Translated by Mimi L. Thompson and set in today’s world from the original Latin of Lucius Apuleius’ timeless, scandalously provocative, shapeshifting classic 'Asinus Aureus'
Accidentally turned into a horse by his lover (who’s a witch) a young lawyer's plan to defraud a billionaire goes wildly wrong. Destined to see the cruel crazy erotic world through equine eyes, finally he manages to escape to become an animal rights activist.
Chapter 1 – London - Now
The Overground train pulled out of Richmond. The river swung away and the journey - and the story - started. A half-empty electric train, on a Thursday morning in late March, may seem an inauspicious way to start a story of magic, witchcraft and derring-do, but it is best to be honest right from the start. Since this is indeed where my story begins, you'll have to put up with a bit of suburban humdrum. I sat slumped in my seat - (she might have been dead for ten years, but I could still hear my grandmother telling me to sit up straight) - over a cooling cup of station coffee and some complicated legal papers. Complicated legal papers are usually boring legal papers and so it was with this particular lot. It wasn't long before my attention drifted from the monotonous legalise and I began to be aware of an odd couple, arguing loudly in the seats on the other side of the aisle. They were an ill-matched pair, almost comically opposite in physical appearance. One was stick thin, with a thin, lugubrious face and smart suit. The other was a lardy bastard in a stained white tee-shirt and a leather jacket two sizes too small. They were clearly in the middle of an argument. 'Laurel' was attacking 'Hardy'.
"The next thing you'll want me to believe is that she can make time go backwards, reverse the big bang, stop the CERN accelerator and make Lisa fall in love with you. You talk such crap, Michael, that it's really starting to piss me off."
"And you're so closed to anything remotely out of the ordinary that you're about as exciting as a Friday night in Perivale. What more can I tell you? You've heard the whole story - swear to God - exactly as it happened. It's not my fault that you've got zero imagination and can't see past the end of your dick."
"So you're really expecting me to believe there's witches living in Willesden? That's about as likely as a virgin living in Chelsea. Cut the crap and go back to sleep."
At the mention of Willesden, I really pricked up my ears. As luck (fate?) would have it, this was my very destination. I glanced at my watch. The journey would probably take forty-five minutes. What better way to pass the time than a tale of the unexpected?
"Excuse me, gents, for eaves-dropping, but I couldn't help over-hearing your conversation. As it happens, I am an academic attached to the Psychical Research Unit at the University of Oxford."
Instant, plausible lying was one of my many gifts.
"And I'd be awfully grateful if you'd be willing to share your experiences with me. It sounds perfect material for a seminar paper."
'Laurel' clapped his hands theatrically to his brow.
"One born every minute. We're not living in the dark ages, mate. Wake up and smell the 21st century."
"Ignore him. He's a spiritual cripple. I'm more than happy to tell you my story. Fame at last. But no names, OK? And don't interrupt. This is a long story and a lot more complicated than any seminar paper."
The curious man snorted disdainfully, lay back in his seat, and started to speak. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the fat man certainly knew how to spin a yarn.
"My name is.... No, I'm not going to tell you that. But you may as well know that I've been in the import-export business for nearly twenty years. My particular merchandise is leather jackets and my particular corner of this great Metropolis is Willesden. Hardly an achingly lucrative centre of commerce, but it suited me just fine. If you know where to look, there are markets and wholesalers all over NW5.
So. It was only last week when it all happened. I had just returned from Lagos with a particularly fine consignment of sheep-skin. I'd spent the whole bloody week hawking it round all my usual customers, only to find that someone else had always been there just before me. So there I was, with a whole load of dead sheep, who were proving impossible to shift. Depressed and skint, I did what anyone would do in my situation. I took myself off to the Staked Bear to get pissed.
It wasn't until I'd finished the second pint that I looked about me and right there, in the corner of the public bar, staring gloomily into a smeary, foamy glass, was a man I once knew very well indeed. He was an old business contact, called... Let's just call him Ricky. This was a fucking crazy thing. Everybody knew that Ricky was dead. That he had died five years ago this very night. In a pub brawl down Leyton. Everybody knew that his wife had spent all her savings on the funeral. We're talking the works. Funeral with a capital F. Plumed horses. The winner of X Factor singing Amazing Grace. It had pretty much bankrupted the poor cow. And now here was the dead husband himself, sitting, bold as brass, in a pub on the other side of London.
I stared hard at him hard, waiting for an explanation. Running off with some sexy bird seemed the most likely explanation.
"Say something, for fuck's sake!"
I mean, he must have recognized me. I was beginning to feel nervous and actually started to shake him, half worried that he'd turn out to be a ghost. Well, we've all watched that kind of crap on late-night TV.
Silence.
He looked so monumentally awful that I almost began to feel sorry for the bastard. I was beginning to think that something really nasty must have happened to him. That a faked funeral was the least of his worries. His face looked like a skull. And he didn't seem to have washed or shaved or changed his clothes since the last time I saw him. So I quit the interrogation, bought him another pint and waited for him to speak.
It took a couple of pints and quite a few packets of cheese and onion before the story gradually emerged.
"Five years ago this very night.'
He shook his head in seeming disbelief.
'Five years ago.'
I waited patiently.
'I'd had a series of bad sales. The market traders of Whitechapel were becoming picky. Discerning. The market itself had started to attract a new, hipster clientele, with a taste for high-end, well-made fabrics. There was also a worrying trend to fair-trade and workers' rights. A wheeler-dealer who buys from a child factory in Bangladesh was rapidly becoming surplus to requirements. I'd seen the writing on the wall for weeks now, but that particular Saturday, I hadn't been able to make a single sale. To cheer myself up, I decided to buy a ticket for the Heavy Weight final out West. The sport was good and I almost managed to forget my worries for a hour or two. But as I was waiting for the night bus, a masked gang ran out of a side street and beat me unconscious. They stole everything, even my fucking clothes. All they left was my life - and even that was rapidly ebbing away when I was found by Stiris. Stiris. Stiris. Stiris."
The name seem to act like a talisman. He was repeating it again and again and rocking slowly from side to side. I shook him roughly.
"So what about her, then, this Stiris?"
"Like I said. She was the bitch who found me. Are you deaf or something? She wasn't young - forty, maybe even fifty - but sexy as Mary bleedin' Magdalene.'
He laughed humourlessly and crossed himself.
'And she was a proper Good Samaritan. Or so I thought."
Here he paused again and stared into the distance. It seemed politic not to interrupt, so I took a sip of stout and waited for him to continue, which he did. Of course he did.
"It's all was hunky dory at first. She picked me up and fixed me up. Good and proper. We went straight back to hers. Hot bath, change of clothes, plasters, bandages, clean sheets. And sex. Lots of it. Better sex than I'd ever had the joy of."
Perhaps it was just jealousy - the joy of sex had been distinctly been lacking from my own life in recent months - but I was soon on my high-horse. The knightly defender of the wronged 'widow'.
"Then you deserve all you got, you cheating bastard. Didn't you think of your wife for even one minute? Couldn't you at least have let her know? I never knew you were such a selfish wanker. I went to your funeral, you know. We all did. All the old crowd. And I've never seen anyone look as crap as Lisa. She was a good woman. She didn't deserve this. She always stood by you. Did her best. I saw her only last week and she looked about sixty. Her life is over, finished, and all the time you've been shacked up with some bitch on heat in a council flat."
At this tirade, Ricky suddenly looked terrified. His eyes darted all over the pub, as if scared that we'd been over-heard.
"Shut up, you idiot. And keep your fucking voice down."
He was now speaking scarcely above a whisper.
"You know nothing, schmuck. Nothing. Nada, Zilch. And you'd better watch what you say or it'll ruin us both."
I was beginning to think that he'd finally lost the plot. A nervous breakdown, resulting from sustained business failure, was suddenly looking like the most obvious explanation of the whole sorry story. I was idly wondering about the process of getting him sectioned, when I realized that he was speaking again. In a petrified whisper.
"If only the muggers had killed me. If only I'd died right there and then, in the deserted bus-stop, instead of being 'saved' by Stiris, how much better my life would have been. After a couple of weeks, man, I soon discovered the truth. My new wife was a witch."
"What? Like Macbeth? We did all that at school. 'Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble.' Had a broomstick, did she? A pointy hat? Warts and a black cat?"
I was trying to inject some humour into the late night sesh. Without discernable success. Ricky responded angrily.
'Fuck you. This is serious shit. This is the real deal. Modern day witchcraft, practised right here in London. Mostly by West Africans. If she wanted to, my 'wife' could make it snow in August, she could fly, she could kill the president without even seeing him, she could fuck-up the entire MoD computer network. But she prefers to focus her skills on fucking up the lives of individuals. Ordinary people, like you and me. Everyday, men and woman trail from all over London to see her. They pay thousands for her magic. Literally thousands. They come for all sorts of reasons. They want promotion, they want a baby, they want an orgasm, they want to kill the mother-in-law, they want to speak to their dead dad. There was one poor fucker who, only last month, bought an ointment for producing fivers.'
Strangely, that particular story rang a sort of bell. I'm sure they'd been a court-case about it. I was about to say something, but Ricky was on a roll.
'The police come, too, of course, but what are they ever find? A lock of hair in a pool of semen? No jury in the land would convict. No barrister would prosecute. No judge could possibly understand the real evil at work here.’
At this point, my old friend fell into a sinister silence for a long beat. I thought that he'd lost interest in Stiris and her powers, when he suddenly started speaking again. He spoke in an excited gabble, as if the evening were suddenly too short to say all that he had to say.
‘But her most popular spell, the spell she casts most often, is the love spell. With a single incantation, she can make any man fall instantly in love with her. Any man at all. Young, old, black, white, rich, poor. Picky she ain't. A public school boy trying to grow his first beard? A synch. A high-church vicar, known for his taste in choir-boys. Twice already. A Rasta crack-dealer, a pimp, a traffic warden, a duke. The prime minister."
David Cameron and the Witch of Willesden seemed a step too far, but I kept my council and let him carry on.
‘And even me, a broke diddycoy from somewhere near Epping. She got me good and proper. Head-over-heels stuff. But God help anyone who tries to break it off or to share his affections. One poor sod made the mistake of boasting of a simultaneous affair with a local girl. With a single word, he was transformed into a beaver,"
"Well, well, well. A beaver in the streets of North London. Wonders will never cease. But why, pray, a beaver?"
I suppose that the mention of Macbeth had brought on this mock Shakespearean turn of phrase.
"Fuck, mate, don't you know any natural history? You're an ignorant bastard, you know that? I thought everyone knew that beavers bite their own balls off when they're scared. She was obviously hoping that a similar fate awaited her two-timing ex.
And she's even more vindictive to her rivals. The wife of one of her favourite boyfriends - a pretty boy from Somalia - has been condemned to perpetual pregnancy. The baby will never be born. The spell was cast a year ago. You can imagine the size she is now."
I looked curiously at the man sitting in front of me. Did he really expect me to believe this pile of crap? How often over the years had we sat in pubs just like this? But I had never heard him discuss anything more exotic than the chances of a holiday in Crete. I tried to re-gain an increasingly slippery reality by opening the fifth packet of Walkers. But Ricky was still very much in the other world. I was shocked to see that he had actually started crying.
"Last night, I finally decided that enough was enough. I had to get out. So here you see me, alone for the first time in five years. On the run. And scared shitless."
I must say that I was beginning to feel a trifle uneasy myself and wanted more than anything to get out of this crazy place as soon as possible. But the hour was late and Ricky was in no fit state to travel.
"How about we stay here just for tonight and get out ASAP tomorrow morning?"
By this stage, Ricky was too tired even to speak, but nodded. As luck would have it, the pub had rooms, so to speak, to let. I assume that they were normally rented by the hour, ditto the barmaid, but I was in no mood to quibble. We staggered upstairs and fell like dead men (excuse the pun) onto the small, dirty beds. My night, as you might imagine, was disturbed by an ever-worsening succession of nightmares. It was, therefore, with something like relief that I was jolted awake at midnight by a terrific crash at the door and the sudden appearance of two sluttish women of about fifty. Their sudden arrival in the room had shaken the floor and walls to such an extent that my bed was flipped right over, with me in it. Trapped, but at least safe, I watched the unfolding scene as the two hags marched over to my still sleeping friend.
"Look, sister! That's him. That's the bastard who thinks he can take bed and board from me and then run away, spreading filthy lies and slander. I gave him a pretty good time and this is how he repays me!"
Just then, the first hag happened to look over in my direction. My luck, such as it was, had run right out. Her beady old eyes soon found me, cowering under the bed and gabbling Hail Marys.
"And that's Michael - (I won't give you my surname, if you don't mind). If he hopes to spirit away from here alive and kicking, he's more of a fool than I thought."
"Shall we kill him first?"
"No. Let him live for a couple more hours. My darling will need someone to bury him tomorrow. I can't think that anyone round here will be rushing to call the police and the sexton."
With these chilling words ringing in my ears, the first woman whipped a machete out of her parker and drove it right through my room-mate's throat. Immediately, arterial blood spurted out in great fountains, covering the bed and the carpet and shooting up in sweeping arcs to the ceiling. Soon the whole fucking room looked and smelt like an extension of Smithfield. For some reason, the second crone, Stiris' sister, started collecting the blood in a cup. While her sister was thus engaged, Stiris herself was attempting to plug the pumping wound with a dirty sponge.
In less time than it takes to tell the tale, the women had left and I quickly realized the terrible danger in which I now found myself. Not only were the witches planning to kill me first thing tomorrow morning, I was very likely prime suspect for the murder of my poor old friend. What jury in the world's going to believe what really happened? In double fear, therefore, of both Wormwood Scrubbs and the weird sisters, I realized that there was only one thing for it.
Using all my strength, I somehow succeeded in pushing the bed off my face. With a quick glance at Ricky, I made my way gingerly down the stairs. The lugubrious landlord was still serving shots to a malodorous crowd of lock-in regulars. With a sinking heart, I realized that it would not be possible to make my escape without asking the balding, Grant Mitchell look-a-like, to open the door. My request did not go down well.
"What the fuck? You've only just payed for the room. Full English included. What's the idea of creeping off at two in the morning? And where's the other bloke? Laughing Boy, Happy Harry, Sunny Jim? Done 'im in, have you? Let's see, now, what's most likely? S and M game gone wrong? Lovers' tiff? Armed robbery? I reckon I'd better take a look-see for myself."
The bruiser was actually starting to manoeuvre himself, and his stomach, from behind the bar. As he was built like a fat version of Eric Bristow this was slow going. Slow enough going for me to say, with a high hysterical laugh,
"Only joking!"
With that pathetic ploy, I ran up-stairs as fast as my legs could carry me. I had come to realize that suicide was now the only way out. With a heavy heart, I knotted the sheets together and somehow managed to tie them to the spidery rafters of the so-called guest room. Even in this brave, final attempt at escape, failure dogged me. The sheet snapped and I fell heavily down on the bed below. Right on top of the hapless Ricky.
The crash provoked angry shouts from the bar and the sounds of feet on the stairs. As I was desperately sizing up the window as a possible means of escape, the corpse started shouting.
"What's all the bleedin' racket? And what's that idiot shouting about? I mean, shit. It's three in the bleedin’ morning. I'm half inclined to move back with Stiris. At least I could get some sort of sleep there. And what the fuck are you doing on my bed? Are you are pervert or something?"
I was so overjoyed at the sound of my friend's voice, that I very nearly did kiss him. Right there, right then. On the blood-stained bed. But something in the landlord's voice and something about the axe hacking down the door made me change my mind. Before you could say Jack Robinson, Ricky and I were climbing out of the window, down the rusty drain-pipe and out into the raw London night.
It might have been three in the morning, but the streets of NW10 were full of shiny, happy people. By this time of the night, they were mostly too drunk or stoned to notice a couple of blood-stained, bare-footed strangers, but I couldn't afford to take any risks. In particular, I couldn't risk the landlord finding us. Half carrying, half dragging my poor old friend, we moved as quickly as possible through the throng of clubbers. We didn't dare stop until we had put a good few miles behind us and the pub. Hurrying along the snaking roads, I sneaked furtive glances at Ricky's neck. To the untrained eye, it seemed as good as new. There was no wound, no sponge, no blood and no scar.
"I suppose it's true what they say. Gin gives you nightmares."
"It also makes you piss yourself. And you still stink of it."
With that, he pushed me away so hard that I tripped over the kerb and nearly fell foul of the number 98. We staggered on like this, like a pair of bickering drunks, for the next couple of hours. A grey dawn was breaking as we approached Paddington. We were a stone's-throw from the canal and the West Way, when Ricky suddenly grabbed my arm.
"Talking of nightmares, bruv, I had a fucking nightmare myself last night. I dreamt that Stiris had found me. That she'd hunted me down and cornered me like a rat in that stinking shit-hole of a pub. That she and her sister had broken into the room and stabbed me in the neck."
He shuddered at the memory and pulled up his collar, as if to protect the phantom wound from the dawn chill. His queer, blood-shot eyes darted all over the place, as if still looking for the nemesis that dogged him. I was shit scared, but decided on the hearty, pull-yourself-together approach.
"You shouldn't worry about any dreams. Everyone knows they mean fuck all. Whatever Dr Freud might say. All I know is that the hangover from hell is just kicking in."
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than we came upon an all-night, mobile greasy-spoon. The sort of vermin-ridden van that is chased all over London by different Councils. As Ricky obviously had no money, I bought us both cheeseburger, chips and a battered saveloy. We ate sitting on a bench, over-looking the Grand Union Canal. But as he ate, a change seemed to come over my friend. He suddenly looked extremely unwell, white as a ghost and gasping for breath.
"Give us a drink, mate."
He peeled open the sweating coke and began to drink. But, as I watched in dumb-struck, mounting horror, the wound in his neck suddenly re-appeared. The sticky, brown liquid was soon oozing through the open wound, spattering his grubby tee-shirt. Soon, blood, too, was oozing out. And soon after that, of course, I was sitting next to a corpse.
This was, to say the least, an unwelcome development. For the second time in as many hours, I was poised to be suspect numero uno in a murder investigation. For how the hell could I hope to explain all this crazy shit? Very soon, the first joggers would be here, the early-bird bargees and the Polish fisherman. I couldn't allow them to find me sitting on a bench next to a murdered tramp. There was nothing for it, but to tip his poor old body into the canal and get the hell out.
The splash seemed loud enough to wake the whole of Westminster and I started back in terror, awaiting the inevitable sirens and arrest. Incredibly, nothing happened. The constabulary were clearly too busy shooting teenagers to Tottenham to worry about murders in Paddington. I thanked God and all his saints, hastily wiped my hands on the scrubby verge and caught the first night bus that past. Which took me to Richmond. Of all places."
"That, at least, is true."
Michael's companion had been laughing silently throughout this extraordinary tale, shaking his head in exaggerated disbelief. He now spoke, eager to find a part of the story that chimed with his version of reality.
"At six o'clock last Sunday morning, the story-teller of Willesden, Scheherazade herself -" he gave Michael a friendly jab in the ribs- " pitches up at the club. We were having a special anniversary night. You might have seen the posters - 'House of Silk First Birthday, Underground House, with Mister Dog'?"
I looked blank. Underground House was not exactly my tasse de thé.
"No? Anyway, things were pretty blurry by that time of the night. Or should I say 'morning'? A much more likely explanation of this tale of the unexpected is one pill too many. What do you say, Your Honour? What's a jury more likely to believe?"
I looked from Michael to doubting, laughing Thomas and back again. I honestly couldn't make up my mind. I had, after all, grown up in Lagos. I was still enough of a Nigerian to wear an amulet and to worry about girls stealing a lock of pubic hair. But before I could come to any definite decision, I had come to the end of my journey. Bidding farewell to my curious travelling companions, I left one piece of advice with the devil's advocate.
"Don't mock what you don't understand. More things in heaven and earth... and all that."
Chapter 2 follows soon . . .
© 2017 Mimi L. Thompson
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