Catching a few choice glances, and twitching like a one-man band, Marquise Nomenclature was once again recumbent and drooling on one of the steamer chairs, legs akimbo, her reinforced support undergarments showing. Her Starling days were long gone.
Either Spaz or Flid could be heard in the distance, down by the lake, repeatedly yapping at a spoonbill, only serving to highlight the protracted lull. Thunderheads had accumulated forebodingly to the West, threatening to curtail the day’s revelries.
After a quick costume change, Miss Bintwrangler rematerialized on the bandstand, her thought provoking outfit an indubitable trespass against good taste. With two sharp claps in quick succession, she took instant command of the attention of her guests, and with a flourish she whipped away a silken cloth that had been concealing the culmination of her life's work. Mounted on an array of easels were numerous enlargements, a sample of the more poignant works from her extensive portfolio. Fascinated, the assembled guests pored over the eclectic array before them; many were disturbingly revealing, both of her subjects, and her errant mind.
In the first, Clench was captured emerging from behind the hothouses, removing his shirt as the sun streamed down behind him. The delicate play of golden beams of afternoon light shining through a breathtaking nebula of chronic scurf and skin flakes was something to behold.
In another she had expertly framed Mrs Feltch's oversize panties disappearing up her hungry bottom as she bent over to tie an errant bootlace whilst wearing a skirt inappropriately short for her age.
Their minds boggled at a cavalcade of eye watering vignettes: an extreme close-up of a ravaged old mans face, with puckered mouth, pockmarked cheeks and sunken eyes peering out from what appeared to be a wimple; The slumped, shadowy figure of Constable Coldmeece with what could only be described as ectoplasm escaping from between his slack rubbery lips, filtering through his yellowed, beeswaxed walrus moustache, coiling lazily around his chinstrap before flowing up to and out of an adjacent window; Scrunts, the town's professional hermit, cavorting with Plethora, the local besom maid, a rusty trombone clasped in the spatulate fingers of his free hand. Disturbing image after disturbing image burnt itself onto the mind’s eye. Many of the onlookers would suffer long, wakeful nights, suffused with troubling animosity-filled dreams for months to come.
‘And, if you will follow me to the gazebo, you will find, my pièce de résistance!' Constance paused for dramatic effect.
'Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you.... 'Arse Birds!'’
Lorgnettes, pince-nez, monocles and even in Professor Dreadnought‘s case a pocket telescope, appeared as a hushed awe fell over the guests, and each stretched their necks forward towards the compelling image, in an attempt to augment their view.
They stood, as one, agape, gasps of astonishment and murmurings of approval, were followed finally by a ripple of applause
‘…. How very striking…. a most powerful image…’ marvelled Lord Winnit IX
‘…Is it trickery?…’ from Ettiley Heath.
‘Well, I for one simply love it! That Lady has a true gift…I get an inkling we might have finally found the requisite missing artist for the South Wall in the ‘Fish Mists’ wing of The Smug Kitchen…’ whispered Horatio Flange to Rotunda Asquith, eyebrows raised questioningly.
‘Remarkable!!’ Philomina Gripewater exclaimed, clearly delighted.
‘The others were exquisite, but this, this is an abomination!!’ Cecilia Sprint-Strudel cried, balking into her handkerchief.
Amid the numerous shots taken that singular evening out at Slag Grope Lake, the one that had been most lovingly enlarged, hand mounted and signed, was of course that which had previously demanded Norbury and Constance's attention so avidly. It had been one of numerous images capturing the starlings’ pre-roost assembly as they waxed and waned in the dying light, but its distinction lay in what was either a miraculous coincidence or a terrifying glimpse into the unknown. At the very instant that Constance had clicked the shutter release on her box camera, the sinister feathered creatures had formed themselves into alphabetic runes, the letters a, r, s and e.
How did this astonishing thought transference work; where had this word come from; and above all what could it mean?
Perhaps the wine had gone to his head, but it was suddenly all too much for Bean Weevil. Time had sat idly back and watched the once youthful Reverend's unquestioning faith as it was quietly eroded, crumbling lamentably from within. He no longer felt he could honestly stand by the convictions and beliefs he had so lovingly preached to his devoted flock for so many years, indeed he had been sorely tested over recent days, and found himself wanting. Arse Birds was the final straw. Never before had it all seemed so futile. Existentially lost, he shambled uncertainly away, requisitioning an unattended decanter of warm amber liquid and a discarded glass as he passed the abandoned tables, clumsily sloshing himself a generous measure. As he walked on, quiet tears blurring his vision, he stumbled, losing a carefully polished shoe, but he continued on heedless. If she had been present to bare witness, one feels certain that Miss Bintwrangler would have captured the desolate tableau with her expert eye and of course her ever-present Wetplate Collodion camera
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