A FEAST IN A FIELD (CHAPTER 4)

Janie Cobweb first saw the light of day in December 2007, when i was writing a blog for another well known blogging site called MYSPACE, due to popular demand i found myself writing a whole series of related blogs, almost 30 in number and since then i have reworked them and issued them as a paper back book available to purchase on lulu.com.


What follows here are faithful renditions of the original blogs and not those published.





A FEAST IN A FIELD.

Artie Archer ran like the wind once it crossed his mind that he was safe from burning. "It's all right whistling a merry little tune and trying to look anonymous, but the best thing to do is to get away from Billy of the Big Belly as quickly as I can," he'd told himself – and had started running like he'd never run before.

While he was running, forcing one leg to lope in front of the other, he got to thinking. After all, he was the village writer and in that noble position had been called on to do a great deal of really hard thinking, especially when it came to complex plot lines in which a really good person needed to be extricated from this or that unbelievably dangerous situation.

"This is a strange village," he huffed and puffed to himself as he ran along. "To think that in the age of Playstations and crotchless knickers people still think it's appropriate to burn other people alive, and actually delight in it! It reminds me of tales of cultural revolutions when the spirit of intelligence was being cleansed from weird and wonderful societies in the past, and how these days we look back on then as being primitive and heartless!"

"What on Earth are you rambling on about?" asked a voice at his elbow, and when he glanced round in shock it was to see that a rotund individual with whiskers and wearing a bright red coat was running along by his side, matching him step for step, one who had he himself been in the possession of a big round stomach would have been also matching him wobble for wobble.

Artie pulled up to a screeching standstill and fluttering clouds of dust sprung into the air as if propelled by tiny bursts from minute explosives.

"I thought they were going to burn you!" he gasped. "I thought they had it in for you good and proper! I thought that they wouldn't give up until they had a jolly good fire a-blazing and you were a pile of sweating ash!"

The fat man stopped running just as suddenly, and created an equally exciting cloud of dust. He pulled a jolly face and bellowed "Ho Ho Ho!" several times as he contrived to get his breath back.

"Nice of you to be so concerned as to try and rescue me," he panted with a great deal of irony laced in his voice.

"I would have, but it was either me or you and I like to be free from fire," said Artie, trying to sound sympathetic and understanding, but failing miserably.

"It would take more than Billy of the Big Belly to burn me!" exclaimed the red man. "I'm magical, I am! I can do things that mere mortals only dream of doing! For starters, I can ride my sleigh round the world in a single night, and not only ride it but can stop at every house and drop presents of this or that at the foot of little children's beds while they're sleeping, and munch mince pies left out for me, and slurp sherry without getting the timniest bit – hic – pissed!"

"Where is your sleigh?" asked Artie, impressed. "I love tales of that Rudolf of yours! He's my favourite! Lovely red nose and a heart of gold!"

"Sod it, I left the whole kit and caboodle on the burning field!" exclaimed Father Christmas. "I really should learn to be less forgetful! Why, only last year I forgot to leave presents at the British Prime Minister's home, so he's had to live since then without his usual parcel of common sense, which might have proved pretty nasty for the rest of the world if he had anything remotely resembling intelligence between his ears!"

That's the trouble with Prime Ministers," agreed Artie, "but what are you going to do about your sleigh? Hasn't it got all the presents for all the children in the whole wide world in its capacious sack, and won't the villagers pinch them all?"

"Oh, that's no problem," grinned the fat red man, "This is my last call and I've only got one left. It's for Janie Cobweb, and that's why I was landing on that field where they were about to burn you."

"That little bitch doesn't deserve anything at all!" growled Artie. "I spend all my life writing stories for innocent little children, and all she wants to see is me going up like a roman candle! But we'd better do something about getting your reindeer back. I know my neighbours in this here village and they're a light-fingered lot! They steal so much off each other that it's become a tradition for the women, when they go shopping, to secretly take things back to the shop so they've got something to buy when they get there! And the men are no better! They're after each others' stuff all the time. It's like an obsession with them. They're not happy unless they've got their hands in each others' pockets!"

"Sounds like a rough place, then," observed Father Christmas.

"Oh, it is that. I hate living here, but where else can I go? There are mountains all round the place and they'd have to be climbed by anyone wanting to get away, and we've all got the same genetic defect which means we're all totally terrified of heights! But you haven't said how you're going to get your reindeer back!"

"I'll go and demand them," announced Father Christmas. "I'm not afraid of any old burning! And I'll take the opportunity of giving that little girl, what was her name, Janie Cobweb, her present. It's a special one, that it is! Then I can go back home and get a good three hundred and sixty-four day's sleep."

"That's a long time," observed Artie, "to be asleep, I mean."

"I prefer leap years when I get the extra day in bed," yawned the good Father Christmas. "Now come on with you and we'll go back to the burning field and I'll get my reindeer back quick as winking, and be off home to my good lady who will have prepared a good bowl of steak and kidney stew with dumplings for me to eat and be wearing her best negligee for me to marvel at!"

"Sounds nice," observed Artie.

"Delicious on both counts," agreed Father Christmas. "Now come on and we'll sort things out, no messing."

"This reminds me of a story I wrote," mused Artie as they walked along. "It concerned a boy who was born without a head."

"What's anything that's happened today got to do with boys without heads?" demanded Father Christmas, puzzled. "I don't get it! You're not making any kind of sense to me!"

"It's just that if you haven't got a head you can't think because you haven't got any brains, and what the folks tonight have tried to do is totally brainless," observed Artie.

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" roared his companion. "Yes, I get it! And you are, of course, quite right!"

"Now, hush," suggested Artie, "We're just about back at the burning field, and I've already got away from them once: I don't want to risk getting ensnared again and this time get burned for real."

"Okay! Mum's the word!" agreed his jolly companion. "I'll see Rudolf the moment we get in sight of the field: his big red nose gives him away! Can be seen for miles, it can!"

The two of them tip-toed back to the field.

"Shouild be able to see Rudolf by now," muttered Father Christmas.

Instead of an angry crowd they found that just about the entire population of the village was sitting on the grass in cosy little groups and chewing on great steaks of fragrant meat.

"Is that you, Artie?" called a voice. "Come and join us! This is delicious!"

"Is that you, Millicent?" he ventured, amazed at the obvious change in a woman who not so long ago had been quite happy to see him burned at the stake until he was definitely dead.

"Of course, you sweet man!" she cooed. "Now come on and sit by me, and bring your friend! This venison is so good!"

"Venison? Venison? Venison?"

The man from the skies (chapter 3)

Janie Cobweb first saw the light of day in December 2007, when i was writing a blog for another well known blogging site called MYSPACE, due to popular demand i found myself writing a whole series of related blogs, almost 30 in number and since then i have reworked them and issued them as a paper back book available to purchase on lulu.com.


What follows here are faithful renditions of the original blogs and not those published.






THE MAN FROM THE SKIES

"If you set light to me nothing good will come of it," muttered Artie Archer, looking directly into Billy of the Big Belly's eyes.

"If you don't set him alight right now I'll kick you where it hurts, just you see if I don't," squawked the shrill voice of young Janie Cobweb. "My mummy always said I wouldn't be a proper woman until I'd seen my first really good burning, and I want to be a proper woman so I want it now!" she added, her eyes locked onto Billy's like two desperate cat's-eyes.

"If he does set light to me there'll be no more sweet little stories for lovely little girls," hissed Artie at her through clenched teeth.

"Put a bag over his head and get on with it!" called somebody with a gravely voice from the crowd, which was beginning to display the first stirrings of impatience.

"No bag!" shrieked Janie. "I want to see his eyes burst and the juices turn to steam as they evaporate on his crumbling cheeks!"

"You're not a very nice child," grumbled Artie. "A nice little girl would beg for my life! I nice little girl would tell everyone here they should be ashamed of themselves for demanding that an innocent little man like me was burnt to death just because he wrote the kind of stories that melt ice-maidens and cause ancient cats to drop down dead!"

"I'll burn him!" announced Billy, aware of the growing impatience of the crowd. "Now if you don't mind, little girl," he added to Janie, "if you don't mind I'll ask you to take a couple of steps back or the juices from his snozzle when they explode from him might fly onto your precious skin and burn you, and consequently scar you for the rest of your life, and I dared say you wouldn't like that!"

"I want to stay exactly where I am!" snorted Janie in a very loud, very shrill and very imperious voice.

"Your mother ought to give you a slapped bottom, then," suggested Artie, mildly. "You remind me of a little girl I know of who always wanted her own way. She would create all kinds of havoc if she didn't get exactly what she wanted until one day she insisted that she wanted an old Friesian cow as a friend. Her mother said there was no way she was going to have an old Friesian cow in her house, especially one with an incontinence problem, but the little girl shrilled and shrieked and declared that she wouldn't stop until she got her old cow. So she cried and moaned loud as sin both day and night, and first her mother got a headache and then her father got a migraine, and still she moaned and wailed and filled the whole neighbourhood with horrible sounds. In the end, in total despair, her parents got divorced and went their own ways and it turned out that neither of them wanted their daughter with them. So she was taken into care by the local Beadle, and put in a children's home where she was beaten every second day whether she deserved it or not, and had nothing to eat except bread and water and her Christmas presents were bars of soap, which she ate because they tasted far better than any of the food she was offered."

"That's all lies!" screeched Janie.

"Is it the truth?" asked Billy of the big Belly, fumbling for a third match in the box of matches that had cost him an English Pound.

"Of course it is," observed Artie. "It's the kind of things that happens to little girls who think it's perfectly reasonable to behave like spoiled brats and get their own way over everything, including the burning of the local village story teller."

"I'm going to burn you anyway," muttered Billy, striking the third match.

"What's that?" asked a slimy thin man with whiskers who happened to be in the crowd, pointing into the skies above his head.

Every neck craned to see what he was pointing at.

Every head was twisted until every head was pointing to the stars.

And high above their heads, higher than a man can see properly, there was the outline of a row of what were almost clearly horses. And that row of what you might have thought were horses was pulling something behind it. And that something that they were pulling had the oddest character imaginable sitting on it.

"What on Earth's that?" asked Billy of the Big Belly, still holding a match that was slowly burning down until it singed his fingers, and he had to drop it with a petulant "Ouch!"

"It's a fat man in a cart!" exclaimed Janie Cobweb. "Why, he's even fatter than you are, Billy of the Big Belly! And he's got a sack," she added. "Do you think he's going to come down here and put us in that old sack of his and cart us away to some strange land where we'll be slaves to princes? Do you suppose he's an evil sorcerer who's going to trap each and every one of us and march us to another planet where we'll be roasted on spits and toasted over an eternal fire?"

"You'd make a good story teller, Janie," muttered Artie. "You've got the kind of imagination it takes to make a really good story teller!"

But nobody else could find a single word to say because everyone else had his or her mouth open and everyone else was staring so intently at the strange apparition in the skies that a passing sparrow pooed in one person's mouth, and he didn't even notice.

And the thing, whatever it is, drew closer so that the crowd of people gathered for the Burning could see it more closely.

"They're not horses!" shouted a boy out loud. "They've got trees on their heads!"

"They're antlers," called a girl in a gym-slip.

"The fat man's wearing red and he's got a white beard!" called out another. "And his sack isn't empty and waiting to be filled, but it's full and waiting to be emptied!"

"I've heard of that character before!" announced Billy of the Big Belly. "He goes around the world giving presents to all the children in every land, and when he's done the idle sod sleeps for a whole year before he has to do it all again!"

"You mean…?" asked the crowd as if the hundreds there were one person.

"It's Father Christmas!" shouted Billy. "Quick! He's sure to land here! I'll let this writer idiot go and we'll have a bigger burning tonight! We'll tie Father Christmas up and he can burn! He's big and fat and full of grease, and he should blaze really well!

Without waiting for the advice of anyone, not even of Janie Cobweb, he untied Artie Archer and hissed into his ears, "You'd better get off, squire! This is a reprieve, but if I were you I'd not come back to this village, not even if you live to be a million!"

"You can't burn Father Christmas!" shouted Artie. "He's a really wonderful man and does all the good in the world! Without him the world will become a sad place and little children will go without Playstations and misery will reign supreme!

"Sod off!" ordered Billy, "If you know what's good for you," he added. "And if I were you I'd change my pants before the stink gives you away."

Artie shrugged. There wasn't much else he could do, just shrug and wander off. He whistled a jolly little tune to himself when he thought he was out of earshot of the terrible Billy and his matches. Somehow, he needed cheering up

Meanwhile, the fat man in his sleigh landed on the field, right next to the wooden stake that was still driven menacingly into the ground. Billy of the Big Belly slouched up to him.

"What have we here, squire?" he asked, clenching and unclenching his fists.

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" came the joyous reply.

THE BURNING FIELD

Janie Cobweb first saw the light of day in December 2007, when i was writing a blog for another well known blogging site called MYSPACE, due to popular demand i found myself writing a whole series of related blogs, almost 30 in number and since then i have reworked them and issued them as a paper back book available to purchase on lulu.com.

What follows here are faithful renditions of the original blogs and not those published.







The Village Burning (chapter 2)



THE VILLAGE BURNING

There probably comes a time in every man 's life when he wishes he'd done something else.
Artie Archer felt like that as he was led unceremoniously onto the burning field. Even though the flames had not as yet been kindled he fancied he could feel them singeing his skin and converting his hair to stinking dust.
"I don't understand why you're doing this to me," he muttered to Billy of the Big Belly. "After all, I've tried to make a goodness out of my life and live according to the highest ideals of a writer, and here you are charging off with me to the burning field with the express intention of converting my lovely red blood into ashes!"
"You shouldn't have done it, lad," replied Billy of the Big Belly out of the corner of his mouth, trying to look as if he wasn't saying anything because having apparently friendly discussions with the condemned would do him very little good if his role in the ceremony was ever to be debated in a Court of Law.
"I've done nothing!" exclaimed Artie, ringing his hands and sweating. "All I've done is write innocent fairy stories to entertain the children with! It's not as if I've been occupied programming violent Playstation games like some spend their lives doing!"
"You wrote that little thing about the fairy with the broken wings, and it melted my Alicia into a puddle, so don't you go coming the innocent with me!" snarled Billy, suddenly changing moods. "When a favourite lady suddenly becomes a puddle and, mark these words, and trickles down the guttering and into a drain, a fellow can't help thinking he's got a burning grudge!"
"But your Alicia was an ice-maiden!" protested Artie, shocked that he should be blamed for something as innocuous as a lump of ice melting on a summer's day. "You always knew she would melt! You told me loads of times how it would break your heart when you no longer found yourself waking up cold and freezing damp in the morning after she'd spent a night in your bed!"
"She was reading your rubbish when it happened, so you're to blame!" Billy was adamant and Artie could see there was nothing he might say that would change things.
"Here we are!" scowled Billy.
Artie looked around him. A fair-sized crowd had gathered, men and women and children, all of them baying for blood. He knew there was a huge appetite for burnings in the community. The smallest children were brought up to look forward to their first one, and old gaffers and their hag-like wives told many a tale of memorable burnings from the past. It was a custom for everyone to gather round in eager anticipation, and cheer themselves hoarse as the first flames were kindled, and proceed to go crazy as the tongues of fire licked against quivering flesh.
"Now you just stand here so I can tie you to the stake all good and proper," snarled Billy. "It's most important that I tie you real tightly or you might get away when the flames get really hot, licking against your tender flesh and scorching it!"
"It doesn't seem fair to me," muttered Artie. "All I ever did was try to write good things and lead the children down a righteous path so they could grow into bold citizens."
"That's not what Daisy-Rose says," muttered Billy.
"Daisy-Rose who?" asked Artie, straining his memory and failing to find any kind of Daisy-Rose anywhere in it.
"Daisy-Rose the Butcher's cat," replied Billy with a strange look in his eyes. "I loved that cat, I did! It came round my house almost every day, sniffing in my underpants drawer and purring at me every time I stroked it! And then it read that story of yours, the one about a princess who could detect a pea through a dozen thick feather mattresses and changed beyond all recognition right there and then, and before you could say Jack Robinson there it was, lying on the road ready for the coalman to run over it with his lorry, and sure as sure that coalman did: he couldn't help it! Wept about it, he did, wept long and loud and couldn't be more sorry that he'd killed poor old Daisy-Rose!"
"Cats can't read!" admonished Artie. "They don't even pretend they can read! They just play with balls of string, chase mice and bring half-dead sparrows into the house as presents! They don't have anything to do with reading! And anyway that butcher's cat was half dead five years ago! It was so old it should have been dead back then let alone sniffing at your boxers last week!"
"Right! I'll hear no more of this Nancy-boy talk!" snarled Billy of the Big Belly. "It's time this village was treated to a good burning! Why, if you were to have your way we wouldn't have one, and then there'd be a rebellion! There'd be callings for someone else to be burned and that someone else'd probably be me!"
"Better you than me," observed Artie.
"None of that kind of rebellious talk!" shouted Billy. "We can't have back-chat of that general sort, that we can't! It's treason, plain and simple! You're to be burnt and that's that! It'll be fun for the children. Just think of them before you go off talking like you just did like some simple-minded traitor!"
"Who'll write their stories once I'm burned?" asked Artie. "Who'll provide little tales to entertain them during cold winter nights?
"They'll have none of stuff like stories!" shouted Billy. "Instead they'll have fighting on them there Playstation devices, and shootings and hangings and murderings! They'll have what they really want and not the mamby-pamby witterings you call stories!"
"Oh. Then you'd better burn me," muttered Artie. "I couldn't possibly live in the kind of world that doesn't allow stories."
So Billy tied him to the stake. He was most careful to make sure he used only the strongest flex from the Electrical shop, and he bound it round and round Artie until he looked more like a ball of wire than a writer.
"How does that feel?" he asked.
"Tight," replied Artie.
"Just as it should be!" nodded Billy of the Big Belly. "Right then! Where's the matches?"
"In my pocket," replied Artie. "My back pocket," he added helpfully.
"Damned daft place to keep them!" roared Billy, and he struggled to force his hand through the rolls of cable that he'd only just tied as tight as he could round his victim, searching for a back pocket.
"I wasn't thinking they'd be needed for a burning," snarled Artie. "I bought them to light pink candles on my niece's birthday cake, not to set light to a bonfire, with me in the middle of it!"
Eventually Billy reached into Artie's back pocket and slowly he withdrew a box of matches.
They were red-topped matches, which was good so far as Billy was concerned, and they were damp matches, which was equally bad from his perspective.
"They're wet!" he shouted. "The matches are wet!" and to prove his point he struck one on the box and it didn't as much as spark.
"Of course they are," muttered Artie. "I just weed myself. I had to. There weren't any regular toilet facilities when you tied me up and anyway a man who's about to be burned might tend to wee himself."
"You're a disgrace!" snarled Billy of the Big Belly. "You're the kind of lowly person who deserves to be burned!" Then he turned to the crowd who, by this time had become a multitude and bellowed "Anyone got any matches? This fool has wet his!"
First one then a second and then a third person produced a box of matches and waved them in the air.
"Cost you a tenner," said the first person.
"I'll take a fiver," volunteered the second.
"You can have mine for a pound," grated the third, a swarthy man with a boil that needed lancing on his neck. So Billy smiled at him, produced a pound coin and took the third man's matches.
Then he struck one of them held the glowing sliver of wood aloft.
The crowed started cheering and roaring.
All of them to a man and a woman roared encouragement.
Everyone in that field except for Janie Cobweb aged five, and she took one step forwards until her little head was right up to Billy of the Big Belly. Then she fixed him with her innocent, pure eyes, her skin like newly-woven satin, and she said in a loud clear voice,
"What you waiting for you daft pillock! Get that timber burning before it's night and I'm sent off to bed!"
And the entire crowd roared again, and Billy of the Big Belly struck another match.

The Selfless Writer (chapter 2)

Janie Cobweb first saw the light of day in December 2007, when i was writing a blog for another well known blogging site called MYSPACE, due to popular demand i found myself writing a whole series of related blogs, almost 30 in number and since then i have reworked them and issued them as a paper back book available to purchase on lulu.com.

What follows here are faithful renditions of the original blogs and not those published.








THE SELFLESS WRITER

"We live," said Artie Archer, nodding his head sagely, "in a selfish age."
"I couldn't agree more," agreed Millicent Mower, pouring tea from a beehive teapot and producing, as if by magic, a tin of ginger--nut biscuits and a few marshmallows.
"The trouble is," muttered Archie, "everybody wants to dominate everybody else. Take me, for example. I'm a writer as you know. Kids stories and the like. But what happens? I get despised for my stuff, that's what happens! I put in something funny and I'm either racist or sexist or anythingist. I include a few chapters about murder and blood and gore and I get called irresponsible. Me, irresponsible! I ask you!"
"You can be a bit over-the-top," ventured Millicent. "After all, my Mickie read one of your stories and it gave him a heart attack. Died, he did, clutching his chest and cursing like a trooper. But he still died, and that was one of your stories as did it."
"He'd have died anyway," replied Artie defensively. "After all, he was ninety-seven."
"And a half. He was ninety-seven and a half!" put in Millicent proudly. "And he could still read, at that age too! He read that story from start to finish without a break, you know the one, it was about a kingfisher!"
"There's not much in that one to scare a man to death," muttered Artie. "I can't see what was in it as would give anyone a heart-attack unless it was the part when Curly the Kingfisher pecked the scarecrow's eyes out. But it was only a scarecrow and the eyes weren't real, you know."
"My Mickie thought it was real," mused Millicent. "Millie," he said to me all bright-eyed and the like, "Millie, listen to what your mate Artie's written!" And he went on to tell me about this scarecrow, a lovely fellow with button eyes and a wife and kids at home. And the way an old kingfisher zoomed down out of the skies and pecked away at those eyes of his, like a drill he said it was, rat-a-tat-tat-tat!"
"Then your Mickie was a twallop!" almost exploded Artie. "I write for kids, not old men, and I've not had a single report of any kid being damaged in any way by a single word in any one of my stories!" His eyes were blazing as he spoke, and Millicent might have taken note had she been looking, but she wasn't. Instead, she was munching on a ginger-nut and knitting pearl and plain stitches with rainbow coloured wool.
"Our Mooney was damaged," she chuntered. "Only last week he was damaged. He was reading that story of yours about a fat man climbing down chimneys with a sack on his back, and he came on the word 'footprint' and he was damaged. We had to have him locked away, we did, he was so damaged. He became like a loony, he did, all shouting and raving because of that word 'footprint'."
"There's nothing about 'footprint' to drive a kid mad!" scoffed Artie, clearly upset by the way the conversation was going. "If you ask me that loony kid of yours, Mooney you called him as if you knew in advance he was going to be a nutter sooner or later, anyway, as I was saying I reckon he was three sheets to the wind before he ever picked up my Christmas book!"
"That he wasn't!" wept Millicent, wiping her eyes on a brand new rainbow sock. "And as for you being rude about my one and only little boy, our Sadie was damaged by one of your words too. And I've heard as your books have been banned by the library down town! It's said your words are like knives, cutting away and stabbing the youth of today! I've heard them say that you should be locked up on account of the damage done by your words!"
"You're as mad a drain," exploded Artie, "saying things like that when my only aim in life is to add a little colour to the lives of future generations!"
"Colour?" squawked Millicent, "is that what you call it? Colour? Why, I was talking to old Mrs Henderson down at the flea market only this very morning as is, and she reckons you made her Angela's little lad turn blue! She said as he picked up one of your stories, just a little one about peas and beans and a greedy little princess, and he turned irreversibly blue! Daren't go to school daren't even go out to play! As blue as a summer sky or a warm tropical sea! So what do you say about that, Artie?"
"I say she's bananas," muttered Artie. "I say she should never have kids in her care, not blue ones and not green ones and not yellow ones. I say she should be taken to the burning field and put to the stake and set light to. That's what they should do to the Mrs Hendersons of this world!"
"That's not such a nice thing to say," said Millicent, pausing with her cup half way to her lips and dropping at least two stitches and a ginger-nut. "To say that the poor woman should be set light to! To suggest, suggest mark you, that a good lady like dear Mrs Henderson should have to suffer a burning! It's beyond belief what some folks say, and that's a truth!"
"That's why I say we live in a selfish age," grunted Artie. "We live in the kind of age when a woman like you can tell tales about my words damaging kids and actually killing old men, and that Henderson woman not being burned at the stake for suggesting that my innocent stories sent her brat mad! Next you'll be saying that my tales have unplaited some girl or other's hair! And that would be the most selfish thing anyone's ever said to me, worse even than the day old Ma Biggead wrote to the papers on account of her hair turning grey when she read my little book of nursery rhymes!"
"Well, it did!" insinuated Millicent, darkly. "I saw that hair of hers, and it was as grey as the sky in November when it's raining cats and dogs!"
"She's eighty if she's a day, and ladies of that certain age often have grey hair!" scoffed Artie.
"Not Ma Biggead until she read them rhymes of yours, and then she went white as snow!"
"I thought you said grey as the November sky when it's raining cats and dogs," growled Artie.
"Yes, that too!" nodded Millicent. "Them books of yours ought to be banned! They ought to be piled up on the burning field and set light to!"
"You're nuts!" raged Artie. "Nobody's come to any harm whatsoever after reading my little tales of gentle life and sweetness and light."
"I've been stalked," pounced Millicent. "I've been stalked, and I'd just read 'Gertie the Lonely Duck'! And out of the blue he came, a stalker with a willy so big you could have called it a python without lying, and he stalked me!"
"A willy, you say?" asked Artie, suddenly interested.
"Like a python! Like a gigantic snake wafting around inside his pants! Like nothing you've ever seen before! It enraged me! It filled me with fear! I had to chase him for seven miles on my own feet just to check!"
"And he was stalking you?" asked Artie, cynicism or something like it suddenly leaking out of his eyes.
"Every time I looked he was there," she confirmed.
"Well, he would be if you were running fast as a serpent after him," commented Artie. "It might be said, I suppose, as you were stalking him!"
She looked at him reproachfully. "How could you say such a thing!" she shrieked, and started weeping. "How could you say anything as spiteful as that! It's you as should be taken to the burning field! It's you as should be punished!"
"You're crazy," he conceded.
"I may be, but you know who my old man is don't you?" sneered Millicent. "He's the Chief Burner! That's who he is! The Chief Burner, and he'll have you burned, just see if he don 't!"
"You said he was dead," laughed Artie, "You said as your Mickie died after having a heart attack as a consequence of reading one of my stories!"
"Ah, but Mickie weren't my hubby," whispered Millicent, "he were my special, secret friend, he were. No, my hubby's Billy of the Big Belly, and he's a-coming right now! Hey, Billy, lover of mine! This prat's trying to seduce me and he needs a good burning! You'll see about it for me, won't you, lover?"
A huge man, so fat he might never have fitted through a door, came up to the two of them.
"Nah," he said to her, "He's okay! He's my mate! It's you as is mad!"
"Then I'll keep me legs shut…" she ventured, her eyes gleaming at him.
"Ooops," he muttered, thoughtfully. "Can't have that! Okay, honey, if it means that much to you," said the greasy fat man, and he turned to Artie. "Sorry about this, mate," he said regretfully. "I'll get it over quickly, just see if I don't, but it's a burning for you!"
"You mean…?" asked Artie, his eyes suddenly swelling with alarm.
"Yes, mate," said Billy of the Big Belly, "So come along quietly, and don't think of running because if you were to do that a bloke of my size'd stand no chance of catching you!"
"Of course not," replied Artie meekly. "I'll come quietly, just you see if I don't."
And he walked off, hands in the air submissively, towards the burning field, where a crowd had already started to gather.