Brains Not Brawn (extract)
Terry Nolan’s legs had been twisted since the accident, but he still had a razor-sharp brain; he kept it in a glass jar in the cellar.
The cellar steps had been a bit of a problem at first, but after a week or so he had been able to confidently manage them. The big advantage was that it was a space that was his; a sanctuary from his mother. He loved his mother, but she had a tendency to cramp his style – and having little enough of it, he needed to exercise it as much as he could. The cellar steps were too much for her arthritic hip, so he could use them to escape.
He had first seen Victor in a back street second-hand shop not too far from his home. Since the accident he had done a great deal of reading. He had begun to realise how little he knew, but was equally perplexed by how much there was to learn. He had seen many books on antiques and old instrumentation, but none of that had prepared him for the contents of the shop. He could recognise so few of the objects for sale that he wondered who on earth could have previously owned them, and what on earth they used them for.
Then he saw Victor.
"Ah, the young mathter hath an interest in necromanthing?"
Terry jumped; the shop owner had appeared at his shoulder. Even though he stooped, he still towered over Terry. In the long black cape, the shop owner looked more as though he were on his way to the opera rather than indulging in retail sales. He kept his stare fixedly on Terry, stroking a non-existent goatee beard.
Terry looked back at the large glass jar. A label had been carefully hand written and fixed on the lid. It simply said ‘Victor’. He had no idea what the owner was talking about, and the thick lisp did not help, but something was definitely fascinating about the item.
The shop owner looked Terry up and down, but as Terry was only five foot one, it was more down than up.
"I think Victor hath taken a liking to you"
Terry stopped. He had bought a few things for his cellar to make himself feel at home, but this was a little different. "Look I’m afraid I don’t have much money."
The shop owner shook his head. "Victor can only be taken out on loan. Why not take him home and come back in a little while if you want anything else."
It was a full week before Victor had begun to speak to him.
"Ah Terry, my necrophilic nemesis. Do you never consider my corporeal needs?"
It was at that stage that Terry realised he needed to buy a dictionary. At first he had not been sure how to feed Victor, but his mother had said that fish was brain food, so he sprinkled in shredded tuna on a daily basis.
"Ah, blessed pabulum to nourish the synapses." Terry realised that he needed to buy a bigger dictionary.
Victor did not talk about his past and Terry was too polite to ask, so he never found out the circumstances which led to Victor’s current situation.
Victor was more interested in the present. "So tell me about this ‘Internet’ again"
After his accident, Terry was not able to go out into the world for quite a long period so his mother had decided to bring the world to him, or a least a very selective version of the world in the form of cable TV and the internet. He had not let himself get hung up on daytime TV, but for Victor this was a revelation. Fifty channels of garbage, to the rest of the world, were manna from heaven for Victor. Most afternoons Terry left him to it and followed his doctor’s orders by staggering round the local park on his crutches. This also meant that he might accidentally run into Ingrid.
(To read the rest of the story, look for Peter's book 'The Write Direction' on Amazon Kindle)
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