It Was Punch, Judy

That’s the way to do it!

The kazoo voice yelled the famous line and everyone laughed and laughed and laughed until the tears came and their bodies ached.

The enraptured audience sat on the floor, legs crossed, looking up intently at the stage. Bursting into laughter. Clapping delightedly and chiming in with words when required.

This really was the way to do it.

Only Jane didn’t feel quite right about this. Theatres ranged the audience at least at something like eye level with the stage itself, and with rising rank after rank so everyone could see all the action from a suitable position. That sort of seating position afforded depth. That’s why there was a backdrop of scenery and all that jazz. This was theatre from another position. Like being at school and listening to the teacher read a story at the end of the day, only this was so much more than a story and it deserved a better vantage point.

Jane craned her neck to see further, where there was no backdrop, only the characters. She was obliged to laugh again as the main character hit one of the other characters. 

Slapstick.

A stick.

Hitting with a loud slap.

A raucous plot.

A ridiculous voice.

What wasn’t there to like?

More laughter, and the laughter was infectious.

“Isn’t this fun?!” 

Jane turned towards the sound of the voice and saw the grinning face of Danny. Danny lived next door to Jane. He was nice. Really nice. As nice as nice can be. With a sprinkle of sugar on top. And a cherry atop the sugar. Maybe he was a little too nice. How sad that the world could deem someone too nice. But that world was not here right now and Jane dismissed those thoughts. Now was not the time. Besides, Danny really was at it with that grin of his. He was going to crack a tooth if he tried for any more of a grin. Despite Danny’s undue effort at the biggest of smiles, Jane could not help but return his smile and as she did, she laughed.

Then Danny laughed.

Danny’s laugh made Jane laugh even more and they laughed uncontrollably, more so as they wondered why it was that they had laughed so hard in the first place, and then carried on with the laughter for so long. They became delirious with this hard and seemingly never ending  laughter. It very nearly got too much.

“Oh!” sighed Jane, holding her side, “I haven’t laughed like that for ever such a long time!”

“Neither have I,” said Danny mirroring her action with the holding of his side, “in fact, the last time I laughed like this was probably…”

His forehead creased up as he tried to recall the last time he laughed like that, and Jane resented those creases above his sparkling eyes. Those creases threatened to break the spell of the laughter and all the fun they were having. So she reached out and tickled him. 

“Oy!” he cried as her hand shot out to his other side and grabbed playfully at just the right spot.

Jane was elated by Danny’s indignant exclamation and rewarded with his evasive wriggling, so she went at it like a crazed serpent, with no teeth of course. She wasn’t intending to hurt him. Not much anyway. As Danny leant back and away, Jane lunged forward and her hand snaked up his side and reached his armpit. 

She wasn’t quite sure how it happened. One minute she was sitting cross legged next to Danny, watching the show, the next she was straddling him and tickling him under the arms. She was having so much fun. She needed this. She needed to just play and go with the flow and have fun and escape everything else, all of it, the whole rotten bundle of her life.

“Stobbit!” Danny was pleading, but this only egged Jane on to tickle more and more insistently.

Right now, in this very moment, tickling was the bees knees, the chicken’s beard and the dragon’s elbow to boot. Danny was squirming under her and trying to throw her off, but as long as she kept tickling, he couldn’t coordinate himself adequately to throw her off. 

Somehow, he composed himself sufficiently and got some leverage. She canted to her left and almost fell, but just in the nick of time, she countered and leant right. He saw his chance and threw himself in the opposite direction, but this was an obvious ploy and Jane was ready for him and in a fluid movement she both disrupted his momentum and slipped her knees out past his shoulders.

Now she took to tickling his neck.

Danny’s face went very red. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. Almost as though the tickling was interrupting the flow of messages from his brain to his body and nothing was prompting it to inhale and exhale. Jane liked this. This was so much fun.

Then she stopped, “OK, I’ll stop tickling your neck,” she told him.

The look of relief on the moon of his red face was comical and Jane giggled a giggle that stopped his relief in it’s tracks. His eyes went wide a second before she dropped her hands and they went down behind her to his sides and crawled all over him like the best ever tickle spiders.

Now his face went a deeper shade of red. This should have been even funnier, but suddenly it was fun no more, and as soon as the fun stopped, the tickling stopped.

Jane looked down at Danny’s face and she snarled. The snarl came from nowhere and surprised her more than it caught Danny off guard.

That was when the slapping started.

As she slapped those red cheeks of his, Jane was yelling at Danny, but now Danny was laughing. Danny was laughing in the same way Jane had been moments before. There was a release here. Something in him had snapped and he was letting go. 

He was letting go of something he had held onto for far, far too long.

The slapping stopped, but the laughter continued until Danny could laugh no more. Jane rolled off and became aware that the show was continuing despite their boisterous and disruptive behaviour. 

“What?” she asked Danny, seeing the merriment in his eyes.

He repeated the words she’d screamed at him while she was slapping at him.

It’s all your fault!

Her face was blank for a moment and then she chuckled, “that was a bit silly of me wasn’t it?” 

“It’s fine,” he told her, “shall we watch the rest of the show?”

Jane nodded and smiled, and then they resumed their places. Legs crossed and heads tilted upwards. Jane slipped her hand into Danny’s and Danny squeezed it. They both smiled, both at the simple comfort of a hand held and the entertainment before them.

“Did you think it was going to be like this when you booked him?” Danny whispered to Jane.

“No,” she whispered back, “but then I was so very angry when I booked him.”

“So was I,” agreed Danny, “more angry than I have ever been.”

“I’m not now though,” Jane said.

“Me neither,” said Danny, “in fact I feel more happy than I have any right to.”

“Yes,” said Jane, “was it the sugary drink?” she ventured.

Danny nodded a very enthusiastic nod, “or the cakes.”

“I had quite a few of the cakes,” said Jane.

“So did I,” said Danny.

They sat quietly then, apart from the parts where they knew they were supposed to join in with the laughter or the applause or the words that he encouraged them to say so that they were as much a part of the show as everyone else.

Eventually, Danny spoke again, “do you think they knew?”

Jane thought about this, never looking away from the show, “that we knew? Or about the show?”

Danny took a while to respond. He was finding it difficult to think clearly and the show was so very engaging, “I think they knew that we knew, but they didn’t care.”

Jane nodded, “they were very obvious about it when I came to think about it. It was all so very rude of them wasn’t it?”

Danny nodded, “they didn’t need to be like that. It was like they were rubbing our noses in it. I think I’d rather they’d been more…”

“Well behaved?” guessed Jane.

“Something like that,” Danny smiled as he said this, then he chuckled, “I don’t think they suspected anything about the booking though, do you?”

Jane chuckled her own chuckle, hers was louder and firmer, “not one bit!”

“We did warn them though, didn’t we?” Danny turned to Jane as he said this and Jane grinned a teeth clenched grin, her eyes gleaming manically.

“Their faces!” she said in something like triumph.

Then they both nodded and said the immortal words…

He’s behind you!

Only he wasn’t behind them now. He was right there in the middle of the kitchen. On top of Jane’s husband Barry, bashing his brains out.

That’s the way to do it!

The kazoo voice blared and Jane and Danny clapped gleefully.

He’s a very naughty man!

Jane and Danny laughed raucously as the show went on and on.

But somewhere from deep within, a tendril of icy fear crept up through their midriffs and slipped into their minds. This was not right. None of it was right. They had only wanted to frighten their respective husband and wife. Something needed to be done. The affair had to stop. The unfaithful spouses had to be stopped from hurting the people around them. They had made vows. They needed to know how selfish and bloody well callous they were being. 

It wasn’t fair!

Barry and Trudy had to pay for what they had done.

But Danny and Jane hadn’t wanted any of this.

Had they?

When they booked him to do something about the hurtful infidelity, Professor Punchinello had been so warm, and friendly, and persuasive. He’d talked and talked and talked and as he talked, he’d weaved a plan that sounded so right. The plan had fit like a handmade costume and Jane and Danny had willingly donned their costumes and gone along with everything that the professor had asked of them. 

As though responding to the first flush of their fear, the professor stopped hitting Danny’s wife Trudy with the rolling pin and turned to look at his enraptured audience, his face a red mask pock marked with gore. He smiled a terrible smile, his yellowed teeth in stark contrast to the blood that had painted a face that consisted of exaggerated and coarse features. He rose up, never taking his eyes from them both, he climbed off the kitchen island still holding the rolling pin. The rolling pin looked for all the world like an elongated voodoo doll, some of Trudy’s hair hanging limply from the end of it and swinging to and fro as he came closer, looming over Jane and Danny, making them feel tiny and insignificant and very, very frightened.

They heard a deep and terrible voice roar that’s the way to do it, and then the professor and all sign of his presence was gone. 

Jane and Danny were still sitting there on the kitchen floor when the police arrived. 

Neighbours had been disturbed by strange sounds that got louder and louder as the night wore on and threatened never to end. Jane and Danny were still laughing there in the dark as the door of the house was smashed in and the police discovered a scene that the lead officer could only describe as an abattoir.

In response to the reading of their rights, after they had been told that they had the right to remain silent and that anything they said could be used in evidence against them, Jane bellowed six words in a strangely rasping voice.

That’s the way to do it!

She’d beaten Danny to the punch.