The Christ Caper
The rain fell almost hard enough to wash the lice out of the beggars’ beards. Almost. These were Jerusalem lice. You didn’t survive in Jerusalem long without being tough and those critters hung on and dug in like relatives at a rich man’s funeral. It had been six months since the case I’d labelled the Jerusalem Caper for my memoirs and things were back to normal for me. A few jobs here and there and those were lousy. My office had me for company and I think it was considering suicide. I couldn’t blame it. The scholars, priests, guards, and vendors were all hurrying through the downpour to wherever it was they were going. It didn’t look like any of them were hurrying to my office. The early evening had all the hallmarks of looking like another quiet one with my feet on the desk sipping fermented prune juice. "Sam, there’s a Mister Hired Goon to see you." That was Effie Perine of Judea, my loyal and long-suffering secretary. Maybe I’d drifted off for a few seconds because I hadn’t heard her come in. I was briefly annoyed. That’s the sort of thing that can get you killed in this line of business, not that I had much to fear lately. You don’t become the target of reprisals when you’re spending most of your time looking for missing cats. There was a hulking great shadow in the doorway behind Effie. He pushed himself into the room. "Let me guess," I ventured dismissively. "You’re a Goliath lookalike and some runt called David is muscling in on your territory." Mister Hired Goon didn’t appreciate the humour and made for my desk brushing Effie out of the way. I didn’t appreciate the way he knocked her. We all have our limits. I reached for the Smith & Ishmael .22 Slingshot from the drawer but never had a chance. Damn! He was fast. "Damn! You’re fast!" I thought he deserved to hear what I was thinking. I thought the flattery might buy me some time too while I considered my position pushed up against the wall with my feet inches clear of the floor. "Little Pee-Pee has a job you will be interested in." His breath stank of garlic. I let him have the full force of prunes in return. "He didn’t want to come here personally?" I asked. "That’s not Little Pee-Pee’s way." I was dropped to the ground. I made a mental note to buy sandals with more cushioning. A moment later and my offerer of employment had left. In my hand I held the small stone calling tablet he’d left....
Lesser Tales Of Norse Mythology
Beofoxe In the land of the Danes in the kingdom ruled over by Hrughkhar, son of Phlegm, the forest grew deep and dark around the great hall that held the old king’s throne. And the mood in the hall was as deep and dark as the forest outside for the king and his people lived in fear of Grendelsdottir, evil and mighty offspring of the now-vanquished Grendel who bellowed unearthly noises through the night and struck dumb with terror all from the mightiest man to the mightiest womanchild. For ten years the timid folk sought a hero to save them but their cries went unheard for they were suffering a cashflow crisis and could not afford to pay a reward. But a warrior from the north came into the hall one evening and proclaimed that his name was Beofoxe, a champion to his own people, defeater of the Four-legged, Chihuahua-headed Serpent of Kold Fjord, slayer of Baldur The God Of Tears’ Stable Boy Les, taunter of Grizgraz The Grumpy Goat, and that he would rid the land of Grendelsdottir in return for a wooden carving of the king’s likeness by the greatest woodsman in the land. And the king who was vain and drunk ordered it so. And Beofoxe, wounder of Champion The Wonder Moose, left the great hall and strode bravely through the dark and deep paths that wound through the dark and deep forest until he came upon the clearing of Grendelsdottir. In the centre of the clearing lit dimly by the blood moon there was a small bog and there rested by this bog a hollow tree trunk. The brave warrior drew his sword, which he called Stabby, and advanced toward the tree trunk. "Come out Grendelsdottir!" cried Beofoxe, chess partner of Ethelred the Unsteady. "Stabby longs for your demon blood and Odin will sing of the mighty hero Beofoxe while Loki taps his toes and hums along before this night is out!" And the terrifying creature leapt from his resting place and landed on all fours at the edge of the bog. Fully three inches in height and with skin green and damp, the mighty Grendelsdottir let out a croak that echoed through the tree trunk and became an unearthly bellow. And Beofoxe, pusher-over of The Cow That Slept Standing Up In That Field That Time, dropped Stabby and ran for he was deathly afeared of amphibians. The following Summer an owl carried Grendelsdottir off to feed its young and the curse on the land was lifted and there was much prosperity. However, Hrughkhar had been unable to pay the woodsman for his carved likeness...
Taunting The Yeti
I’ve got an uncle that is a little odd and does odd things. Not to me. Put down that phone to social services. He lived on a boat for a while and entertained himself by beading his hair and watching it sway as the waves rocked his leaking shell of a home. To keep warm he smeared nut oil on his body as insulation. He smelled of nut oil. A lot. He picked up a broken microwave for the boat too. There was no electricity on the boat so that was okay but he was convinced that putting tin foil on his head and placing it inside the oven would allow him to pick up television signals thanks to the way the cooking electronics were arranged. He went on a holiday to the Canary Islands and had everything stolen except for an inflatable bed and a tub of butter. He fell asleep on the bed, floated off to sea, used the butter as suntan lotion, and suffered third degree burns. He then stumbled upon a collapsed hotel inhabited by a gang of homosexuals (their preferred haunt) who chased him up a hillside until he lost them by hiding in a cave. One time he said to me "the Winter Olympics causes mental anguish". He may be odd and do odd things but he was right about that. Now there’s mental anguish … Figure skating causes brain pain, for example, because it is so mind-numbingly awful. Tinny speakers outputting 2 watts of raw Latvian folk music out of time to a couple spinning and sliding around an ice rink in matching polyester and rhinestone outfits is neither technical nor artistic and may even violate the Geneva Convention on torture. Cross-country skiing needs more bear attacks and someone needs to tell the snowboarders that there’s a supercool rad half-pipe just over that precipice dudes. Trying to guess the circumference of speed skaters’ thighs hurts right behind the eyes and causes trembling in the extremities. I tried to watch the Super-G and got a headache too. Why? From trying to work out why it was postponed just because it was snowing. How can you postpone an event that takes place in snowy regions of the world on snow in snow equipment because there’s snow? That’s like cancelling a deep-sea dive because there’s a chance of rain. And then there’s mental anguish … When I see those white mountain scenes, those white vistas, and those treelines (white), I’m reminded of the time I set out to taunt the Yeti. It was an act of bravery I’d told myself beforehand and wasn’t borne of...
Sense And Prejudice
For as long as anyone of import could recall the Thompsons had enjoyed a reputation of being among the most hospitable – and therefore liked – of the larger families along the Hampshire and Wiltshire border. The village which ran up to and around the southernmost tip of the Beaufort Park estate was gifted with lavish fetes on several occasions during each year and the head of the household, the retired doctor Ernest Thompson, welcomed all to his doorstep and never turned away so much as a vagrant or a Mancunian. The Thompson fortune came through several routes; slavery and sea cucumber cultivation – naturally -, wine production and the private practice of medicine – of course; for the grape was a fond friend to the aging ex-doctor -, and sundry enterprises for diversification was the key to success in the market after all. The Thompsons were rich and smart. There was immense sadness when the great fire at the Christmas gala took all but one member of the family from their place on God’s soil and ushered them swiftly into Heaven. Eliza Thompson, the youngest of the nieces in residence at Beaufort Park threw herself from an open window in the east tower, saving her life but taking in so much smoke and suffering so much shock from landing on Samson, the Great Dane, that she lapsed into a coma and was taken to be looked after in a clinic in nearby Whittingdon. In the aftermath of the blaze and quite shockingly for the gentle folk around there was surprise to discover that the dispersal of the family’s wealth was to be tied in knots for years to come following complacent will-keeping and the young girl’s lack of age. It was most unlike the Thompson family, the village muttered. Fancy not preparing for such an eventuality. But poor Eliza needed expensive care and a decision was made to sell the house – when such a feat became possible – and the land. The house was rebuilt largely for free by the local people out of love, reverence, and the need to keep moving as the cold of winter merely gave way to a cold and wet spring, a damp and quite cold summer, and an autumn that could best be described as cold. Finally, on very nearly the first anniversary of the inferno word reached the village that Beaufort Park had acquired a new owner. Harold Plimpton was the new master. From north, was the rumour, with no word of a wife. Rumours and whispers were all that were known for Mr Plimpton – as polar opposite from...
Giraffes and me, c.1920 to c.1945
Now it’s interesting that you bring up the subject of "giraffes" because – and stop me if I’ve told you this before – I had the pleasure of being a close friend of celebrated giraffe explorer Gerald Affable back in the early 20s. Of course, many people claimed to know him back then. Well, without TV and with radio broadcasts in their awful infancy it simply meant you had to get out and about and mingle to avoid the onset of The Deadly Fugue sweeping Europe. That caught my cousin, you know. Sat in a chair and stared into the space on the cabinet set aside for the television set when it was invented. Couldn’t snap her out of it. Sold her into white slavery as a "fixer-upper" and bought some Rennie Mackintosh lamps. I wonder what happened to them. They’d be worth a fortune now. Anyway, Gerald Affable; one of the surviving intelligent animals bred by the Kaiser but which failed to accept their brainwashing and refused to attack our boys in Northern France towards the end of the Great War in case you don’t remember. Really, what do they teach kids in school these days? Oh, but he drew the crowds in Paris after his successful exploration into deepest Chad in 1919 to find the fabled and geographically-challenged Goat-headed Goat of Upper Volta. There wasn’t a place Gerald couldn’t get into – well, allowing for the obvious height restrictions for a full-grown giraffe – but the constant limelight eventually bothered him and he took to drinking to blank out the hangers-on and well-wishers and ne’er-do-wells and will-o-the-wisps and such. Which is where I fit in. We shared a taste for absinthe and a sense of humour that baffled many Parisians throughout the various arrondissements and, blind drunkenly, lived off his fame for a good few years. The old Moulin Rouge was a favourite haunt. High ceilings and some semblance of privacy in the booths at the back plus, of course, dancing girls and copious amounts of alcohol. Perfect. Until his demise naturally. We really thought the chandelier would take the weight. Ah, I must digress. Now not long after this I fell in love. It wasn’t the first or last time I’d fallen in love but it was the first and last time it had been with a human constructed by the insane Dr Gelatin out of New Zealand. Well, "human" may be too strong a word for her. Her head was very nearly right – if you stopped counting her eyes after two and ignored the obvious seashells – but most of the other parts were...
Spooky Horror Tales Of Terror
Writing an article takes time – no, it’s true – and time’s not been on my side recently. I forget what we argued about but ever since then my work days have dragged along like a heavy-set Alsatian with no legs in need of some fresh air and a game of "chew the frisbee" and my recreational evenings have skipped by like a flat stone bouncing off the surface of a calm lake before plopping beneath the surface of sleep. That’s a dreadful analogy; I tend to fall asleep with a ping rather than a plop. Oh well. Writer’s block is an awful thing to suffer from if the action you’re trying to perform is writing. Mud wrestlers can survive day-to-day with acute writer’s block and still live a full and meaningful, dirty thong-wearing, slippery, slidy life. But for a writer it’s Purgatory with the promise of Hell to come. And there’s something even worse than the block; realising fractionally too late that some current event would have been perfect to write about. Would have been. If only you’d remembered it was scheduled to happen. I quite often pass a landmark occasion and think "Buggering shite! I could have prepared a damning indictment of that particular event if my memory wasn’t so full of holes! A pox on it!" So, to make sure I’m not caught out this year I’m presenting the 2005 Halloween Update Special in August. Wrap up warm, grab some hot chocolate, and ignore the rustling behind you as you read these Horrific Stories Of Unbridled Terror! The Locked Door Sharon needed a place to stay and she needed a place to stay quick. That was why she bought the old house without looking it over fully. The estate agent had seemed nice enough but had insisted on guiding her around the place rather than letting her wander. That had been an inconvenience but had seemed nothing more at the time. So it was that she found herself standing in her newly-purchased home without even having checked out all the rooms less than a week later. Damn the local council for finding rare woodworm in the house she grew up in and designating it a national park. It was dusty but Sharon’s asthma had been cured by a brick in a sock years ago in a fortuitous mugging-gone-wrong so that didn’t bother her. She didn’t even mind the cobwebs so much. Sure, she didn’t like spiders but so long as they didn’t bother her she didn’t bother them. Besides they kept the flies away. Flies. She hated flies. The old house – her new home, she...
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