Episode Twelve

Pichard turned the body over ...

Ten minutes later, feeling satisfied, he lit a cigarette and examined the contents of the man's pockets. "Yep," he reflected. "It takes a stiff to do real justice to a stiff!" He looked at the name on the wallet - CHU EN GINSBERG.

Good grief, he thought, another confusing sub-plot written out. Pilchard decided to report back to Flongord for further instructions. Anyway, it was a good night on the telly. Walking out through the french windows, his foot kicked against a small, hard, metallic object. He bent down to pick it up. With a dull thud, his face connected with a bony kneecap. All became darkness in the festival of light.

Still groggy from my brain-mangling acid trip and this sudden, unexpected transition to first person singular. I knew that I had to stay conscious. Already the floor of my cell was none too pretty to look at, but I wasn't in the mood for no sight seein'. I guess, along with everything else, my time was running out. Still, some mugs baked themselves in the sun for hours to get their colour - my way was a totally inside job.

The window above the door snapped open and a face appeared. Shaking the shit out of my eyes, I recognised Yuw. "Unfortunately, it seems that we have to let you go, Mr. Gilbert." His monotonous voice tore at my brain like a chain-saw through a fossilised turd. "My literary experts inform me that if we let you die, then we all stand a 99.3% chance of being written out of existence altogether. Besides," he went on, "that notorious multi-quadruple agent Rudy has decided to string along with me for a while. As a sign of good faith, he rubbed out Ginsberg for me last night." As he spoke, one of his henchmen donned a forgman suit and waded out to me. The 'antidote' came in two parts; a large mug of kaolin and a huge rubber bung. "It will take a few hours to have any effect," Yew leered at me in fiendish anticipation of the ordeal to come.

[All jokes about pains in the arse have been cut out. Ed]

As I waited for my guts to congeal, Yuw told me that some sucker called Pichard was being done for the murder. What did I care? Let some other bastard write him out of trouble, I was in enough of my own.

It was then that I realised that there was no way I was gonna tie this thing together right now. There were just too many bums cuttin' in on my action. Talking of burns, that bung [offensive material removed. Ed] arse!

They picked me up, hosed me off and dumped me in a car. I was driven round for half an hour, blindfolded. Finally I was grabbed by the seat of the pants, dragged out of the car and dumped outside my own front door. I crawled on to my bed, ripping my clothes off as I did so. Pretty soon I was feeling myself again. About 4 a.m. somebody banged on the door. Bloody perverts get everywhere!

Next morning, after a light breakfast of six raw eggs and four pints of milk, I threw up. Feeling stupid (that's the name of my cat) I decided to stick to cornflakes in future. I opened my morning paper. Inside I found a used Kleenex, a large piece of rubber tubing and a hurriedly scrawled note:

Dear Steve (it said),
I must C see your right away. B# about it!
Luv and osculations,
Petal xx

Quickly, I reached for the wardrobe and tore out my bra, panties and special reinforced truss with concealed water-tight pouches ... ? Damn! Wrong flat again!

I went next door to my flat and dressed quickly. Just as I was leaving, the phone rang. I answered it. "You don't know me yet, Gilbert, but my name is Ragen. I've been taken out of a lucrative doss of a T.V. job and stuck in this stinking collection of lewd thoughts and innuendo to warn you that the plot may take a sudden, discontinuous leap in a completly unrelated direction any second now."

Puzzled, I closed the door, fell downstairs, cursed, tied my shoe laces and walked toward the bus stop. Just as I was crossing the street, the author changed from red to green ...

(TO BE RUN OVER)