Dear Reader,

Thanks for turning up! To see the first chapter of Homunculus in all its glory, check the Macmillan New Writing web site:  www.macmillannewwriting.com

Just to reassure you that the book continues in a similarly anarchic fashion here is a preview look at Chapter Ten.

Cheers!  Enjoy.  And then get cracking and buy the damned book so I can bash out a sequel and, well, yes I’ll be frank, make lots of money to donate to good causes. And that sort of thing.

Hugh Paxton

 

CHAPTER TEN: FIELD TEST II.

General Butt Naked was wearing thick clothes in Freetown and liking the thought of the stir it would make. The suit was pink, the silk tie decorated with a woman being whipped and loving it. A Chinese guy had painted it for him.He'd also obtained white golf shoes, and socks which had little designer crocodiles on them. The sartorial crescendo arrived in the form of a Panama hat that had been given to him by Commander Joe after the successful ambush of four internationally respected war correspondents who had been shot dead snooping around the RUF diamond field at Tongo a week earlier. The hat from the ambush had taken some getting used to. And had needed a bit of repair. Initially General Butt Naked had had his doubts. It rode his afro like a cowboy on a feisty mustang. Never quite here. Never quite there. A precarious sort of hat. But then he'd seen it on his head from every angle possible. Two of his general staff had held mirrors and made efforts to ensure that they reflected every potential view. Eventually Butt Naked had decided that the hat was him. It was a hat that could go anywhere at anytime. Perfectly clothed, and impeccably, if provocatively, hatted, Butt Naked sailed out of his Freetown hotel, the Frangipani, surrounded by his customary dagga and whisky fumes to meet the "International Community's" movers and shakers. As an afterthought he clamped down on a fat, assertive Cuban cigar that had been confiscated from a Cuban military advisor months, perhaps a year ago. "This is," he declared, with pride, and supreme self confidence,"My day !"Disappointingly, though, the media was not assembled. The only ones who cared about stories were out of town, covering the latest media martyrs. One of whom, via Commander Joe, had furnished Butt Naked's hat. Preliminary low level peace talks in Freetown were not an international news priority. A surly group of supporters who half-believed that being naked would afford them protection from bullets began growling. The appearance of the General fully clothed struck some as a bad omen. He identified faces in the crowd. Not all his men. Not by any means. There were General Murder's men there too. Butt Naked and General Murder did not always see eye to eye. Neither did their men. The growl spread and became a roar. The call of "Show us your butt !" became a chant. General Butt Naked was incredulous. This one time he was invited to peace talks, this one time he was wearing clothes and everyone picked up on it as if he was selling out. "You people got a problem with my suit

? I can kill you any time I'm wanting," yelled the General, one hand steadying the hat, the other clenched around his AK which he had christened “Gutfucker”. Gutfucker had been painted with the words, "Peace Now". The paint was not yet dry. He hadn’t wanted to paint over Gutfucker but in the interests of diplomacy had compromised and attached several Band-aids to obscure the name. There hadn’t been enough of them. His assault rifle’s stock now read Peace Now and “Gut…er”.“I’ll gutfuck you all!” explained the General, whose mind was now firmly focused on crowd control.He would have said more but his ample lips and horsy teeth were combined in a desperate mission to support his assertive Cuban cigar at an angle appropriate to his new found status as a diplomat. The cigar was twelve inches long and the very devil to control. It had already fired inflammatory shards into the curtains of the Hotel Frangipani's lobby, which were still being extinguished. The match he’d imperiously tossed over his shoulder hadn’t helped. And now the cigar was making a mockery of his pink suit with gobbets of burning ash! The General's good humour evaporated completely. What to do with the cigar ? He didn't want to throw it away. Castro had a huge cigar and his clothes didn't catch fire when he was speaking. And he sometimes spoke for twelve hours! Winston Churchill had a cigar. A cigar was the thing to take to international meetings.!He stood for a moment in a mood of truculent indecision. What to do? Throw the cigar away ? Keep the cigar ? Ignore the crowd ? Open fire on the damn crowd ? "Show us your butt !" shouted a gaggle of scrawny grinning childen. "Show us your butt !""That skinny shanks ain't got no butt !" bawled an angry and immensely fat woman who had already had one of her children mutilated in the war and wasn't about to see it happen again."He's just a murdering butt-less coward wearing clothes !" "No butt ! What are you saying ? No butt ?" The General was appalled at the impudence. His reputation was entirely built on the fact that he waded into bloody battle butt naked. He whirled furiously. "No butt ? I'll show you my butt."He was about to do just that when the antique cigar exploded with a small crackle then a flare of fire that touched off his afro. He’d doused it in Hai Karate aftershave. It might as well have been drenched in petrol. The sudden flare ignited his hat. Unbelievable ! Butt Naked, quite simply could not believe how the day was turning out. In order to quell the embers that had already claimed his eyebro

ws and which smouldered on his head he reached for his whisky bottle in his suit pocket. His guards were making threatening gestures but they too were clothed and felt disoriented. One of them ran back into the lobby shouting for water.Butt Naked tore off his smoking hat and poured whisky on his head. While doing so he dropped the AK which discharged into the crowd and sheared a large chunk out of the fat woman's own butt, as well as the lower jaw of her infant that was slung in a bag suspended low. A white face appeared as if by black magic. It had a camera. The press ! Outrage ! Here he was going to peace talks with his fucking hair on fire and he’d just been photographed shooting some bitch in the butt! How was that going to look on the front page of The Mail and fucking Guardian ? And what were his guards doing ? A UN car with tinted windows installed to conceal the identity of peace keepers pulled up.“Salvation !” thought the General. “Time to blow this scene and hit conference tables !” A bucket of water hit the General from behind. His guards ! The idiots! His suit ! Scorched then drenched !”The camera clicked again. “Deal with you bastards later !” howled Butt naked at everybody.”Gut fuck the lot of you ! I just don’t have time now ! I’m off to the UN! Peace talks!””The General’s day continued its downhill slide as he approached the Toyota.The UN car door was opened by a fat hand attached to a ropy, withered arm. The leathery face beneath the chauffeur’s cap had mouth that was pink and puckered as tight as a rose bud. It had no nose. Instead it had a child's trumpet from which smoke was curling in oily liquid ripples. "Get you RUF. Get you," droned the homunculus through it's trumpet. The General fell backwards. The homunculus reached for the detonation switch on the bomb that was strapped to its chest. The car exploded with such force that almost everybody near was killed instantly. Body parts and chunks of twisted metal from the car showered the square. Every facing window in the Frangipani shattered. The survivors were just four. A fat woman, missing some buttock, a child without a jaw and the white man who had taken the photographs. Named Pierre Spong, he was stringer for Paris Match and free-lanced for Voice of Africa and Le Monde. Spared by the whimsy of ballistics the fourth survivor was Butt Naked who crawled unsteadily for cover back up the steps into the Hotel Frangipani. Spong, shell-shocked, came in close to photograph the jaw-less kid, took some shots then ran, his stomach wailing at itself. T

he square was a charnel house, drenched in blood. A few minutes later, though, he returned to the scene of the inferno. His head had cleared somewhat and he was thinking that he might have a chance of getting the kid to Connaught hospital. There was an ambulance there already. Things in green coats and wearing face masks were already collecting the body parts. Spong frantically fired off the remaining two shots in his camera and then ran, heart thudding, in the direction of his hotel and jerry-rigged dark room.