Hysterical Remedy
By J. Hackson

Perry had combined his carrier/courier firm with his old butcher shop business. The growing tide of office conversions in the town had given rise to sudden dispatch requirements. Whereas the delivery boys were once delivering legs of mutton and bacon trotters, they were now, in the same fail swoop, catering for legal documents and financial reports. It was an easy transition. The bicycles of the young boys needed no adjusting. Everything went into the one basket.
Sometimes a streak of fat would get onto the envelopes, but it was all taken with a pinch of salt by the more than grateful solicitors.

One of the dispatchers was a twenty-one year old, operating in the name of Mild Wynters. Mild had seen both sides of the story. Up until his nineteenth birthday he had labored heavily for a soliciting friend of the family -"Tangent & Co". He landed the position through sheer nepotism. Not to say that he wasn't without a fair degree of intellect and initiative. But eventually the dry, paper life of office collaboration had bullied him too much. He had seen an advertisement for delivery boy with bike, applying in person to the Perry address. The meat job was his; he landed up with a chopper, and the next thing he knew he was loaded up with frozen eyes and other Christian delicacies, aiming the wheel ahead.

He rode fast as always, ripping through the sunny streets, between cars and other dispatchers, over cobbles that broke spokes and into front porches of houses and businesses. He was totally unconcerned with immaculate delivery and, more often than not, was asked to return to place-houses to correct the items delivered.
In one instance, some frozen bull's eyes were delivered to the Greenglade Hospice, who were expecting merely a report from their benefactors. The eyes were taken none the less. It was only the next day when a transplant patient on ward 77 complained of her inability to fully close her eyelids. Upon closer scrutiny it was found the eyes were those of cattle, and not hot-blooded, male Aryan.

Surprisingly the eyes were not physically rejected by the benefactor, although morally the hospice staff were rejecting, objecting, and injecting stimulants into the patient's stomach wall, in order to bloat the said. The hospice staff were trying to achieve an equilibrium between size of eye and belly. As it was, throughout the night the poor girl patient had been begging for food, her eyes swimming, barely held in their sockets, eyeing with the hunger of a fair size Wiltshire.

The sight of a human face, bloated by the presence of a huge coupling of cattlian retina bases was in some ways comic. When the poor girl blinked, her eyelids were stretching to a real limit, and hardly touched down with the upper cheek skin. When the eyelids shot back over the rotund, pink spheres, they made a short cracking sound which reminded one of a bathroom blind. The human lashes became exactly that, and the marks caused by the hurtling hairs were very fine slits, bleeding and painful to the touch.

Other hospital mix-ups gave rise to such unfortunate combinations as "Rhino Man" and "The Boy Duck", although exactly how the rhinoceros horn became produce of "Perry's" the butcher, was never disclosed.

The frontage and window displays of Perry's was a truly glorious sight. In an idyllic centre of town position with no lack of greens outside on the 'vard, creating a fresh family atmosphere for today's consumer.

Mild's younger brother was enrolled in an employment scheme for school leavers. The scheme was compulsory, unless doctor's certificate could be shown. He was training with an advertising firm to be full time photocopier. He was heavily into rock music, and enjoyed going to the Wednesday disco at his local function hall, where he could hear all his favourite groups like Saxon and The Gladiators. Here at the disco, the males, all sporting long hair, striped jeans and training shoes, would dance from the waist up. This dance was called the "Mushroom Hog Genesis". The females would stand by and watch the males. More often than not, Mild had to pick his younger brother up afterwards, and so it was that Mild put together a catalogue guide of his Heavy Metal disco observations. He made a mental count of the times a strand of HM hair stuck in the corner of the mouth belonging to the HOG dancers.

An observation which Mild's brother hotly disputed was that which seemed to indicate that Metal fans were becoming cleaner, more Devil-lyric obsessed and more outwardly "casual" or "normal", especially since chart music's acceptance of blonde Swedish "+keyboard" groups, who wrote catchy choruses. Mild would tease the metal sprog about how undifferent his aspirations really were, and how tirelessly weak the music was.

Perry had increased his turnover by tenfold, what with the dispatch side of the business starting to cough up dividends. With the money he bought a third business, situated in Paris. "The Siamese Kebab House (Keys Cut)", a choice idea based on the success of the dual business combination of "Perry's". Such a revolutionary business maxim did not go unnoticed by others, who were quick to establish their own firms under the new banner of ambiguous shop-share.
A rivals butchers outlet, "Nodder", began to pierce lobes. Most shops in Paris employed all weathers vending machines, selling stamps, gum and contraceptives. Some stores catered for family planning, albeit open-plan. The firm where the young HM Wynters trained, employed ex-amateur chiropodists.

The "Have-a-Go" judo club was sited on the left side of Burr Street. Attendees could park outside or use the area round the back set aside specifically for the "judiasts" (judo enthusiasts). Perry was the instructor of about thirty women students. He applied his business knowledge cleverly to the martial arts. To combat a physical affront he suggested ATTACK. His first words each week, (Wednesday night, seven 'clock), were: "Take the initiative, be the initiate, and attack before you are attacked." The girls hung on every word.

The judo hall was only such by night. During the day it was used as a pre-natal aerobics centre. The foam, plastic sheeted mats doubled-up nicely for round the clock use. Not surprisingly the hall had been the witness to a number of early births, and even just before Xmas, a pair of miscarriages. Nevertheless, as the weeks went by the women progressed on the double-laned dual carriageway to maternity and marital martial artistry. And for some of them, BOTH.

In Paris, a woman in American-tan tights was window shopping, from street-level. Sporadic looting went on each time the shops were darkened by the shadow of her bulky framette. Underneath the stockingwear she had English un-tan legs. Alarms rang in her MASSIVE WAKE-SLIPSTREAM, as Interpol attempted to pounce on the opportunist looters.

Perry sits back and laughs at the way his businesses have bloomed into heavy, drooping flower heads. His success was all the more poignant considering that the initial decision to combine butchering with dispatch was in fact a PUB decision. He knew very well that those types of decision rarely made it to the car. But Perry had the rare quality of being able to capitalise, to solidify, the liquid alcohol ideas, sometimes being able to repeat whole chunks of pub dialogue for use in his own dynamic life. Fleshy ideas, whose skeletons were first constructed during "sessions" on PUB NIGHTS, decorated on the bones, filling out small ideas into weighty possibilities.
The only business to ever fall flat on Perry was one he built up at the age of seven. His "conker exchange" had no takers.

As a youngster, Mild Wynters would be dressed by his mother. She would make him multi-uncoloured jumpers, 'specially striped so that when the young Mild started to dress himself he would be able to line up the stripes as a guide to neat attire.

His shirt was tucked into his elasticated-waist shorts. His long grey summer socks were held up by white garters which left a deep impression on his legs. To prevent confusion in the school P.E. changing rooms, Mild's mother purchased two thousand identity tags, embossed with the name MILD WYNTERS. Each one was to be sewn in the hem of his every garment. This left Mrs. Wynters with 1,997 tags. He fondly remembers lining up the vertical stripes on his jumper with other vertical things, like the hat-stand or the telegraph pole outside the front gate.

Rhino man was always asking questions that he didn't want answering. In conversation he would subconsciously add a question to every sentence he spoke. "Rhetorical" is the word. He lost his first wife to this little habit. She simply grew tired of having to work out in her mind whether he wanted an answer to his latest question. The trouble was, Rhino man would sometimes throw in a couple that he did want answering, so knowing this, his poor lady wife would be at her nerves end waiting for her cue.

His second wife he lost in post-op. The transplant confusion with the rhinoceros horn proved to be the last hair to break the camel's back. What began as a straightforward nasal exploration turned into one of the 20th century's medical catastrophes, ending in an awkward divorce; JUGGS vs. JUGGS. David Fumanchu, the surgeon at the Greenglade hospital, who operated on Mr. Juggs, escaped prosecution after claiming to be out of the operating theatre for a ten minute spell.
Further examination of his timesheet proved this claim correct. Allegations were then dropped when it was discovered that it was a mere youth trainee who, acting without supervision on the face of Mr. Juggs, had mistaken David's handwritten operation plan. Immune from punishment as they embarrassingly are, the youth trainee was sacredly let off and put into the supplies warehouse. Several reversal operations were attempted to no avail. The horn was allowed to go through with a massive hospital apology, but as yet no monetary compensation. The judge's final words on the case were ones of sympathy for youth trainees, who had to unavoidably work without supervision or payment.
"Where was Lady Luck?" he asked.

The End