Boardania - Tales From The Shed part VI

The Doctor

I've not written anything in this journal for a little while because I've been really ill with some sort of mystery stomach problem.

It started the morning after my last entry. The Welshman brought me my breakfast. I wasn't feeling quite right as soon as I woke up, but as I was talking to him, I started to feel even worse. He was going on about the lack of sheep in the books, despite the two I wrote especially to get rid of him last time. Honestly, I create a whole new character, set in a sheep farming area and even write the book in a simple way, with chapters, just so he'll be able to follow the plot. The whole of the first book had sheep in it. There was even a humorous sheep that attacked a dog, but - oh no! Not enough sheep for Mr. Woolyback. I only got away with not having to put so many in the second one because the other gang members aren't as ovine obsessed as he is.

Anyway, where was I...? Oh yes. After about half an hour of his nonsense, I started to be violently sick all over his boots. My guts were pumping the stuff out everywhere. I've never been so sick. The Welshman just looked at his boots in horrified silence. After about five minutes he came to his senses and hit the newly installed panic alarm. Carrot Boy, the Scotsman and the Irish tramp came rushing into the shed. When they stopped laughing at the Welshman's boots, they helped me up and took me into the house. I was seated at the kitchen table and a washing-up bowl was put in front of me.

I was aware of the conversation that was going on even though my head was in the bowl.

"What the **** did you do to him?"

 

"I didn't do a thing to him boyo. We were tallking about the llack of sheep in his books and he was just about to promise to write one set entirelly in that Wellsh valllley parody that he does, when he just started spewing. He hadn't even started his breakfast. Llook at the state of my boots!"

 

"What are we going to do boss? We can't take him to a doctor, we'll be found out."

 

"Well it's a good thing we've got a ****ing doctor of our own then, isn't it?"

 

"You can't seriously mean her can you? She's crazy!"

 

"She's not crazy! She's just got... erm... different views about medicine than most norm... I mean traditional doctors."

 

"Wellll if she killlls him it willll be on your head."

 

"No! If he dies it will be on all our heads. What's the point of all this if we've got a dead author on our hands?"

 

"Maybe that Swedish writer will work out when we kidnap her at the London meet-up?"

 

"That won't work if he's dead. The idea, if you remember, was to use him to get her name known. Nobody knows about her yet, so there's no money to be made there."

 

"Wellll I could stillll promote her in disguise."

 

"Yes, but you can't write to save your life. I've seen your pathetic attempts a fiction - 'Barbara The Wonder Sheep, indeed!' Pathetic!"

 

"Anyway, the shed will have to be larger if we've got the two of them here."

 

"All this is immaterial. We need to call the doctor now. We'd better play safe and do it from the call-box around the corner."

 

"Oh ****! I think he's filled that bowl up already. Ewww!"

The bowl was gingerly taken away from me and a bucket was put in its place. Carrot boy and Irish tramp went off to make the phone call.

About and hour later, as I was practically passing out from the sickness, the doctor arrived. She was a foreign looking young woman with dark curly hair, a very serious looking face and a manic look in her eyes. She put her hands on her hips at started to tut at me. Then she looked at the gang members and tutted at them. They all looked terrified. They were certainly very quiet. She started to poke me with her index finger in various parts of my abdomen. Every time I cried out with pain, she tutted and shook her head. She shone a torch in my eye and down my throat and tutted some more. She gave the gang members a look that made them all cower and then she took a large syringe out of her bag, filled it from a vial and then, without warning, jabbed it into my leg. I screamed in pain. She just tutted and shook her head. The last thing I heard before I passed out was her telling them to put me in a proper bed.

I don't know how long I was unconscious, but when I woke up I was in a large bed, that seemed to have biscuit crumbs in. The bedspread seemed to be made from, what looked a lot like badger skins. On the wall opposite was a hand painted portrait of the Scouser's favourite badger, Bessie. I'd recognise that horrible animal anywhere. There was a signature on the painting, but from the distance I was away, I could only make out the letter 'Z'. Whoever had painted it had managed to catch the pure evilness of it.

I was feeling very odd. Not sick anymore, but I could hardly move and there seemed to be a drip in my arm. I followed the tube with my eyes and saw it led to a bottle of luminous green liquid. The bottle seemed to be emptying at an alarming rate.

Then the door opened and the doctor entered. She came over and poked me and tutted a lot more.

She spoke:

"Now then. I have done some tests on you and it took a long time to get the results. The pathology lab I sent the samples to put a biohazard label on them and sent them to the nuclear power station. The power station have been asking where the samples came from, because they think that the substance can power their reactors better than plutonium. What have you been eating Mr. Writer?"

I explained that all I had eaten was what the gang gave me. She looked at my doubtfully and tutted.

"Well whatever it was seems to be out of your system now. The gang was hoping to make money out of selling your vomit to the power station, but I put a stop to that. However, the bucket load you did produce is now producing heat and lighting for all the gang members thanks to a simple generator that the owner of the badgers constructed. You will be issued with two buckets in the event that you feel sick again. Now you have wasted enough of my valuable time and I have to get back to experim... I mean treating the poor peasants in my village."

As she was leaving, she turned around and said:

“By the way Mr. Writer, I’ve got a pet pig back at the village that I named after one of your characters.”

For some reason that last statement sent a chill through my body. It reminded me of something I’d once read, although I couldn’t remember what.

I got to stay in the bedroom and was moved back to the shed at the end of the week. I'm still puzzled about what caused the sickness, but I've been feeling strangely enlivened ever since.