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He had felt poorly since Christmas and now it was the first of April. He knew he wouldn’t be sick because he never was, so he didn’t need a bucket or a bowl. When Tuffin was poorly he saw things that weren’t really there. When he woke up, he saw that his bed was made of bricks like a coal bunker or a shelter that you get next to the railway line where workers can make tea or have a rest. When he reached down, his bed felt hard and heavy, but he knew it wasn’t really. It would turn back into blankets and sheets when he wasn’t paying attention, so he closed his eyes and thought about April the First and it became soft again, but now he knew he was sick.
April the First meant people could play tricks on each other and nobody would mind. They would say ‘April fool’ and laugh, even if it wasn’t very funny. Pretending someone was sick was not very funny, so if a spirit or ghost or some sort of imagination had come up with a joke to make Tuffin think he was sick by making his bed feel like it was made of bricks then that was scraping the bottom of the barrel, which was another way of saying they weren’t very good comedians.
Tuffin felt the bed again to check that the softness was still there, and it was.
Tuffin was hardly ever sick and had never been sick for more than two weeks. This had been more than twelve weeks which probably meant it would never go away. Something that stays that long becomes part of you because it shares your blood and your food and all your cells get a little bit of it. It must get in your brain in order to make you see things that aren’t there. It seems unlikely that it would know the date or that on April the First you were allowed to play tricks on people even if they weren’t funny, but anything is possible if you don’t have your own body to worry about. If you have your own body then lots of things are not possible because it’s not strong enough or it gets old or breaks. So however clever you are at using your brain it can’t beat the body in a fight.
These days, people take parts of other people’s bodies when their own has broken, but you have to be lucky for that to work and some people think it’s rather disgusting to have a bit of someone else inside you. Also they worry about the person who gave it away or had it taken from them.
Today, Tuffin felt so ill that he would be happy to take a bit of someone else’s body, even if he didn’t know them or like them, if it made him feel better. So he set about finding someone.
The first thing he did was to make a poster and put it up on the gate at the bottom of his drive.
‘Wanted. Body Parts. Some of mine are worn out. If you have any in good condition I will pay a lot of money.’
April 1, 2025