The Never-ending story
Okay, so I found this on my desktop, it’s dated but amusing. Seems I wrote this for a challenge some time ago. Enjoy…
The adventures of Colin and Friends
Once upon a time there was a young boy named Colin. Colin lived in a little town called Wellingborough, which as we all know readers, is a town that would have been better if it had been sectioned off by a series of dams, then flooded, in 1982.
One day, Colin was walking through Wellingborough’s Queensway district with a spring in his step, when suddenly, out of the corner of his eye he spotted something shiny and glowing in the distance. He ran as fast as his little legs could carry him, onto a grass verge to inspect this shiny wonder.
“Wow!” he exclaimed, “It’s a brand new 50 pence piece! This is surely the luckiest of days. Best I get home and show my friends, Loz and Dan!” Colin often talked to himself, in full sentences, due to growing up in Milton Keynes, where generally you’re better off talking to yourself if you require any kind of intelligent banter.
Colin got back to his house in record time that day, so excited at the prospect of this shiny new fifty pence piece.
“Loz! Look at this,” he shouted on entering the house, “I’ve found something and it’s brilliant!”.
“What is it, I’m busy writing the pseudocode that’ll form the basis for Web 3.0.”
“Look!” and Colin showed Loz the shiny new fifty pence piece, “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Actually mate, it is. Quick, get Dan, Web 3.0 and international recognition can wait.”
Colin went upstairs to Dan’s room, and found him busy organising his music collection into varying types of rock and roll.
“Dan, I’ve found this,” and Colin showed him the fifty pence piece, “I can feel something brewing in my hand, this is going to be big. Do you have any idea what powers this holds?”
“Right, let me have a look,” Dan said, grabbing it from Colin’s hand, “Well, what this looks like, is a portal to some kind of space-time continuum, cunningly disguised as a shiny new fifty pence piece”.
“Brilliant!” shouted Colin, raising his hand in the air, “to the garden!”.
Grabbing Dan’s arm, and yanking him from his chair, they made their way to the garden. Sitting down at the table, Colin carefully placed the fifty pence piece in the middle of the table, and each with one arm extended, they held a piece of it between their thumb and their forefinger.
“Right,” Dan started, “If I remember correctly, there’s only one way to open this. We’re going to need to recite the lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ – are we all familiar with that?”
Luckily, they were all massive Simon and Garfunkel fans, in particular Colin, who had bought an iPod that could hold forty-thousand songs, only to fill it with Art Garfunkel’s ‘Bright Eyes’ thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times, leaving one space for ‘Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall’.
They began to recite, and as they began the last verse…
Sail on silver girl,
Sail on by.
Your time has come to shine.
All your dreams are on their way.
See how they shine.
… the table began to tremble, and the fifty pence pieced began to hover in the air, omitting a feint orange glow. They all jumped up quickly and stepped back, with Loz forgetting the decking wasn’t particularly expansive and falling onto the barbecue.
“What’s happening?” Colin yelled, “This doesn’t look good!”
“Don’t worry Colin, we’re opening a portal. Keep a little back, I’ve forgotten most of the laws of thermodynamics, but I’m fairly sure there might be a little bang.” Dan stepped back a little further, “Oh yeah, and whatever you do, don’t look into the light.”
Meanwhile, on the floor, Loz had noticed several small balls of light appearing from the now bright glow coming from the fifty pence piece. These little balls of light were all congregating near a gap in the decking, at the base of the hot tub.
“Erm, guys,” Loz began, “I think I’m going in now… this looks ba…” Suddenly, a bright blast of white light shot out from the fifty pence piece, knocking Dan and Colin onto the ground, and sending Loz back into the barbecue.
28 seconds passed.
Colin opened his eyes first, “Loz, erm, Dan, are you guys okay?”
Dan and Loz started to move slowly, “I’m okay,” said Dan.
“Not too bad,” murmured Loz, “my head hurts a bit.”
Suddenly, a gruff voice from behind them called out, “Gentleman, arise from your stony ground and face me now.”
Turning around slowly, they cast their eyes on the most ferocious looking beast they had ever seen, more ferocious than the shabby kitten that had found it’s way into their living room one night, with a scent to rival any Wellingborough-based blonde travel agent.
From head to toe this beast was covered in coarse black hair, with 3 large, scaly fins protruding from it’s back, and claws a foot long.
“I am Rogan, and I am a Carnifosaur. The last in a line of great warriors, and heir to the throne of Raunds.”
“Erm, Raunds? But you’re from another dimension,” Dan interjected.
“Shut up human, we have a Raunds too, and it’s magnificent. A Spar on every corner and roads with no bumps.”
The Carnifosaur jumped down from the table and towered over the boys, glaring at them with each of his four eyes. “Follow me. We have work to do.”
Colin, Dan and Loz all got up and followed Rogan into Wellingborough, they were surprised that no-one was even taking any notice of this beast walking nonchalantly into the centre of town, but then, as they realised, it was nearly midday, most of them would have been drinking for the last few hours.
“Wait here,” Rogan demanded, “I’m hungry.” Without hesitation, or thought, Rogan walked up to a wandering child.
“Oh no, he’s not going to… is he?” cried Colin. But, totally surprising the boys, Rogan waited for the child to pass and walked into Greggs, grabbing himself a sausage roll and a danish pastry.
On returning, Rogan issued his latest directives, “Right gentleman, you must take me to the place you call HMV, we are looking for the holiest of cinematic delights, the Annie / Oliver boxset. I could have bought them seperately in my world, but I won’t allow them to make me succumb to that kind of thing.”
“Seriously, is that all you came here for?” asked Dan, clearly a bit disappointed.
“Well, yes, what did you expect, world domination?”
“I was hoping for something a bit more interesting than a shopping trip to buy a couple of camp musicals, are you some kind of…”
Dan didn’t have time to finish his sentence, in two strokes of Rogan’s claw, he was dead. Very dead, in pieces, most of which had ended up in a nearby clothes shop.
“Oh my god! You killed Danny!” cried Loz.
“You bastard!” finished Colin.
“Shut up, infidels!” boomed Rogan, “I will be back in one minute with my DVD.”
With that, Rogan disappeared into the shop, leaving Colin and Loz to think about their lost friend, all the good times they had, the adventures, the laughing. They were almost about to shed a tear when Rogan reappeared, with an HMV bag and a smile upon his face.
“Time for me to go boys, I need you no more.” and with that he disappeared down and escalator. They knew he was going back to the house to enter the portal, but they were in no mood to follow him.
“What do we do now?” asked Colin.
“Not entirely sure mate,” began Loz, “I guess we go back to our lives, like nothing ever happened. Might be best we don’t tell anyone about this.”
“Good call. Do we need anything from Iceland?”
Loz and Colin walked off into the abyss of freezer cabinets and cheap processed food that was Iceland. They had survived another adventure.
Meanwhile, a magpie sat looking at a shiny fifty pence piece with a feint glow, lying on a table, in a back garden quite familiar to us now, readers.
It swooped, and picked it up, flying to the nearest telephone pole to inspect it’s find, just as a hulking beast appeared in the garden where it had just flown from.
This wasn’t over.
THE END.
