by Brian Hughes
“You know as well as I do that there are legal procedures t’ follow in this sort o’...argh!”
The farmer scuttled away cockroach-like into the darkness leaving Seth Grimshaw to pluck the needle from his buttock.
It eventually gave with a quiet snick and the sound of a gluteus maximus snapping back into position.
“Right! You ignorant bastard! That’s assault that is!” Seth rubbed his backside tenderly, a frown bringing his forehead down over his eyes. “I’m confiscatin’ this for evidence. And in the meantime y’ can shut this place down pending further investigation!”
With a straightening of his shoulders Grimshaw marched defiantly towards the door.
After several paces, however, it dawned on him that Giles Barley had already beaten him to it.
The blunderbuss was raised once more against Barley’s piggy eyes, only more aggressively this time.
“Thee ain’t goin’ nowhere, Grimshaw.”
The barrel swung menacingly in front of the inspector’s head as he tried to appear nonchalant.
“Tha’s always bin an interfering dick, thee ’as. Thy ruined moi range o’ bird’s nest soups last year...”
“It was seagull shit, man!” Grimshaw ground his teeth together angrily, unsure whether to simply barge past the farmer and into the yard. “Three dozen customers at the Hoi Tin restaurant were rushed into ’ospital with gastro-enteritis because of that!”
“And tha ruined moi organic bread line!” continued Barley, unswayed by the argument.
“There were pebbles in the loaves, f’r crying out loud!” Grimshaw snorted.
He made to move but felt the cold press of the blunderbuss against his temple and was forced to take a step backwards instead.
“And discarded johnies an’ lumps of soil,” he went on with more conviction. “Mrs Fanshaw ’alf choked t’ death on one of y’r crusty cobs! Now let me out this instant!”
“Oi can’t do thart, oim afraid.”
Giles shuffled forwards, forcing Grimshaw to stumble into a heap of old machinery.
“Oi’d be cuttin’ moi own throat if Oi did thart and this latest range of Ostrich drumsticks is provin’ very popular with the locals. Nope...y’ can just wait patiently for ’alf an ’our on thart there woolsack.”
He indicated the sack with a nudge of the blunderbuss and Grimshaw, realising his options were limited, decided to comply.
“Oi reckon,” Barley continued, checking the mud-encrusted Rolex strapped round his wrist. “Thart injection should just about arf taken effect by that toime.”
At roughly the same moment, somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, Commander Hogan was conducting business with a four-armed Snoot from Porkloinus Minor.
Or, to be more exact, he was currently stuffing half a dozen hamster-like creatures with sharp, pointed teeth into the pockets of his trench coat.
It was proving difficult, one of the little buggers emerging every few seconds with a timorous squeak and a half-chewed humbug in its mouth.
“I thought we’d agreed that now I’m along for the ride you wouldn’t be indulging in any more of this...this...”
Cissy, who had been standing close behind him with her arms wrapped tightly about her padded tank top, suddenly jabbed one finger at his nose in desperation.
“This smuggling business!” she concluded angrily.
“I’m doing them a favour, Cissy,” Hogan replied, forcing the goobledon’s head back down amongst the sweet wrappers with a ‘frrrrrt’ noise. “I’m saving them from being eaten by the Groaks. Very tasty titbits on the Groakian homeworld these things. They boil them alive and then push a lollipop stick up their arses.”
“Just hurry up!” Cissy pouted, kicking lethargically at the bucket of Palbo Moon Souvenir Rocks by the base of the counter. “I’m growing increasingly worried about where you left that DNA Reconstructer.”
“I’ve told you! Stop worrying your freaky little head,” Hogan replied, trying to hand the shopkeeper a forty Arkadian-dollar note whilst five goobledons scaled his sleeve adventurously. “Where-ever it is, it’ll be perfectly safe.”
“I just don’t want to turn up back on Earth to discover the human race has transformed itself into jelly babies!”
“It’d be an improvement,” Hogan replied, giving the smallest goobledon a good thwack on its head.
It shot back into his pocket and decided to explore the lining of his coat.
“Come on then if you’re so desperate to return to your God forsaken planet. There’s no point in dawdling.”
“I don’t feel well, Barley!”
Seth Grimshaw tried to push himself up onto his elbows and discovered the weave across the woolsack to be far coarser than he’d remembered.
“Why’s everything gone so big? And ’ow come I’ve grown a tail?”
The grubby features of the sadistic farmer suddenly filled his vista.
Dirty, sneering, yellow-toothed features with smatterings of blackheads forming fairy rings across their surface.
Mr Grimshaw shook himself from his stupor and checked around. Although he was now sitting upright everything looked as though he was still at ground level.
Then he checked his own body and twitched his whiskers.
“Oh bugger!”
Barley’s sneer turned into a grin. It didn’t stop there, transforming into a chortle and finally ending up as a maniacal laugh.
Grimshaw watched as the farmer’s tonsils vibrated deep within the receding chasm of his throat.
A flash of light split into shards on the blade of the axe as Barley raised it above his head.
With a shriek of fear Grimshaw leapt to his feet.
Seconds later he was scampering hastily towards the nearest skirting board, his tiny claws scrabbling across the grit-covered stones and his tail tripping him up.
All that was left behind for the farmer’s amusement was a small pile of droppings and a tiny bowler hat.
The Second Course
“Can’t you shut those bloody things up?” grumbled Hogan, forcing down on the steering column so that the Icarus swooped in a long, slender arc towards the planet. “They’re getting on my nerves now.”
“We’re having a sing-song,” Cissy retorted in a beaming grin.
She was kneeling upright on the passenger seat, facing the wrong way and waving her arms about as though conducting a small school orchestra.
The goobledons had been arranged like a collection of nodding dogs along the trinkets-shelf behind her.
Now the cockpit was filled with thoroughly unmusical shrieks that, if Hogan listened closely enough, sounded suspiciously like, “Are we there yet?”
“Perhaps they’d prefer to stretch their legs,” Hogan responded gloomily, a particularly high-pitched whine making him wince. “There’s a button here marked ‘airlock’. Just give me the nod and I’ll try to accommodate ’em.”
“Grumpy sod!”
Cissy turned round and faced forwards again, the feathered atmosphere of the Earth swelling outwards beyond the murky windscreen.
“Get out of bed the wrong side this morning?”
“Actually yes,” Hogan snorted. “That’s why the bottoms of me sneakers are now covered in goobledon turds.”
He added a bit more pressure to the joystick and the Icarus swung dramatically into the atmosphere, glowing dimly around its haunches as the friction put its sealants to the test.
The cottonwool clouds tore apart with the ease of moistened tissues, the glow from the rolling blue oceans below them now deluging the cabin with an aquamarine hue.
There was North America, patches of green, white and brown smeared in the fashion of some child’s finger painting across the large bunion of the continent.
And some distance off to one side, growing incredibly fast, was Great Britain, an intricate arrangement of streets and patchwork fields.
Forests soared past in a dark green blur.
The zip of cities with their dreaming spi
res and smog-filled streets.
And finally Greyminster, a flattened red scab at the craggiest end of the fells, weeping surgical stitches of smoke from its numerous chimney pots that bent and fractured as the Icarus pile-drived its way between them.
“What’s up with ’em now?” Hogan was too busy concentrating on the control panel to turn his head around and look, but the goobledons annoying song had turned into something altogether more distracting.
“I’m not sure,” Cissy replied, checking to see if any of them had accidentally sat on the radiator spout. “They seem to be responding to something below us.”
“Nine Acres farm,” noted Hogan as the Icarus slowed to an amble above the titan of the new chicken coop. “Looks like we might ’ave found our missing DNA Reconstructer then.”
The Third Course
When, from a purely physical perspective, your body matches the same proportions as a common house mouse, dinosaur-sized chickens are generally beyond the limited measure of your viewing capacity.
In fact, all that was visible of the chickens right now were their yellow claws moving slowly across the desolate landscape in the manner of electricity pylons defying the usual laws of gravity.
Grimshaw emerged from the hole in the skirting board and took a long look around.
Following several diplomatic attempts to thwart the advances of a horny field mouse, he gave it a punch on the nose, quickly worked out a route between the thousands of mouse-traps littering the floor and then set off at a sprint.
Giles Barley had fallen asleep with his mouth wide open. His snores were drifting up towards the distant ceiling in the fashion of noisy bats.
Three gigantic chickens had formed a crescent around him. Now they were staring down at his prostrate form, wondering whether he was worth eating or not.
In one hand Barley clutched his frying pan. He'd been using it to chase Grimshaw around the chicken shed less than half an hour before.
It contained a few new dents and some of the old fat had slithered down the handle, detailing the history of several near misses and giving it more character than most kitchens could bear.
After approximately four minutes and thirty-three seconds, when the excessive amount of exercise had become too much for Giles’ clapped-out lungs to handle, he'd given up his pursuit and disappeared back into the farmhouse, re-emerging presently with his arms full of traps.
Then, on all fours and grumbling bitterly, he’d laid them out before collapsing onto the woolsacks for a quiet doze.
One ear was now cocked against the darkness, semi-conscious for the first sounds of snapping.
“Pst! Barley!”
The tiny voice prickled its way down Giles’ ear canal, stabbing at the edge of his awareness.
“Oy! Barley! Somebody’s built a camp fire in one of your fields!”
Giles awoke with a start, the phlegm suddenly rattling around his throat.
SNAP!
With a howl of pain Barley reeled backwards, the mousetrap pinching into his nose and a spurt of blood spiralling up from his nostrils.
Grimshaw flew backwards from the jolt as well, tipple-top-tailed through the air and landed with a soft thump on ground some distance away.
Whilst Giles was fighting valiantly (if not wretchedly) to remove the wire spike from his purpling bulb, Grimshaw hoisted himself upright and darted across to the abandoned DNA Reconstructer.
It took all his strength to lift the device up in both of his front paws and hold it up above his head.
“Right, y’ bastard! Let’s see ’ow y’ like a taste of your own medicine then!”
And off he hurtled, the needle straight out before him in the manner of a mediaeval lance, heading angrily towards the farmer’s grubby rump.
Straw scattered across the cobbled yard beneath the fierce jets of steam.
Several snails came loose from the rusted combine-harvester and span over the fence on the thunderous air currents.
One or two startled ducks became suddenly bald.
Exactly why shuttlecrafts had to produce so much noise and confusion when they landed was anybody’s guess. The designers had obviously thought that the arrival of their crafts deserved to be announced as the air vents apparently served no other purpose.
Whatever the case, the Icarus touched down, rose up at the front end once or twice, landed again with more conviction this time, made a farting noise as the air-lock was released and then extended its ladder as though pinioning itself to the farmyard.
Moments later the two intergalactic travellers were stumbling groggily towards the ground, Hogan’s feet getting caught up in his trench coat as he clambered down the rungs.
“Cissy, there’s really no need for the ray gun!”
“I’ve been to Nine Acres Farm before,” Cissy replied, reaching the cobbles and standing defiantly before him, brandishing her stubby weapon at a passing vole. “When I used to work for Brasswick we had to come here from time to time to pick up supplies. I’ll have you know that Barley’s guard geese are extremely vicious.”
“’Appen as may be but we’ve more important matters to get on with than standing around looking like something from ‘Stickinsects with Guns’ magazine.”
He looked around, his eyes coming to rest on the tumbledown farmhouse with its peeling shutters and blistered front door.
“That DNA Reconstructer’s obviously somewhere round here. Let’s try in that pig sty there.”
Hogan was almost correct.
He’d just chosen the wrong building that’s all.
Giles Barley, on the other hand, knew exactly where the transmogrification device was.
It was currently sticking out of his ringpiece.
“Tha bloody idiot!” he yelled painfully, wrenching the machine out with watering eyes. “What’s tha set it to?”
He squinted at the LCD.
Not that it mattered. He was incapable of reading anyway.
“Oi’ll bloody ’ave thee for thart, by Gord Oi will!”
Still clutching the DNA Reconstructer in one hand, he made a grab for the frying pan.
Grimshaw watched as the huge oval shadow descended quickly towards his head.
He might have been the size of a rather fat dormouse (albeit a dormouse with a tiny black moustache) but his mind was still that of a human being’s.
Intelligence and personality, it seems, are products of social influence as opposed to genetic. Rather than sitting there waiting to become a blood-spattered pancake he took to his heels and darted.
Mousetraps snapped, whirling up into the air like fireworks, as Giles Barley pursued him through the minefield he’d created.
Several bit Barley on his arms and legs resulting in howls of derisive pain.
Grimshaw, on the other hand, had a distinct advantage.
Being only small but still having mental faculties that were as sharp as a pin, he dodged the cheaply made death traps with an exhilarating degree of accuracy.
In fact, he had such control over this magnified environment, he even took time out to make a mental note of the numerous Health and Safety regulations the farmer was breaking right down at a microscopic level.
Clang!
The frying pan missed his oval ear by the smallest of hair’s breadths.
Dodging beneath an old tractor engine that had been put out to sump in one corner of the building, he flattened himself against a piston and watched his chest rise and fall dramatically.
Beyond the skirts of the cylinder head he could see Giles Barley scrabbling down on all fours.
A few seconds later a splintered pole with a nail in one end filled the gap.
Giles swung it from side to side, Grimshaw having to leap acrobatically every time it came close.
“Oi’ll ’ave thee, tha little barstard!” Another circular movement and the stick left a groove through a patch of oil. “Oi don’t care if the coppers turn up. Tha’s not shuttin’ me down for just doin’ moi job...ngh...”
&nb
sp; The sentence was concluded with a peculiar grunt.
Giles knelt upright, abandoning his stick.
As he continued to snort Grimshaw dragged the pole beneath the engine.
Huge, uncomfortable looking swellings battered Barley’s features about from inside.
“Wart’s goin’ orn?” he yelled with mounting panic. “Seymour? Woife? Get thee arses out ’ere an’ call us a doctor afore it’s too late!”
“I don’t think you understand Mr Barley.”
If Giles was having difficulty getting his wife/niece and son/nephew/cousin-or-something to respond to his pleas for assistance, then that was nothing in comparison to Marshall Hogan who was experiencing even greater difficulty with the inbreds himself.
“We’re not here to buy anything.”
“Tha’s very good eggs, see...” Seymour Barley held one of the eggs alluded to in his huge palm. If it hadn’t have been so brittle and covered in slime then you could have played basketball with it. “Tha’s got the lion picture on ’em and everything.”
This much was true. It wasn’t the official ‘lion’ designated by the British Egg Board, just some rather sad looking scribble in felt tip that had more than the customary number of legs that a feline required. But it was still a lion and in Seymour’s book that amounted to an official guarantee.
“We’re looking for a machine,” interrupted Cissy, leaning towards him as though somehow that might help with their communication difficulties. “It’s about so big...”
She held her hands apart.
“And so high...”
She turned them round by ninety degrees.
“And it’s diamond shaped.”
“Moi dard deals with all business matters,” replied Seymour, obviously at a loss as to what she was talking about. “’Cept for eggs o’ course. Oi’m allowed t’ deal with them.”
“No, no...you don’t understand.”
“It’s true,” interjected Anne Barley, Giles’ wife, her large white arms splashing about in the bath tub that was, as always, filled with potatoes. “’Is dard won’t let ’im near nothing else. Big clumsy ox thart ’ee is. Not since the milkin’ incident when he almost pulled old Daisy’s tit orf.”