Day 53: Miffed Matt #6

CONTINUED:

IN THE THUNDERDOME

the great beast Yaxley-Lennon is charging straight for Miffed Matt.

MATT'S P.O.V. - YAXLEY-LENNON

roaring in, the creature's fists going up high, higher, coming down with the force of a crashing asteroid.

CLOSE ON MATT

not moving. Waiting. Surely too long. Finally, right as the fists smash down, Matt leaps away. The fists slam into the earth, throwing up sand, and Yaxley-Lennon is temporarily staggered --

-- which opportunity Matt takes to unleash a flurry of punches into the beast's legs, thighs, torso.

It's the tickling of a gnat. Yaxley-Lennon barely notices. Looks down at Matt, twists --

-- and backhands the smaller man, hurling him clean across the arena.

Matt smashes into the cage's metal bars. Falls, winded.

Yaxley-Lennon springs, surprisingly agile, up into the air, coming down directly at his wounded prey.

Matt shakes the tweety-pies off just in time, rolls, and Yaxley-Lennon's knee comes down right where Matt's head was a moment before.

Matt tries to run, but Yaxley-Lennon grabs his leg, flings him as if he were a child's doll at the roof of the cage.

Matt thuds into the bars, cries in pain, but grasps on. He's clutching to the roof, looking down as Yaxley-Lennon gets a run up. Matt scrambles to hook his legs up and round the bars.

YAXLEY-LENNON

leaps, powerfully, as --

MATT

gets his legs through, lets go his arms, hangs down --

-- and grabs onto the speeding meat-bullet that is Yaxley Lennon, twists with the creatures momentum, lets go.

Yaxley-Lennon is fired, spinning, into the bars, which groan and buckle as they are struck by the force of the behemoth.

The impact would kill a lesser man. But Yaxley-Lennon shrugs it off. Gets back on his feet, rips off a buckled length of cage -- makes for a perfect lance -- and roars at the sky.

Yaxley-Lennon takes the lance and starts jabbing it at Matt, who's still up there clinging to the bars at the top of the cage.

Matt dodges the jabs, swings across the cage like monkey bars, arm over arm across the arena and down, dropping on the other side, pirouetting, coming to rest breathing heavily facing his opponent.

Yaxley-Lennon bellows mightily.

The creature claws the ground like a bull. Lowers its helmeted head. Raises the lance. Charges.

Matt yells and runs to meet the juggernaut.

FROM HIGH

as the two enemies close the space.

MATT

at the last moment feints, dives under the lance and right between the giant's legs --

-- but not fast enough. Yaxley-Lennon, dropping the lance, brings a brutish foot down as Matt passes, right into the smaller man's ankle.

A sickening crunch. Matt howls in anguish.

Yaxley-Lennon is relentless. That one second is all he needs. A huge fist thumps into Matt's chest, knocking half the life out of him. Another fist into his skull. One more, an uppercut, pushing out teeth and saliva and blood, the force arcing Matt upwards and backwards and over on himself.

Matt crashes to the ground, broken, destroyed.

Yaxley-Lennon stoops to pick up his lance, turns back to Matt, raises the lance to the heavens, ready to bring it down right through Matt's limp frame.

The Crowd, who have been going ballistic this whole time, pause in a pregnant silence.

MATT'S P.O.V. - YAXLEY-LENNON'S HELMET

and the noise coming from within. Now Matt is close to the beast, and there are no other sounds, he can hear a continuous buzzing, like that of a hornets' nest, emanating from the helmet.

What the hell? Matt's curiosity gives him the strength to rouse himself from the depths for one final gambit.

He dodges the downward thrust, grabs the lance in both hands, and with all the strength left in his body he jabs it back upwards, angling it under Yaxley-Lennon's helmet, prising the metal headpiece free and popping it off like a Pringle top.

Yaxley-Lennon goes flying backwards, but we follow --

THE HELMET

rolling, rolling across the sand. It comes to a halt facing up, a small electronic device visible in the lining inside the helmet, playing the National Anthem over and over on a loop.

MATT

takes the lance, leaning on it for support, and, dragging his injured foot, hobbles over to the downed Yaxley-Lennon. Raises the lance above his head, preparing for a finishing blow --

-- as Yaxley-Lennon rolls over onto his front.

CLOSE ON YAXLEY-LENNON'S FACE

grinning simply. It is the face of a child, naive, confused, blinking in the harsh lights of the arena.

YAXLEY-LENNON
Where da buzzy-buzzy go?

MATT'S FACE

utterly shocked.

YAXLEY-LENNON (CONT'D)
Buzzy-buzzy make me anggy. All da time buzzy-buzzy, no fink of other stuff.

UP IN THE V.I.P. BOX

Grand Humungous Timmartin is on his feet. He bellows down at the combatants.

TIMMARTIN
Yaxley-Lennon, our brave warrior, you almost have him. Just a little more!

YAXLEY-LENNON
Me no wanna. Me wanna sun lounge, play fly-planes, no do smashy-smash.

The Crowd is agast. But the day demands a victor.

ANNOUNCER
Well, Miffed Matt. It appears the final move must go to you. The Numberdome will have its five pounds of flesh. Strike, now.

CROWD
Finish him! Finish him!

Matt looks up at the Announcer, the crowd, at Timmartin and Farazze leering down from their pod. Looks at all of them, at the makeshift lance in his hand, slick with his own blood. Finally at Yaxley-Lennon. And --

-- he drops the lance in disgust. It rattles to the ground.

MATT
Get someone else to do your butchering for you.

ANNOUNCER

uncertain. Looking to Timmartin.

TIMMARTIN

pauses for a long beat. Sighs.

TIMMARTIN
So be it.

He nods, and a brawny LIEUTENANT steps forwards, raises a scavenged rifle, squeezes the trigger.

ON YAXLEY-LENNON

as the bullet pierces his heart. The huge man slumps, dead.

No one moves.

Then the crowd erupts. Screams, howls, commotion everywhere.

A second bullet thuds into the ground where Matt was standing --

-- but he's already on the move, running towards the gap in the cage where the metal bar that became the lance was torn off. As a third bullet ricochets off the cage beside him he ducks, pushes himself through the hole, and is away, into the chaos of the Spoon Town night.

CONTINUED ONE MORE TIME...

Day 52: Miffed Matt # 5 - Miffed Matt Beyond Numberdome

INT. NUMBERDOME - NIGHT

A bright spotlight pierces the blackness. It illuminates a patch of sand.

LOOKING UP

at the source of the spotlight we see shapes moving around its diffuse edges. A larger shape is hoisted into the centre of the spotlight, partially blocking it, and then lowered towards us, the shape in silhouette. It is a body, the limbs hanging limply at its sides.

THE BODY

lowered to a couple of feet off the ground, and then dropped, falling with a thud onto the sand. The body groans, rolls itself over, throws back the blanket in which it is wrapped. It is--

MIFFED MATT

--groaning.

FROM SOMEWHERE ABOVE

the crackle of a loudspeaker, and then a voice, deliberate, enthused, belonging to a female ANNOUNCER.

ANNOUNCER (O.S.)

The old world ran on decimal points. On fractions. On equations. Life and death were decided within the cells of a spreadsheet. A banker squeezed zero-point-one of a dollar here, a politician saved their fat friends a quarter of a penny there. An accountant tapped a button on her keyboard, and half a planet away an entire city starved. Well no longer. We don't hold truck with large sums, with tiny fractions. Only one number concerns us in this age. The number five.

CROWD (O.S.)

Five! Five! Five!

ANNOUNCER (O.S.)

Less than five can't be counted, it's dirty; more than five makes your head all hurty. But five is the perfect mid-point. Five is the universe in glorious balance. All must be brought to five, and in that five will we find peace.

CROWD (O.S.)

Peace in five! Peace in five!

Miffed Matt stands, checks he's still in possession of all his appendages, brushes himself off.

ANNOUNCER (O.S.)

And where do we do this sum? Not in checkbooks and underhanded spreadsheets. We do our accounting out here in the open, in the Numberdome, where all can see, all can witness. Numberdome. Three may enter. Two more may enter. Five must remain!

The spotlight goes off and all the lights flash on. The arena -- for it is an arena -- is lit up. Miffed Matt is on the floor of an enormous cage, the bars reaching upwards all around him and meeting at the top, where a small hole from which he was lowered is being barred and bolted by two bare-chested mutants. Around the cage are stands housing a boisterous Crowd, cheering and pumping their fists. In a special observation box Timmartin and Farazze sit scoffing pre-match snacks -- English snacks, none of those vole-oh-vaunts or other foreign muck. And on a central podium, high above the arena, holding a microphone, is the Announcer, a flamboyant woman with spiked shoulderpads who looks not dissimilar to Tina Turner.

CROWD

Five must remain! Five must remain!

ANNOUNCER

Or four may enter. But then only one may enter. Five must remain!

CROWD

Five must remain!

ANNOUNCER

Or seven may enter. But then two are going to have to leave. Five must remain.

CROWD

Five must remain!

MIFFED MATT

I'm not sure I'm getting this.

ANNOUNCER

What is there not to get? Five must remain!

CROWD

Five must remain!

MIFFED MATT

Is that a game? I don't see how that could be a game.

ANNOUNCER

It is the most glorious of games, played through the generations by our people. The sacred game of fives.

MIFFED MATT

Sounds like a card game to me.

ANNOUNCER

Well it's not, OK? It's a game of terror and agility and universal balance. Eighty-eight may enter. Eighty-three will have to leave. Five must remain.

CROWD

Five must remain.

MIFFED MATT

Yes, I can do arithmetic. I'm just not getting any sense of depth. It's like someone has taken a one-line joke and based an entire belief system around it.

ANNOUNCER

Enough of this. Bring in the champion!

A gate in the side of the cage is pulled open by a handful of nervous TAMERS, and a man steps through. More than a man. A hulking, gargantuan creature. YAXLEY-LENNON -- at least eight-feet tall, with rippling muscles and skin marked with homemade tattoos. He is naked but for a Union Jack loincloth covering his waist, and a battered and notched Saint-George's-cross helmet hiding his head.

The Tamers spur Yaxley-Lennon forwards with spears and buzzing electrical whips, causing the beast to howl, lash out, and, in time-honoured tradition, grab an inexperienced Tamer and rip his head off and eat him before leaping into the arena.

TAMER #1

Goddammit. That's the third apprentice in three fights. And I really liked Terry.

TAMER #2

It is becoming rather a trope, isn't it?

TAMER #1

Why don't we just take his manacles off inside the arena?

TAMER #2

It's part of the spectacle, I suppose.

ANNOUNCER

Ladies and gentlemen, mutants and aberrations, I give you your undefeated champion, top of the league, defender of our freedoms, king of the sunbeds -- Yaxley-Lennon!

Crowd goes mental.

ANNOUNCER (CONT'D)

Two have entered. But you all know the rules. We've got a discrepancy here. Yaxley-Lennon, I guess you'll just have to tear Miffed Matt into four equal pieces. For five must remain!

CROWD

Five must remain!

MIFFED MATT

Oh.

ANNOUNCER

Oh what?

MIFFED MATT

No, it's just. A fight to the death? Really? I thought it was going to be more interesting than that. 

ANNOUNCER

What could be more interesting than a fight to the death?

MIFFED MATT

I mean. All that stuff about fives seems like misdirection. I rather feel you're using it as grand populist rhetoric with which to mask the inherent simplicity and thuggishness of your approach.

ANNOUNCER

(hurt)

We're not the kind of people to do a thing like that.

(back to business)

But whatever your words, Miffed Matt, it is time to move past them, to a place of actions. Contenders, you are in the Numberdome now, and it crackles with anticipation. You go now into history. Stand, contenders, and be counted! Begin!

Miffed Matt turns to face his opponent --

-- and Yaxley-Lennon charges.

CONTINUED...

Day 50: Miffed Matt and the Game of Fives # 4

(Part One)

(Part Two)

(Part Three)

INT. EYRIE - DAY

Miffed Matt, bruised and bound, is shoved roughly into the chamber high above Spoon Town. DOOTY MANAGERS #1 AND #2 follow after him. They bow to Grand Humungous Timmartin, a towering behemoth in arcane breathing apparatus and gimp suit with uncovered nipples, then turn and bow a little less enthusiastically to Timmartin’s second-in-command, a wretched and stunted creature, salmon-eyed and piranha-toothed, a limp little potato-faced wart known as NIGE FARAZZE.

MIFFED MATT

I see you’re looking as hale as ever, Farazze.

Farazze wimpers and crawls to Timmartin, starts suckling at the larger man’s teat.

TIMMARTIN

Nige Farazze is Prince of the Tender Boyz, Leader of the Yewkippers, Supreme Jussaruggular of the Blokes, and I will not have him disrespected by you, worm.

Nige Farazze purrs and laps his moist tongue around his master’s exposed nipple.

Timmartin removes a spiked glove and with a great veiny hand slaps Farazze so hard that the runty man goes skidding across the floor.

TIMMARTIN

He is, however, utterly repugnant.

MIFFED MATT

Why am I not surprised to find you sitting at the corner of this web, Timmartin?

TIMMARTIN

And why am I not surprised to find you at my mercy shackled before me, Miffed Matt?

MIFFED MATT

You know you won’t get away with this.

TIMMARTIN

But, Matt -- I already have. Just this week a mounted column of my fiercest Tender Boyz dissolved the last of the senate in Brussels -- dissolved them in vats of acid, specifically -- and set a torch to their holy books of Ee-Yew legislation. The last remnants of your old world have been swept away. You are a man out of time, Matt. With your German efficiency and your Latino hips and your mullet adored by men of the Netherlands, you stand for an integrated world that no longer exists. I have seen to that. From Pole to Pole now there is only the wasteland, a new order based upon each man standing by himself, for himself, and garroting any who get in his way. Strong and stable castles in the dark, each of us, unassailable, impenetrable, protected from the horrors outside our walls.

Timmartin leads the way out onto a balcony overlooking the town.

TIMMARTIN (CONT’D)

Look, Matt. Look at the beauty we have created.

MIFFED MATT’S POV - SCAVENGERS

A group of brutish scavengers are kicking a pig to death.

BACK TO SCENE

Timmartin walks his prisoner back inside. Miffed Matt comes to a standstill with his back to a burning torch, his bound hands close to the torch’s metal casing.

TIMMARTIN (CONT’D)

We were tired of those out-of-touch banana-straighteners in Brussels telling us what to do, so we wrenched back control. We were tired of our jobs going to foreigners, so now there are no jobs. We were tired of being sold funny European food that made our tummies yucky, so now there is only good old-fashioned British cuisine, like roasted rat and irradiated trout. Where once there were poncy feathered clothes from Paris, now there is only real English garb, hessian sack tunics and leather jerkins and rusted iron chain mail. Where once the ruling from distant shores regulated every aspect of our lives, now we are free to beat our neighbours over the heads with metal pipes and steal their possessions and leave them bleeding to death by the side of the road.

Timmartin pauses.

TIMMARTIN (CONT’D)

You are uncharacteristically quiet, my pathetic adversary. Is it taking time for the reality of your situation to sink in?

MIFFED MATT

No, I had no problem with that. The only thing that was taking time was cutting through these bindings.

Miffed Matt brings his hands, now decidedly free, round to his front.

MIFFED MATT

But that’s done now.

Miffed Matt jerks to the side and grabs the container holding the burning torch, flings molten tar at the approaching frames of Dooty Managers #1 and #2, who drop their weapons and scream, blinded by the boiling pitch. But these guys, like all duty managers, are used to suffering at work. A bit of molten tar in the eyes is pretty much a better-than-average shift. So they regain their composure and, though blinded, begin fumbling for their weapons.

Miffed Matt leaps into the air and swings from a chandelier.

TIMMARTIN

Get him, you fools! He’s swinging from the ... from the light fixture. You know. The ornate circular light fixture. Oh I can’t bring myself to say it. It’s far too French.

Dooty Managers #1 and #2 are bumbling around the room.

Miffed Matt swings, somersaults in the air, lands on a chaise longue.

TIMMARTIN

He’s on the ... oh you know, the long chair, the one with the varnished wooden legs and the opulent plush red cushion covers.

Miffed Matt dives from the chaise longue and scrambles to the corner of the room, up onto an antique bureau.

TIMMARTIN

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Dooty Managers #1 and #2 take a guess at the sound of Miffed Matt’s footsteps and charge in his direction. Miffed Matt backflips from the ... erm ... the writing desk as the guards approach, slicing at both their necks with fountain pens from the desk as he flips. The guards crumple to the floor, gurgling and dying noisily.

DOOTY MANAGER #1

(last words)

Still not the worst shift I’ve done...

DOOTY MANAGER #2

(last words)

About par for the course, actually...

Miffed Matt, turning, picking up Dooty Manager #2’s halberd in one smooth motion, starts towards Timmartin, who panics, tries to flee.

But they’ve all forgotten Nige Farazze. The little goblin, who had scuttled away from harm as soon as the situation got dangerous, as always, now comes flying towards Miffed Matt.

Matt slices the halberd directly at Nige Farazze’s chin -- but Nige Farazze doesn’t have a chin, just a flaccid face that dribbles away weakly into a gummy neck, and so the halberd misses by inches, slams into a wall.

These are the only seconds Timmartin needs to pull a long blade from his own substantial chin folds, to manoeuvre -- ahem, manipulate -- the edge of the blade into place against Miffed Matt’s neck.

TIMMARTIN

Enough.

Timmartin is sweating heavily, his breathing apparatus hanging loose, his moulding fetid body visible below his torn gimp suit.

TIMMARTIN

Farazze, well done.

He flings Farazze a scrap of sausage -- Wall’s, not one of those Polish or Spanish ones or anything like that -- which Farazze catches in his nasty little teeth and devours hungrily, before slurping a pint of ale and muttering something incomprehensible about immigrants.

TIMMARTIN

As for you, Miffed Matt. I was fond of those guards. Good help is surprisingly hard to find in today’s economic climate. To think, I was just going to gut you and feast upon your entrails. But now I see that is far too gentle a death for the likes of you. What to do, what to do?

FARAZZE

I knows, master. I knows what to do with the nasty man.

TIMMARTIN

Pray tell, my unctuous one.

FARAZZE

How about we get him to do a little bit of counting?

A rare smile plays across Grand Humungous Timmartin’s toad-like face.

TIMMARTIN

You think so, do you?

Farazze nods eagerly.

TIMMARTIN

Well, Miffed Matt, looks like you’re going to be playing a game of fives.

Farazze throws back his head and cackles.

FARAZZE

Fives! Fives! Fives!

Timmartin stands, beams.

ANGLE ON MIFFED MATT

Caught, defeated, confused.

TIMMARTIN

What fun.

CONTINUED...

Day 49: Miffed Matt and the Game of Fives #3

(Part One)

(Part Two)

INT. ENTRANCE TUNNEL - DAY - SUBJECTIVE CAMERA

Miffed Matt's P.O.V. We're in a dark tunnel with light at the end. We're pushing forwards, grunts and groans all around. We hear cacophonous noise, commotion from outside the tunnel. An enormous archway, the noise swells, and then we're through--

CUT TO:

EXT. SPOON TOWN - DAY

--And into the (comparatively) open air of Spoon Town.

It's bedlam. EXOTIC VENDORS hawk their grotty wares.

Booted feet stomp through mud and slush.

Warped and disfigured CHILDREN run cackling through the crowds.

Bands of SHIRTLESS MEN, adorned in crude tattoos, swilling hooch, belch and roam and fight.

Under a wooden sign reading "Booty Salon" a parade of OLDER WOMEN have thick paint slopped onto their faces and gaudy inks brushed over their nails.

Food stalls sell meat-like sticks of gristle and sinew, at-best from roadkill, fried in rancid grease.

The air is thick with shrill cries, piercing laughter, guttural chanting.

It's the centre of Worksop in a post-apocalyptic future, and literally nothing has changed.

MIFFED MATT'S P.O.V. - STORYTELLER

A squat and ugly STORYTELLER, who'd be here at any time, really, and totally doesn't exist for purely expositional reasons, on a grubby stage regaling his audience.

STORYTELLER
...Love him. For he delivered us from darkness. After the Great Undoing, while all around us crumbled, the temple that was the heart of this town thrived. The weary and the sick came from miles around to patronise the site, to give up what few coins they had to the gods of this temple, and they were rewarded with glorious Stellar Juice to ease their pains and to soften their aching minds. The temple became more than a temple: an arbiter of politics, a trade giant, the only employer in town. All roads led to the Spoon.

Our procession of Driver and Prisoners and Miffed Matt has paused to let a wagon pass. Miffed Matt watches the Storyteller.

STORYTELLER (CONT'D)
And the Spoon was held in the hand of one man. One beautiful, sacred man. After the needs of our town clashed with the aims of regional government, this man did not sit idly by. He watched what was good and holy in our ground be shipped to the devils overseas, and he said No more. He crowned himself Grand Humungous of the Wastes, declared the old men in corrupted Laandan, and their antiquated ways, a blight upon the land, and with his legions of loyal Tender Boys he swept away the last vestiges of a broken regime and ushered in this era of enlightenment. So remember, tonight, as you're sleeping safe, as you're enjoying the spoils of this realm of Eden, who to thank for these riches. Love him, love your saviour, the Remainer-Smasher, the Curry-Wednesday Warrior -- Boss of the Burger, Beermat Poet, founder and Man-in-the-Chair of Spoon Town, the one, the only -- Grand Humungous Timmartin!

The crowds cheer. Streamers fill the air. The wagon lurches on, and the procession continues. Miffed Matt, from under his hood, spits on the ground.

CUT TO:

INT. THE EYRIE - DAY

A rounded room perched high above Spoon Town. Dark. Shadowy. Malicious.

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN'S P.O.V. - MIFFED MATT

We're looking down a dirty telescopic lens at Miffed Matt, spitting on the ground and moving off.

We hear a low growl from O.S.

BACK TO SCENE

A clawed hand grips the seeing glass and thrusts it away.

A body in the blackness. Wisps of grey hair. A shining eye. The Grand Humungous is at home.

Turns to an UNSEEN CREATURE making suckling noises below him.

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN
Look

The Unseen Creature takes the seeing glass.

UNSEEN CREATURE'S P.O.V. - SCANNING CROWD

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN (O.S.)
Our new guests.

The lens sweeps the crowd, pinpoints the procession, the Prisoners, and, finally, Miffed Matt.

BACK TO SCENE

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN
Bring me that man.

CONTINUED...

Day 48: Miffed Matt and the Game of Fives #2

EXT. SPOON TOWN GATES - DAY

Dawn breaks hard over the ragged mountains. The wan sunlight illuminates a towering collection of metal, a jutting perimeter wall of ragtag corrugated sheets and vehicle shells and scavenged detritus, looming fifty-metres high and three miles round like a giant hobo’s smashed teeth rising from the desert.

Jutting from one section of the wall is an abscess, the Guard Tower, housing the Spoon Town Gates -- and bleeding out from the abscess onto the sand is a smudged dirty fleck, the Driver, with his line of Prisoners (and Miffed Matt) in tow.

A small hatch slides open in the side of the Guard Tower, and the face of a GUARD, twisted and scarred, pierced with many rings and chains, pokes out from the hole.

GUARD
Welcome to Spoon Town. Witness our might and cower, unholy worm. Password please.

The Driver steps forward.

DRIVER
Right, I know this. The blood of the sewer rat flows uphill.

GUARD
Incorrect password.

DRIVER
Oh, dammit, yeah. I think that’s the password to one of the other barbaric trade hubs I frequent.

GUARD
Don’t worry, that happens.

DRIVER
It’d be handier if they were all the same, wouldn’t it?

GUARD
Oh, no, they should never be the same. What if someone hacked into your brain, with say a serrated cleaver, and found the password. Then they’d have access to all your personal barbaric trade hubs.

DRIVER
Right, yeah, of course. I’ve seen the educational semaphore. OK. Well I’m pretty sure this one has something to do with forsaken. The forsaken shall inherit the Earth?

GUARD
Is that all lowercase?

DRIVER
No. Capital E on Earth. Because otherwise the forsaken are just inheriting earth, common or garden - ha - clod, ground, dirt; rather than the world, our kingdom, the planet that we call Earth.

GUARD
Incorrect password.

DRIVER
The forsaken shall inherit the earth all lowercase.

GUARD
Incorrect.

DRIVER
The forsaken shall inherit the earth each word capitalised.

GUARD
Incorrect. Would you like to reset your password, perhaps?

DRIVER
Yes! I didn’t know that was an option.

GUARD
Of course. Just answer your secret question first. What is your favourite torture implement?

DRIVER
Well that’s easy, the good old cat o’ nine tails. That’s oh-apostrophe tails. Although, hang about, when would I have set up this question? Because I was big into the flaying knife for a time last year. Ahh. I have no memory of this. Let’s go with cat o’ nine tails...

GUARD
Incorrect. You have now exceeded your total number of allowed guesses and for your own safety will be locked out of Spoon Town for ten minutes. Please try again later.

The Guard’s head disappears back into the wall and the hatch is slammed shut.

The Driver looks back at his prisoners and grins sheepishly.

DRIVER
Pain in the irradiated tumour, these things.

The Prisoners mutter their noncommittal assent.

DRIVER
I’m sure I know the blasted thing.

PRISONERS
(in general agreement)
Mmhmm, of course, yep.

No one says anything. The Driver scratches himself, whistles a little. The Prisoners shift their weight, gaze around. The Driver coughs, stares up at the sky.

DRIVER
Looks like more acid rain.

PRISONER #1
Could be.

The Driver scratches himself again.

PRISONER #1 (CONT’D)
Did you see those mutilations out near Futility Ravine last week?

DRIVER
No, I must have missed those.

PRISONER #1
Bad mutilations, they were. Sloppy.

DRIVER
They’ve got no class, the bandits these days.

PRISONER #1
Oh, you’re telling me. Time was, a bandit would tear down your yurt with his modified ramrod, take all your possessions, carry off your daughters, skin you alive -- but he’d do it with a certain élan. It was all part of the game. These kids today, it’s like no one taught them the rules. They don’t announce their approach with heavy metal guitar solos. They don’t arrive for a warm-up round of murder and then leave again, promising to return, giving you enough time to hire a wandering hero to protect your family. They just show up, lop off a few body parts, and drive away again. Where’s the flair? Where’s the pageantry?

DRIVER
Take old Guzzlicker the Gluttonous, now there was a bandit with style.

PRISONER #1
Killed my great uncle, did Guzzlicker. Hell of a bandit.

DRIVER
They don’t make them like that anymore.

PRISONER #1
No they do not.

Both men fall to silence. A wistfulness fills the air. No one says anything. A two-headed lizard scuttles past.

DRIVER     PRISONER #1
I was--    It’s funny--

DRIVER
Sorry.

PRISONER #1
You go.

DRIVER
No, sorry, after you.

PRISONER #1
No, it’s just, I was just going to say it’s funny, underneath the leather harnesses, the chainmail, the rat-skull belts, the pierced nipples, the daubed blood of your vanquished foes, take all that away, and underneath we’re not so--

--The hatch snaps open. The Guard pops his head back out.

GUARD
Welcome to Spoon Town. Witness our might and cower, unholy worm. Password please.

DRIVER
Ahh, there we go. Sorry for the delay everyone, I’ll get you chaps moving onwards to your certain deaths in a jiffy. Right. Password. The forsaken shall inherit the Earth one two three. T and E capitalised. Numbers as numerals.

GUARD
Incorrect

DRIVER
Poisoned warts! OK. The forsaken shall inherit the Earth one two three exclamation mark.

GUARD
Incorrect

DRIVER
One the forsaken shall inherit the Earth one two three exclamation mark.

GUARD
Incorrect

The Driver looks about to burst into tears. The Guard, in a tiny moment of humanity winning out against the inexorably churning machine of bureaucratic obstinacy, takes pity on him.

GUARD
You know you have to explicitly state the spaces between words, right?

DRIVER
Of course! One capital-T-the space forsaken space shall space inherit space the space capital-E-Earth one two three exclamation mark.

GUARD
Password accepted. Step forward for your visitor’s band. Relinquish all weapons at the booth. Failure to comply will be met with swift retribution. Please enter Spoon Town, and have a nice day.

The Driver whips his prisoners and the whole sorry procession limps forward, the Driver pausing only briefly as he passes the Guard to raise his eyebrows in a small gesture of thanks that, though small, still to the Driver means everything.

Miffed Matt trudges with the Prisoners, his head down, through the gates and into the waiting maw of Spoon Town. He says nothing.

CONTINUED...