Colvenhoof: Satan's Shorts (Clovenhoof Anthology) Read online

  Sidney jotted down the details and handed the note to Ben.

  “Wow,” said Ben. “That’s great, thanks.”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with today?” asked Sidney.

  Ben thought for a moment.

  “Well, actually, there is something. I was wondering whether it might be more economical to buy some of my enamel paints in larger tins like you have here. It all depends how it’s formulated. It’ll need to mix with my other paints.”

  “Would you like to study the Material Data Sheets?” asked Sidney.

  Ben’s face lit up with a smile so huge that Nerys didn’t have the heart to grumble so she decided to go back to the soft furnishings.

  A loud noise made her look across at a display of power tools. She saw that Clovenhoof had unplugged a computer terminal from a floor socket and had replaced it with the power lead to a large orange device that was bucking in his hands.

  “What’s that?” she yelled.

  “A leaf blower,” said Clovenhoof. “No leaves to try it on though.”

  He stretched the cord behind him to move around the corner. Nerys looked on in horror as a leaflet display exploded into the air, swirling higher, as Clovenhoof wielded the leaf blower with a whoop.

  The power was cut suddenly, and Clovenhoof looked round in disappointment.

  “Can I get you the box for that sir?” asked Sidney, handing Clovenhoof the plug. He was accompanied by Ben, who was studying a sheet of dense text.

  “Yes please,” said Clovenhoof. “Actually, there are some other things here that I need.”

  They moved into the outside area to look at the sheds. Sidney followed behind Clovenhoof with a hand truck piled high with power tool boxes.

  “Jeremy, is that a chainsaw?” asked Nerys, peering at the stack of boxes.

  “Yeah!” said Clovenhoof.

  “I can’t imagine what you’d want with a chainsaw,” said Nerys.

  “Well I don’t know how I’ve gone for this long without one,” said Clovenhoof. “I can imagine all sorts of things I want to do with it.”

  “How are you going to afford all of these things?” asked Nerys.

  “No problem,” said Clovenhoof. “I came into a bit of money the other day.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, I met someone running out of the Post Office. He tried to knock me over, so I thumped him. He hit me over the head with this bag and it got stuck on my horns.”

  Nerys’s eyes flickered upwards. She frowned slightly, then shook her head.

  “And then what?” she asked.

  “He realised it was stuck so he ran off. When I opened it, there was loads of money inside.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh, right.” Nerys shrugged. “I guess we can afford a decent shed then?”

  “Yeah. What about this one?”

  They all stopped near to a large shed with an apex roof.

  “No good,” said Ben. “This one’s not tanalised.”

  “What’s that?” asked Clovenhoof.

  Ben nudged Sidney, grinning gleefully at his new best friend. They leaned together and chorused as one. “It’s treated inside a pressure vessel with a wood preservative called Tanalith.”

  Clovenhoof went misty-eyed for a moment.

  “Tanalith,” he said. “One of the most curvaceous demons you ever laid eyes on.”

  “Eh?” said Sidney.

  “Acid flashback,” said Ben to Sidney. “We think he did a lot of drugs in the sixties.”

  They moved on to the next shed.

  “This one is better,” said Ben.

  Nerys pouted.

  “Why do you want a boring square-shaped shed? Surely if we’re going to sit outside in the sun, we should get one of those?”

  She pointed to the window-fronted summerhouses.

  “People can see inside,” said Ben. That’s not very secure, if we want to store valuable things like collectable militaria.”

  “Well there should be some windows,” said Nerys. “Or where will we put the curtains?”

  “As long as there’s room for a fridge, it doesn’t matter,” said Clovenhoof.

  They eventually agreed on a shed with shutters at the windows, and wheeled their purchases to the checkout. Clovenhoof piled on more tools and a remote controlled tank from a display mysteriously marked as ‘seasonal’ as they went.

  “I’ll just go and get someone to pop you through the checkout,” said Sidney.

  “Can’t you do it?” said Ben, slightly disappointed.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Sidney. “I don’t actually work here.”

  Sidney walked away and they all stared at his back for a long moment.

  “Is that why they call it Do-It-Yourself?” asked Clovenhoof.

  Nerys woke the next morning to the sound of hammering. She looked out of her window and saw Clovenhoof in the garden, tools and timber scattered everywhere. He was stripped to the waist, so she lifted the net curtain to take a discreet peek, but decided not to go down, in case she got roped in to help. She watched as Clovenhoof braced a panel against his shoulder so that he could fasten a bolt through to another piece. He lined it up and got the bolt through, but then realised that the spanner was just out of reach. She wondered whether to go and pass it to him as he wriggled and stretched to reach it. After a few moments, he decided to make a rapid dive for the tool box and leap back before everything fell to the ground, but he was too slow. Panels fell to the floor with a slap and Clovenhoof jumped up and down, swearing viciously.

  Ben came home in the late afternoon and went out into the back garden to take a look at Clovenhoof’s progress.

  He squinted into the low sunlight, trying to see where Clovenhoof was. His foot clinked against an empty Lambrini bottle. He looked down and saw that there were many more. He followed the trail and found Clovenhoof snoozing against a stack of wood. In his hand he gripped a tool of some sort.

  “Jeremy, I think you might want to wake up. If you’re going to sleep, why not go inside?” Ben said, shaking Clovenhoof’s shoulder.

  Clovenhoof woke up with a shout, and sat bolt upright. His grip tightened on the trigger of the nail gun that he had clasped in his hand, firing a nail into Ben’s foot.

  Ben howled and rolled around on the grass. Within seconds, Nerys came scampering across the lawn with her first aid kit and a look of gleeful anticipation.

  “What seems to be the matter?” she said, in a weirdly breathy voice which might have been an attempt to model her speech on that of Marilyn Monroe but, given the circumstances, made her seem like someone auditioning for a role in the porn version of the Florence Nightingale story.

  “The bastard shot me!” Ben squealed.

  She kneeled over Ben and pulled off his shoe, ripping the nail away with and eliciting more screams. His grubby white sock was rapidly becoming a soggy red sock and she dressed his foot quickly, shushing him gently all the while.

  Clovenhoof staggered to his feet.

  “People should know better than to disturb a man at work,” he said. “Very dangerous.”

  “You were asleep!” yelled Ben. “Who sleeps with a loaded nail gun in their hand?”

  “Someone who wants to put a shed together when he wakes up?” Clovenhoof said, peering at Ben’s foot. “That looks nasty. You should get someone to look at it.”

  The looks that Ben and Nerys both gave him were wasted as he lay back down and started to snore gently.

  Nerys had resolved not to look out of the window. Every time she did, she saw some fresh horror, like Clovenhoof chasing Twinkle round the garden with his ridiculous leaf-blower, or wielding his chainsaw like a maniac. She was sure that there were expletives carved into the fence. It was quiet today though.

  “Too quiet,” she said to herself.

  Twinkle, shell-shocked from the leaf-blower experience made sympathetic whimpers at her feet.

  There was no hammering from outside, no
roars of power tools. She decided to go down and have a look and found Clovenhoof by the fence.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Putting this tree back. The man over there got angry that I chopped it down with my new chainsaw.”

  “You can’t put a tree back when it’s cut down,” said Nerys. “You’re sticking branches to the fence. That’s different.”

  “Well I had to use this glue gun, it’s great. The tree will look the same to the guy over there. He’ll never notice the difference.”

  “It’s an apple tree, I think he might.”

  The following day, Nerys was pleased to see that the stinking supermarket trolley had been removed. She locked the door of her car and a curious noise made her walk round to the access path between the houses. She leaped back as a nightmarish sight bowled along the path towards her. It looked for all the world as if someone had motorised a supermarket trolley and fitted a chainsaw to its prow. A miniature shed roof topped the monstrosity.

  “Jeremy!” she yelled. “I know this is your doing! Come and stop this thing immediately!”

  Clovenhoof emerged from the path as the trolley dashed into the road. He held a remote control in his hands, and shrugged at Nerys.

  “I think it’s got a really short range,” he said. “I can’t seem to control it.”

  “I don’t want you to control it,” she yelled. “I want you to stop it!”

  It was careering up the road now, sending cars swerving as it rattled towards them. Clovenhoof ambled after it, admiring its trajectory and wondering why no modern, regularly-used supermarket trolley without a revving chainsaw and wooden roof would ever go in such a straight line. Eventually it went up a ramp onto the pavement and Clovenhoof sped up, thinking he might stop it shortly.

  One of the wheels struck an edging brick and the trolley went into a spin. Clovenhoof stepped back as the chainsaw whipped towards him. It would be rather inconvenient to have his chest ripped open. The trolley sped off in a different direction and he sighed and broke into a trot. It was plummeting down a ramp now and he realised that it was heading directly for the canal. He lunged to grab it but wasn’t quick enough. He sighed in disappointment as it sank below the surface. Nerys caught up a few moments later and watched with him.

  “What possessed you? What on earth was that thing?” she asked.

  “I saw a telly programme with fighting robots,” he said. “That was my first attempt. I don’t think it went too badly, all things considered.”

  “Well at least it’s got some of your more dangerous toys out of the way,” said Nerys, turning for home. Clovenhoof peered into the murky water for a while and decided that he could pull them back out another day. He walked off, idly wondering how big a remote controlled helicopter would have to be to carry a chainsaw.

  On Saturday afternoon, Nerys went to help Ben with his crutches and they ventured outside together to take a look at the shed.

  Clovenhoof dozed in a deckchair so they walked around quietly, checking out his handiwork.

  “You know, this actually looks pretty good,” said Ben, putting a spirit level over the door. “I’ve no idea how, but it all looks solid and square.”

  “Aren’t the windows just crying out for those darling curtains that I bought?” squealed Nerys, clapping her hands together childishly.

  That woke Clovenhoof, who stretched and grinned at them both.

  “Barbecue tonight?” he said.

  “Oh yes!” said Nerys. “I’ll go and buy some things when I’ve put all the soft furnishings in here. I must get extra sausages for Twinkle, he loves a sausage.”

  She frowned.

  “Where is Twinkle?”

  That was when they heard it. A faint yipping sound coming from beneath the shed’s wooden floor.

  The curtains fluttered at the windows as Clovenhoof brought in another armful of bottles to form his bar. Ben was busy setting up a wargaming table, and Nerys relaxed on a sun lounger on the veranda, with Twinkle cowering underneath. Clovenhoof stepped over to the barbecue and turned the sausages with a flourish.

  “Who’s for a hot dog?” he bellowed.

  Twinkle whined from his hiding place.

  “Sometimes I think he understands us, you know,” said Nerys, getting up. “I’m going to light the candles before it gets dark. Some of them are scented. We’ve got Citronella to keep the bugs away, and Jasmine because it’s so, so beautiful.”

  “How long are you going to keep this up?” asked Clovenhoof, rolling his eyes.

  “Keep what up?”

  “The awful pink girly bleating. The frilly aprons.”

  He pointed to the see-through organza curtains.

  “A few weeks ago, you might have worn that as a dress with a bikini underneath, not hung it at the window.”

  He turned back to her.

  “Is that, is that…embroidery?” he spluttered as she put something down on the table.

  “Yes, I’m making a sampler,” said Nerys.

  “Let me see,” said Ben, coming over. “You know that good embroidery should look as neat on the back as it does on the front?”

  They turned over Nerys’s work. It looked like a bird’s nest on the underside.

  “Ben!” sighed Clovenhoof. “I never thought I’d say this, but set up your wargaming table. Let’s get this party started.”

  Two hours later Nerys had made use of all the empty Lambrini bottles, arranging them round the shed with candles on top of them, giving the place the air of a cheap Italian bistro. She lolled on top of a large beaded cushion while Clovenhoof and Ben stared at each other over the wargaming table.

  Clovenhoof had decided to sample the spirits from his newly built bar. He was currently on vodka which he sipped from a brimming tumbler.

  Ben had a small steel ruler in his pocket, and used it to take measurements on the wargaming board. He pulled out of his pocket a pair of reading glasses and put them on to scrutinise the board from every angle.

  “I never saw you wear glasses before,” said Nerys.

  “I only use them for close, precision work,” said Ben.

  While Ben agonised over his troop movements, Clovenhoof found himself drunkenly daydreaming of another battle, long ago. Not a silly battle with lead figures and nothing so mundane or two-dimensional as the skirmish playing out here on this unrealistic scale model field.

  Clovenhoof remembered the broad heavens and the rows and rows of angels pitted against one another. He would have won too if the numbers had been on his side and he had not been blinded by the light. It was a close fought thing but also a crushing defeat followed by that slow, hard fall into the bowels of Hell and the Lake of Fire.

  He smiled to himself. Funny how the Lake, his punishment for insurrection, was the thing he missed most about the Old Place now.

  “I’m done,” said Ben, straightening up.

  Clovenhoof grinned boozily at Ben.

  “Well, the numbers aren’t on your side this time,” he said.

  “Eh?” said Ben.

  “Not talking to you,” said Clovenhoof.

  Thirty seconds later, after screaming incoherent battle cries of revenge and getting a bad attack of the hiccups as a result, Clovenhoof had sent half of his tabletop army to their deaths.

  “Those fallen trees are working against me,” he grumbled.

  “Those are sausages,” said Ben eyeing Clovenhoof over the top of his reading glasses.

  Clovenhoof grabbed all three cold sausages and stuffed them into his mouth at once, making feral chomping noises. He then sat back and belched in triumph. Nerys tutted loudly.

  “So, what’s your next move?” asked Ben.

  Clovenhoof thought deeply. What an expert tactician needed was a brilliant move to swing the battle round in his favour, something truly unexpected…

  He leaped up and grabbed his leaf blower.

  “A hurricane!” he yelled, blasting soldiers from the board as he swung it wildly. He swung it again, to
be sure that the battlefield was completely cleared. Tiny soldiers and salted peanuts were all swept away in a pleasing vortex of chaos.

  “Now I understand the appeal of wargaming!” he yelled. “This is great!”

  The tumbler of vodka was caught in the small-scale gale and tipped over. Tiny droplets of spirit blew across the shed as a mist, ultimately and unavoidably finding the candle flames. A small but impressive fireball lit up the shed, setting light to the highly flammable organza curtains.

  Ben screamed and fled, tripping over Nerys’s lounger and spilling them both into the garden.

  Clovenhoof stayed where he was and stared in admiration at the flames that surrounded him. Finally, he had created a place that really felt like home! His glorious Lake of Fire was lost to him, but this reminded him so powerfully of its beauty that it brought a tear to his eye. He turned around slowly, lost in nostalgia.

  “Jeremeee!”

  Nerys plunged through the door and tugged his arm.

  “Come on you fool, stop messing about!”

  She hauled him out onto the lawn and collapsed, panting and coughing while Clovenhoof gazed at the fire with wistful regret.

  “How drunk would you have to be to just stand there in a burning building?” she spluttered.

  Ben gave her a tentative pat on the back as she coughed again and she glared at him.

  “It was so hot. So beautiful,” said Clovenhoof dreamily.

  “Idiot,” said Nerys, scrambling to her feet. “Wait, can you guys hear sirens? I think the firemen are coming!”

  “So they should be,” said Ben.

  “Young, muscly, athletic firemen.”

  She looked down at her long tiered skirt and buttoned-up blouse. She unbuttoned the top half of her blouse, tousled her hair and ripped off her skirt above the knees. She threw the excess fabric onto the burning shed. As an afterthought she kicked a couple of scatter cushions after it.

  “Now, where did I put my emergency lippy?”

  “Hey Ben,” said Clovenhoof, throwing an arm over his shoulder. “We may have lost our nice new shed, but at least Nerys is back to normal! Everything’s going to be fine.”

  *** The End ***