Penny Dreadful.

[wraithwitch]

As promised, a piece of trashy faux-victorian melodrama, as written by my neurons.



In a time and place where women wore floofy dresses and men were dashing... Where a gentleman was within his rights to carry a flintlock, and a lady to faint if she felt the world was becoming unreasonable... Where cities had piles of urchins, puddles, gin and cholera in the East and a collection of toffs having waltzes and garden parties in the West... There was a young lady called Beatrice Ursula Narcissa Naomi Yvaene. But rather sensibly everyone called her Bunny.

Before fortune snook a nose and waggled its fingers rudely in her direction, Bunny had been the daughter of Lord Horatio IronWill and Lady Charming IronWill. She had been one of fifteen siblings to grace the IronWill residence, which was a small palace that took up most of Kensington.

But then - oh woe, alas, alack and fie for shame - Lord Horatio’s old rival from his school days, Sir Fredrick Grovlington, was elected Prime Minister. Sir Fredrick lost no time in writing up a list of all the people he hated most so he could devote his time to making their lives really miserable. The list had ten names on it, but they were all Lord Horatio IronWill, only written in different colours and with poetic epithets such as ‘stupid-pants’ ‘incredibly-dim-brain’ or ‘smells-of-pee’.

Grovlington passed a law proposing a host of new taxes. There was the Kensington Tax, the Horatio Tax, the IronWill Tax, the Fifteen Offspring Tax, and the Being Better Than Me At Everything In School Tax. Not to mention the Because I Said So Tax and the I Really Hate You Tax.

In no time at all, (roughly four and a half days) Lord and Lady IronWill were destitute. They provided for their children as best they could: one son went to the navy, one to the army, one to the clergy and one to live as a mad hermit in a ditch on an old friend’s country estate. The two youngest boys were sent to a work fair and apprenticed to become a garden lawn ornament and a koi pool respectively.

However, as everyone knows, the girls were more problematic.

Three of them were married off to a travelling Mormon, one of them professed a desire to become a hat on the grand stage of Europe and was sent to Paris in a box. The eldest became a governess to Sir Lucifer Screwtape’s children in Suspicious Shadows Hall. (Letters written to friends profess that she was very happy although she strongly disapproved of Sir Lucifer’s turning into a giant centipede when he lost his temper; she felt it encouraged the children to follow suit.) The second eldest donned a false moustache and became a viscount with a wife, two mistresses, six children and a small castle to her name. The thirteenth child became a secret weapon used by the government to bestow ill-fortune upon their enemies. The fourteenth, being overly influenced by laudanum and faerytales, threw herself down a rabbit hole and was never seen again.

And the last, was Bunny. She was exchanged for one boot and a bottle of licorice gin to a mad artist who wanted her to become his muse, paint-mixer and adjustable easel. The mad artist was called Earlsfield, despite being neither an earl nor a field. He was a disreputable chap of the sort mothers warn against. Indeed, things might have gone very differently if Lady IronWill had warned her daughter about the rakes and hoes of London society and the tawdry nature of lower class gardening implements in general; but she had been too busy with her philanthropic work, knitting rice pudding and brewing pots of charity for orphans.

It came as quite the surprise to Bunny then, when on the first night at the artist’s studio in Tadpole Street, he propositioned her and asked whether she might take a glass of gin and allow him to ravish her in the kitchen. She said no. So he asked if he might ravish her in the bedroom instead.

At this, Bunny employed the lessons gleaned from her Great Aunt Mildred, a formidable woman with steel eyes and cast iron hair (she had belonged to a freakshow when she was younger.) Aunt Mildred had warned her of the perils of strong drink and loose men. She had advised her young niece to take the drink, and then take a skillet to the loose male in question.

Bunny did.

The gin infected her mind like a pleasantly warm bath of mild idiocy. And then a hand attempted to infect her skirts. Bunny whipped out her skillet. There was a satisfying clang: Earlsfield the unfortunate and Athanasian artist dropped to the floor, dead. Great Aunt Mildred’s lessons hadn’t covered what to do with louche ex-artists, so using her own initiative, she tipped Earlsfield out of the window and took the gin to bed.

By midnight, Earlsfield had been dragged to a local hovel where he was being used as a novelty draft extinguisher; and Bunny had fallen into a happy gin-addled torpor.

In the morning, Bunny awoke, swept the hang-over goblins into the street, and went to the kitchen to make tea. It was at this point she discovered their was no tea; nor was there any food save for some celery that had kept company too long and too promiscuously with some chalk pastels for its own good. Not fancying the pastels since they were celery tainted, she dined on absinthe and alizarin crimson oil paint instead. After four days spent in this manner she had finished the absinthe and worked through all the oil paints from French ultramarine to yellow ocher to burnt umber, emerald, ivory white and purple lake. She had also had hair streaked with colour, skin of a pallid hue and had become somewhat absinthe-minded, so looked like a drug-addled urban faery.

She resolved to place an advertisement in the newspaper, but having no money she instead took a brush and bottle of Indian ink and graffiti’d newspaper boys and stray dogs. Her message, with some variation and many occupational spelling hazards, ran thus: Young Lady, oil-paint-affiliated, will do Anything for Money; Tadpole Heath, dusk.

At dusk Bunny pulled down one of the curtains and used it as a cloak and then made her way to the edge of the Heath. Since this was not a topic that had been covered by Great Aunt Mildred’s wisdom, Bunny imagined that she would be called upon to do some gardening. Or perhaps teach young ladies deportment. Or maybe pretend to be an Italian Duchess for a dinner party at short notice. She was not entirely prepared for what was asked of her.

The first gentleman she met, carrying a stray dog with her advertisement written on it and looking hopeful, asked her to lie in a bath of custard quoting Ophelia and depressing sonnets. Having a practical mind, Bunny asked if she got to eat the custard. “No,” said the gentleman. “I do that.”

“Read the small print on the dog’s back teeth,” Bunny told him, and walked on amidst shouts and howls.

The second gentleman she encountered had a graffiti’d urchin. He asked her if she might beat him with a plum pudding. Feeling really rather hungry, Bunny asked if she might eat the plum pudding. “No,” said the gentleman, “The butler does that.”

“Look at the small print in the urchin’s trousers,” Bunny instructed, and walked on amidst the shrill yelps of alarm from a young cockney and the shriller call of police whistles.

The third gentleman she encountered stood all alone, and he looked her up and down and asked with lazy assurance, “How much?”

Bunny was about to give him a very short answer but by this point she was half mad with hunger and so asked a question instead. “For what?”

“Everything,” proposed the gentleman.

Relieved she didn’t have to do complicated mathematics on an empty stomach, Bunny said, “A bottle of licorice gin and a boot. The left one,” she added. And then because she had a knack for commerce and was extremely hungry, “And a 4oz steak, a loaf of bread, a pot of tea and a punnet of strawberries.”

“Raspberries,” the gentleman countered.

“Done!” Bunny exclaimed.

The gentleman grabbed her by the wrist and had a very particular gleam in his eye as he pulled her close and opened his coat to reveal a steak, some bread, a teapot and a punnet of raspberries.

Delighted, Bunny was reaching for the steak and had almost grasped it when there was a swish and a swoosh and a double click that sounded suspiciously like two flintlock pistols being primed.

Out of the gloaming came a shadowy figure, armed with two flintlocks and a hat the size of a small island made by QuangleWangleQuee and Co. “Stand and deliver...” the stranger cried.

“Blah-dee-hell,” Bunny ground out with exasperation.

“...your money or your wife!”

The gentleman’s eyes widened and he pushed Bunny towards the black clad figure.

“Life - damnit - I meant life!” the highwayman protested as Bunny barreled into him and the gentleman made his escape. The cloaked thief caught her before she tumbled and couldn’t help but mutter about how he wasn’t up on the current Wives&Chattels’ Exchange Rate.

“A boot and a bottle of licorice gin,” Bunny told him, giving up on the idea of ever eating again.

“Is that what you were paid?”

“It’s what I’m worth.”

What the highwayman had meant to say was, “I beg your pardon?” but what he actually said was, “That’s underestimating your value by at least several cobblers and a street of gin-mills.”

“You what?” was what Bunny had meant to say, but at that point the highwayman pulled her close to him and kissed her with all the fervor and none of the sloppiness of a seventeen year old Valentine.

“Tasty!” was what the highwayman would have said had he not been otherwise occupied.

“What the bloody?! - mmmm...” was what Bunny might have said had she not been equally as occupied.

Had anyone asked, Bunny would not have believed how much might be achieved under the cloak of darkness and under a dark cloak. (Two hands of Rummy, cream tea and scones, and a discussion on the chronic failure of the Ontological Argument.) It was at this point that several days of paint and absinthe coupled together with everything else and Bunny felt distinctly giddy. “Oh bother,” she said, and fainted.

The highwayman’s first thought was, ‘Damn I’m good!’ before sense of the common variety informed him the young lady’s condition had nothing to do with the blinding size of his charisma. “Um,” he said. Followed by, “Oh, balls!” as he heard the sound of police whistles, size twelve boots and a general hue and cry. He shook Bunny quite forcefully. “Where do you live?” he demanded.

“Small frogs,” Bunny mumbled, “urban thoroughfare. Seven - six.”

The highwayman scooped her up into his arms, muttering all the while about the unfairness of cryptic crosswords.

The whistles and thud of boots came closer.

“NOOOONE shall pass!’ the thief screeched from the darkness. “For I am a guardian of the Heath!”

“Oh crap,” said one of the size twelves. “I knew my godmother was right. She kept telling me about this kinda shit.”

“What is it?” asked one of the younger size twelves.

“A balrog?”

“A warp demon.”

“A true fae?”

“I am a Tricky Questioner!” The highwayman retaliated. “Fear me!” he added, helpfully. “You may only pass if you answer my question. What is serendipity?”

“A duck!”

“A ticket and a bit of string!”

“No, that’s string-tickety you idiot.”

“You have failed!”

“Give us another chance!”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Oh all right. Where do I live? I’ll give you a clue: small frogs, urban thoroughfare. Seven - six.”

“Syllabub?”

“Do shut up and let me think...”

The youngest of the size twelves who happened to be a bit of a geek, snapped his fingers. “Tadpole Street!”

“Full marks!” exclaimed the highwayman. “Now, if you could just give me directions...”

Thus it was through guile and the influence of some mad old crone’s faerytales, that the gentleman thief was told by His Majesty’s finest where Bunny lived. But oh woe, alas, alack and fie for shame, the moment of his triumph was also his undoing: he swept his hat off and gave a courtly bow.

“Ere,” said one of the older size twelves. “That’s a restricted hat! You got a license f’that Quangle?”

“Oh bugger,” said the highwayman, and started to run.

“Nick ‘im!” called all the size twelves, pulling out Submission Truncheons, Stop That Pistols and Pointy Knives. Thus began a violent chase and running skirmish that lasted until - at the edge of the heath - the highwayman threw his hat at the policemen and the Quangle engulfed them all like a marquee with the ropes cut.

“Hahaha!” said the black-cloaked cove, followed by, “Ow!” as several Stop That Pistols were fired in his direction. He valiantly ran on until he reached Tadpole Street and saw a garret that was covered in as much absinthe and oil paint as the young lady in his arms. Kicking some inebriated and belligerent looking goblins out of the way, he climbed the stairs, opened the door, deposited the young lady on a conveniently places chaise-longe (which she filled, artistically, wanly and prettily) before sliding to the floor in exhaustion.

Bunny’s eyelids flickered. “Where - which - what - who?” she asked vaguely. Followed by, “Ergh, I’m so hungry right now I could eat celery.”

“Fear not!” said the gentleman rogue brightly. “Look! I have jam!”

Bunny scowled.

“Drippy jam. Lots of warm drippy jam... Oh bugger,” said the highwayman, and fainted.

“Jam!” shouted Bunny, wielding a spoon. And then, “Ergh. Not jam at all. Balls.” She threw the spoon away and tore up some strips of unused canvas. Propriety dictated that she close her eyes and wrap him in bandage from head to foot like an Egyptian mummy, clothes and all. However lacking enough bandage, she had to waver propriety, mutter a swift prayer to the Good Manners and Butterscotch faery, pull all his clothes off, search his body for the source of the not-jam and then bandage the wound. It took her quite some time, as she started the investigation at his toes and the pistol ball had torn through his shoulder.

“Well,” thought Bunny, “that was informative. From the lack of webbing, black mould or rickets I can deduce he is a gentleman of some means, discerning taste, and he doesn’t come from Insmouth. Rocking!” With that she hefted him up onto the chaise-longe so that he might sleep. She unpinned her cloak and re-hung it as a curtain; tried to eat the celery but caved at the last second and ate Sap Green oil paint instead, washed down with turpentine. Feeling far better and distinctly less sane, Bunny blew a raspberry at the Good Manners and Butterscotch faery before laying down next to the highwayman, pulling a blanket over them both and falling asleep.

“Ah!” said the highwayman when he woke up in the morning, pale, sore and entwined with what looked like an underfed mad artist’s muse.

“Ah what?” muttered Bunny a little crossly now that her pillow had moved.

“Ah as in a small cry of surprise or alarm?”

Bunny looked blearily out of the window where a diminutive Cryofsurprise Oralarm (commonly called an ‘Ah’,) was singing and building its nest in the boughs of a nearby tree. “So it is,” Bunny agreed, and laid her head back down.

“Er, I say...”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Isn’t this a little improper?”

Bunny fixed him with a bleary eye which although not as cold-iron as Mildred’s would have made her Great Aunt proud. “We,” she reminded him, “had tea and scones.”

“So we did. But, well, we haven’t been formally introduced!”

“You stole me,” Bunny pointed out.

“I - what - I never - well... maybe a little. But still!”

“Fine,” Bunny sighed. “What’s your name?”

“Tiberius Black,” the highwayman told her with a failed attempt at a horizontal bow.

“No it isn’t,” said Bunny.

Tiberius looked irritated. “It might be.”

“But it isn’t.”

“All right, what’s your name then?”

“Bunny,” said Bunny.

“No it isn’t.” Said the man claiming to be Tiberius.
“Yes it is,” said Bunny, and she hefted her skillet. “And if you’re any sort of dandy highwayman you won’t question the word of a lady.”

Certainly not one armed with a skillet, Tiberius thought. “Where did you pull that skillet from?”

“Trade secret,” Bunny muttered.

“What is your trade?” The highwayman asked, intrigued.

“Oh, I don’t have one. I was a daughter of Lord and Lady IronWill but when they became destitute they sold me to Earsfield - an Athanasian and recently somewhat moribund artist. I’ve inherited his business. Well, his oil paints at least. Although I’ve eaten most of those.” She sought to change the subject. “Why did you become a highwayman?”

Tiberius looked noble and tragic. “I was not born in iniquity, but America, which is similar but less classy. I was the only son of the Emperor of the Confederacy and as such lived a life of splendor and plenty. My clothes were woven of the finest gold thread and we ate stake in cream of diamond sauce for every meal.

But then - oh woe, alas, alack and fie for shame, my father’s third concubine, Lucky, assassinated him with a glass of poisoned gasoline he was accustomed to take in the evening as a nightcap. She sold me and the rest of the household into slavery, changed her name to Liberty and crowned herself queen, thereby inventing irony - which was a great success overseas, so I’m told, although no one got it back at home.

I was given to the questionable care of Captain Freudulant Quack and stowed aboard his ship the Non Compus Mentis: a floating haven for the Irredeemably Perturbed, Loonys and Sundry Misfits. Everyone had to work on the ship, no rest or quarter was given. I was employed as a half-mizzen sail. Exposure to the wind stretched me to my current height - back then I was only four foot two - and exposure to the sun bleached all the hue from my skin and the memories from my mind.

I might have remained a half-mizzen sail all the rest of my wretched life, but whilst sailing across the Mediterranean a freak hurricane blew us into the Channel after that a series of unlikely and strategically placed earthquakes pushed us around Margate and into the Thames Estuary. By the time we reached Gravesend, I was the only sail left. We washed up on the shore at the Isle of Dogs whereupon a gang of rabid urchins descended and dismantled the ship into its component bodies and sold them to Mrs Moony’s Pie Emporium. I alone escaped by dint of pretending to be an old laundry ticket and therefore of no value to them.

In my weakened and exhausted state I managed to convince myself also that I was nothing more than a laundry ticket and so blew about the city in a crumpled lump, accosting laundresses and demanding to know if they’d lost me, or suits demanding to know if they’d cost two and six to clean. I might have remained in this sorry state, amnesiac and in mortal fear of the rain causing my ink to run, but after an indeterminable age (two weeks) hunger drove me to some form of sanity: I may be no more than a cast-off from a washerwoman’s scrapbook, but even paper needs to seek gainful employ so that it might earn and eat. Having no love of the day, my choices for employment were watchman, Thugee cultist, vampire, nightsoil collector or highwayman.”

“So you chose highwayman.”

“No, I chose vampire, but my application was rejected. The old boy was a traditionalist you see, and I just didn’t look good enough in the white dress. I considered cultist next, but I didn’t get on with their Union Rep, so Highwayman it was.”

“I see...” She sounded dubious. “If you were a complete amnesiac,” Bunny quibbled, “how have you remembered all that?”

“Oh, I haven’t. It’s just what an unsavory yet oddly alluring albino gypsy fortune teller recounted to me in Shadwell. She prophesized with gin bottles.”

Bunny snorted. “Anyone can do that. I can do that.”

“Go on then,” Tiberius goaded.

“You just want to get me drunk,” Bunny accused shrewdly.

“I don’t just want to get you drunk,” Tiberius corrected, producing a gin bottle he kept for just such emergencies.

Bunny sat up, drained half of it, swayed for a moment or three and then blinked. “Ask,” she slurred.

“What the valiance of beryllium?”

“T’feh. Pass. Ask me one on History, Art or Philosophy, damnit.”

“All right. What the buggery bollocks is going on?”

Bunny’s eyes grew very wide and held a particular light within them which was best described as the ninth colour of the spectrum. She smiled. “Oh, that’s easy enough. We are both lost souls from broken pasts who have saved each other unintentionally and now are as set as High Tea. Also we both bomb at Rummy and kick arse against Anslem and Descartes.”

Tiberius smiled indulgently. “Well played,” he said. “Although that’s not really prophecy, is it?”

“You asked what the buggery bollocks was going on,” Bunny pointed out, “not what the buggery bollocks would be going on.”

Tiberius Black thought he had a few ideas but it would be quite improper to suggest them. At least, it would be improper if Bunny was the only one who’d drunken a bath-full of gin-flavoured idiocy. He took the bottle from her and drained the rest which effected him rather more than it ought on account of the liberal amounts of blood he had carelessly left lying around the place.

“Tell you what; I’ll give you the Question Unaskedfor.”

“That sounds painful,” Tiberius commented.

“Is a fairytale thing. Proffy-prossif-prophecy,” Bunny managed. “Means you get tol’ the right thing ev’n if y’didn’t ask the right quess’n.”

“Shows what I know,” Tiberius said sagely.

“What d’you know?” Bunny demanded.

“Not a lot, apparently.”

“Right.” She leant down over him so her nose was an inch from his and her hair fell forward and curtained his face. “Tell you ‘nother thing you don’t know.” She smiled. “You stole me. But I stole somethin’ from you.”

“What?” asked Tiberius sounding slightly panicked.

“You’ll work it out,” Bunny said, making herself comfortable against him once more.

“My sense of self esteem?”

“Nope.”

“My beer bottle top collection?”

“No. Starts with an ‘H’.”

“You mad vixen - you stole my head! Give it back!”

“Try again.”

“Please give it back?”

“No, you mentalist, you’ve still got your head.”

“Ah-ha! What about my haberdashery?”

“Have you got a haberdashery?”

“No.”

Tiberius asked several more questions regarding horses, ham, harmonicas, hands, houses, horns, heat, hills and handbags, all to which Bunny murmured a sleepy sounding ‘no’, her hand and cheek resting over his heart.