its importance all too clearly. It had been written in the same hand as that used in the note which had been affixed to the first victim of Loathsome’s murderous spree at St. Bumthrusty’s.
“So it was you who penned that letter,” I mused. “How extraordinarily dull.”
“That was just the beginning, Likely! I had far more fun toying with you later that very day, when I took great pleasure in ramming your carriage off the road…”
“Egads!” I gasped. “I remember that! You made me spill some whisky, you utter shit-ball.”
“Wait, Likely, because it gets rather more brilliant still. A few months later, as you boarded the HMS Bastard to sail to America, I sent an assassin after you, to rough you up a bit. You know, just for fun.”
“Doctor Corkscrews!” I exclaimed, as I remembered my encounter with the murderous medic.
“Indeed, indeed. It is a terrible shame you offed him, Likely. He was under strict instructions not to kill you. I just thought his attack might keep you on your toes…” Loathsome stopped to draw upon his cigarette once more, before flicking the cigarette butt across the room. “And then – then! – I hatched a brilliant scheme to pilfer all the booze from the Likely Estate earlier this year. Oh, your face! It really was utterly, utterly priceless!…”
The news that Loathsome had a hand in many of my most notable adventures of the past couple of years set my head reeling, and I had to steady myself on the wall beside me. The fact that Loathsome has been manipulating me so made me feel rather sick, but above all it made me want to pound his putrid skull to dust.
“That just about does it, Loathsome,” I hissed. “I think I have heard quite enough. Now, if you will be so kind as to put your fists up, I think we…”
“Wait a moment, old boy,” Loathsome replied, rather too nonchalantly for my liking. “What time is it?”
“What in the name of shittery does the time have to do with anything?” I yelled.
“Oh, the time is very important, Likely. Very important indeed,” Loathsome answered, strolling over to the enormous bell hanging from the roof of the tower. “For you see, at six o’clock, this bell here will chime the hour.” Loathsome gently patted the side of the bell. “‘Tis quite a size, isn’t it? Apparently, this is the largest bell in the entire county, Likely.”
“I think I am looking at a rather bigger bell-end right now, Loathsome.”
“Very droll. Anyway, at six this bell will chime six times; and on each of those chimes the bell’s huge clapper will strike the inside of the bell with quite considerable force. Imagine, Likely, if someone were unfortunate enough to wind up actually inside the bell when that happens…why, I would think they would be pulped to a mash fairly quickly, don’t you?”
I slowly drew closer to the fiendish felon, knowing all too well that he was planning something awful.
“What have you done, Loathsome?” I demanded.
“Here,” said Loathsome, striking another match. “Take a look inside, Likely.”
I took the match from Loathsome’s hand, and knelt down to look under the bell. And there, manacled to the actual inside of the bell, was Botter, considerably not-dead, but looking rather the worse for wear, his face badly bruised and his mouth gagged. Furthermore, he had been stripped down to his underwear, which I felt was not only completely unnecessary, but also incredibly revolting. Truly, Loathsome was a most twisted individual indeed.
I rose back up slowly, but before I could return to my full (glorious) height, Loathsome delivered a swift boot to my beautiful face, sending me sprawling flat on my back. Loathsome laughed maniacally as he withdrew a revolver from his overcoat, and pointed it at my head. Blearily, I retrieved my solid-gold pocket-watch from my waist-coat, and tried to focus on the tiny clock face.
“I would say your time was running out, Likely,” Loathsome chuckled.
The blurring of my vision subsided, allowing me to read the time on my pocket-watch. Annoyingly, it seemed Loathsome was rather correct.
It was four minutes to six.
I had less than four minutes to save my own life, and to save Botter’s.
In that exact order.
- Lord Likely
Next Time in The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely: Time runs out as ‘A Lesson in Murder’ reaches its nail-biting, pant-soiling conclusion!
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