Blade Runner

So, there I was, minding my own business, walking home after a long ten-hour shift at work, when a couple of guys stop me and one of them pulls a knife on me.

It's funny how these things suddenly happen out of the blue, isn't it? Of course, by 'funny' I mean 'horrifying'.

It was a Friday night like any other, and I was heading home, taking the same route I always do. The Sweeney Todd soundtrack was playing on my MP3 player, and as I enjoyed Johnny Depp's mock-cockney tones mourning the loss of his dear Johanna, I noticed a couple of figures on the other side of the street.

Based on a cunning survival strategy of not approaching strangers, I chose to ignore them, and crossed over to the other side of the road. Unfortunately, it seemed these strangers did not want to ignore me so easily, and so crossed the street as well, and thereby went from being completely ignored to fully acknowledged.

One of the two went behind me, while the other took to the front, a classic Pincer Movement as favoured by military campaigners throughout history, and by lions in the wild. Which would make me the hapless gazelle caught between two predators.

The guy in front of me blocked my path and refused to budge, forcing me to dislodge the singing barber from my ears and ask what it was that they wanted. I figured they'd be after a cigarette, or something.

"Do you want something?" I said.

"Yeah," came the rather blunt reply. What that something was he didn't elaborate on, and just stared at me.

"Well, what?" I continued. "What is it?"

Then there was a sound that I recognised all too well from my time unpacking boxes in a supermarket - the ratcheting sound of a blade being pushed up several notches on a retractable blade. I looked down to where the noise was coming from, and there it was, clutched in the bloke's hand, blade down.

Terror gripped me, and a thousand thoughts jostled for supremacy in my head, the loudest of which was simply, 'SHIT!' Not very useful, maybe, but entirely appropriate.

I had no idea what to do. I'm entirely useless in any kind of confrontation, and posses precisely zero kung-fu skills, despite having watched dozens of Jean Claude Van-Damme films. I could not formulate any feasible plan to ensure my continued survival, and was almost resigned to the inevitable stabbing.

"What?" I said dumbly, hoping to get some vague idea of what these two wanted. The man in front of me said nothing, fixing me with an ice-cold stare. He angled his body towards me, while the other guy remained behind. Fuck, I thought. This is it. This is how it ends, at the hands of two shitty little bastards, on a dark street in Portsmouth. What a crap way to go. If I had to go, I'd rather it was at the hands of a dozen, nude, wild nymphomaniacs or something. Not this. This was rubbish.

What the hell did they want, anyway? Were they just wanting to stab someone tonight? Or did they want to mug me? If it was the latter, then they'd be sorely disappointed. I had approximately seven pounds on me, and the MP3 player I had been enjoying Sweeney Todd on cost me a fiver form Tescos. I almost hoped they did want to rob me. The slim pickings upon my person would teach them to pick far wealthier targets in the future.

Whatever they wanted, I began to wish they'd get on with it. But still they remained silent and unmoving, not giving me the slightest hint of their intentions. I was sure I was going to be struck at any minute. I was sure they were going to pounce in a flash. Any time now...

However, it seemed that my time was not yet, for at this moment the fates intervened, or God chose to spare me, or Lady Luck fluttered her eyelashes, whatever you choose to believe. For suddenly another man passed-by, going about his business entirely unaware of my current situation. His sudden appearance took my two captors by surprise, and they both seemed to relax themselves, in an attempt to make it look less like they were about to stab me, and more like we were just hanging out together, having a lovely time.

Suddenly, my brain stopped hurling expletives around my skull and threw out an order to the rest of my body.

NOW! It screeched. Move now! Don't wait for the passer-by to pass on by, so we can resume the business of getting stabbed. Just get the hell out of here.

My legs happily obeyed, and I brushed past the guy with the blade, figuring that he'd be reluctant to do any stabbing in front of this passer-by. The blade-wielding bloke seemed surprised by my sudden movement, and tried to slow me with his elbow as I passed, but I was not stopping for anyone now. I was out of there.

Bizarrely, I didn't run. I walked fast, of course, but I didn't take to my feet at full pelt, which seems odd when I look back on it. I just marched up the road, and didn't look back, not even when one of the guys yelled, "You were lucky," after me.

I was lucky. I already knew that.

The full shock and horror of this night-time encounter didn't really sink in until after I had gotten back home, and even then it wasn't right away. No, the first thing I did when I got in was to go and make a cup of tea. Sadly, however, we were out of milk, so without even thinking I went back outside to go to the shop to get some more.

What the fuck was I thinking?

It was only when I returned from the shop, and sat down with a nice cuppa and a few cigarettes that the shock caught up with me. Panic and fear enveloped me, and one thought kept circling through my mind - what if that passer-by hadn't appeared?

I was in quite a state, and I had no-one to talk to as the house was empty. So, I picked up the phone and called my dad, who listened as I blurted my story down the phone, stammering and blubbering in equal measure. I felt bad for burdening my parents with my woes at such a late hour, but I did manage to get most of the previously bottled-up emotions out, and began to regain something approaching some form of composure.

My next duty was to telephone my place of work, and let them know of the incident so they called forewarn any of my colleagues who might be planning to go home that way. Then I phoned my housemate and warned him (who heeded my warning, despite being steaming drunk), and then I finally phoned the police, which proved to be a massive waste of time because they were 'too busy' to come and take a statement from me, but they told me that they hoped to drop by in the next couple of days.

I'm still waiting to hear from them.

So there you go. That is how I spent my week-end. How was yours?

- Fanton.

The Hack and the Slasher

Thomas Peckett Prest must be kicking himself, or at least he would be if he wasn't completely dead, and buried six-foot underground.

Prest is widely considered to be the creator of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a character currently enjoying a blood-soaked revival on the big screen in Tim Burton's gloriously gothic musical-slasher movie of the same name. If only Prest had the immense foresight to predict the popularity of his gruesome creation, then he could have wound up being a very well-off corpse indeed.

Johnny Depp found shaving the Invisible Man very difficult work.

However, Prest was a hack writer, a quill-for-hire who spent most of his life penning comic parodies of Charles Dickens' oeuvre (including such ingeniously-titled classics as Oliver Twiss and David Copperful), and pulpy, schlocky stories of thrill and suspense for the popular penny dreadful publications. These were cheap, lurid periodicals published in Victorian Britain to occupy an increasingly literate working class with undemanding and unsophisticated entertainment. Sort of like the TV networks do in our modern, enlightened times.

Literary infamy was doubtlessly the last thing on Prest's mind, as he was far too busy churning out cheap tat for the penny dreadfuls. Indeed, his lasting creation, Sweeney Todd, first appeared as a mere secondary, supporting character in the completely non-terrifyingly titled story The String of Pearls: A Romance, a sure indication as any that Prest had no idea that he was sitting on a potential goldmine.

When Sweeney Todd went on to prove far more popular than a poxy string of pearls, the character soon found himself taking centre-stage in a theatrical adaptation by George Dibden Pitt in 1846, to great success. It must have been a bitter pill for Prest, as the unattributed author of the original tale, living in less copyright-savvy times - he made approximately zero pounds and noughty-nought pence from this popular stage adaptation of his own work.

By failing to even sign his own work, Prest went on to miss out on further healthy royalty cheques from a multitude of stage and film adaptations over the next one hundred and sixty-odd years, culminating in both the prolific Stephen Sondheim stage musical, and the current Tim Burton movie, itself based on the Sondheim musical. Which, in turn, was based on Christopher Bond's stage play, The String of Pearls. Which, of course, was based on Prest's original, cheap and un-cheerful serial.

Can you hear that sound? It's the sound of money slipping through Prest's skeletal fingers.

The moral of this story is clear. Firstly make sure you get credit for your work, and make sure you copyright it to the hilt. Secondly, don't sideline your best characters in a stupid story about a sailor and a necklace.


And now finally, for those interested in my incredibly important opinions: Burton's Sweeney Todd is a fantastic triumph; a supremely entertaining slice of musical macabre which succeeds on every level and completely fulfills my expectations for a Burton-directed horror musical. The cast are uniformly fantastic, with Johnny Depp turning in another great performance and proving to be more than adept at singing in a mock-Cockney style, resulting in him sounding something like David Bowie, which of course is no bad thing.

In short, Sweeney Todd has made the transition from penny dreadful, to million-dollar wonderful. I loved it.

I think Prest might have liked it too.

- Fanton.



Read The String of Pearls in its entirety, courtesy of the Victorian Dictionary.

And don't forget to read The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely, another completely excellent Victorian tale destined to become a classic for centuries to come.