The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag by Robert Rankin Read Free Book Online Page A

loud.’
    ‘You
want to watch that, they’ll put you in the nut house.’
    ‘Ha ha ha,’
I said, as I hadn’t lost my sense of humour.
    ‘I’m
glad you haven’t lost your sense of humour,’ said the inmate, tucking into his
porridge. ‘I’m Dan, by the way.’
    ‘Pleased
to meet you, Dan.’
    ‘No, it’s
Dan-by-the-way,’ said Dan by the way. ‘I’m only Dan to my friends.’
    ‘And do
you have many of those?’
    ‘Well,
none, actually.’
    ‘Then
don’t let me spoil a perfect record.’
    ‘Oh,
what the heck, you can call me Dan, if you like.’
    ‘Cheers,
Dan.’
    ‘No, I
said Dan-if-you-like. Are you taking the piss, or what?’
    ‘I’m
just trying to eat my breakfast.’
    ‘Yeah,
well, let’s have no trouble then.’
    ‘Fine.’
I picked what appeared to be a toenail from my teeth and cast it aside.
    What
are you in for?’ asked Dan.
    ‘Multiple
murder, cannibalism and necrophilia,’ I said, as this often proved an efficient
method of subtly discouraging further conversation. ‘Do you have a problem with
that?’
    ‘Absolutely
not.’ Dan tucked further into his porridge. ‘That’s what I’m in here for.’
    ‘Let’s
eat up and piss off, shall we, chief?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘Absolutely,’
said Dan.
     
    A little later Dan said, ‘Actually
I’m not in for multiple murder. Well, I am, a bit. But it’s not the real reason
I’m in here. I’m in here because I know things they don’t want the
outside world to know.’
    ‘They?’
    ‘They, them. The powers that be.’
    ‘Always
the same old they,’ I said. ‘Been having trouble with them myself.’
    ‘I
uncovered this terrible secret,’ said Dan. ‘You see, every man, woman and child
in the entire world has an invisible alien sitting on their shoulders
manipulating their thoughts.’
    ‘Bummer.’
    ‘Yes,
isn’t it? And no-one will believe me. Because the aliens manipulate their
thoughts and tell them not to.’
    ‘Tricky
situation.’
    ‘And I
know about the Jesus conspiracy.’
    ‘Is
that like the JFK conspiracy?’
    ‘Only
in that it’s a conspiracy.’
    ‘So it’s
not like Jesus wasn’t really crucified, he was shot with an arrow from the
grassy knoll, or anything like that?’
    ‘No, it’s
about the second coming.’
    ‘Oh
yeah? What, you know the date or something?’
    ‘July
the twenty-seventh.’
    ‘This
year?’
    ‘No,
not this year, don’t be stupid.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘July
the twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty-seven.’
    ‘How
about a stroll around the exercise yard, chief?’
    ‘In a
minute, Barry, I don’t want to miss this one.’
    ‘Barry?’
said Dan.
    ‘Never
mind about Barry. July the twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty-seven, you say? I
wonder how that slipped by me.’
    ‘Perhaps
you were doing the Hippy Trail, or at Woodstock, or reading a Johnny Quinn
novel, or something.’
    ‘That
must have been it.’
    ‘Of
course it wasn’t it.’ Dan banged his spoon on the table. ‘It was never in the
newspapers. It’s a conspiracy. Didn’t you ever wonder about the Summer of Love?
Why nineteen sixty-seven was different from any other year? It’s because it was
the year Jesus was reborn. He was reborn in San Francisco. The CIA knew it was
going to happen, they had copies of the missing pages from the Bible that were
suppressed by the Pope prior to the English translation being done for King
James. The date of the second coming was in there. The CIA took Jesus into protective
custody, he’s being brought up on a farm in Wisconsin. He was born in nineteen
sixty-seven, so he will be thirty-three, his age at his former death, when the
millennium comes around.’
    ‘Something
for us all to look forward to there, then.’
    ‘Twat,’
said Dan.
    ‘And I
thought we were getting along so well.’
    ‘Take
the piss if you want. But when Jesus comes down in glory from the clouds, in a
helicopter would be my guess, you and all the other unbelievers are going to look
pretty