PART 2:

SWEET AND SOUR STALK

OR

I, KNOW? WHAT YOU DID? LAST

CHRONICLES!

"What did we do last chronicles Igor?" Al asked.

"I am not exactly sure."

"That could be a problem. Whoever killed Cicci knows, so if we don’t then we have no line of defence!"

"We’re not in court Al! Whatever our line of defence is it certainly cannot protect us against a psycho who wants cut us open!"

"Valid point," Al agreed. "Who could it be?"

Cleo sauntered into the light from the darkness of the side of the house. With her she carried a bloody sickle.

"Cleo, it was you!" Captain Homes de Pants cried. "We can of course still flirt, can’t we?"

"What?" She was rather confused. "I just found this sickle in the bush and I . . . Oh my God, what is that?"

"You bitch! You killed Cicci." Igor began to lunge at her but then remembered that it was Cleo who held the sickle. "Shit, she is going to kill us."

"What? No, I just found this in the bushes. I didn’t kill him."

"What did he do to deserve this? What did we do last Chronicles?" Al flung the questions rapidly.

"I don’t know what you are talking about," She turned to Captain Homes de Pants. "Sex, yes? Come on let’s get out of here."

Captain Homes de Pants dribbled hopelessly.

"Pants, you sly dog," Gamblor hooted. Pants had just worked out a response when Igor shoved him aside, pushing him into a painfully spiked cactus.

"Good the police are here! Get her! She killed Cicci!"

"Ow! Spikes!" Homes de Pants cried.

Two police officers approached Cleo, with mace and pistol drawn. "Come on, ma’am put it down."

"I didn’t do it," she pleaded, dropping the sickle.

The police men grabbed her and slapped cuffs on her wrists.

"That’s it!" NTM commended. "Justice yet again served with the yFalminican Police force."

"Who called the polithe?" Gorf asked.

"I didn’t," Igor admitted.

"Not me," Al and NTM said.

"Wasn’t me." Others added.

"It was me," Gamblor said. "No wait a minute, did you say polithe, I mean police? No, I was just gonna say that I spiked the punch."

"Gamblor you idiot!" Igor spat, "the punch was already alcoholic, you putting more alcohol in it would explain why most of the people here are drunk!"

"Bitch bitch bitch," Gamblor muttered.

It soon however became apparent that no one had called the police, or at least no one was willing to admit it.

"Doesn’t matter," Al said. "It is over now."

The crowd decided that with the killing and all it was time to go home. Everyone filed out within ten minutes, leaving the owner of the house quite confused as he arrived home.

"Well whose house was it then," Al asked. "This is 186 isn’t it?"

"No, this is 185, 186 is across the road." The man said.

"Oh." Al was embarrassed. "Thanks for the party then."

"I thought they liked me," he sobbed. "I really though that they liked me."

He cried into his cup of hot chocolate. "No one showed up, no one."

"I hate them, they have always been like this. Those bastards, I will get them!"

AT THE PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, THE NEXT DAY . . .

Two men sat in the corner of a small room, coming off the main entrance of the palace on the mezzanine level. At a small card table they ate something from a package of paper.

"Hey, Phirl," Bill said. "Dird you hear about thet murder last night? Some Beverien girl hes bin licked erp fer irt."

"Really? No I dirdn’t hear abert thet. Who irs thirs girl?"

"I dernt know. She is frerm Beveria or sometheng."

"Yes, Beveria. Irsn’t that in Colombia?"

"Nice firsh and chirps, hey Birl?"

"Yis, nice."

Let us depart temporarily from these two odd men with bizarre accents. There are better conversations to listen to, more interesting people to eavesdrop on.

Al sat at his desk, swivelling with joy in his new chair.

There was a beep from the phone. Al pressed a button that he hoped was the right one. "Yes?"

"Mr. Al The eight Bavarian delegates are here to see you or something."

"Eight? Weren’t there nine of them?"

"Yes, sir but wasn’t there like something like a murder or something?"

"Yes, of course! But, wait, no. The man who killed those kids was put in gaol wasn’t he?"

"Umm," Hummana thought deeply, "Yes, but I like meant the murder like last night or something."

"Of course! Thankyou, Hummana."

Hummana Melonlicious, Al’s co-star in And It Came To Pass™© had been working as Al’s secretary for the past few weeks as her acting career was slightly less than successful of late. Sweet Bosom, who usually filled this role had been promoted to Personal Assistant.

"Send them in," Al added thinking that perhaps it wasn’t quite obvious, to the silicon based creature that he did want to see them.

The door came open. Independent Rail Crowd stuck her head in. "Peace, Al," she said, opening the door further. "God she is attractive," a voice could be heard saying outside.

"Ah, Island Robe Catcher!" Al beamed. "Come in!"

"It’s, Illuminated Rain Cloud, Al."

"Of course it is,’ he said reassuringly. If she wanted to change her name everyday, it was none of his business.

"Welcome all! Hello Baron, Bob, Daemina, Draco, Red Hood, Egoni and Mercedes," he said as they filed in. They were an odd bunch. Daemina seemed to have a flute permanently attached to her lips, Draco occasionally coughed and spluttered everywhere (a hopeless attempt at breathing fire). Red Hood wore what her name suggests and carried around a picnic basket. Egoni looked like a combination of Sinead O’Connor, Demi Moore in GI Jane and Sigourney Weaver from Alien 3. Bob had the odd smell of gin constantly surrounding him accompanied by a thick cloud of smoke from his cigarettes. Mercedes had the unsettling composure of a BBC news reporter, but that wasn’t the least of it.

The eight Bavarians came in and sat.

"So, where’s Cleo?"

There were a few nervous coughs as a fat ass waddled in and out of the office and Al removed his foot from his mouth.

"Whoa, freak out, where did that groovy mule come from?" Irate Rocking Cantaloupe shrieked as the ass departed.

Mercedes did her best to ignore this. "We need to speak to you," She started, "on the issue of . . . " A small voice came from Al’s computer, "Mail!"

"Mail? Oh no. Thankyou I already have a mail service. yFalminican Post, very good." Al grabbed hold of one of the flowers in the vase on his desk. "Got nothing bad to say," he spoke to the flora, "about the yFalminican government or its services."

He quickly scribbled on a piece of paper and slid it over to the Bavarians. It read: ‘They are always listening’. He screamed shortly afterwards and grabbed the paper, ate it. They were always watching too, he remembered.

"Ah, yes," Mercedes began, unsure how to respond to such a display. "I think there has been a mistake, that voice that said mail, it came from your computer."

"Oh! I am sorry, I will just check what this is."

Al opened up his newest mail and read it. In large, red letters it said: "I know what you did last Chronicles."

"Oh," AL said as he fainted.

"Wake up! Al! Al!" Gorf stood above Al, slapping his face. "Thomeone, get thome water."

The crowd threw various fluids at the man on the floor. Mouth wash, detergent, urine, saliva. One man was dragged away after pulling down his pants.

"Wake up!" Igor kicked AL in the face numerous times.

"Perhaps," NTM suggested, "that would cause even more damage to him and resulting in him, oh I don’t know, slipping into a coma or something!"

"Hey," Igor defended herself. "I am the one with medical training!"

"That’s military training! Igor! What you are doing is part of your training to kill people!"

"Well, if you are going to be like that! Don’t expect me to kick you in the head when you are unconscious."

"What is all the fuss?" Al asked, coming to.

"You fainted!" Gamblor said, "What happened?"

"Oh, well, I was sitting at my desk, talking to the Bavarians when I checked my e-mail and . . . OH! MY! GOD!"

"What? What is it?"

"There was another message. It said: ‘I know what you did last Chronicles’. It can’t have been Cleo!"

"No, wait a minute," the Baron said. "She could have sent that e-mail too. She could have set it to be sent at a certain time."

"Mmm, I s’pose."

Everyone gave Al big, reassuring grins, while Inclined Ratio Calibrator drew small yellow flowers on his face.

"Peace and harmony!"

The day passed normally and Al became sure that it must have been Cleo. Everyone went home early, except for Phil and Bill who remained, discussing the days proceedings over cold firsh and chirps.

The eight Bavarian delegates sat at their table, drinking imported German beer (which had been severely frowned upon by the excessively patriotic yFalminican waiter), eating fresh salad and a large Ass roast.

The Baron ate ferociously as the other seven looked on. International Robotic Cow’s stomach churned after her first and only bite. "Whoa, I must stop eating so much!"

"I think that we will turn in." Mercedes announced.

"Yes, we can speak for ourselves you know!" Bob complained.

"You did chose me as your spokeswoman, did you not?"

"NO! Ever since that stupid Newspaper in Australia quoted you on everything and didn't mention anything we had said, you have been going on like your opinion is more important!"

"I think that now we will stop this argument," she proclaimed.

"Yes ma’am," Bob sulked.

"All eight of them went to their rooms upstairs."

[Why did you put that in quotation marks?

I don’t know, it just gives me a bit of personality I suppose. No one knows who

I am, they just assume that this story is telling itself. I want recognition damn

it!

Shutup and do your job!

Hey why are you ordering me around!? I am Guru Al, brilliant evangelist. I am

the one writing this story, Hochlor, so don’t think you are better than a

common lackey!]

So, they all went their separate ways. Red Hood arrived back in her room and quickly prepared for bed. She lifted her suitcase up onto the bed and took from it the package, which contained the information about her deepest, most dark secret.

It was a one thousand, nine hundred and six page confession, detailing her secret in eighty seven chapters and six parts. When she brought it out into the open she believed that it would probably earn her a Nobel prize. War and Peace or A tale of Two Cities were examples of children’s literature compared with this. It was the ultimate novel!

She placed it carefully on the bed and opened it. She smiled upon it. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," she read, "It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epic of belief, it was the epic of incredulity. It was the season of light . . ." She paused. There had been a sound from behind.

"Who’s there?" she asked, assuming it had been a knock on the door.

There was no answer. She left the book unwillingly and went to the door, opened it.

There was no one around. She returned to the bed and the book, humming the tune to Stalin Night *.

*A suspicious adaptation of the popular Christmas carol Silent Night, Red Hood had composed spontaneously, naming it then and there. This, she had thought would be another one of her great triumphs. She would also conquer the music world, following the literature world.

Red Hood sat on the end of the bed with the dangerously large book in her lap. As she read on, "It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. . ." she thought she caught the reflection of something move behind her in the mirror. Rather the reflection was in the mirror and the thing was moving behind her, not the reflection of something actually inside the mirror (I explain this as I know that the world is abundant with such people as David Bruce and Susie Maronie).

She lifted her head quickly, and turned around. There was nothing. Behind her was only a wall and the rest of the bed stretching out.

Red Hood hesitantly dismissed this and returned to the book. "It was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. We were all going direct to heaven . . ." Once again something flashed in the mirror. Red Hood jumped around.

"Ha ha ha," she laughed realising that it must have been the wall hanging swaying in the breeze.

She looked back to her book. Yes, a masterpiece, she thought. Perhaps she could be accused of plagiarism, but who’s to say that Charles Dickens didn’t copy off her!

"We were all going direct the other way." The sickle came down

Red Hood coughed as it tore through the fibres of her flesh in the back of her neck. Blood poured from her mouth and wound. She screamed and the sickle came down again, this time into her stomach, as the figure in the black robes pushed her onto the floor.

"It was the worst of times," the figure said in an incredibly deep voice, before it raised the sickle, allowing it to dramatically reflect the light from the moon outside and then it returned to its seemingly rightful position in Red Hood’s liver.

It was about then that she kinda died (I am trying to lighten it up as much as I can).

Outside in the hallway the other six Bavarians gathered, pounding on the door, in response to Red Hood’s screams. The Black Baron had been there first, followed by Bob. Daemina came next, then Egoni, Mercedes, Internal Ringing Capsule and Draco came last.

Approximately three seconds after Egoni arrived the screams stopped. They had ceased ten seconds before Mercedes had got there.

The Baron and Bob were attempting to barge the door down.

"We are attempting to barge down the door," Mercedes declared.

"Shutup, and help us!" Bob yelled.

The door swung open and the group vomited on seeing what was inside. Red Hood lay on the bed, arms crossed over her chest. Her entrails decorated the previously dull room. On the walls the message they had seen twice now was written in intricately detailed, bloody letters.