Hand Shandy

Things were not the same any more. People had moved on, places had changed, time was different and he was not quite what he once was. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He pulled off the duvet and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sat and cradled his head in his hands, scruffing off the sleepy feeling and messing his hair even further than it was already. A squint at the clock revealed that it was around 4am. "Hm. A lay in tonight then..." He yawned. Sleep was so transient these days. So light. He went to bed tired and woke up tired. No sleep was ever enough - not that he could sleep properly. He stumbled to the toilet and pissed half in the bowl and half down his leg and the floor. It didn't matter. Nothing really mattered any more. He walked away without flushing or washing his hands and stumbled down the stairs through the inky blackness and murky shapes. The darkness was kind of nice. Cold, peaceful and calm. No ringing phones, no talki...

Trace Darrk was no ordinary rabbit. Part fur, part cyborg fused mechanoid killer, part carrot powered zen ninja, he was as close to the perfect pet sized killing machine as you could get. Cold as steel in a winter wonderland, and about as fluffy as a bag of grumpy sharks on a hot afternoon's trip to ikea. He quietly opened the skylight, dropped his tibetan yaks hair rope through the hole and slinked down it into the darkness. Once inside, he surveyed the scene. Two guards patrolling directly below and two more at the door. They were all the same - Chicken assasins! They must be guarding something good. Where there are Chicken assasins, there is trouble. Who ever had hired him for this job was certain of something, the bounty was hot property and the trouble would be hotter. No questions asked - Trace was the rabbit for the job. He slowly started to swing on the rope from left to right, his special order Tabi ninja shoes gripping it between his large toes. At the highest p...

Condensation dripped onto the gleaming black marble floor of the papal bathroom, sending ripples across a pool of sudsy bath water which shimmered in the reflected light of a thousand candles lining the similarly black marble walls of the cavernous chamber. Pope Danzig reclined in his sunken bath and gazed upwards at the clouds of steam and incense partially obscuring the bas relief frieze depicting The Fall of Man in, for dramatic effect, black marble against his bathroom ceiling, and sighed, allowing his eyelids to droop as he contemplated the recent demise of his foe. Word of Beefheart's death had reached him within moments of the martyrdom of the entire VII Fleet at what would come to be known as the Holy Battle of Port Salut, and had come as something of a disappointment. That his arch enemy should die an ignomineous but swift death due to a mechanical failure rather than a slow, agonising death at the inquisitorial hands of Mother Church Inc. pained Danzig. Oh yes, he had spe...

Beefheart sat in stunned silence for a moment, jaw gaping, searching for a suitable opener. "- ", he began, then stopped. "Uh...", he ventured. "OK", shrugged the doppelganger. "We'll start. We have assumed this form partly to conceal our true nature from you, but also partly to get your attention. We brought you here for a reason and we went to great lengths to make sure no one else would know where you were so we'd have enough time to tell you what you need to know before we send you back." He smirked at Beefheart and took a long drag from his cocktail. "Back? ...from the dead...?" slurped Beefheart through his own drink. His gaze drifted toward the ocean and the two naked giggling figures splashing in the surf. "But maybe I like being dead...." His train of thought was rudely disrupted by being slapped hard across the face. Head swimming, he dragged his attention back to the sight of his own face glaring angri...

In these enlightened times, most right thinking persons (as opposed to " Right" thinking") were against the killing of sentient or even semi-sentient beings for pleasure. There were, of course, a few exceptions and the hunters were quite vociferous in their opposition to laws banning the killing of other life forms solely for personal gratification. Politicians, lawyers and activists wrangled for centuries until at last a solution was arrived at which all concerned finally - however grudgingingly - agreed to. The rationale was this: If the hunters want to hunt, let them - but let them hunt each other. There were a few token voices of dissent but secretly even the hunters were overjoyed. At last, they would get to waste someone with a gun and no one would call a bad on them. And so it began, the great Hunting Forest Reserve planets of Ursa Major. The rules were simple: 1. To avoid anyone gaining a tactical advantage, all hunters were to carry biometrically tagged weapons ...

Momentarily blinded by the exhaust of yet another Arcturan Porn Freighter, Beefheart instictively threw up his hand to protect his eyes and was so startled to actually see his own hand he flung himself backwards into - to his further shock - a sandbank. Looking down at his own body which had been so noticeably absent from view for the past three days, Beefheart found it as disconcerting as if he had encountered a corpse in his bed and scuttled backwards across the sand in a futile attempt to escape it, stopping abruptly seconds later as his back hit an immovable obstacle. Sweating, heart racing, Beefheart closed his eyes for the first time in three days and forced himself to breathe normally, relishing the sensation. Gradually he allowed his awareness to expand beyond his own panic to begin to take in his environment. Warm sand. Cool breeze. Salty smell. Good start. He opened his eyes cautiously and, squinting against the glare, took in the vista before him. From the surf line twenty y...