SINGLE PALE MALE

OR

I KNOW, WHAT! YOU? DID?

LAST! CHRONICLES.

Whatever it was, it was outside. The breathing was heavy, sickly. The door knob turned.

"Argh!" Igor started, and the rest followed suit.

"Argh!"

The door began to open and the screaming became even more stressful and ear-piercing.

"Argh!"

The door swung open rapidly on its hinges. There stood a crippled figure, bent, covered in blood.

"Argh!" Igor cried. "I mean Gorf! I thought you were dead."

"Nether," Gorf replied breathlessly. "I am Gorf Thuperhero Exthoardianire!"

"Yey!"

"The killer ith," Gorf said, raising his hand. "It’th . . . ah, my hand, so heathy . . . can barely lift hand. Must tell who killer ith . . . can’t, tired, weak. Killer ith . . . in room . . . ith . . ."

He fell forwards on the floor and stopped moving. There was seemingly a fresh wound on his back.

"Not again!" Igor exclaimed.

"Well," NTM considered, "it must be one of the new comers."

"Yes, the newcomers." They all groaned, licking their lips and then wondered where that came from.

The space in the room rippled suddenly. "Ah, sorry," Blinky admitted, "that was me. It should work this time." He flicked a switch on his watch thingy and the room collapsed in on itself.

Seconds later they came out of a weird trippy dizzy spell and looked around. They were still in the room.

"Was this meant to do anything?" Igor questioned.

"Yes, we should be in the year 1918"

"Where?" Gamblor asked.

"I don’t know."

"As far as I can see, we are still in the palace." Al said

"Look outside," Blinky replied waving his hands around carelessly.

"Oh, he doesn’t look happy," Al observed, looking out of the window.

"Who is it?" Igor asked.

"I don’t know. He has this small, thin moustache, and a funny, pointy hat."

"Oh my God!" Bob cried out. "It’s the Kaiser!"

"Run that by me one more time," Al suggested.

"He was the emperor of Germany from 1888 to 1918," Bob explained.

"Aha, and that would mean that . . ."

"We must be at the end of the war, judging by the expression on his face. Germany wasn’t doing very well at this time."

"No," Bill ventured. "I thirnk I would lerk like thet irf a whole room creshed into my erfice."

"Yis, certainly Birl," Phil agreed.

"I don’t think he has even noticed us," Magnio put in.

"Yeah," they all concurred.

"What should we do?" Daemina asked.

"Lets go talk to herm," Phil and Bill suggested, climbing out of the window.

"But . . ." Al started, but realised that everyone else was following the Kiwis, so he went with the flow.

Kaiser Wilhelm had been sitting at his desk, stroking his withered arm. He contemplated the war thingy. It really wasn’t going that well, was it?

"Mmm, Austria-Hungary," he considered.

"Blast that Franz Ferdinand, can’t take a bullet!" Wilhelm screamed.

NTM blushed as he heard this, he remembered how he had been there in 1914 when the Archduke was kind of assassinated. In a twisted, cryptic kind of way you could say that he was responsible.

"I was only shooting pigeons!" NTM cried out aloud.

He received an assortment of odd looks from the people in the room.

"Who are you?" The Kaiser asked.

"Ah," NTM responded, "we are . . . uhm . . . we’re people from the future."

"K," the Kaiser shrugged.

The small bed in the corner moved, its covers rustled. Suddenly the covers were thrown back and a large-breasted woman sat up.

"Ah," Hummana sighed, she felt refreshed after her sleep. "Mr like Al?" she called. "Where are you or something?"

She was meant to have a meeting with Mr Al. at 10:30, it was now 11:00pm. "Oh, well or something." She climbed out of the bed and went to the door, opened it.

"Um or something," she thought. There was something different here surely.

Part of the hallway was still there, but it ended at a certain point, with a jagged edge. Beyond that was a wall made of brick. The floor was on a slight slant.

She walked up the hall anyway and found that she could go no further than about twenty feet. She stopped near a pot plant.

"This is like weird or something," she commented to the pot plant.

"Armllngm," It replied.

"Aha or something," she listened thoughtfully.

"Ah," the pot plant confirmed.

Wait a minute or something, her mind said. As far as I can tell from my database pot plants don’t talk or something.

"Mr. Pot Plant, like are you talking or something."

"I’m . . . not a . . . pot plant,"’ it responded slowly.

"Aha or something," Hummana decided.

"Hello," it said as a small, shrivelled creature stepped out from behind it. "What’s your name?" the creature asked.

"Um, it’s like Hummana or something."

"That’s . . . a nice . . . name." The creature commented.

"Where . . . are . . . the others?"

"Others or something?"

"Please take me with you!" Kaiser Wilhelm pleaded.

"Get him off me," Al shrieked. "He won’t let go of my leg.

"Don’t leave me here."

"Should we take him with us?" Igor asked.

"Perhaps," Blinky began, "but that would kind of defeat the purpose of the fish."

"Ba?" Al asked.

"Sorry, just a saying from my time. It means that it would be with Moose."

"Squa?"

"It . . . ah, don’t worry, we’ll take him."

Wilhelm jotted down a note on a piece of paper. "Gone to Holland, see ya later, or not. Say goodbye to family, please feed Mittens."

The troop of 17 climbed through the window and seated themselves in the comfortable chairs before Blinky prepared his watch thingy.

"If you open your legs just slightly," he said, "the feeling you get is that little bit better."

"That’s sick!" NTM squealed

"Way ahead of you Blinky," Gamblor stated, comfortably spreading his legs while sitting on the armchair, noticing his left cheek wondering of momentarily as Blinky began the time travel process.

Strange things can happen between the starting point and the destination point in time travel. Our heroes noticed this. Not least of all Igor who found herself in an engrossing conversation with her left foot, swapping recipes and home made contraceptive methods.

Insalubrious Regurgitation Catalyst was rather freaked out by her right arm turning into a trumpet, playing the tune to ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’.

Al noticed, quite unpleasantly, that his thyroid gland had wondered off briefly and returned later with complaints of a headache and its imminent pregnancy.

Countless other things happened in this abnormally long time travel including Bob’s eyes turning into two big chicken Mcnuggets, and NTM having a large red tractor become attached to his left buttock.

However long it seemed it only lasted thirty nine seconds.

A bemused camel ran off quickly after having only just appeared in the dry, red field. Stupid Humans, it thought. "Camels best friend indeed!" it scoffed at a small shrub before disappearing on the horizon.

One minute after it left a small chunk of a building appeared in its place. From it a voice could be heard, a distinctly German voice. "This doesn’t look like Holland!"

A large group of individuals jumped out of the window of the chunk, seemingly confused.

"There may have been a few miscalculations," Blinky explained.

"How the hell did we end up here . . . here in, I don’t know, wherever the hell it is?"

"We’re in Australia!" Al squealed with delight. "My homeland!"

"Fuck this stupid country!" Al screamed. "Why is it so fucking big? You can walk forever and never get anywhere. Damn Burke and Wills!"

"I don’t know if you could blame it on them, Al. Anyway, calm down, we are trying to avoid an R-rating here," Igor commented.

"I will fucking kill them!"

"Aren’t they already dead?" Igor asked.

"Good old Igor," Al commented sarcastically, "Always worried about the specifics."

"Let’s not get hysterical," NTM suggested, "we will be alright. There has to be a town around here somewhere. Any minute now we will come across some nice quiet town or farm house at least."

Our heroes had wandered into a dense bushland a few days before, it was thick with irritatingly dry, pointy and small shrubs amongst the large trees. They had left the chunk of palace behind and were starting to wish they hadn’t. They had with them some of their bags, with a few clothes, and previously some food which had been eaten in the first half hour.

Yesterday they had celebrated Phil and Bill’s birthday by eating sticks. Life had been better and they were starting to wonder whether they would ever see the graceful coast of the great land of yFalminica again.

"We will surely die," Al said enthusiastically.

"No you won’t," a German accent answered. It was slightly different from the Bavarians’ accents.

"Who the hell are you?" Gamblor yelled accusingly at the tall man who had stepped out of the bush, a rotting parrot carcass sitting in his breast pocket.

"I am Aussiebushman! Brilliant hero and connoisseur of bush food. I will save you, mates"

"Aussiebushman?" Al thought. "But you sound German."

"I don’t know what you are talking about." Aussiebushman avoided their glances. "I am bonza Aussie, mate."

"Ah," Al said knowingly. "No real Australian talks like that!"

"OK, perhaps I’m not Australian. But I have lived in the bush for almost all of my life. I know it like the back of my hand."

The group peered at the back of his hands. It was covered with scribbles, pointless little drawings and vulgar four letter words. "Help me!" was written on his right index finger, "Where is my cummerbund?" scrawled on his left thumb. On the back of his left hand was a small illustration of an upside down (from his perspective) gum tree. It was labelled ‘Gum tree scheme’, annotated underneath was ‘a sure way to make money, not like these other dodgy pyramid schemes.’

"Gees, she is attractive," Gamblor murmured in Ironic Rowboat Cereal’s direction, "I mean, I think he is mad."

"And you still have your accent?" Captain Homes de Pants asked.

"OK! Please, stop the interrogation," Aussiebushman exclaimed. "I am the only survivor from a plane crash two days ago."

"That is really pathetic," Al judged, "I bet you have been eating sticks and stuff."

"No, actually I have survived by eating a native berry, they are quite abundant."

The jaws of the group fell a metre or two, slapped the ground. "I can’t believe it!" Daemina cried. "We have been eating twigs and leaves for almost two weeks, he has been dining on Berries!"

"What?" Aussiebushman scoffed. "Twigs? Ha ha ha ah aha ha aha ah!" He laughed at the group, as they blushed with shame.

"Come on, come to my camp."

The path to Aussiebushman’s camp was fortunately short and rather free of any evil looking creatures or poisonous Armadillos. They were all accordingly thankful.

"It’s not much," Aussiebushman admitted, "But it is home for now."

Each of the people in the group had to collect their rather disobedient chins from the ground. Aussiebushman had apparently constructed intricate tree houses, made of bark, sticks, leave, bones, and grass.

There, in three large trees was one large, multi- storey, interconnected house.

"How the hell did you make this in the short time that you have been here?" Al asked.

"Oh, it’s nothing. Just something I threw together." He seemed somehow embarrassed. "If any of you want to have a shower, the bathroom is in the second tree."

"Wha?" Igor inquired.

"Make yourselves at home."

That night each of the members of the group had found their own place to sleep. Al, NTM, AFOC and Igor sat with the Kaiser, Blinky and Aussiebushman telling their stories.

"And that’s how I invented the digital watch," Al concluded.

"That’s the biggest load of crap," Igor theorised.

"It’s certainly more plausible," Al retorted, "than you being the double for Ginger Rogers."

"So," Aussiebushman said, "How did you become time travellers?"

"Well," Gamblor explained, "We aren’t really the time travellers. Blinky is. We just came along with him to get away from this psycho serial killer."

"Shit!" Al cursed. "I totally forgot about the killer! I hope we didn’t bring them with us!"

Just then, Al’s ponderment was given basis for analysis, for a terrifying scream was heard from one of the other trees.

"Argh!"

"Aw, crap," everyone said simultaneously.

"I could rerlly go for serme firsh and chirps right now, ay Phirl," Bill said.

"Yis, firsh and chirps."