You know, I never asked to be a Mike. Mother was a George and I could easily have been born with her genes, tall and hairless instead of stout and as hairy as a baboon. But no, I’m a Malform—I look like a Mike but I have the sacred markings of a George. Most Georges would be happy to do away with us, but of course they can’t because of the sacred markings, so instead they just treat us like shit.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my father, Nebuchadnezzar Mike, was a great man. His heroics during the Battle of the Winter Sun are legendary; the bravest and strongest of all the Mikes, so mother always said. She hid for most of the war in a cave, pregnant and desperate, only coming out when victory for the Georges had been declared. By that time no one could be sure who had associated with the Mikes. All the remaining Mikes were rounded up and killed, or so they thought.

“Always remember you’re a Mike, not a George,” she used to say. She was the one who put the Resistance in touch with me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unsympathetic to the Mikes, it’s just that no one tries to kill me. Despite the beatings and daily abuse, life isn’t too bad.

So, the resistance got in touch and enrolled me as a spy. Or course I resisted, at which point they threatened to tip off the George authorities that I was already spying for them. Not much of a motivation, huh? Where’s my pride? Where’s my sense of identity? I’ll show you pride and identity—they’re covered in lime and crammed underground tighter than the number of hairs on a Mike’s eyebrow. Dead is what they are. And I don’t want to die.

So, with this in mind, I’m here at the Three George Kings Final Tour 3007, spying apparently, and I’m swaying and chanting and all the rest of that rubbish. And even if there was something to report, it’s not going to come from my mouth. Sadly what does come from my mouth after about seven hours of this tedium is a yawn. Big mistake.

There’s a shove in my back. I spin to find myself standing in the shadow of a giant George. He’s so big even his shadow’s got a shadow.

“Ok, let’s go Malform,” he says and nods to the cold swirling dust wind outside the auditorium “You and me outside. Now.”

“Brother, I am just a poor Malform,” I say, giving my hands a good wring. “I am of the Standard Life. I come from a long line of Original Georges. See my markings.” I lift my head to show the triangular scarring in the shaved patch on my neck. “Please, let us not fight.”

“Why then did I see you mocking the great and the good? Why did you yawn when George King Two sang his mournful ballad ‘The Day was Plucked and Tasted Bitter’?”

“Not a yawn, but a crick in my neck.” And to prove the point I throw my head back, roll my eyeballs up and repeat, “Blessed are. Blessed are. Blessed are,” one for each of the kings. Soon enough this moron is joining in like the balsa-wood brain he is and I slip away.

As soon as I get home, the grandfather clock starts on me.

“Well? How was it?” asks the muffled voice. “Did you learn anything?”

“I can’t speak to you when you’re still hiding in that,” I say.

Slowly, the grandfather clock door creaks open and another man who looks like me climbs out. He’s short and hairy, but with wide bulging eyes like two golf balls popping out of a patch of black grass. It’s Jeremiah Mike.

“So?” he asks.

“Only the usual austere rubbish,” I tell him. “Love will pass, good will come. I yawned at the wrong time and nearly got the crap kicked out of me by this big ugly George.”

“You must be careful, Ezekiel Mike. The Great Mike had a dream last night that three ships went sailing by, and out of the waves rose a man on a desert platform. You know it’s been exactly thirty years since the Battle of the Winter Sun?”

“Of course I know.”

“Tomorrow,” Jeremiah Mike continues, “the skies will blacken with the smoke of the George’s terrible reign.”

“Excuse me?”

“War. We go to war tomorrow.”

War? Are they insane? That’s the problem with people—it’s always signs this, gods that, where’s good old-fashioned common sense amongst all this?

“Meet in Underground Lair 4B tomorrow at oh five hundred for briefing,” he says. “Bring your own teabags.” With that, Jeremiah backs into the grandfather clock, nodding his big bushy head. His footsteps gently thud away leaving just me and my rampant fear of death. Great.

That night I can’t sleep. All I can think about is war, death, my father, and how I don’t want anything to do with this. I pack a rucksack, unpack it again, clutch my knees to my chest, imagine slipping from the city and trudging through the dust storms to a cave, hiding there until the fighting is over. I consider going to the authorities, telling them about what the Mike’s are planning to do, but I don’t in case they torture me. I’ve heard they pluck out a Mike’s hair one by one, stretch this bald, naked Mike on a rack, sew their mouth shut, and then give this poor soul to a high-ranking George to hang on the wall as art.

 

In the end I go to the kitchen and snatch up a handful of teabags. The stories my mother told me of Nebuchadnezzar Mike and his bravery loop through my head like curse. What I hope for is a quick, painless death. Never have I felt so small.

When the grandfather clock chimes five, I slip inside. As I trudge down the steps my legs feel weak, like they’re made of crumbling bricks. The walls are lit with dull yellow torches. All the while I’m thinking, why are we doing this? And then I crawl through a low tunnel and into Underground Lair 4B. What I see opens my eyes wider than a kick in the balls.

Every single hairy square inch is covered with Mikes.

They’re crammed follicle to follicle on the floor. They’re scattered on ledges and in alcoves. It’s an explosion of Mikes. An eruption of Mikes. All holding axes and maces, waving broadswords twice their own size. The noise is like the angry grumbling of a giant beast. The ones closest to the entrance grab at me, bring me in, hold me and rub my hair. Some notice my markings and say, ‘Good, good’, or ‘Praise the Great Mike, a Malform.’ I cannot recall a moment when I felt so part of something.

On the stage at the front is the Great Mike, a foot taller than any other Mike in the room, his robe flowing to his hairy feet and glittering with sparkling purple. He bangs his staff hard on the wooden stage and calls out, “What pain could hurt so much? What tragedy could not move us like this? We are down here, eyeless and mouthless, suffering forever at the hands of the Georges. No more!”

I join in when the Mike’s around me cry, “No more! No more!”

The Great Mike calms us with his hands. “But first,” he says, “before battle, tea. Did everyone bring their own bags?”

After the ritual tea we scrabble for the tunnels. A warm hand rests on my shoulder. There’s an almost supernatural calmness to the touch and I stop instantly. The resonant voice behind me says, “Ezekiel Mike?”, and when I turn I’m facing the Great Mike himself.

“Yes, Great Mike?”

He lifts an axe, its blade dented but sharp, the ancient symbols of the Mikes curling around the shaft. “It was your father’s,” he says. He hands it to me and I weigh it crossways, one hand on the blade, the other in the shaft. It feels like a long forgotten phantom limb made real again. The Great Mike bows to me. I rush to the tunnel.

The battle is vast and bloody, bursting from the city and into the plains where the low dust clouds camouflage us from the tall Georges. At first I’m scared, running for cover when a George approaches. But the first time I thud my blade into hard George flesh, something changes. I feel my father inside me. I understand for the first time I am my father’s son. Soon I learn how to fight them properly. I go for the legs, hacking away at knee height. We are few, in comparison, but the Georges are lazy from years of easy rule and unprepared because of the Three Kings’ Final Tour. I fight in a way I never thought possible. I fight with bravery.

Three days into the battle, I stumble, bloody and starving, into an old school building. Looking for a place to rest for an hour, I fall into a classroom. The smell hits me, as rich and dense as an abattoir, a physical thing forcing its way into my nose and mouth. In the corner is a pile of tortured and torn Mikes, their hair cut away in rough chunks, their stomachs ripped open and guts pulled out like gruesome stuffed toys in the hands of a malicious child. In the centre are six Georges. On his knees by the bodies is a face I recognise. It’s Jeremiah Mike.

The Georges face me. One calls out, “Come hither, Malform. Why not join the fun and finish off this last one. We’re opening them up to see what makes them so vile!”

Jeremiah Mike rolls his eyes to mine but says nothing. I loiter by the door.

“Come on, Malform,” the George says. “Use my axe, it is much larger than yours.”

Slowly, I walk to the front of the room. Although I know I should be scared there’s a strange calm running through me, as if my blood has transformed into the waters of a gentle brook. The George holds out his axe.

“No,” I say. “I will use my own.”

I face Jeremiah Mike. He gives me a sad smile and a nod. A single tear dribbles from his bloodied left eye. “Praise almighty Mike,” he whispers and puts his head down.

I lift my axe up above my head with both hands. The classroom is silent except for Jeremiah Mike’s soft, shuddering breath. I can feel the expectation of the Georges. In one movement I swing down and swivel on my heels. My axe slices clean through the kneecaps of the George behind me.

“To Mike!” I scream and throw myself into them. As I whirl my blade I see Jeremiah up, axe in hand, fighting by my side. They are too many. A sword swings, catching the light, and then as if in slow motion, happening to someone else, it scythes through my neck. There’s a moment of darkness. And then I’m in the classroom again, but I’m not a block of matter any more. I’m a soft gust of wind. I’m a whisper in a shadow. As I drift upwards, the Georges below tearing my body to shreds, I feel something, a light glowing inside me, and I know it’s my father. I know he’s proud.