The Bott Twins: Birth, Death and Other Jokes

By S D Clark

A grotesque, surreal and darkly comic series of tales about the most terrible family on the planet.

Mrs Bott, an horrendous “unlanced boil” of a woman and Mr Bott, “a balloon of a man”, are very unhappily married.

Into this disaster enter two unwanted arrivals: The Bott Twins.

Born bad? Or driven bad? It doesn’t matter. What you do need to know is that:

“If you ever meet the Bott Twins, run. Run and don’t look back.”

Too few people take this advice and the results are not pretty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398478442

S D Clark

Saffron Daisy Clark is a transgender woman, who worked in education for over twenty years, teaching a bewildering variety of subjects including game design, health and social care, sport, art and drama before stopping to work full time as a writer and performer – setting up a creative production company: Parasol Productions – and complete her transition. Current projects include: a film to be released this year: Room to Roam (script and performance); a film in production: The Princess & The Punk: Talking to No-One (script, performance and direction); and a film in pre-production: The Last Dinner (script and performance). This is her first novel – she hopes to continue the twins’ stories…

Book preview

About the Author

Saffron Daisy Clark is a transgender woman, who worked in education for over twenty years, teaching a bewildering variety of subjects including game design, health and social care, sport, art and drama before stopping to work full time as a writer and performer – setting up a creative production company: Parasol Productions – and complete her transition.

Current projects include: a film to be released this year: Room to Roam (script and performance); a film in production: The Princess & The Punk: Talking to No-One (script, performance and direction); and a film in pre-production: The Last Dinner (script and performance). This is her first novel – she hopes to continue the twins’ stories…

Dedication

To my two brilliant sons:

Zed: who insisted I write these stories down, and

Zeph: who laughed generously in all the right places

Copyright Information ©

S D Clark 2022

The right of S D Clark to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398478435 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398478442 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Emma who bravely provided critical comment, despite knowing how badly I would take it.

Thanks to Liz, Egley, Carl and Linda who gave me the courage to complete the work.

Preface

There are some children that behave well most of the time and there are some that behave badly most of the time. The Bott Twins, however, are different, very different. They don’t behave badly, they behave evilly and not some of the time or most of the time, but all of the time, from the day of their birth to now. These are facts and they are written as a warning. If you ever meet the Bott Twins, run – don’t even say goodbye – run and don’t look back. This is why.

Chapter One

The Bott’s Birth Day

Mrs Bott was screaming.

If you ever heard Mrs Bott scream, you’d never forget it. Imagine the most uncomfortable sound you can think of; your granny farting. One of those, that sounds really wet and lasts much longer than it should. And you’re sitting on her lap. Then multiply that discomfort a hundred thousand times and even then you’d not get it right.

Mrs Bott was in the maternity room and she was screaming, and patients who hadn’t gotten out of bed for months or maybe even years, were getting up now and running out of the hospital. Hands clamped to their ears, tears streaming from their eyes and snot speeding from their noses, they sprinted away from the awful sound. A lot of those patients should have gone to the toilet before they left the building.

Mrs Bott was screaming and the whole hospital was emptying; bladders, bowels, bodies and all.

Mr Bott Awaits His Fate

In a room not far from this howling harridan, a very round man was sitting in a very small chair smoking a very large cigar. This man was Mr Bott and he was smoking and scowling.

He had been told many times not to smoke in the hospital but had pretended to be a variety of things; deaf, stupid, Russian, dead, until those telling him had impotently tutted and tottered away.

He was scowling because it was becoming all too clear that he was going to be a father. He was not happy about this but he knew it was happening by the speed with which people were leaving the building. If Mrs Bott was screaming, something was happening and that something would be a baby and that baby would cost him money, lots of it. For a long, long time. He was not looking forward to that at all. So, he scowled and he smoked and he waited.

Mrs Bott’s Labour

Mrs Bott hated every second of her life at this moment. She was going to be a mother. She was going to have a baby and she didn’t want a baby. She didn’t want anything in her life that would get in the way of her direct route to Mr Bott’s bank account. This stupid baby was going to get in the way. So she screamed, not because she was in pain but because she was incandescently angry. The baby had made her fat and sick. It was going to make her poor. And it was taking its time coming out.

The Bott Surprise

Mrs Bott had been in the hospital for 14 hours and 37 minutes.

She was getting tired of screaming. Three doctors and five nurses had, by this time, been removed from the ward. They had, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but all inevitably lost their minds as Mrs Bott’s screams had drilled unceasingly into their skulls. The fourth doctor and sixth nurse were also beginning to lose the will to live as Mrs Bott continued to howl.

Then suddenly something wonderful happened.

The pain and the noise and the pain that was the noise stopped. For one glorious moment, there was absolute silence. So solid you could almost eat it. This was quickly followed by a series of syncopated thuds as the fleeing patients who could not walk suddenly remembered that they couldn’t and fell to the ground.

Then the crying started. Two notes, out of tune but in curious and disconcerting double harmony.

Congratulations, Mrs Bott. You have twins.

Twins? echoed Mrs Bott and the word raced down the emptied corridors into Mr Bott’s ear through his head, out the other side, turned and smacked into the front of his face. He stood up, sat down and stood up again.

Twins! shrieked Mrs Bott once more. Two of them?

This was a nightmare, a daymare and a mare all rolled into one. The future years of her life spooled in front of her. Or would have done had she possessed any imagination at all. What she did see clearly was that these two things the nurse was trying to place in her resisting arms would be in the way of her perfect life. That would never do. Not now. Never. Never. Never. Never. The hamster wheel of her mind began to spin.

Mr Bott! she shouted. Here! Now!

The Twins Make a Statement

The nurse placed the twins in their plastic cots. They then did a curious thing. They stopped crying and started looking.

People will tell you that babies cannot see anything clearly at first, just dim shapes and that they certainly don’t decide anything until they’ve been alive for quite a long time but these two really looked. Blue eyes were focused and searching.

They looked at the twitching doctor, the quivering nurse, their shouting mother and then they looked at each other.

If anyone had been watching, they would have noticed that something not quite right, certainly not nice, passed between them. A spark of inhumanity fizzed, and as Mr Bott flung himself into the room, responding to his wife’s summons, they quite deliberately threw up.

Twin projectiles of puke gushed impossibly from their mouths. One right into Mrs Bott’s face and down her open throat, and the other into Mr Bott’s, extinguishing his cigar instantly.

I’m not having them! squalled Mrs Bott, baby sick dripping from her face. Do you hear me, Mr Bott, I’m not!

Mr Bott looked at his wet and wilting cigar which now had added carrots.

How can a baby have carrot sick, he thought, and how can they be such good shots?

Then he looked at the vomit-faced Mrs Bott and finally to the twins who lay there and looked right back at him with troubling ocean-blue eyes.

Mr Bott was a very successful businessman, and although he didn’t understand why, he was sure that his success would suffer if people knew that he had thrown his children away. One he might have got away with, but never two. There was nothing for it they’d have to keep them, and he would have to tell Mrs Bott.

A Note on Relationships

It will at this point be useful to point towards some truths about husbands and wives or husbands and husbands or wives and wives, or couples. It should make this tale easier to understand.

I understood at an early age that in any relationship, there is a leader and there is a follower. I discovered this by watching my mum and dad work around each other. It was obvious to me who the leader was and who the follower was. You will probably have an idea yourself when you look at your adults.

In my family’s case, I was certain my mother was the leader. My father, however, was certain he was. He was wrong, of course.

As an annual example, when we went on holidays, my father would plan the schedule. He didn’t call it that; he called it ‘The Doorways to Discovery’. You can see now where I get my fondness for flowery language. These ‘Doorways’ largely involved us all going on long walks to look at places of historical or scenic disinterest. My mother did not enter these doorways with us. She would stay by the nearest pool and sunbathe, drink and sunbathe some more. My father then would have his holiday with us, and my mother would have hers without us. They both got what they wanted. Mum though did far less work. My mother was in charge. That was obvious to us but never to my dad.

Mum was a benign dictator though. Mrs Bott was not. If her plans weren’t followed, there would be pain and the person feeling that pain would be Mr Bott. Mr Bott knew this.

Sometimes you must do a thing even if you know it will hurt you. Mr Bott battled with himself and lost. So, with characteristic reluctance, he told Mrs Bott why they would have to keep the children.

The Twins’ Smile

A lot of shouting followed, all of it from Mrs Bott.

The twins listened intently to everything. Again, people will say that newly born babies