Tag: Writing
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VIROS (Barnaby Taylor, 2017)
FOUR KIDS. ONE APOCALYPSE. ARE YOU READY?
Chapter 3
This was the first time in the short time that I had known her that I had seen Ellis looked scared and this of course made me feel terrified. She seemed so calm and collected, even when she talked about her parents and so I kind of assumed that she was one of those fearless-type kids you read about in comics or see in films; the ones who seem old before their time and wise beyond their years. I went to speak and she shook her head. Her eyes were wide and I thought she was going to cry. If this was how she looked then how must I have appeared to her? I would hate to think. It is hard to be cool when you are petrified but it is harder still to be petrified in front of someone you would like to impress. The swarm was stumbling noisily closer and had now blocked off the road completely, meaning there was no way we would be able to run back past them, even if we wanted to.
I looked around, desperately trying to think of something to do. The road we were on had terraced houses on both sides but all the doors I could see were shut and no –one had left their windows open just in case two kids might need to escape from a double viro swarm some time in the not-too-distant future. There was the odd tree in the front gardens but only the ornamental fir-type not the big-tall-hide-from-a-monster-type.
The viros were getting so close now that I was starting to see their faces and what they were wearing. Like those old paintings of Hell we were once shown at school by our art teacher, the swarm was twisting, howling, growling, moaning, mindless and contorted. Angry-looking men and women, as well as teenagers and kids are stumbling and bumping and getting in each other’s way and pushing each other along and generally moving towards me and Ellis in the kind of nightmarish, creeping way you normally see in those TV shows that none of us are meant to watch but all of us have seen. Fortunately, and unlike many of the other apocalyptic swarms you see in films, our viros weren’t the running kind which was handy because if they had been then it would have all been over before it had even begun.
I looked at Ellis and she still looked uncertain. I pointed at the nearest front garden and she nodded. We quickly climbed over the low wall and tried to find the thickest bush we could find to hide behind. Things didn’t look good and thinking that the end was about to begin I shut my eyes and tried to imagine exactly how it felt to be ripped to shreds by other people’s teeth. I reached out and gripped Ellis’s hand. She gripped mine hard in return. In any other situation this would have been a perfect next step in any developing relationship. Sadly, however, there was nothing perfect about any of this and so with no thought of anything else other than our rapidly approaching death, we just huddled together with only a flimsy shrub between oblivion and us.
The noise was deafening now and there seemed nothing left to do but wait for the inevitable to happen. The swarms wailed and gnashed and screamed and keened, as if angry to have been transformed into bloodthirsty monsters against their will. Contorted twisted unhappy figures raged against the circumstances of their new existence. But it wasn’t just hateful sounds that filled the night. My nostrils began to fill with the stench of the recently infected and the business that their infection has caused them to do, namely eat human flesh. I had never smelt anything like this before (thankfully). It was acrid and metallic and ripe and rotten. I gagged. With my eyes tightly closed I could feel my senses being totally overwhelmed. I felt small and weak and helpless. I felt like there was nothing I could do. Ellis crouched terrified beside me. I knew she was feeling the same way. She gripped my hand and I thought the bones were going to start shattering one by one, knuckle by knuckle, joint by joint, finger by finger.
‘This is it!’ I thought. ‘This is how it feels to die.’ I braced myself and waited for the swarm to fall upon us.
But it didn’t. Above the baleful din of the viros I suddenly heard the sounds of gunfire and engines. I opened my eyes and saw that the night was full of nozzle flashes and in the strange strobe light that these flashes created I watched in awe and wonder and shock as the swarms of angry viros were torn apart by a storm of bullets. A convoy of trucks was forcing itself through the swarms, scattering viros as it did. Each truck was carrying soldiers wearing gas masks and each soldier was firing at the viros. We crouched in stunned silence as the soldiers made short work of both swarms. Bullets flew everywhere. Dead viros began to pile up all around us and as they did so I felt the sudden urge to run towards the trucks waving my arms in a desperate bid for the soldiers to spot us and save us from the viros. I half-stood up, ready to leap over the low wall but Ellis pulled me back and held me tight and wouldn’t let me go.
‘They’ll shoot us too,’ she whispered. ‘At a time like this they won’t be able to tell the difference between the living and the dead. We’re all viros to them right now.’ She wrapped her arms tightly around me.
‘We need to stay here and not move.’
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Viros (Barnaby Taylor, April 2017)
Work in Progress
Chapter 2
‘And so that’s when I knew that I had to get away,’ Ellis said as she looked over my shoulder to check that my infected pursuer hadn’t managed to get up onto the top of the van. Despite his best effort Mr. Smith was struggling to get as far as the bonnet.
‘Luckily,’ she continued, ‘Mum and Dad were so distracted with our next door neighbors that I was able to slip out the house without them seeing me.’ Ellis smiled grimly. I didn’t know what to say and looked down at my trainers. The laces suddenly looked dirty. And they were brand-new. Everything felt really weird.
‘I’m over it already,’ Ellis said after a while. ‘I have to be. What else can I do? My mum and dad are now viros.’ I half-smiled.
‘Is that what you call those things?’ I asked. Ellis nodded.
‘Virus. Viro. It seems to make some kind of crazy sense.’ Ellis looked away and at that moment I kind-of momentarily half-realised that her choosing that word to describe these creatures was a way of making the loss of her parents slightly easier. Ellis continued. ‘They’re not coming back and as far as I can imagine they are going to keep on attacking people now until they are destroyed.’ She shrugged and I looked at her again.
‘My mum was, is, might still be at work. She cleans in a hospital in the early mornings and I make my own breakfast. She gets home just as I’m leaving for school.’ My voice faltered as the enormity of everything suddenly threatened to consume me like the worst kind of shameful blush.
‘What if she’s now … a viro?’ I could feel the panic rising from deep inside me. A tear was forming in my eye. Don’t cry, I told myself. Don’t be a baby! I paused and Ellis kindly saw that I was getting upset. She opened her rucksack, reached inside and handed me half a ham sandwich.
‘Eat,’ she said. ‘It will make you feel better.’
‘Thanks,’ I sniffed.
I looked around as I chewed on the sandwich. There was a low wall all the way around the roof, with barbed wire along most of its length. The roof itself was covered in bird poo and peeling paint. We were certainly safe up here but there was no protection from the elements. Eating wasn’t making me feel any better.
‘What are we going to do?’ I asked Ellis. ‘How am I going to find my mum?’
‘We need to find my brother,’ replied Ellis. ‘Vinny will be able to help us find your mum.’
‘Where is he?’ I asked. Ellis stopped smiling.
‘Vinny didn’t come home last night but I know he is safe somewhere. He told me that he had football practice at school and that he would see me later.’ Ellis looked sad. ‘Vinny goes to St. Dunstan’s.’ I smiled.
‘That’s right by the hospital,’ I said excitedly. ‘Let’s head there now.’ Ellis looked at me. She shook her head.
‘It is a long way from here and the streets are full of these viros. We won’t get far during the day. We had better wait until tonight. It will be much safer to travel under cover of the darkness.’
And so we waited for the night to come and as we did we chatted about the things we knew were now gone forever; like our normal lives and all our friends and family and all their friends and family. And as we chatted we both cried for all the things we had lost but we also felt relieved as well that we were still alive and together.
‘After all,’ said Ellis bravely. ‘We are almost all we have each got left.’
From where we were we could see the viros going about their daily business which, from here, looked a lot like howling and moaning, chasing and eating anybody foolish enough to stumble upon them, and then doing some more howling and moaning with a bit of shuffling and walking slowly thrown in for good measure. There were a couple of occasions when Ellis was tempted to fire her catapult but chose not to in case we got surrounded. It was a fearsome-looking slingshot with a foldaway wrist brace.
‘Where did you learn to handle that thing?’ I asked.
‘My uncle has a farm in the country and every summer we would go to stay with him. He decided that he would let me earn some pocket money by hunting rats and collecting a bounty for each one I killed.’ Ellis smiled and pointed at her catapult.
‘This beauty has killed over two hundred rats,’ she said as we both watched another infected shuffle past, ‘but seeing as we’re not on the farm any more I now have new prey to hunt.’
Fortunately for us the viral apocalypse had occurred in the middle of winter so even though it was a real shame that civilization had collapsed at least it meant that we didn’t have to wait too long for the night to come. It was a fairly simple job for the two of us to get down off the roof. Ellis went first and once down she crouched with her catapult loaded just in case. I scrambled down, grazing my knee in the process. It really hurt but I didn’t have time for pain and like two heroes in their very own game, we set off to find Vinny.
It was relatively easy for the two of us to slip past any individual viros that we saw. Most of them were preoccupied with whatever it is that viros are preoccupied with and so didn’t really notice us. Occasionally, one might turn its head, as if it heard something. Or sniff the night air suspiciously but we would be on our way before they could see us.
I had never really been out in the town at night before unless it was in a car so walking the streets after dark was a new and nervy experience for me. Ellis, on the other hand, seemed far more comfortable and moved with real confidence. I felt much safer with her around and just as I was saying this to myself she suddenly froze and pointed ahead. I stopped too and strained to see what she was pointing at. I gasped.
Just ahead of us stood an enormous crowd of viros. There were so many of them that it looked like they were queuing to get into a football match or grab some bargains at a January sale. Ellis motioned with her hand for us to retreat but as we turned to go back the way we came we saw that another huge swarm of viros was moving towards us. We were stuck.
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Excerpt from a new project called Viros (Barnaby Taylor, 2017)
Tagline – ‘Famous Five meets the Walking Dead’
Chapter One
It was an incredibly eerie way to spend an afternoon, stuck up on the roof of the local corner shop waiting for night to fall with only a strange girl for company.
If you had told me yesterday that this was how I was going to spend my weekend I would never have believed you. How could I? Everything has happened so fast that I doubt even the keenest brains in the world could have truly been prepared.
When I went to bed last night the world seemed just about fine. A little crazy in places but the world has always been that way, especially with all those politicians and presidents saying mad and divisive and dangerous things. When I woke this morning everything had changed.
The details are currently very hazy on the radio but from what I can gather, some form of unknown airborne virus has spread catastrophically overnight and infected three-quarters of the world’s population. Reports of individuals turning into of blood-crazed monsters are widespread. Whilst no one is prepared to come out and say it, we have all seen enough films and played enough video games to know that this virus is a likely extinction-level event.
If this means that the world is going to end then it is no wonder that everyone is unprepared. How could you ever really prepare for something so sudden and so catastrophic? I suppose you could hoard boxes of beans and bottles of water in your basement ‘just in case’ but the sort of people that do something like that are the same sort of people who live in the middle of nowhere and have been ready for the breakdown of civilization since before I was born. For everyone else it has all come as a bit of a shock.
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Jake and I was born with a chromosome missing and this simple fact means that it has only been Mum and me since my dad left. Mum says he wasn’t mature enough to deal with everything and so went missing round about the same time that my missing chromosome was found. I live a quiet and ordinary life like any other eleven-year-old kid in a small boring town like this one. Things are only a big deal if you let them become a big deal and I don’t so we won’t need to talk about any of this again. I am who I am and I am proud of it.
My radio alarm clock had woken me as usual at 7am, just in time to hear the news about the virus. The airwaves were full of experts arguing about expert things but the basic premise was a really simple one, through no apparent fault of its own, the world now faced total and utter disaster. Countries were collapsing. Governments were beginning to fall as societies came to an end. I got dressed quickly and headed downstairs.
My mum works early morning shifts as a cleaner at the local hospital and so I’m well used to getting myself up, getting dressed and getting my own breakfast before she gets back. Before you judge her you should know that I love her for what she has to do and the sacrifices she has to make to feed us both. So what if I wake up and she’s not there sometimes? In any case, being independent is very important to me, as it is to all kids, and I have always enjoyed looking after myself in the mornings. Until now, that is.
I knew Mum would be worried about me and I was sure worried about her. But what should I do? I know she would have told me to stay at home and wait for her to come back but how could I do that? The hospital wasn’t far from my house and so I decided that I should try and find her. What if she was trapped? Or hiding frightened somewhere? She would need me there with her so I grabbed my coat and headed out my house.
My house is on one end of a terrace and at the other end is the old corner shop run by Mr. Smith. Every day before school I like to pop in to spend five minutes reading the news headlines.
‘It’s still only doom and gloom,’ Mr. Smith would joke every morning. ‘But Hey! We wouldn’t want it any other way, would we?’ he’d say and wink as he stood behind the counter.
It was early in the morning and I was so worried about Mum so I wasn’t really looking where I was going. I bumped into someone.
‘Sorry,’ I said as I looked up to see that it was Mr. Smith. He growled and went to grab me. I tried to duck but he had the hood of my jacket held tight in his fist and I couldn’t get away. We wrestled for a moment and I could feel his other hand trying to grab my throat. I had to do something to get away or I was in real trouble. I managed to hook my right leg behind his left and I leaned into his chest with all my might. Mr. Smith lost his balance and fell backwards onto the pavement, losing his grip of my hood as he did so. I stepped back.
‘Quick! Up here!’ I heard someone shouting but couldn’t see anyone. Mr. Smith was getting back to his feet. ‘Up on the roof,’ said the voice. ‘Look up here.’ I looked up to see a girl smiling as she fired a catapult at the lumbering Mr. Smith.
‘I’ll hold him off. You need to climb onto the top of that van and then jump across the gap.’
Quick as a flash I jumped up onto the front of the van but as I started to climb up I felt something tug my ankle. I looked down to see that Mr. Smith had caught up with me..
‘Help,’ I shouted to the girl. ‘He’s grabbed my ankle.’
‘Don’t panic,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll knock him down.’ Something whistled past my head and I felt the grip loosen on my ankle. I looked back. Mr. Smith had been hit right between the eyes by a stone from the catapult.
‘Good shot!’ I shouted.
‘I know,’ came the reply.
Without stopping, I scrambled up onto the top of the van and looked across to the see the smiling girl waving.
‘Jump,’ she said encouragingly. ‘You can do it.’
Can I? I thought but that is not the sort of thing that you would ever say out loud in front of a girl you have just met for the first time so I did what she said and jumped. I caught hold of the low wall and pulled myself up and onto the roof.
‘Hi!’ said the smiling girl. ‘My name is Ellis and welcome to my roof.’ I smiled back.
‘Jake,’ I said winded. ‘All my friends call me Jake.’
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Excerpt from a new project called Viros (Barnaby Taylor, 2017)
Tagline – ‘Famous Five meets the Walking Dead’
Chapter One
It was an incredibly eerie way to spend an afternoon, stuck up on the roof of the local corner shop waiting for night to fall with only a strange girl for company.
If you had told me yesterday that this was how I was going to spend my weekend I would never have believed you. How could I? Everything has happened so fast that I doubt even the keenest brains in the world could have truly been prepared.
When I went to bed last night the world seemed just about fine. A little crazy in places but the world has always been that way, especially with all those politicians and presidents saying mad and divisive and dangerous things. When I woke this morning everything had changed.
The details are currently very hazy on the radio but from what I can gather, some form of unknown airborne virus has spread catastrophically overnight and infected three-quarters of the world’s population. Reports of individuals turning into of blood-crazed monsters are widespread. Whilst no one is prepared to come out and say it, we have all seen enough films and played enough video games to know that this virus is a likely extinction-level event.
If this means that the world is going to end then it is no wonder that everyone is unprepared. How could you ever really prepare for something so sudden and so catastrophic? I suppose you could hoard boxes of beans and bottles of water in your basement ‘just in case’ but the sort of people that do something like that are the same sort of people who live in the middle of nowhere and have been ready for the breakdown of civilization since before I was born. For everyone else it has all come as a bit of a shock.
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Jake and I was born with a chromosome missing and this simple fact means that it has only been Mum and me since my dad left. Mum says he wasn’t mature enough to deal with everything and so went missing round about the same time that my missing chromosome was found. I live a quiet and ordinary life like any other eleven-year-old kid in a small boring town like this one. Things are only a big deal if you let them become a big deal and I don’t so we won’t need to talk about any of this again. I am who I am and I am proud of it.
My radio alarm clock had woken me as usual at 7am, just in time to hear the news about the virus. The airwaves were full of experts arguing about expert things but the basic premise was a really simple one, through no apparent fault of its own, the world now faced total and utter disaster. Countries were collapsing. Governments were beginning to fall as societies came to an end. I got dressed quickly and headed downstairs.
My mum works early morning shifts as a cleaner at the local hospital and so I’m well used to getting myself up, getting dressed and getting my own breakfast before she gets back. Before you judge her you should know that I love her for what she has to do and the sacrifices she has to make to feed us both. So what if I wake up and she’s not there sometimes? In any case, being independent is very important to me, as it is to all kids, and I have always enjoyed looking after myself in the mornings. Until now, that is.
I knew Mum would be worried about me and I was sure worried about her. But what should I do? I know she would have told me to stay at home and wait for her to come back but how could I do that? The hospital wasn’t far from my house and so I decided that I should try and find her. What if she was trapped? Or hiding frightened somewhere? She would need me there with her so I grabbed my coat and headed out my house.
My house is on one end of a terrace and at the other end is the old corner shop run by Mr. Smith. Every day before school I like to pop in to spend five minutes reading the news headlines.
‘It’s still only doom and gloom,’ Mr. Smith would joke every morning. ‘But Hey! We wouldn’t want it any other way, would we?’ he’d say and wink as he stood behind the counter.
It was early in the morning and I was so worried about Mum so I wasn’t really looking where I was going. I bumped into someone.
‘Sorry,’ I said as I looked up to see that it was Mr. Smith. He growled and went to grab me. I tried to duck but he had the hood of my jacket held tight in his fist and I couldn’t get away. We wrestled for a moment and I could feel his other hand trying to grab my throat. I had to do something to get away or I was in real trouble. I managed to hook my right leg behind his left and I leaned into his chest with all my might. Mr. Smith lost his balance and fell backwards onto the pavement, losing his grip of my hood as he did so. I stepped back.
‘Quick! Up here!’ I heard someone shouting but couldn’t see anyone. Mr. Smith was getting back to his feet. ‘Up on the roof,’ said the voice. ‘Look up here.’ I looked up to see a girl smiling as she fired a catapult at the lumbering Mr. Smith.
‘I’ll hold him off. You need to climb onto the top of that van and then jump across the gap.’
Quick as a flash I jumped up onto the front of the van but as I started to climb up I felt something tug my ankle. I looked down to see that Mr. Smith had caught up with me..
‘Help,’ I shouted to the girl. ‘He’s grabbed my ankle.’
‘Don’t panic,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll knock him down.’ Something whistled past my head and I felt the grip loosen on my ankle. I looked back. Mr. Smith had been hit right between the eyes by a stone from the catapult.
‘Good shot!’ I shouted.
‘I know,’ came the reply.
Without stopping, I scrambled up onto the top of the van and looked across to the see the smiling girl waving.
‘Jump,’ she said encouragingly. ‘You can do it.’
Can I? I thought but that is not the sort of thing that you would ever say out loud in front of a girl you have just met for the first time so I did what she said and jumped. I caught hold of the low wall and pulled myself up and onto the roof.
‘Hi!’ said the smiling girl. ‘My name is Ellis and welcome to my roof.’ I smiled back.
‘Jake,’ I said winded. ‘All my friends call me Jake.’
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The following is an extract from Volume 2 of the Falcon Boy: A Fairly Hopeless Hero series,
The Brothers Revoltable Travelling Circus and Other Crazy Fun with Special Guests.
(If you have not yet read Volume 1 I am not going to judge but merely suggest that you should follow the link at the bottom of this post.)
Chapter 3. ‘Dear Sirs and Madams’
‘Dear Sirs and Madams’, the email began. ‘My name is Clayton Candlegrease but you may call me Falcon Boy. I have recently been involved in certain world-saving situations. Perhaps you might have heard about them?’
Bewilder Bird didn’t say anything when Falcon Boy first told him that he was going to apply for the lead role in Eucalyptus McKenzie Really Saves the World. Considering the fact that Bewilder Bird has taken a vow of silence this is hardly surprising. However, even if Bewilder Bird hadn’t taken this vow I am pretty sure that the sheer deludedness of Falcon Boy’s ambition would have rendered him speechless anyway. I know I was struck dumb when I first heard about his plan. I’m still reeling even as we speak.
The trouble is that nothing would now do for our fairly hopeless hero. After the last lot of shenanigans with Dr. Don’t Know and his evil plan, Falcon Boy had now come to imagine that the world was still only spinning correctly because of his heroism and, therefore, he was now the de facto protector of Panic Town and all it represented. This is despite his being told repeatedly by Captain Lori Lorimer that he wasn’t to keep patrolling the streets without official permission.
‘We really appreciate the help you provided regarding the Dr. Don’t Know affair,’ said Captain Lorimer with as much tenderness as she could manage, considering that this was the fifth time she had had to call Falcon Boy into her office to speak to him about his patrolling. ‘But that was a one-off incident and we are not expecting any further situations where the safety of Panic Town is compromised in any way.’
‘But, I’m good, me …’ stammered a blushing Falcon Boy. ‘I really can help and fight and save you.’ Captain Lorimer coughed uncomfortably.
‘As I have told you before, we value your community spirit but a civilized society simply cannot have people taking the law into their own hands.’ She smiled. ‘There would be chaos and where would that leave us?’
A small tear began to form in the corner of Falcon Boy’s eye.
‘But chaos is MY business …’
Falcon Boy sniffed. Captain Lorimer smiled as kindly as she could.
‘I’m happy for you to continue wearing your costume in public if you want to. I am pretty sure that there will sometimes be the odd event that would appreciate the presence of a small-town celebrity to perhaps help draw a crowd …’
Falcon Boy stopped listening.
***
‘And then I told her that she couldn’t keep a good man down,’ said Falcon Boy to his long-suffering silent friend. ‘I don’t care what you say, I said,’ lied Falcon Boy, ‘I am going to keep on fighting crime all the time that Panic Town needs me to keep on fighting crime.’
With an opportunity to properly reflect even Falcon Boy would have possibly considered this last statement to be reasonably rash, especially considering that Panic Town has never really needed him to fight crime in the first place. Nevertheless he was too upset by Captain Lorimer to really be thinking straight. And as we all know, reflection has never really been Falcon Boy’s thing anyway.
Everyone will always need me, he said to himself. Even if they don’t know it yet.
Anyway, as someone I really don’t like used to always tell me, even when I asked them not to, you cannot unring a bell. And so the email to the production company continued.
‘I would be available for an audition at very short notice,’ typed Falcon Boy. ‘I am a bona-fide superhero but I have never flown so I will have to take the train and probably a connecting bus to get to you. I am pretty good with timetables and things and if given enough notice I can reasonably be anywhere you need me to be.’
Falcon Boy stopped typing and uploaded the action photos he had asked Bewilder Bird to take.
For the first photo Falcon Boy jumped from a small stepladder and asked Bewilder Bird to ‘catch me in mid-flight.’ The photo looks a lot like Falcon Boy has tripped and is falling but, as he told Bewilder Bird, ‘at least I’m not just standing still and smiling stiffly.’
In the second photo Falcon Boy is standing stiffly still and smiling in his favourite superhero contrapposto pose.
‘I want to appear at once serene but also exciting,’ he told Bewilder Bird. ‘Poised and ready to leap into action but not twitchy and nervous. Try and make that happen for me, my good friend.’ But Bewilder Bird’s phone was an old one, the camera wasn’t very good and the buttons were too small for his large gauntleted hands.
‘I have attached some images of me in action which I hope will give you a better sense of who I am and what I will bring to the role.’
The tone of an email is always the hardest part. Falcon Boy was trying to sound interested but not too interested.
‘I have no acting experience,’ he typed, ‘but I have recently been in situations that have required me to behave heroically in public so I think that this might make up for my lack of working in films and things. I also have had my photograph taken several times since I helped to save the world and so I would be well-placed to deal with the incessant demands of the world’s paparazzi.’
As I mentioned a moment ago, the tone of an email is always the hardest part. If you are ever writing an email and find yourself wondering whether you have got the tone right or not you could always print off Falcon Boy’s email and use it as an example of how not to write one.
‘I will sign off now because I think it will better for me to talk to you face to face rather than electronically. That way we can all be sure of exactly what it will be like when we work together.
I am big and strong and hardly ever wrong.
Yours in Profound Anticipation
Falcon Boy
PS – When you reply could you let me know if I will need to bring an overnight bag or not. It is always better to have too much than to realize you need something that you haven’t brought with you.
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The following is an excerpt from Volume 2 of the Falcon Boy: A Fairly Hopeless Hero series, The Brothers Revoltable Travelling Circus and Other Crazy Fun with Special Guests (coming soon in paperback)
In each episode of A Very Testing Time Peg and Dee Quilty test things to the great delight of an online audience that now numbers in the billions. Each episode (and there are 1000s of them) begins the same way:
‘I wonder what happens if … ?’ says Peg.
‘Let’s find out!’ replies Dee.
Cue wonky glockenspiel and Peg and Dee materialize. Each episode is meant to be great fun for all involved but that does depend upon your viewpoint. For children like Ellis and her classmates, Peg and Dee can do no wrong. For the many concerned parents and anyone else sent into an absolute rage by the runaway success of the simplest of ideas, ‘A Very Testing Time’ is exactly that. Episodes that caused considerable concern for those considerably concerned included;
spray-painting an elephant’s rear;
dressing cats in dolls clothes;
passing off pigs as babies in prams;
putting their parents into residential care;
starting a run on the Stock Exchange;
convincing an elderly relative that Christmas Day had been moved to a week in August;
starting up a start-up to close down their least favourite Burger chain;
lobbying their local elected representative for lost distance wrestling to be made an Olympic sport;
inventing a board game with no board and no rules;
entering a potty into an art exhibition;
using a random word generator to write an award-winning novel;
breaking into a top security prison;
entering and eventually getting a bronze medal for coming third in a mini-marathon without either of them leaving their bedroom-cum-studio;
advising a monarch to let the spare rooms in his palace be used as public storage facilities;
patenting a brand-new rip chord made especially for deep sea parachuting;
sponsoring a graduate through Law School with the express purpose of getting this graduate to sue themselves in court (the graduate subsequently lost but took the case to Appeal);
electronically influencing purchasing patterns for a range of television shopping channels;
starting (and ending) a new aesthetic movement;
using a 3-D printer to print a 2-D printer;
hiring a flash mob to comment upon the actual absurdity of the everyday as a philosophical concept;
commissioning a series of experimental short films based on the notion of liminality.
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The following is another extract from the soon to be released in paperback second volume of the Falcon Boy: A Fairly Hopeless Hero series, The Brothers Revoltable Travelling Circus and Other Crazy Fun with Special Guests.
Chapter 34 Billy Barone’s Pig and Chicken Treats Ltd©
Without really thinking too much about it Ellis and Davey ducked into the world-famous Billy Barone’s Pig and Chicken Treats Ltd© SnakShak that has stood on the edge of the Panic Two Park since a long time before even I was born.
Ellis had never tried any of the amazing products being offered, not because her parents had told her how bad they were for her but simply because she found the Billy Barone logo rather threatening. There was something about the cartoon pig holding hands with the cartoon chicken that made her feel slightly troubled. And she wasn’t the only one.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the company maintained a very high profile in Panic Town by supporting as many charities as it could afford and employing as many local people as possible, Billy Barone’s Pig and Chicken Treats Ltd © would have been run out of town a long time ago.
Originally, there was only one character designed to represent the Billy Barone empire, a chicken and pig-like hybrid homunculus called Mutt the Meat who, it was confidently believed by everyone involved it its design, would capture the hearts of generations of children and convince them to sample the full range of pig and chicken products on offer.
Sadly, however, the designing committee didn’t factor the character’s appeal to children into the design process and the finished character, complete with a long lantern jaw, straggly red hair jutting out at random from chin to crown, topped off with strangely hunched shoulders and an extremely irritating way of shouting ‘Come and Meet the Meat!’ in the advertisements on the television and radio, quickly became the stuff of nightmare and satire.
If children weren’t shouting ‘Come and Meet the Meat’ at each other in comic voices in playgrounds everywhere during intricate games that involved aliens, zombies and anything else considered unheimlich, then they were cowering under their beds in terror and begging for the soft toy version of Mutt the Meat they had just been given for their birthday to be buried at sea, burned in a field somewhere or dropped into an active volcano.
The damage to the company’s image was extensive and almost caused the Billy Barone Empire to collapse before it had had the chance to establish itself. Luckily, however, and just in the nick of time, someone came up with the idea of a children’s competition to redesign the character. It was a brother and sister called Jen and Shaky Shilling who submitted the winning designs.
Given the fact that the original character was so terrifying it was a stroke of childish genius to create two characters from it. Sadly, however, the genius didn’t stretch to the naming of the new characters and so Silly Chicken and Pig the Pig were born.
Straightaway a new softer image was created and even though the sight and sound of two glove puppets squawking and squeaking ‘Come and Meet the Meat!’ at each other wasn’t to everyone’s taste the company was saved and slowly began to expand again.
You only have to step into your local Billy Barone’s to really appreciate everything the have to offer the discerning fast-foodist. Walk through the front door and as you approach the counter look out for the sign inviting you to experience the Billy Barone Mega Meat Experience©.
As you thrill to the heady aroma of boiled chicken skin and pig bones why not marvel at the army of unhealthy-looking people shoveling Tasty Trotter Twists© into paper cones. If these are not to your liking, might I recommend the Packed Pig Parcels©, primed pieces of reconstituted pork stuffed with cheap blue cheese and chili flakes.
Or, if you have a fancy for something more poultry-esque, why not plump for the Double Stuffed Skins©, complete with a side of Billy’s Bestest Beans© and washed down with a glass of Billy Barone’s World Famous Chicken Water or Pig Fizz. (I’m not making this up – well I am but I’m not, if you know what I mean).
Volume One is available now in paperback.
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The following is an extract from Falcon Boy: A Fairly Hopeless Hero Volume: II
The Brothers Revoltable Travelling Circus and Other Crazy Fun with Special Guests
Chapter 26 ‘Thompson the Wonder Dog’
It took a while for the stage to be cleared after Agatha’s act. Fortunately a safety-net had been put in place in front of the stage so that no-one in the audience would get hurt but Captain Lorimer got some brick dust in her right eye and Falcon Boy’s ears wouldn’t stop ringing. Nevertheless, everyone marveled at Agatha’s death-defying bravery. She truly was a stranger to danger. Rudolph Revoltable gallantly used the rolled corner of one of his red silk handkerchiefs to get the dust out of Captain Lorimer’s eye. ‘Thank you very much,’ said the Captain and she blushed as red as the handkerchief even though she only had eyes for the daredevil Agatha.
‘You are very welcome, my dear,’ said Rudolph with a small bow. Falcon Boy saw this happen and hoped that someone would ask how he was. But no one did. ‘Probably because I’m a superhero’, he thought to himself. ‘We need to be tougher and more reliant upon self-reliance than everyone else.’
With the stage swept clean and the cannon removed the lights fell dramatically dim. Only a single spotlight could be seen in the middle of the stage. In the spotlight stood a small table and on the table was an old-fashioned gramophone player. From out of the darkness Rudolph’s bewitching voice floated on the night.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope you are enjoying our preview so far?’ The crowd applauded again and Rudolph waited for it to end.
‘Some might say,’ he said rather dramatically, ‘that we have saved the best for last. Without further ado, I present to you all here and to all those watching at home, the wonder that is Thompson the Wonder Dog.’
A stagehand stepped into the spotlight leading a tired-looking Alsatian on a lead. He unclipped the lead and turned to the gramophone player. The stagehand lifted the lid and set the needle down. He turned the handle on the side. With the gramophone player fully wound the stagehand left the stage.
The speakers hissed and crackled as the old gramophone player started playing and the needle scratched the record. The music began. The sound of a single violin playing a slow and wobbly tune filled the night sky. After the first few bars Thompson lifted his head and joined in.
Hooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwlllllll!!!
Thompson the Wonder Dog made a truly terrible noise. He sounded something like what would happen if a strangled howl married a painful yelp and they argued all day. Even Davey Doodah winced and his relationship with a tune has always been a slight and occasional one.
Aaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhllllllllll!!!!
The old record kept turning and old Thompson kept singing.
Eeeeeeeeoooooooooooouuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
‘My oh my!’ said Ellis’s dad. ‘That is really awful.’
Ellis’s dad loved to shout things at the television. This really annoys Ellis’s mum, who says things like ‘They can’t hear you, you know.’ But this never stops Dad.
‘Go on, son,’ he shouted. ‘Let it out, you hear!! Let it all out!!’
Ellis and her mum were not so sure.
‘That poor dog can’t sing a note,’ said Ellis’s mum.
‘What dog can?’ replied Ellis with profundity.
‘Once more with feeling,’ shouted Dad and he started to accompany Thompson, giggling as he did.
‘Hoooooowwwwwwwllllllllll – hahahahahahahah’
‘You can pack that in,’ said Mum and threw a cushion at him. Dad packed it in.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for Thompson. He howled and wailed his way through another twelve minutes and twenty seconds of the song. Bewilder Bird felt an overwhelming urge to cry. Councillor Footswerve was worried that he would irrevocably fracture the façade of appropriate civic responsibility by wetting himself.
Hooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeooooooouuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeooooooooouuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooouuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeouuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeooouuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooouuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeoouuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeooouuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeoouuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeooooouuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooouuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooouuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooouuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooouuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeoooouuuuuuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeooooouuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwlllllll!!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeoooooooooouuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeooooooouuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllllll !!!!
(If you think that this part of the story is getting hard to read then spare a thought for the poor people having to listen to the audio version of it. As for the film; well, I guess we’ll cross that wholly unrealistic bridge when we never ever come to it!)
Finally the record stopped and Thompson fell silent. The silence was deafening. Nobody clapped. Everyone was too stunned. Everyone, that was, except for Rudolph. He started to clap his hands. Now, whether it was embarrassment, desperation, guilt, delusion, or just plain and simple relief, everyone else started clapping as well. Everyone in the stadium. Everyone at home. Everyone. Including me.
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‘Books are a uniquely portable magic.’
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (1999)
Happy World Book Day!!!!
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BARNABY TAYLOR 