Heller's Punishment (3 page)

When I pulled
up near them, I swung my tail again. But to roar or not to roar? I
didn’t want to frighten the children, so I compromised and stomped
away from them before I let out a mighty roar.

The mother
jumped in terror and uttered a few choice words that she probably
immediately regretted letting her children hear her say. The boys
screamed with happiness, chasing after me, begging me to do it
again. So I turned around and roared directly at them, clomping
towards them. They screamed again and ran to hide behind their
mother.

The racket
attracted the attention of some more newcomers and then some more.
And before I knew it, I was in the middle of an enthusiastic crowd.
The next couple of hours passed quickly because the museum became
surprisingly busy and I was having so much fun entertaining the
crowd.

I chased after
a group of teens, roaring at them and forcing them to scatter,
laughing. I ghosted people and when they noticed me following them,
I stopped still and looked away innocently. I tapped people on the
shoulder from behind, pantomiming a belly laugh at their reactions
when they turned around to find a dinosaur standing next to them. I
did a spot of moonwalking. I chased more teenagers and a couple of
the braver young children. I boogied with some older dudes. I
frightened more mothers into accidentally cursing in front of their
kids by blasting my loudness at them. I made so many little
children scream in delight that I gave myself a headache. I pulled
an ‘aw, shucks’, hanging my head and scuffing my feet on the ground
when a couple of young women hugged me, probably thinking I was a
man. I had my photo taken a hundred times. I roared and I clomped
and I swung my tail. I was a hit.

A local news
crew, sent to cover the opening day, filmed me for a while and,
yeah, I’ll admit that I played up to the camera, secure in my
anonymity. Daniel and Niq would get a laugh out of it when we
watched it together tonight.

But then I
needed a break. I found one of the staff and caught their
attention. They led me back to a staff room that contained a
kitchenette and a bathroom. A couple of staff helped me take off
the heavy head and let me out of the costume. They kindly offered
me a long t-shirt to wear from lost property so that I didn’t have
to sit around in my undies embarrassing everyone. I drank some
water, used the facilities, sat down for ten minutes and let the
sweat dry off. And then it was time to slip off the t-shirt, climb
back into the costume, ready for Tilly the T Rex
(
Allosaurus
, I imagined Elton whispering indignantly in my
ear) to continue her starring performance.

Not long
afterwards I was back in the middle of the crowd again, roaring and
flicking my tail around, smugly congratulating myself for finding a
job that paid me to have so much fun. Judging from the amount of
people circulating around the bottom floor and heading to the
escalator, Mabel didn’t need to worry about the show being a
success. It seemed like a sure thing to me.

And that was
when I felt it.

It started with
a small tickle on my neck. I had just enough room inside the
costume to twist my hand up to scratch at the spot. And then the
tickle moved down my neck. And then there was another tickle on the
other side of my neck as well. And one on the back of my neck. Yet
another little tickle skittered its way across my shoulder blades.
I wriggled them with itchiness, but there was no way I could
scratch my back in my present circumstances. I tried to scratch it
against the costume, but that didn’t help and only made the dino
look as if it was doing the twist (which earned me a smattering of
applause).

Something ran
down my arm and I shrieked. I’m not that keen on creepy-crawly
things to be honest. Especially when they’re inside a costume with
me.

I held my arm
up to the mesh panel where some light streamed in. Oh boy. I had a
spider on my arm. No, rewind that. I had spiders – plural – on my
arm. Lots of spiders. Lots of tiny baby spiders crawling on my arms
and my neck and my back.

Oh God!
I freaked. I desperately swatted at them, jerking and spinning, my
body itching everywhere. To the crowd it would appear as though the
dinosaur suddenly started convulsing.

Spiders! All
over me! Now I could feel them on my face. They were probably in my
hair.

I screamed and
began stomping around wildly, trying at least to shake them off my
body.

“Somebody help
me!” I shouted. “Please! There are spiders in here with me!”

But nobody
could hear me. People in the crowd nervously edged away from me,
drawing their children to their side.

“Somebody help!
Please!”

A couple of the
museum staff, concerned expressions on their faces, rushed over to
me. They attempted to speak to me as I danced about with
increasingly frantic energy.

“Are you all
right?” one asked, the master of the understatement, because I very
clearly
wasn’t
all right.

“
Spiders!
” I screeched.

“What?”

“Spiders! Get
me out of here.”

He turned to
his colleague. “What did she say? I can’t hear a word.” His helpful
colleague merely shrugged in ignorance. He took me by the arm and
led me to one side, away from the curious eyes of the crowd.
“What’d you say?”

I didn’t want
to speak again, in case spiders crawled into my mouth. One was
making an exploratory foray up my right nostril and a couple of
others seemed to be building a web in my left ear. I waved the
dino’s tiny arms around in what I hoped was an instantly
recognisable mime for ‘get me the hell out of this costume because
it’s full of spiders’. But he didn’t seem to understand. And I had
to admit that mime had never been my strong point, being someone
with a self-acknowledged smart mouth who liked to talk a lot.

“Would you like
us to help you out of the costume?” guessed the man into the mesh,
in an insultingly slow and patient way as if I had just landed in
the modern era from three hundred million years ago.

I nodded the
dino’s big head, refusing to open my mouth.

“Okay. Hold
still,” he said, his colleague reaching for the fasteners that
attached the head to the costume.

Unfortunately
right at that moment, something scuttled across my eyeball and I
screamed, the spiders taking advantage of my open mouth to decide
that my tongue was just the spot to set up a new life. I
jitterbugged in horror away from the staff members, spitting
spiders out and trying to move my hand up to my eyes.

“Hey, I said to
hold still!” the male museum attendant snapped at me.

In my panicked
jiving I dropped the remote control inside the costume.
Shit!

I couldn’t lean
down to pick it up.
Double shit!

And then I trod
on it, activating both buttons and the dino locked into roaring,
swishing mode.
Triple shit!

I lurched
headlong into the milling crowd, not really registering them in my
urgent need to get the spiders out of my mouth. My tail whipped
back and forth, slapping people’s legs and butts, knocking over a
couple of little kids. I accidently slammed into people, roaring
right into their faces.

“Someone help
me get out of this thing!” I yelled to no avail. Nobody could hear
me over the constant roaring. And let’s face it; a raging dinosaur
is the last creature you want to listen to patiently to find out
exactly what’s up its butt. So most people did the sensible thing
when faced with a dinosaur entertainer suddenly gone berserk in a
large crowd – they screamed and fled. It was pandemonium.

Elton!
I
thought in wild desperation.
He’ll know what to do. He knows
everything about everything. He’ll help me. I have to get back
upstairs to him.
And it was honestly the only thought in my
mind as I ploughed my way through the crowd, roaring and whacking
people left and right with my tail. All the while still convulsing
madly as the spiders found new crevices to investigate.

I headed for
the lift. A couple of burly fathers, deciding that I’d terrorised
enough small children in my dino rampage, closed in on me, their
intent to bring me down in any way possible clear on their faces.
So I sidelined the lift and virtually sprinted towards the
escalator, roaring at everyone, people either scattering in my path
or risking a beating with my tail. A major headache pressed against
my forehead. Heller sure wasn’t going to be happy about this.

I glanced
around and saw the burly fathers coming after me.
Hurry!
Hurry!
I told myself, flinging myself onto the first step of
the escalator.
Elton would not only know what to do, but he’d
also protect me from the angry mob.

The tail
continued to swing sideways, banging into the glass half-panels of
the escalator, causing me to overbalance. One of the fathers ducked
under the tail and at the right time, grabbed it and yanked on it.
I tumbled backwards, down five or six steps, well-cushioned by the
costume. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the fathers
who I bowled over, and not in the good, romantic type of way
either.

The three of
them fell, banging into each other like dominos, to end a crumpled
heap at the bottom of the escalator. Righting myself as fast as I
could, and keeping them at bay with my tail, I scrabbled up the
escalator. I was moving too quickly and tripped as I reached the
end, falling face first onto the moving steps, no arms to save
myself.

The big head
protected me from crunching my face onto the metal treads and one
mercy was that the impact finally stopped the roaring. I was almost
at the top and closer to Elton, when the entire escalator came to a
shuddering halt. It didn’t take me long to realise the reason for
the breakdown. One of my tiny puppet dino hands had become trapped
at the top tread of the escalator where it disappeared into the
metal landing. I tried to yank it free, but it was caught fast.

Oh
great!
I thought, anxiously looking over my shoulder at the
three fathers advancing on me. My sole consolation was thinking
about how flipped out were
they
going to be when they hauled
me out of the costume for a beating, only to discover a sweaty
young woman in underpants with spiders in her mouth.

And then the
most miraculous thing happened. Elton appeared.

He came
strolling down the corridor, hands in his pockets, whistling some
operatic ditty that –
obviously!
– I didn’t recognise. He
was off duty to have his break.

“Elton,” I
called weakly, on the verge of spidery tears. But of course he
couldn’t hear me. The fathers clamoured over me to wrest the head
off me (literally and figuratively).

Elton assessed
the situation quickly. “Whoa, you guys! Back off the Allosaurus.
Now.”

The fathers
looked at each other in puzzlement. “Do you mean this T Rex?”

“It’s not a T
Rex,” he explained with an impatient sigh, rolling his eyes. “Look,
it has three claws and . . . Oh, never mind. Just get away from the
dinosaur. There’s a young lady inside there. What are you thinking
climbing all over her like that? Get off her. You’re probably
hurting her.” And he’d never sounded more logical and calm. I could
have kissed him . . . well, maybe just a small hug of appreciation.
With one arm. Or maybe just a pat on the back in gratitude?

“A chick?
Really?” asked one of the men, letting me go. “Are you sure? I
thought it was a man inside there. It was clomping around like a
man. It has a man’s build.” The other two men murmured in
agreement.

“Hey! That’s
the costume, not me!” I yelled out from inside, but nobody heard,
and sure, I’d just invited another neighbourhood of spiders to move
into my mouth. I started twisting and spitting again, terrified
that even though they were only babies, they’d lay eggs inside me
and then they’d hatch and burrow into my brain and lay eggs and
then
they’d
hatch . . . and hadn’t we all heard
that
terrible story?

“There’s
something wrong with her. Help me get her out,” Elton ordered and
surprisingly the angry fathers obeyed.

I was
unceremoniously freed from costume, my delicates drenched with
sweat. Everyone looked embarrassed. Even I did, and I was
hysterical by then.

“I have
spiders!” I sobbed incoherently when I was free.

“
Eek!
”
screamed one of the fathers, waving his hands and backing away.
“She’s covered in spiders. Oh God, I hate spiders! Get her away
from me. Get her away. Get her
away
!”

“Get them off
me!” I jigged around in front of everyone, swiping at myself and
spitting onto the carpet, undignified and frankly, slightly
insane.

Elton took
control with confidence and composure. Mabel had, in the meantime,
trotted out to see what the commotion was, her antenna finely tuned
to any disasters on her precious opening day. She was aghast at the
scene that confronted her.

“Take Tilly for
a shower. Now,” Elton ordered her. He turned to two museum staff
who’d navigated the down escalator to reach the top. “You two, call
the costume shop. Get someone over here now. Then direct people
traffic. Turn that down escalator into an up escalator and make
sure the lift is only used for departures. One way in each
direction. I’ll be back soon to take over and make sure everything
is returned to normal.”

Then he placed
his arm around my shoulders and rushed me to where Mabel was
urgently directing, soothing me all the while, “You’ll be okay,
Tilly. You’ll be all right.”

He was so
masterful that now I saw why Heller had employed him and why Clive
and his colleagues appreciated him so much. Because while they had
warned me about him, there was much respect in their bantering that
I’d failed to notice on first pass. And I bet there hadn’t been
even a quarter as much respect in their warnings to him about
me.