Muddle and Win by John Dickinson Read Free Book Online

of skin, abandoned in the vast forest that was the scalp of Sally Jones.
    And the light around him grew.
    Someone behind him said ‘
Freeze
.’

THE ANGEL TOWERED over him. It might have been carved from bright marble or shining steel. Or very, very hard light. Muddlespot had to squint at it to see.
    It was all straight lines – head, wings, feet. Its dark glasses were rectangles. Its tuxedo was pressed in crisp white lines, its little black bow tie was a cubist’s dream. Even its fiery hair flamed in little zigzags. In its rock-steady hands it gripped a great bassoon, with the mouth pointed right between Muddlespot’s eyes.
    Muddlespot’s hands shot up as high as they could – which was just slightly below the level of his ears.
    ‘Well, well, well,’ said the angel, in tones like bells tuned in C sharp. ‘What have we here?’
    ‘Er  . . .’ said Muddlespot. He thought of various possible answers. None of them seemed likely to improve things. ‘Is there time to defect?’
    ‘Nice try, creep,’ said the angel, ‘but I don’t think so.’ It spoke into a mouthpiece. ‘Hello, base? I have the intruder. Shall I purify?’
    ‘Mercy!’ cried Muddlespot, throwing himself forward and grovelling among his scattered kit. ‘I’m too young to die!’
    ‘You have your orders, Blue Two,’
said a voice from midair.
‘Yay, verily.’
    ‘Too bad, creep,’ said the angel, hefting the bassoon. ‘Say your prayers. Oh, I forgot – you people don’t, do you? Just say “Goodbye” then.’
    Muddlespot’s little claw, clutching frantically, closed on the thing he was looking for. ‘Goodbye!’ he squeaked. And he rolled, and threw it at the angel’s feet.
SPLOTCH!
went the tar bomb in a fountain of black ickiness. The light was smothered at once.
    The angel was blinded, covered head to foot in black goo – and
very
angry. It wiped its eyes on its sleeve. The bassoon quested from left to right. Just let that little creep show himself and he’d get blasted so hard he’d still be travelling outwards when all the galaxies collided!
    But Muddlespot was gone. All that was left was an abandoned No. 19 portable furnace, a few scattered runes and a frantic scurrying somewhere in the undergrowth.
    ‘Base!’ yelled the angel. ‘I’ve lost him! Request urgent backup!’
    ‘ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!’ sang angel choirs in close polyphony. Rainbow gates clanged open. Steeds of fire trampled. Saints shook their lances and hurried out to battle. The air rang with alarums. ‘ALERT! ALERT! YAY, VERILY ALERT!’
    Fierce-eyed robins established a cordon in the bushes around the Jones household. Shock troops equipped with cymbals, harps, triangles and trumpets moved in behind a creeping barrage laid down by an organ in the old mission hall, while low-hovering afreets and pegasi circled in support.
    But Muddlespot was ahead of them. He was already tumbling into space, hanging by an abseil line from the tip of Sally’s ear. Down, down he went, burning his hands in his hurry, kicking out with his little feet so that he could swing inwards on the return, and release, and fall in a heap in the delicate curled canyons of Sally’s auricle. There he lay breathless, listening to the clamour of the hunt and the growing clatter of feet in corridors nearby.
    Voices called. Wings rushed. Muddlespot cowered in his place as troops of security angels poured past him, hurrying out from their posts in Sally’s brain to scour the slopes of her shoulders for signs of the intruder.
    The sounds faded. He waited. No more came.
    After a long while he picked himself up, gathered his considerably reduced kit sack, and began to softly make his way in the direction from which they had come.
    Upwards.
    Inwards.
    Into the mind of Sally Jones.
    There was a high archway, carried on slender pillars. Beyond was a six-sided chamber. On each side of it was an arch like the first, opening onto long corridors of diminishing perspectives, or onto flights of broad