17

A Nightmare On East 66th Street.

The assassination of a psychotic moustache is not a matter to be taken lightly and they spent the rest of the day planning and the whole of the night in preparation for a midday attack. They had decided that since the moustache was the villain of the piece, they would spare the desk clerk’s life and simply shave the hair from his face. There was a danger that in its last moments the moustache might try to kill the clerk, but that was a risk they were willing to take - mainly because it was a risk that didn’t involve danger to any of them, but only to the clerk. They used the fire escape for their comings and goings, and had got their armoury together by ten the next morning. Each of them had three safety razors - two disposable and one specialist with four blades and pivoting head. Added to that they each had a moustache and beard trimmer, a small pair of scissors, a cutthroat razor and a can of shaving foam. They plumped for foam over gel because the foam would not only be able to stun the moustache momentarily, but would also totally obscure its vision, giving them precious seconds in which to press home their attack.

However, the morning did not run totally smoothly. At about 9am, Sage and Dredly were in the room waiting for Greta to get back from the pharmacy, when they suddenly heard a commotion in the corridor. Sage opened the door an inch or two and he and Dredly peered down the passage. What they saw made them both sick to the pit of their stomachs. It was the desk clerk arguing heatedly with a female guest over a small yucca plant, which she said she had bought that morning to give as a present to a friend of hers in Wyoming. The clerk had grasped the top of the plant firmly, while she held the pot and they struggled for control of the poor shrub, which was clearly terrified and trembling like a... Well, like a leaf, really.
“Let’s do him now!” Sage hissed.
“No wait! We don’t have the shaving foam yet.” Dredly whispered, grasping his shoulder.
“Let’s just shave him dry - teach those whiskers a lesson!”
“No, we need Greta. If we go off half-cocked, we’re not only risking the life of that plant, but maybe even that girl as well. We must...”
But he couldn’t finish his sentence, for with a sudden, gut-wrenching rip, the desk clerk tore the yucca plant out of the pot. Earth was sprayed everywhere and the broken roots of the hapless plant dangled pathetically in the air as the clerk held his grim trophy aloft.
“And I want you out of the room in an hour!” The clerk cried. Then without even a backward glance, he hurried away, carrying the yucca plant to what Sage and Dredly knew would be a slow and grisly end. The woman herself was shaken and stood in the doorway crying. When the clerk had disappeared from sight Sage and Dredly ventured out and offered succour to the woman. They calmed her down and then explained that they were going stop the clerk from harming another plant - although they left out the moustache aspects of the case, as they didn’t want her to think they were even more doolally than the clerk.
“He’s got no right to take away my plant!” The woman sobbed.
“Don’t worry, we’ll bring your yucca back to you.” Said Sage heroically. “Even if he’s drained it of its sap, lopped off all the branches and cut it in half to look at its rings, we’ll bring it back! It doesn’t matter if he’s shaved off all the bark and driven nails into every one of its roots, or covered it in weed killer, or turned it into an amusing novelty hat, we will give you its remains. That is our pledge!”

Unfortunately, this only served to make the woman cry all the more, and as her hysteria heightened, they decided to beat a hasty retreat, glad in the knowledge that they had helped bring a ray of hope into her life. Greta was waiting for them inside the room and they quickly set about preparing for the final attack. They knew that the clerk had regular habits and that at midday every day he liked to go down to the basement to have a quick onion based snack. That was the time they would strike. It would mean taking him on in his own subterranean layer, but that ensured there would be no unwitting bystanders who could be caught in the crossfire. Time dragged in that final hour. Each of them was lost in their own dark thoughts.
Dredly, who had not slept a wink in over twenty years actually felt tired. His recent experiences had drained him physically and emotionally. He felt like an empty shell - a pistachio shell, not a walnut shell... Sort of salty and half cracked open with a green tinge, as opposed to gnarly with a papery layer around the nut - and as he looked at the bare room everything was tinged with grey. This wasn't because of his mood or his tired senses, but because the room itself did have a grey tinge to it... But the experience was pretty unpleasant all the same.
Sage paced the room. He was desperate to get into the fray. For reasons he couldn't quite understand, he found the abuse of houseplants thoroughly unforgivable. He felt burning hatred in his heart, almost as if the plants were his people and he had to defend them. His feelings didn't make sense. He wasn't related to any plants - at least not to his knowledge. It was true that his uncle had medically become a vegetable, but that was because he had spent years as a roadie with Ozzy Osborne. No, there were no chloroplasts in his family and yet he hated that moustache like he had never hated anyone before - except Anthea Turner, but he knew he wasn't alone in that.
Greta sat in the corner sharpening her claws. It was like waiting for a seal to surface through a hole in an ice-sheet, only warmer... And without the howling wind... Or the ice... Or the seal... Otherwise it was identical. She wondered whether they were doing the right thing. She was a hippy and a pacifist and wouldn't harm a living creature - unless they were a seal surfacing through a hole on an ice floe - but now she was preparing to snuff out the life of a proud and distinctly bushy moustache. Was it right? Did she really care? It was a toughy...
“Okay, let’s do it.” Sage said at last.
“Shall we, y’know, synchronise watches?” Greta asked.
“I don’t think there’s really any point in that.” Dredly replied.
“Oh, right...I get it. We’ll all be together anyway.”
“No, it’s ‘cos Sage can’t tell the time.”
“I never have anything to tell it.” Sage admitted.

Before they opened the door, they stopped and looked at one another for a moment in an unreal silence, exchanging glances which told of the trepidation each of them felt at the venture they were about to undertake. But there was more, much more. Sage stood there in the doorway squat and solid, his brows hooded and his jaw set in grim determination, while Greta raised herself up to her full nine feet, slapped her head into the ceiling and went back to stooping.
“This is it, guys!” She said, and then Sage opened the door.
Moving swiftly through the passageway like the elite members of a fly SWAT team, they made the stairs without being seen. They gained the ground floor with the same stealth and Sage, who was acting as vanguard, slowly put his head around the corner to look out into the lobby. He almost instantly withdrew.
“Damn!” He whispered. “He’s still at his desk!”
Dredly looked at his watch. It was four minutes past twelve.
“This can’t be right. He always takes that break at midday on the dot! What’s he doing?”
Sage peered around the corner once more.
“He’s checking somebody into the hotel.”
“What do we do now?” Greta asked. “Do we retreat or what?"
“No, this could work for us.” Dredly hissed. “It might hurry him when he takes his break. He might have to eat his onion too quickly and give himself indigestion - that’s when he’s going to be most vulnerable, that’s when we strike.”
They waited the time out, listened to the clerk interrogating the guest about pot plants and then heard the guest go on his way. Sage looked out. The clerk checked around him, put up the “Back in fifteen minutes” sign, then hurried to the basement door. Precisely thirty two seconds after they heard it close, Dredly gave Sage the signal to go. He scuttled across the lobby and slid down behind the reception desk. A moment later he gave his compatriots the all clear and they scrambled to join him.
“Go!” Dredly said, and Sage made for the basement door. Greta watched the rear. It was her job to hold the reception area at all costs and stop the moustache from making a break from the cellar. She was the perfect lookout, as she shape shifted into an exact copy of the desk clerk, apart from the British Bobby helmet she was wearing. It was her only risk of being discovered, but as long as she could keep up her pretence, no one would tumble the only hole in her disguise and simply assume the helmet was a harmless eccentricity.

Meanwhile, Sage was at the door. He reached into his back pocket and produced a small can of oil, quickly applying some of it onto the hinges of the door. The last thing they needed was to be caught out by a squeaky hinge! He then opened the door with catlike stealth and gently started down the steps. Dredly followed at once. The door swung easily thanks to the oil, but Sage had used too much! There was too much run-off and it pooled on the top step. Dredly's foot hit the gunk and suddenly he was falling forwards. His face buried into Sage’s back. There was momentary darkness, the heady smell of washing powder, then the wall, the ceiling, the first step - Ow! - thundering noise, bruising pain, a whirl of images, rolling, tumbling, Sage’s beard, a final crunch of an awkward landing on the bottom step, then a moment of crystalline silence. Dredly's head was spinning and he became dimly aware of the approaching footsteps. There it was! The moustache high up above them, black and bristling.

Well, that can't be good! Can our heroes escape from the evil clutches of this deranged face furniture? Or will the mental moustache torture them in ways so terrible that the next chapter will soon become the interrogators' handbook at Guantanamo?

Find out in the next somewhat lazily titled chapter...