Max's house is back

"Mars?"

 "Well. It was somewhere."

 I nodded. I do that a lot, these days. Talking is an exertion I cannot afford to make. I need to keep my energy up. For fleeing. I'm no Rincewind, but there's a lot of things I'd rather be quite a distance from. This was one such thing.

 Max, you see, had found his house. As you regular reading bastards know, he seems to have been staying at mine for some time. You know, so we can engage in zany adventures, and drain my will to live. Anyhow, whatever had happened to Max's house was over, and it was back where it'd been when he'd bought it. I maintain that the house never moved, but Max insists it's been in space, or was taken for a joyride. He swears he saw some nuns filling it up with dried pasta at Asda. I denounced him publicly. I won't have him insulting anything that looks like a penguin.

 The house, for all the neglect and abandonment it had suffered, didn't look too bad. Sure, there was a lot of graffetti on the walls. And a lot of stray cats inside. And a crazed old man. I'd expected a crazy-cat-lady-type squatter, but what I got was a suited man who looked a little like Bismarck drinking tea from the Tupperware. I chased him out with a broom, while Max polished the banisters.

 The kitchen was bare. Max offered my a cat, but I declined, explaining I'd already eaten. Lichen fell from the ceiling, showering us as we sat at the table. I looked out the back window at the swings and see-saw outside. I looked around at the walls. I looked at Max.

 "I don't think this is your house."

 He looked around slowly.

 "No." He replied at length.

 We herded the cats back inside, rounded up the homeless and regrimed the staircase. Then we went home. I'm thinking of posting Max somewhere, but I doubt the Post Office will let me.

Someone's trying to send me a message.

At first, I thought it was was Raiden making another of his desperate attempts to befriend me - he's been hanging around a lot, telling me about things he sees in the park - and when I awoke to find Max's severed head in the bed next to me, I thought he was trying to win me over with kindness. (Don't worry, I've sewn Max's head back onto his body, he's fine now)

 Then, yesterday, a Mafia Don arrived at my house and demanded I cast his nephew in my new film. I tried to explain I didn't make films, and also - through a complex series of events that required much genealogical enterprise on my behalf - explain to the Don he had no nephew. But in the end, I had no luck in either endeavour.

 In a beautiful voice, one of the Mafia goons began to sing in Italian. The moving, dramatic score provided the perfect background music for the other two henchmen, who set fire to my living room.

 Beside me, in a flash of lightening, Raiden appeared.

 "Help! Fire!" I yelled enthusiastically at him.

 "Oh." He sulked. "You barely talk to me, but now you need something.... Well, I'll see what I can do."

 In Raiden's defence, of course, he didn't have mastery over rain or water or anything. But after the first few attempts, it should have become evident to him that lightening was not the solution to my problem. Huge bolts of the stuff flew from the sky, immolating my already smouldering shrubbery and destroying my carefully arranged garden Scrabble board. The roof of my house gave way under the combined forces of fire and a different fire, caused by lightening, which was to all effects and purposes identical to the first fire.

 I sighed, and went into the garage. I'd lost everything, especially the beehive that had been growing ever larger under my gutters. Those bees were meant to sustain me through old age, providing flying nourishment and sexual gratification...

 Oh well, this isn't real life. Don't cry for me, I'm already fictional.

I'm not really scared of clowns.

No, I certainly don't have a phobia. But I'm distrustful of them, certainly. Maybe it's like being racist, I don't care. But then again, I do hate black people as well.

 No, not really.

Anyway, back to the clowns. I'm not terrified by them, but the make-up, the giant shoes, the over-sized trousers. What have they got to hide? Why are their faces masked and their body sizes hidden? The reason was obvious, of course. Criminals. A massive network of criminals.

 It all started in a field, as many things do. The lives of field-based animals, for instance, usually start in fields. But I wasn't emerging from a sheep's vagina, not this weekend. No, I was here with my house, which had recently been deposited in a deluge of watery proportions. Some cows had talked to me, but offered no real solutions to my predicament - how to get my house back to its original location. Kevin, the talking snail, had disappeared two days ago. I think a hawk may have grabbed him, but that's another story. But I couldn't stay in a field, it would confuse the postman.

 So, I began to look into solutions to the problem. My electricity, obviously, was out, and I seemed to have lost my wallet in the excitement, so calling and paying for help were out of the question. It was then, seeming like a miracle, that a car pulled up nearby.It was tiny, a two-seater, I would have estimated. Swinging open the door, the occupant slowly unfolded. A clown, over 6 foot, slowly stretching out his body, his knees first stretching, his body rising to a straightness of rake-like nature, standing at 90-degree angle to the earth.
 He straightened a bow-tie, water spraying sadly from the middle, and patted at an over-sized wig. A briefcase was withdrawn from his trouser-line, springing open in his hand, spraying custard over his shoes. Sadly, he picked up papers and placed them back in the case, looking down to check they were in place. Ominously, unavoidably, a spring rose up, striking like a tiger, catapulting a pie into his face. He wiped the pie from his giant glasses and approached me.

 "Good-day Sir" He began, pausing to squeak his nose with a silent acceptance. "You look like you need some help."
 I looked at him. He bore a look of sad dejection, his fate accepted, his slapstick life unavoidable.
 "Yea." I replied. "But I've got no money. What can you do anyway?"
He smiled. Not a real smile, of course, that part of his life was long over. A fake smile, hastily painted onto his face with makeup.
 "It is no problem. But one day, I will come to you. And I will ask you a favour."

With that, he clicked his fingers. From his car, clown after clown began to emerge. Giant clowns, their clothes stretched too tightly over their barrel-chests and bulging arms. They surrounded my house, lifting it from the base, and crab-walking East, towards my home. The Clown Don led me to his car, offering me a seat beside his driver, folding himself into a tiny boot I couldn't fit a hamster in.

We drove home. I now owed a debt to the Clown Mafia, of course, but no worries. I'm sure there won't be any repercussions...

Image via Wikipedia

In which I float and am cowed at.

Image via Wikipedia

Outside, it was still raining. My house, badly built and with floats instead of foundations, had gently lifted itself onto the rising flood waters outside, caressed their gentle waves, and deposited itself in the middle of a field of cows. Kevin, being a snail, had set off to forage for supplies, and I had stayed to make sure no bovines stole the house. Such is the natural order.

 "Mooo. I say, old fellow. Moo."

I turned slowly to look at the cow standing near me. A bowler hat rested on his head at a rakish angle, black make-up around one eye, all in white. He looked like Alex, minus the droogs, but he talked slowly and with purpose, like Gregory Peck.
 "I wonder, friend. Could you perhaps..."
 "Look." I cut in. "I've already got one anthropomorphic animal in my life right now, I don't need another. Are you going to commit violent crimes towards me?"
 "No." The cow replied. He hung his head in shame, and I did likewise. After a few minutes, we began to back off, not meeting the other's eye. I retreated into my hallway, and hid behind the umbrella stand. I felt safe there.

Return of the prodigal me.

Yes. It was based on my life, you know. Cover via AmazonI'm home now. The train, kindly, pulled up right outside my house. I say kindly - I expect the council are going to be pretty pissed I encouraged rail workers to build a railway line down my street. But anyway, I'm home. A worrying fact occurred to me as I collected my luggage and circumnavigated my duckpond - I'd left Max alone in the house. I mean, I locked the doors and opened the window a little before I left.
 Besides, he had the soup. And probably some tramps in there. I really must pay more attention to what's happening in my house before I lock it up...

I steeled myself at the door, as I've done so many times before, and prepared myself for some new and absurd horror.
 The house looked normal. My pictures were straight, the rug free of urine - which was certainly good, I can't afford another Big Lebowski-esq adventure - and my microwave was free of play-dough. Max was in the kitchen, stirring what I assumed to be soup on the hob when I found him. There were no tramps around, and even better, nothing indicating he'd hacked up tramps and made soup out of them. I greeted him, and slumped into a seat by the table. Max, stirring with his right arm, turned to face me,
 It was then I noticed his left arm, previously blocked from view by his body.
 It was made of wood.

Seriously. There was a dazed woodpecker on it and everything.

There's a stall outside my house...

Early this morning, I noticed them setting it up - 4 or 5 gnomes, in little gnome suits and hats, with a truck. The stall looks like your typical American child's Lemonade stall: it's wooden, crudely made, and has a little sign nailed on top. It differs, however, in regard to its contents: while a lemonade stall sells lemonade, and homemade bacterial infections, this stall lacked lemons, products derived from lemons, or even yellow coloured water pretending to feature lemons. What there was, was a huge pile of jam. Well, jams to be more correct - lots of different flavours and colours of jams, piled up next to the stall.
 After lunch, I went out to see what was going on. The gnomes told me it was a pick'n'mix stall, and I could pick my own jams and fill a bag to take home. I explained that I liked jam that A)I knew the flavour of, and B)wasn't sold off a big pile outside. I also explained they were in my front garden. They took this badly, throwing handfuls of jam at me until I retreated into the house.
The joke's on them though - even now, a huge swarm of wasps is descending on their stall, ripping them limb from limb. Remember this, dear reader - Never cross me!

I opened the curtains again. I was relieved to discover hiding from the problem had worked - I seemed to be back on dry land. In fact, my house seemed to be back in my garden. A closer examination revealed a postman trapped in the basement, but all-in-all, things seemed good. However, problems arose when the postman tried to leave. As I walked him to the gate, we both noticed my house was no surrounded by a 20-foot wall. Digging revealed that the wall was firmly fixed in place, so I called Max, remembering he had a lot of nitroglycerin lying around his flat. And nails. I should probably tell someone
It didn't take him long to blow a hole in the wall, and soon I was free again. The postman, unfazed by such events, continued on his journey.

I took another look around the kitchen. There was no point denying it, it was a mess: The bin was overflowing, the sink was full, and my expensive marble work-surfaces had been replaced with what looked like a sheepskin rug. Max was staying.
 "So, any news about your house then?"
Max shook his head despondently. Last week, Max had returned from his annual week trip to the bus depot - where he impersonated a bus driver and stole as many packets of coffee granules from the staff kitchen as possible - to find his house had been stolen. He seemed pretty certain it was taken by a "goth and a homosexual woman". He had no evidence, and indeed, no reason to suspect anyone. However, he refused to listen to reason. Now, he was sitting in his (my) underwear, watching game-shows and shouting abuse.
 "So, want to do anything?" I asked.
 "No." He replied, anticlimactically.
Not everything in life is interesting.