The Quack – Day 2 NaShoStoMo

Here's day two's piece for the NaShoStoMo challenge. And yes, the mozzies did have their revenge last night. That will teach me!

The Quack – Day 2 NaShoStoMo


All Joseph Henry Robert James wanted in life was fame. He thought he had tried everything, but his legal career was even shorter that his singing career. After a year nobody even remembered that there had ever been a song called “Cerebrations on Helen of Troy” and he looked wistfully at the opera houses and theatres where many others were making a name for themselves. He tried politics, but found it quite boring. He tried seafaring but found the ever-moving ocean waves and bug-filled biscuits not much to his liking. He then tried a writing career, but found barely anyone to read what he had written, and none to enjoy it. At last he decided, on the age of 33 summers, to study to be a doctor. He found the lectures quite agreeable and did not faint at the first sight of blood or of a corpse, which was always a good thing. Yet, when he tried to cure his patients as he was taught to, they never got well. Some even died overnight, as if a sudden plague had swept through the hospital wards. It truly seemed as if his fame would rather be infamy. Joseph could not bear to have another patient of his die and decided to rather leave the medical profession as well.

Joseph Henry Robert James left the city and roamed the country side, doing odd jobs, but more often than not causing rot, blight and sudden locust attacks on the farms he visited. He took this also as a sign that he had not yet reached the place he was meant to be. He was sure that his fame lay just over the next horizon and kept to the roads and to himself, following his feet by day and sleeping under the stars by night.

One day he reached a small town and decided to visit the barber for a good shave and clean-up. He got talking with the barber and soon decided to try his hand at being a barber. How difficult could shaving and cutting hair be, after all? He soon found out that there was a skill to it when his first customer died from a severed jugular. Joseph was chased out of another town.

By nightfall he came to an open field wherein stood a lone wagon and two grazing horses. Rain was coming, and Joseph decided to try his luck at finding shelter in the wagon for the night. He knocked on the rickety wagon door and waited for an answer from inside. Sure enough, a faint voice came from within, telling him to open the door. He opened it slowly and peered inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

The inside of the wagon seemed a lot larger than the outside and held not only three large bookcases filled with tomes, but also a rack of drying herbs, some bottles containing strangely coloured liquids and an enormous black, three-legged cauldron under which a greenish fire was lit. Inside the cauldron a brownish liquid was bubbling and steaming. Standing behind the cauldron and stirring it with an over-sized wooden spoon was an elderly man dressed in a swallow-tailed coat and top hat. A thick, grey beard hid most of his lower face. He looked up from the cauldron and grinned.

“Greetings, traveller,” he said in a rasping smoker’s voice. “What brings you to this part of the world?”

“There is rain coming and I was hoping to get shelter for the night.” He gave a wary, lop-sided grin.

“Well, boy, you come as if you were called. My apprentice is still out gathering firewood and I need someone to keep stirring here. I guess you’re as good as anyone. Come, I need to add the secret ingredient before the mixture is overcooked.”

Joseph took the spoon and started stirring the thickening liquid. “What is this?” he asked.

The old man rummaged through the bottles on the shelf, muttering to himself and every now and again touching the brim of his hat as if he wanted to make sure that it’s still there.

“That, my dear boy, is General Proudtoe’s Great and Wonderful Cure-all Medicine Patent 212! You see, as soon as I add this distilled Newt Eyes, that solution you are stirring will turn green and start to smoke with red smoke and then the true magic is released! With Patent 212 I am sure I will rule the world – and cure all illness, of course.” He took a spoon from the recess of one coat pocket and measured out a spoonful of the garish green liquid in the bottle. With a flourish he added the distilled Newt Eyes to the concoction brewing in the cauldron. As Joseph stirred, the liquid began to bubble and boil and turn green. Soon blue smoke rose from the liquid and started to fill the wagon. Joseph wondered if the crazy man would follow him if he started running now.

Before he could make his decision, however, the wagon door opened again and another man stepped inside, a bundle of firewood under one arm. At least, he thought it was someone of the male persuasion, although at first glance he wondered whether it was human. The person walked bowed, with a humped back. He wore a worn suit of brown and his face and hands were spotted a myriad of colours. Even his hair – what few strands he still had left of it – stood on end, giving him a strangely disturbing halo of green, blue and brown. Joseph looked at the bubbling cauldron and back to the man – supposedly the apprentice – who had just entered. The same, strange colours mirrored in both.

“Come and taste, Igor, come and taste!” the old man cried and dished out a spoonful which he held out to the apprentice while Joseph looked on with his mouth agape. With a sigh Igor put aside the wood and took the spoon from the old man. He looked up to the sky to say a quick prayer before swallowing the awful liquid in one gulp. He fell to his knees, clutching at his throat and making gurgling noises before falling to the floor, senseless.

I am going to die a famous man on the gallows, Joseph thought as the old man said: “Well, that’s never happened before.”

The man who only wanted to be famous stared at the man he had just helped kill. He wondered if he could run fast enough to get away from the law. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, but then faster and faster, a change came over the man at his feet. First the multicoloured patches on his skin faded to a ruddy, sun-browned colour and then his hair, too, changed to a rich black. Even the hump on his back seemed to melt away.

“Hallelujah and eureka!” the old man shouted. “I’ve done it at last! No! No! You, young man, you’ve done it! I’ve made 211 batches of that cure-all and they have all either killed my apprentices or have them looking like Igor had done only a few minutes ago! It’s a miracle! You have the touch my boy! We’ll be famous!”