Chapter Twelve

‘The quantum multiverse is full of conflicting forces, Anji. White holes, black holes, wormholes. Strong forces, weak forces, gravitic forces. Reality itself is pulled this way and that.’ The Doctor tried unsuccessfully to demonstrate the concept with his fingers. ‘In some places, in some entire universes, it’s stretched too thinly and the fabric becomes weak.’
  Anji was beginning to wish she had never brought up the subject. But, while she and the Doctor were waiting for Angel, taking a stroll towards the outskirts of Zanytown, she had decided to have one more crack at unravelling the mystery of this world. ‘I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that somewhere as… as silly as this place could have evolved naturally.’
  ‘You think it was created?’
  ‘I think there has to be somebody behind it, yes. Don’t you?’
  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Doctor, as if it had never occurred to him before. ‘Human beings have been asking the same question of your own world ever since they evolved the capacity to think. I don’t know the answer to that either.’
  ‘Oh, Doctor!’ groaned Anji. ‘I’m not on some great quest for God.’
  ‘No?’
  ‘I just want an explanation that makes sense. I mean, the fairy tale world I could understand. Well, just about.’ She frowned. ‘You don’t think this planet could be alive too, do you?’
  ‘I don’t think so,’ mused the Doctor, ‘although there are some similarities.’
  ‘You mean the way people’s thoughts can mould their surroundings.’
  ‘Allowing them to create objects out of thin air, yes. Not to mention the fact that they can manipulate momentum, the weather, even gravity. Have you noticed that, by the way? Gravity on this world works by mutual consent. Until you realise and accept that you ought to be falling, you simply don’t fall.’
  ‘You’re getting off the point.’
  ‘Hmm. Of course, now that you come to mention it, it does seem quite a coincidence that we should find two such places in a relatively short span of time.’
  ‘Places where reality is… malleable. That’s what you’re saying, right?’
  ‘Allow me to demonstrate.’ The Doctor stopped suddenly, turned to Anji and spread his arms wide, beaming as if he were showing off a conjuring trick.
  ‘What?’ she said.
  ‘The shirt,’ he prompted.
  ‘Oh, that’s right – it was yellow, wasn’t it?’
  ‘But blue goes much better with this jacket, don’t you think?’
  ‘Not really. But at least I can look at you without shielding my eyes now.’
  ‘Hmm.’
  ‘And you changed it entirely by force of mind? Could I do that?’
  ‘Perhaps,’ said the Doctor, as they walked on, ‘with practise. We’re not attuned to this world as its natives are. Even changing the pigmentation of a small amount of its matter took a great deal of effort – and it was really only possible because I’ve been wearing it close to my chest, so to speak, for so long.’
  ‘OK,’ said Anji, ‘just one more question. What does that mean?’ They had reached the jailhouse, and she stopped and pointed at the sign outside it. ‘“Animation Cells”. As in what they make cartoons with on Earth, right?’
  ‘Ah, yes, I did ask about that… a passing rabbit; charming fellow, although he did persist in asking me what was up, and addressing me as…’
  ‘Doctor!’
  ‘Yes, well. Apparently, the cells are so called because they prevent free movement.’
  Anji scowled. ‘It still sounds like an in-joke to me.’
  ‘I’m sure it’s not,’ said the Doctor.

Jasper felt as if he had been woken from a pleasant dream. He was back in the hotel kitchen, back in his old life, and it was time to let his flights of fancy, his hopes and aspirations, recede into the depths of his subconscious mind. He had been given a final warning, as usual, before the big, fat hotel maid had abandoned her duties to go out on some personal errand, as usual. The usual mound of wet plates teetered on the draining board, and a freshly iced cake stood on the big central table, just asking for trouble. As usual.
  It wasn’t long, of course, before Squeak came out to play.
  Jasper went through the usual motions of combat, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He knew how this would end: as it had always ended, as it would always end. He tried to lose himself in the chase, not to think about the inevitability of his upcoming defeat. But he couldn’t make himself forget, and he couldn’t lift himself out of his crushing depression.
  Ten broken plates, one singed tail, eight lost teeth and the imaginative use of one improvised spatula fulcrum system later, Jasper lay face down in the remains of the big, fat hotel maid’s lovingly prepared dessert, and in the depths of despair.
  He realised then that he couldn’t put up with this for the rest of his life. But he had tried running from it, and that had made things worse.
  Which left him with only one option.

It took Angel a long time to pluck up the courage to enter her home.
  Angel Mansions looked so different to how she remembered it. It was all… crooked, like the rest of Zanytown. But she had never pictured it that way before. In her mind, it had always been perfect. Had she always had to bob her head to avoid hitting it on the slanted lintel of the front doors? Had the grand hallway always had an upward slope?
  By the time she had picked her way up the crooked stairs and along the crooked balcony to her crooked bedroom, however, she was used to filtering her old life through this strange new perspective. The bed next to hers may have had two legs shorter than the others, but it was still the bed in which Mr Weasley had once slept. His bedtime book and glass of water still stood on the short table beside it. She flicked through the book, and wished that she too could be clever enough to decipher the wavy lines that filled its pages.
  Mr Weasley’s dear, sweet face still smiled kindly at her from the painting on the wall. Angel tried to avoid his frozen gaze as she lifted it down from its hook and laid it aside, to expose her wall safe. She didn’t know the combination – but, after a moment’s anxiety, she simply closed her eyes and turned the dial randomly, and the door clicked open. She took a million-dollar note from the top of the pile within and secreted it in her breast pocket.
  She returned the painting and spent another minute trying to straighten it, until she realised that its top and bottom edges weren’t parallel. She sighed and made to turn away, but instead found herself riveted by the image of blissful days trapped within the gilt-edged frame. Herself and her guardian, the perfect happy family. Or so she had thought, then. They had smiled, in those days, and embraced each other warmly. How she missed that.
  Angel Falls was lonely, and she feared that the feeling might never go away. What was it about her that made everyone she loved, those people whom she trusted and needed to look after her, keep leaving her?
  It was her fault that Fitz had been kidnapped. It was she who had dragged him all the way out into the desert, just to indulge her in a pointless, frivolous game. She had been playing with cars, unaware that her hero was suffering so awfully.
  Why had everything had to change? Why did horrid things keep happening? Who would look after a helpless little girlie like her now?
  The weight of questions pushed Angel down onto her bed. She lay on her front and buried her face in her pillow and wept, and wished it would all go away, that she could just wake up and find that her life was all normal and lovely again.

To Anji’s surprise and pleasure, the TARDIS was waiting for them at the Zanytown Hotel. The Doctor had persuaded a pair of pack mules to fetch it in exchange for having their backs scratched last night. She ran to her room, forgetting that its contents ought to have been upset until after she had seen that they were just where she had left them. She changed her blouse, washed and touched up her makeup. She thought about her pullover, but swapped it for a stylish short, black jacket (not that she needed to impress anybody, oh no – and especially not Angel).
  She remembered the banana skin in her pocket and reached for it with some trepidation, to find that it had disappeared. Of course it had: it was created by the inhabitants of the Crooked World and, like everything else, endured for only so long as they could see it. Which reminded her: she grabbed a tablet from the food machine. Ideal though disappearing food was for keeping cream cakes off the hips (and she was certainly tempted to take advantage of that fact, but it might have led to bad habits), it did nothing to combat hunger.
  Finally, she made use of the toilet facilities. She had been starting to worry about the lack thereof in Zanytown: she hated the thought of doing her business in public, especially if there was a chance of being spotted and (ugh!) imitated.
  This brief interlude in familiar surroundings gave her time to think. When she eventually re-emerged into the Doctor’s room, she had put her finger on the one thing that still bugged her.
  He was waiting in front of the TV set, which was turned off. ‘Has he been in touch yet?’ asked Anji. It was the Doctor’s theory that the Weasel would contact them, rather than the Sheriff. Somehow, he would know that it was they who planned to pay Fitz’s ransom.
  ‘Not yet, but he will be. As soon as Angel arrives with the money, I expect.’
  ‘Ah, yes. The money. One million dollars.’
  ‘That’s right.’
  ‘One million dollars,’ she repeated, with added emphasis.
  ‘Your point being?’
  ‘Earth currency, Doctor. Earth animals, Earth customs, Earth landscapes, Earth language.’ 
  He gave her a look of mock disapproval. ‘I thought you said no more questions.’
  ‘No questions, then, just statements. Weak points in reality, I can accept. People able to influence their surroundings with a thought, I can accept too. But this isn’t just a Crooked World, is it? This is a crooked version of one specific world: Earth!’
  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. You’d be surprised how parallel evolution –’
  ‘Doctor!’
  ‘And, of course, a quantum echo of Earth across the dimensional –’
  ‘Or,’ said Anji, folding her arms stubbornly, ‘someone’s been here before us.’
  ‘That’s possible too, yes.’ Reacting to the triumphant expression on her face, the Doctor continued: ‘Although, if they have, then I’m sure they’re long gone.’
  ‘Pity. I’d like to know what sort of demented mind creates somewhere like this. For that matter, what do you suppose it was like before they came here?’
  ‘Who knows?’ said the Doctor. ‘Perhaps nothing more than cosmic dust. This is only a theory, though, Anji. We don’t know anything for sure.’
  ‘I know.’ She liked this theory, though. It made some kind of sense to her.
  ‘Any more “statements” you’d like to run by me?’ asked the Doctor.
  But, before Anji could answer him, she heard footsteps approaching the room from outside – followed, seconds later, by a timid knock at the door.
  The television set turned itself on with an electronic flash.

When Squeak next emerged into the kitchen, Jasper was pretending to be asleep. He faked a snore as the mouse pattered by, and his whiskers twitched as he heard the fridge door opening and closing. Then he leapt to his feet, his instincts telling him to go straight after the thieving rodent, to save as much food as possible. The sound of munching from inside the fridge was almost too much to bear, but Jasper controlled himself. He had a plan – and a wedge of cheese or two was a fair price to pay for ridding himself and his mistress of their nemesis for ever. He was beginning to realise that he could replace the cheese anyway.
  He produced a hammer, a set of nails and two short planks, and swiftly boarded up the entrance to the mouse hole. From nowhere, he found a handful of ball bearings, which he scattered along the floor beside the skirting-board. Then he crept to the sink and found himself a sturdy frying pan. By the time he confronted Squeak, he was fully prepared.
  As Jasper yanked open the fridge door, a light snapped on inside. Squeak reacted quickly, hurling a large joint of ham into the cat’s mouth. As Jasper recoiled, dumbfounded, the mouse leapt onto the floor and scuttled away towards his home. He skidded to a halt, his eyes bugging out, when he saw that he couldn’t get in. He turned and ran along the skirting-board, but careered out of control on the ball bearings. Eagerly, Jasper swooped in with the pan, but Squeak’s frantic pedalling kicked the tiny, silver balls up behind him to ricochet off the cat’s face like machinegun fire.
  As Jasper nursed his pain, Squeak struck out across the kitchen floor in search of cover on the far side. But the cat was close on his heels. They raced round and round the big table; Jasper brought the pan down in a regular rhythm, on every third step, but Squeak leapt out of harm’s way as if prescient during each downward stroke. So, Jasper took three steps but kept his makeshift weapon raised. And Squeak jumped. And then, as he landed, on Jasper’s fourth step, the cat gleefully pounded him into the ground.
  He scraped the mouse’s body off the base of the frying pan. Squeak was already re-inflating, but Jasper had his tail and, much as he wriggled, he couldn’t get free.
  Jasper hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do now. The answer, he supposed, was to do what came naturally.
  He dropped Squeak into his mouth, closed his teeth in front of him like ivory prison bars and swallowed him whole.
  A long silence followed, and Jasper imagined that he ought to have felt happy. Instead, he felt a distant sense of relief, tinged by a more immediate uncertainty and emptiness.
  Then he was doubled over by a sudden pain, and he realised that Squeak was still active inside him, punching his stomach lining. He hiccuped, once, twice – and, on the third time, he blew the mouse up through his throat and was thrown backwards himself by the force of the expulsion. He was angry now, railing at the injustice of a world that wouldn’t let him win just once. He looked around for the loathsome creature that had blighted his life and found it wielding a brush that was far too large for it. Squeak was painting a new hole on the skirting board beside the old one. Jasper dived at him, claws outstretched, too late. Squeak, impossibly, darted into the new, fake hole, leaving Jasper to punch the skirting-board and get black paint on his pain-swollen, throbbing paw.
  Normally, that would have been the end of it. Jasper would have cowered in his basket, defeated, until the big, fat hotel maid came back and punished him for the theft of the cheese. But not this time. He had promised himself that this time would be different and, as his face turned red with fury, he only grew more determined to keep that promise.
  He created the biggest lump hammer he could think of, and a saw, and he set to work on the skirting-board. It was the work of a minute to pull a large section of the wood away, leaving a clumsy, jagged hole that spread up the wall. His bolt-hole exposed, Squeak hid beneath his matchbox bed, but Jasper flicked it over and fastened his paw around his enemy again.
  He carried him to the table, picked up the flour-stained rolling-pin and bludgeoned Squeak’s head into his shoulders. A few seconds later, the head popped back up, so he hit it again. He repeated the process nine, ten, eleven times, but – apart from a lengthening lump on Squeak’s head, a look of increasing annoyance on his face and Jasper’s growing frustration – it had no lasting effect. What would it take to be rid of this vermin?
  He thrust Squeak into the oven and turned it on full, but realised – just in time to catch him again – that he had climbed out through a gas ring at the top. He filled the sink and held the mouse underwater, but Squeak blew up like a balloon until all of Jasper’s strength couldn’t hold him down, at which point he floated to the surface and spat a deluge of water into the cat’s eyes. He thrust a large-bladed kitchen knife through Squeak’s chest, but removed it to find that it had left no wound. Running out of ideas, he went for the cheese grater, but somehow Squeak twisted and curled in his grasp so that the only things he grated were his own toes. He cast his obstinate foe into the microwave, where he steamed and turned a bright shade of cooked red  but, irritatingly, didn’t explode.
  Jasper watched through the glass, and his anger and resentment grew as Squeak revolved on the turntable, sitting with his arms folded and wearing a sullen expression.
  When he could stand it no longer, he popped open the door, seized his tormentor by the tail again, raised him to his mouth and purged himself of a lifetime of helplessness and aggravation by fastening his teeth around Squeak’s throat and tearing his head from his body.
  Blood spurted from Squeak’s neck, and spattered Jasper’s face. The small, round head tasted salty, and felt wet and sticky on his tongue. He spat it out in disgust and it landed on the table, in the squashed remains of the home-made cake. It wore a shocked expression, and Squeak’s dead eyes stared at Jasper accusingly. Slowly, horribly, he began to realise that he had done something unspeakable, that Squeak was never coming back. With a surge of revulsion, he half-placed, half-threw the body next to the head, as if the mouse might somehow knit itself back together. He stared at its remains, paralysed and cold with dread.
  And that was how the big, fat hotel maid found him, still staring, almost an hour later.
  At which point, she started to scream and wouldn’t stop.

‘What I’m s-saying, Sheriff, is that I’m grateful to you for g-giving me this chance, but I’ve realised now that I should g-get back to my farm. Sh-Sheriff?’
  Boss Dogg turned his eyes slowly towards Deputy Bacon, and devoted a small part of his mind to working out what he had just said. He had not been listening, but enough of the words had seeped into his subconscious for him to fill in the blanks. ‘No,’ he said gruffly.
  ‘N-no? G-goldarn it, Sheriff, I only want to do what you t-told me.’
  Dogg sighed. He wasn’t in the mood for this. Something had come to him while he was sitting behind his desk, pondering his problems. A memory. A painful memory. Of something that had happened a long, long time ago.
  ‘That’s why I need you, Deputy. You know what’s right. You can help us get through this.’
  ‘That’s right, Uncle Dogg,’ said Scrapper. ‘He can hold ’em down while we biff ’em!’
  ‘B-b-but… b-b-b-but…’
  ‘You’re staying and that’s all there is to it,’ snapped Dogg. He sounded more impatient than he had meant to, but he needed silence. He needed to think. Forcing himself to calm down, he said: ‘This situation is more serious than you can know. We need all the help we can get.’
  ‘If you s-say so, Sheriff.’
  ‘Now get out of here. I need a few minutes alone.’
  ‘Oh boy, you’re gonna formulate a plan to biff those villains, aren’t you, Uncle Dogg?’
  ‘And take Scrapper with you!’
  ‘Oh, Uncle Dogg!’
  Dogg sighed as his two deputies filed out of the shack. His head was pounding – an unpleasant new sensation – and he rested it in his front paws as his mind filled with memories of the most terrible, tragic day in the history of his world. He had thought, then, that he would never forget that awful time, never be able to keep his dark secret, but somehow he had done both. At least, until now.
  Now, more than ever, he knew that he couldn’t allow this plague of free will to continue – because it had all happened before, and only he remembered.
  Only Boss Dogg knew how it had ended, last time, and that memory brought a cold flush to his forehead and filled his stomach with ice.