The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin Page B

Rothko.
    And then Will told Tim about the foul-smelling Victorian robot with the horrible black eyes that had killed the other William Starlings and had tried to kill the one who was presently sitting talking to Tim, who was a different Will to the Will that had gone into the toilet on the tram, but was really the same one.
    Which confused Tim somewhat. Although Tim did say that he was reminded of a certain classic twentieth-century Hollywood movie, where the robot was from the future.
    “But this one came from the past,” Will explained. “To stop me from altering the future, which would have, in turn, altered the past. Which, in fact, it did.”
    Which got Tim confused once again.
    And then Will told him about exactly what had happened after Tim had given him the Retro on the Friday of the following week. Which really got Tim confused.
    But the beer was
so
good.
    And Will told his tale well.
    And as with all well-told tales, this one was not told in the first person.
    And it went something, in fact altogether, like this.

9
    The plastic phial lay on the tabletop, empty.
    Will sat rigidly, staring into space. His eyes were glazed, the pupils dilated. His face was an eerie grey and his lips an unnatural blue.
    Tim reached cautiously forward and touched his hand to Will’s neck, feeling for the pulse of the jugular.
    There was no pulse.
    Will Starling was dead.
    Will’s eyes suddenly opened and so too did his mouth.
    “Through a veil of cucumber I viewed the errant bicycle,” said Will.
    “Pardon me?” said Tim, in some surprise.
    “The spotty youth of time dwells upon the doorknob of pasta,” said Will.
    “Again I confess to bafflement,” said Tim. “But rejoice, nevertheless, that you have not popped your clogs.”
    Will said nothing more for a moment, but then his opened eyes grew wide.
    And then Will said, “Run for your life.”
    “My what?” asked Tim. “My life?”
    “Run,” cried Will and he leapt from his seat, overturning the table and wastefully spilling the drinks that Tim had purchased.
    “You have spilled the drinks,” said Tim, stepping back to avoid the falling table and the glasses. “By Our Lady of the Flatpack, you have taken the Retro, haven’t you, Will?”
    “I know all.” Will was up and about and now on the move. “I know the past and the near future too. We must run quickly, and now.”
    A crowd was beginning to form. Detached from the general crowd, it encircled Will and Tim and the now fallen table. It was a crowd of onlookers, as crowds so often are, a crowd which had “become interested”.
    “Everybody run!” bawled Will. “Big trouble coming. Everybody run.” And he made to push into the crowd, to reinforce his words, as it were, with appropriate and demonstrative actions.
    The crowd, however, yielded not.
    A lady in a straw hat said. “There you have it, the youth of today, brains broiled on seedy substances. It was never so in my day.”
    “Yes it was, too,” said a chap in a J-cloth bandana. “In your day it was all eating frogs up flagpoles and savouring the smells of Sarah.”
    “Let me through,” cried Will, buffeting against the burly belly of an interested onlooker. “It’s on its way. It will kill you all.”
    “Please make way,” said Tim. “My friend is somewhat drunk; he’s liable to project his supper onto a number of you, simultaneously.”
    At this, the owner of the burly belly that Will was presently drumming upon made an attempt to step back, but this attempt was without success as further ranks of interested onlookers now penned him in.
    “Run!” shouted Will. “And those who can’t run, waddle.”
    “And there,” declared the lady straw hat, “you bear witness to the perils of under-eating. Delirium. Under-eaters are so ungross, aren’t they?”
    “I’ll agree with
that
,” said the chap in the J-cloth bandana, a chap of considerable girth. “You may be a dotty old loon, but your finger is on the return key of truth upon