Excerpts from“TALES FROM THE STAND-UP CHAMELEON”
A work in progress
Book One: “The Eternal Sidekick”
REWIND
It was The Dawn of The Gods…
REWIND:
It was five minutes before the Dawn Of The Gods. Ffegorran Llegorran The Great Cock was just ffinishing a cup of tea. Ffegorran was The Ffirst Awake; he was to employ his mighty crow ffully ffour times. To stir all the other Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes from where they slumbered beyond space and time. To waken the pantheons of the Multiverse!
He drained his mug, pulled a face when he found he hadn’t stirred it long enough and had a beak full of sugar. Then he rinsed out his mug under the tap and went out into the darkness of eternity. Here and there, flashes and sparkles of light flickered.
This light was potential.
It was the very stuff of existence, of life itself. It held within all that which would ever be, as well as everything that would never occur but might, if all dreams were made real. All possibilities explored and fulfilled. But here in this beginning there was as yet, nothing. The worlds of matter and spirit were newly formed and needed this potential to be activated. This was the task of the gods and men. To initiate the possible, it was also the doom of worlds for some would not survive long. For if all dreams might be made real, some worlds would have the misfortune of their gods being woken from bad dreams.
They slept now in the ethers and the stones, The Gods. In the waters and fiery hearts of worlds, they slumbered.
Ffegorran Llegorran The Great Cock ffilled his lungs with the crystal clear air of dawn, threw his head back, opened his great beak and…
…A sound broke forth clean and clear into the blackness opening a pinpoint of light in the air. The note of the sound changed, moving down two or three semi quavers, staccato then rising again causing blue ripples to emerge from the pinpoint before bursting with golden fireworks.
In words, the cockerel crew
“Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
Once.
In the infinite worlds and dimensions of the Multiverse an infinite number of Gods were waking up.
In the Junglid P’sha-shaaaa. Nequisha Serpent Woman pushed her head from the rotting vegetation that was and forever will be The Great Merukak. As her tail brushed a foetid piece of rotting wood, a small pink ant emerged blinking into the light. It coughed for a moment before unconsciously reaching for his fags, then realised
A: He was an Ant,
B: Ants did not smoke,
C: There were no cigarettes in the rotting vegetation of The Great Merukak and even if there were, they would be very wet!
“Shit!” Said Phsshant, and then set off following the snake goddess. She might know where to get a smoke.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
Twice.
On the desert world Cananderaa, The Wind, Ma’aal Dikara grew from a light breeze that barely caused a tremor on the thin layer of dust that covered the sand itself to build into a raging tempest. His voice gaining strength with each second until he roared in exultation.
“I AM MA’AAL! I AM MA’AAL! I AM MA’AAL!”
This concatenation dislodged a sleeping Vulture, who thought this was the best thing that had ever happened, caught the thermals and forever rode with Ma’aal Dikara for he was Kakaw The Vulture, also known as Dikara’s Hoover.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
Three times.
On a barren world of darkness and rain, a giant god kicked over a rock as he walked past. Under the rock, a small man was hiding. He had not been there before. With the gods and the heroes, he had woken into existence as a small naked man covered in blue paint hiding under a rock. He knew of nothing save that which had just occurred. Which was seeing a huge foot go flying over him, a foot that was none too clean either for that matter. He stood up and set off to follow The Foot.
For the forth and final time,
“Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
All have their part to play; the ant, the vulture, the naked blue man and Ffegorran Llegorran The Cockerel now had played his part.
Ffully ffour times he had crowed his cock-a-doodle-doo.
Ffegorran Llegorran The Cockerel now had played his part as the irresistible fforce of the ffist of Ffaartpit the God Of Just Another Ffive Minutes punched out Ffegorrans snooze button.
*****
TWO
NEXUS
Everywhere is a nexus; everywhere leads somewhere else and back. Places are connected to others in greater or lesser degrees, so a city is a bigger nexus in comparison to a small town or village. The city is bigger, so more roads, rails, rivers lead into and from it.
But some are deceptively small. One of these was as it happens also called Nexus, and it was also one of the most important. For not merely roads from neighbouring towns and villages, but a disproportionate number of roads, gates doorway and portals into other worlds and dimensions.
Its architecture reflected this as travellers from other realms liked the look of the place and stayed.
Someone born and raised in Nexus probably had the most cosmopolitan upbringing that anyone could and therefore had an especially open and friendly nature.
Smiggle Banjaxx was one of these and he was just about to take it off, He was meeting Jabberlique in half an hour and that usually meant one needed a barrier or two.
“ About two should do it for now” Said Smiggle to himself as he threw the barriers onto the cart.
In fact it took a little longer than half an hour due to the fact that a visiting minor deity passing through Nexus had a mild case of Chronolexia, or time blindness . Which meant that the flow of time of whatever locality he was in got blurred and seconds become hours, weeks become days and in the case of one comedian, someone who had once been a big star before it all went down the pan.
The last five minutes of his act dying a pitiless death in a Rochdale nightclub took three years to end.
It was the final straw, and he aged prematurely in the normal weeks that followed, before losing touch with the reality TV programme that was documenting his life and ritually slaying his agent with the psychotic puppet that had made him such a star and loved by children the world over.)
Smiggle was a small man, a greenish tint to his face and the pointed nose and ears gave the lie to his obvious Goblin extraction, but here all resemblance to those evil little buggers ended. By choice, he was most at home with either his stamps, or even better pottering in his shed with home brew. But needs must as the devil drives and his special talents made him a natural for the work he did.
That work involved Jabberlique.
