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The Wanderer smiled to himself, pulled the window shut and sat down opposite The Three he'd come to see.

They were really one of the strangest groups of people he had ever come across. If you could call them ‘people’. They were in fact three heads on three poles. Each of them had been pierced through, neck to skull, with a pointed metal rod and then placed in a line through the seat opposite where The Wanderer was sitting. They had all had some of the skin peeled from their heads and, to varying degrees, their faces had started to decay. Left of Three had an eye missing (which was rather disconcerting for The Wanderer because he still felt as if the socket was staring at him), Middle of Three was missing a bottom lip and a nostril and Right of Three looked as if four large bites had been taken out of his face.

Whenever one of The Three spoke, the other two's poles slid downwards until their chins, or what were left of them, rested on the material that covered the seat. At the same time as this was happening to the two non speakers, the one who was speaking caused his pole to start to sway side to side rather like a pendulum on a huge grandfather clock.

Middle of Three was now swinging at such a pace that the side of his head was banging rhythmically against the train's window, leaving a red patch of blood with each thud. It was starting to make a pattern not dissimilar to the outline of a butterfly.

"Not bad is it?" shouted Middle of Three as he turned his face towards the window this time. His nose crunched against the glass with such a force that his nostril was pressed flat across his face. As he came back for another go he was screaming with excitement.

"This is going to be its head!"

And sure enough as he flung his face forwards into the window and then away again, his squashed nostril left a perfect example of a butterfly's head in exactly the right place.

"He's not a doctor!"

Middle of Three's pole immediately slid down into the seat vibrating to a dead stop as Right of Three took over. He was up and away. The other two, motionless down below, looked up at him from the corners of their eyes and they did appear a little confused. Left of Three took over.

"What do you mean he's not a doctor?"

Right Of Three replied, shooting up on his pole; a huge grin across his battered face.

"He's got no patience!"

There was a slight delay and then the screech again. All three of them were roaring with laughter. When they did this together the spectacle was even stranger. All three poles sank into the seat up to their heads and then they started spinning. As the pace increased, the laughter became louder and faster until it didn't sound like laughter any more but more like a high pitched snore. Then their heads left their poles and floated up and around the carriage, bouncing off the ceiling, hitting the windows and banging into anything that got in their way. Suddenly the laughing stopped and within a split moment all three were back on their poles, silent ready for the next swaying to start.

The Three suddenly chorused together.

"If you want to find the way out of here Wanderer man you've got to choose one of us. If you don't you’ll never ever get out .We can tell you that now." 

They roared with laughter.

"Thank you very much I do appreciate that. I do know that’s why I'm here. What do you want me to do then?" asked The Wanderer.

"Do? You don't have to do anything but listen to us tell our tales," they simultaneously screeched across the carriage. 

"Is that all?" replied The Wanderer, smiling. 

"Well not quite .Once we've finished you decide which one of us is telling the story you need to use as the key out of this place. That's all you’ve got to do Mr The Wanderer”

The Three all joined together in a huge screech of laughter that echoed around the carriage.

"And if you get it wrong, that’s it. No other chances. You’ll never get out and we should imagine you’ll probably end up like us. A saddo on a stick!"

Another screech of manic laughter filled the air.

"It's my go first this time," shouted Left of Three as he tick tocked above the other two. Middle and Right of Three gave him a look that would have been a shrug of the shoulders and nestled their chins into the seat staring straight over at The Wanderer.

Left of Three set himself into a slow regular motion, looked down at his listeners and started his story.

"Before I became what I am now I used to be a butcher in a little French town. I'd been doing it for about eight years so, as you can imagine, I'd started to build up a good collection of regular customers. I was open from seven in the morning until seven at night and I worked every day of the year apart from Christmas Day. Even then I was open for a couple of hours in the morning in case anybody had forgotten something vital for their Christmas dinner.

As you can see I was quite a hard worker and I was doing very well out of it. I'd just moved into a nice, big house with land on the edge of the village and I was looking into buying another property in a nearby town as an investment for the future. You could say things were going marvellously. That was until ‘he’ moved in."

Left of Three took a deep breath and there was a moment's silence. His pole started to slide and Middle of Three began to stir and move upwards. Left of Three quickly continued.

"There was a small shop a couple of streets away that had been empty for two or three months. There had recently been a few rumours appearing about how it was going to become a solicitor's office or something like that. You know the sort of talk! You hear customers in the shop gossiping or you might catch the middle of a conversation as you walk past somebody in the street. Normally nothing ever comes of them and on this occasion this is what happened. Nothing did come of them. It didn't turn into a solicitors; it turned into another butchers!”

"Didn't you have any idea at all?" asked The Wanderer.

"No! It almost happened overnight. One day it was empty but by the lunchtime of the next day he was in there. One of these new so called ‘Artisan Butchers.’ You know the type. They are ‘one with the meat!’ They become ‘part of it’ and it ‘becomes part of them’ and all that rubbish! I had noticed that afternoon that my trade had gone down. Some of the regulars didn't turn up. I thought it was due to a bout of flu or something like that but it was on the walk home after work that I found the real truth. A brand new, twee, wooden sign hung above the shuttered window of the previously empty shop:

ALAN RALT Artisan Butcher-meat for all occasions.

Meat for all occasions? What does that mean? I ask you. Don't you just eat the stuff? Oh no, not Alan Ralt! I found out over the next few weeks that the last thing you should actually do with meat is eat it! You do perhaps eventually get around to that but first of all you've got to mess around with it. Dress it up! Put it in sauces! Disguise it! Give it different names! Expand the concept of meat! That's how he used to put it in his silly little adverts that were scattered around the village. I'd never seen anything like it. Obviously I never visited the shop but I did see a few of the things he was selling. Sausages in little hats made out of sage and onion stuffing. Pork chops built into a wigwam with a scotch egg squaw and Indian Brave. Chicken legs with a lemon and herb mountain scene built into the side. A lamb cutlet piano complete with a beef mince maestro in a wafer thin ham dinner jacket. A porkless pork pie for the vegetarians with...."

The Wanderer burst out laughing.

"I know! It's ridiculous isn't it but do you know what?” 

Left Of Three left a dramatic pause.

“Those bastards in the village stopped coming to me and started to use this idiot! Over the next few months my trade fell by about fifty per cent. They got completely taken in. He was charging exorbitant prices for this rubbish he was making and they were paying it! He must have made a fortune! Then one day, obviously when he felt the time was right, he disappeared as quickly as he had arrived. Just like that! One morning on the way to work I turned around the corner to see no sign, no shutters. Just that same old empty shop again. I couldn't believe it! He'd only been there for five months in all. Five months and in that time he must have made more money than I'd made in the eight years I had been in the trade!

Over the next few weeks my regular customers gradually returned, tails between their legs, with apologies and promises of how they'd never let me down again. Their excuses were pathetic!” 

Left Of Three proceeded then, in a deeply sarcastic and overblown style, to mimic some of them. His voice squealed around the carriage. 

‘I never really liked his stuff anyway. It simply didn’t have the taste your meat has got!’ 

‘The simpler stuff's better you know and such good value for money!’

‘I never did trust him. It was something about his eyes!’

‘I knew it wouldn't last. I just thought I’d try it for a few weeks!’

He literally spat these last few words out, his face contorting in anger. 

"Funnily enough though I never really felt any animosity towards Mr Artisan Butcher. Maybe a few pangs of jealousy when I think back on it. But it was those fickle, two faced, shallow bastards of customers that really made me do what I did next."

"What did you do?" asked The Wanderer, who was now sitting forward, his chin cradled in the palms of his hands, deeply engrossed in the story.

"Well I decided to pay them back. I made myself a huge pair of underpants with an enormous circular metal waist from which four struts came in and joined to a wooden support in the centre which I could step into. What I used to do was load up my van with all the meat I had in my shop at the end of the day and drive straight home. I'd unload it into my kitchen and forget about it until it was time for bed. Then the fun began."

"What did you do?" asked The Wanderer, looking bemused.

Left of Three started screeching with laughter. The other two joined in and off they all went again, drifting around the carriage chuckling and giggling, banging into the ceiling, crashing into walls. 

Eventually Left Of Three started to calm a little and signalled to the other two to come back down to their poles. The laughter subsided and he continued. 

"I would bring the meat upstairs, put on my newly made underpants and then load all of it inside until it was nearly overflowing above the rim of the pants. I'd then go to bed, sleep the night like that and in the morning load the meat back into the van and go and sell it to all those suckers. They’d still keep coming in saying things like ‘Lovely chops yesterday!’ or ‘Oh the flavour of that bacon! How do you get it to taste like that?’ I really don't know how I managed to keep a straight face."

"How long did you keep doing it for?" said The Wanderer, chuckling at what he'd just heard.

"Well! By myself that went on for about four years but then I got married and it became even better. Instead of me loading my pants by myself we turned it into a game. I had to run around the bedroom and my wife would see how many bits of meat she could throw in, in four minutes. She was very good you know. She would more often than not completely fill them up. On some nights, especially if we'd had a few glasses of wine, she'd jump in herself afterwards and we'd have sex amongst the rump steaks and beef burgers. She was a laugh!"

Left of Three looked solemn and distant for a second and then carried on.

"Anyway! This had been going on for about eight years altogether without any of those morons having any idea what I was doing. But then I got unlucky."

"Unlucky?" said The Wanderer.

"Yes one night we got broken in to. I woke up to find this man standing at the end of the bed. Of course as soon as I shouted out, he was off and away but the damage had been done. He'd seen me in the pants. Before long it was all over the village and I had no option but to pack in the shop and move away."

"What was the reaction of the villagers like?" said The Wanderer.

"They were absolutely seething with anger. I was really surprised. They seemed quite an insipid lot to me in general but they were fuming about this. I started getting a few threatening letters and some of the women from the town started verbally abusing my wife so I thought it best to move away. Anyway it didn't end there. They must have followed me when I left because I didn't tell anybody where I was going. I was coming out of my new place early one morning, a few months later, when a group of four of them jumped me. I didn't recognise any of them. I think they must have been hired or something. They dragged me round into this alleyway and started giving me a good hiding. To cut a long story short, as I was falling, I hit my head and I died. They panicked and cut me up into small pieces, peeled my face to try to avoid my being identified later, put me in a few bags and chucked me into the canal. The next thing I knew was that I'm on this pole next to these other two, telling my story to anybody who wants to listen."

Left of Three looked down at his two colleagues who seemed to have fallen asleep.

Middle of Eight suddenly stirred.

"Have you finished? What did he make of it?"

"I don't know. He hasn't really said a lot about anything yet," replied Left Of Three.

He looked across at The Wanderer.

"What did you think of it then?" he asked, chuckling to himself.

"It’s a very strange story,” replied The Wanderer, grinning across at the three of them. 

They looked at each other knowingly but didn’t say a word.

"My go then," said Middle of Three.

His pole slid up and he started.

"You know when the inside of your nostril is really dry? Like for example when you've come to the end of a cold? Your nose has stopped running and the mucus has started to harden up and crystallise?

"Yes," replied The Wanderer, looking rather blankly at Middle of Three.

"That's where my story starts. I've always been one for having a good root around up there. When I was a young child I used to pick and lick and more often than not swallow. Hairs, grit. The whole lot! I even used to sometimes try and save it for a later occasion if I couldn't enjoy it properly at the time. I used to take it out, roll it between my fingers to dry it up a bit and then push it as far back inside one, or both, of my nostrils. Sometimes it would stay there for days waiting for that right moment when nobody was around so I could then blow it out into the palm of my hand and enjoy it to its full potential."

He looked down at The Wanderer to see what reaction he was getting. There wasn't much. There was even less from the other two who were now, or at least seemed to be, fast asleep on the seat below their pole bound friend. He continued.

"I had to blow it out because, after all the time it had been trapped in there, it tended to lodge itself right at the back and there was more often than not no possible way I could get a fingernail around it. When I was about eleven I started to develop this idea in my mind that I was creating a huge lump of snot in my stomach that was growing every time I swallowed any of it. I almost started to believe that I could feel it creeping up my oesophagus; a slimy, hairy dumpling that would one day roll out of my mouth, at an inopportune moment, into somebody else’s lap.” 

Middle Of Three chuckled to himself as he continued. 

“However that dumpling never actually did appear but something else, far more interesting, did. Not out of my mouth but out of my ex- nostril to be precise.” 

He left a dramatic pause and then carried on, a look of glee over his mutilated face. 

“One day I was delving around in both of them looking for one I'd stored the day before. I just couldn't find it. I was certain I'd put it in the right hand one because that was always the one I went to. I don't know why precisely but I think it's something to do with angles. I was left handed and I found it easier to approach my right nostril with my left hand. I could get more of a twist inside for retrieval and storage. But I knew something wasn't quite right with this one because I hadn't been getting that wonderful nagging presence feeling I'd get from it being in there nestled away. I'd checked both nostrils, two or three times, and was just about to give up, thinking that it had disappeared right inside or had fallen out in the night, when I felt a weird sensation in my right one. It was as if it had completely dried up inside there. Do you know what I mean? Just after you’ve had a cold?"

The Wanderer nodded.

"I must have got exactly the right trajectory and pressure because it came out in one hit. A cathedral. Not a stone missing. Everything was there. Stained glass windows, gargoyles, bells in working order, elaborate mosaics, even the collection boxes. Everything. I couldn't believe my luck! I'd been waiting for this opportunity for years. I went straight out and found a large piece of land with easy access, had some canonical robes made, got some friends together to help and started making some real money."

"Real money? I don't understand," said The Wanderer.

"I set the place up as a working cathedral. Services, confessionals, weddings. The whole lot. The only difference between ourselves and the other run of the mill churches was that we did nothing for charity. It was superb. There was only the initial outlay of the clothes and then everything else was profit. The word quickly got around about the new cathedral and we were soon packed every weekend and very often during most days in the week too. I used to masquerade as a bishop. I built up a whole fake past life. How I was brought up abroad by a foster family. How I worked my way up through the different levels in the church and how I'd always wanted to visit this area to preach the good name of God. They all fell for it completely down to the last detail."

"What! Everything?" asked The Wanderer.

"Yes! For a while. Everything! It was because they wanted to believe it was true. Just like they wanted to believe in the God they worshipped. It fitted so nicely, as he did, into their scheme of things; even if it was completely false. A brand new cathedral to piously support. A great one up against the neighbours. You know the types of things they’d say: 

‘There's a lovely young bishop in that new cathedral. He's ever so nice. Comes from a difficult background you know! He's working so hard on what he's trying to do. We give a little bit each month. It's not much but everything helps doesn't it? Have you been to worship there yet?’

It was foolproof. The neighbour would go away seething with holy jealousy and come straight to the cathedral with a donation that was just that little bit more than the neighbour who had told the story and so it went on. I was making more in a day than I did in a month in my previous job."

"You said ‘for a while.’ What happened?" asked The Wanderer.

"One of the bishops from a cathedral who were playing on the other side of the fence, if you know what I mean, checked out my background. He obviously discovered it was all a pack of lies and immediately the story was out.The locals didn't take too kindly to being duped. However it wasn't one of them who put me here believe it or not. It looked like that in the local papers .They’d set it up to appear like that. In fact it was a group of local clergy from the surrounding area who got together and hired two or three men from outside to come and burn down the cathedral and kill me. Not very holy eh?"

"What did they do to you?" asked The Wanderer.

"In the newspapers it was an accidental fire that started in the organ loft. They reported that it was probably from a candle that was left burning by mistake or a cigarette that wasn't put out properly by one of the choir boys. I apparently was tragically caught in the blaze and burnt so badly that I could not be identified. What actually happened was totally different. 

I was in the apse with the collection boxes seeing if there was anything left in them before I made my getaway. I had sent all my friends away with a thank you payment and my money was safely hidden somewhere. All I had to do was collect this last little bit and then put the cathedral back up my nose and disappear. My idea was probably to go somewhere abroad where I could start the whole scam up again. Unfortunately my greed was the undoing of me. I had to return and get that last little bit of silver. I had my back to them. They hit me over the head, spun me round and cut away one of my nostrils with a knife. That was all in one movement. Then the knife came back again, sliced off my bottom lip and I lost consciousness. I found out later that they had taken me out through the back of the cathedral into the woods, decapitated me with an axe, buried my body and took my head back to the clergymen who had hired them."

"What did they want with it?" asked The Wanderer.

"I never found out. The churchmen wouldn't pay the full price for the job the men had done so they refused to give them my head. There was a scuffle and it rolled away down into a deep, stagnant pond where it apparently stayed; nobody really that bothered to retrieve it .The next thing I was aware of was being here with these two. Time for an elephant!"

Middle of Three swung himself so hard to his left that the side of his head crashed into the train's window causing Left and Right of Three to jerk awake on the seat underneath him. As he rebounded off, The Wanderer saw that part of the side of his head had been left on the glass making what looked exactly like the body of an elephant.

"Now for the head and trunk," shrieked Middle of Three.

"Oh no you don't!"

Right of Three rocketed up from the seat on his pole.

"You've had your go! It’s my turn now!" he shouted.

Middle of Three sunk down sulkily, lowering himself begrudgingly in next to Left of Three and within a few seconds had fallen asleep. The Wanderer scratched himself on his back.

"How did you know?" asked Right of Three, looking a little surprised.

"How did I know what?" replied The Wanderer.

"I think you're starting to move in the right direction. Do you feel there has been a change?"

"A change in what?" asked The Wanderer

"A feeling ? A sensing ? An itching maybe?" Right of Three replied, starting to laugh.

"Have a listen to my story and you might find it's all starting to fit into place. Picture the scene. A lady's bedroom in the middle of the afternoon. The curtains drawn. The lady is lying on her front on her bed, topless without any shoes on. Leaning over her is a tall dark figure in a long, black coat and a wide brimmed black hat. There is soft music in the room. On the lady's left shoulder blade is a cross shape with a square cut out where the horizontal and vertical parts of the cross meet. The dark figure has a long, leather handled knife with a curled end which he has placed in the empty square directly onto the skin of the lady's back. He moves it back and forwards. Her face is loose, relaxed and her mouth is slightly open. With each movement of the knife she lets a small gurgle of delight fall out into the room and her toes scrunch into the bedcover. The door bursts open. A large Alsatian dog runs into the room, leaps onto the back of the dark figure, ripping at the side of his face with its teeth. The figure falls and, as he does, the dog is onto his throat immediately, tearing at the flesh, his jaws drenched in the figure's blood. The lady jumps from the bed and runs towards the dog. By the time she gets there the dark figure is slumped on the floor, not moving. A man enters. The two of them look at the stationary figure on the floor for a moment and then drag it into the bathroom where they proceed to dismember and decapitate it. They load the pieces into bags which are dragged outside and left until they decide how to dispose of them. What do you think has been going on?"

Right of Three looked across at The Wanderer with a huge smile across his face.

"Is this some kind of whodunnit?" The Wanderer replied.

Right of Three didn't answer. He just hung there on his pole, a smug look on his face.

"She was being raped and the dog came in to save her?" said The Wanderer.

"Come on now you know that can't be true! Why was she enjoying what was happening? You remember the gurgling and the toes. I only told you a few seconds ago." 

Right of Three looked very pleased with himself. 

The Wanderer tried again. 

"She'd been involved in illicit sex games with a lover and been discovered by her husband who set their dog on him."

"Better but still nowhere near it! Have another go."

"The curtains were on strike so they got more money than Oliver."

"What do you mean?" said Right of Three, looking totally puzzled by what The Wanderer had just said.

"I reckon the blow organ sank without a trace behind the methane park idiot track. Is that any nearer? "

Before Right of Three could reply The Wanderer continued.

"What if the donkey missed its uncle and needed the school bus to make it clear again...No I don't think so! Try this. A slanting ecran creosote love machine drinks more than its fair share of bubble bath. It's getting closer isn't it? I can feel it in my water. That's it. Water pipes under the floor were in direct constellation with the animal kingdom so half an askey is better than tooth..........................."

By now Left and Middle of Three were awake, disturbed by the constant high pitched whine coming out of Right of Three's mouth.

"Several pigeons took exception to wild mushrooms in the barley cake so they all left Parliament. Am I on the right track? Try this one then. Fire them all before the boffins in jellyfish costumes hear the whispers going round the coffee mornings especially in the suburbs of igloo."

At the word "igloo", Left and Middle of Three slid up their respective poles and joined their colleague in his whine. At the same time as doing this The Three were lifting their chins forward and upwards in a similar action to that of a cat just prior to it vomiting. They all seemed very distressed. Their five eyes were wide open with the look of scared animals, staring straight down at The Wanderer, who continued with his answers.

"If I chick chock my elbows with a chain blarney would that ring the correct exchange for cartilage? Maybe that's nearer the truth than I think. If it's not cartilage perhaps I should be delving into the botanical world. Fifteen trailing sevens pour out their hearts to a cistern that rapidly needs open heart surgery in its stamen."

By now The Three, still continuing with the whine and the chinnish motion, had left their poles and joined together in the air about two arm's lengths above The Wanderer. They were petal clustered, backhead to backhead, rotating slowly eight to the left ,eight to the right, eight to the left, eight to the right, gradually descending, getting closer and closer to The Wanderer’s head. 

It was as if they weren't there. He didn't give them one glance. He just carried on with what he had to say.

"If you were to walk a child to school through the honeycomb of the financial world then you may not expect a slant on honey to be in the nude. I think nudity is something you three would not tolerate. What about this?"

One and a half arm's lengths away. The Wanderer was roaring with laughter now.

"I feel a door has a panel made out of yawns because if the sleepless can't sleep then why should too many sweets spoil the chance of them all to make a living out of it. You've gone very quiet. Am I that close to the answer? I reckon this is it. Finally they swung out of the closed door scenario for a fight with the mogul who needed a rest from the constant dribbling of his maiden name."

They were now one arm's length. The Wanderer continued at the same pace, showing no concern and no interest in The Three turning just above his head.

"Fantastically final judges need butter on their bread before anyone can even attempt to sanctify a beating tomfoolery. Am I getting closer? Are you allowed clues? If silence is a clue then may the golden frost lay a plank onto any stem of ghostwriter's initials."

Half an arm's length.

"Long indeed before anyone comes home for a seasonal breaking of time inside the hollow tube of pink balloon. Something's wrong with that one. I'm going in the wrong direction now aren't I? Is it a turning point compass wise that made the old transvestite toast the vixen with a verbal wine as opposed to sixteen diametrically opposed wonders leaking into a polluted waist.

By now The Three were turning so close to the top of The Wanderer's head that the flaps of flesh and gristle that used to be part of their necks were dragging over his hair, leaving slimy trails of blood snailing behind them.

Their whining had now reached an almost unbearable pitch and their chinnish movements had also become so extreme that they were cracking their skulls against each other with every lurch forward. They continued downwards, turning and whining, cracking and sliding until they sat on top of The Wanderer's head like a spinning Three head hat at the carnival. A talking hat. A hat that wanted blood. A hat that wanted revenge.

"Time to join us sucker.” the Three of them screamed .

The Wanderer continued.

"Right of Three! You were the dark figure. It was your job. You worked as a scratcher and that is what you had been called to do that afternoon. The lady had an itch she couldn't satisfy. She saw your advert in the local paper and contacted you immediately. You had just arrived at the house and had set up your stuff. Some music to relax her, your wide brimmed hat to keep any unwanted light from her eyes and the four pieces of tape to enclose the scratching area. I believe they are used to pull the skin around the itch tight so as to increase the potency of the action of the knife edge. Although the knife was being used by yourself as an instrument of pleasure this is not what the lady's dog thought when he burst into the room, fresh from his walk, eager to see her again. He mistook you for an assailant and of course attacked you. She tried to reach you before he could do his worst but was, unfortunately for you, too late. It was also unfortunate for you that you live in a country of animal lovers. They couldn't face the thought of their beloved dog being put down so they settled on it being you instead. As in the case of your two friends they had to make you unidentifiable so they decapitated you and tried to peel most of your face off."

The Three had stopped spinning, chinning and whining and just sat motionless on The Wanderer's head. They screamed in howling unison.

"How did you know?"

“Don’t try just feel!” he sniggered back at the three desperados.

In an instance The Wanderer reached up and pulled them down over his head, one after the other, with a split and a slumpth and crick and a bung and made himself a nice three skinned balaclava, fresh with the face of a new Wanderer on it. 

The End

‘Three Heads On Three Sticks’ music here