Is there a size limit on Fluxlist?
It won’t seem to accept the story so far – so I’m trying it
in two halves.
Part the First
Nomad
Slasher. An
everyday story of Ambrosia for simple country folk..
(Please add to the story wherever you see fit, add your name at the
front and post it.)
"Man Bites Dog" 42-page book made of fur, teeth, skin and bones
brian, Kathy Forer, Roger
Stevens, Michael Leigh,
Alan fffo, badgergirl,
Carol Starr, Suse, Allan R.,Madawg
The Story So Far.
Fourteen wolverines and one lap dog chase a badger. But the badger is too
fast and burrows beneath a paintbrush stuck in a stone. In the burrow are
mushrooms and grain. The badger makes a broth ambrosia
of the green grain and mushrooms and is soon asleep.
The badger is dreaming... In the dream there are no wolverines or lap dogs
because the badger was really awakened by the artist removing the paintbrush
from the stone to begin painting for the morning. Little does the artist
realize that the badger is in the burrow. Once, the badger
(a strange name for a badger some would say) is reassured as to its safety and
breakfast is under way in the burrow; ambrosia of green grain and mushrooms
with the added delight of mini arsemallows!
The day is going well, the sky in an incoherent blue, but what was is that
strange sound? Thunder and a police siren infiltrate his dream, cement mixes
drop their distant loads, the clouds are grinning. The badger jumps from his
spot thinking his borough has imploded. When he hears the
rain on the stone above, he realizes the electricity
is still working and so he washes his face and soon falls back deep asleep. Once sleeps. He sleeps and he dreams some more.
He dreams of sitting on a five bar gate in Shinaniki Da. It's 1932 and Tom Thumb, the Topsy
Turvy talking automaton has just opened the Tough Cough
Drop Shop in the village which badger can see from where he sits. The Baked
Potato Man wanders by trying to sell his wares.
"Piping hot King Edwards!" he shouts as he wafts the steam from his
portable oven perched precariously on one-legged wheel-barrow. "Juicy Jerseys covered in
ketchup!"
Badger asks the Baked Potato Man if he has any crispy potato peelings in
batter.
"No, but I have these fine Cheshire New potatoes in gravy." He
smiles, proffering the steamy morsel which suddenly grows two eyes and leering
mouth and cackles most horribly!
Hours later, Once the badger, is awakened by the noise
of wood against stone. It is night and the lap dog is yapping. The wolverines have
surrounded the stone and are chanting an incantation. The badger doesn't
breathe, not a whisker moves. Neither up nor down, although suspense is
acrostic. After a paws of several minutes and a tail
too long for the telling, the badger quickly whips out his cross-stitched magic
asbestos underpants and pulls them on ferociously. Once
flings open the serving hatch and grabs the vial of sacred weasel water
and makes a mad dash, a kind of crazy underlining really, for the burrow entrance
and confronts the seething mass of writhing wolverines squirming around the
stone which is now glowing with a strange
phosphorescent throb!
"Ahh", sighs
Badger.
The wolverines howl with delight.
Now read on…
Chapter One – Zonograph Buys A
Head
It was a dense night. Stumble patterns and brave yapping set apart the
party of owl elves and gnome mimics writhed and chased
and spurned
the undergrowth around the latest beige badger
silting. In the brave
distance behoves the strange
and incandescent foreshadows of
wolverines and greenish melon lights upon the
substantial forest fare.
Young Zonograph, the tallest owl elf snuffed his
warps harp and muttered
- I can hear a badger. The badger is in trouble. I scents
wolverines.
Hurry there is no stone unready ton roll upturned in this
lackadaisical pre-momentary of the word fandango.
Meanwhile, or to be more precisereiouseless, high on
hill stood a
lonely man with a goathead,
his fixedinterestrate stare
directeddyboyhoodlesservilely
at the burning black belching
smokestacks of the town beyond the wolverine woods.
The sound of a
suddenly snuffeforadicalcified
warps harp, brought memories back for
Ludwig Hat, erstwhile butler and badger baiterribleedinglendervish
of
Vincent and Cara Van Hire.
Ludwig stood immobile, imshelle and intexacoe, for Ludwig had been
brained by falling groceries, dropped from almost a
mile overhead and
one mile and eight inches over shoulder, a result of
the splitting of
a cheap carrier pigeon on its way home. Forcing his
gaze downward
Ludwig was horrified, not only had his part of the story not managed
to settle on a definite form, not only did it lack
content but now to
his disgust he found that he had been rendereducededicateddyboyfriended
by a carp’s tangerine!!! He couldn't even get
that right. But when he closed his eyes, pursed his lips and held his
breath, he could see what he had left.
Ludwig crossed his eyes and dotted his teeth, relaxed and floated up,
through the roof of his own mouth. Long and
complicated wordadditions,
he thought, canwearyoudownifyournot
careful, and so he resolved to be
more carefulinfuture.
Win Cent the Magnificent and Cara the Quiet Nice, however, were seriously
considering
calling Sister Meg and entering into the fray. Sister
Meg O'Lomania
was after all acrostic champion Frigidaire and good at
getting badgers
up and down and out of trees (and wolverines out of
toasters for that
matter.) Lap dogs she had no time for as their
batteries always seemed
to run out in the middle of a sent bottle of enormous
pulchritude. Or a sentence…
His eyes dilated and shuffled in the moonlight, his breathe came in
short pants, his coughs in a skirt and his trousers
rolled up like
Venetian blinds caught in a mighty Wurlitzer.
Mrs. Shufflefang caught sight of herself in the
polished knob of
a Milkman's portable pelmet crusher and she winced
inwardly, tossing
back a mane of flaxen hair that was tied in a bun and
covered in
currants. The badgers, for now there were five, all
grabbed the reins
of the milkman's horse and whipped it into a gallop
and then into a
small tea shop where it scattered several old ladies
and a troupe of
dwarves on an outing.
Suddenly, Pequot Marmaduck threw a crumpet at Sister
Meg. It caught
her with a ping in the Frigidaire and she fainted
straight away,
smashing the paw of the lap dog who was dreaming of
heaven-sent
chumlaka. Cara sprinkled
Sister Meg and the lap dog each with half a
gram of lemon juice. Meg cried out, "Get me a
toasted pineapple!" The
dog sniffed the crumpet.
Ludwig had fallen onto the milk cart and the badgers were busy
cleaning the splashes from each other when seven
wolverines slunk by
and whistled an old tune from the dark days when
weasels were weasels
and fourpence was worth
three and a half cents. The badgers had been
mistaken for minks! Finally, they could answer Young Zonograph's call
and they set out toward the southern phosphorescence,
towing Mrs.
Shufflegang who had the fixedinterestrate
card for gas and carrots for
the hybrid horse and roasted beast for themselves.
Chapter Two – The Tart’s Tale
"What's all this, then?" Uncle Walt awoke with a tart.
"Once?" he
yelled. "Where is that pesky badger?"
Carefully smearing the remains
of his last bottle of bright orange nail varnish into
his hair, he
feebly crawled out of the hole. Lulu, meanwhile,
disappeared into a
cravat.
"There's wild weasels in there, I tells ya. I
don't want to go to the
steak house no more!" Several of the badgers
loitering around the
enormous bonfire giggled loudly. Once kept his head
down. Uncle Walt
in this mood... best keep out of his way. A wolverine,
hiding in a
nearby double-decker laundry basket chuckled quietly
to himself. He
had a variety of chuckles but preferred the quietly
one. Wait till I
tell the others, he thought to himself.
Chapter Three – Wardrobes on the Rampage
Later that same day, 3,000 red-headed women converged on the small
appliance department at St Macy's, home to the
partridge of man's
desire and woman's loathing. There was a sale, you
see. Yousee left
the apartment in a shambles. Tucking it under her
badger, she moved
the entire affair slightly to the south of Turkey.
"What's all this
then?!" shouted Blarney the turkey buzzard.
"This doesn't look like a
chestnut to me, it looks more like a shrunken head
from the
Ooompungokoonoo Indians of Skull Island!"
"It's the one I've been looking for," screamed the turkey buzzard as
if pole-axed, "For nearly 300 years our family
have searched the seven
seas and thirteen ponds of Umpklah
to find the sacred shrunken head of
Saatchi the Flame God - I can't believe you had it under your badger
all this time!"
"Neither can I," said Blarney with a withering
smile. He had other
smiles but the withering one was his favourite.
As they sat contemplating this new find a strange and eerie noise
assailed their ears, Blarney decided to look
within his badger for
Turkey basting apparatus. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Blarney, the
Ooompungokoonoo Indians of Skull Island were busy
making plans of
their own. Lulu crawled out of the cravat and prepared
breakfast for
Uncle Walt. All of this activity occurring elsewhere soon caused poor
Blarney to
tire. He decided to take a nap.
A strange dream percolated through his brainbox,
flickering like one
of Logi Bairds
firsts contraptions and fizzed horribly. Pop! A
balloonish elf in purple
jodhpurs and cravat exploded overhead and a
rain of tiny elf clones came giggling down. The
wardrobe was moving
mysteriously and shape slightly shifting. It threw
open its flappy doors
like the jowls of a huge dog. Dribble flew out like
moldy tapioca and
caught Blarney full in the mush. On cue, from within the fleshy wardrobe
- troupes of badgers, weasels, stoats and wolverines
came marching out
all with guns over their shoulders and wearing smart
uniforms and
regalia usually worn by the Grenadiers and Irish
Fusiliers. Trumpets and
bugles blared the Smurfs Marching Song and a fairy
orchestra on a
revolving dinner plate came whirring about Blarneys
astonished head like
a tiny Frisbee. With all the
din he hadn't realised his lower half was
sinking slowly into some custard-like stuff that oozed
from the ground
about his knees. "Cripes!" he yelped, as the
custard rose higher and his
knees sank lower...
Chapter Four – Ground Dog Day
"What's all this, then?" Uncle Walt awoke with a tart.
"Once?" he
yelled. "Where is that pesky badger?"
Carefully smearing the remains
of his last bottle of bright orange nail varnish into
his hair, he
feebly crawled out of the hole. Lulu, the tart, looked
at him
disparagingly. She had other looks but disparaging was
her favourite.
"You've been re-living the past again, as though it was happening all
over again," she said.
"Damn," Uncle Walt drawled. Where's that badger, Once?"
"I'm here," Once answered through the TemporalTimeGate
(tm)
"If I've told you once, Once," Walt said,
"I've told you..."
There was an almighty noise, a screech, a smidgeon, a thumpyclumpybumpy
existential, serious and yet soft-stockinet kind of
stony
paintbrush-beset-by-wolverines kind of noise. Uncle
Walt pulled his
voluminous cravat tighter and pulled his i-TimeDisplacer (tm) from the
folds of his thigh-fur. He punched in Zonograph, the owl-elf's number.
>From deep within Lulu giggled.
Visit The Poetry Zone
http://www.poetryzone.co.uk
