The waters of life

“Phillip,” Cecil said, kicking Phillip in the small of the back to wake him up, “I need a favour.”

“Wha? Who? What? Who?” Phillip asked, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, why am I asleep in our treehouse?”

“It’s a long story,” Cecil answered. “But the only relevant bit of the story is that you couldn’t sleep last night because a bat was snoring in your bedroom, so you came up here this afternoon for a quick nap.”

“Oh yes, I remember,” Phillip sighed. “What’s the rest of the story?”

“The list of things medically wrong with the bat that caused it to be indoors, sleeping and snoring during the night,” said Cecil, taking a sheaf of handwritten papers from his pocket. “The vet was very thorough.”

“So you need a favour?” Phillip asked, tearing the papers to shreds and eating them, hoping to turn the conversation back to Cecil’s reasons for waking him up and maybe generating some kind of apology.

“Yes. I’m getting married in half an hour, and I need a witness. The men next door were going to do it, but then they remembered that they’re both the same person, and we need two different witnesses or it’s not a real wedding. I didn’t want to ask you, because you’d only say no, but I don’t know anyone else.”

“No,” said Phillip, lying back down and closing his eyes. However, at that exact moment, give or take half a second or so, Samantha had gone into Phillip’s bedroom, seen the bat eating her favourite expensive eyeliner and screamed “Yes!” in the way that her psychiatrist had advised her to do whenever she meant “No!”. The sound reverbrated around the house and echoed into the treehouse outside, where both Cecil and Phillip mistook it for Phillip agreeing to witness Cecil’s marriage.

On the way to the church, Phillip asked Cecil a few pertinent questions about the upcoming wedding, while Samantha grumbled ceaselessly about being forced to wear her second-favourite eyeliner, which she despised (she wasn’t terribly keen on her favourite eyeliner either, but at least it wasn’t quite as revolting to her as her second-favourite). “Who are you marrying, why are you marrying them and what’s a church?” Phillip asked.

“I’m not marrying anyone, I’m just getting married,” answered Cecil. “And I’m doing it because I want to be emperor of the world, and the people just won’t accept an unmarried emperor. There are a lot of old-fashioned people out there, and I just can’t afford to upset them. And it’s a building like that one over there, only bigger and not a fire station.”

“Oh, I see,” Phillip said. He then frowned and sat in silence for two hours, apparently thinking about something, before getting up from the pavement again, walking the remaining five yards to the church door and going inside.

“Dearly beloved,” the vicar began. “We are gathered here today – my God that’s a terrible eyeliner – to join Cecil in holy matrimony. If anyone knows why I shouldn’t, speak now or forever hold your peace, do you, Cecil...”

“Hang on a sec!” Phillip whined. “You’re supposed to pause after the ‘speak now’ bit! I was going to say something!”

“Shut it, fat-face,” said the vicar. “... take Cecil as your lawful wedded self?”

“I d...” Cecil began, but Phillip grabbed him by the knee and prevented him from finishing the word, while Samantha opened a packet of salt-n-shake crisps and ate them noisily and the men next door discussed their pet dog’s obsession with tennis racquets.

“Cecil, I’ve realised why you want to be emperor,” Phillip said. “It’s about your third cousin Brenda, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Cecil admitted. “In another fortnight, give or take, it’ll be twenty years since she vowed to destroy me once and for all in twenty years’ time. Only by becoming emperor of the world can I stop her.”

“You could just kill her with a knife,” Samantha suggested, eating fish and chips that she’d had noisily delivered to the church during Cecil’s heartfelt confession. “Or a bigger knife.”

“Killing people is against the law,” Cecil said. “If I was emperor, I could just make it so that she never existed in the first place. But that’s all out the window now that Phillip’s figured it out.”

“I now pronounce you Cecil,” the vicar said, having taken the ‘o’ in ‘another’ to be the completion of Cecil’s ‘I do’, “and also the emperor of the world. You may kiss anyone you see fit.”

“No no, it’s okay, I don’t need to be married any more,” Cecil said. “We’ve sorted it all out. Brenda can’t destroy me now that Phillip’s worked out why I wanted to be married. It’s a shame, really, I would have quite liked to be emperor of the world anyway.”

“Well, you are the emperor of the world...” the vicar protested.

“Shut it, vicar,” chorused Phillip, Samantha, Cecil and the organist, and they all went home for tea.