Abridged! A Short Collection of Short Stories Read online



  Abridged! A Short Collection of Short Stories

  Copyright© 2013 Nicholas House

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Around the Galaxy in Eighty Days

  Amethyst

  Within

  The Messenger

  End of World

  Soul

  Plague

  Claudia

  About the Author

  Titles by Nicholas House

  Around the Galaxy in 80 Days

  Somewhere on the outskirts of London, England, at some point in the future, no one was entirely sure exactly when, it rained. It rained especially heavy that night on Chapel Street, partly to create an air of inauspicious mystery but mainly because the local council hadn't gotten around to repairing the weather regulator yet. In that street the only house that seemed to have semblance of life about it was number 37. There was a kind of dull, warm glow about the building and it seemed to have somewhat of an inviting quality to it. Inside sat four old men, each sipping gently on brandy from large Snifters. Then there was another, much younger, man slurping loudly on a lager from a dented can with one hand whilst trying to handle a poor constructed Lamp Kebab with the other. This mans name was Gerald Tansem, yet for reasons that never truly became clear to anyone, he preferred to be called Shwaps. Contrary to the opinion of most, if not all, of his peers he had recently become the newest member of The Educated Guild of Travellers. Despite the fact that efficient interstellar space travel had been achieved decades ago and was now readily available to the masses no one really travelled anymore. In light of this the entry requirements for the guild had been somewhat reduced and seeing as Shwaps was the only one who bothered to turn up for a school trip to Saturn's rings when he was eleven, he more then qualified for acceptance.

  “Yes, Sidney,” chuckled one of the older men, swirling his brandy slowly, “you may have travelled to the systems deepest pit on Ganymede, but I have travelled as far as the Great Seas of Blessed.”

  “Indeed,” began another old man, already with a deep air of condescension, “I, however, have travelled to the galactic rim and I tell you, the food out there can make you sick for a month.”

  Shwaps suddenly took notice of what was being said and put his kebab on a greasy piece of paper in his lap. “You mean they’ve got McDerik's on the edge of the galaxy?” his voice was steady and serious, echoing around the room as the light chuckling fill silent.

  Another of the old men, this one possessing an overly large beard, took a long sip of his brandy only to seem astonished when his glass was emptied. “So, Gerald," he muttered after an uncomfortably long pause, "where exactly have you been, of late?” he got up out of his deep red leather backed chair and poured himself another glass out of a crystal flask.

  “Um,” he took another bite from his kebab before holding held it up, speaking with a full mouth, “went to the kebab shop before coming here.”

  “I think he means have you been anywhere you have to genuinely travel to?” added the only one who had not contributed to the conversation yet.

  “Um...” Shwaps thought hard with the strain of the exercise clearly showing.

  “Nowhere, that’s where!” snapped the man who had visited the Great Seas of Blessed. “I don’t know why you were allowed to join in the first place!”

  “I’ve been to Saturn!" Shwaps tried, "and I bet I could go as far as Mr. ‘The food is disgusting nine and a half thousand light years away’,” he replied clumsily yet managing to leave at least two of the men shocked and insulted.

  “Fine! Let us place a wager. A wager that you can not travel..." the old man thought for a second of a suitable and equally impossible endeavour, "around the galaxy in, oh let’s keep with tradition, eighty days.”

  "Eighty days?" Shwaps repeated uneasily, "You do realise how big the galaxy actually is, don't you?"

  The men around him grinned. "Well, if you don' think you can manage it then you are clear not the traveller you claim to be and you know where the door is," they all looked in sequence to the front door expectantly.

  Shwaps considered their proposition for a second but before he could come to a decision his mouth opened. “You’re on!” something inside him was surprised that he had agreed to something virtually impossible, especially after that time with the Llamas. “What’re we betting?”

  “Well, let’s see. If you can not achieve this feat then you will have to leave this club and reimburse us for all of the things that you have ingested, broken and...err,” The old man coughed nervously, “disgraced.”

  “And if I win,” he clapped his hands together and got up, putting his kebab on the seat along with the can of larger on the arm of the chair, “I get to stay in this cushy little number with a reward of five grand. Five thousand quid! Five- zero- zero- zero smackaroons,” naturally he made a large emphasis on the amount of money he wanted.

  The men murmured among themselves for a few seconds before looking up calmly. “Fine, we have a wager, then?”

  “Yeah, we got a wager,” Shwaps slapped his hand against the old mans and shook hard leaving an unsettling grease stain in his palm. He then rushed towards the dark teak door leading out on to the wet street. Grabbing the knob, he swung the door open fiercely and stormed out. Seconds later the door swung back open to reveal Shwaps again, drenched from the rain. He gave the group of old men a quick, weary glance, leaned round the back of the door and snatched away his leather jacket.

  “Be back here at exactly,” the old man who had suggested the bet looked at a posh digital clock in a mahogany case which read ten to midnight, “exactly twelve midnight.”

  “Right,” Shwaps put his jacket on in an over exaggerated way and once again exited the building, this time not to return.

  “Well,” said one of the old man who had now emptied just over five glasses of brandy, “that’s the last we’ll see of him.”

  “I would say he won't even get to the space port. We shall never have to see him again,” he grinned subtly. “No more broken ornaments, no more food stains,” he was stopped by an odd smell emanating from where Shwaps had been sitting. Looking down he saw the remnants of the kebab mixed with the larger that, he now realized, Shwaps had knocked over whilst putting his jacket on. He sighed in dismay at the infernal concoction slowly soaking through its multi-layered packaging and irreversibly staining the plush chair. "I pray to god he doesn't make it."

  Shwaps hammered on a flimsy red door along a narrow, somewhat less privileged, street. Here, at least, the weather regulator was working and so it wasn’t raining. After a few minutes of uninterrupted banging a light appeared through the arched window at the top of the door. Numerous bolts were soon thrown back and chains rattled as they were hurriedly undone before the door was opened with lightning speed.

  “What do ya’ want!?” there was a silhouette of an average built individual grasping a baseball bat tightly, poised to swing as hard as it dared.

  “Phil! Watch what you’re doin’ with that thing!” Shwaps grabbed the bat and wrestled it off Phil without much resistance.

  “Shwaps? What the hell are you doing here?” he looked at the pitch-black sky then down the lightless street, “and at this time of night?”

  “I need you to g
et me tickets to the Triton Space Port,” babbled Shwaps.

  “What? Slow down,” Phil rubbed his eyes in a bewilderment, “Triton? That port’s for interstellar travel. Why do you want to go interstellar?”

  “A bet,” Shwaps barged his way past Phil only to begin rummaging through the nearest draw, “a bet that I can't get around the galaxy in eighty days.”

  “How drunk are you?” queried Phil loudly in an attempt to distract his friend from searching through his possessions.

  “I’m not,” Shwaps replied, withdrawing quickly with Phil's passport in hand.

  “Why have you got-... No, I’m not coming with you, you can forget it!”

  “Yes, you are, every traveller needs a passport,” mistook Shwaps.

  “However much you do need a passport, I think you mean a Passepartout. I’m still not coming with-”

  “I’ll share my ten grand reward with you,” Shwaps lied, knowing very well that the only thing that could sway Phil's decision was the idea of money going his way.

  There was a second of stunned silence as Phil flicked his eyes around curiously. “I’m coming with you,” he was about to step out from the door when a cold gust of wind blew and through its chill Phil remembered that he was still only wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a baggy shirt. “I’ll put some clothes on first, though.”

 

  The next morning Shwaps and Phil arrived at the Cape Canaveral Transit Station carrying nothing but the clothes on their backs and a bag of overpriced memorabilia. The Transit Station was large and marginally dome shaped with tall spires reaching to the sky. Occasionally a small craft would emerge from the tip of a seemingly random spire at high speed and race off through the atmosphere.

  The lobby had plush marble floors, various flashing signs for people to blatantly ignore and duty free shops packed with people purchasing English alcohol, Spanish alcohol, American alcohol and any other type of alcohol they could get their hands on.

  Shwaps, after quite a bit of arguing with the attendant, finally managed to get himself through check-in as anything other then livestock. On the other hand Phil had continually set the metal detector and was threatened with a body cavity search until he spontaneously produced a five pence piece which had become stuck in the lining of his coat. Even so, in light of the commotion they had caused, security reasoned they could justify cavity searches for the both of them regardless.

  After finally managing to make it through customs they sat in the large, crowded waiting area, staring at the brightly lit billboards for their flight to appear. They did this for a significant amount of time until finally, some three and a half hours later, their flight was illuminated in large green letters. Led by Shwaps, the two of them headed in the direction of the designated gate hundred and twenty seven. The gates architecture seemed to be loosely based on that of a subway station barring the re-enforced Perspex windows in the ceiling above. The long, train like short-range transit pod sat on some kind of highly magnetic track that its self was sunken into the ground. The high edges were marked distinctly with a fluorescent yellow line as if to encourage drunken idiots to submit themselves for the Darwin Award like any good station does. In the bright sunshine that was pouring through the window above, it was possible to see all the way to the end of the track where it simply appeared to stop. This begged the question of distance verses velocity and other intelligible musings but also the much more important consideration of engine verses not being broken.

  Soon the doors to the pod opened and around twenty people, including Shwaps and Phil began to shove on board as to not miss the chance of getting one of the thirty odd seats. The inside was metallic and Spartan with windows running along each side of the cabin, each of which carried a harsh warning about how not to break the glass in the event of an accident. After all, no one really likes explosive decompression, except those few who are best just to remain anonymous. Just as everyone found an adequate seat the doors slid closed and sealed with a harsh hiss. A loud clank sounded from behind the pod and the ignition tube, laid out far ahead, began to gently rise to some unsettlingly high angle and gave another clank as it stopped. The whole chassis rattled and there was an explosion followed by a deafening roar. The rattling continued as the pod started to move along its track. It moves faster and faster towards the ever nearing sky and that consideration about engines occurred to everyone once more. It was already too late, though, the pod shot out of the launch tube at significantly more then the required escape velocity of eight kilometres per second and ploughed through the atmosphere like a bullet through water.

  Once the pod was flying in open space and the whole idea of instantaneous death began to pass it became apparent just how much traffic there was going through the solar system. Most of the traffic was made up of delegates from the Utopia Planitia Commercial Hub and the Ceres based mining city of New Melbourne. The general traffic routes, though, were much less congested and so the journey to Triton Space Port lasted only for around twenty minutes. Still this was as far as Shwaps, or anyone else on the pod for that matter, had ever travelled. This was especially true for Phil who had experience that feeling as he stepped foot on the Hyper Sonic Jet to America at Heathrow.

  Triton was an odd world, greyish like the other cold bodies in the system but with shining caps, tinted pink against Neptune's glow. Across its surface sprawled large networks of domed buildings and cruiser bays with acceleration tubes stretching off in every direction. As soon as they touched down on one of the numerous landing pads, the transfer between the transport pod and the Continental Class Space Liner was, with understatement, more then quick. Put simply the process went thusly; step from pod on to fast moving conveyer belt. Travel through large detector to have vaporised anything that didn't comply with solar law. Finally the belt would lead to a large domed hanger where the huge Space Liner was stood. Everyone would then be hurriedly ushered onto the Liner so that it could launch only two hours behind schedule. After some clearly German fostered efficiency, the last of the passengers boarded and the air locks sealed with triple the amount of clanging and hissing as the pod. The domed roof of the hanger then peeled back and the Liner lifted off. The moons very surface shuddering as the vast ship engaged its Fusion-Ion engines and headed off towards the edge of the Solar System.

  After a few seconds of watching the spaceport fall away behind them, the on-board speaker crackled and clicked on. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Star Liner Orion. Today's coarse is plotted to the well known star city of Galileo A5, in orbit around the binary stars of the Caster system which lay approximately fifty two light years from Sol. For your comfort, we will be stopping off at Pollex Bed, Breakfast and Service Station at thirty four light years along the route. Until then, please sit back and enjoy your trip.” The captains speaker clicked off and the flight attendants emerged and began their normal duties of explaining safety. However, the whole part about hallucinogenic fits, in flight meals and brain sucking aliens seemed new. It had clearly been added on account of being the one item left off the safety list to actually occur. To this passengers responded with complete obliviousness or by promptly using all of the in flight sick bags in quick succession because of the overly graphic images now appearing on the plasma screen.

  The journey to Pollex was more or less uneventful apart from the school of space dolphins that flew along side the Liner for a few light years. Beyond that Schwaps passed the time sleeping and Phil happily watched the, less than quality, in flight entertainment. Soon enough the Space Liner docked with the service station and everyone was able to leave to use the facilities while the ship re-fuelled.

  The space station was like any other bland services and Shwaps, like any other services attendee, spent a few minutes roaming the lobby until he found what he thought was an arcade game. He approached it and pressed the ON button. Nothing happened, so he kicked it. Still nothing happened, so he kicked it again. Yet again, nothing happened. After a while of constant pounding he st
opped and gently leaned around the back to see it wasn't even plugged in. “Phil, help me plug this thing in, will you?” Phil complied with Shwaps’ request and the screen burst into colour, then faded away with no sound to be heard. The screen remained completely black, then a large amount of yellowish dots, various in size faded into view. Shwaps moved the joystick and jabbed at the buttons which seemed to change the selection of dot with the joystick moved it around. “What’s wrong with this thing?” he said irritably, moving the joystick around and hammering on the buttons, “This game's stupid...”

  At the Hubble Association Space Institute a lone researcher sat half asleep in front of a black screen showing only yellowish dots of varying sizes. Each of these dots represented the stars in the night sky, standing as glorious, immovable giants of the cosmos. That was until they began wildly jumping around the screen in all different directions. The researcher slowly opened his eyes and gazed at the screen, bewildered. “There aren't supposed to be any star movements today.” The stars continued darting around the screen until they aligned and decided to conduct a rendition of River Dance for a few seconds before returning to their original positions as if nothing had ever occurred.

  The researcher squinted and shook his head. “I need another coffee...”

  Shwaps had stopped ‘Playing’ the so called game and had returned to the Liner followed a few minutes later by Phil, his pockets stuffed with junk food he’d spent the whole half hour allocated buying.

  The launch from Pollex was much like any other launch, the Liner was delayed several times, a Pollex Weevil was found in the toilet but clearance was eventually received and the ship sped off towards Castor.

  Two and a half hours later, some four times longer than most other forms of transport, they reached Castor Star City Galileo A5. As the ship manoeuvred its self for docking, Shwaps marked the distance they had travelled already on a simple map of the galaxy he had torn from one of the in flight magazines. Fifty two out of seventy thousand light years, he thought mournfully, there's not going to be any sight seeing. First things first; rent a car. A Ferrari Comet should do. It's expensive, yeah, and Phil won't like it but, what the hell, he can be ignored.

  Phil was, indeed, ignored and they spent the next four hours travelling along the S.23, S.46, S.52 Spaceways and the fifth Neutron Star Pulse Accelerator until they arrived at New Bigfork, an asteroid settlement off the eastern Cygnus arm intersection. It was much larger then the original Bigfork, despite being comparatively small in its own right. There were around twenty houses, two shops and a small landing pad all surrounding a single public house; The Twilight Inn. Although, so far, they had barely even travelled for one day, they decided a day off was required even though to Shwaps and Phil took 'day off' to loosely mean the better part of a week. On the last night of their 'well earned' vacation they endeavoured to rid the inn of their alcohol supply as it was supposedly causing issues between tourists and the locals. At the very least this was soon to become the general consensus. Among this supply was some of the strongest alcohol in the known galaxy; 'Uncle McPhersons Head Hammering Home Brew'. Subsequently the pair left, or were rather forced to leave, the colony drunker then an Englishman on Saint Patricks day.

  Under the influence of alcohol it wasn't the best idea to drive a turbo charged space super car, let alone speed. Then again, to be fair, they didn’t exactly 'speed' per say. They hardly even drove, for that matter. They simply trundled along an empty back space lane, barely over the speed of light, singing songs and telling rude limericks. According to Phil, one such limerick when thusly; “I once knew a robot, his name was Bitties. Then one day his head spun round, his top fell down, and he found out he had-” thankfully the unorthodox rhyme was cut short by blue flashing lights in the rear view mirror and a distinct, whirring siren.

  The ever so slightly more sober Shwaps pulled the craft over to an oxygenated pod and did his best to exit the craft and meet the officer without falling down or throwing up.

  “Do you realise you were going a bit slow, back there?”

  “Was me?” asked Shwaps as soberly as he could.

  Phil hiccupped and the officer looked at him quickly. “Are you drunk, sir?”

  “No,” said Phil, elongating the N, whilst grinning like an idiot. “I’m perfectly drunk,” he stopped grinning, “sobrer,” he thought very slowly before coming to the conclusion that there was something much more pressing to be addressed. “I jus’ wanna stay one thing,” his face turned a green colour and his cheeks puffed out, “I’m going to throw up in your hat,” he swiped the sturdy fabric hat from the officers head and held it tightly to his face while producing a sickening gurgling noise. Slowly he withdrew it and smiling unsteadily before handing the soggy hat back to the officer. “What do ya know, they're not waterproof,” Phil abruptly blacked out, falling rigidly to the ground leaving Shwaps to think it was as good an idea as any before doing so himself.

  The next day Shwaps woke up with what felt like an axe protruding from his skull and a vague memory of being sentenced to one month on a prison ship. The charges went something along the lines of drink driving, driving too slow and being sick in an officer of the laws hat. Shwaps sighed. Seven days and he’d already cocked it up more times then France changed sides during wartime. He slumped back onto his bunk and sighed again. He had never actually served jail time before, despite what everyone thought.

  All in all, imprisonment hadn't been all too bad for the pair. After all they were on the minimum security deck, surrounded by the chocolate bar thieves, other drunks and elderly people who had not paid their television license. Some things they even enjoyed like Tuesday night movies and kebabs at dinner. However, the entire fact that they were in minimum security made it wholly unsurprising when, twelve days later, there happened to be a jail break. It's not even as though Shwaps and Phil wanted any part of it. They just happened to get involved when a screening of 'The Great Escape' got the audience a little over excited. They, along with numerous pseudo-criminals were forced along with the break and ended up having to leave in an escape pod had a top speed less then a general farm tractor.

  At first things were bad, very bad considering the prison ship didn't want to waste the fuel turning around to pick up some trouble makers who simply annoyed the wrong policeman. Things started to look up, though, when the navigation system finally managed to locate its self, managing to lock onto their exact position in the galaxy. Much to Shwaps' delight and Phil's general nonchalance, it had transpired that the prison ship had taken them over thirty thousand light years in the right direction. Right now they were drifting somewhere in the vicinity of the Pegasus Cluster, approximately half way around the galactic bulge and well on their way to victory. However, despite the apparent, unplanned, progress in the past eighteen days, to complete their journey they needed to acquire a craft to travel nearly thirty seven thousand light years in sixty two days. Going on their luck so far this may not have been overly concerning. Only, when considering the fact that they barely had a weeks supply of food and they were no more then a stones throw from the middle of nowhere in what could only be described as a petrol powered box, the situation could have been better.

  For a fortnight the pair lived off rationed supplies and packets of peanuts Phil had stolen from the prison cafeteria, drifting in the cramped pod without any semblance of life in the void. Every day they took turns watching the scanner and dodging space junk, until one day, just after the air conditioning had packed in, the scanner picked up something major.

  “Shwaps! Wake up!” Phil kicked him in the leg, “wake up!”

  “What!?” yelled Shwaps, startled, “what is it?”

  “Well, the scanner’s picking up something weird. It seems to be some kind of hole. A big grey hole in space,” he looked at Shwaps who looked him straight back. He glanced back at the screen with curiosity in his eyes, then wiped it solemnly. “It was steamed up”, he mumbled quietly, preparing to be smacked across the back of the he
ad. Suddenly he looked up again, his eyebrows at awkward angles. “Where'd it go?”

  Shwaps looked closely at the screen and after a second or two sat back, grimacing at Phil. “What colour is space?”

  “Black?” replied Phil cautiously, a touch of a quiver in his voice.

  “And what colour, generally, is a Black Hole?”

  “Is this a trick question?” he was hit with a forceful stare. “Black?” he endeavoured finally.

  “So is it, at all, possible that the anomaly is still out there, that it is a black hole, but you just couldn’t see it anymore?” he flicked his eyes towards another panel and sighed, “and now because of this pods somewhat limited detection capabilities we are now too close to the blasted thing to get away.”

  “Oh,” Phil responded simply, not entirely sure how to take the revelation at hand, “what are we going to do?”

  “Apart from dying?” Shwaps started unhelpfully, “I imagine we have two options; one: we turn the pod around, shove the engines to full power and try to get out of the gravity well. Granted, before we get barely five thousand metres the engines would of probably burnt out,” he said as optimistically as the situation would allow, “or two: we go straight in. According to the readout this thing is big, possibly big enough to be connected to something on the other side. If we're very lucky then we might be dumped in at least a sort of reasonable area.”

  “How reasonable?” Phil's gaze bore down on Shwaps.

  “Best chance is somewhere in this galaxy,” his breath hissed through partially gritted teeth, “moderate chance we land in a reality of some shape or form.”

  “I really can't wait to hear what the worse case is...”

  “Well, the worst case is that there’s not even an exit to this thing.”

  “Then what happens?” the pod shook from the gravitational sheer of the black hole, making his words barely understandable.

  “Then we get crushed into something the size of an amoeba,” Shwaps stuttered less then gently.

  “Fine!” Phil conceded, with virtually no thought at all, “I never really liked life anyway,” he punched the throttle and the pod jerked around to face the distorted starscape and sped off into the abyss.

  As it transpired there was something on the other end of the black hole. Against all odds they had even landed in the right reality, somewhere in the Milky Way and even more amazingly both the escape pod and both humans inside had apparently survived.

  Nevertheless, the pod was now a wreck. What propulsion there had ever been was effectively gone, most of the oxygen canisters were ruptured and the primary structure of the pod was rapidly disintegrating. With luck now well out of the question and some higher intervention clearly at play, there coincidently happened to be a lone structure barely ten thousand kilometres away from them. The small structure was run down and practically falling apart but still had a neon sign around its landing pad stating 'Singularity Services'. Naturally Shwaps set a coarse and prayed thanks to that, oh so, merciful deity who, as well, obviously had money riding on Shwaps' journey.

  The station was owned and run by someone with a thick West Country accent but claimed never to have even been to Earth, let alone Cornwall. Upon their landing he ventured out onto the landing pad to greet his new visitors but was greeted back by something not so friendly.

  “Where are we? How far did we come?” Shwaps asked quickly, running towards the owner, waving his arms about.

  “Most people ask that,” said the farmer man calmly, “just not quite in that way,” he took a small step back from Shwaps who was practically kissing the man at this point. “You’ve travelled a good forty thousand light years from the Cluster Hole,” he grinned, seemingly having his own private joke about the term 'Cluster Hole', “You boys look like Terrans. Earth ain't no more then a hundred light years from here.”

  Shwaps and Phil grinned and jumped wildly up and down in delight. “We did it! Who knew it'd be so easy!? We've got rooks of time and Earth is only a hundred light years away!”

  Hold on, Lads,” interrupted the owner, “I don’t want to be a bother but don’t forget about the time lag”

  “What!?” screamed Phil, “what 'Time Lag'?”

  “There’s always a time lag when you go through a black hole,” the good ole days farmer type replied placidly.

  Shwaps glanced at the date on his watch then at a large digital time readout on the side of the building. They were, indeed, different. It turned out that, overall, they had just around six hours to get home. After all of this, just six hours to get back to the four old toffs who had sent him on this insane quest. Transport! Transportation was needed and for some definition of the term 'fair price' it was kindly provided by the owner in the form of ‘A Beauty’ as the owner had so casually described it. The 'beauty' was actually closer to a ‘Clapped Out Old Banger’ as Phil had so subtly corrected. Still a ship was a ship and Shwaps wanted his money.

  Amazingly enough the banger managed to survive all the way back to Earth but burnt up in the atmosphere after the handbrake was found not to work. To be fair, it was quite a sight as a space hippie noted thusly; “Dude, your car just, like, burnt up in Earths atmosphere, man.” Happily enough Phil, in all his intellectual glory managed to find the time to devise a retort in the form of; “Shut up, you stupid little person.”

  With only fifty three minutes left to spare the two, by now filthy, individuals fell against the ticket desk at Cape Canaveral and with wheezed, dust laden breaths managed to cough "Two to Heathrow" before collapsing altogether.

  Again the four old men were sat sipping brandy and telling stories when one of them suddenly looked up, remembering the bet they had made eighty days ago. “Do you realize that in around two minutes that young lad, Gerald, will have to leave and finally pay for everything he's broken,” he chortled briefly, "that is if he is still even alive."

  “I hope he knows how to write a cheque,” said another sarcastically.

  The clock began to chime the twelfth hour and, right on que, the door burst open. “Where’s my money!?”

  The old men were stunned. “Who’s he?” exclaimed the oldest pointing at Phil.

  “He’s the one you have to pay another five grand!”

  There was much grumbling from the group of four only to end with that inevitable question, “why?”

  “He come with me, went through what I went through. He deserves it!” There was more grumbling from the old men. “I’m willing to leave this club,” bribed Shwaps.

  Spontaneously the old men stopped grumbling and each dived for there cheque books, only then to compose themselves civilly again. “I assure you, your cheque will be in the post,” he smiled sickly and glanced at both of them, “Ehh, both of yours.”

  “I bloody well hope so!” Shwaps placed a hand on Phil's shoulder, "come on, lets go home," they were about to leave when he suddenly realised something and pointed to the chair he had been sitting in eighty days ago. “Where’s my Kebab!?”

  Amethyst