Princess Lucidity to the Rescue, A Travesty- part 1

(Author’s Note: Yet another one of those “travesties”, this one kind of being a rough parody of sci-fi kitsch and the like which I wrote whilst sat in a pub somewhere just for something to write. It vaguely alludes to Arthur Michaelson in the first travesty, and might be something he wrote, or perhaps a dream of his if I ever actually get round to writing “The Ma’chandra Chronicles”. Needless to say this is a work of fiction intended for the purposes of entertainment/humour/parody only. The author does not condone any unpleasantnesses such as partner abuse which may follow in real life. There is also other general violence, death and some mildly adult humour. You have been warned.)

“My, my, darling! What a sight!” came an unmistakable voice from the foot of the bed.

Arty craned his neck upwards as best he could, the restraints binding his hands and feet firmly to the ornate frame of Lady Estrella Marcia’s bed, leaving the rest of his body barely free to move. As he strained to look upwards, he barely bothered to glance up at the frame he saw before him, all 7’2″ of amazonian perfection clad in little more than an iridescent silver halter-top and matching hotpants, laser pistol and utility belt strapped to the waist, crowned with a perfectly-permed mass of neon-turquoise hair and a bejewelled band around the forehead. Well, he could hardly not pay any attention to it – but his attention was soon diverted to the face, perfectly-lined eyes piercing deep into his brain with a megaton stare, bright red lips curled into that knowing, sarcastic smirk that let him know that he was in deep, deep trouble and its giver would gladly make sure he knew it. The look that let you know, in no uncertain terms, that the 2000 volts of searing pain that was shortly to follow was no less than you bloody well deserved. The look that let him know that, in spite of both of these things, he’d better be relieved to see it, which he surely was. And not only because it was better than the alternative.

“P-princess! By am I glad – to see – you! I- I mean… I can explain…”

Princess Lucidity Morningstar, First Lady of the space colony of Eta Carinae Prime, had no time for such feeble excuses. Not merely because they ill befitted the officially-betrothed of one as important as herself, but because the sound of screams and shouting and the hiss of burning flesh coming from behind the door made it obvious that danger was not far away, and they had better make like a tree and get out of there pretty zarking quick.

“Just hold still a moment,” she instructed him removing the laser pistol from its holster. “You know,” she said as she adjusted several dials on one side of the pistol to the correct setting, “if you wanted to get all tied up like this, there’s a perfectly good bed back home I can tie you to, if you like…” Flicking a switch at the side of the weapon, with just a few expertly aimed shots, she freed Arty of the restraints.

“I know,” he croaked back, struggling upright and to his feet.

No sooner had he managed to just about regain his balance, the inevitable came. A wave of searing agony surged through his body, knocking him back against the adjacent wall, courtesy of Lucidity’s Wand of Principality.

“That’s for sneaking off with that conniving lamia behind my back,” she exclaimed.
Barely had he recovered and staggered to his feet, than another jolt coarsed through him and collapsed to the floor.

“That’s for being such a bloody idiot,” continued the Princess.

Arty could have sworn that in an earlier era that would be considered abuse, but this was (relatively speaking) the 29th century and standards were different; besides, one did not betray the trust of a Space Princess when that trust bound you to her body and soul; besides, such thoughts are difficult to have when your body is still limp and searing with pain, and would mostly have to wait until later. Even more difficult when the Princess in question yanked him abruptly to his feet, planted a kiss full on his lips and assured him in no uncertain terms:

“That’s because I bloody well love you in spite of everything, and don’t you dare forget it!” before adding, “Now, to get out of here…”

“Shag…” was his response, still half-dazed from the pain.

“There’s plenty of time for that later,” she replied.

“…pile…” he continued. “I… mean… there’s an… escape hatch… under the… shagpile… carpet…”

“Ah,” replied the Princess, barely regretting having spoken so soon. Glad of the information, she dragged her hapless beau’s still-limp body over to a chair by the carpet, her well-honed genes and intesnse physical training making up for what those ridiculous 20th-century primitives back in Arty’s time would have considered the deficiencies of her sex.

Before she even had chance to lift the carpet, the door suddenly opened with a characteristic whirr. Lucidity whirled around, pistol quickly drawn out of its holster, ready to dispatch the half-dozen Dog-Men that came rushing through the door, whose abject stupidity made them little more than laser-fodder at her expert hands, but leaving her surprisingly underprepared for the well-aimed javelin of a rough-looking woman dressed in little more than a plain woollen tunic and furs, her hair tied back in a rough braided bun for practicality. The javelin pierced her chest, straight through the heart, and as her collapsed form lay spreadeagled on the carpet staining it with copious amounts of blood, she could have reflected of how wasting her time on such ‘shocking’ behaviour ill-befitted her name and the reputation that went with it, the most she could manage was “oh no, not again!”

“LUCIDITY!” screamed Arty, attempting to spring up to embrace the Princess’ lifeless form before collapsing right next to it, his muscles still weak and in pain from the spasms.

“WHY?!? WHY-Y-Y?!?” he bawled.

“Don’t blame me, sport,” replied the barbarian woman who had moments earlier thrown the fateful javelin. “Just doing what Her Bluehairedness pays me to do. You, on the other hand, she wants to keep alive, as well you know- Fluffy likes his dinner fresh, even if he doesn’t mind some stale dessert…”

“YOU KILLED LUCIDITY, MARIEKA!!!”

“No need to repeat the bloody obvious,” exclaimed Marieka (for what else would a javelin-wielding barbarian by this particular author be called?) matter-of-factly. “Come on,” she continued, drawing the longsword from behind her back and making to point it at the hapless male specimen.

He suddenly reached for the laser pistol that lay a few inches from Princess Lucidity’s lifeless hand, pointing it in turn at the barbarian.”

“Don’t… try anything… I’ll shoot…”

“But you don’t know how that thing even works,” taunted the barbarian woman. “I mean, beats m-”

A lound crackle of electricity could be heard, and she collapsed to the floor.

“Good boy, you’re learning,” came a familiar voice…

*****************************************************************

(In our next episode…)

Her Ladyship, Estrella Marcia the Third of Neptunia Secunda, stared at the monitors with an air of feigned calmness that belied her trepidation. Nervously she twirled a strand of midnight-blue hair which fell about her head in a mass of long, loose curls, pretending not to bite a lip painted the same colour as the wine half-filling the elegant crystal goblet hanging down between the fingers of her right hand, heavily-lined green eyes darting this way and that as she surveyed each scene. Carnage had decorated the corridor which led to her private chambers, the bodies of Dog-Men piled high before what was left of the three bikini-clad figures who belonged to her mortal enemy’s elite bodyguard, collapsed in the doorway in an equally dead state.

(What will happen to our hapless …”hero”? Will he ever be free from the nefarious machinations of Lady Estrella and her pelt-clad henchwoman, or get turned into monster food? Just what exactly is Fluffy, and precisely how sapient is he? Is that really a mentally-backed-up clone of Princess Lucidity, or someone completely different? Will Marieka jump ship… perhaps even literally… and join them, or stick by her employer until the bitter end? Will there be any exciting mecha battles involving Lady Estrella’s elite guard? Find out all this and more… sometime in the future, maybe?)

Insanity Claus, or the Awkward “Consequences” of a Very Mary Christmas: A Farce, part 1

[Another silly story that I wrote for Christmas 2018 to amuse the family. I know it’s a little early in the year but thought it was too good not to share now. Also, for more information, see here.

Please note this is a work of fiction. All real-life entities or references to other works are included for the sake of satire or affectionate parody only; no misrepresentation is intended. The Today programme is property of the BBC.]

Somewhere in a cut in spacetime slightly lambda-wards of the skies above the Atlantic Ocean, battered by the cold air currents and the snow it blew through the rift, could be seen a most curious sight, albeit one which would no doubt be familiar to millions of children on the surface of the planet “below”. It appeared to be a sleigh pulled by reindeer, a large sack positioned in the rear and a portly, white-bearded fellow in a red coat in the driver’s seat. He let out a loud, cheery “Ho, ho, ho!” in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Brian Blessed, before calling out:

“On Dasher, on Dancer, on… Oh, dingo’s kidneys, why can’t I even remember the names of my reindeer? This is what you get for being over a thousand years old… On… Rudolph? Yes, that’s it… with your nose so bright…”

At this point the red-coated fellow was interrupted by the droning of a biplane closing in behind. A biplane on which was mounted a very menacing looking grenade launcher. A grenade launcher that fired off a rocket propelled grenade which exploded several feet from the back of the sleigh, sending fragments tearing through the large sack fastened to the back of the sleigh, creating a secondary rupture in spacetime and gradually sucking the multifarious contents of the bag into the unknown aether beyond.

“Oh, my sweet lord!” cursed the figure. “Oh, smegging foetid dingo’s kidneys! She’s ruptured the Bag of Holding! That dratted Mary! Does she ever give up? Now we’ll all be sucked in, and good little children the world over won’t get their presents! Oh, won’t she just think of the childreeee..nnnnaaaaaarrrgggh!” The figure, sleigh and all was sucked into the rift, the biplane soon following behind.

The rift opened up somewhere in the middle of the Scottish countryside not too far from a certain well known loch, early on a winter morning. As the red-coated figure held tightly to the reins of his reindeer, which had snapped off from what was left of the sleigh due to the force of the rift, the remains of the biplane could be seen careering into the side of a nearby mountain (where it made a fairly spectacular explosion) whilst the pilot, having bailed out, descended safely to earth by means of her emergency parachute. As she did, she could not help but noticing a large head emerging from the surface of the loch. When Santa (for it was, of course, he) finally emerged, crawling out of the freezing water after having let go of the reins and making an awkward “emergency landing”, he found Mary standing over him, brandishing a revolver.

“So, now I have you, Kringle! Any last words before I decide to send you on your way to meet the reason for the season since you failed to deliver that Bionic Woman action figure I so desperately wanted back in 1979?”

“Erm… brrrr… do you know… w-w-what y-y-you’ve j-just…d-d-done? Y-you’ve j-j-j-j-just ruined C-c-Christmas for millions of child-d-dren all over the smegging world! And w-w-w-worse s-still…”

The half-chilled-to-death Santa was interrupted further by the whooshing of a flying saucer bearing the words “SS Graceland” flying overhead, before it was hit by a rocket and tumbled headlong into the monstrous head emerging from the loch, which by this point had been joined by the rather long neck to which it was attached.
Santa, by this point just beginning to get over the shivers, scolded:

“Oh… oh d-d-dear! Just as if things couldn’t get any worse, now Elvis has been done in as well!”

“Elvis?” asked Mary quizically. “He’s dead isn’t he? I think it’s time to put you out of your misery for good, you mad old fool…”

“Before you do, you mad Yorkshire terrorizer, allow me to expl-l-lain… brrrr! Elvis isn’t dead, you know, he just decided to take a break for a while, and he went back to his home planet… you know, the media have been hinting at it for years!”

“Well I don’t watch much telly, do I?” pointed out Mary. “Usually since most of my tellies don’t last very long every time Marcia decides she really, really wants to watch Eastenders. Anyway, do go on…”

“Well he was about to come back especially for a one-off special New Year’s benefit concert before somebody shot him down…”

Mary looked out over to the loch to see the smoking remains of the flying saucer floating next to the severed neck of the monster.

“You have got to be kidding me… now let me see…” she said, replacing the gun in it’s holster, fumbling in one of the many pockets of her coat to pull out a small radio which she switched on and fiddled about until she found a passable Radio 4-bearing signal.

“…beep, BEEEEP!” went the radio. “This is the Today programme with Mishal Hussein and John Humphreys on Friday 28th December. It’s 8 o’clock. Now, a summary of the news with ..BZZT!” Another voice chimed in following the static:

“…News at 8 o’clock. Following the emergency debate of the Missing Christmas Disaster held in the House of Commons last night which resulted in a snap vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government, amid ongoing tensions over the final BZZZT! which was due to be voted on in the New Year, a snap general election has been called due to take place in February ahead of the BZZZT! date in March. Early polls suggest an unprecedented landslide victory for the Monster Raving Loony Party…”

Mary turned off the radio, retracted the aerial and put it back into the pocket from which it came.

“I thought as much! You remember when Screaming Lord Sutch was leader of the party? Remember how the bookies had better odds for Elvis Presley crashing a UFO into the Loch Ness Monster than him successfully contesting an election?”

“Y-y-yes…?” asked Santa, puzzled.

“Well it looks like the odds have been somewhat tilted in the favour of both.”
“Y-y-you know what this means, don’t you? One, I’ve overshot Christmas by three days, two, your smegging actions have just broken the fabric of reality! We have to fix this, and there’s only two ways of doing that…”

“Oh really?”

“YES! One, trail all over the Highlands looking for every last missing present and get them hitched up to the sleigh to be delivered by last Tuesday, and I mean even though the time travel part is easy with a bit of magic – how else do you think I do it every year? – looking for that lot would be pretty much like looking for a habedashery’s worth of needles in a hay factory, so, two, we go off questing in search of the fabled Temporal Reset button before Twelfth Night, and the clock is ticking! Can’t cheat it, you know, timey-wimey you-know-what…”

“Oh brother,” said Mary. “I guess I have no choice do I?”

“Nope!”

“Well, three things before we do. One, since when did you of all people start turning into a walking parody of classic British sci-fi comedy? Two, I would place the blame for that squarely on my sister Wendy, the infamous monster slayer, not me. Three, we’re going to need help…”

‘Shhk!’ came a javelin, landing right between Mary and Santa, landing at their respective feet.

“Oi! Need a hand? Or rather, a longsword attached to a hand?” came a gruff but female voice in a strange, indeterminate accent.
They looked round to see a rough-looking barbarian woman, dressed in furs, her long brown hair roughly tied up in a braided bun behind her head for practicality, her face beset with scars from numerous battles.

“Marieka of the Renavam Amazons at your service,” she continued. “If there’s adventure, excitement and monster slaying to be had, count me in!”

“Well, I can’t guarantee any monster slaying, but…” said Santa before he was interrupted.

“Oh, bloody hell! Get yerself back to tabletop RPG land, you haridan, before I frag you to the middle of next century!”

“Try me,” the amazon replied, with the sort of come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-you’re-hard-enough tone you might expect from someone like her in these sorts of situations. “I already dispatched one version of you back in the other story. Now will you let me join you or not?”

“Oh, go on then,” said Mary, resignedly. “But first we have to get you some more modern weaponry, and then we have to get you another monster slayer to face down…”

Will Santa, Mary and Marieka manage to reset the fabric of space and time before Twelfth Night rolls around? Will our intrepid antiheroes manage to deal with Wendy the Monster Slayer or will she ballista them in the backside first? Will things ever manage to get back to whatever passes for a vague semblance of normality in the Consequences-verse? And will Jenny Everywhere make an appearance? Find out in our next thrilling episode… if there ever is one!

It was another Dark and Stormy Night: A Travesty only the Author will Understand (with Added Annotations so the Reader Can)

[Notice: The character of Jenny Everywhere etc. etc. blah blah crap you know the drill.]ⁱ

[Content warning: violence, swearing, mild sex references, lots of incomprehensible in-jokes and general stupidity.]

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain beat down hard against the window and the wind howled like a demented wolf-bat. In the distance, lightning flashed and the thunder roared in response, as if Zeus and Thor were engaged in an epic turf battle to decide who exactly was going to be thunder god on this bit of this otherwise god-forsaken planet. In the midst of this sat Arthur Michaelson, sat at his typewriter yet again, looking out the window wondering if yet another damned tree would collapse over the power lines to his house and cut his work short for the night.ⁱⁱ It was more interesting, he supposed, than the drivel currently staining the scroll in front of him. It was different from the usual even worse drivel he’d normally write about nubile young space princesses brandishing laser swords, trying to rescue their hapless beaux from some green-skinned femme fatale from the planet Zog’chandra, who was trying to lure him in with her feminine wiles in order to eat him alive when he least suspected it.ⁱⁱⁱ (That, or something very similar that would keep the punters happy.) No, this was supposed to be about an ordinary girl happening upon and ordinary guy in some railway station back on old Earth, hoping to rekindle the spark that had lain dormant for the past ten years since they had been childhood sweethearts or some such. Sentimental mush. But somehow he couldn’t get it quite right. Needs must, he decided to at least look down on the drivel he had written before the lights went out and he’d have to go to bed and dream about his dead wife and why he couldn’t save her all over again. This is that drivel.

***

Laura waited impatiently as the station tannoy announced that the 18:45 to Menaasa would be delayed for another four hours due to the wrong type of leaves on the line. Damn it, the wind was in danger of messing up her perfectly teased hair that had taken enough hairspray to burn a hole in the ozone layer all by itself and it was insufferable. She was too tired from seeing her- ahem – “clients” all day and it was blatantly insufferable that she couldn’t make a few bucks more. She tapped her 6-inch heels nervously against the concrete floor of the platform. Damn these railway strikers complaining that the timetables had worked out to their dissatisfaction! Didn’t they think of the ordinary passenger and their needs which she just had to satisfy? It was such a nuisance that she barely noticed the noise of someone- or someones- materialising next to her with a loud “SHIFT!” noise. One of those someones, someone who probably would have very vaguely resembled KT Tunstall (if she’d had her hair cut really short, just so happened to be wearing aviation goggles and purple-and-yellow-striped scarf, and wasn’t Scottish^iv) if Laura had known who the hell KT Tunstall was since it was the ’80s, accompanied by a moody-looking, tomboyish teenage girl wearing a baseball cap and hoodie that looked ever so anachronistic. The first of the “someones” crept up behind Laura, tapped her on the shoulder and muttered in her ear “Hiya Lozza, how’s it hangin’ minliena?”

Laura stumbled and tripped over. “Totally bitchin’,” she exclaimed. She got up and dusted herself off. “Ah, Jenny, it’s you. What the hell are you doing in my story? I’m supposed to be moping and internally whinging all to myself. Kindly leave me be.”

“Nice to see you too, Laura. But what exactly are you doing here?”

The moody-looking teenage girl nudged Jenny in the ribs and said: “What exactly are we doing in Clochan North Station? Not exactly somewhere for an exciting adventure is it? Unless you were planning on hooking me up with-“

“Give it a rest Megan, we’re only getting started. This here is the Eighties. Time to savour the big hair and the sweet synthesizer music.”

Laura, unfazed, carried on.

“What does it look like? Me, a lone woman stood on a deserted station platform, all dolled up and nowhere to go? Obviously I’m a prostitute. Not some random career girl, like maybe an estate agent or something, just desperate to see their sister or something.”^v

“Last I saw you were a bright young college girl with a future ahead of her. What happened?”

“Oh, a bad break-up, this led to that, now I’m just happy to screw anyone for the money. Shit happens, you know?”

“Err… no?”

“Well you wouldn’t would you? Were this written in a short story I would see it condemned as an improbable fiction. By the way, if your young friend wants to couchez avec moi ce soir, I can do her for $50. Mates’ rates.”

“How about that guy over there? Isn’t that Mike Moheden the rock star?”

“Meh, he had his chance ten years ago. Besides, me crossing that bridge in these heels? Do you want me to kill myself?”

“Err…. no?” asked Jenny sarcastically. “Why don’t you wave your arms at him maniacally or something? Let him come to you?”

“Err… ’cause he’s all plugged in?”

At that moment, Mike was dead to the world, trying desperately to listen to his tape of the band New Horizons which was named for some card that let you enchant lands so you could tap them to add 2 mana of any colour to your mana pool, wishing their attractive lead singer Mena Tenazi was moaning with pleasure in her beautiful alto voice and running her fingers all over his body as deftly as she was the Juno 60 she was playing, all whilst clutching his precious guitar tightly to his chest.

Megan nudged Jenny again. “You know what else would make this scene totally complete?”

Just then a wormhole opened up above the track and something dressed in camos plopped out of it, screaming with a rough Yorkshire accent and shouting “Ooof! Whoever did that’s getting a bloody frag enema!”

“What did I say about speaking of the devil?” exclaimed Jenny loudly.

“How very cliché,” remarked Laura, yawning with boredom and pulling out a fan from her overnight bag for dramatic effect. “What are we getting next? A tap-dancing robot girl?”^vi

The thing pulled herself up off the tracks, dusted herself off and lifted herself up onto the southbound platform. “Sorry I’m late to the party, chucks. You’ve not by chance got owt to blow up?”

“You could try the picket line outside,” remarked Laura nonchalantly. “Or Mr. Walkman over there.”

There was a distant sound coming over the wind from outside the station entrance, of one female and several male voices having an awkward argument, followed by a bloodcurdling battle-cry and the sound of metal slicing through flesh and crunching bone.

“Looks like someone beat me to t’first one,” replied Mary, for it was she, the mad bomber of deepest, darkest Yorkshire.^vii

In walked a rough-looking woman, greasy hair fastened back into a braided bun, wearing nothing but furs, leather boots, a backpack and more spears and javelins than it seemed humanly possible to carry, bloodied longsword in one hand, can of Tymena Dark Mild in the other. “Ey. Name’s Marieka of the Clan Renavam. Youse dunno if there’s anywhere to get any more booze?”^viii

“Oi! No outside drinks!” called a voice (from a door behind them marked “Refreshment Lounge”) in broad Clochan Lyniezian. “If you want to get a cuppa Samson’s Extra Strong Tea, I’ve had no bloody customers all day and I’m getting sick of it, so feel free to step in!”

Mary tossed a grenade into the aforementioned doorway, which exploded with a satisfying “BANG!”

“Did anyone have a clue what she was on about?” she asked.

“Err, excuse me,” interjected Laura sarcastically, “actual Lyniezian who actually understands Lyniezian here?”

“Shut up yer frickin’ whore,” counter-interjected Mary. “Nobody asked you…uuggh…” she continued as a miraculously well-aimed javelin went sailing straight into her chest.

“YESSS!!! Finally I hit something with a thrown weapon that actually looks humanoid!” shouted Marieka triumphantly.^ix

“AWESOME! ‘Bout time someone took care of her,” exclaimed Megan. “You said your name was Marieka right?”

“Errr, yeah? And, thanks?”

“Well, I used to know a girl called Marieka. Smaller and slighter and had much bluer hair than you, but same name. And if you want to know a great place to get some more beer, I know this little joint called the Leaky Bicycle just over the road and round the corner. Wanna come?”

“Errr.. sure!”

The two set off before Jenny or Laura knew what was happening.

“Did you just see what happened there?” asked the former to the latter.

“What happened,” replied Laura, “is that my last paycheck of the night just walked off with some baby-eating harridan.”

“I think she’d take offence to that last one.”

“Eh well. Whilst you’re at it, you never told me what happened to your other bit on the side, that Leelee lass…”

“She was NOT my bit on the side, just some annoying limpet-like idiot, who unfortunately got eaten by the Wast Monster whilst we were on holiday in the English Lake District.”

“Eh?”

“Tells you all about it in…” explained Jenny as she reached into her backpack, “… this here book,” pulling out a small, beaten up copy of Corinne’s Pocket Guide to Lake Monsters of the British Isles. “Available for two pounds ninety nine at all good bookshops.^x And no, I don’t know what that is in Lyniezian dollars, so you can have mine for free.”

“Whatever,” yawned Laura disinterestedly, pretending to fan herself before the fan itself was flung out of her hand by a sudden gust of wind.

“Never mind,” replied Jenny.

Just then the station tannoy announced that all trains had been cancelled in both directions for the foreseeable future, and that their humble announcer was going home for a nice glass of elderberry wine and to put up her feet and watch telly, all ready to join the union in the morning and, whilst she was at it, call the police.

“Well, that’s it for the night,” said Laura. “I’m tired.”

“Fancy going past the videoteken^xi then going back home for a little Betamax and chill?” asked Jenny.

“I don’t think you actually understand the meaning of that woefully mangled and anachronistic comment, but sure, why not? On the house. I thought you were asexual though?”

“Well…. I am a multidimensional traveller who has access to the knowledge of infinite alternate selves, I think I know a bit more than you think I do. And… if it’s you, it’s okay.”

“One more thing before I go, if you will indulge me min nara liena…” said Laura, before proceeding to remove her shoes, trudge all the way across the tracks barefoot, clamber up to the other side, march over to a shocked Mike Moheden, yank the earphones off him and yell:

“THIS IS FOR PREFERRING THAT KEYBOARD PLAYING STRUMPET OVER ME YOU FREAKING ARSEHOLE! DON’T THINK YOU WERE IMMUNE TO MY OBVIOUS FOURTH WALL BREAKING POWERS OF PERCEPTION!”

before proceeding to jam the heels of her shoes directly through his temples into his brain, then breaking the guitar over his head and walked right back across the tracks barefoot.

“Didn’t think you had such wanton acts of ultraviolence in you Loz…” exclaimed Jenny.

“I surprise even myself sometimes,” Laura replied.

The two walked off towards the station exit.

“Your universe or mine?” asked Jenny.

Both women laughed uproariously.

Overhead, Zygonitarian Demolition Fleet Captain Zzlplwik Mlplenk had had enough of watching these proceedings and exclaimed:

“Bah! Enough of these ridiculous Earthlings and their ridiculous carryings on! Gunner, charge the demolition beam! Helm, set in a course for Betelgeuse, hyperspeed factor four!”

The explosion could be seen from distant star systems when the time was ripe.

tHe EnD!!!^xii

****

Arthur Michaelson removed the scroll carefully from the typewriter just as the power went out. Fumbling for a matchbox in the desk drawer, he pulled out a match, struck it, set light to one end of the offending document and tossed it into the stove. With another match he lit the smelly naphtha lamp with which to light his way to bed for yet more fateful dreaming.

THE ACTUAL END.

iFor legal reasons I’ll include the actual license: “The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.”

iiFor reference, the character of Arthur Michaelson and his inability to write stories on a dark and stormy night are the idea I had called The Ma’Chandra Chronicles, set on a fictional world called, unsurprisingly, Ma’Chandra and peopled by those who, for some reason, came originally from Earth but found themselves trapped down a wormhole and ending up there.

iiiThis was probably inspired very, very vaguely by one of the movies for Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura series, and will in turn be inspiring another silly piss-take of my own called Princess Lucidity to the Rescue, coming to a blog near you very soon.

ivNot too sure if the KT Tunstall reference is fitting, but for the fact I found out that (like Jenny- at least, my version of her… maybe) she had part-Chinese ancestry and is also pretty awesome, in your humble author’s opinion. (I’m a little wary of making Jenny’s ethnic background official though as I feel like I might be stereotyping her Mum, though.)

vThis came from the fact I could not for the life of me work out what the heck Laura- who, as you might recall featured in several of my other stories- did for a living. I still don’t. Obviously in the actual story she’s not a prostitute, but someone on Quora “helpfully” suggested it.

viI actually had a dream about this whilst on holiday in the Lake District. Don’t ask. More jokes based on the same holiday follow shortly.

viiWould you like to know more? See here (tap dancing robot girls and lake monsters also feature): https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DarthWiki/Consequences

viiiMarieka is my stock D&D character. If you play D&D with me you’ll probably already know this. The badly mangled Teesside dialect is not normally associated with her, mind, but was inserted for the lulz.

ixIn the games I was playing at the time, somehow I could never successfully roll to hit when attacking with javelins.

xRemember that holiday in the Lake District I was talking about? Those pocket guidebooks could be found in every bookshop and gift shop going. Obviously not featuring lake monsters, needless to say. (Publisher name has been altered so I don’t get sued or anything.)

xiLyniezian for “video rental store”. Of course you worked that out already, didn’t you?

xiiMost of the Consequences stories ended like this. Also, if Capt. Zzlplwik Mlplenk seems remarkably similar to the Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy franchise, it is quite deliberate. (Albeit for reasons of affectionate parody only, again just in case I get sued.)