Fun Patrol

“What does it mean, Mummy?” sighed Galerina.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Amanita. “Child, take my hand. I feel an awful presence here. I feel this place to be touched.”

“What’s this? Are you having a swoon, Madam? Here, have a teaspoon of Mrs. Right-A-Way’s Tincture of Opium Cure- All. It cures fainting and strengthens the bowels,” Mr. Pigg courteously offered.

“That will not be necessary,” replied Mrs. Amanita.

“Suit ‘self miss,” sighed Pigg, uncorking the medicine and taking a draught. He shook his head rapidly, made a satisfied grunt, and turned to the assembled group. “Good people, be warned,” said their grizzled guide, jabbing a finger in the air theatrically. “We are about to enter the abode of the maddest of the mad. These unfortunates have completely forsaken reality in favor of their childish fancies. Though their bodies are under our firm control, their ravings can only be stoppered by the hand of Him who made us all. For the sake of the children, therefore, allow me to pass out these sound-dampening ear mufflers, available for a nominal extra charge, in order to safeguard their innocence from the unholy ravings found behind the locked doors of these dungeons.” As he passed these out, he also sold and passed along small bagfuls of oats. “It being Christmas Day,” the inmates were allowed an extra ration, but only from the kindness of strangers. “One further item to which I will draw your attention, while some of you fine folks purchased willow switches and had no success prodding the melancholiacs to activity, let me assure you that the use of this device along with well-cast handfuls of oats will not be unrewarded among the unfortunates of this wing. Therefore I urge those of you who’ve not done so already, to purchase your sticks now, for merely a hay-penny extra…”

These tasks accomplished, Mr. Pigg unlocked the door and led the troupe inside. The stench was unbelievable here, the lights dimmer than ever, and the wails of the unfortunates were only supplanted by the restless clanging of their chains. As they approached the first cell, there was silence from within. They peered through the bars and saw a young woman standing in the middle of her cage, free of all restraints, straining on tip toes toward the distant gaslight on a high wall near the ceiling. She had long, tangled hair, almond eyes and a tanned complexion. The smile on her face was joyful, yet tears streamed down her cheeks and on to her long tresses. Mr. Pigg pulled out a truncheon and banged on the door.

“You! Tell these good people your name!”

“Violet,” she said.

“Tell them your name,” bellowed Pigg. No further answer was forthcoming, but a sing-songy humming. “Her name is Miss Pepperflake. She was born here, the daughter of mad parents. I suppose whatever vapors make one’s parents mad can infect wee ones as well, for she has been mad since birth.”

“Why does she cry so, yet smile?” asked Galerina.

“Eh? Why? Why don’t you tell her, Miss Pepperflake?”

The girl stopped humming, but sang her response: “I am a flower, a rare flower. They give me but little water here, so I must water myself.”

“Ha! Where’s your flower then, rare flower?” taunted Pigg. “I don’t see it, Miss, and neither do these good folks.”

“The sunlight here is too dim. I cannot grow by this flickering light.” Suddenly, her smile disappeared. She ran to the bars and rattled the door. “Feed me!” she cried. Galerina threw her a handful of oats. “No! Not this! Plants eat light. Please feed me light. I belong in a pasture, in a wood, in a meadow, not here, not in this cell. Please let me out of here. Please!”

Mr. Pigg jabbed her rudely with his truncheon. “Back! Get back in your cage, fiend. You’re low you are, low, filthy and deranged.”

“So young to be mad,” sighed a gentleman in the group. “Such a shame. I thought only the elderly were prone to it.”

“That is a common misconception, guv’nar,” sighed Pigg. “Unfortunately, lunacy takes all sorts. We do the best we can for ‘em here.”

Agaric began to poke his switch through the bars, but his mother stopped him. “Would you hurt a flower, son?” she whispered harshly.

The tour continued, introducing the party to an assemblage of strange characters. They met His Lordship, Mr. Tuttle, who was both King George III and Jesus Christ. “It’s my fucking birthday,” he yelled at them. “I want my manger! I’m the son of man, you sods, get me some wine!” The party all took turns agitating him with their sticks until he was foaming delightfully and threatening eternal damnation on them all. Next they met Mrs. Plumper, a tubby, middle-aged woman who believed herself a cow. It was all they could do, said Mr. Pigg, to keep her from attempting to eat Miss Pepperflake the flower. Afterwards they met Mr. White, a unicorn who refused to be tamed, Mr. Standfast, an old sailor who had taken too much grog and declared himself a mermaid, Mr. Stalwart, a narwhal, and Princess Buttertooth, a former cobbler on familiar terms with the poppy who bethought himself a princess who had never known hunger, pain or want of any kind. The assembled party found his emaciated skeletal features most hideous to contemplate.

Last of all, they paused before the cell of an inmate named Bingo. “Now this ‘un here, he’s real interesting,” said Pigg. “Mr. Bingo—or just Bingo, as he calls himself—is madder than any of these other poor creatures you met before. He showed up one day in strange clothes and what we betook to be an American accent. Says he’s from the future, he does! Says he got ‘ere with a time engine, har, har! Nevermind he can’t tell you nothing ‘bout ‘ow it works. He also claims that in his future life he was some sort of an expert on the mad, isn’t that rich? Takes one to know one, eh, is that it, Mr. Bingo? Always pestering Dr. Poppit for an audience, he is, says he has new, untried techniques for curing the incurables, he does!”

“And what does Dr. Poppit say about his ravings?” asked Mrs. Amanita.

“What else? He’s mad, of course. Per’aps he knows a thing or two about animal magnetism, but nothing else. Hey, Mr. Bingo, why don’t you tell them what else you are? You’ll love this,” he whispered. When Mr. Bingo did not move, he encouraged several of the party to poke him with their sticks. When that proved incapable of generating a response, they threw oats at him.

The half-naked, bedraggled figure stirred slightly, but could not do more than sit up with difficulty from his straw pile, as his hands and legs were bound to the concrete floor in thick, cast-iron manacles. Bits of straw wafted lazily from his beard and long hair, which flowed amply past his neck and over his chest. He looked to be a very old man with wild eyes. His filthy fingers with blackened nails scraped as many of the oats as they could find on the floor and brought them to his mouth to be devoured ravenously.

“Tell them, Mr. Bingo,” Pigg said again. “Tell them what you are.”

He mumbled something too low and indistinct for the group to hear. He appeared so overcome with weariness he could barely hold his head up. Mr. Pigg poked him with the stick again, this time in the face. With greased-lightning reflexes, the inmate snatched the stick, pulled it toward him and snapped it in two. The crowd gasped at this violent display. A low, deep growl of a voice emerged from within the emaciated form. “Do that again and I’ll unfriend you on Facebook! That was not patient-centered care. It was abuse and neglect! Do it again and I’ll send write you the worst damned Yelp review you’ve ever seen!”

Mr. Pigg fell down laughing. “There he goes with his ‘yelp reviews.’ Isn’t that the sound a cur makes when he don’t get his bone, Mr. Bingo? The way you talk it must be worse than the Tower o’London! I daresay!”

“It hasn’t been created yet, but when it is, I’ll see you rot.”

“Ohhhhhhh, from the future is it? Yes? I see, well unless you plan on making us both immortal I’m afraid neither of us will live to see it. And your time will be getting short here indeed, I reckon. Can you good people believe old Mr. Bingo’s already been enjoying our company for over two score years now? Here, good people, now watch this.” Pigg opened Bingo’s door and held out a bag of oats toward him on the end of a stick, to which he stuck his whole face in a devoured immediately. Mrs. Amanita shook her head ruefully, but said nothing. “What manners! Do you always eat like a horse?”

“I’m not a horse. I’m a centaur!”

“I only see two legs and two arms,” said Agaric. “You’re a liar!” He stepped into the cell and proceeded to wallop Mr. Bingo with the switch until Mrs. Amanita intervened.

“I can’t help it. My hind legs are invisible!” Bingo yelled with an anguished roar. “When I went through the time portal I was riding a horse. Our parts got fused and now I’m a centaur, but you can’t see my horse half because it’s linked to me in another dimension.”

“You’re to never, ever treat another soul like that again,” Mrs. Amanita whispered as she pulled Agaric’s ears, “or so help me I will take you out of the world that I brought you in.”

“But mother, he’s a liar!”

“What do you know of it, son? Did he not say his legs were invisible? Some things in this world cannot be seen.” She gave the boy a final, stern look than released him.

As Mr. Pigg closed the door and locked Bingo’s forlorn cell, the tour party laughed and offered an ovation. Mr. Pigg bowed and accepted their laurels. Indeed, their entertainments by the inmates had exceeded all expectations. It was a fine Christmas for all. As the party were led away, Galerina peeked inside Bingo’s cell. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Bingo,” she whispered. “I hope Father Christmas gives you back your horse legs.”

Upon the conclusion of the tour, Pigg and several other handlers herded all of the inmates from their cells to a large hall, prodding them with sticks and curses until they formed a motley crew of three ranks. Once the caretakers had them all chained together and their shackles secured to the floor, they were ordered to place rings of mistletoe atop their heads—all but Mrs. Plumper the cow woman, for fear she might consume it. “Silent Night, you animals!” yelled Pigg, and after several croaks, the inmates began to churn out Silent Night in several different keys at once, in a cacophony of moaning. All but his Lordship, Mr. Tuttle, seemed unsatisfied. “Indeed, this is my song!” he said with a wink toward the audience. “I’m the Son of Man.”

“Shut your mouth, Mr. Tuttle! Away In A Manger, you fiends! Put your hearts into it, if you have any!” When the offkey moaning continued, Mr. Pigg yelled, “Where is your Christmas spirit, damn you!” He commenced to furiously switch the inmates at the side of the throng. A more pathetic assemblage there could not have been. As the group swayed asymmetrically and arhythmically, with eyes downcast, moans and drool dribbling from their mouths as their chains creaked and their feet shuffled on the floor, Mr. Pigg stood back a minute and beamed to himself. He turned to his tour group. “Indeed, the Bedlam Idiots Christmas Show is no St. Mary’s Boys’ Choir, but mark me, if you beat them soundly enough, they’ll sing like angels!”

After the conclusion of the inmates’ chorale performance, they were herded back to their lonely cells and the tour party made their way toward the exit glowing with the merriment and frivolity that their visit had endowed them with. As they exited Bedlam, Agaric noticed a dull, blue light emanating from a mysterious room down a side corridor. Anticipating his mother’s apprehension and recalling the ire he had already stirred, the young lad carefully detached himself from the group and scampered on cat feet toward the room, being sure to keep to the shadows—of which there were many in this dark place, at this time of year, and as the church bells outside tolled for eventide. As the boy approached one of the many iron doors he had seen throughout the institution, he stood on tip toes to peer through the keyhole. What he caught a fleeting glimpse of, seemed not of this world.

A strange figure with humanoid appearance sat enthroned on a dais in the middle of the chamber. It had a head like a massive tea kettle, arms and back clad in iron armor. It looked vaguely like a coat of mail, but far more bulky, streamlined and imposing. A low, churning noise came from inside the room, seeming to emanate from inside the armor itself. It made the whooshing of a coal-fired furnace and also the ticking of a clock, as though gears of some engine ground away on each other in fretful cycles. Small jets of pressurized steam or smoke breached from holes on the sides of the head and shoulder plates at regular intervals. The thing waited expectantly, throwing off an aura of undulating blue light that cast monstrous shadows over the otherworldly and otherwise empty cell.

Just then the boy, whose eyes were big as wagon wheels, lost his purchase and beaned his noggin on the door with a thundering clang. He looked up and noticed a sign over the door that read: “Dangerous Experiment In Progress. Move Along.” But because Agaric couldn’t read well, and because he wouldn’t have changed his course even if he could, he lost no time at all in pressing himself to the keyhole once more. What he saw made him leap back and cover his mouth with a gasp. The tea-pot-headed armored body had remained motionless, but turned its head all the way around. A pair of blue lights pulsed from what may have been the eyes of a demon. A muffled, inhuman voice lacking in intonation projected toward the door.

“Excalibur ready. What is your command?” The boy turned to flee, and as he did so, he was caught by the scruff by an irate Mr. Pigg.

“You naughty little cur!” their guide seethed. “How dare you stray from the tour! Why, if you didn’t come from a good home, I’d flay your hide meself!” With that, he planted a few well-placed cuffs to the back of Agaric’s head and began to drag him back to his worried mother. Even under this duress, the boy could not completely stifle his wonderment at what he had seen. More than anything, he needed some context for the inevitable tale he would tell his mates, something to lend it credibility.

“Mr. Pigg, wait! Mr. Pigg, please sir, what was that thing? Please tell me. I promise I’ll tell not a soul.”

Pigg stopped for a moment and grabbed his chin. “Oh no, ye won’t tell a soul, because ye saw nothing, nothing that was intended for prying little eyes anyway. And if ye do tell ... well, old Mr. Bingo hasn’t had a cellmate in years and I’m sure he’d be all too happy to have the pleasure of your company, especially after the merciful corrections you visited on him tonight.” The boy said nothing further, but let out a whimper and ran to his mother. Mr. Pigg bade them all good night before retiring to his quarters to count his tarnished coins and whet his lips with cheap gin and Mrs. Right-A-Way’s Tincture of Opium Cure-All.

In the next installment of Bingo In Bedlam the laws of man and nature will be flaunted with wanton abandon! The souls of men will hang precariously in the balance! Tea will be harvested ... in England? Care of the mad will be taken over by something cold ... and inhuman. Mad schemes will be sown—not by the mad themselves, but by their keepers!