“Now, ink the fence!” ordered Mr Todarodes and yet again Daniel blocked the kick coming at him harder and faster. Ripples in the water went in all directions as his master sent a barrage of blows towards Daniel and he blocked them all with faster reactions. Being that the squid’s arms are attached to its head as opposed to its body, just like Mr Tickle, this lightning hand-to-eye coordination is actually normal behaviour but Daniel is a teenager and normal behaviour in any species in that period of their lives is beyond hope really.
“Wow!” said Daniel, he was amazed.
“Your training begins tomorrow,” Mr Todarodes told him.
Daniel went to leave. Unlike many Cephalopods squids do not have external shells; they have a gladius, or a chitinized internal shell however Daniel, like many of his friends supported wearing one on their head as a fashion statement (it’s all a bit silly really but you try telling these kids, they never listen) and so he picked up his hat and suddenly thought of something he had to tell his master. “Hey Mr Todarodes, I’ve had an idea, we could do one where I hang my shell on a hook, you know, shell on, shell off kind of thing, what about that?”
“No,” replied Mr Todarodes, “I think that’s enough, we’ll leave that to Jackie Clam for the parody of the remake.”
4.
Daniel was feeling better about himself, so much more confident as he trained everyday with Mr Todarodes he plucked up the courage to ask Ali out on a date. She was delighted and so Mr Todarodes allowed Daniel-son the use of his car. Mr Todarodes thought it would be good for Daniel to ease the worry of the karate tournament that he had accidently signed his apprentice up for when he paid a visit to the evil karate school that Johnny and his mates attended, he thought he was just signing him up for a free prize draw to win an automatic barnacle removal kit.
Daniel was nervous of the date; she seemed to really like him. Man, he was glad he wasn’t a shallow water species of squid that had a hectocotylus, in which instead of his manhood he has one of his arms specialized to store spermatophores and transfer them to the female. Structurally, hectocotyli are muscular hydrostats. Depending on the species, the male may use it merely to store and transfer sperm to the female, or he may wrench it off and present it to the female. Daniel didn’t relish the idea of this wrenching an arm off malarkey and the rumour that went around the school playground back in the Med put him off the idea of any hanky-panky up till the point he was old enough to realise that he wasn’t a shallow-water squid at all. Even dirty magazines for the shallow water species had to have “beware when wrenching,” warnings on them.
No matter how much he told himself he wasn’t a shallow-water squid rather a deep sea type of Cephalopod he couldn’t shake the notion of the wrench. “Are you okay?” she softly asked him as they embraced each other squashed in the backseats of Mr Todarodes car, man there was no room to swing a catfish in there.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he replied.
“You know you don’t have to do this tournament if you don’t want to, Johnny is tough.”
This made him all the more certain that he had to fight, to prove himself to her but he did not say this, just continued to kiss her her under the gills, then across her mantle. She had a beautiful mantle. Then he felt her caress his underside, he had no reason to be concerned, I mean he was no Onykia ingens (otherwise known as a Greater Hooked Squid for reasons that will become clear before the close of this lengthy parentheses section for this Subantarctic species are rather well endowed. When erect, the penis may be as long as the mantle, head and arms combined, they are undeniably “hung like a sea-donkey, if indisputably such an animal exists.) Mind you, all deep water squid have the greatest known penis length relative to body size of all mobile animals, second in the entire animal kingdom only to certain sessile barnacles, another good reason for Mr Todarodes to hate those barnacle fuckers. To add to his confidence that she would be impressed by his manhood we must remember that the actor playing the part of Daniel, Ralph Minno was of Italian descent. Ali Gill shrieked with delight (despite the scene being edited from the final cut, but hey this is the book, EL James watch out mollusc sex is the new bondage.)
From thence forward they were in love, but Mr Todarodes was now keen to make him put his lustful thoughts to one side and continue his training, copying a sideways move and pinch from a neighbourly crab. However one day when Daniel went to his training session he found an empty bottle of fish oil lying on the seabed and heard the destructive noise of bashing shells inside. He swam in cautiously to see Mr Todarodes smashing his car to pieces, little bits of barnacle were flying off, “take that you big cocked bastards!” he was yelling.
Daniel reeled up to him and Mr Todarodes shows him a photo of a beautiful young female Japanese flying squid, “wow, is that your wife?” Daniel asks.
“Yes,” he whimpered “today, it should have been our anniversary, wha wha wha!”
“What happened to her?”
“One day we went for a romantic swim, too close to shore, a fisherman’s net caught her, whisked he away from me. I swam for my life to the quayside where there was a restaurant that backed right up to the sea, from there I could see the people eating, I jumped up and that is when I saw her, she was lying on a bed of noodles……dressed in spring onion and oyster sauce! Wha, wha, wha!”
“Oh my, I am sorry,” Daniel looked again at the photo, “hey, she does look tasty though….”
“WHA, WHA, WHA, WHA, WHA, WHA, WHA!”
“Huh? Oh, sorry, sorry, I meant she looks beautiful, in the photo like.” He tried to patch his statement up but knew it was too late, he swam out and Mr Todarodes told him there would be no training today. Daniel thought cool, I can go home and study my new issue of “shallow water babes,” complete with warning messages.
5.
It was the day of the tournament, that morning Ali was riding her seahorse but she came to watch later on. Daniel strode inside not knowing what to expect, he hoped Mr Todarodes would be up on the routine but he confessed he knew no more than Daniel, “but this is my first time at a karate tournament,” pleaded Daniel.
“Me too Daniel-son,” replied Mr Todarodes, it did not give him much reassurance.
The hall was packed, lots of squid celebrities in attendance, Squid Rock was performing a warm-up set with his heavily plagiarised tune, “All Summer Long,” (kettle, black Mr Author??)
The most talked about appearance was from the famous actor Squidward Tentacles from the US hit soap opera, “SpongeBob SquarePants.” He paraded about draped in expensive seashells with an entourage of sexy mermaids and puffing on a joint of top quality seaweed, keen to point out to everyone that the creator of the show is in fact a marine biologist and didn’t just copy facts from Wikipedia.
Someone gave Daniel the low down on the rules and a Cuttlefish called him over for the first match, he shouted “Squids in!” (a joke that will be wasted on those not from the UK, that is why I left in the rather poor quality Kid Rock gag, you got to keep those Americans happy.)
The cuttlefish was a master of martial arts, a monk of the shoalin temple that would bravely lay down his life for the honour of his beliefs, the fact that after his death his bone would be shoved into the bars of a cage and used as a calcium-rich dietary supplement for a budgerigar while an old lady peered into the cage pointlessly chanting “who’s a pretty boy then?” did not register in his mind.
Daniel and his first opponent squared up. Daniel took on his first fight and won, feeding on the glory of that moment he went onto triumph all other matches and made it to the semi-finals; so did Johnny.
The semi-finals came, Johnny won his and Daniel’s opponent was Johnny’s friend from the same karate school, conveniently. His sensei instructed him to break his knee with an illegal move, “but sensei,” the boy protested.
“Don’t argue,” ordered the master.
“But sensei, squids are invertebrate, we don’t have knees!” he explained.
“Just do it!” he demande
d and the boy went back to the fight, he flew a punch directly into Daniel’s arm and the crowd gasped as the crack could be heard and not believed. Daniel cowed over in pain and was escorted off to see the doctor. The boy was automatically disqualified. Daniel was through to the final but the doctor told him he could not continue.
“Do that magic shit,” asked Daniel to Mr Todarodes, desperate to continue.
“I cannot, it would against the rules….” concluded Mr Todarodes.
“Please!” Daniel pleaded, knowing his pride was in shatters, his revenge had not been completed but mostly because his newfound girlfriend was watching and he really wanted to get her in the ink-sack. In turn Mr Todarodes had learned about friendship and also, to bend the rules slightly, after all he contemplated; they were breaking the rules, so cod knows we should too. So he rubbed the arm of Daniel and he came back out in true Hollywood fashion to a blaze of cheers from the crowd. But slightly annoyed looks from Johnny and the sensei.
The Cuttlefish asked quietly if he could continue and Daniel bravely nodded. He then announced that the fight would continue and both Johnny and Daniel stepped into the ring. A few moves into the round and it’s now clear that Johnny has the advantage, Daniel is protecting the leg. Johnny is pulled up by his naughty instructor, “sweep the leg,” he orders.
“But Sensei….”
“Are you deaf?”
“But….”
“No buts get on and do it!”
“But Sensei, you really need to study the anatomy of a squid…..”
“I said no arguing….” His master was now pushing him back into the ring, “Sweep the leg!”
Squids doesn’t have legs, they have eight limbs that are commonly referred to as arms, and two longer ones which are tentacles, thought Johnny, my Sensei is a doughnut, he’s not following this story at all; I mean it’s factual and that….So, what limb do I sweep, and I haven’t even got a broom?
Whilst Johnny was thinking this Daniel had moved into his crab pose, on the side with all his arms in the air. Johnny thought no more of it and knew he had no choice but to do as his master asks. He haphazardly flew at Daniel and with the perfect timing Daniel launched out and pinched the bully right on the mantle, sending him spinning over and crash landing into the rocks, unconscious. The crowd went wild and screamed Daniel’s name, Ali was flushed with admiration and attraction, Mr Todarodes was impressed and proud of his student, Daniel was overjoyed to have his revenge served and the readers of this story were overwhelmed with relief that this story is coming to a close and they can go back and check some gossip and look at their mates baby photos on Facebook.
Daniel stood admiring the crowd and much to his Sensei’s disgrace Johnny took the trophy off the master of ceremonies and presented it to Daniel, “You’re alright Loligo, good match!” he said, all was forgiven and the ocean was still once again. Until a big net suddenly swooped over the whole tournament hall and it was pulled out of the sea by two white bearded men in blue uniforms and silly blue hats, “Arrgh, there be good calamari tonight skipper!” one yelled and the other laughed.
Jack, to the Future.
1.
Jack Farley sat on a rock with his small son overlooking the stone circle in the fields below them. “Why do we talk differently from all the others father?” his son asked him.
“Because I taught you to speak as I did so that you can listen to the story I am about to tell you and you will pass it onto to your own children. They then will pass it on to their children and so on, until the tale that I tell you reaches the right generation to carry out what needs to be done, so I can get back to my own time,” Jack said.
“Can you tell me the story?” asked his son, dressed in animal skins.
“Yes, it is time, listen very carefully as you need to pass this story on, I will tell it as it happened, or as it will happen, hopefully.”
2.
“My name is Jack Farley, I am a past area sales manager for Tykon, a heavy plant machine producer, done it for a few years now and I love the job, takes me all over the time but sometimes, going back too far can be a pain in the arse, assignments back before our communications network was established can be lonely and without contact back to HQ it can be nerving.
I have no family, it would be impossible to get married and have kids with all this travelling that the job involves. It suits me down to the ground, I’ve always wanted to be a high flyer in business and that means I never would have time for kids.
So, one day I get this very important assignment which means I will be going back a long way. So I was up early to beat the traffic, I get dressed; take off in my pod, stopping at Tarbucks for a quick coffee and to call the office to tell them I was on my way.
Running late I got caught in the bottle neck at tunnel 6, rush hour again. The radio tells me there has been an accident between junctions 2030 and 2020 and the traffic is nose to tail for over 7 years. Why people all have to leave for their journey at the same sort of time is beyond me really, it’s not like we are travelling distance rather we are travelling through time so it really doesn’t matter what time you leave, you get to your destination at the same time anyway. I guess it’s just human nature; we can’t change the habits of a lifetime. When, years ago, people travelled distance they all wanted to get there early, I can understand that but the habit of getting up, having breakfast and then getting into their vehicles has never faded. I could have waited until after the rush hour but I needed to push on, an important business deal was about to be signed; a job that would structure the company for life, I couldn’t wait around as I was in anticipation of the result.
Since Dr Emmett Brown’s company, DEB’s commercial release of the flux capacitor the market has been flooded with prospective time travelling tourists and the time tunnels that used to be empty save for scientists and businessmen like myself have now been filled with millions of delivery vans, youngsters out on a beano to more liberal time zones like the 1960s and 1990s or old age pensioners holidaying in past paradises. Needless to say the congestion is becoming a problem and as other tunnels are constructed it only leads to more people being able to afford cheap time travel packages.
So I sigh as the traffic comes to a grinding halt just past the 2030 turn off and take a sip of my coffee, this is going to be one hell of a long journey. People always flock here to see the last flickers of the ozone layer disappearing and the solar rays bursting through. It’s quite sick really watching all those innocent people fry but it is a historic event and gives people faith in the new artificial atmosphere.
A pod with floral purple cushions and a box of disposable handkerchiefs on the passenger shelf pulls off into the hard shoulder. The grey tops inside pile out and sit on the bank sharing out cucumber sandwiches and French Fancies. A delivery driver beeps his horn in frustration; he cannot get past; why, if he is on performance related pay like most of them are he doesn’t simply pull off the tunnel an hour or so sooner in order to get there earlier hasn’t registered in his feeble excuse for a brain. He beeps again, waving a mid-finger at the aging folks on the hard shoulder.
The traffic moves forward a couple of months and then grinds to a stop again, I hit the steering wheel, why did I not just wait until this traffic had cleared I think to myself. That is when I spot a lone young man with crusty dreadlocks and a big backpack standing on the 2027 slip road holding his thumb out for a lift. Usually I avoid hitchhikers like the plague, bunch of freeloading skivers with nothing better to be doing than hassling people for lifts to festivals, this guy is probably looking for a lift back to 1969, they all want to witness Woodstock; get a haircut and get a fucking job I say to myself as he stands there hopeful for a lift.
Then I think about the long journey ahead, it wouldn’t be so bad if I pick him up so that I can have some company even if it’s just for a few decades, I might be able to convert him to become a businessman like myself. So I stop and pick him up. “Hi,” he says through his dirty bearded mouth, “than
ks mate!” I’m not his “mate” but I smile anyway and allow him to throw his muddy backpack on my clean backseat and jump into the passenger seat.
“Where are you heading to mate?” I ask him in his own broken language, regretting my decision and hoping it wasn’t too late, hopefully he wanted dropping off at the illegal warehouse parties of the 1990s.
“1914,” he tells me, what on earth does he want to do back then I think but I nod and he sits back, “busy on the tunnel today isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it always is,” I reply.
“All these time tourists, sad really,” he says. Now I am sorry, he may not be the stereotype holiday maker but he is, more or less a tourist himself, he doesn’t time travel for business, he’s just bumming about getting his kicks. “So, when are you off to?” he asks, typically making small talk and without any real interest.
“2600 BC,” I tell him.
“Wow!” he screams, “what are you doing that far back?”
“Well, I work for a machine company, selling heavy building equipment. I want to get the pagans to buy a heavy-duty crane in order to lift the stones in the construction of Stonehenge,” I tell him, taking another sip of my coffee.
He grins, “That is like, crazy man!”
I smile back, “well, they need it and the purchase of the crane will secure the company name for hundreds of years to come. Sure it will not bring much money into the firm but it’s a crucial marketing strategy against our nearest competitors.”
He nods, “crazy, man.”
Not really interested why he wants to stop at 1914 I thought it best to ask him why anyway, “why 1914, not many festivals happen back then?”
“Oh no, I’m not off to a festival,” he grins, “I’m a freedom fighter on a peace making mission.”
“Oh right, how does that work then?”
“Yeah man, when I get there I got to get straight to Sarajevo and find a man called Gavrilo Princip, he was a Bosnian Serb and a member of a secret military society known as the Black Hand. He assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand which led to the Great War of 1914 and in turn led to the uprising of the Nazi Party in Germany which started the Second World War.”
Tales of Worrow Volume I Page 8