The Cuckoo's Clock

By S P Mount

A 20th century aristocrat deserter runs psychological rings around a group of psychiatrists gathered to assess the result of his lobotomy-the first ever conducted in wartime Britain–as well to get him to finally admit to a series of heinous crimes involving the crude hybridization of man and beast. But, the patient is not at all what they expected.

Wholly demented prior to, not one, but two, otherwise botched operations, his silver-tongued intelligence, in between claiming to be trapped in his current existence by way of a cosmic anomaly, edges precariously close to disclosing both malpractice and an illicit intimate relationship with the operating surgeon who betrayed him. With authorities closing in and for fear of being considered complicit, the surgeon revealed his lifelong lover's hiding place as being on a remote Scottish isle.
Insisting he was created from pure energy by a future version of humankind, while making references to the 21st century, the patient will only admit to similar atrocities documented in the 18th, deftly denying any involvement with those occurred in his current lifetime.

Regardless of the patient's clever upper crust wit winning the day, he is still deemed loopy as a hula-hoop. Otherwise affable and astoundingly astute, though, the result of his operation can only be considered a groundbreaking success in the field of neurosurgery.

As a result, patient and doctor embark upon a tour entailing a series of medical conferences throughout England as they head towards the isle, turned military asylum, where he will live out his days. En-route, the worst storm in memory affords an opportunity for escape and the ultimate revenge as the roles of patient and doctor are reversed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S P Mount
• Release date: Jan 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370458851

S P Mount

Originally from Scotland, S P Mount travelled the far-flung corners of the world through a career in tourism before settling in Canada where he lives with his rescue dog 'Quentin'–the senior party of the small business they own together. S P considers himself 'against the grain'–a disposition that bemuses lifelong friends. While some of the darker aspects of his writing often arise to surprise even him, he usually roots for the underdog and has a penchant for trying to write the bad guy likeable. He has an innate aversion to clichés such as apple pie that tastes 'just like granny used to make'. S P has studied the art of writing for many years and achieved his creative writing qualifications in British Columbia. he is published in numerous anthologies. "I might have 'multiple personality disorder', but still, I know 'we' only ever need a table for one."

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The Cuckoo’s Clock

S P Mount

Edited by Sam Walker

eBook Edition

Copyright 2017 S P Mount

Table of Contents

Prologue

The Office

The Interview

The Tour

The Cottage

The False Identity

The Sumo Wrestler

Prologue

Four of the country’s esteemed psychiatrists had gathered in Edward’s office to personally assess what his recently published medical paper proposed was a rejuvenated brain. A wretched mind that most miraculously escaped the desolation of the mere subsistence wartime had succumbed it to. A human consciousness, he claimed, with no more comprehension of the world around it than a maggot worming its merry way inside an apple. But then, Edward always did have a flair for the dramatic. It's one of the reasons I love yet absolutely loathe him.

Simply put, the point of the exercise was to ascertain if a recent medical advancement migrated to Great Britain from America proved it were possible to overhaul the mind of a raving lunatic–as Edward's paper suggested it did. But if I, the first to undergo the highly controversial lobotomy procedure, were anything to go by, at the end of our little gathering, the matter would, rather appropriately, remain somewhat mired within a grey area. You see . . . I did not wish to demonstrate if the answer was either yes or no. Where was the fun in that?

The point of the confab was twofold, though. There was also great anticipation that the loony might at least be sufficiently compos mentis to admit to a series of macabre surgical experiments conducted on a tiny Scottish isle no more than a craggy rock. Mutilations, which entailed, in the crudest manner imaginable, the barbaric attempt to achieve the hybridisation of man and beast.

Protruding from the Irish Sea like a festered boil on a teenager's face, it is common knowledge that Ailsa Craig is an isle to which I have a life-long connection. But that is all the authorities had to go on; DNA testing would not be readily available for decades. Unless I had admitted it at the time, they could not prove a damn thing. But still, that did not stop them from depositing me in a loony bin like the can of beans they said I was. I suppose, though, with hindsight, they did have due cause, for I was not feeling quite myself at all. I will admit.

The criminalities they sought to condemn me for were remarkably similar to the chilling deeds of a disreputable physician's experimentations documented in the eighteenth century–a truly repugnant era, by the by. I do not recommend it; one becomes knee deep in shite when ambling its crime infested alleyways. Consequently, the authorities branded me as a copyist killer–which is akin to the more modern term: ‘copycat.’ 20th century society was yet to coin the term when it came to criminality. Only 19th century novelists had utilised the word thus far, applying it to a person that copied documents by hand or replicated music. But copyist . . . Copycat . . . Whatever . . . How terribly impertinent to suggest that a man such as I had been, had no personal creativity.

Ah, but the wonderfully namby-pamby 19th century . . . The age of truly inspired invention and style. I think of it as the era in which humankind finally crawled off the rock it had slithered onto at the dawn of time to stand on its own two feet and differentiate itself from the apes. Yes, one of my favourites, a golden age to which, at some point, I must return. Edward will adore it; it is as pretentious as he.

Yes, the crimes committed on Ailsa Craig were unspeakably heinous, but truly deliciously abominably so. Unlike those committed on the isle in the 18th century–a time when human mutilation was slightly more acceptable–the precise details of the victims' fates could not be disclosed to the public for fear of outcry. Ironic, when one considered the appalling carnages of the Second World War that simultaneously excused mutilations under the guise of all being fair in love and war. But that is so-called humanity's definition of rationale. Apparently.

*

Despite the good doctors’ best efforts at convincing me to admit to the murders, though, I did only self-confess to those that had occurred on that ugly little atoll from two centuries before. Notwithstanding the surgical procedure Edward claimed cured my mental instability, much to his increasing humiliation, they immediately concluded that my mind spun purely by the momentum of what was a somewhat lucid, but highly irrational thought process–just as I intended.

Initially, my intent in playing along was purely for the purpose of self-amusement. What else did one have to occupy one's time with within the confines of a loony bin except to count the stripes on the pattern of the wallpaper and the petals of the floral design on the carpets of the communal areas?

I simply wanted to mess with their highly educated minds. Why the hell not? The middle classes, I always find, are so easily agitated. I wished only to give new meaning to the expression ‘psychobabble’–a word that would not be coined for another thirty-five years or so, but which, when I used it to typify their best guess evaluations of me, the doctors must have considered it actual babble.

Regardless of the outcome of the meeting, there was to be no personal benefit to me in addition to that already gained by having my mind restored. If I were suddenly to appear as the so called 'Brain of Britain' . . . If I were to come up with the answer to the age-old question about the meaning of life or explain exactly how the universe was finite–both of which I would have obliged if asked–I would never be permitted any semblance of freedom for as long as I lived. And, as a young man trapped in so called 'time' as a result of cosmic incompetence, that promised to be an awfully long time.

It went without saying I committed those crimes, but had I admitted it with a semblance of presence of mind, the noose, or a firing squad, would undoubtedly await me. Why then, would I have played along with their little game . . . For the sake of Edward’s reputation? Phhh. No, I took immense pleasure in watching him squirm like the maggot he was born to be when I appeared suddenly less lucid than I had been in our private tête-à-têtes leading up to the meeting that would present proof of success with the lobotomy procedure. As I have proved time and again, Edward was nothing without me to thrust him forward in life. My unexpected less than sane disposition that day was a stark reminder of that. But still, he was too dumb to know it.

Due to my temporary incapacity in that era to travel through what humans insist on referring to as time, I had been unable to simply disappear long before I was ever committed to that goddamn insane asylum, and therefore the affront I was ultimately subjected to by the most appalling scrutiny by lesser beings was unavoidable.

Nonetheless, my wildly erratic, albeit surprisingly coherent performance initiated a most unexpected turn of event that ultimately saw the iron studded doors of Bethlem Mental Institution flung wide open. And through those doors, I set out to wreak revenge on the traitor that was Edward–until generosity of spirit and the power invested in me saw our actual spirits intertwined for eternity. But still.

Ah, poor Edward, always dependent upon little old me . . ..

The Office

The easy chairs were plush and eclectic. Their rich earth tones subdued the garish pink and red stripes of the wallpaper I tried hard not to count through habit. They would not be out of place in a bordello. Edward never changed. He always did confuse vulgar for classic–except for his choice in accepting me as a lover, of course. The whore seating was arranged both casually and most carefully for their occupants to better explore and assess the inner machination of a mind–which, apparently, up until recent months, was synonymous with a bowl of mushy peas.

The doctors’ collective stare burned into my face when I hobbled into the room. My walking cane at that time not yet become indulgent habit. I had not healed properly from two of my toes being blown off.

Their eyes narrowed. Their tongues lingered on doubtful lips. One or two gently and arrogantly massaged their forefingers and thumbs as to look contemplative. They reminded me of a pride of lions I once watched as a child from Norfolk House on the outskirts of the Masai Mara. It eyed a gazelle fatally trapped between the outhouses and a half-assed fence intended to keep wildlife out. But in Edward's office, it remained to be seen who exactly the prey was.

Despite the comfortable seating and the doctor's collective brain-smarts, they looked highly uncomfortable and gormless. But then, who could blame them? There was no precedent for the radical cure for psychosis they were entirely sceptical about being factual.

When Edward took away my cane, I partially reclined on an eighteenth-century chaise longue as if I owned it. In fact, I once did. Briefly. I gifted it to him two decades before. It implemented an aspect of taste in the otherwise lowbrow décor of his prestigious Paddington accommodations from after he graduated medical school. Rococo style, late Baroque, I shipped it from Paris. A divine find that only a practised eye could discover.

My legs crossed stylishly, such as a gentleman does without seeming feminine, and I rested my arm along the elegant curve of the backrest. The couch was typically cliché for a shrink’s office, and no doubt brought in to impress aristocracies . . . As well, the odd boy for rent Edward had lured back from the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus with his exquisite looks and his father’s fat pocketbook. But then, Edward always was a pretentious little shit. He aggrandized both his professional and social status at every opportunity. I loved that about him.

He lit me a cigarette, for smoking was the one thing I insisted on re-establishing during our previous private sessions. I smiled graciously by way of acknowledgement, both for it, and to reciprocate the doctors’ nervous smiles. Not the Cuban cigar I was accustomed to, granted, but after one hundred and sixty-eight years, and suddenly finding myself in the company of the working classes, what was a noble person to do?

I was articulately arrogant when I mentioned it was so good of them to come, as if I were their congenial host. For what use is a good education and hailed from the higher echelons of society otherwise? What? Initially, I exhaled steady streams of smoke into their enquiring faces with the absolute confidence of sound of mind. My cigarette, poised elegantly, if not precariously between the very tips of my fingers, gesticulated sentiment that cleverly diverted focus from nails so arduously gnawed they were better suited to a man that faced hanging at dawn. And, apparently, I was lucky not to have been.

Not quite the gentleman I once was, in what humans refer to as ‘the past’, I lacked props to accessorise my obvious and inherent sophistication. There was no filthy martini nearby or even a smoking jacket . . . If not exactly my preferred ensemble of morning dress. Since the operation, though, I was, at the very least, upgraded to jade green pyjamas. One-size-fits-all attire, that, together with the burnt orange garments the absolutely hopeless loonies wore made us appear like an undulating pattern of psychedelic wallpaper when we crawled the stark walls of the nuthouse.

My vocal capacity was no longer heard as gibberish–which I was wholly surprised, when I recovered my sanity, to learn it was. My talent for mimicry, Edward had always so loved, was still intact, and as astoundingly accurate as ever, and I put it into good practise there at the meeting. I spoke to each of the doctors in his voice and accent when they addressed me. Strangely, Edward did not find my talent quite as amusing then.

The usual condescension, by way of a pat on my head or my knee, for being a good boy, was also most pleasantly absent. As well, the need for the placating needles–albeit that lingered in a crystal ashtray near Edward’s leather arm patch, just in case. Humph, arm patches. They accessorised the cliché of the chaise. Where was the fashionable flair Edward used to so ostentatiously don? He ended up becoming what he always said he never would. He succumbed to maturity and societal expectation of how one should look in any given profession. His entire appearance then, was only missing a tobacco pipe and a feigned expression of deep concern.

I recognized that ashtray also. It was my father’s. He once cracked it off the head of ‘Cookie’ in Nairobi for fetching white sugar for his breakfast coffee instead of crystalized Demerara. Ah, such decadence. But the memory of the blood flowing down Cookie's face and the rage he needed to contain made me giggle so hard that it set a precedent for the doctors’ opinion of just how cured I could possibly be. It unsettled their high expectation after my cordial welcome of them, it was the first clue the loony's brain might have been somewhat restored, but I was still as loopy as a hula-hoop.

I did so enjoy watching Edward cringe, though. No such lack of control had ever happened in our tête-à-têtes. He looked tremendously worried. Perhaps he forgot, though, that in my saner years, he always mentioned just how wonderfully unpredictable I was. Considering he aspired to take credit for a paper already published, though, who could blame him for panicking? His entire reputation depended on the successful outcome of the assembly. He need not have worried, though; I would never betray him. Not like he did me. I was only playing with him a little.

The man is a lunatic, Battersby, one of the doctors said, rising from his chair. This is a complete waste of our time.

I agree, another said, looking at Edward accusingly. It is evident the simpleton has no more capacity outside of laughing at a wheel spinning around and around.

But . . . But . . . Edward said shaking his head, his mouth agape.

The learned gentlemen looked at each other quite astounded when I abruptly stopped giggling and engaged them intelligibly once again, albeit without taking a breath. I could see their minds visibly strain lest they offend what was,