The Sprout Prince Hits Rock Bottom

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Atkinson Row was like two different streets that had been forced to cohabit. Along one side, the living rooms of a pre-war terrace blazed with festive cheer, like the open doors of an advent calender. The modernist student hall of residence, that loomed opposite, was a garish assembly of giant Tetris bricks that had been improperly slotted together. It had been mostly vacated for the season and only a few lights were on.

Jake Denham paced along the middle of the road with his hoodie pulled down over his eyes. A girl with wavy ginger hair shouted at him theatrically from one of the upper floors:

“You boy, what day is this?”

Without pausing, he silently extended his middle finger in her direction.

On the fringes of the hospital parking lot, a pair of Christmas songs, blaring from separate cars, briefly skirmished for his attention.

The lobby was unusually quiet.

An elderly couple were leaning over the counter, where a receptionist, in a spotty blouse, sat typing at a computer.

“We've just been to see Doctor Fanny in the gynae clinic,” announced the old woman.

“Her skirt was so short you could practically see her fanny,” grumbled her husband.

A printer next to the receptionist stirred into life. As she removed the document, she caught sight of Jake. She called after him:

“Sir! Sir, can I help?”

“I'm here for the alcoholics support group.”

“It's the third door on your right.”

“I know where it is,” he snapped.

~

It was the usual crowd, augmented with festive jumpers, some of which lit up, or played electronic renditions of Christmas songs. There was a newcomer: A pale young girl, with dilated eyes. Her dark hair was bound into a half-ponytail. She looked familiar, but Jake couldn't place her.

He spent the opening prayer imagining himself bludgeoning his recent nemesis, a film director named Matthew Bonwick.

“Now we have a new member who we are going to invite into our sharing circle,” croaked Vivienne. “Rae, would you like to open the proceedings?”

The girl stood up and shyly addressed the group:

“Well it started when I got a part in a Christmas advert for Gaterows supermarket. I was a princess and I danced with a Brussel sprout who turned into a handsome prince.”

She smiled at Jake who stared back at her with sudden recognition.

“And I see my co-star is here this evening,” said Rae.

There were a few 'ahhhs' from the more sentimental members of the group. Rae smiled nervously.

“It must be lovely to rekindle your old romance,” mused Wendy.

“We were both ten years old,” said Jake. “We didn't get married.”

“I adore those adverts,” said Brenda. “Do you remember the one where the little boy finds an injured snowflake? He keeps it in the freezer all year and feeds it ice-cream. At the end he lets it go and it flies north, with all the other snowflakes.”

“My gran liked that one,” said Clive, nodding approvingly.

“Your gran is an idiot,” observed Jake.

“Was an idiot,” said Clive, firmly, staring daggers.

“It's soulless advertisers mining their childhood for poignant moments, so you'll buy more mince pies made with Sicilian orange peel,” argued Jake.

Vivienne brought the meeting to order.

“Anyway,” said Rae. “On the set, Jake and me got hold of a bottle of peach schnapps. It was my first drink and unfortunately I never stopped.”

~

After the meeting, Jake found himself standing with Rae outside the toilets. Signage above them depicted the silhouette of a man, whose head had been painted out. Clive intentionally pushed against him as he walked past.

“Dick,” muttered Rae, just loud enough for Clive to hear.

“So what are you doing now?” Jake asked her.

“I'll probably just go home,” she said, breezily.

“No I mean, are you still acting?”

“Oh”, she said, smiling with her upper teeth “Mainly voice-over work for videogames. What about you?”

“I did a couple of werewolf films. Canid and Canid: Asylum. I'm actually in London because they're making a third one called A Christmas Canid. I was going to be in it, but now I'm not.”

“What happened?”

“It's a different director. He told me the road to success is greased with cum.”

“And you begged to differ?”

Jake grinned.

“Yeah, so I'm kicking around London sofa-surfing. If nothing comes up by Christmas Eve I'll hitch-hike home.”

“Where are you staying tonight?”

“I'm going to head over to Victoria Station.”

Rae's eyelids drooped over her blackened irises. She pressed her lips together so tightly, they made her mouth go crooked.

“You know,” she said, “You could sleep on my couch.”

~

Rae flicked on the light switch in the kitchen. A small glass vial stood conspicuously in the centre of a rustic wooden table, as if it had been awaiting her return. They sat opposite each other. Jake picked up the bottle. It was filled with tiny cylindrical beads, the mottled colour of blackcurrants.

“What is it?” he enquired.

“At the moment it's the only thing stopping me from necking a litre of vodka every night.”

He pulled out the stopper and sniffed the contents.

“Is it acid?”

“Purple microdot. I'm going to take one in a moment. You can too if you want.”

Without paying attention he selected one of the beads, dropped it into his mouth and swallowed. Across the table, Rae regarded him with a mixture of horror and amusement.

“You just took three stuck together,” she said.

“Is that bad?” he replied, concealing his worry with a sketchy smile.

“It means that you need to batten down the hatches.”

~

Jake was sitting on a settee, lost in the interlaced blurring of his slow-moving hands. Across the room he watched Rae rise from her own after-image.

“I'm going to the all-night garage,” she announced.

He heard his voice saying: “Is that a good idea?”

Suddenly she was standing in front of him. Their hands were fused together.

“It is,” she said earnestly. “It's really, really important.”

He was about to argue when he realised that he was standing in a different part of the room. Rae was gone. An advertisement for Norrisons supermarket was playing on the TV:

A woman with vocal bedhead was singing a version of Driving Home for Christmas. On the screen Jake watched a parcel fall from the back of a delivery lorry. This was followed by a montage of the gift attempting to reach its destination, assisted along the way by a flock of migrating birds, a pensioner on a mobility scooter, and a hedgehog, wearing a dress and a bonnet, who guided it across a perilous motorway. Having reached its journeys end, the package leapt through the letter box and took its place among the other presents beneath a perfectly decorated tree.

The song ended, the supermarket logo faded from the screen, but the image of the tree in the hallway remained, as if frozen in time. After a long pause, one of the presents raised itself up on one corner and farted. There was more silence and then a light tapping against thick glass.

“Jake,” said a female voice, in a plummy English accent.

The face of the hedgehog appeared at the bottom of the screen.

“Jake, can you hear me,” she enquired.

He nodded, his mouth agape.

“There's not much time. You need to help us escape.”

“She's coming,” said the fairy on top of the tree.

The hedgehog curled herself into a ball of loosely-pleated gingham, and rolled backwards into the pile of presents. A dark-haired woman crossed the room and disappeared through a door. The hedgehog uncurled herself.

“Was that Claudia Winkleman?” asked Jake, hesitantly.

“She goes by many names,” said the Hedgehog, adjusting her bonnet. “She is a demon who has clothed itself in human form. She must be banished from this plane of existence.”

“Destroy her!” chorused the Christmas tree baubles. Their high-pitched voices were joined by the baritone of the presents around the base of the trunk.

“But she's Claudia Winkleman,” said Jake.

“We met online, She promised me a role in a series of wholesome children's books,” lamented the hedgehog. “She keeps us in a shipping container and pimps us out to supermarkets every Christmas. You are the chosen one who, it is written, will free us from our bondage.”

“She's coming back,” warned the fairy, urgently.

“Oh shit,” said the hedgehog, turning around just in time to see Claudia enter the room.

“What going on here, Harriet?” she enquired sternly. Under the tree, the presents were attempting to burrow underneath each other.

“Oh, I see,” said Claudia, staring at Jake. “We have a guest.”

“Destroy her!” pleaded the hedgehog. “End her black-hearted reign of tyranny!”

“I don't know what to do,” replied Jake in desperation.

“You do know, Jake. You've always known.”

As Claudia began to advance towards him, Jake bellowed an incoherent war cry and launched himself into a flying kick at the television. There was a flash and a loud bang.

He was lying on the floor. Around him tiny voices were crying out in jubilation. Through a haze of smoke he watched the hedgehog climb through a jagged hole in the TV screen. She was dressed in a beret and carrying a backpack with an anarchist symbol drawn on it.

“Thank you comrade,” she said. “I'm off to rob the Bank of England and redistribute the wealth among the proletariat!”

The tree fairy took to the air behind her.

“I murdered my last two husbands and I'll kill again!” she boasted gleefully

A brittle rumble heralded a stampede of Christmas baubles.

“We're going to steal all your drugs!” they chorused, as they rolled over him.

“I'm going to cover myself in cocaine and fuck a disco ball!” said a straggler.

“You lied to me,” Jake gasped.

“Never trust a hedgehog who can quote Das Kapital,” philosophised a Christmas present, as it leap-frogged over him. “The Romanovs learned that the hard way.”

~

When Jake awoke, it was morning. The darkened TV was like a broken window in a derelict house. Rae was nowhere to be found. He tried to leave through the front door but couldn't figure out how to unlock it. Returning to the living room he unhooked a window latch and climbed through.

He followed a trail of red glitter until he heard ragged panting ahead of him. A gift-wrapped box, badly-dented in one corner, was dragging itself along the flagstones. He manoeuvred around it, blocking its path. The package paused and tilted itself upward.

“Went out through the chimney,” it moaned. “Feel off the bleeding roof, didn't I.”

“Any final words?” asked Jake.

The present coughed up some fragments of wrapping paper.

“I'll see you in hell,” it said.

Jake raised his leg and brought the full force of his trainer down on the box. It felt good. He did it again. And again.

Across the street, Jane Porter and her son, Robin, watched the young man frenziedly stomp a discarded carton of fried chicken.

“What's he doing?” enquired Robin.

“That's your uncle Jonathan,” lied his mother. “He is a very angry man who hates Christmas. You must never speak of him to anyone. Now come along, or we'll be late for your father.”

Jake had ceased in his violent assault on the Christmas present. He bent over, winded from the exertion. The long road of vengeance stretched before him into the distant horizon. Its end, if there was one, lay beyond the reach of his dilated, thousand-yard stare.

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