Flash in the Pan

Reginald Wellbeloved was a meticulous, pernickety little man, and so environmentally aware that he used to bottle anal wind, hoping to delay the onset of global warming that little bit longer. By the time he died, alone and unloved, from terminally trapped wind at the age of 89, he had a cellar full of neatly labelled glass jars that mapped out his entire gastronomic life. Which was all very interesting, but ultimately academic when an incredulous and careless house clearer called, appropriately enough, Albert Crapper accidentally dropped one of the largest jars whilst lighting up an environmentally unfriendly cigarette. Then, the whole cellar went up in a sheet of blue flame, blowing the door and Albert into the garden and releasing a lifetime's collection of fermented methane into the atmosphere at one fell swoop. Reginald would have been mortified, if he hadn't been dead already.

As it was, Albert was in one sense lucky to have escaped with his own life, although extremely unfortunate in having been blown, singed and deafened, into the neighbourhood cesspit which had been ruptured in the blast. Understandably, considering the traumatic experience and the nature of his surname, he had subsequently developed a phobic mania about things excremental and devoted his immediate life thereafter to waging a single-handed vendetta against the increasingly disgruntled proprietors of the many Curry-houses in town. "Stop it at source" seemed to have been his cry. When the police firmly warned him off his self-appointed task, Albert had turned his talents in other directions. If he couldn't stop it going in, he thought, he could at least prevent it coming out.

Inspired by his seminal experience in Reginald Wellbeloved's cellar, he had joined an electronics evening class, and developed a thermo-acoustic device, ostensibly for persons with arthritic conditions of the hand which prevented them from striking matches. Albert, however, had other uses for his invention. Secretly installed beneath the rim of toilet pans, his subsequent modifications included a trembler switch, activated by the rip of forcibly released intestinal gases, which lit a flame, igniting the passing flow right back to source and thus temporarily welding the walls of the rectal passage together. Which for Albert, if not for the hapless recipients of the treatment, was a source of immense satisfaction.

Whilst bemused medical practitioners wrote learned papers about the increasing incidence of anal perversion in a small-town environment, Albert went quietly about his business, removing his devices when they had done their work, and installing them elsewhere. And all would have gone well, but for a curious combination of events caused by an obese and flatulent businessman, and a sticky trembler switch. Closeted in the cubicle next door, Albert was amazed to hear the long, drawn-out expulsion of gases that, by rights, should have long since resulted in a flash of flame and a howl of anguish. He was not to have foreseen, of course, the effects that shoddy workmanship and the hermetic seal of overhanging thighs would have upon a pan full of noxious gases: when the trembler switch finally kicked in, both they and the device's fuel tank exploded. Not only was the unfortunate businessman's rectum sealed forever, but his entire alimentary canal was blown out through his ear, and Albert suddenly found himself scrabbling about in the rubble of the demolished cubicle frantically trying to recover the remains of his device before he hurried off into the night, covered in excrement for the second time in his life.

Luckily Albert lived alone and, whilst his neighbours poked about half-heartedly in the drains trying to discover the location of the awful smell, he managed to rid himself of it after three baths and a good scrub with a wire brush. Mystified, but mollified as the smell waned, the neighbours abandoned their search, and Albert disposed of his clothing in the living-room grate.

There the matter might have rested, except that Crapper's latest victim had not fully expired when the Emergency Services arrived. Had Albert lingered a little longer in the rubble - although it was quite understandable that he did not - he would have realised that he and the unfortunate businessman were slightly known to one another; a fact which the businessman tried to put over to the resuscitation team hesitantly attempting the kiss of life. "Cccc ... Cccra ... Cccraa ...Cccrapp ..." he struggled, pointing a podgy finger at the hole in the ruined cubicle wall.

"Yes, I know, old chap" comforted the paramedic, "but don't you worry. We'll soon have you cleaned up." At that the businessman's body gave a final ripple as a last gigantic eructation sought its escape. Finding the way irrevocably blocked, however, it backed up instead against the further waves following and set the dying man's false teeth dancing in their plates: an accompaniment to the death rattle proceeding from his throat. The paramedic shook his head sadly.

"What was that he said?" asked Police Constable Rope, peering over the paramedic's shoulder.

"Dunno. Summink about crap."

"Well, he would wouldn't he?" said the policeman, wrinkling his nose distastefully. "You wouldn't think there could be so much of it in a human body, would you?"

"What was it, d'you think?" asked the paramedic dubiously eyeing the body bag being spread out by his mate and wondering whether a bucket wouldn't be better, "Terrorists?"

"New one on me if it is." replied P.C. Rope, privately thinking they would have been better off flushing the remains down the closet, if anything had remained of the mechanism. "Must be some new crowd altogether. I mean, it comes to something when a bloke can't relieve himself without getting his arse blown off. Is he dead, then?" he continued "only if he is you'd better leave him there. It could be murder."

The paramedic looked at him with a jaundiced expression. "Well it's hardly suicide is it? Not unless he shoved a stick of dynamite up his arse and lit it." He rolled his eyes. "I can think of pleasanter ways to go."

So could Rope. That fate was one which the Chief Superintendent had often wished upon him for the bumbling copper that Rope was. And now this had to happen on his patch. Well at least, he thought, it was a C.I.D. job now. He put in a call to the station to set the wheels in motion and settled down to wait, keeping the crowd of curious onlookers at bay. The paramedics withdrew thankfully. The next shift could sort this lot out.

While he waited, upwind, Rope turned events over in his slothful mind. This was the second explosion on his patch in as many years. The first had been put down to gas, although the bloke who precipitated it maintained it was something else entirely. But then, he shuddered, anyone who had just had an involuntary swim in a cesspit was liable to claim anything.

They'd had to keep the chap in hospital for a fortnight pumping him full of all sorts of stuff. Same chap who had a grudge against the Restaurants in the High Street, if he remembered correctly. Some sort of name that had caused a great deal of mirth at the time, he mused. Pratt? Clapp? Clapper? Crapper ... that was it! Crapper.

Crapper. The name bored patiently away at Rope's monolithic mind.

***

Crapper himself, meanwhile, was boring patiently away at an array of trembler switches spread out on his workbench. More sensitivity and an enhanced flow of fuel were obviously what was required if there was not to be a repetition of the evening's disastrous activity. He hefted the first of his improved models. Twice the fuel capacity, twice the rate of flow ... if a gnat so much as passed a silent one, it would be incinerated in a flash. He worked on into the night.

Rope, on the other hand, clocked off as soon as the C.I.D. boys had done their stuff and the pink and brown blancmange had been scraped or sluiced away. If there was anything to find, forensics would find it. In the meantime Rope needed his sleep. There was something niggling at the back of his mind and he generally found that his thought processes worked much better when he was horizontal and snoring

Crapper, too, slept eventually at just about the same time as Rope arose, but whereas Crapper had something to show for his labours - to whit a sack full of new, improved soft-tissue welders - Rope had nothing but a headache. It was during Rope's morning ablutions that the revelation hit him.

"Crapper!" he shouted at the bathroom door, drawing an expression of disapproval from his wife who was just on her way down to make breakfast. The poor chap last night wasn't just drawing attention to his parlous plight, he was trying to tell them something! Crapper was the connection! In quite what way and why Rope's subconscious hadn't yet worked out but the suggestion was enough to set his policeman's nose twitching. And this was one he was going to keep to himself. That would show the Super who was a pratt or not! He finished his morning ritual and hurried down to breakfast.

A diligent search at the station revealed Crapper's last known address and the current electoral roll confirmed it. The notes of the investigating officer during Crapper's hate campaign against the Indian take-aways were very revealing. As well as now being a suspected Terrorist, friend Crapper seemed to have a fanatical food-fad too - although in that, Rope was inclined to sympathise: he couldn't stand the foreign muck himself - bran, lentils and beans, that was the stuff to keep your blood clean. Food fad or not, however, Crapper's fancy hardly warranted the lurid anatomical detail with which he had apparently showered prospective diners. It fair turned Rope's stomach to read it even now. He squared his shoulders and turned his size twelves in the direction of Crapper's house.

Albert was awake when Rope arrived. He had been woken by the clank of drain covers as his neighbours took up where they had left off the night before just in case they had missed some sort of blockage. Seeing people poking about in the drains and sniffing the air, Rope's direst suspicions were confirmed. Add to the list of felonies ‘serial killer’ and Rope's promotion to the brass was a foregone conclusion. He ordered the neighbours not to disturb the evidence and rapped at Crapper's door.

Albert was way ahead of him. As Rope rapped at the front door, Albert sidled out of the back and legged it away up the street as surreptitiously as pyjamas and carpet slippers would allow. Rope swore as he saw what could only be the suspect disappearing into the distance and put out a call on his radio for assistance. Soon, Albert was in custody of a couple of patrol-car men and Albert's manufactory was in the custody of a curious Rope, who hefted the sack into the station on his back.

Albert was saying nothing in the interview room. Nothing comprehensible at any rate. Rope had stationed himself at the door with his anonymous sack whilst the C.I.D. men tried to make some sense out of what Albert was saying and what Rope had alleged. Already a squad of men were digging up Albert's back garden and a disillusioned probationer had just sluiced himself down after a prolonged search of the sewer.

"Ask him what he makes of these, then?" Rope interjected in his heavy-handed manner, dumping the sack of unidentifiable objects on the table. The effect on Crapper was remarkable. He shot to his feet, clenching his buttocks and backed away in a curious pigeon-toed waddle.

"Ah ha, you see. I knew he was up to something." Rope eased his uniform trousers and ran a hand across his stomach where the morning dose of bran was performing its daily miracle. The C.I.D. men poked around in the sack while Albert darted his eyes around the room wildly. Another ripple rang through Rope's stomach and his neck bulged as he tried to keep the eruption in, but the bran bowl had been somewhat bigger than usual that morning and he was fighting a losing battle which he lost in spectacular fashion.

Jumbled about in the sack, the directional nozzles of the tissue-welders didn't know which way to fire first, so they fired in all directions at once, igniting each other in a chain reaction that soon built up into a bigger explosion than Crapper had caused the previous night. As the table disappeared through the floor and the officers through the walls Crapper, who had recognised the tell-tale signs on Rope's contorted face only too well, dived through the door, which obligingly blew out for him just as he reached it. It was, of course, inevitable that the slopping-out detail from the cells should pass the door just as Crapper flew out, and the broken sobs later issuing from beneath the upturned pail as the dust settled testified to the state of mind of the creature sitting underneath it.

Rope survived, although in the circumstances he never got his promotion, but neither did Albert get convicted, for it is astonishingly difficult to conduct a coherent prosecution against someone when they insist on curling on the floor in faecal position, clasping their nose, and persistently pulling an imaginary toilet chain.

Today Albert is quite happy. His padded cell overlooks the sewage works. And on a warm day it is ambrosia to his soul.