The invasion of the bemused.

[polymorphikos]

I have no idea where I found this origionally, but it was buried away on my hard-drive and I thought it was funny and I don't remember writing it. Anyway, if anyone finds the site then can you tell me.

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Cambridge didn’t have a great faith in the roof of his hut, chiefly because it didn’t have anything to hold it up. The poles had rotted away several years ago, and the entire structure rested upon a whim, a prayer, and a number of old milk-crates that Cambridge had stolen from the rear of the supermarket in town. Right now the roof was in an extremely precarious position, because a monster of some kind was on top of it and trying to open a way in.

Cambridge wished he still had his shotgun, but he’d sold it when the trigger fell-off (which in retrospect would have rendered it fairly useless and explained why he got so little for it off of the blue fairy). He did have an old rake, and he was brandishing it with every ounce of his malice and preparing to face the monster, which had torn a piece of sheet metal from the roof and was reaching one of its scaly arms into the hut and roaring.

“Buggr’off ye mangy bugger wid ye fish-arms’nd ye fol bret a rowrin’ o’ me ‘ouse.”

The monster stopped its roaring and tore the roof open, then dropped into the hut with a creak that didn’t speak well for the state of the floorboards. The roof followed with a tinny crash. The monster loomed up, standing seven feet and bristling with spines and hooked claws. Its yellow eyes glowed balefully and its teeth were long and the epitome of sharpness. Cambridge quaked.

“What did you call me?” said the monster.

“I sid be gone ye fish-armed, fol-bred bugger wid ye rowrin’nd ye goin’t me ‘ouse com’n elph’nt wid a ‘edeck.”

“A common elephant with a haddock?” asked the monster.

“Nay, ye daft bugger. Lik’n el’ph’nt wid a ‘eddeck.”

` “Oh,” said the monster, and proceeded to hulk menacingly.

“Wot ‘o ye won’t o’ me?” Cambridge waved his rake menacingly in spite of the fact that it was plastic and broken, and the monster stared at the old man in semi-disbelief. “Be ye one o’ de pixies come fo’ de teakettle agin?”

“The teakettle?”

“Aye.”

“No, I don’t want your teakettle. I’m actually a hideous space thing from beyond the moon. I’ve come to steal your body and use it in my arm of robot zombies I will use to crush your puny earth as an ant beneath my heel.”

“Ye ain’t o’ de boots.”

“What?”

“Nay boots. Ye canna crush nay ent beneat y’eel if ye nay boot.”

“I was speaking metaphorically.”

“Oh aye? Ah nay speak o’ de furren lingo.”

The monster sighed and sat down in the battered armchair at one corner of the hut. There was a sizzle, and a glass of something blue appeared in its hand. Cambridge eyed the monster and then sidled inconspicuously over to the teakettle, which he slipped behind a cardboard box full of cheese crackers.

“Ah ye sure yeh nay pixie?”

“Positive.”

“So ye be ‘ere fo’ de crushin’ o’ d’ents.”

“No, not for the crushing of ants. Say do you have anything to drink?” The monster had finished its glass of blue liquid.

At once Cambridge’s eyes lit up and his brow furrowed. He grasped his rake more firmly than ever and began to beat the monster thoroughly with it.

“Ye be de pixy, ye nasty bugger!” roared Cambridge, “Ye’ll not o’ me teakettle come the repsha o’ a plague o’ poltergeists. Now of wid ye, afore Ah set me dog on ye head.”

“Why, is it large?”

“Aye, ‘tis vast com a wel’n mean com a fury, wid tree ‘eds’n a bret o’ far.”

“Really?” said the monster patronisingly and filled his glass from nowhere. Cambridge paused in his admonitions and peered at the glass with incongruous calculation in his eyes.

“’ow’ve ye done dat, Pixy? Be’t ye fell magic o’ the field’n fen?”

“No, it’s science. Would you like some?”

Cambridge grudgingly accepted a glass of the stuff, and sat against one wall to spend the next five minutes sniffing it before he finally took a sip. His eyes widened and he drained the cup. It refilled unbidden and he drained it again, drenching his straggled beard with fluorescing cobalt blue.

“Do you like it?” asked the monster, “I invented it myself.”

“It be a fine brew for the fey-folk t’be spreadin’, an’ ye canna want me teakettle wid such’n emeeble think com dis a be guzzlin’ in ye fairy-caverns. Speak ye though, Pixy; be ye alon?”

The monster sighed and stretched, then scratched a flaking scale until it detached and floated to the floor like a dust mote. It pulled a little blue ball from its pocket and tapped it, and a series of clicks and whirrs came from it followed by a cat-like yowl.

“It may interest you to know that F’nngb’blfribbit and his army of laser-powered squid-people just conquered Eurasia, so whether or not I’m alone is immaterial. What you might like to know is that you will soon live on a world ruled entirely by luminous cephalopods, so I suggest you take all the necessary precautions. Me, I’m going to sit here, have a drink, and then bugger-off back beyond the moon until they find intelligent life at Proxima Centauri. By the way-“The monster leant forward unpleasantly, “-don’t try any of that funny stuff with the rake on the squid-people. There not nearly so easy-going as I.”

Several hours later, when the monster had left and Cambridge was finished re-propping his roof with the milk-crates, a knock sounded at the front door. It was abrupt and officious, and when the wire latch was removed and the door swung open it was to reveal a squid-person looking as near to condescendingly polite as such a hideous creature could come.

“Hello, sir,” burbled the squid-person, drooling from its shard-toothed gash of a mouth, “I’m here to inform you that you are now a subject of the Intergalactic Confederation of Squid-People. The ICSP hopes you realize that, although your life may undergo significant changes as you are transformed into a cephalopodan slave of the Dark Lord F’nngb’blfribbit, we hope that this will not intrude to much upon your personal space.” The squid-person smiled and raised a shiny, pointy, and thoroughly unpleasant-looking ray gun.

“Nay ’ntrested!” said Cambridge, and shut the door. A moment later it reopened on the confused and astonished squid-person, who remained so as a teakettle was handed to it with a smile.

“Apol’gise, but Ah did nay ken ye widout ye ‘at.”

The door shut, the squid-person wandered away with the conviction that it was temporarily insane, and Cambridge went to the cupboard and took out one of forty-seven identical teakettle, and proceeded to brew a handful of bluestone gravel in it.

[I, Brian]

Completely strange - and I cannea read Geordie!!

[Esioul]

Heheh very weird- I can't read Geordie at all! And why is he called Cambridge?

[Myla Starchild]

I am a Geordie! Yay for Geordies!