by A.R.A. Owen
- Humor – Sci-Fi – 6 Pages
A gentle breeze blew down Slag Street, dust billowing in its wake past the front doorstep of the Cummy Todge pub. Ned was just putting his Treomph Bernneville away, and he felt a bitter reflection. It had been just three years since Tiko had married his Herley Dorvidson, and the thought of them both in bed together still made him feel physically sick. Still, life had to go on, and he was now married to the Elf Fauna who was pregnant with his child. He sat down on a pub bench and gazed into the sunset, his thoughts drifting like flotsam on a sewage pit. Distantly he could see the piles of hay built up like small hills, waiting as they were to be collected for use by farmer “Bastard.”
“Fucking Bollocksing Piss.” Ned muttered under his breath, for he was a man of deep meditation. “Nothing ever happens around here just lately.” He bent his head down and set about tying up his boot lace and as he did so, a huge silver shape drifted over the pub as silently as death itself, blotting out the Sun and most of the early evening light.
It came to a stop directly over the distant hay bales, yet it still filled the entire skyline from horizon to horizon. “Fuck thats all we need.” Ned muttered irritably without looking up. “More pissing rain.” In the very centre of the shimmering disk a small hatch opened and a body, tiny by comparison, was ejected. It landed squarely on the largest of the hay bales exploding it in huge plumes of dried out grass and dust. The hatchway closed and a terrifyingly over-amplified voice boomed out: “Keep your moronic Earth trash out of our galaxy or we will annihilate your entire world human scum!”
With its passenger and its message delivered, the huge ship drifted away silently until it was but another speck of light glittering away in the cosmos.
“These laces are a complete twat.” Ned muttered, still oblivious of the entire event that had just transpired. Ironic really when one considers that people at Joderal Bank Observatory would have given their right arm to witness what the ageing hippy had just passed off as a “Bit of bad weather.” Finally giving up on the knots, he stood up and stretched. “Ah well, I’d better get behind the bar. We’ve got two girly super-heroes coming around tonight.”
Fauna was just wobbling across the poolroom when she met Ned halfway across the floor. “Look what you’ve done to me.” She said, pointing at the large bump protruding outwards like an overrisen Yorkshire pudding.
“Thats basically what we humans do to females. We pup them and then we make them stay at home and do the dishes, which is really how nature designed it.”
Fauna growled something under her breath and vanished into the kitchen to do the dishes.
It wasn’t that Ned was sexist or anything, it was just a firm belief of his that women should do as they were told. (Neds view, not the authors view before you start E-mailing me with death threats e.t.c.).
The sound of two motorcycles arriving made the cash registers ring in his head, and he quickly set about polishing glasses casually behind the bar.
Two women entered presently, one dressed in a bright green “Kawasaki” paddock jacket and sprayed on leggings, blonde hair hanging in thick locks down her back, the other with long dark hair, crimped and hanging around her black bikers jacket. The latter was noticeably shorter than the other, but it wasn’t their looks that Ned noticed so much as the fact that both wore eye masks in the style of the “Lone Ranger” and “Tonto”.
“Hello ladies, what can I get you?”
The woman with the dark hair eyed him with disdain and growled in a yorkshire accent, “Eeegh lad, dorn’t yer nor oo we arr?”
Ned scratched his head. “Well if you’re going to rob the place, you might as well call back later when we’ve taken some money.”
It was the woman in the paddock jacket who spoke up next. “I am cider lady and this is my friend, the Manchurian Man mangler.”
The latter added, “Sor yerd better trait us wi some respect lad.”
The first continued, “It is our sworn duty to alleviate any kind of male chauvenism wherever we find it and wherever possible, to relieve people of the misery we call cider drinking, by selflessly drinking it all ourselves.
“Ned threw a look up at the ceiling and back down to his two strange customers. “Well thank you for filling me in on that one, now would you like something to drink?”
The Manchurian Man Mangler didn’t like the tone of his voice. “Eeegh yorn better be cerful lad, or Cider Lerdy ere’l gi yer ferce a batterin appen she will.”
Suitably chastised, Ned repeated his question in a more civil tone.
Cider Lady scanned the bar with her sharp super hero vision for a good while. Because of her super hero metabolism, she had to be very very careful with what she had to drink. After calculating the possible alcoholic effects of several different brands of highly intoxicating drinks, plus several hundred combinations of those drinks, she made a perfectly balanced, computationally accurate decision. “I’ll have a pint of cider please.”
Nodding, he turned to the other woman. “And pray, what will you have?”
After a pause of a split second the other replied, “Eeegh arll have tore. An less o yorn lip lad.” After paying for their drinks, the women seated themselves by the Jukebox, where presently the Scorpions began to blast out.
Fifteen minute went by and found Ned busily flicking peanuts across the bar. The doors swung open and the next customer entered. It was a man who was quite tall with very tidy hair and a suit. Ned looked him up and down before saying: “We only serve bikers in here mate. Why don’t you go a mile further down the road to the Bulging Nutsack?”
In reply, the man dipped into his coat and produced a small wallet which contained a passport type booklet of information and a photograph. “My name is Ferret Boulder, I work for the S.P.S. That is the Strange and Paranormal Society. I wondered if you had seen anything strange earlier this afternoon?”
Ned gestured over to his super heroin customers who were saving the world from the mad cider disease.
“Well yes I agree that they are very weird and probably warrant an investigation in themselves, but I meant…..” Boulder leaned closer to the bar and after looking both right and left, muttered in a hushed voice “……..U.F.O. activity?”
Ned spluttered, choking with laughter. “U.F.O. activity? U.F.O. activity? I hardly think I would miss something like that mate! But if I do see anything strange like little green men for instance, I’ll let you know!”
Boulder made a half hearted attempt at hiding his irritation. “Just ring me at this number will you if anything weird happens?” He scribbled a name and number down on a small scrap of paper and passed it across to Ned. “I’ll have a rum and black current please.”
Ned took the small piece of paper and set about getting the man his drink.
Neither of them noticed the labored mechanical noise growing gradually louder by the second. Boulder sat down in the seat opposite to the two women and began to ask them questions. Suddenly the smoke alarm went off and Ned jumped over the bar to waft a newspaper beneath it. “Damn this stupid contraption! It goes off for the slightest excuse!”
The excuse in this case was standing in the doorway, smoke rising from its scorched fur. Scorched that is from the sustained thrust of an extra-terrestrial deep space vehicle leaving Earths gravity at the speed of light. “Is something burning?” Cider Lady enquired.
“Yes, its me I’m afraid.”
All eyes turned towards the door where they beheld for the first time in five years, the cybernetically reproduced features of one that was believed lost to mankind forever. One who was the last best hope for mankind. One whose fame was so widespread, that even after all this time, his face could still be found imprinted on T-shirts and underpants.
They beheld Binkle Bunny.
For those of you out there who have perhaps been dead for the last few years, I will explain. Due to a terrible series of events involving some farm machinery, some nasty bastards and a nuclear war sometime in the future, and after being warped back in time by Doctor What in his time travelling fridge freezer, Binkle Bunny had been rebuilt. The mad Doctor What had restored Binkle from a bloodied mass of fur and bones into the finest mechanical beasty that the world had ever seen. He stood six foot tall on two powerful mechanical legs finished off in the finest highly polished chrome. His chest was ribbed externally by a cage made from the strongest ultra-hardened battle strength steel. His arms were basically the same construction as his legs except they had workable hands on the ends. His neck was reinforced with tungsten struts, his face was half silver and half fur. On the silver side of his face, an electronic infra red eye shone scarlet. His nose was was still a furry little rabbit nose that twitched, but one of his ears was obviously made out of some kind of polycarbonate residue.
Standing in the doorway now however, Binkles Chrome work was somewhat charred as was his fur.
“Come in and shut the door. I hope you’re going to buy a drink.”
The entire pub turned back to its own business, Binkle wirred and clanked his way to the bar. “I’ll have a gin and tonic, shaken not stirred.”
Ned was already preparing his drink. “Ice?”
Binkle shook his head. “No thanks.”
The whole room fell into an awkward silence. All eyes were now firmly fixed on the rabbit again, suspicion written in every pair.
“Let me get this straight. You, Binkle Bunny, do not want any ice in your drink?”
Glancing around himself somewhat nervously, the cyborg rodent shrugged. “No I don’t. What of it?”
Suddenly Boulder kicked his table over yelling “Fuck me! An alien!” Producing a gun he began to let off rounds which consequently bounced off the armored mammal.
“Bloody good job I didn’t ask for a slice of lemon.” he muttered to himself.
Ned had dived behind the nearest piece of cover which just happened to be his wife.
Binkle turned to face his attacker and suddenly produced a gun from out of his leg.
Ned was livid. “Hey! Thats a direct rip off of a well known movie!”
Binkle took absolutely no notice as he calmly shot the gun out of Boulders hand.
Cider Lady and the Manchurian Man Mangler were on their feet in an instant. Cider Lady kicked Boulder straight in his boulders. He doubled over and the Manchurian Man Mangler brought her knee up into his face. Boulder fell to the floor half conscious, the Man Mangler started swearing too badly to write down and hopped around holding the knee she had just used. “By eck lad, that were mar bad knee that were appen.”
Cider Lady added with a growl: “Yes and those were two full pints you knocked over.” To prove that women were indeed the gentle sex, both women gave Boulder an additional kick in the rocks before pinching his wallet.
When Boulder had been taken to hospital by his sidekick, Dorna Wooly, the atmosphere in the pub began to settle back into its normal (using the term loosely) self. Normal that is for a pub containing a cybernetically re-produced rabbit, two phsychotic feminist super heros, and a pregnant elf.
Ned busied himself cleaning glasses painfully wishing that the rest of the Cummy Todge M.C.C. would get back from the Isle of Man to buy some beer. Over the noise of the jukebox playing “We are the diddy men,” which Cider Lady insisted was the best record she had ever heard in her life, Ned heard a motorcross engine die down and stall in the car park.
Presently a man staggered in and he looked to be in severe pain. He waddled up to the bar and surely enough his eyes were bloodshot from some hidden torment.
“What can I get you stranger?”
The man seemed to be in a deep trance but he managed to gasp out: “A pint of lager and a crow bar please.”
Ned’s expression went blank and he asked: “A crow bar? I don’t follow you. What kind of drink is that?”
The stranger shook his head with rapidly vanishing patience. “No I mean a real crow bar to get rid of this.” Turning his back to face Ned, his plight became only too apparent, for attached to the mans backside was his motorcycle seat, held in place by several six inch nails.
“Oh, you’ve had your seat recently recovered by Puppy Stranglers Seat Coverings P.L.C. I’ll fetch the antiseptic and some pliers.”
Being a super hero himself, Binkle Bunny shouted across in his enhanced robotic voice, “Don’t worry, I’ll get on to it right away!” Before anyone could stop him, the mechanical rodent had copped hold of the bike seat and ripped it off the strangers arse in a plume of blood, torn jeans and some pretty colourful language.
He turned to the rabbit and spoke softly, blood trickling down his legs. “Why thankyou very much you much loved and indeed deeply inspiring creature of vast good repute, with your shiny little bunny nose and your fondness for helping people in their hour of need. Your approach to the public and their problems has indeed pointed the way forward to us all during these dark and unpleasant times. It is therefore with the deepest regret that I have to do this.” The stranger gave Binkle an appologetic smack in the teeth, knocking the cybernetic creature backwards into Cider Lady, making her spill her pint.
The blonde haired woman was full of gentle understanding, and it was due to this gentle understanding that she picked up a table and gave it a sympathetic shove across the bar, straight into the back of the strangers head.
The stranger muttered “Hmm this is sadly one of the increasingly common stories of violent malevolence in todays society and indeed a problem that is spreading, not only into our public houses, but into our shopping malls, factories and schools.” Then he passed out into a coma that would last for five months and with brain damage that would make him believe he was King Edward the Third for the rest of his life.
As the ambulance drove away, Ned muttered to himself in irritation. “Well, what an excellent night. Two customers rushed off to hospital within an hour of each other and its only nine thirty.” Throwing the now quite intoxicated super heroines a dirty look, he began picking up the wreckage off the floor. He would have barred them both if he hadn’t expected to then be their third victim. As he dropped the last of the broken glass into the bin, the double doors at the front flung open to reveal two three foot tall green men sporting ariels. “What the fuck have we got here now?” Ned growled.
Both little men waddled up to the bar and the one on the right spoke to him in a high pitched voice. “Earthling, we have travelled many jingbats to your planet. Zogbollux and I, Pizzflabs, require the refreshment you earthlings refer to as lager.”
Bending over in order to reach them, Ned twanged the little ariel on the head of the nearest offender and snarled: “You think I was born yesterday don’t you? With your twangy ariels and your green paint. Bog off out before I have you arrested. Under age drinkers nearly cost me my licence last year, so go and ask your mummy for a lemonade.”
The little men turned to face one another and stared trance like for a good many minutes. It wasn’t very often that a scouting party from the Narl invasion fleet was insulted in such a manner. Then again, being little green men was an unfortunate image for the most feared alien repression fleet in the galaxy.
Turning to face Ned, the man that had remained silent until now, made himself heard but not entirely understood. “Very well, we will forgo your human type refreshments. However, we will have to fribble your narn.”
Ned was losing his patience with the kids and he suggested that they run home to their parents before he slapped them around the earhole. Then one of the offenders produced what Ned presumed was a water pistol. “Oh I see. Ok, shoot me and then go home.”
The Narl invasion fleet scouting party thought that this was a good idea and subsequently a thin beam of blue light shot out, hitting Ned right between his legs fribbling his narn goodstyle. Abruptly the beam stopped and as the little green men turned away, the sickly smell of burnt flesh and frazzled pubes assailed the mans nostrils.
“We’ll be back.” Both little green men stated in unison.
As the ambulance men stretchered Ned into the back of the vehicle, Binkle Bunny, Cider Lady and the Manchurian Man Mangler stood watching. The blue light flashed on and the ambulance sped off, leaving the three figures to stare after it.
One awkward silence later, Cider Lady spoke up: “Well, the ciders quite nice but this pubs a bit weird.” The other two murmured in agreement, happy in the knowledge that this episode of Binkle Bunny was now over.
Will Neds narn be permanently fribbled?
Will Cider Lady ever succeed in her quest to rid the world of all apple based drinks and will anyone decipher the attempt at a Manchester accent?
Find out in the next thrilling installment of “Binkle Bunny.”
Binkle Bunny is Copyright of A.R.A. Owen.
