Weclome, dearest listener, to our annual festive folk horror story, in which feral Girl Guides, the malevolent spawn of Mythosian madness, a chorus of daleks,  plus Cinderella and other misguided pantomime characters make this season what it should be – a complete mess. Yep, we’re back in St Botolph-in-the-Wolds. Where else could we be?

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Cinderella and the Seven Penguins

A Play (Almost)

By Mrs J Whitehead (47), and Adelaide Cleggins (12)

It was almost Christmas in the quaint East Yorkshire village of St Botolph-in-the-Wolds. Old men struggled through the streets with bundles of kindling, keen to pay off grudges by setting fire to their neighbours’ houses. Children danced around the frozen village pond as the ducks tried to reload a Lewis gun, whilst cheery Santas stood outside the shops, weighed down with tins full of foreign coins, buttons and washers. This charming picture was made even more seasonal by the coating of soft white flakes which had settled on much of the village, a result of the recent shortage of anti-dandruff shampoo.

Waiting at the railway station, Sandra watched the armoured train from York disgorge its only two passengers and then speed on, eager to be away before it was spotted by the many Girl Guides who roamed the village. And there was her cousin Mary, wearing his school uniform and with Bottles the lurcher in tow. Sandra gave her cousin a big hug, and stood back to admire his outfit.

“That hemline’s a bit racy, isn’t it?” Sandra eyed Mary’s short pleated skirt.

“It’s all the rage now – and it has its advantages. The college bully has started giving me lunch money.” He smiled. “But my heart still belongs to Fiona Wiggins from Geography.”

“I warned you about signing things after a glass of Old Suzy. And how is dear little Bottles?”

Bottles expressed his usual excitement at being back in St Botolph’s.

“Oh.” She wondered if she had time to change her socks. “The same old problem, then.”

They made their way up to the farmhouse, pausing every so often to let Bottles panic at the strange smells on some of the tussocks of grass. Josias Turvey’s cows had suspended their anarcho-syndicalist protest for the Yule season, and it was once again possible to walk down the main road without stepping in three inches of bovine do-do. Sandra’s mother was up by the farmhouse chimney stack, trying to tape a sheep into position next to Santa’s sleigh.

“She watched one of those American films where they decorate the outside of the house for Christmas,” said Sandra. The aggrieved sheep slid slowly across the roof, followed by an empty bottle of gin. “So, are you excited?”

Mary looked down. “No, it’s the way this skirt hangs–”

“I meant about the pantomime.”

This year’s Christmas panto was the talk of the whole village. Mrs Whitehead, the vicar’s wife, had written it, despite police warnings, and Sandra’s cousin had the starring role. ‘Cinderella and the Seven Penguins’ was reputed to be stirring stuff. The Wolds Tractor Review itself was sending its top literary critic, if he finished changing the spark plugs on his mum’s combine-harvester in time.

“How are your parents, Mary dear?” asked Sandra’s mother, falling off the roof. They picked her out of a horse trough marked ‘MR BUBBLES ONLY’, and dried her off with one of the smaller sheep.

“Fine, thank you. Mummy’s flying reconnaissance over the Norwegian coast for a Belgian Navy black-ops exercise, and Daddy is re-organising his collection of early Venezuelan dirty postcards.”

“How lovely.” Sandra’s mother took a swig of Old Suzy from her hip flask, and passed out.

“Probably concussion,” said Mary.

“Something like that.” Sandra sighed, and led the way into the farmhouse…

<In Whateley Wood, the whip-poor-wills call. Due to their exile in this damp, alien land, their melody resembles a hospital ward full of bronchitic pensioners, but it still has power. Something dark is going to happen – and souls may be in peril. Far below the dyspeptic birds, a nightjack opens two of its eyes, and smiles…>

***

Next day found the cousins at the church hall. It hadn’t been looking for them, but these things happen. Sandra was the prompter and general ‘organiser’ for that night’s opening performance, and was still try to decipher the script. Mrs Whitehead was a keen amateur calligrapher, and her handwritten script had caused some difficulties (only an urgent telegram had stopped the hippotamus being shipped from Chester Zoo). But the cast was there, the costumes were ready, and the afternoon rehearsal was underway on the stage.

Mary, clad in a selection of old dishcloths, knelt by a fake hearth. Behind him stood a selection of the local mixed infants, dressed inexplicably as penguins, and the two Ugly Sisters, played by the dairy farmer Josias Turvey and the village imam, Rashid Syal. In full costume and with faces powdered and rouged, they stretched the word ‘ugly’ into a realm of new and unexpected definitions.

“Oh, Cinderella, how can you ever go to a dance?” boomed the imam, his long black beard poking out from under an extravagant floral bonnet. “Look at the state of you.”

Mr Turvey laughed in his finest theatrical manner, almost losing his blonde wig. “And besides, you have to scrub the cowshed and iron the cat!”

“Author, author!” shouted an elderly man at the back of the hall, loading his shotgun.

Mary waved. “Hello, Mr Linseed Grant.”

Mrs Whitehead, crouched at the piano, gestured the cast to carry on whilst the crumbling recluse was manhandled out of the hall. By the magic of theatre, one of the penguins fell over and another was sick on the plastic pumpkin. On to the stage strode Mrs Tepple, the popular bar-person from the Flayed Bull tavern.

“Why, here’s the printed cow.” Mr Turvey flourished his duck-feather fan. Two small ducks glared at him from the sidelines.

“It’s ‘Here’s the prince now’,” hissed Sandra, who had a better grasp of the handwriting by now.

Mrs Tepple slapped her thigh, causing some surprising ripples further up her superstructure. The Prince’s costume was very tight, and very revealing. “I’m hatching a ball this very evening, and you are all incited. Tight ties and furry slippers, drinks vouchers at the door.”

Sandra let the errors pass, and managed to guide them through the rest of the pantomime with moderate success. The Dalek Chorus, played by sundry Girl Guides, introduced each change of scene in suitably metallic voices, although they were more menacing than Sandra liked. Their inclusion was due to the fact that their leader, Adelaide Cleggins, had suddenly demanded to play Peter Pan. As no one dared say no to Adelaide, a hasty rewrite had been undertaken, one which included Adelaide’s mother being written in as Wicked Stepmother – and the presence of said Dalek Chorus.

“Tinkerbell, I wonder if the Ugly Sisters can fly like me?” said Adelaide, taking aim at the imam’s rear with a heavily booted foot…

“Time for a tea break!” said Mrs Whitehead, hurriedly.

The Guides were distracted with chipped enamel mugs of Brasso and lemonade, leaving everyone else to argue over the script, their roles, and the price of salted butter these days, in another corner of the hall.

“Where is Mr Bubbles, anyway?”asked Mary. “We could do with him to keep an eye on this mess.”

“He’s staying at the vets in Malton.” Sandra stared at one of her mother’s anchovy and apricot jam sandwiches, wondering if it was going to cough again. She too was missing the presence of her slightly psychotic pony, who would have sorted this lot out with a few well-chosen words and a hoof in the belly for troublemakers. “He bit a rambler, and they’re trying to work out what the woman caught from him. She went a funny colour the next day.”

“Is it serious?”

“Depends how many internal organs you actually need. But he’s a good boy, really – he did warn her not to touch that turnip, and she kept leaving gates open.”

Mary contemplated his bare feet. “This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?”

“I imagine so. But you’re jolly impressive as Cinderella, and that’s what matters.”

<There are people gathering, and for many, there must be many. The nightjacks creep and gather within the briars of Whateley Wood. They were diminished by the dreaded Horse-thing that assaulted them some moons ago, but he is not here. And the small ones who smell of metal polish and who trouble the nightjacks constantly are coming out in number, unarmed, away from their protected places. Revenge, says the Black Mother of the Woods, is a dish best served bloody and ripped to pieces…>

***

Tea at the farmhouse was a leisurely feast. The table was piled high with a range of home-made treats, some of which were edible. Even Mary had to agree that the pineapple and marmite upside-down cake was slightly less horrible than it sounded.

“Never tread the boards on an empty stomach,” said Sandra’s mother, retrieving the teapot from one of the many sheep which roamed the kitchen. “I think I’ll put one of those doggy sedatives in Bottles’ bowl. He seems awfully nervous.”

“That’s probably because he’s tasted Mother’s cooking before,” murmured Sandra to her cousin.

Bottles, of course, being both a lurcher and a sensitive soul, was about 1200 words ahead of Sandra’s family, and had already worked out that something horrible was on its way.

“The imam’s very good, isn’t he?” Mary bit carefully at an unlabelled sandwich.

“Mr Syal? He’s super.” Sandra saw something move under a slice of bread, and hastily covered it with a napkin. “He’s always pleasant and helpful – did you know, he doesn’t even mind Methodists? In principle, anyway.”

The others winced, but said nothing. The M word was not one lightly used at the table. After tea, it was time to check the costumes – Sandra’s mother was wardrobe mistress – and drive everything down to the church hall. With only an hour to go, Daleks were taunting penguins, Josias Turvey and the imam were deep in an argument about transubstantiation and the Arian Heresy, and Mrs Cleggins had taken too many tranquillisers.

Any remaining male members of the cast and crew, plus one or two female ones, were clustered around the statuesque Mrs Tepple, offering to help her in or out of her costume.

Adelaide Cleggins stood centre stage. She was a tall girl with interesting hair and eyes like stolen marbles, who normally had the demeanour of a sociopathic wolverine. There were few Girl Guide leaders who were on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, especially at the age of twelve. At the moment she was in command mode, making sure everything went to her satisfaction.

“Prop mum in the corner and she’ll be fine. I can give her one of the red ones if we really need her.” Adelaide adjusted her Peter Pan outfit, and gave a shrieking whistle to alert the other Guides. “All right, you lot. You blow this for me, and there’ll be a new skull or two in the hut tomorrow.”

“An’ we is doin’ it proper, Adelaide,” said Emily Pethwick, a cheerful nine year old. “An’ we is not sawin’ fru nuffin’ or stuffs like that.” The little girl kicked a rusty saw so that it slid under the nearest piece of scenery.

“Y’all be good now,” added Mary-Sue Perkins to the rest of the Daleks. Mary-Sue, the only child of very bored parents, had been brought up to believe she was American. “Ain’t lookin’ for a passel o’ trouble here.” She kicked a Dalek into line, and adjusted an eyestalk or two.

Sandra peered around the curtain as the hall filled up. “Quite a crowd.” As each new villager arrived, they were manhandled into their seats by those moody mixed infants who had lost out on being penguins. “I hope they don’t realise the free gin isn’t coming out until at least the second half.”

In no time at all, it seemed (or forty seven and a half minutes, if you’re an obsessive clock-watcher), the outer doors were chained shut and the first tinkling strains of the opening music came from the old piano in the corner. With the church organist still under arrest for teaching otters without a licence (and arson in Her Majesty’s dockyards), Mrs Whitehead herself was playing, and was managing to coax an intriguing range of notes from the piano, a range which soon had the locals begging for the panto to start.

“And-now-our-Christ-mas-show-be-gins,” grated ten badly made Daleks. “Death-to-the-Doc-tor, who-ev-er-wins.”

The curtain rose to a spectacular backdrop painted by the butcher’s daughter, Ethel Murchison, which accounted for the surprising number of sausages and pork chops adorning a rustic living room. Between those and the normal witch-signs, protective hexes, rowan berries and whitethorn rods which would adorn any typical home in St Botolph’s, the set was rather crowded.

“Oh woe is me, Buttons,” said Mary, dressed as Cinderella in rags and addressing a box of assorted zips and other fastenings. Sandra still thought they should have cast that part properly. “My sisters do not like me, and my step-mother is a harridan who never rests in her constant criticism.”

The audience stared appreciatively at Mrs Cleggins, who was slumped in a chair with her eyes closed and drool running down her chin. The scene livened up with the arrival of the two Ugly Sisters.

“Yes, but if Christ was both of God and yet created by Him, then the Second Ecumenical Council should have…” Mr Turvey realised that he was being watched, and smiled at the audience. “Oh look, Magnesia, here is our feeble half-sister Cinderella, obsessed with haberdashery.”

“Indeed, Chlorina, and what a sight in her… dishcloths.” The imam stroked his beard. “Is it not said that even the screech-owl and the camel take care to clothe their nakedness, as all the children of Abraham must so do?”

“Uh, probably.” Chlorina, who had lost his place already, waved one large hand in the air. He had found it in the props basket. “But better a camel in the desert, than a screech owl for dessert.”

Confused by this ad lib, Mary rose to his feet. “Why do you hate me so, sisters?”

“Societal pressure and high inheritance tax,” said Chlorina. “Now go and scrub the front step…”

<Empty streets, and the stink of humans, many humans, all converging on one simple structure. The nightjacks creep from every corner, remembering. Remembering, like static which leaps from mind to mind, their humiliation at the hands of the small females some months before. nightjacks will rend their own, but that is their privilege: no other has such a blessing. The Horse-thing is gone, and the Goat-Mother of a Thousand Thousand has spoken – this night will be theirs…>

***

“That first part went quite well,” said Sandra, drinking ginger beer on a packing case with Mary. On stage, the Dalek Chorus intoned certain doom to all, and made scurrilous comments about cybermen. Then they reprised the plot so far for the more intellectually-challenged villagers. Mary, who was re-applying nail varnish to his toes, seemed less confident.

“I don’t understand why Cinderella is followed by the Seven Penguins. They’re very annoying. Or why Peter Pan keeps flying in and out of the window and going on about touching his Wendy.”

“Village politics.” Sandra grinned. “Wait until you get to kiss Mrs Tepple. She’s awfully pretty.”

Mary was dubious. “Isn’t she a bit too, you know, well-upholstered, for a prince?”

“Seventeen marriage proposals this year. You know that statue they made of her…”

“Don’t. I have to wear two pairs of underpants near that thing.” Mary shuddered. “I see they didn’t let Mr Linseed Grant in this time.”

“No, he came back with a flamethrower, and had to be taken home. The theatre critic is here, though.”

“Is he the one the audience keep throwing potatoes at?”

Sandra put down her ginger beer, noticing the time. “That’s him. He gave a bad review of the Massey Ferguson 2600 series tractors, complaining about their transmission ratio, and was nearly lynched in Wetwang. Anyway, it’s showtime.”

The next act went slightly better. Peter Pan made Tinkerbell, played by an oxy-acetylene torch, transform Cinderella’s rags into an inappropriate Native American costume made by Mary-Sue Perkins. Then the Seven Penguins hauled Cinderella, sitting on the plastic pumpkin, off to the Prince’s ball.

“Why, who is this beauty?” intoned the Prince, who had left her contact lenses at the pub and was staring at Josias Turvey as he crammed a meat pie into his mouth. The players were shoved into their proper places by Peter Pan, waving ‘Tinkerbell’ perilously close to the ballroom’s nylon curtains, and the disguised Cinders was crushed to the Prince’s bosom.

“Mffle-peh,” said Cinders before collapsing. After hasty CPR he fled the scene, dropping a shoe, a fake eagle feather head-dress and a selection of well-thumbed pamphlets on how to join the Belgian Submarine Corps.

Back on the main set, Mrs Cleggins recovered consciousness long enough to deliver a random selection of her lines, and Sandra had drilled the Ugly Sisters in their parts during the interval. By the time that Peter Pan had finished her unorthodox sword-fight with the Fairy Godmother and booted Dick Whittington across stage for good measure – “And that goes for your idiot cat, too,” – the audience were becoming excited. Or were at least mostly awake.

“Oh Puss, shall we never see London?” wailed Dick Whittington, and was promptly hit on the head with a tin kettle thrown from the auditorium. Puss, played by a stuffed giraffe, said nothing.

The Prince arrived, resplendent in a brocade bolero jacket, purple leotard and fishnet tights, and silence fell in the cheap seats as she asked who wanted to try out her furry slipper. Given that this was Mrs Tepple, the speech brought the locals close to tears, mostly of envy.

“I’m game,” said Chlorina, as Magnesia backed away, feeling that his faith was being over-tested at this point. The imam had warned the vicar’s wife that going too far back into the origins of these folk stories could be risky. Fortunately this was the point where the Seven Penguins were to return and give light relief to the scene, whilst Cinderella tried on a wellington boot.

“Cue mixed infants,” said Sandra.

As the little ones came back on stage, she stared. The penguin suits were occupied, but something was wrong about them. Their previous reluctant slouch had been replaced by a malevolent scramble, with some on all fours. Beaks were awry, and it was as if there were too many pointy bits inside the outfits. She had that feeling, the one which would normally have included Mr Bubbles coming forward to slam an iron-shod hoof into someone’s head.

“Uh-oh. Mary!”

Her cousin turned, losing a dishcloth or two. He knew that tone – and could see Bottles already scrabbling at the locked doors to get out. The deformed Penguins were advancing on Peter Pan and the Dalek Chorus, off to one side of the stage. As they came forward, the hastily made outfits started to come apart, revealing curved talons and thin, black-haired arms. St Botolph’s Mixed Infants was a peculiar school, but had never had pupils like these. Well, not many.

“Nightjacks!” Adelaide Cleggins threw aside her Peter Pan cap and raised her rubber sword. “Daleks, to me!”

The Girl Guides rushed forward, shedding various cardboard panels and extremities from their dalek costumes as they came.

“Exterminate,” said Lucy Smothers, a tangle-haired little angel with a tendency to set fire to things.

“An’ extriminate them proper this time!” cried Emily, replacing her plunger arm with a conveniently stashed ten inch hunting knife.

Father O’Hanrahan (defrocked), who had only attended the pantomime so that he could denounce it, climbed onto a chair in the auditorium. He peered through his bifocals at a black, bristly, three-eyed creature which was about to vault into the audience.

“Methodists!” he screamed, and pulled his biretta over his eyes in the hope that he might be spared.

Disintegrating Penguins and Daleks clashed over the body of the Fairy Godmother, who moaned and tried to crawl towards the wings. For a moment Sandra thought it might be a fair fight – one set of small, malevolent creatures against another – but more nightjacks began to appear from under the stage, and the Girl Guides would soon be heavily outnumbered.

“Mother… of a Thousand Thousand… blesses… us,” said the largest of the nightjacks, forming the nearest to human speech Sandra had ever heard from its kind. It advanced on the Guide leader, its claws elongating.

“Yeah, well, my mum can kick your mum’s arse.” But the twelve year old didn’t look as confident as she sounded. Adelaide glanced at her own mother, who was comatose and dribbling again.

A slightly more chaotic chaos than usual erupted across the stage. The Ugly Sisters, backed into a corner, used their duck-feather fans and swishing crinolines to hold off nightjacks, and the Prince returned, brandishing a stage-prop bottle which broke into sugar fragments as soon as she used it on a nightjack’s head.

“I brought supplies, darling.” That was Sandra’s mother from the audience, holding up a Remington shotgun and a bowl of tuna and raspberry trifle. Unfortunately, thought Sandra, the milling scene around her was no place for firearms. Maybe she could poison the creatures with the trifle.

“Oh, Mr Bubbles, if only you were here.”

“What’s this all about?” Mary scrambled to her side, shedding another dishcloth.

Sandra picked up a craft knife, wondering if she could break a leg off the nearest chair and fashion a rudimentary spear. “We had a scrap with these little horrors earlier this year, on the edge of Whateley Wood.”

“The Guides?” Mary stared over at Adelaide Cleggins, who was trying to force the rubber sword down a nightjack’s throat and still keep all of her fingers.

“No, the nightjacks. The Guides were on our side.”

“And how did you get out of it?”

“Mr Bubbles, and a combine harvester.”

“Oh.” Mary sagged. “We don’t have either of those. Don’t even think we could get a combine-harvester in here.”

The hall had descended into a cross between a shark feeding frenzy and a village jumble sale. More dark, spiky creatures with too many limbs erupted from one of the stage trapdoors and tumbled into the audience to create a general melee. Men shrieked; women extemporised weapons. One nightjack fell back coughing in a cloud of Chanel No. 5, and another staggered between the seats with a handbag stuck on its head. Two members of the local Esoteric Order of Dagon had managed to construct a protective Elder Sign out of sponge fingers, but it kept falling apart.

“We need more jam,” gasped Mr Pickman.

“Ia! Ia! Shub… ouch,” A nightjack collapsed as Henry Ndoah, the village charcoal-maker, hit it on the head with his award-winning Goat Surprise Cake.

The cousins entered the fray on stage, only to be scratched and buffeted to one side as the Guides and the nightjacks took out their enmity on each other.

“An’ you is deaded, see.” Emily battered her opponent with the pumpkin, but the nightjack was not only not deaded, it was clearly ready for more. The Daleks were being pushed towards the backdrop, a delightful floor-to-ceiling painting of the Prince’s ballroom, and even Adelaide was having trouble. Her tights were ripped and there were long, deep scratches down her arms and legs.

“Gosh.” Sandra kicked a nightjack where she hoped it might have reproductive organs, “This isn’t going too well.”

“Shub-Mother… bless us,” said the creatures from Whateley Wood, their cracked voices joining in eldritch communion.

“And here’s a blessing from Mecca.” The imam slammed a meaty fist into the nearest monstrosity. Fighting back-to-back with the other Ugly Sister, he was holding his own but making no real progress.

The church hall had darkened under the presence of so many nightjacks, as if they brought their own world with them, and even the doubtiest fighters amongst the locals were beginning to get a strange, queasy feeling. Chairs were not quite where they should be; the angles of the stage were warping, and a place which had smelled of gin, sweat and greasepaint was now taking on the musty, wet odour of the deep woods.

“An’ where’s the nice horsie?” shouted Emily Pethwick, trying to hold off two nightjacks at once.

Such was the weight of multitudinous, bristly nightjacks that the villagers were hard-pressed, unable to match hundreds of slashing claws and small, slavering mouths. The light was being sucked from the church hall, and there were too many shadows. Pushed into the wings, Sandra and Mary looked around, desperate for something to use against the horrors. Something cold brushed Sandra’s leg, and she turned, ready to to strike…

Bottles the lurcher was behind them, dragging a bulky, misshapen costume across the wooden floor and wagging his tail wildly. Just for once he looked excited rather than scared. He dropped his burden, and nosed it repeatedly, looking at the cousins.

“It’s a panto.” Mary grabbed Sandra’s arm.

“Well, I know that,” said Sandra, irritated.

“No, look at the costume, silly.”

She stared, then moved closer and held up part of the rough painted hessian. “Oh my goodness, yes. But are they that stupid?”

Mary smiled. “They live on the edge of St Botolph’s. They can’t be that bright.”

Ignoring what she suspected might be a slur against her beloved parish, Sandra patted the dog on the head.

“It’s worth a try. Good boy.”

Bottles wet himself.

<The small humans are weakening, and the nightjacks grow stronger. Soon there will be more than blood – there will be flesh, gristle and bone, and the Mother will exult in her children’s victory, shaking the hemlocks and setting the wood a-howl with the songs of the nightjacks…>

Adelaide dragged a concussed Dalek back against one wall, fending off two creatures at the same time. She took a last swig from the Brasso she had hidden in her knickers, and threw the empty bottle at the nearest nightjack. As a wiry thing in the remains of a penguin outfit advanced on her, even Adelaide Cleggins, leader of the dreaded St Botolph’s Girl Guide troop, was getting worried…

A single large turnip rolled onto the stage, a sepulchral rumble in the middle of the madness. The combatants paused, even the nightjacks slightly puzzled as the one remaining spotlight shone down on the turnip.

“Mine,” boomed a voice from the wings.

In the darkness at the side of the stage stood a nightmare for nightmares. A wild mane and four large feet, slamming down on the boards as it advanced.

“So you night-slugs bugger off.”

“An’ it’s the horsie.” Emily screamed with delight and picked up the nearest nightjack, swinging it by its scrawny legs. “An’ yay!”

A remarkable spirit of new hope filled the Girl Guides. The Ugly Sisters cheered, and even Mrs Tepple in her shredded Prince costume managed to grab one creature by the neck and batter its head against a wall. The Daleks surged forward, swinging their fists and knives wildly, as doubt assailed the nightjacks…

<The Horse-thing. The Destroyer. The Cold Iron Hoof which Slays. Noooo…>

In a tumble and whimper, they fell back, scrambling for the passages under the stage and a way back to the hemlock and briar woods of their Mother, where the whip-poor-wills coughed and dank gloom could be their comfort. The Horse-thing haunted their dreams, and had never yet bested by any of their kith or kin.

They did not see, and did not pause to see, the painted spots on the animal’s flanks, the glass eyes and the straw sticking out where the ears were coming off. They did not wait to watch Sandra and Mary stumble into the spotlight in a pantomime horse costume, Mary yelling a fairly bad impression of Mr Bubbles through the lolling mouth.

“Bored now,” bellowed Mary, turning the horse head to face the last few nightjacks. They fled. As the Daleks looked like making a half-hearted attempt to harry the stragglers, Adelaide called her troop back, counting to make sure she hadn’t lost anyone.

“Ex… exterminate,” said Lucy Smothers, and passed out.

Gasping for breath, Sandra and Mary managed to step out of the costume, both of them spattered with noxious black blood, and exhausted. Mary, almost down to his underpants, grabbed an abandoned piece of crinoline in order to retain some dignity. The Ugly Sisters shook hands, and sat down to catch their breath.

“Allah, praise Him, made a funny old world,” said the imam, picking a bit of nightjack out of his beard.

“Aye, He did that.” Josias Turvey examined the gouges down his thick arms. “I don’t think I’m volunteering for next year’s performance, though.”

The audience – those members who weren’t unconscious, in shock or hiding under their chairs – erupted in applause as Sandra and Mary came to the front of the stage. The cousins were joined by the rest of the cast, and took a bow.

“And now our play is at an end—” began Mrs Whitehead, coming out from her hiding place behind the piano. A potato hit her on the side of the head, and she retreated.

“An’ she were no use,” said Emily firmly, brandishing a second tuber in her other hand.

“Gin all round, and someone better find out what happened to the mixed infants.” Sandra took the shotgun from her mother, in case of further surprises, and began to organise the clear-up. She didn’t think anyone cared about the Final Act, and besides, from what she had deciphered it involved Peter Pan assassinating the Prince and some nonsense about mythic archetypes. The vicar’s wife took everything too seriously.

“I don’t think you’ll be whisked away by your prince today.” She smiled at her cousin

“Sort of a relief.” Mary grinned back. “We should have had them applaud Bottles, really, It was his idea.”

Bottles wuffed at his name, and urinated copiously on a fallen nightjack. It had a Dalek plunger stuffed up what was presumably its backside.

“Or perhaps not.” As the villagers limped out into the night, supporting their wounded, Sandra threw the pantomime script over her shoulder. “I’ve quite gone off the theatre.”

As they clambered down, Mrs Cleggins opened her eyes, taking in the scene of recent carnage. “A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every–”

A hail of dalek parts, penguin beaks and severed nightjack limbs put paid to the final speech of the day.

***

Mr Bubbles trotted along the farmhouse track the next morning, glad to be coming home to his warm barn. That stupid rambler had only caught dengue fever and amoebic dysentery from his bite – he couldn’t see what all the fuss had been about.

Sandra and Mary were standing in wait at the big barn doors, their hands and faces a mass of scratches and gouges. He turned one large, dark eye on them.

“Good panto?”

Sandra and her cousin hugged him; Bottles did a celebratory pee on some thistles.

“You just wait until you hear what we’ve been up to, boy,” said Sandra, and began to recount the whole story of what really happened at Cinderella and the Seven Penguins.

“Bored now,” said Mr Bubbles.

THE END