val'sSHORT STORIES
BUTTERFINGERS
St. Peter stood outside the gates of heaven, impatient, muttering into an uncombed beard containing the crumbs of a hasty breakfast. "By all that's holy - begging Your pardon - Where is that messenger!" A thumb irritably shoved shocking pink sunglasses back up his nose, a hand hitched up violently coloured Bermuda shorts. "Why do things always happen on my holiday? Why am I always called to sort them out?"
He shuffled forward in ancient and frayed rope sandals, mainly held together by dirt, and peered down the shining stairway to heaven. The swiftly rising waters had reached the half way mark. This latest problem was the fault of the rainmaking department where the great circular cataract of heaven thundered. Their job was to divert some of the waters to areas of the universe needing rain. But, since that chap with the funny red wig arrived, they had been on strike, and had shut down the computer and hid it's electronic key. Now the waters of heaven thundered in a straight, unchecked fall directly into the universe, and was drowning it. So God had called for Peter, ordered him to fetch the duplicate key from stores, told him to sort it out. And here he was, waiting for the only winged messenger he'd found not messaging. As he grumbled, "Should never send a cherub on an angel's job," there was a puff of displaced air and the cherub was hovering before him, tiny wings whirring, duplicate key on outstretched rosy palm. "About time," Peter snarled, grabbing the key. Hitching up the shorts again he legged it down the high street of heaven, sandals flapping. The magnificent effulgence that was God was manifested by the roaring waters, foot tapping impatiently. "Took your time didn't you?" roared the cosmos shaking voice. "Quick now - Give it here!"
But as Peter hastened the last few steps an ancient sandal finally unraveled. It flapped from his foot, the other trod on it, he slammed to his knees with an unGodly curse and the key sailed from his hand. God grabbed at it, fumbled, the key was flicked higher. Proscribing a perfect parabola it disappeared into the mighty cataract. God stared at Peter, dumbfounded. "That was the only one!" St. Peter stared back, wondering how he would get out of this one. Then a flash of inspiration. "Oops," he said. "You are a butterfingers.
ZONES
Under desiccated potted palms a small ensemble plays a muted samba. The musicians sway gently to their own rhythms, soft lights gleaming on chitinous shells and their purple eye stalks waving in unison. At a keyboard, made from Charlton Heston's dental impressions, sits a twisted black dwart by the name of Pus Conway. Idly, he taps the keys in sympathetic harmony and hums a complete different tune. 'You must remember this ...' Suddenly the saloon doors crash open, and on an arctic gale of whirling snowflakes and dead oak leaves, a stranger blows in. Tall and menacing, he looms there, tattered brown cloak billowing, shapeless felt hat shadowing his face, an eyepatch giving a ruthless piratical air. A Zone-Pac dangles from his mega codpiece, worn over green fluorescent tights, and not quite as large as a small cupboard. Standing nine cubits tall and an upright span, he towers, biceps bulgingly akimbo, legs too .. Truss too tight again. Damn! "Ho, sniveling denizens," he roars in basso profundo. "A drink, and be quick about it .. Or," one eye glares around, "by Baelzebub's tail I'll have your ears!"
"What be them?" whispers one slug entity to another, who replies "Dunno. But something painful I expects."
Various entities, blasted to the floor by the force of the voice, pick themselves up groaning, shivering in the gale still blowing around the stranger, grabbing drinks, money, hats, tables and chairs in that order as the wind began moving them to the far end of the room. A full Greek chorus of chubby pink youths floated out of the stained woodwork. "Ooo, shut that door," they coyly falsettoed, limp hands flapping, saucy eyes winking, mouths pouting into glistening buds. They drifted in a girly giggle once around the stranger, soft hands patting and plump bottoms jiggling, then into the wall on the other side, taking a very surprised tax accountant, unfortunate enough to be in their path, with them. His faint screams were to be heard racing through the walls for days.
The stranger's Zone-Pac had lifted from the floor another foot. Pink and sweating, trying to muffle a climatic arrghh, the mumble, "Oh, the door, I say, terribly sorry and all that," came as he hastily shut the door. "So sorry," came the ingratiating apology. "Awful bore, eh what? All that snow .. arg .. and draft and stuff .. arghh .. " With a loud thunk the Zone-Pac slid to the floor from an abruptly quiescent cod piece. With a strained grin he nonchalantly picks it up, as if it was supposed to be there all the time, and saunters to the bar to stare the goggle eyed baroctopoid in the optics. The hubbub and music restart as the denizens go back to their business. Placing a foot on the polished brass rail, bending his mighty thewed nine cubits down to place an elbow on the low bar, the stranger begins opening his mouth to repeat his order. The bar tended beat him to it.
"What'll it be, mysterious heroic stranger?"
"Sasperilla-aaaaaaa ..." the elbow slips in a wet patch and off the bartop, the mighty body jackknifes and the heroic chin crashes into the wet wood, the foot shoots off the rail and lodges in a full spittoon. The room went utterly quiet. Slowly, the stranger straightens, even slower he turns, muscles quivering at the sides of the muscular jaw. All at once the noise restarts and everyone is occupied with other matters. Suspicious, one hand hovering near the eyepatch, he looks around, daring anyone to met the single eye gaze. Only the black dwart, who is microcephalic anyway, dares to throw a sidelong grin.
The tax accountant abruptly pops from the wall, bug eyed, buck naked, frilly knickers on his head and chase me written in lipstick on his bum. "Help," he gasps, as cooing calls of hello sailor and sea shanties muffle from the wall behind him. "Is there a cork in the house?" No one pays the slightest attention as plump hands snatch him back again, all are too busy surreptitiously edging away from the dwart and the piano.
With a mach 1 sneer the strangers swaggers over to the dwart. Step, clang, (splosh) goes the spittoon, step, clang, (splish). He leans on the piano, it groans under his weight, a long finger impales the dwart up his left nostril. He bends low, and breathes into the face like a prune left too long in the sun, "Play it again, Spam. I dares yuh."
Cross eyed, the dwart, too dense to know fear, sneers, "Me monica ain't Spam, codwad, it's Pus. Whyfor youse call me Spam?" Suddenly sporting a stetson and chawing baccy, the stranger drawls, "Cos yuh'll end up in a tin if'n yuh don't do what I sez."
"The hell I will," splutters the dwart, eyes watering from Mama's Magical Garlic Piza on the breath.
A gunlike a small cannon joins the finger up the other side of the nose. "Play, you sonava moo cow molester!"
Wondering how the stranger knew both his father and his favourite tune, the dwart begins playing honkytonk and making strangled mooing noises. The cannon is re-holstered, the finger refuses to budge. "T'ank God his goilfriend ain't here too," murmurs one old denizen, nursing the dregs of oirish stout and looking hopefully at the full glass of his companion. On cue, the saloon doors swing open and there, beyond drifting veils of illegal smoke, is standing a figure which looks familiar to the stranger. Afro brushing the doorjamb, she teeters in, spurs jingling on gigantic platform heels.
"By the great Quark!" the stranger bellows in joyful surprise, the stetson - and several drinkers - lifting clear into the air. "It's Hairy Mary!"
Trying the shake the dwart from his finger he step, clang (spush)es to her. Piano feet squeek protest as the dwart drags it with him, face stretching like a rubber band, long ears revolving in alarm, still making mooing noises. Only now they sound desperate. That is, more desperate than the molestee cows.
"Help," gurgles the dwart.
"Help," faint from the walls, accompanied by a twittering chorus of hello soldier and high heel marching noises.
"Me an' my big mouf," from the stoutee.
A hand like a side of bacon pats the Afro, platform heels crunch through the floor. With exquisitely gentlemanly manners he helps her from the hole with the free hand. "My Maryness, my heart. How did you escape, thou animate flu brush?"
Hairy Mary quirks a lopsided woman of the universe kind of grin, the other side of the lop holding a hint of suffering having been born with fortitude and profit. "Twarnt easy, podner. Had ta work muh way through two whole battalions of them centaurs. Almost got me in a sweat. Ah needs a pop quick, them coyotes be aclawing muh back agin."
Reaching into his codpiece he hands her part of his trusted standby, one of Valmira the valkyry's socks. Grabbing it, she sniffs deeply. "Wow man, really far out," she coughs, toes curling, "top quality too." "Only the best for my friends," he simpers, vainly trying to wipe the dwart off on a leg. Piano makes discordant jangling noises as it waves up and down with the clinging dwart, bashing the floor. As they stand there, gazing fondly into each other's eyes, saloon doors metamorphose into marble pillars, the piano into a harp, and beautiful music falls from the ceiling to litter the floor with pastel notes. A cohort of plump airmen, propeller beanies on their heads and singing come fly with me, aeroplane out of one wall and into the other with the dazed accountant in their midst. The stranger smiles into eyelash fluttering eyes, her Afro begins steaming, lightning flashes in his codpiece, the ensuing thunder curls the brim of his stetson and crack the floor across.
"Ohm Gawd," says the one with the oirishly dry glass. "He's done it now."
A cloud of chittering B's burst from the crack, swarming overhead into an angry mass they begin dive bombing the drinkers. A frenetic panic ensues, a mob of wildly gesticulating, screaming, braying, hopping entities all make for the door at the same time. From under a snapbrim fedora, the stranger says, "Of all the joints in all the universe, we had to meet here," while doing a bit of gesticulating himself with the impaled dwart. The dwart proscribes incredible parabolas around the tall head, praying at fifty five miles an hour. By itself, the harp plays Nearer oh God to Thee. Rescuing his pint of sasperilla from the panicked stampede, the stranger lifts it in salute.
"Here's looking at you, babe," he says with a wry mouth lisp and downs it in one gulp. The codpiece burgeons. Placing the dwart on the floor, he puts one foot on it's chest and heaves. The finger slides out with a loud Shluckkkk. The dwart screams, as the vacuum created in his nasal cavities by this sucks his walnut size brain halfway down his nose. Putting his own finger up it, to prevent losing the only thing he'd ever won in a raffle, he squints up at the stranger and gasps as recognition dawns.
"I .. I know you, you're Steel-Ahh!" The dwart abruptly dissolves into a blackened bubbling mess on the floor. The walnut brain rolls into a mouse hole and promptly falls in love with a pink mousetrap and lives snappily ever after. The tall one flips his eyepatch back into place.
"That'll teach him. Should have called the little snot Bogey!" He turns back from the dwartish remains. "Come Hairy Mary, my beloved, let us away. Meanwhile, tell me, what news hast thou of Valmira?"
Twanging Greensleeves, the harp follows them as they pass through the pillars. (Teeter, teeter, step clang splosh). Pausing for a moment, Mary eyes the recent acquisition to his extremity. "Tell me, oh mighty Steeleye Span," she winsoms, wrapping both legs around the cool metal of the spittoon to soothe her pulsating brain. "What's this on thy foot?" "Ah .. er .. it's a secret weapon," he mumbles, developing a bad limp as Mary's weight adds to the pot.
"Ooh," she breathes, remembering the centaurs, "I get quite attached to secret weapons."
Step, clang, (splosh-rub-pant-Ahh!)
Step, bong, (rub-pant-splish-Ooohhh!)
As happy as only a mighty hero and his maid can be, they disappear behind a nebulous cloud of shifting realities.
*
In the empty saloon of overturned furniture and dripping ale, the B's return to the crack, spiders rapidly cocoon struggling peanuts, and flies don aqualungs to swim in alcoholic heaven.
Deep in the walls, a lisping commentator is excitedly gabbling through the Grand National. There is the sound of creaking leather harness, of quirts smacking naked haunches. In a state of gibbering hysteria, the tax accountant leads the field as a last bend is negotiated and the race for home begins.
