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Hyperica
    "when once you have taken the Impossible into your calculations its possibilities become practically limitless" —Saki
    Hyperica Dunphy wasn't the fairest in the land, but she certainly was the vainest. Vain regarding everything and everyone. Of course, she was vain about herself, and took everyone else in vain, the distinction grammatically being lost in linguistics, but the action in her well-honed practice, being lost on no one.
    Her fondest hours were spent admiring herself in her myriad of mirrors. But when her mother got dressed to go out, the gentle, pretty woman could always depend on a parting acid-drop present from her only daughter of "You're not wearing that , are you?" Hyperica's father was Cloudmere Dunphy—the physicist so famous that people who buy The Sun for their daily news (tits: page 3)—even these people instantly recognize his broad ivory brow. This noble forehead was simply the inspiration for "Oy, Baldy" to his only child. Even God wasn't safe, always being called on with great irony whenever anyone wanted Hyperica to lift her mind or finger away from her own being to learn something, or do something for another being on the planet. "Oh, Gawd," she would say. God knew he wasn't being called but sneered at also.
    The three lived in their cosy house in Cambridge, surrounded by a garden that the parents fanatically tended, and the daughter studiously avoided, choosing instead to prance, primp, and preen in her room in front of her mirrors. She combed her diction as much as her hair, stealing the essence of the accents of her cultured parents, but curdling the tones with her own brand of irony. To her, it was wit of the highest order.
    God had only blessed the Professor and Mrs. Dunphy with this one product of their love for each other, but their mutual regard had only grown stronger over the years, as they shared their bewilderment over the gargoyle whose second-greatest joy in life seemed to be—to embarrass them.
    The garden was their refuge. They tended their canes of raspberries, currants and gooseberries; pruned the espaliered pears against the garden wall; carefully bletted the idiosyncratic medlars from the ancient arthritic tree till they were properly rotted; and grew muscatels and peaches in the hothouse along with a collection of orchids to enhance the posies of rare flowers which Cloudmere thrilled in picking for his wife.
    She, in turn, delighted in making a blizzard of puddings: ruby and snow summer pudding, seagreen gooseberry fools, syllabubs, Sussex ponds that oozed butter and lemon. Cloudmere adored his puddings.
    They ate them with the same childish joy, usually in the hothouse, out of one big bowl—an escape from the product of their womb and loin, lurking in her room except at mealtimes or when she knew her mother had made something sweet. Grace Dunphy had resorted to making and leaving decoy desserts for Hyperica to steal so the girl didn't pinch her father's favourite foods before all had a chance to eat them. Thus the practice evolved of Mrs. Dunphy making and the distinguished Professor and Mrs eating their puddings like guilty children, hidden by a conspiracy of friendly leaves and foggy windows.
    ~
    Lately though, even these delights had been harder to come by, the bile of Hyperica spreading to become a vast river delta encompassing the house, their love for each other, even their friends.
    Grace and Cloudmere had just come home from the airport after a tearful parting, seeing off Cloudmere's old physics soulmate, Grusha Gorosuv ( the Gorosuv, if you keep up with the field), who had spent the past two weeks at their home.
    Hyperica's protests had taken on the form of a campaign. "Do I have to watch him sieve his tea through his teeth" at the breakfast table. "I know he's here. I can smell his socks,"—her first words back from a trip to the shop to buy makeup or magazines. And to his face, "Thy stinking breath doth make me long for death," followed by a giggle at