Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help by Douglas Anthony Cooper

Natica sauntered casually to the door, and he inserted his repulsively modern key in the lock. When he turned the key, the whirs and clicks ensued, this time accompanied by the sound of a small mammal being mercilessly teased. He opened the door. Arabella and Milrose unconsciously assumed the stance of sprinters about to plunge into a race.
    But Massimo Natica did not leave the room. He opened the door, and was passed a tray of food by someone that neither Arabella nor Milrose could see. Milrose did glimpse the hands and forearms of the person delivering the tray, however, and it did not hearten him. The hands were huge and barely human—they might have looked appropriate attached to the end of Sledge’s thick arms. And the white medical shirt the man was wearing seemed about four inches too short, which suggested that his arms were about four inches too long.
    Despair occurred to Milrose Munce.
    Lunch was, like dinner and breakfast, not too bad. The sandwiches were fresh. Milrose sniffed them for the characteristic almond smell of cyanide, but he could detect nothing.
    They lunched in silence. Neither Milrose nor Arabella smiled, although Massimo Natica smiled enough for all three of them. He managed to smile while eating, which was an astonishing feat, and not admirable.
    Was yesterday’s dinner the very last chance they would have to subdue and conquer their host? Milrose Munce wanted to kick himself. Even now Massimo Natica might be hogtied on the couch, and they might be happily dancing in the sunshine, dining on jungerberries and cream, and delicately approaching the topic of Arabella’s birthmark.
    Arabella glanced at the door in the ceiling and pondered whether some special combination of words might cause it to swing on its hinges. “Open sesame,” perhaps? No, that did not seem probable. This was not the sort of room where exotic commands were likely to have any effect. Perhaps she could just say, “knock knock.” And somebody behind the door would answer, “who’s there?” But this would require a punchline, and Arabella could not think of one.
    Arabella’s flower was having an increasingly difficult time in this den. It wheezed asthmatically during lunch, and occasionally coughed. Arabella stroked it with concern.
    Massimo looked with suspicion at Arabella’s flower. “Do you think that your flower is a
normal
flower?”
    “You leave my flower out of it.”
    Massimo smiled even more broadly, to reveal a distressing number of superb teeth. “Now, Arabella. It was an innocent question. We are not concerned about your flower.”
    “Well,
I
am concerned about my flower.”
    Massimo narrowed his eyes, cleverly. “And do you think that’s
normal
?”
    Arabella narrowed her eyes, murderously. Massimo did not seem to notice.
    “This is what I want you to consider as we progress through Help. I want you to think aboutwhat you are doing, and whether it is what you would expect of a normal, well-adjusted young person.”
    That afternoon, and over the next days, they laboured to give their Helper the false impression that they were being Helped. The therapy consisted mostly of silly exercises aimed at silencing voices and enhancing normalcy.
    The exercises were so excruciatingly moronic that Milrose would have refused to engage in them on principle, but—for reasons neither he nor Arabella could determine—disobedience was simply not an option. It was a talent the Professional Helper had: when he was set on them doing a certain thing, they had no choice but to meekly obey. Perhaps he was a magician? Had he put something in their food? Milrose wondered.
    They made no progress in their plans to overcome Massimo Natica, to punish him and escape. Far from it. Every day reinforced the difficulty of the task: while Natica might have lacked concentration when it came to noting their relentless efforts to insult him, he was clearly aware of their conspiracy, and left them no room whatsoever to manoeuvre.
    Every