A deafening crash jerked Prem the Pirate, the world’s biggest children’s performer, out of a dream about Polly the Parrot; someone was banging on the bars of his cell.
“What? What do you want?” the pirate moaned.
“Message for you,” a guard said, launching a rolled-up piece of paper like a javelin through the bars and into the cold cell.
The pirate straightened the tea towel on his head and lurched to his feet. He walked over to the piece of paper that lay on the dirty floor and picked it up.
“9.15,” Prem read aloud. “What is this?”
“Don’t leave me hanging,” the guard said. “I wanna know what Killer Carrington wants.”
The mere mention of the country’s most notorious criminal shivered Prem’s timbers. Fear compelled him to read aloud.
“Yo, Prem! 9.15. That’s the time I want you here, matey. Arr, arr, arr and all that jazz. Might even get some jazz standards in. We’ve got our kids visiting today — you and me are gonna rip it up.”
“What’s that mean?” Prem asked the guard.
“He wants to sing again. Or rap. Or freestyle. Or whatever he’s calling it this week,” the guard said. “He is good, don’t get me wrong.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
The guard laughed.
“Killer likes performing. And he likes duets. We get a lot of rock stars in police custody. Rappers too. Killer likes to get them up on stage to perform. Not many children’s performers make it here, but he likes your stuff and I hear you’re seen as a bit of a badass over in maxi.”
“Maxi?”
“Maximum security.”
“Right. So, he wants me to get up and sing with him? No music, no microphone, nothing?”
“The food hall over there turns into a stadium rock venue when there’s a celebrity inside. They’ve got a house band and all.”
“But I’m due in court soon.”
“It’s Killer Carrington; he’ll make it work.”
Sure enough, within the hour, a phalanx of hired thugs arrived at Prem’s cell with orders for him to warm up his vocal cords.
It was only when Prem the Pirate was frogmarched out of the building towards an entrance that the thugs assured him would avoid the paparazzi that he noticed a logo plastered across their khaki uniforms.
“KCE,” Prem said to one of the four men carrying his limbs. “What’s that?”
“Killer Carrington’s Entourage.”
Had Prem been physically able to, he would have pinched himself to check if he was dreaming.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“It’s no joke.”
“You must think I’m pretty stupid,” a dizzy Prem said as the men swung him through an empty courtyard all the way to a service entry.
“Actually, I think you’re one of the most gifted lyricists of this generation,” the man holding Prem’s left leg said. “And I wish I had your way with women.”
“OK, put him down.” This time it was the man holding Prem’s right arm talking. “Get him in the limo.”
“Limo?” Prem said.
It wasn’t until the car was out on the highway, cruising in the morning sunshine towards the maximum-security prison, that the men explained more.
“So if Killer Carrington has an entourage that can just turn up and carry someone out of police custody this easy, why isn’t he free?” Prem asked.
The four men laughed.
“What makes you think KC wants to be free?”
“KC?”
“You don’t realise how valuable it is to KC’s career that he’s behind bars. He has to stay there.”
“I’m not following.”
“KC wants to be around for a long time; he has loads to offer the human race as an artist. Sure, he’d be more of a legend if he escaped into the jungle and was never heard of again, but KC doesn’t want to be never heard of again.”
***
Brooms and mops surrounded the children’s entertainer in what was usually a cleaner’s closet. The stench of chemicals filled Prem’s airways and made him momentarily wretch. Today this hovel was his dressing room, though he had no dressing to do.
“Prem the Pirate! Prem the Mangy Pirate! How the frickin’ hell are you?”
Killer Carrington was standing before him in all his menace — menace that was much, much shorter than Prem had expected. To the pirate’s sheer disbelief, Killer, the fiercest and most vicious psychopath in the world, would have barely reached 150cm on a Prem the Pirate height chart.
“Hi, Killer. What exactly is going on here?”
“We’re on.”
Killer Carrington said nothing more and staggered away down the hall with the impaired movement of a body that had burrowed relentlessly through a thousand treasure chests of drugs.
Replacing Killer in the doorway moments later was a much taller — and eminently healthier — young woman who introduced herself as Sally.
“I’m stage and tour manager for Mr Carrington,” she said. “You look like you’re in costume. Ha, I’ve never noticed how much your bandana looks like a tea towel. But then, I’m not really a fan of your work. No offence.”
Prem nodded. He was used to complete strangers telling him they didn’t like him. It always made them feel better to be able to remind the pirate that he really wasn’t superior to them.
“You work for Killer?”
“Only part time. I’m studying medicine. This is really good money on the side.”
Sally clutched Prem’s hand and yanked him out of his dressing room. The strength in her wiry, bony wrist and forearm surprised the pirate.
“The support act’s almost done. It’s pretty painful spoken word, but he’s Killer’s cellmate, so, you know . . .”
Sally led a now nervous Prem down a long, dingy walkway to the familiar cacophony of voices yelping abuse. Each insult felt fired like a poisonous dart.
“You’re a dead man walking. I hear a dead man walking,” one resident madman cried through the bars.
“Sorry, we’ve had to take a detour through death row. It’s not ideal preparation for our artists-in-penitence, I know,” Sally said.
“You mean artists-in-residence?”
“I meant what I said.”
“Dead man. Here comes a dead man,” the crazed cries continued.
“You’re the one on death row, moron,” Sally shouted back.
The cells fell dead silent.
“Works every time. You’ve just got to be firm.”
At the end of hallway, Sally whisked Prem into another small room.
“Is this a kitchen?” Prem asked, noticing several middle-aged women in matching blue and white dresses milling about scrubbing and cooking.
“You really think you’re performing in an actual rock’n’roll stadium with a spa-filled dressing room? This, Your Royal Higness, is a lunch preparation area — one that prides itself on having met government health standards in six of the past thirteen years. And you are on in five.”
Sally walked out, violently swinging the door behind her, and left Prem alone with the women, who were much less interested in what he was doing in their kitchen than he expected. They just moved about slowly, barely lifting their feet from the floor, occasionally sighing as they wiped down benches and scrubbed harder at grime that proved resistant.
Prem could hear the sound of awful spoken-word poetry forcing its way unnaturally through the PA in the next room. It reminded him of the helpless, indignant squeals of animals at the slaughterhouse all those years ago.
“Dropping drugs till he could down no more/He fired the bullet; his victim on the floor/No babes at his side, he retreated into hell/Alone with his turmoil, rotting in this cell. Thank you . . . and good night!”
Prem shuddered. His turn on stage was approaching. Almost on cue, the usually still contents of his bladder began to swill.
“What are we doing with this leftover swill, Mary?” one of the women shouted while pointing to a tub of food scraps that sat on a bench in front of the pirate.
Prem barely noticed. That familiar, sudden and almost incapacitating desire to urinate rushed over him. He needed to pee. Or did he? It didn’t feel like anything would actually come out if he stood at a urinal trying to discharge. But what if he wet his pants the moment he climbed up on stage?
The embarrassment in any situation would be fatal. In a prison, wetting his pants would probably spark a riot in which he would be beaten to death. He may has well load a gun for these animals and ask them to put him out of his misery.
“Breathe deeply, Prem,” he said aloud. “You know this feeling — and it goes away.”
It always did — this had happened to Prem literally thousands of times before, but it didn’t stop him pacing around the room, frantically looking for buckets, sinks or drains.
“You all right, love?” asked one of the kitchen staff, who noticed Prem sizing up her swill tub.
Prem, his heart pounding and his limbs trembling, nodded.
“I get nervous before I perform.”
“Righto, love.”
The pirate dashed from the room in the direction of where he assumed the toilet was. Such pre-show jitters over a sustained period had made him an expert on building design.
Prem burst through some swinging double doors and stumbled out into another hallway.
“I’m guessing second on the right,” he said. “It always is.”
But the pirate had never performed in a prison before and hadn’t factored in that such places were designed to confuse those trying to escape. What should have been a door that led to a urinal turned out to be an alternative entrance to the food hall — Prem had made a premature arrival to his show.
Before him, blocking a clear pathway to the stage were hundreds of hideous, beastly prisoners in red coveralls. Every single one of these sub-humans had small children perched on their shoulders. The little tackers, juiced up on red cordial no doubt, screamed and waved Prem the Pirate flags and figurines. Their deliriousness, Prem realised, was mixture of excitement at being at one of his shows and terror at visiting their fathers in a maximum-security prison.
The house music stopped dead, the lights went down and a spotlight shone in the pirate’s direction. It would be his guiding light through this sea of miscreants.
The pirate’s mind was spinning faster than the brutal — yet always familiar — insults being hurled in his direction. This time, Prem didn’t care. For the next hour, his usual anxiety and shyness wouldn’t reduce him to a wreck of a man. It was time to perform. All he needed was a microphone and complete control would be his.
“Arr, get outta me way, you mangy dogs! I be on a search for buried treasure! What’s that, children? Yes, me thinks it’s a-yonder!”
The pirate sped up to a slow but energetic jog as he pushed through the crowd with as much force as a children’s entertainer should use on his audience – and much more than any sane person should use on hardened criminals.
“I said get out of me way, you marauders!” Prem shouted while pressing his hand hard against the back of one particularly crazed-looking inmate.
“What’s that mean?” the man grunted. “What’s a marauder?”
“It means one who roams in search of things to steal or people to attack,” a pasty, slim and bespectacled inmate next to him leaned over and said.
“I’m only playing,” Prem whispered in the hulking beast’s ear. “I’m a pirate, you’re a pirate. It’s for the kids. Play along, would you?”
The pirate wasn’t in the least bit surprised that this simple explanation appeased the man, however opposed to logic his sick mind probably was — things like this always worked.
Prem wasn’t one to exploit the power fame had brought him, nor was he prone to exploit people because of who he was. But he had learned throughout the course of twenty-four years as the world’s biggest celebrity that most people were quite willing to ignore their social reality when in his presence and go along with the show. This had often resulted in stone-faced school principals break-dancing, world leaders singing duets with parrots and, yes, even crazed psycho killers letting an undersized children’s entertainer push them around.
Prem had spent many a long night wondering how he could harness this strange glitch in the laws of nature and transfer it to his personal life, but he was too nice a person to really pull it off; it was strictly an in-character phenomenon.
“Arr, me hearties! Help me! A bad, bad, bad pirate be on the hunt for me treasure. Arr, if it falls into his dirty hands, he’ll be usin’ it for evil! Come aboard me ship, me hearties, for the yonder ride!”
Those within earshot cheered as Prem reached the stage, bowed and went for a microphone.
“Boys and girls, aboard your thither sea monsters,” Prem said. “We’ve work to do. Shiver me timbers! Time’s running out and me treasure’s still nowhere to be seen. Arr!”
Prem was thinking a couple of moves ahead. He didn’t want Killer Carrington dictating terms to him on stage — it was the pirate’s time to shine.
The five-piece band on stage, the unimaginatively named Jailhouse Rockers, greeted Prem with indifferent nods.
“What you got for us, kid?” the skeletal, wan guitarist said, drawing back on a cigarette.
“Tell me it’s something better than the set list this clown’s given us,” the heavily inked and shirtless drummer cursed while bouncing on his drum stool and adjusting his kick pedal.
“You know my work?”
“Yep,” the guitarist said, again drawing back on his fag, but refusing to make eye contact.
“OK, great. Most of my songs are simple three-chord arrangements. The rockier ones are generally in G or A and the sad songs are in D minor.”
“Always the way, ain’t it?” the greying bass player said. “Yeah, yeah, we got it.”
“Hit it, guys,” Prem said. “Ill at Ease on the Seven Seas.”
The band, professionals that they were, launched into pure note-for-note perfection of the track, the likes of which Prem hadn’t heard since the golden age of The Sextant Sextet.
“Arr, welcome me landlubbers to this special one-off treasure hunt for all you strong junior pirates out there,” Prem shouted.
The crowd cheered.
“It’s a-gonna take us a wee few songs before we be gettin’ to where me treasure is — let’s a-hope we get there before we run into that bad, bad, bad pirate.”
Prem, whose bladder had well and truly settled by now, knew it was ambitious to think Killer Carrington would take this as a hint to delay his entrance, but anything was worth a try.
“I got a bout of scurvy/Things are topsy-turvy,” Prem began singing. As though on cue, the crowd echoed these eminently familiar lyrics.
Just as the pirate finished the verse, however, the off-key, grating sounds of a second vocalist — Prem stopped short of considering him a singer — crashed the song. The squealing feedback of the microphone, coupled with a wild cacophony of pops, thuds and crackles, revealed the person grasping it as amateur at best.
“Yo, yo, yo! Killah in da house!”
The deafening screech of Killer Carrington’s voice had Prem and most of the children in the crowd blocking their ears. Their apparently tone-deaf fathers, on the other hand, seemed strangely hypnotised.
“I got my main man, Prem the Pirate, yo! Prem the freakin’ Pirate; a personal friend from way back. He’s agreed to do this show tonight,” Killer ranted. The Jailhouse Rockers eased into a gentle backing groove. “It’s just so damn awesome you’ve come out here, ’cause not only are we here doin’ it for the kids and all my friends down here in K-unit, we’re celebrating somethin’ so damn special it might just make me cry.”
Carrington dropped to his knees, putting his hand on his chest, and began pouring out his heart with about as much artifice and trickery as the pirate had ever seen.
“My debut album — in stores and available online from tomorrow — is all of my heart and soul extracted from the painful exterior that has encased me ever since I was unjustly locked up in this prison way back in–”
“That’s the evil pirate!” Prem bellowed, pointing across the stage to Killer.
All of the stadium’s children began screaming and shouting before launching into a customary Prem the Pirate crowd stanza.
“Bad, bad man of the sea/Why are you always chasing me?/No, no, you won’t stay afloat/I’ll fire my cannons into your boat.”
Sticklers of traditional grammar often criticised this otherwise universally loved Prem anthem, insisting “cannon” was both singular and plural.
“Arr, I think the crowd has a-spoken,” Prem shouted. He fired a glance across to a resilient Killer who, rather than admit defeat, launched into a rancorous rap about “the system”.
“What’s that?” Prem screamed through the microphone. “The bad pirate is trying to trick us. Let’s stop him reaching the treasure. Hit it, guys.”
The band exploded into an up-tempo guitar-driven hard rock number that somehow made those in the audience — and Prem himself — feel like they were in the midst of cannon fire.
“Shiver me timbers! It’s working, it’s working,” Prem shouted. “He’s retreating. Yes, boys and girls, the bad, bad pirate is runnin’ scared. Arr, isn’t he a cowardly pirate? And what do we say to cowardly pirates?”
“Cowardly pirate, bother me no more/Prem’s gonna send you . . . to the ocean’s floor.”
For a few more musical bars and insults, the serial killer sat still, not really knowing what to do. He wasn’t used to such onslaughts.
“No, no, children. You have it all wrong. I’m a nice pirate. A gentle, sea-loving defender of these here waters. Arr, arr, arr.”
Killer was a psychopath and, therefore, not averse to imitating emotions. But the children weren’t bought.
“He’s faking it,” a boy in the front row shouted.
This comment stopped everyone, including the band, dead in their tracks. The room fell silent.
“What was that, young man?” Prem asked.
A spotlight illuminated the small boy who sat on his deranged father’s shoulders glaring towards the stage at Killer Carrington. One of the stage crew rushed to shove a cordless microphone into his hands.
“I said he’s faking it!” he exclaimed again. “He’s not a good pirate. He can’t even rap!”
The children went crazy. So crazy that Prem could see the fear in the eyes of the murderers, rapists and drug dealers that trembled before him.
“Children, calm down, please,” Killer shouted. “I bring you treasure of my own – my album. This is pure gold, I promise you.”
“That’s not gold!” the same boy yelled back. “He’s trying to give us fool’s gold while he goes for the real treasure.”
“Let’s get him!” another convict’s son shouted.
Prem stood still — in shock as much as quiet joy — as hundreds of children jumped from their fathers’ backs to the wooden floor and charged for the stage.
“No, no, no!” Killer shouted, but it was to no avail: the angry mob beat him to a bloody pulp as the band launched into a screeching hard-core punk number that the pirate soon found himself dancing to.
It wasn’t a perfect victory for Prem — the tabloid media later accused him of inciting a riot – but he was dragged away feeling like some of his dignity had been restored. He even felt a tinge of happiness — and relief — when Killer text-messaged to thank him for sparking the brawl.
“I owe you one. I really do. All publicity’s good publicity, pirate; my album’s going to sell like hot cakes,” he wrote.
Prem didn’t care about that. The prison show had been a small win and he was going to take it.