The further
recollections of
Lord Geoffrey Rapture BA (hons)
...Where was I? Oh yes, Old Corkhill. A lovely chap, so polite and kind to his mother. No, that was my mother... he used to beat his with an oar if she breathed too loudly. Of course, everyone treated my mother with courtesy and respect. She bit them if not. She was a remarkable woman - she raised fourteen children entirely on her own. I don't know who they were as she never introduced them to the family, but I'm sure they were well-mannered.
Good manners were of paramount importance in my day. Rude people ran the risk of painful bites from my mother and an on-the-spot execution from the Nice Brigade. The Nice Brigade was a private army that patrolled our county, seeking out impolite people and killing them. They were a cheery lot, always ready with a smile or a vicious murder. They once beat Tommy the Orphan half to death when he didn't doff his cap to a lady. They would have killed him outright, but I pointed out that he didn't have any arms and wasn't wearing a cap. They stopped smashing his skull with their golf clubs and let him go after that. They were hard, but fair. And violently insane, of course.
Tommy the Orphan was so grateful when I saved his life that he used to do odd jobs around our house out of gratitude. Well, not so much odd jobs as bizarre jobs - painting the curtains with soup and nailing bacon to the bannisters. He was a likeable lad, with a cheeky smile and inexpertly cauterised stumps. He never had any money and would have starved to death if Father hadn't have taken pity on him. After Tommy had done a few chores for us Father would give him a shiny red apple and all the effluent he could eat. The local children used used to tease him about his poverty - they would shout "Pauper!" at him in the street and pelt him with giraffe dung. He always took the abuse with good humour, possibly because the one time he fought back they had cut his arms off and murdered his parents.
Of course, the children met with a sticky end when the Nice Brigade caught them teasing Tommy. There was an almighty scuffle and the Brigade dragged the children off to the gas chambers in the church basement. We never did find the remains. Tommy left shortly after - he became so poor that he could no longer afford reality, and had to go and live in an alternate dimension. We managed to find him a nice one operated by a demonic entity called Vilrath who used to play Canasta with Grandpa. I still have a photo somewhere.
It wasn't long after Tommy left that the Nice Brigade disbanded. They finally realised that murdering people wasn't actually very nice, so they had to kill themselves. Sad, really - they forgot to cancel their newspapers beforehand.
Come to think of it, I once patented a design of vibrating wardrobe. I have no idea why - it may have been a bet with Corkhill. We were always daring each other to do silly things. I remember betting Corkhill tuppence that his wife couldn't break down the door to their freezer room from the inside. He was convinced she could, and locked her in there with the refrigeration unit switched on. He wouldn't admit defeat for three days, by which time she had frozen solid. I took his tuppence and helped him thaw her out with a hairdryer. He got his own back though - the tuppence was cursed, and for the next six months I was followed everywhere by the skeletal corpse of a dead Nazi officer. It was a terrible nuisance - when I slept it would catch up to me and ram it's bony fingers up my nose. I tried everything to get rid of it, from exorcism to go-go dancing. Eventually Corkhill's wife took pity on me and told me it haunted the owner of the tuppence. I threw the coin through the window of a television studio and that was the last I saw of the Nazi skeleton. I believe it writes soap operas now.
The most dangerous bet we ever thought up was when Corkhill offered me five pounds if I could drink forty-two gallons of bleach without going to the toilet. I nearly managed it as well... Can't remember what happenned after the vomiting started... something to do with blood and purple goo... a red thing, could have been purple as well... more things... stomach lining... agony, darkness... screaming... a ... screaming, yes screaming...
...Where was I? Oh yes, Old Corkhill. A lovely chap...
All text copyright and intellectual property of Stuart Ashen