Happy Campers

The Burial of the Sardine, painted by Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

The Happy Campers encountered the Scum of the Earth at the Crossroads of Perplexing Coincidence. The Happiest Camper said to the Chief Scumbag, "Good day to you, kind sir. What a happy day, is it not?"

The Chief Scumbag grimaced then replied, "Get fucked asshole!"

"Oh dear," said the Happiest Camper, "I do apologise if we have offended you and your friends in any way."

The Chief Scumbag frowned, hawked a gob of yellow-green phlegm upon the ground, then snarled "You offended your own mother the day you were born, Camper Boy! Now get the fuck outta here before I tear you a new one!"

"My, my, my," said the Happiest Camper, "you seem to be a tad tetchy this glorious god-given morn. Why don't we all thank the Creator for the many blessings bestowed upon us. Now, let us prey!"

And with that the Happy Campers fell upon the Scum of the Earth like ravening wolves until every last scumbag was dead and every drop of scum sucked from the face of the Earth.

Except for one little boychild scumbag hiding behind a tree. But not for long. He was found and brought before the Happiest Camper.

"Who are you?" asked the boychild scumbag with understandable trepidation.

"We are elongated ridges on the floor of each lateral ventricle of the brain," replied the Happiest Camper, leaning forward to slit the boychild's throat with a kris.

The Summons of the Amulet

The gang were all there, in their usual spot behind the trees at the south end of the school grounds. They were talking about good ways to commit suicide and Tom said injecting air into your veins ‘cos that gives you a heart attack, and that’s how Bruce Lee died but they never found out who did it though.

Then Piggy said eating yourself to death, like in that movie where they ate and ate and ate and the one dude got sick and starting farting until they forced him to eat mashed potatoes and then they all screwed these hot young babes with ice cream and chocolate sauce dripping all over them.

The younger boys, JJ, Nose and Weasel said “Wicked!” and “Fully sick!” Nose got his name from the size of his nose. None of them could remember how Weasel got his name.

Just then the boys noticed Tom’s step-sister Suzie approaching. Her pale skin was dotted with freckles. She wore her frizzy red hair in pigtails. Her eyes lay deep and green behind spectacles with lenses the thickness of coke bottle glass. She had just turned seven and in her hair she wore one of the cute little bunny hairclips that daddy had bought her on her birthday.

the amulet of ouroboros

Secrets imprison knowledge, constrain understanding, obscure true pathways. Some secrets throb with power, sparkle with the colours of alchemy. Such is the secret known as the Elixir of Eternal Life. Such is the secret known as the Philosopher’s Stone.

Some secrets are tucked away at the back of your mind never to be known on pain of death… secrets carried to the grave and beyond… secrets that curl in on themselves like frightened creatures, furtive and small… hidden in places where the foul miasma of corruption marks the presence of horrors beyond imagining.

Dark knowledge lies pooled in stagnant ponds, where the stench of decay hangs heavy and close. Such is the nature of the Secret that lies forgotten and inert inside the bottom drawer of a dust-covered cabinet concealed behind the cobwebs at the back of a dark benighted chamber behind a heavy bronze-studded oaken doorway at the end of a twisted passage in the Mansion of Unremembered Things.

hags to haggis

The Scottish war-chief McMac and his war-bud Lord Mildew were heading home after a long, hard day of slaughter and mayhem.

Behind them was the whiskey-soaked battlefield upon which their foul-breathed minions had totally vomited upon the enemy — the cowardly, beef-eating English — had thrown them crying into their warm beer back to their moustachioed mothers and pink-cheeked fathers.

Mounted upon their champing war-nags, bollocks bruised and battered, the noble haggis-lovers clip-clopped their weary way up and down a lonely stretch of heather-cursed witch-land, as mountainous and boring as this very tale itself.