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| Chronicles of the Cake Stop |
| Vol I No. 2 |
| The Game Continues |
Evilchuffy
The door to the Cake Stop has been busted off it's hinges and there, silhouetted
in the moonlight stands...
The sinister figure of Si Davies, the CTC’s most feared enforcer. They called
him The Archaeologist because his victims weren’t going to be found for at least
5000 years and they weren’t going to be looking too good either…
"I’m hearing from the Dons of the CTC that you guys are a little, tardy,
with your subscriptions. This is making the Dons unhappy. At their age they
don’t like to be made unhappy. They want me to make you an offer you can’t
refuse. Pay up or I let Yenrod here off his leash. He ain’t been fed for a while
and I’m not so sure those carbon leg-irons can hold him when he’s riled."
Outside, in the shadows, a ghastly formless shape howls and gibbers at the moon.
Unable to hold himself back any longer, Steelman lets out a girlish scream.
"Ve vill pay, ve vill pay!" he sobs, tears sending mascara dribbling
down his cheeks. "Don’t send zat thing in here! Zese are mein newest
stockings, he vill ruin zem!"
Cowed by the hideous threat hanging over them everyone fumbles in their pockets
for what money they have and drops it in Si’s cycling cap.
&qyot;Very wise of you guys," he says. "Cos you ain’t got no right to
ride if you ain’t got no head."
Placing the bulging cap in his battered pannier and strapping Yenrod, now
placated with a nice fresh bone, into the child seat behind him, Si rides off,
carefully and with due respect to other road users.
The Cake Stop heaves a collective sigh of relief and went back to talking utter
crap.
A few minutes later Sherrif Ronstrutt staggers in. Dropping his walking sticks
he puts on his glasses and peered at the wreckage of the door.
"What, I, er, eh?"
"Oh sit down you doddering old fool," snaps Claire. "We almost
got mauled! Where the hell were you?"
"Well, I wash down by the Muckshpreadersh Ranch. Thoshe MKUK boysh are a
whoopin’ and a hollerin’ down there in direct contravention of the Countryshide
Act of nineteen sheventy four, shubshection shix, paragraph sheventy
shree," he pauses to wipe the spit off his chin.
"I’ve come to rushtle me up a posshe! Er, hash anyone sheen my teef?"
Young Hasufel leaps to his feet.
"Them MBUK boys huh? Well, we know how to deal with them, don’t we boys?
Who’s with me?!"
"WE ARE!" roared the entire crowd and they watched as he charged out
of the door. Alone.
Kathy Pike
Unfortunately, in the building adjacent to the cake shop, a fight seems to have
broken out. Peacful cyclists, whose only plans consisted of a flapjack and a mug
of hot chocolate find themselves inexorably drawn to the disruption. Suddenly,
some burley fighters barge in through the doorway!
"Speed kills!"
"No it doesn't, speed-cameras-are-mere-revenue-
generating-devices!"
"Frik!" "'kin 'ell" and other obscenities fill the air.
Rigby emits a falsetto scream, and hides behind Fatbloke, who is doing his best
to protect any innocent pork scratchings that he can find. Thanatos, emerging
from the scene of his latest beating, rushes to protect Kitzy, only to be hit
with a minipump by a tall, military man, who seems to have got there first and
is diligently inspecting the poor maiden's elbow for any sign of damage. Nutty
and Tim Pike survey the impending danger, and wonder if they will be able to get
out of this with their beer unspilt.
Without warning, the crowd of onlooking cyclists falls silent, and move apart to
allow one of their number to come to the front. She leaves her game of pool,
retrieves her eye from a pint glass, and walks up to the bickering few, who look
apprehensive.
"Right, stop that," she says, "it's silly."
Steelman adds...
At which point steelman runs from the cafe, grabs his Schmeisser machine-gun
from the bikes holster and fire two mags of dumdum rounds at Evilchuffy and
SiDavies, screaming "Eat lead, Limeys."
Gunner Rodgers
"Come sit with me, my spiritual sister, for I long to be rested by the
dulcet tones of one so fair as you, let my eyes rest, while your sweet voice
carresses me!"
But to whom has Gunner appealed his address, to what fair beauty has he bespoke
these words laced with wicked charm, whilst all else were caught up in the orgy
of cataclysmic violence that erupted in the cake shop?
derall
I return to the Cake Stop Café and lean the Recumbent against the wall. I
unhitch the BoB and pull it inside the Café. Within, all are dressed in their
finest tweeds, the ladies in crinolined finery. Today is a special day for the
League of Gentleman Cyclists.
Today is the Glorious Twelfth.
Today is open season on birds, though Gunner seems to have taken the meaning in
the wrong manner. I pass around the Guns; A Purdey for Gunner of course, a
Cogswell&Harrison each for the Tims and Yenrod. A Verney-Carron for FatBloke,
Chuffers and Riggers. I retain a Holland&Holland for myself. Some within express
a distaste for the carnage to follow, but I point out that being vegetarian
means only that you can't eat game.
They are not convinced. A fabulous picnic has been prepared for us by the Staff
of our café. We load picnic and guns onto the shooting brakes and move up into
the hills. We take our places in the butts and spend the afternoon banging away
at the birds. Gunner gets the wrong end of the stick again. A passable bag, and
the Café will be serving Roast Grouse, Grouse Salad, Grouse Soup, Grouse Paté
and Grouse Sandwiches for the next fortnight.
thanatos walks in and dies again.
Estie
Whilst the regulars are out banging birds, violence breaks out once again as a
new delivery of mini marmites is placed on the counter. Amidst the chaos I stay
seated in the corner tip-tapping on my laptop.....I have a pile of Food Diaries
awaiting dietary analysis.
I peer through the scuffling mass of lycra to see Thanatos lying unbreathing on
the scarred wooden floor. Like an angel appearing through the lycra mist, Kitzy
swoops down & offers her mouth to his. She exhales deeply...filling his lungs
with her life force. Slowly he awakens....people begin to stop their brawling.
Everyone circles the young couple, as the realisation of Thanatos' harsh
treatment dawns on them. As annoying as he may have been he did not deserve to
die. As he begins to move a wave of relief floods the room. People
begin to cheer as he slowly begins to rise from the floor........
Aeroflash
A short fellow in a red jersey and similarly-hued face staggers into the cake
stop, muttering "cake...water...cake."
He sits down at a table by himself and wipes the sweat from his brow,
which is immediately replaced by another gallon of moisture. The rhythm of his
breathing slows, and the panting resolves itself into breaths of "twenty-
nine-fif-ty-eight."
In a corner, Gunner is wooing JK Rowling.
A burst of machine-gun fire rattles the windows from outside, followed by
manical teutonic laughter. The door bangs open on its hinges - again. Thanatos
springs upright.
"What, who where?" he mutters.
"You're alive again," utters a soothing voice, from a nearby female,
annoyingly young and twice as beautiful.
...But at the door stands a towering black and silver clad figure.
"You have defied the will of the goddess!" she thunders. "He is
mine to live forever with in the Summerlands!"
You could hear a pin drop. But nobody drops one so it's OK.
redshift
The glorious twelfth rolls on into the thirteenth. Hah! unlucky for some, but
not in this place.
The hissing of rain on the windows rises through the silence, enters the
awareness of the Cake Stop occupants. They, all unwary, have offended many
deities this day, and this is payback. It is however, merely water and is as
nothing compared with some of the things these people have swallowed.
The gentlemen, cooing over the guns, have failed to notice that the ladies for
the most part disdain such things as projectile weapons. The ugly splattering of
life upon the wing is not for them. The ladies much prefer the elegance of older
times, the delicate folded petals of finely crafted alloys blended with hints of
carbon and honed to razor edges, weapons of silence and finality.
The black and silver clad goddess, treading accidentally upon Thanatos, walks
over to Gunner and takes him gently by the elbow...
groucho
In his monitoring station deep in the bowels of Future Towers, Mr Withers casts
a weary eye over the array of monitors and listening devices each carefully
labelled C+ Forum, Race, Know How, Community, For Sale etc.. As his gaze reaches
Cake Stop monitors he reaches for his control button and zooms in to the Cake
Shop Cafe and effects a sweep of the room...
Thanatos fully recovered and erect... the not so Adonis having his elbow felt...
half-full or half empty pints in front of Nutty and Tim... the menu grouse this,
grouse that, grouse the other.. but no duck soup... The League of Gentlemen
gather around the cylindrical disc player sing along to light opera... peace is
being restored.
Back at Future Towers Mr Withers boss bursts through the door.
"Better get on with the draw for the black carbon!"
As he approaches Mr Withers to make the draw the mail sack catches on a box
markes C+ jerseys sizes S, M & L. The boss trips, the sack opens and the
contents spread across the stone floor. Mr Withers glances down at a name. And
another. And another. They all say one thing....
Ravenbait!!!!
As the boss helps himself up his hand catches upon the microphone switch
connected to the hidden pa system in the Cake Stop Cafe.
"Well we can't have all those entries from one person. I know; the winner
is ... a Mr L. Armstrong from Texas."
Heads turn at the CS Cafe toward the source of this news.....
Aeroflash
...As a battered and bloody Basque in a torn pink jersey limps through the
door.
'Has anyone seen my bike?' he moans. 'It's a Giant with Campag Bora wheels. I
seem to have cycled over some Acme glue someone left in the road. A bit like
when someone tried to trick me by painting a convincing tunnel on the side of
the Alpe d'Huez. I'm sure he was wearing yellow. He was here, I'm sure of
it.'
...As a wiry Texan escapes down the road pushing a slightly dusty 'competition
prize', the still wet black paint glistening unconvincingly in the setting sun.
'Lucky you can ride on a flat tub,' he mutters as he spies his former steed, a
hastily discarded OCLV decaying in the roadside vegetation. 'I've decided it is
about the bike after all...'
oldnewbiker
It would appear that Thanatos has the same immortality thing that the Highlander
had.Lucky lad means he could live long enough to see someone other than Lance
win the tour.
mikehowells
my wife stomps in, asking for anything with 'ade' in the name for her husband,
who's badly bonked after some heavily panniered hill-climbing. she starts loudly
singing american pie, all four sodding hours of it. again.
after leaning my bike against the wife's embarressingly identical specialized, i
stagger in, red-eyed and wobbly like a newborn foal. "chocolate!" i
shout, "wifey! i'll have some chocolate too...and cake...and stop
singing."
i drop like a stone onto a chair whilst wifey feeds me chocolate and nasty greed
liquid. perking up, i thank her, pull out a pack of cards, order a couple of
cups of builders tea and stick some led zeppelin on the jukebox. so far i've
ignored everybody there. i smile a hello and get back to the serious buinsess of
losing badly at cards.
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