The Feral Peril by Paul Stafford Page B

steroid-dependent stories like this) with a savage scrap in the school handball championship between two warring siblings, a humiliating radio broadcast that even made me blush, and a dirty doublecross that nearly destroyed an honourable secret society dedicated to the downfall of sisters everywhere.
    Or maybe the doublecross did destroy the secret society; I don’t remember. Least-ways, I don’t care enough to refer to my notes on Tony Bones-Jones right now. Check it yourself in History of Horror , indexed under ‘L’ for Losers. Doubtless you’ll find your own name there, too.
    But enough about you. It was handball season at Horror High, and every student with their brain sewn in the right way had furiously practised and perfected their repertoire of low, bogus shots, devious death-plays, and sweet-and-savage hook-ups. The handball court was marked out in the quadrangle in fresh blood and powdered teeth, and the school maintenance crew had temporarily dismantled the gallows, guillotine and electrified detention cages to set the scene for more painful punishments for the losers.
    Fourteen rounds had already been played. The corpses were piling up, and impatient hearse drivers formed a disorderly queue right around the block.
    Sirius ‘Dead Serious’ Skull and Bill Lickpenny were the championship commentators, relaying the action from a smoke-filled, glassed-in soundproof booth perched on precarious scaffolding far above the handball squall. Loudspeakers mounted around the quadrangle blared their reports, and the sound bounced off the gothic walls of the high school, echoing up and down the long corridors, seeping into the deepest dungeon.
    Turned up too loud, as usual.
    â€˜Sirius Skull here, folks, the “Mouth from the South”, calling the games courtside for you today, and it’s already been a killer competition with some major upsets – dead serious. Am I right, Bill?’
    â€˜You are, Sirius,’ replied Lickpenny. ‘You are, you are, you are. Walk us through the highlights so far.’
    Skull grinned and toked hard on his fat, stinky cigar – not an easy thing to do when you don’t have lips.
    â€˜Bill, as you well know, I’ve never been one to glorify violence, but some of thisviolence has been glorious. The match between Dwain Frankenstein and Claudia Blood-Drip was as savage as anything I’ve ever seen – dead serious – and the untimely death of Govinda Graverobber at the hands of Brandon VanChickenhead was as beautiful a display of blatant, notorious cheating as you’ll ever see in this world or the next.’
    The opinionated chrome dome stopped to take another long draw on his cigar, seemingly oblivious to the dangers smoking posed to a decomposing individual, and the smoke drifted lazily out a jagged hole in the back of his braincase. He shouldn’t smoke. After all he, too, was a sportsman, playing in the annual darts finals, clamping the dart between his teeth while his partner hurled the dartboard at him.
    Sirius Skull was only allowed out of the school one week a year to call the handball championship, get his darts fix and chain-smoke cigars. The rest of the time he spent on Grimsweather’s desk as apencil holder with his eye sockets stuffed full of HB pencils.
    But his eyes were wide open now. ‘I’ve had a vision, Bill. I’m seeing into the future, and I see a very obvious winner. But who do you think will take the crown this year?’
    â€˜Well, a man would be a born fool to predict the outcome of this championship,’ replied Bill Lickpenny. ‘So I predict Tony Bones-Jones. You’ll remember Barnaby Hangdog very nearly mauled Bones-Jones last year and was definitely the dog to muzzle, but since he’s left the school there’s no real challenger left.’
    Sirius grinned as only a skull can. ‘Yes, if Barnaby Hangdog had put as much practice into keeping his private life