Renegade T.M.

by Langley, Bernard

  47.

  “I have the sacred shears of Salamaloo!” declared Pierre, holding aloft the gardening tool as if it was the Holy Grail itself, “and I’m not afraid to use them!”

  “Who’s this joker?!” growled Ben, “think I’ll call you pudding!”

  “This is the guy who murdered me in cold blood!” said Fendel, remembering the sudden knife thrust and shuddering noticeably at the thought.

  “I only did what was necessary mon ami,” he replied seemingly in earnest, “it was necessary for you to die, in order for you to die again, so that you could die again, and then be reborn, see?”

  “No,” said Fendel, “that’s about as clear as a steam room full of chain smokers on a particularly misty morning in a cloud!”

  “Now, now,” replied Pierre in his best softly, softly, catchy monkey voice, “there’s no need to hold grudges, I only murdered you so that you could be reborn.”

  “But I was already born, why did I have to be reborn?”

  “So you could get the shears from Hupa Hool.”

  “But I didn’t, you did!”

  “Yes, well I was getting to that,” responded the Frenchman, “I have endeavoured to keep tabs on your progress here in the after-afterlife, and it became abundantly apparent after a rotation or so, that you were hopelessly and comprehensively, ill-suited to the task. If your success rate could be measured in decibels, I would liken it then to the muffled cough of an asthmatic ant at the Artists on Absinthe after party.”

  “Right,” agreed Fendel, accepting the analogy quite readily.

  “I have therefore decided to pitch in myself, in the hope that we can get things moving along a little quicker,” explained Pierre further.

  “My shears!” exclaimed Slip, “but how did you find them?!”

  “They were in the shed, hanging up next to a trowel,” he replied quite unremarkably.

  “Curse your magnificent genius, I was sure no one could find them there!”

  “Yeah, way to go Slip,” put in Crinkle sarcastically, “hide the gardening shears in the garden shed, foolproof!”

  “Aren’t we forgetting something,” said Pete, “big angry shark about to eat us!”

  “Leave that to me,” declared Pierre, readying the shears as he spoke, “prepare to meet thy maker!”

  As Pierre unleashed a magical space-time altering barrage from the sacred shears, Fendel found just enough time to leap at his legs, causing the Frenchman to topple over, and altering the shear’s beam so that is flew harmlessly over the shark’s fin.

  “If anyone’s going to be killing anyone around here,” declared Fendel, “it’s going to me, not Pierre!”

  “My father was called Pierre!” announced Ben all of a sudden, seemingly on the verge of yet another traumatic episode.

  “Alas my fine finned friend,” replied the Frenchman, “my son was taken from me when he was just a little boy, his name was Ben, and he was certainly not a shark like you.”

  “But my name is Ben!” he said quite startled, “and I am not a shark at all! My father left to go and fight against the Co-leen on Krassis, all that I have of him now, is this photo here.”

  The shark reached inside his designer monkey skin man-bag and retrieved a crumpled-up photograph which he handed to Pierre.

  “Zut alors!” Pierre declared, “that is me! Then your mother must be… “

  “So fat that she has to wear a “warning wide load” sticker across her enormous back, which underneath someone has scrawled my other muther is a Porsche!” interjected Pete, without fully understanding why.

  “Erm, no actually,” replied Pierre calmly, “your mother must be Giselle.”

  “Yes that’s right!” Ben almost shouted, “but she gave me up when a was only a baby.”

  “Then you are my son,” said the Frenchman slowly, the full ramifications dawning on him, “and from this day forth, I swear to be a proper father to you, I will be the Papa you never had.”

  “I love you Daddy,” said Ben swimming toward his newly found father.

  “And I you, but I do not think this angry shark appearance will suit at all,” he said, aiming the shears at his son, “this may smart a little.”

  That said, Pierre unleashed the shears on the shark, and once the smoke had cleared, in its place stood a small human boy, a boy with big bright eyes and a smile that would warm even the coldest cockles.

  “Papa!” yelled Ben, hugging his father.

  “But you’re a robot!” put in Fendel, “how can you be his father?”

  “No, no,” he replied, “I am human, the mechanical parts of which you speak are the result of endless battles on Krassis, in the which the Co-leen managed to remove me from some of my favourite limbs! On the other hand, they do allow me to conceal some valuable items.”

  Pierre then opened the door in his stomach, the same door from which he had retrieved the knife which he used to murder Fendel many moons ago, and then placing the sacred shears of Salamaloo in what was essentially his stomach, he then closed the door again without a moment’s hesitation.

  “I’ll keep hold of these shall I?” he asked rhetorically.

  “My shears!” wailed Slip, “but how do you expect us to live without them!”

  “I don’t,” replied Pierre sharply, “now Fendel, where were you exactly?”

  “About here,” he replied levelling his harpoon gun to Slip’s head again, “any last words?”

  “Have you got a cigarette?” asked Slip.

  “I do,” Fendel answered, tugging the trigger and releasing a harpoon that lodged itself satisfyingly in Slip’s skull, “but those things will kill you.”

  “You killed him!” shouted Crinkle, more out of fear than out of observational prowess.

  “Don’t worry, he’ll wake up where he should be, with your Fendel onboard the Humdinger,” said Fendel reassuringly.

  “You’re nuts!”

  “Now it’s your turn Pete,” he said, aiming the self-loading weapon at him, “last words?”

  “I’d just like to say a few words if I may?”

  “Beautiful,” remarked Fendel, firing a second harpoon into Pete’s chest, killing him instantly.

  “One more Fendel,” said Pierre, looking at his watch.

  “Okay Crinks, your turn,” he declared, making his final aim of the day, “before I release you, can I suggest that when you’re back in your version of reality, you set course for a particularly nondescript planet called Earth in the Milky Way, and look up one Pete Martin. He will remarkably resemble the fish I just killed, but look nothing at all like a fish, understood?”

  “No.”

  “Fantastic,” he said, pulling the trigger and releasing Crinkle from the Hupa Hool fantasy.

  “How about you two?” he went on turning to Pierre and Ben.

  “Thanks but I’ve booked a taxi,” Pierre replied nonchalantly, “now shouldn’t you be going? It’s fair to say that your Renegade gang have not been fairing well without you, you may already be too late!”

  “What do you mean?” he asked aghast.

  “Let’s just say that Dinkle Mormid has them just where he wants them!”

  “That sick freak!” said Fendel placing the harpoon gun to his own head, “those guys would have perished long ago if it weren’t for me!”

  “Well off you go then, bon chance!” said Pierre waving farewell.

  So it was down to Fendel again to save the day. It was apparently not enough that he had already saved the Renegade gang of a different dimension, it was now his responsibility to save his own gang, even though his was in the after-afterlife of Hupa Hool, and already dead twice over! As he pulled the trigger and took his own life (again), he decided that later that day he would be talking to Slip about a pay rise.

  As it just so happened, in another part of the famed after-afterlife of Hupa Hool, a giant caterpillar sat on equally large mushroom, smoking a pipe and looking genuinely fed-up. The caterpillar looked up as if someone was addre
ssing him, and said aloud to whoever might listen:

  “Well, there’s always the sequel!”

  And with one last giant tug on his pipe, then sprang out of existence, like a chopped paragraph on a newsdesk floor.

  48.

  “So you all want to die do you?” asked Mormid, not in fact looking for an answer, “well let me see if can’t be of some assistance.”

  Slip, Crinkle, and Pete were all bound to one another, back to back, so that their legs sticking out resembled a kind of horrific starfish. They were all still in the Sentencer, in one of the many drab holding rooms, apparently awaiting their next bespoke suicide nightmares. Mormid paced methodically around them, his murderous hand tucked away in a pocket, and a maniacal grin stuck imposingly on his face, evidently the result of the trio’s current despair.

  “Oh just do it,” replied Pete, bored now with the whole concept of life and everything it entailed, “kill me already!”

  “Yeah come on, kill us,” agreed Slip.

  “I’m so short!” wailed Crinkle, not expecting that her tiny voice would be heard anyway.

  “Very well,” announced Mormid, pulling out his new gun-hand as he spoke, “I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Mormid looked at them all lumped together on the cold floor, like some kind of terrible gene-splicing accident, and almost felt a sense of pity for them. He hesitated for a moment, then remembering how they had lost him his hand, girlfriend and then job earlier that day, he realised that revenge was a dish best served immediately, and raising his gun for the kill, decided that the fat one should go first.

  “Wait!” a voice demanded, as the door to the holding room flew dramatically open.

  Light suddenly flooded the room, and after they had all taken a moment for their assaulted eyes to adjust, they then discovered it was Fendel.

  “Fendel is that you?” asked Slip, completely forgetting he had a gun to his head, “we thought you were…”

  “Dead?” he finished the sentence for him, “well you’d be right, more right than you’d think possible.”

  “Where have you been?” questioned Crinkle, finding her voice again.

  “That’s a long,” he paused, trying to think of the best way of putting it, but then gave up realising the word would have to be invented, “that’s a long story Crinks, maybe another time yeah?”

  “Have you come to rescue us?” asked Pete in a distant voice.

  “Indeed I have,” he declared brazenly, “put down the gun Mormid, or else!”

  “I can’t you idiot,” replied Mormid, “it’s my hand now!”

  “Well put down your hand then,” he responded, before adding, “and sit on it!”

  “I will do no such thing you weirdo, anyway, your friends here all need my help, I’m only doing what they have asked of me.”

  “What?!” he replied aghast, before asking sarcastically “my pals have asked you to murder them?!”

  “Yeah, he’s right old buddy,” interjected Slip, “nobody’s listening anymore! Renegade TM is finished!”

  “I can’t go any of the rides Fends!” wailed Crinkle, “I’m so short I don’t reach the line!”

  “I used to think life was a series of challenges and rewards,” said Pete, “now I just think it’s one big challenge!”

  “See,” announced Mormid, “they all want to die! And I want to kill them! So why don’t you run along now and go and pester someone else with your fantastic tails.”

  “Come on guys,” Fendel appealed to them, “can’t you see it’s this place that’s making you say those things, you don’t really mean it. Slip, Renegade TM was never about the listeners, it was always about the music. If other people liked the stuff we were putting out, then that was only a wonderful added bonus, and never a reason in itself. Crinks, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met! Okay, sometimes I get back ache when we talk, and sure, you may not be the best person to change a light bulb, but come on, I mean you can always hold the chair can’t you, and believe you me, that chair ain’t going nowhere! And Pete, admittedly we haven’t known each other that long, but what I know of your alter-dimensional self, you’ve got guts kid, I mean you really stood up to that shark, where others would have given up and gone home! What I’m trying to say is that you’re all really rather remarkable people, and I am proud to call you all my pals, shoot, Renegade TM is more than just a job, you guys are my family, and if none of you want to live anymore, then I don’t either!”

  “Well that’s settled,” said Mormid adjusting his aim, “you’re first then.”

  “Leave him alone!” shouted Slip, kicking out his leg so that it caught Mormid in the shin and bowled him neatly over, like an unexpected spare.

  “Yeah,” agreed Crinkle, “I really am bloody good at holding a chair!”

  “Pete,” ventured Fendel, “are you with us?”

  “I really don’t know anymore,” he replied, “I mean what if I’m just like Dink here?”

  Mormid was rubbing his rapidly bruising shin, and was not aware that Fendel was now untying his pals and would have them out in a ping or two.

  “Come on buddy,” said Slip, “you’re nothing like this loser, you’re one of us now Piff.”

  “It’s Pete you moron,” corrected Crinkle.

  “You guys don’t get it though,” Pete continued, “Dink and I are the same! Our pasts are almost identical, it’s as though we’re the some person, but from different planets!”

  “Listen here Pete,” said Fendel adopting a very untypical serious tone, “you’re like the brother I never really cared for, the one who I always screened on my birthday, and whom I failed to return the lawnmower I borrowed from. What I’m trying to say is that you’re in the team, so stop indulging your petty doubts and get a move on, there’s no I in Renegade TM!”

  “What about the big I in IM?” he asked, clearly baffled.

  “That’s silent,” Fendel replied quickly, “look, are you with us or not?”

  “I really appreciate what you guys have done for me,” he replied, “but I have to know that Dink’s going to be okay. I know you guys think he’s nothing more than an evil galactic overlord, but I happen to see a lot of myself in him. You guys go on without me, I’ll catch you up later yeah?”

  “Whatever you say dude,” said Slip, evidently wanting to be somewhere else as quick as possible, “we’ll rendezvous back onboard the Humdinger later, we’ve got a game of twister to finish!”

  “You sure you’re going to be alright Pete?” asked Crinkle concerned.

  “Yeah, yeah, what’s the worst he can do?”

  “Kill you dead.”

  “Oh yeah right,” he realised, “okay help me tie his arms, then you can go.”

  The Renegade gang all pitched in to tie Mormid’s arms behind his back, so that he was now unable to kill any of them with his lethal handgun. Then waving good bye, and bestowing on Pete a look of both admiration and downright pity, they left him and Mormid to their fates.

  “We are the same you and I,” began Mormid, “if you kill me, then it would be the same as killing yourself.”

  “But why are you trying to kill us then?” asked Pete.

  “I didn’t want to kill you Pete, just the idiots you call your friends. I mean look what they did to me! This morning I was a regular happy-go-lucky Co-leen, and now I’m a handless freak, unemployed, unloved, and in prison for a crime I never committed!”

  “I don’t know if I should believe you, from what I’ve seen of your future self, you’re downright evil, “fruits of the devil” evil!”

  “You have to believe me, all I want is to do good with my life.”

  “But how can killing the Renegade gang be a good thing? Think of the googolplexillion number of listeners you’d be tearing away from their favourite station!”

  “I’ve thought about it, and they still have to die, they all have to die!” Mormid paused, thinking he had gone to far, that his thinly veiled act had dropped.

  �
�You are evil,” realised Pete, “I don’t care that you have had it tough, believe you me, we all have! You’re on your own Mormid, and I hope being an evil galactic emperor works out for you.”

  “Wait,” said Mormid, “there’s something you have to know!”

  “Oh what is it now,” he replied utterly uninterestedly, “no, no, don’t tell me, I can’t leave you because, dun dun dah, you’re my Father!”

  “Erm, yes actually, you already knew?!”

  “Look at us, we’re not even the same species, you’re an idiot.”

  “Wait,” he appealed again, “not Father no, we were room-mates at college! Remember we used to play Risk together!”

  “Don’t buy it, going now.”

  “Okay, okay, not that, I’m your greengrocer! Pound your bananas, two pound your pairs!”

  “Please stop,” Pete replied, making his way to the door.

  “I’m someone you sat opposite once on the train!” Mormid shouted desperately as Pete opened the door to leave.

  “Goodbye Mormid, let’s never do this again,” and that said, he closed the door behind him, leaving Dinkle Mormid to whatever fate God had planned for him.

  49.

  Pete closed the door on Dinkle Mormid, and having walked through it, found himself back on the bridge of the Humdinger.

  “Erm… “

  “Time machine remember,” aided Fendel casually.

  “And… “

  “Matter transporter,” put in Slip, “don’t like to use it though, as more often than not it will reassemble your atoms backwards.”

  Pete took a moment to check his physicality, and after deciding that he was indeed the right way round, breathed a loud sigh of relieve.

  “Keeping you up?” asked Crinkle annoyingly.

  “No,” he replied, “that was relief, not tiredness.”