Demolition Derby
DEMOLITION DERBY

Published 'The Dark Fantasy Newsletter' 2000


The row of derelict chicken sheds had open hatches three-quarters of the way up to the ramshackle roofs - ready to launch squawking squatter-rats in further spurts of Olympian endeavour. I slept in the house nearby, being one of those toffs whom the squatter-rats so loathed and would really liked to have raced against - thus to diminish their competitive bloodlust rather than do it between themselves in running skirmishes of hand-to-hand brawling (to which they eventually resorted as “better” than racing). Sorry, the whole thing was a bit too complicated to tell, anyway.

As for me, I preached taking-part-is-as-important-as-winning from my open window. But the finishing-line came too late.

I recall that particular evening, with the sun low in the sky casting doubts as well as twirling girders of translucent gold. First one gnarled head, then another, poked from the chicken hatches, tousled mops coiffured into coxcombs. With jabbing glances to either side, I was soon to be treated with the sight of their knees for ears and scrawny thighs clambering out in piecemeal contortions.

Eventually, they scuttled across the allotment, repeater guns like knobbled elbows ratchetting out in skewed angles, rehearsals of bullets rattling into my fence. I waved a fist at them from my bedroom window, only to discover they were already doing likewise to me, in unison, wishfully thinking I would come out to have the race to end all races, a beatable customer for their cut-throat athletics. My principles did not, of course, extend to jeopardising my own preservation to provide a catharsis that would in turn prevent an even bloodier competitive edge. I limbered up, though, in my bedroom - just in case.

In any event, as I say, the finishing-line came too late.

When things got a bit quieter, with the squatter-rats off on their practice jaunts, I did venture into my garden which was next door to that allotment with the now empty chicken sheds. The wood of the leaning gap-toothed fences and of the tumbledown sheds themselves and of the nearby goose-run and of many of the makeshift trees had all been blackened by the recent climatic changes. If I did not know better, I would think I was in a particularly bizarre dream.

One of the more chickenish squatter-rats, previously concealed from my view by his own shadow, jumped out and started squawking so frantically about the final race, it was difficult for me to pick out any words other than ‘race’. The creature’s knees and elbows were somehow conjoined like outlandish lips with his elongated neck plus narrow head the tongue.

“They’ve gone off to train for the last race.”

At last his gabble had separated out.

“How do you know it’s the last race?” I asked.

“Because... because there are no real competitors left to race against.” The squatter surveyed me quizzically as if sizing me up for sacrifice in the very last dash of all.

Deciding to tack against the natural drift of the dialogue, I asked for his name.

“None-of-your-business.”

‘Nonefer Yerbizniz? That’s an interesting name.”

He knew the game was up. I’d blown his cover. The rest came out in a rush, each word racing the next: -

“Mama Yerbizniz, Dada Yerbizniz, Cousin Yerbiznizes, they’ve all gone off... I’m just a sad critter compared to them, left here to guard nothing but the ruins of a track.”

“You’re squawking again, Nonefer ... what’s the point of speaking when he to whom you speak cannot make head nor tail of your gibber?”

Whatever was said, there was indeed an argument for saying the finishing-line had come too early. Nonefer was the real victim of the racing, the only one left alive to compete again.

In the distance, we heard the grumbling hills, much like the thunderheads bubbling up in the olden days before the climate changed, with clouds now clashing more in the mode of tongues clucking than lightning flashes sparking off Heavenly removal men’s clumsy attempts at preventing the ricochet of angels’ furniture in spur-of-the-moment elopements to Hell. Phewl It was a good job I wouldn’t be called to write all this down. I can simply call it a Demolition Derby, by rumour if not by hard fact. That’s all.

That night, I heard Nonefer’s squawking plaintive crooning about the way death was only sad for those left behind. He envied his Cousin Yerbiznizes their races - in Heaven or Hell, he wasn’t sure.

And it was morning by the time I truly fell into a sufficiently peaceful slumber, thus blotting out Nonefer’s plangent wails. I hope I don’t wake up till much later, or I won’t be in a fit state for digging or putting a sad critter out of its misery. A rat race apart. Other than that, perhaps the whole point of telling this was to prove that having-no-point is the point.