Jack and the green chalk: Part 1

Jack and his mother were hungry, but there was no food in the house. Nor any money. So Jack's mother, Emily Higginbottom, gave Jack some precious items of jewellery to porn at the pornshop, "Cash-R-Us".

"And don't ya take anything less than thirteen spondulecks for the lot, ya worthless lump o' shite" growled Emily Higginbottom affectionately, scratching her lousy hair with gnarled and twisted fingers.

Jack carefully wrapped the precious items of jewellery in a handkerchief of somewhat dubious cleanliness, hoisted his swag upon his narrow, bony shoulders, and prepared to set off upon his mission. Not, unfortunately, before receiving a painful slap to the ear-hole. Preemptive punishment administered, Emily stared hard and loathsomely into the face of her offspring, close enough such that her rancid breath congealed like greasy dew drops on the ends of his eyelashes. Then she barked the following gruffness: "...and mind ya don't dawdle, or you'll cop it good and hard when ya get back!"

"Yes mum," murmured Jack respectfully wiping the drool from his chin, his cow-brown eyes downcast and dolorous.

"Oh I almoss fergatt. Take this here charm-on-a-string with ya. Who bears the charm unharmed shall charm this maid's foolish heart," giggled Emily repulsively, reading the inscription on the back.

"But mum, that's a bit not right, aint it," said Jack uneasily, "I mean, like, 'cos if I puts it on, like, and you me mum and all..."

"What it means, ya potty mouthed grub," snarled Emily, clouting Jack on the head with a saucepan, "is that if ya gets yourself captured, being the stupid fool that you are, and maybe gets yourself tortured a bit, so I caint recognise ya, like if your face was torn off, and your tongue cut out so ya couldna talk, if that was to happen to ya, and if you was able to find yer way home agin, even if yor eyes was burnt out, well then, with the charm-on-a-string round your scrawny neck, mayhap I'll let ye in and settle ye down, and make a nice warm cuppa tea."

Gratefully and humble-like, Jack accepted the charm-on-a-string from his ever-loving mum, and off he went, with a spring in his step and a throbbing in his ear.

-*-*-*-

Now in those days the way to the pornshop Cash-R-Us wound wearily through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in the middle of which was the Stunted Part, a stony meadow where the annual dwarf-tossing festival was held. It was widely acknowledged that the Festival did not reflect well upon the Kingdom. In fact, Good King Wenceslas himself, in the second month of his reign, had seriously considered prohibiting the Festival but had been persuaded not to by the leader of the dwarves, Billy Cruikshanks.

"The thing is, your Majesty," Billy had said, "there's not enough jobs for us in the Kingdom --- the Long Pigs (sorry, I mean the honourable tall ones) hold us in such contempt that the only way we can live is by conspiring in our own humiliation. The dosh we get from the Tossery is just enough to keep the wolves from the door."

"But it's degrading and ugly," the noble King had replied, "and it's my responsibility to ensure that degradation and ugliness are uprooted and destroyed wherever they may be found in our swell Kingdom."

Billy Cruikshanks had never been backward in coming forward. "Forgive me your Highness," Billy had said, "but how would that help the vertically challenged? Will we starve to death for the sake of removing ugliness from the Kingdom? Would not that starvation itself be a great big chunk of ugliness?"

"Mmmm," had been the musing sound emitted by Good King Wenceslas, "a conundrum indeed... a dilemma wrapped within a paradox inside a bamboozlement. Leave us now. We will dwell upon these matters more-ishly."

...continued, unfortunately for you

... published in: NIGHTMERRIES now available at Amazon.com

Falling asleep may be the last thing you do. Ever. This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet.

More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously illustrated by over 20 grotesque images you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

Immature content. Adults maybe.

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NIGHTMERRIES: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF DARKNESS This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet. More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously illustrated by over 20 grotesque images you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

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MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS A disturbing repository of quotably quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments.

MASTRESS & OTHER TWISTED TAILS, ILLUSTRATED: an unholy corpus of oddities, strangelings, bizarritudes and peculiaritisms

FIENDS & FREAKS Adults-only Tales of Serpents, Dragons, Devils, Lobsters, Anguished Spirits, Gods, Anti-gods and Other Horse-thieves You Wouldn't Want to Meet in a Dark Kosmos: 4th Edition

HAGS TO HAGGIS Whiskey-soaked Tails of War-nags, Witches, Manticores and Escapegoats, Debottlenecking and Desilofication, Illustrated