The pretty daisy had nothing to say for itself. The Human Tube Line didn’t care.
The pretty daisy only moved when the breeze blew it. The Human Tube Line didn’t care.
The pretty daisy had no scary rabbits to chase him off with. That, the Human Tube Line did care about. He kissed the pretty daisy. It didn’t complain, scream or flee like the Pretty Girl would have done. The Human Tube Line and daisies were the same, feared and hunted wherever they went, just because they were different.
He decided to sit in this smoking hole for ever.
‘Hello? Hello?’ called a female voice from out of view. ‘Is there somebody down there? Or are you just a hole in the ground? Do you need help? Or are you happy where you are?’
He grunted. His eyes raised to see above the rim of the crater he’d created when he’d crash-landed in the garden.
Before him, a horrible, black house squatted like a complacent toad. He hated complacent toads. They reminded him of the Complacent Frogs of Venus who’d tried to invade earth, armed only with sticky tongues, convinced it could have no defence against such mighty weapons. It had been a short battle.
‘Pretty daisy, help me smash ugly house,’ he instructed the flower. It showed little enthusiasm for the task. But it would, upon seeing how good it was to smash ugly things. ‘Me and Nurse Daisy good friends. Me and Nurse Daisy practise accountancy together.’
He rose to his feet, head flooding with the red mist that made him do things others regretted, then took a thumping great step forward. He took another, then another, then another, fists clenched, a roar forming in his throat. The house was as good as dead.
Then he saw the pretty feet.
They stood in the open doorway, looking out with a sunny disposition; not any old feet you could see skipping between hot tram lines, to avoid blisters, on any broken-down resort’s promenade; not kiss-me-quick-feet.
These were big city feet, with big city ideas. If these feet smoked they did so not from the burning touch of tram lines but through an eighteen-inch-long cigarette holder while cradling a glass of something smooth, and leaning listless against a piano which played a lilting melody.
But all the while, for all the pianist’s harmonious chords, it was the feet you’d be noticing. And while they might lead you on, play you for a fool, take half your money and all your sense, cosh you over the back of your head, and be gone with your car before consciousness returned, they could never be taken for a tramp.
He studied the flower. ‘Pretty feet prettier than daisy.’ His thooming right foot squashed the stupid daisy into the stupid ground. From now on, he’d be doing his auditing with Nurse Pretty Feet.
Nurse Pretty Feet approached, attached to a girl in black. Stood at the crater’s edge, frog on shoulder, she looked down at him. Smiling, she pulled breeze-swept hair away from her face and tucked it behind a multi-pierced ear. ‘You’re the horrible Mr Meekly, aren’t you? I recognize you from the Necronomicomic. You shouldn’t be here. You belong in another world, one where you can do no real damage because everything you smash can be redrawn.’
The girl made no sense. Meekly didn’t care. He just cared about Nurse Pretty Feet. He watched them with a vacant look on his face.
The girl noticed. She looked down at Nurse Pretty Feet. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘You like these?’
He nodded, entranced, Quasimodo to her Esmeralda. She wiggled her toes. And when they wiggled they tinkled with all the magic of Brian Cant.
And when the Human Tube Line laughed, it was with the simplicity of a child.