An Early Childhood Chapter 21 Part 1

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A TEMPORARY CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCE AND A SHIFT IN POWER (PART 1)

 Continued from the end of Chapter 20. An Early Childhood by Paddy Flanagan is a mock surreal autobiography. Its first chapter is here. It parodies misery memoirs (such as Angela’s Ashes by the late great Frank McCourt), as well as time travel, pop culture, and literature of various kinds.

CHAPTER PROLOGUE: Using The SNOPES FACILITY to suss things out

            However, I digress. Melanie Tiptoft - who had declared her undying love for me - was slowly but shoorly turning into a simiAN other than womAN. Those two words have the same ending, so if I was to apply any logic to the problem at all, at all, I was sure to find a cure. I felt a bit miserable that Floudh Rak had disappeared without curing this posh Englishwoman. He had cast other spells, of course, and it was necessary to find cures for all of them.

            Anyway, I consulted my SNOPES dictionary to see if there was any veracity to her condition – her fondness for bananas, rare in those days in Dublin – certainly showed a veracious appetite!

            With her father Sir Colonel Edward General “Colonel Gold Bollocks” Tiptoft retired, or dead or what have you, being written out of the series to be replaced by Colonel Coote Decker, Earl of Mount Wrath, she had been abandoned by all and was now spending most of her days in a permanent residency as a model of sweatshirts, jerseys and jumpers with the Chimpendale’s Dance and Circus Extrava Gyanzee, which was on the upper floor of the National Theatre of Ireland building.

            The catwalk show was held every evening, and poor Melanie didn’t even have to wear a sweater. She would strut out along the catwalk, swinging her arms with panache, the knuckles dragging along the floor, sniffling with sadness at her chimp like appearance. Once a strikingly beautiful young maiden, she now had the appearance of more a kind of chimpanzee woman. A sight of pity, a sight of pity, a sight of pity, indeedy aye oh!

Photo courtesy of John_X

            There was no word on human beings reverting to a more apelike form in the SNOPES dictionary. But I decided to conduct further research, and using telegram communiqués, I contacted the encyclopaedic people to confirm that such cases did not exist in reality.

            According to the SNOPES “etymologists” and “lexicographers” – the confirming, encyclopaedic people of the dictionary – there had been a case, the SNOPES trial, in Tennwesseeeeeeyuh, as the Anglo-Sassanaigh would’ve pronounced it centuries ago, had the Latins made their discovery a little earlier.

            The case had only taken place a year or two earlier, wherein a man who had become an ape was trying to prove that it was possible. Unfortunately, the gorilla was now unable to converse with the court in English. He had lost his case, and he was thrown out of court when he went smashing through the window, running into the wilds of Nashville like that murderous feckin half-breed, Injun Bleedin’ Joe.

            When I imparted this sad news to Melanie Tiptoft, she tweaked her little nostrils and burst out the window herself, shrieking into the wilds of South County Dublin - to an area known as Tallaght.

AND NOW, CHAPTER21 BEGINS HERE PROPER.