Oct 22, 2015

Extract from Chapter 13 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

Dr Pratt cast a fretful look at his watch, then jumped as the latch flipped and the door of the cab sprung open. Professor O’Singh’s head appeared and loomed grotesquely as he struggled to squeeze his shoulders through the opening. His face was fully made up. Lips painted, cheeks rouged, eyelashes plumped and curled.

‘You!’ exclaimed Dr Pratt, arm raised in the manner of somebody warning a bomb disposal expert of making a false move.

‘Sorry, so sorry to keep you waiting,’ wheezed O’Singh, flumping onto the back seat opposite Dr Pratt, setting the whole vehicle asway.

‘You have the head of a lady!’ blathered Dr Pratt, at last able to verbalise what he was seeing. He, at the same time leant forward to cup O’Singh’s head in his hands, a convenient visual to aid the hard-of-understanding.

‘But which lady?’ returned O’Singh, enigmatically, jamming his knees around a department store carrier bag he was attempting to conceal.

The cab engine started with a splutter.

O’Singh caught his breath and saw that Dr Pratt was still staring, transfixed.

‘I confess, I have been so tired of late,’ offered O’Singh in apology.

‘Oh,’ ventured Dr Pratt, curious how O’Singh’s sudden bout of transvestism could be brought on by fatigue.

‘This is more activity than I have enjoyed for a very long time. I fell asleep in there…’ explained O’Singh, nodding his painted head in the direction of the hulking department store whose side entrance he had just emerged from. ‘I was negotiating my through the Cosmetics Department and I just had to sit down. I found a stool. The next thing I knew I had awoke wearing the full range from Clinique.’