Authors note: My first attempt at fiction! It's not an original idea, I know, but I figure I can work up to originality once I've figured out the mechanics of writing. I'm not used to writing fiction, my job is writing Science-faction as Howard Moon would say but I'm having a go at it all the same. Hope it's not too terrible.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. The Mighty Boosh belongs to the people who actually created it, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding among them.
It was inevitable really. When you had enough potential girls that you had to number them at parties, eventually it was bound to happen. But when it did, Vince wasn't there.
It still hurt Howard, even two years down the track, that Vince had been the one to move out for good. They still saw each other occasionally, still talked on the phone all the time (Well, once a week, on a Tuesday. Howard wanted to call more often but didn't want to appear clingy.) and, when Howard had needed help on that terrible excuse for a play, Vince had been there. Even if he had derailed the carefully crafted environmental masterpiece with his robots and glitter. He'd been there when Howard had asked him and that had to count for something. It shouldn't have hurt that Vince was now living in various penthouse suites between London and Paris, being the face of Jean Claude Jaquettie. But it did.
They'd had to hire someone new for the shop too, and that hurt a lot more than it should have. At first Naboo had tried to rope his mates into it but that had been disastrous. Saboo had been rude and had questioned every prospective customer as to their prowess in relation to "the Crunch". Tony hadn't been any use at all and had been flung from the counter every time the cash register drawer was opened. It had been amusing the first five times but eventually even Bollo tired to seeing the pink, tentacled head catapulting into the stock behind the counter. Naboo had kept at it though, but even he had eventually had to cede defeat. The green witch had been, well, a green witch, and scared away most customers. Kirk had been fairly capable when it came to sorting stock but his presence had ultimately led to questions about child labour and the illegality of employing a minor, even when Naboo tried to argue that he was several hundred years old and an inter-dimensional being to boot.
In the end they had gone with Leroy. He was the creator of the Celebrity Tagger 2000 after all and that was their biggest draw card as a shop. Besides, without Vince around, Leroy had seemed almost as forlorn as Howard. Not that either man would admit it.
The whole of Camden seemed to be missing Vince, even with his face on every bus in the city, all advertising the new fragrance from Jaquettie. "Unicorn Tears: Because you know who you are when you're you." If a day passed without one of Vince's groupies coming into the shop, desperate for word from him, it was a strange day indeed.
There weren't many strange days anymore. The strangeness had all but evaporated from his life entirely, Howard pondered one morning as he rolled up the shutters and opened the Nabootique. There was no graffiti to clean off, no crack foxes, no cockney nut-jobs, no adventures to other worlds. Nothing. It was as if without Vince Howard's world had lost it's magic.
He'd even tried going back to the cabin in the woods but there had been no yetis, no Kodiac Jack. In desperation he'd even gone to Black Lake, only to be told that Old Gregg was no more than a myth these days and hadn't been seen in those parts since the fateful night the Funk had been stolen from him. No one in the seaside pub seemed to remember Howard but they had spoken in hushed voices, full of awe, as they'd sipped their flirtinis and spoken of Vince Noir and how he had once graced their presence and showed them The Way. As far as Howard could see, The Way involved drinking Flirtinis, shaving off their beards, eating olives instead of poor, living naan breads and actually going out fishing rather than just talking about it.
It had been depressing. Without Vince there was no magic. No monsters either, but no magic. At least not in Howard's world.
With his morning routine finished and the shop open and ready for business Howard slumped behind the counter and tried to get in the mood for a jazz trance. No doubt Leroy would be by in a minute and shake him out of it, having never heeded the warning to never wake a man from a jazz trance (he'd only had to tell Vince once, but Leroy was infinitely slower on the up take than Vince), but he found that he couldn't really get into the swing of it, even with Charlie Mingus turned up full volume. Especially with that grating wailing sound coming from just outside.
Wait. Wailing sound?
Howard looked out of the front windows but there was no sign of an ambulance, or any emergency vehicle. The wailing, however, was definitely out there. He turned off Mingus and the sound swam to the front of his auditory awareness. It was definitely a wailing sound but it didn't sound like an ambulance, or even like bad electro, which had been his second thought. It sounded... sad.
With growing realisation, and a good dose of fear, Howard began to walk toward the door. He'd heard that sound before. Everyone had heard that sound before: in the supermarket on a busy Saturday, in crowded cafes, even in the library. But it was usually accompanied by the sound of shushing and cooing from a stressed and/or tired mother. It was the sound of a young child crying. It wasn't attention seeking crying either, or scraped knee crying. It was the heartbreaking wailing of abandonment.
As Howard came to this awareness he also came to the door and, upon opening it, was met with what he had feared. The child looked to be somewhere between the age of two and four. Howard wasn't sure, he'd never really liked children. That had been one of Vince's areas of expertise. He'd always told Howard off for scaring the nippers even though Howard maintained that it was the children who scared him. The child sitting on the cement in front of him was more than scary. It was terrifying. It had thick, sandy blonde hair with a slight curl to it and it's fringe hung down over it's eyes. Howard could only tell it was actually crying because of the round cheeks which were soaked in tears and so red they almost looked bruised. That and the noise.
The child, It, was wrapped in a cheap blanket, the kind people used for their dogs, to keep pet hair off the sofa and Howard mentally recoiled at the image. The child gave every appearance of being a stray.
Crouching down by the tiny, blonde shape, Howard tried to think of a way to be comforting without actually smiling. He'd been told enough times that his smile gave off a 'rapey' vibe and the last thing he wanted was for this kid to start crying louder. As he came down to the child's height he noticed something pinned to the blanket, which definitely had a smell of dogs about it. It was a note, attached with a safety pin. The kind that Vince had once carried with such pride, back in his short-lived punk phase. Carefully, trying not to spook the still wailing child, Howard unfastened the message and began to read.
By the time he had finished the note, which had been short and appallingly spelled, he felt nauseous. Without another thought he swept the child up into his arms and bundled it into the shop. Trying not to hold it too tightly while at the same time wanting to hug it as close as he could. It was a child, for goodness sake. Who in monkey hell would do this to a child?
Not even bothering to turn the sign to Closed, Howard sprinted up the stairs to the flat.
"Naboo!" he called, cursing himself when the child began to cry even harder.
"Sorry little one, sorry," he whispered, as he patted the little head, and was surprised when the crying died down to a melancholy sobbing. He sat down on the sofa and began rocking the little thing gently, stroking the blonde curls and murmuring comforting nothings until he heard Naboo enter the living area.
"Howard, you ballbag, what are you..." but his question died on his lips when he took in the sight before him. Howard thrust the crumpled note toward him, the safety pin still dangling from it. As Naboo read the brief lines he face began to darken. Howard had seen his landlord/employer/kind of friend angry on a number of occasions but never like this. Not even when he and Vince had inadvertently released Nannatoo. Right now Howard didn't doubt that Naboo was a shaman, he looked ready to unleash dark magic on the writer of the message he held in his shaking hand.
Looking back down at the note, Naboo began to read it aloud, as if doing so would make sense of the situation, or make it less horrifying than it actually was.
"Noir,
This is yors now. I done tride th hole mum thng but its like rubish innit? All it dose is cry an I wan my life bak so its yor turn. Don wory. It dont take up space, jus put it in a cornr wiv the blankt an feed it in a mornin.
Cheers."
Howard watched as Naboo began to pace around the small flat, his eyes looking everywhere but at the child in Howard's lap. Howard was suddenly aware that the tiny thing was almost completely silent now, aside from the occasional post-cry hiccup and it was with some pride that he realised that he had successfully calmed a child and sent them to sleep. And it hadn't been from boredom either.
"What are we going to do, Naboo?" he asked in a whisper, careful not to wake his sleeping charge.
Naboo stopped abruptly and flattened out the note he had been scrunching in his hand for the past minute. He looked first at Howard, then at the child, and then back to Howard again.
"There's only one thing we can do, really," he lisped in an equally quiet voice. "We have to call Vince."
"But," stammered Howard, suddenly jittery with nerves. "It isn't Tuesday yet."
Naboo just sighed and headed toward the phone. "Howard, you ballbag," he muttered. "He ain't going to mind us calling a day early. Not for something like this at any rate."
Howard sunk further into the sofa, stroking the silky curls beneath his hands and hating himself for the hopeful thought that this strange and disturbing turn of events might bring Vince back into his life, at least for a little while.