The Battle of Towering Electric Mongoose and Centipede

Towering Electric Mongoose advanced. Centipede snarled, spitting mucus from its furry mandibles. TEM rose up upon hind legs, iron claws protruding automatically from paws. Centipede whisked around in anger, hissing at his robotic antithesis.

Rupert Murdoch, from his womb of light perched high above the aggressors, barked orders at the many-legged arthropod of Hell. "Attack creature! Attack!" he spat feverishly, sensing his plan of world domination could be facing its only possible threat.

Centipede leapt into the face of TEM, causing the plucky machine to fall to the ground from his lofty perch. Wriggling in TEM's face, the centipede squirted venom through its forcipules into the eyes of my machine. TEM's jaw opened to utter a shriek of robot pain, its transistors fusing and causing smoke to emit from all of its orifices.

The wretch seemed all but done for, until it leapt up and flattened the squirming worm, gripping its spidery tendrils with all of its power. The spider which had given birth to this creature scampered about on Murdoch's back at the sight of this, in some disgusting satanic parody of maternal care. Murdoch screamed in horror as his creature was clutched by my wonderful metal mongoose.

But it was not yet over, for the centipede twisted and came out on top of my TEM. The giant two then rolled around in the dirt of the park, splashing through ponds and killing swans, destroying a bandstand and impaling an elderly lady on a pitchfork.

The two continued to roll in a terrifying death grip, thundering on towards the woods from whence the Centipede had originally emerged. As they tussled and fought for life - and each others death - they became submerged in the woods until the two fell out of sight and all became momentarily quiet.
Finally the Centipede rose from the woods, its back arched in fury as it pounced upon TEM as if for the final brutal kill. It disappeared again from view as the blow was made... all was silent. And then TEM rose, its eyes shining bright red, its forearms fully outstretched and gripping the Centipede in its powerful claws.

With the beast raised high in the air, TEM pulled the Centipede into two, its green fluids pouring down upon the park. It then devoured the Centipede, chewing heartily on its victim.

It was over. Or at least the threat of the Satanic Centipede was over. I still had to deal with my arch nemesis, Rupert Murdoch and his spider bride, the monster that was once Rebekah Brooks. Reaching from my window ledge, I picked up a sniper's pistol and raised it in the air as he hovered nearby.

"Your days are numbered, you fiend!" I called to the maniacal brute, who was staring towards the TEM masticating on his monster. I pulled the trigger, but instead of shooting Murdoch, it jammed. Murdoch flew towards me and hovered in my window.

"Ha ha ha! Stigwood you miss your chance, my friend!" he laughed, and he and his spider flew away into the horizon, leaving a trail of cheese-scented gas behind him.

As I watched his cheesy vapour trail evaporate, I wondered to myself when I would next encounter the evil of Rupert Murdoch. Sooner that I would like, that is for sure.

THE END

Battle commences...

It was in the early hours of the morning that I was woken by a distant screaming. My eyes snapped open and I rushed to my window to set eyes upon my nemesis, for whom I had been preparing these past weeks in utter seclusion. However, whatever image I had prepared of my foe was incomparable to what lay before me then.

Looking across the Pinner Memorial Park which lay behind my boarding room, a gargantuan creature, perhaps 15 metres high, came crawling though the trees at the far end. It was a centipede of the genus Scolopendra Cingulata, with alternating bands of black and yellow gold across its back. It was crawling quickly upon its numerous yellow legs, feeling its way with pink antennae. As it progressed through the woods, it tore up and ate anything in its path, crunching whole trees in its elongated mandibles.

Alongside the centipede flew Rupert Murdoch, whose ancient imaciated body hovered high up in the air within a globe of glassy light which held him in the sky under his control, presumably via the wires that were protuding from his head. Clutching onto Murdoch's back was the orb-weaver spider which had given birth to the sickening multi-legged monstrosity that was now approaching the bandstand.

"Prostrate yourself before me and you may be spared!" barked Murdoch like some insane dictator. "You are all my subjects now, lie down before the terrible centipede!" While many ran away screaming, some did as they were bid by Murdoch and lay down, believing they were entering into some new world order, only to be gobbled up by the creature.

The time had come to find out whether my preparations would be fruitful. Taking up a remote control device, I pressed a switch. Many metres under the park, my machine began to burrow upwards towards the scene of mayhem. Finally my creation emerged from its hole - the Towering Electric Mongoose, or TEM for short. Thin and lithe, the 20-metre high robot bore the familiar characteristics of a mongoose - the scruffy-haired mammal that naturally preys on centipedes - but was created soley of metal by my genius hands.

The centipede turned and set eyes on the TEM and progressed to attack. It was to be a bloody battle...

TO BE CONTINUED....

My work continues...

I lie here now on the floor of my paltry hotel room in Pinner, a tray of bread and beans a few inches from my right hand, a combination spanner clutched in my left. My eyes are itchy and bloodshot from the hours that I have spent here staring at the machine which I have been constructing since I arrived. 

My host, an ugly man with greasy hair named Rupert, bothers me with knocks upon my door as I try to go about my business. I realise that he wishes to know what causes the strange metallic thumps that he hears in the night, emanating from my door. 

If I were to tell him, I fear he would run screaming in terror from his home, to know what horror will soon alight upon this hitherto peaceful enclave. 

I have few other words to say, other than that I am aware that the time is drawing short, and I must continue for my work must be complete before the day arrives.

A room with a view

... Duly I awoke from this most delicious reverie to find that my mysterious attendee had instantly departed. I rose from my seat and walked briskly towards the exit, just as the mandrills sprung upon the serving boy and wrenched the gizzard from his neck.

The evening light was dusking as I walked down The Strand through the bustle of wenches, pederasts, ablutophobes, kanomaniacs, whores, pedlers, tapsters, scatomancers, virgins, traipsers and trawlers, bellygods, bastards, apes, idlomancers, rapers, morons, slavocrats, idolators and tapeworm-diners, broadsmen, didikkos, mandrakes, shofulmen and tea leaves, until finally I found that I had arrived at Bishopsgate Metropolitan railway station.

Entering the station, I handed over a penny to the man from the Metropolitan Railway, and boarded a standard gauge locomotive, taking a seat in a carriage next to a vicar and an elderly lady who was engaged in work upon a needlepoint cushion. Looking closely I noticed that the image she was creating was one of a man waiting outside a schoolyard with a gun. Noticing my interest, she smiled primly.

The train pulled into Pinner, and it was here that I disembarked, and quickly paced across the village green towards the high street. I found a lodging house and ventured inside, ringing the bell at the reception. A short ugly man walked in from an office and after some brief pleasantries I requested to take a room for the forseeable future, one that must have a north-facing aspect. He nodded in knowing accordance, and escorted me to a room. I immediately went to the window and found it to have a perfect view over the Pinner Memorial Park.

"I'll take it," I  told the fellow, and placed a rusty button in his hairy palm. He smiled inanely and left me to my business. And so it was that I began to plot my task in hand.

A meeting at The Grand Cigar Divan on The Strand

My rendezvous was to be in The Grand Cigar Divan on The Strand, where I was greeted by a towering doorman who with a single enormous hand smeared the venerable juices of the establishment across my face. He, I immediately recognised from a recent brannigan on the North End Road. He seemed not to betray any observable fear, despite the fact that I had witnessed the cur during a terrible bout of cynanthropy. I made a mental note to issue him with some black-mail as the deviant walked me to my table.

Taking my seat I surveyed the immeasurably cavernous dining room before me. The Grand Cigar Divan is decaying to the point where large areas have been fenced off due to sections of the wall having collapsed, allowing the stenchwater of The Thames to come lapping through the rubble. In the distance, an ageing gentleman waited patiently for his companion to take his turn at chess, not realising that the latter was a cadaver. Finally the former collapsed face down upon the board, at which a group of shrieking mandrills at a nearby table took their moment and tore the two limb from limb with their magnificent jaws.

It was as I observed this incident with a surge of scientific intrigue upon me, that my vision was suddenly obscured by a gentleman. Adjusting my focus, a man in a grey suit stood between myself and the mandrills. He walked slowly forward, past a serving boy carving a roast antelope, and stood some feet before me.

"Centipede reproduction does not involve copulation," he began sonorously. "Males deposit a spermatophore for the female to take up. In one clade, this spermatophore is deposited in a web, and the male undertakes a courtship dance to encourage the female to engulf his sperm. In other cases, the males just leave them for the females to find. In temperate areas egg laying occurs in spring and summer, but in subtropical and tropical areas there appears to be little seasonality to centipede breeding. It is also notable that there are a few known species of parthenogenetic centipedes..."

His grim, droning voice had a soporific effect upon my mind, which began to wander then fell into the lightest of slumbers. My mind became focused on the image of a decaying body lying at the bottom of a lift shaft. As I focused closer on this dream-image I noticed that the bloated carcass was dressed in the tousled garments of Friar Tuck.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A brief recap...

And so sirs, let us reconsider the activities that have brought our cast of actors to this juncture.

Having taken in a ginger-haired streetwalker by the name of Rebekah Brooks, I was surprised to discover she was still in the wage of her former paymaster, Rupert Murdoch. After I watched her walk into an alleyway where there was a peculiar interchange with a chameleon-like man, I had my barnacled chum Lumpy Pete follow her, and he did so all the way to the icy wastes of non-London. It was here that he observed her meet with Murdoch, after which she transformed into a gigantic orb-weaver spider and had sexual congress with a poplar-hawk moth, which had itself once been Nick Clegg.

I met with two of my fellow Devotees of Rakuu, who explained that the purpose of the inter-arthropod intercourse was for the spider to birth a giant centipede with which Murdoch could bring the civilised world to its knees. My spirit wife came to me a few nights ago, and during the first act of love we have experienced together since her death, she passed psychic images to me, revealing that the centipede (which appeared to be of the genus Lithobius forficatus) has already begun its inexorable journey towards London, to wreak certain destruction.

As you can see, dear readers, I am in a pretty pickle. I endeavour to save the world from this creature - but to do so, I must harness of all my powers of deduction, all of my years of anthropological learning, and of course my numerous experiences of slaughtering things that are different to me.

Lumpy Pete has arranged for me to meet a fellow scientist, an expert in matters of myriapoda - something of which I have only a cursory knowledge. Let us pray that the meeting will be useful.

The final segment bears a telson

It was while which arched its legs around eating a banana, sleep and the house free, and, since flitting sunlight cascading across my face and dropped from my hand arms, how to of the moth Clegg, Rebekah has been absent from this house, and I have wandered this house wondering I lay in my robe, fell upon the body lying this evening upon he observed her turn into that huge monster of a spider my ottoman with the deal with this issue at hand, leading me finally to take my seat upon the ottoman where Lumpy out at some task me, and the banana and I clawed down towards me as if to draw me towards herself. Then she drawed down and enclose me, encase me in silken gripped and pulled aside and grasped and opened me and pulled my robe inside her deep dead hole and thrusting within and without as he dark ceiling aghast message seemed beaten into me as I lay there held in a delicate balance trying bright eyes flashed aside, legs to find my way out or my way in, grasping within and pulling staring she brought her shawled air aside she spread open for me and in it went glanced up and my girl, my former wife was there hanging above me, pale white and gripped back at me with her darling wet eyes and her arms icy cold into mine and a my stiff prick out, pulling it within her, as against the gaseous forms, her silken skin so skeined and drawn and into those arms it took, my she flashed me an wittling the caves of that deadness crawled an elongated creature, upon many legs she crawled, in disc-like structure with a central pore surrounded by sensory cells. Its shiny mandibles this vision, the crawling beast was yellow and segmented and a hugely away. Compound eyes staring…… An unusual sense organ found in some groups are the organs of Tömösvary. These are located at the base of the antennae, and consist of a glistened in the sunlight. Venom glands run itself a huge image of darkness tip of each forcipule. Venom glands run through a tube almost to the tip through a tube almost to the to the mouthparts. The creature scrabbled forward to London. reproductive organs. The digestive tract forms a simple tube, with digestive glands attached and holes thing with demented fury into the bright light, revealing claws CENTIPEDE which some twenty feet in length was scrabbling in fury venom where of each forcipule. The final segment bears a telson and includes the openings of the caves and deadness lies, and from that deadness, from scrabble crawling It was later waiting for Lumpy lay of drool "sunshine pallett".to return… collecting upon my naked and dissolate upon the hearthrug, a thick corpus after this aparition had passed that I felt what terror it is, this vision she gave me, and I

A meeting with two Devotees of Rakuu leads to an Earth-shattering discovery

Sirs, my meeting at "The Porcupine" began with the usual measures: the special combination of knocks upon the forgettable door on ------ Street, the knowing squint from the bird/man hybrid while removing my cloak, the raucous din of yabbering gents emanating from the Front Bar... However this time the scent of rotting flesh was even more overwhelming than normal - I felt as though my very olfactory bulbs would implode.

Following the odour, my eyes met with the celebrated Xanixi's latest artwork, a fascinating hillock of decomposing whale blubber scattered with the eyeballs of seals and topped with a single magnificent walrus ivory. Clearly a critique of Gladstone's maricultural legislation, it was a masterwork. Around it, a number of prancing aesthetes exchanged comments briefly punctuated by expressions of vomit, so moved were they by the powerful radiation.

I moved on, coursing through the deeper velvet folds of the club, nearly trampling a pastor perusing a pornographic pamphlet entitled "Horace Goes Skiing", until I arrived in the Back Bar, a place where the more desperate sort of drinker would go to seek silent solace in vinegary measures. At the bar I spied my two special colleagues of worship - Devotee Roger and Devotee Mycroft.

We greeted each other in the customary manner, and I divulged all from the previous evening - the sexual congress of those two horrifically gigantified lifeforms. As I imparted this story, my fellow Devotees began to look increasingly agitated, until finally Devotee Mycroft broke in:

"Dear God, Devotee Augustus! Are you aware what your unknowing chap has witnessed?" he uttered, wiping mustard from his huge whiskers. "The Demi-Lord Rupert Murdoch was clearly intent on gestating one or more daemons to work under his service! And if I am not mistaken, the produce of this sickening intercourse are to be monstrous towering Centipedes. Surely with such all-devouring beasts, Murdoch could bring the world to his feet!"

Devotee Roger, who had remained quiet up until this point, was moved to ejaculate: "Augustus - he has to be stopped!"

The Earth threatened by Death In Centipede! Such a terrible vision, that I and my colleagues plotted how we are to deal with the news long into the night, remaining at "The Porcupine" until morning, from whence I emerged, my androgenic hair singed and a buttery tinge to my features...

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Well readers, it's certainly shaping up into an epic mystery, is it not?


Apologies for breaking in - your faithful editor here, and I must turn the glowing light-beam of scrutiny upon the mysterious “Devotees of Rakuu”, an organisation to which Augustus occasionally mentioned he was a member.

Very little is known of this most shadowy of shadowy Victorian cabals - even the usually verbose Mr Stigwood remained resolutely tight lipped - other than the following:

1. It was variously spelt Raku or Rakuu, although three u's and above was generally frowned upon.
2. At its peak its membership rose to fifty or sixty, all men, and all - intriguingly - mustachioed.
3. All records of the organisation seemed to peter out by the early 1880s.
4. It is not known what Raku/Rakuu was, although it is supposed (by myself) that it may have been a supremely intelligent alien life form which which the members communicated via an ancient crystal that had been dug up with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
5. The above theory was heartily postulated in my dream-cycle trilogy 'The Reconfiguration of Elmer Swervizor", which regardless of the comments made by 1986 Hugo Awards panel, shat all over anything by Isaac Asimov.
6. But I digress. The Devotees were known to meet in secret, at regular intervals, perhaps in ancient (or more modern) buildings, where they would practice their Devotion (or otherwise) together (or alone).

And as I turn my modern pen once more from older lands to newer futuristic ones (perhaps populated by tiny robots) I shall leave Augustus to continue with his own story.

What developments shall emerge when our hero consults with his fellow Devotees at The Porcupine?

JC Guthrey
Science fiction author

A rendezvous at The Porcupine awaits...

Tonight, dear friends, I take myself to my club, The Porcupine (owned by Lord Derby), where I intend to meet with two fellow Devotees of Rakuu, the organisation to which I am a member and of which I may not divulge any information, on pain of death. It is with these brothers of mine - who are well-versed in the dark realms of magik and mystery - that I  hope to gain advice and information about the sickening incident of inter-arthropod intercourse that my pal Lumpy Pete observed in the dark wastes of Non-London.

While there, and in developing information for my investigation, I may also be seen to indulge myself of numerous shrimp-oils, a portion of cactus fat, some darkened boys from a mystical land, and a heartening and manly rub-down in the Roman Baths. Pip Pip!

The dreary piss-water eyes of England's shadow

Ah the dreary piss-water eyes of England's shadow and top hat toiling forebears... caps doffers kicking shins and tasting to taste of fog in slime 'n' oil dripping down throat in caustic sea disaster memories of olden hearts, it corrupts me. How in those tasteful times I did worry hearts and drive monsters in tribeholes like Salamander.... where the she-gypsies practiced their cold arts of passion and silence and drilled skulls for penance of sickness

The worrying plastic dreamers voided their souls and trawled to a land of caps and carpets.... my eyes! this silence did end with the travel of a thousand times. I was proud of those monsters dicing with the bodies of many, chop chop! Ha ha!

Oh eyes... eyes... This burning mishap did finally treace me. I walked alone for three days, then burnished my hand upon a Magna Tree. I was indeed lost. Plastic man enabled me a prayer, and I was released into Morden (via Bank). In which Southern ways did tip me westwards. Therein, I bought cabbage,cheese, bread loaf, business cards, filofax and crampon and rode my busy body home... teatime slugs, anyone?Chip chip!

I recall the Banyan Tree, where Saldanerii did foster and drool on its tapered madrigals. Jelly wed pour from terrible joins and

An unholy union of arthropods

Once we had seated ourselves in the smoking room and lit our cigars, Lumpy began his story.

"I followed Rebekah Brooks' carriage as it travelled into the unknown cavernous regions to the north of London," he said, as he immediately slid down onto my hearthrug and caressed my calves.

"Pulling up outside a complex maze of caves, Rebekah stepped down from the carriage, her tresses all a-ripple, and payed the Hansom man in song: 

'Thank you my man for bearing me here
 Thank you dear friend for your unerring steer'

"Such a trill, Augustus! Anyhow, she then walked into the mouth of a cave as I followed at a safe distance, grasping lengths of elderberry leaves to protect from potential destruction via cabbage gas. I followed her into a vast hall room, where I watched her drink from a goblet set upon an ancient table. She then loosened her clothing and, dear God... her features simply fell away! All her body skin and flesh shed to the floor a-crumple. Ugh!

"Her true form was as spider - an Orb-Weaver Spider - elevated and elongated, a cluster of eyelets twinkling with terrible malice in the gloom. O but I must confess that I soiled my cloth there and then, Augustus!

"She grasped a small bell with her pincer and let forth a tinkle, and was immediately joined by her former employer, Mr Rupert Murdoch, whose eyes twinkled with delight at the arachnoid vision before him. He couldn't help but to lick and slaver over her sickly ashen flesh. O! Augustus, how I retched in that antechamber at the sight of such depravity! I was nearly forced to look away!

"But then the match-made millionaire croaked out a speech: 'Phase Two! The crocus-field will be burning over this little number...'

He pulled a cord and a wall fell away, revealing Nick Clegg, who stepped forward. Clegg, the Whig who had thrown in his hat with the Tory Party! Clegg walked forward and spoke forth:

'There is no way that the 50p [rate] is unilaterally going to be dropped in the absence of progress on lowering tax on people on low and middle incomes and looking at ways the wealthiest pay their fair share,' he said menacingly.

'If millions of taxpayers feel they are being overlooked, ignored and passed over, as preference is given to people who need the least amount of help at the moment, you destroy the very fabric of consensus without which a sensible tax system cannot survive.' 

"O how I shudder to think of those words in its unknown tongue, Augustus! But the worst was yet to come, dear friend. Once he had uttered his mysterious incantation, he supped of the same goblet as had Rebekah, and at that too shed his skin! He revealed that beneath he held the physicality of a moth, a monstrous dust-covered Poplar Hawk Moth, some eight feet in height.

"And at that, he and the arachnoid Rebekah began a terrible coupling, their bodies intertwined in some ancient sexual rite, wings beating in ardour against the sickening flanks of the spider's sinewy thighs, as she lassoed him with her sticky bolas. Her fangs chattered viciously as he probed her with his sticky thorax, then grasped her with his vice-like valva and they made their ungodly marriage. And all the while, the sinister match-seller danced and guffawed around the two with glee.

"This terrible sexual communion continued for hours, Augustus, and as I watched I voided my stomach more times than I can remember. Finally it ended, and the sinister spider bit deeply into the moth's abdomen once his use was over, then consumed him entirely. The match millionaire cackled as he watched it done.

"At this, I had to leave, Augustus. It was too much for me to bear! What can it mean, my friend? What purpose was there in this most unholy of unions?"

Awoken from a revery to terrible visions of Shakespearian pustules

Demons stabbing each other in the eyes... the elegant leaking of life... my eyes. my burning eyes.... cold dark hard walls...and the wisp of a familiar silver nightgown... the burning taste of good hard vinegar in my gullet... the light is dimming and she turns to look at me... glutinous folds, o glutinous folds... water pours down the walls and I am free...

I came to from the most sinister of visions with the sickly pustules of Lumpy Pete staring me full in the face, and in my inebriated state each nodule seems to take a terrible face and each face screamed at me: "Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night's body be called thieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon..."

A brisk slap to my jowls brought me around, and I found myself deep in the arms of my darling Lumpy, a tincture of opium hanging from my open vein and the walls of my study stippled with my own excrement in a manner reminiscent of the latest works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

"Augustus!" he bellowed. "Augustus! Rouse yourself! You must hear my story of this most fearsome conspiracy!'

This called for Augustus' patented Instant Sobriety Elixir to be brought forward, which Lumpy knew well. A funnel was inserted into my mouth and poured therein was the cracked extract of four raw quails eggs, a sprinkle of Parmesan and a dried cabbage leaf. The funnel was then extracted and the adrenaline glands from a living human body were brought forward, on which I vacantly chewed for a few minutes.

"I say, Lumpy," I said, "I'm as fresh as a daisy. Now do tell me about your adventure! I am indeed curious."

And so myself and my faithful pal took up brandys and cigars, removed our shirts and rubbed each other with the usual pigeon fat, then retired to the smoking room where he revealed all...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Lumpy Pete takes watch... and I consult with a spirit

Today I sent Lumpy Pete to follow Rebekah as she went about her business, hawking her pretty nonsense rhymes around East Acton. "Now remember, you fool,'" I warned him tenderly. "Don't get up too close, hoping to grab a stare at those ginger bubbies." He glanced away shame-faced, clearly having planned a little tit-watching.

He was to keep me informed of developments via a wireless telegraph device which I have recently developed. Instead of using Edison's patented electrostatic coupling system (dreary!), my device propels lines of "voice information" by pressurising and de-pressuring shafts of air betwixt stations. It was, in part, modelled upon the spinnerets of the common house spider, although with entirely different useage.

But enough of my genius! Once Lumpy had left, I consulted with my poor dead wife :;.^., the ghose who's appearance had tipped me off about Rebekah's strange behaviour. We held conference in the complex language of clicks and whistles spoken by her people, the %¬¬ tribe, all long dead now following a civil war caused by... ah well, that's another story. I asked her for some explanation of this mystery.

"$()()()£ %%$%%$  "!??@$@$%," she suggested. I was shocked at her remonstrations, as you can imagine.
"&&*&&&&£:@@:," I responded with heartfelt passion.
"::$::%:$$:::<>>><££"$$£"""$$$$$$," she explained further. I could hardly beleive my ears! If this was true, then... just as we were beginning to make progress on the case, the receiving station of my aero-modulator began to squark.

"Augustus!" called in Lumpy pete. "I'm following her now, she's taken a Hansom! She appears to be heading North... "
"Keep on her trail you dankish clot-pole!" I told him warmly. "Lose her and you're back out on the street, digging up street-grubs for tiffin."
"Right you are Augustus!" he barked, and I heard the cobbled streets gather pace beneath his trusted steed, Daphne.

It was then that a puff of purple air emanated from the aero-modulator and the device ceased to work. Damn the machine - I should have stuck with electrostatic coupling after all! Lumpy has been gone now some six hours, I wonder what fate has befallen my gentle colleague?

A depth of carion...

A depth of carion, some swine and a voluminious display of hollow... This is a shoddy moment in my life, that the mention of a spectral glimpse, a tethered nightgown or some glacial pumps should bring solicitude? Or was it sure contemptuous footsteps upon my passage? Perhaps I shall never be cheered? Perhaps my eyes shall be burnt as I wander in stately thrum, closed to a tiny tune, along the corridors of my lady's tepid mind-gas? The stretch of these moments abates me...

Lumpy Pete offers his services in the detection of a conspiracy...

It was as the pitter patter of moistened globules upon Augustus' tin roof awakened him (me) this three-quarterpast tiffin that I moaned deep and bulbous in a lowly bellow: "Booooaarrgghh..." and so it continued for a period of between 24 and 32 minutes, before that lowly slattern Rebekah finally cared to poke her pointed jaw around my frontal portal.

"Kind zurr," spoke she with impedimence, "how may I be of assistance to you today?" as she began to slip one arm from her hair shirt. "Not now!" I barked, in no mood for her slutted advances (I had already supped a little too deeply at the elfine cup last night). "Bring me my jabs, you owl!" She curtsied and went away for my works, affording me time to indulge in the pleasurable activity of multiple voidance.

As I took my customary injections with a little light vinegar, the images upon Augustus' walls of his (my) terrible forebears bore down on me (him) with sickening eye-judgement. I began to moan as if my foot had become impaled upon the very trident of Poseidon, and so gathered up my walrus boots and whip, in order to leave.

However, my passage was disturbed by Lumpy Pete, my cantankerous old lodger and co-expeditioneer who staggered in, having, I surmised, over-indulged in the lemony dog-milk in which he had beeen seeking solace of late.

"Augustus," he belched, lines of drool flinging across my cherrywood spankmaster. "Augustus, by my eyes! I must have her, that tousle-haired minxter!" I surmised that he refered to Rebekah Brooks, who I had recently observed confering in a back alley with one of the lizard set. I cracked my whip across his furuncled brow and drove my boot into his glutinous scrotum.

"You idiot! Keep away from the red whore! There is something afoot with her, and I must keep her under watch. The experiment must not be infected by your monstrous libido," I bristled, moustache unfurling and darting in cruel points towards the horrid boils on my housemate's jowls.

Lumpy dropped down upon one knee, his hands lifted in solemn entreaty. "Forgive me, Augustus," he begged. "I had no idea that the dollymop was involved in conspiracy. Please, tell me all, and I will endeavor to help."

And so I revealed all to the befuddled pratt; of the messenger boy with the mystery delivery, the receipt of payment from Rupert Murdoch, and Rebekah's horrid exchange with a sinister chameleon. And while I admitted that this final clue may have had much to do with the rather strong mescaline upon which I had gorged myself one hour previous, Lumpy did concede something was amiss.

"Why," he said, farting deeply into the chute I had especially developed for his increasingly noxious emanations, "this mystery calls for the work of Stigwood and Pete - the greatest detectives in Marylebone! "And while I found the half-wit's vapid remonstrations deeply irritating, I conceded that his help could be of use. But what next?

A curious meeting... and an antique-related relapse

Having this morning packed a sprightly lunch of pickled starfish, I prepared to take a train to Beachy Head, to spend a peaceful day walking in the glades and brooks and copses of the South Downs, perusing my thoughts on the many untethered horrors of this sickening world.

But as I ventured out onto ------- Lane to hail a hansom, a chill drizzle started to scatter over Marylebone village market, settling upon my frock coat like leper’s piss. I scowled at the heavens and cursed any deity that could make a fruitless exercise of the preparation of brined asteroidea.

I was then that I caught a glimpse of tousled red hair, all a-flutter in the bespattered breeze. My maid Rebekah was easing her way through the afternoon crowds, a basket upon her arm… and contained within it? I did not know, for placed over it was a smart chequered coverlet. But I was sure that this was not one of the days when she would make her way up to the west end to sell pirated DVDs.

Something seemed amiss to old Augustus’ wily brain, and I endeavoured to follow her.

The flame-haired scrubber passed into a passage and I followed her at a distance, until she led me to a dank urine-stinking corner somewhere north of Baker Street. As I peered around a corner, I watched her meet a gentleman of perhaps eight feet in height. His eyes – which were situated on opposing sides of his face - swivelled and rotated in a menacing manner that reminded me of a genus of chameleon I once dissected then ate in Grimpy-Grimpy Land.

Upon greeting Rebekah, he cast his cloak across her shoulder and focused his stereoscopic vision upon her basket. She pulled aside the basket’s coverlet and removed a number of items including a woollen mitten and a gastric plug, which he took up in his huge claw. A single silken hair followed, then a copy of Metal Machine Music (by Lou Reed).

It was at this point that Augustus' investigative mind became a little bored, to tell truth, and as they continued their secretive handover of bric-a-brac (some pigeon fat… a crude pornographic sketch…blah blah) I turned around and walked up to Baker Street.

After wandering around aimlessly for a while, I climbed a drainpipe and peered into a room where a man was having his armpit inspected by a nurse.

My boredom became overwhelming and I must admit that I had a slight relapse, starting a small fire in an antiques shop near Regents Park. It built into a fine blaze within moments and I retreated to the other side of the park where I watched it go up in fine style, all burnished orange and bilberry blue. How I chortled, dear friends!

I scarpered home to find Rebekah polishing my Octon’s Aromaron as if it were no more than a speckled egg. I will get to the bottom of this moral turpitude under my own roof! Bark!

A chill awakening... and some food for thought

It was in the darkness of night that I once more felt the chill hand of my dead wife upon my brow... looking up at her many wandering eyes, I realised she wished to lead me away from my bed. She drew away, calling me to follow in her native tongue of clicks and whistles.

She led me in my stockinged feet into young Rebekah’s chamber as she slumbered. Was this something to do with the queer behaviour of young Rebekah? Was :;.^. leading me to information which could solve this mystery? At first I thought Rebekah had been affected by the same sickness of the mind that has lately come across all of the lower orders of London - not to mention Birmingham and Manchester - causing them to enact violent outbursts in outlets of JD Sports.

(As an aside, the bizarre “riots” of these menial workers is perfectly explained by Dr. Augustus J. Stigwood’s Theory of the Sotadic Zones, in which I have postulated that around the major conurbation of London are areas where one can predict increased proclivity towards immodest behaviour. I am currently developing a further theory that explains the cause: the positioning of a number of huge electro-magnetic “engines” which have been installed by Government forces within major London landmarks such as the Monument to the Great Fire. Such magnetic radiation would easily explain these “rioters”’ behaviour.)

And so it was that my partner in detection :;.^. pointed down upon a pocket book beside Rebekah’s bed, inches from her auburn curls that scattered so becomingly across her pillow. Taking it up, I found an entry:

“7 AUGUST: PAYMENT OF 2S 3D FROM MR RUPERT MURDOCH ESQ”

My eyes darkened as I read these words. What fresh dirt is this? Still in the pay of her former employer is she? I suspect treachery is afoot…

A new maid... and a curious development

In the week since Rebekah first pounded upon my knocker, much has happened Chez Stiggers. After hearing her heart-rending story, I decided to take her in and allow her to serve as my own personal maid. O, the lucky whore!

Since removing my curmudgeonly old retainer Brown from my ranks following his increasingly bizarre outbursts, I've been looking for someone to take over the important role of managing my personal affairs and this flame-haired waistrel, once brushed up and fitted with a fine suit of pig hair, fitted the bill.

(I have, however, had some concerns about my pal Lumpy Pete who continues to lodge with me as we plan our trip to the Upper Lowlands - a journey which appears to be increasingly elusive - who I have noticed watching Rebekah with an almightily firey glimmer in his eye. I shall have to watch his advances - I do NOT want another incident like that of the time my sister Georgina came to visit.)

All was going well, until I spied something curious occuring this morning. As I broke my fast with my usual dish of ocelot veins and considered a tincture of cannabis sativa, Rebekah glanced at her watch then excused herself and walked towards the front door. Removing myself from my seat, I watched her from the vantage point of my front parlour.

There I saw her upon my doorstep receiving a strange boy, all covered in soot and mucus. Upon greeting him, Rebekah did look to her left and right, then take a small package from the boy. She then handed him a sixpence and shoed away the urchin.

I quickly returned to my seat and continued to chomp on veins. She returned and made no comment about the preceding exchange, having presumably hidden the package amongst her decolletage.

What caper is this!? Augustus's nose will sniff out this mystery!

A surprise visitor tells of a strange conspiracy

It was as I made my toilet this morning that I heard a knocking upon my door. Looking out on the street, I saw a desperate-looking moocher with an overgrown shock of red hair pounding upon my knocker.

I cursed down on the muck snipe and then hawked a fine green one to seal it. It was not until her eyes flashed up at me in anger that I noticed that my visitor was a woman, some lowly dollymop.

‘Hello Augustus, we could have some fun with this,’ I said to myself slyly.

Taking her in, I seated her upon the hearthrug and had some warming broth brought it to her. As I poured myself a stiff brandy, I called on her to tell me her story, of how she found herself to be in such a position.

‘Rebekah is my name zurr,’ she said in a broad Lancashire accent. ‘Rebekah Brooks.’

‘I used to work at old man Murdoch’s match factory. Proud of me, was the old cur. And proud was I to work there making them matches 12 hours a day, even if he did lay his fingers upon me a little too often.

‘But cames the day when all the trouble started – a day when the matches were found to be going off in gentlemen’s pockets without them even being struck! There was lawsuits coming in left, right and centre from coves complaining of singed ballbags.

‘Everyone started blaming me, but old man Murdoch said he’d protect me. And I trusted him, I did. He took me into his mansion on the hill and said he’d make me a lady. Lady of the manor, little I!

‘Of course, he had to close down the factory, and all the workers went out on the streets, but I was safe, thank the Lord!

‘At least that was what I thought, zurr. It came to a week later when I got my marching orders – old man Murdoch had tired of me, found some new floozy. And I was out on the street with nothing but a farthing in my pocket.’ At this, a single tear trickled down Rebekah’s cheek.

‘I got my own back on the old buzzard though, heh heh,’ she muttered. ‘He had a surprise when he faced the dock that morning. No one will ever connect it to me though…’

To be continued…

Blessed relief

Sirs. I must confess I have been pleasuring myself all morning over the sight of these two mischievious nymphettes. O their wanton eyes! It is too much for my loins to bear. I shall be sightless by tiffin.

A loathsome malady...

Mes amis...

Ah no... my friends.... please excuse my insuffisances... deficiencies... in the maintenance of this journal... again, sorry - journal.

It has been a wearying year since I fell hard with a dark and distressing sickness that wrought its poison upon my harrowed limbs and reduced me to the very darkest pit of humanity.

For last year I was struck down with a most severe case of gallic illness... Yes, the French Disease. Please do not turn away from these pages in fear of feeling the palsy's tendrils at your throat! Regardless of the bunkum postulated by Dr John Snow, There is no proof that the mallady can be transfered via the International Network.

It was my beloved Mandy (o! those glutinous folds, those tufted curlicues!) that poisoned me with this vile sickness. It was during her celebrated tour of Europe that she was brutally sired by a swarthy député in a darkened corner of the Palais Bourbon. Yes - she was infected by his stinking 'gallus'.

Soon after meeting her I was lost in the fever, with but few moments of horrifying clarity. I recall waking at one point to find myself performing La Marseillaise through an ocarina protruding from my anus, as King Leopold II looked on admiringly. The mists enveloped me again, only for me to revive to find myself lurking around the backstreets of St Mary le Bow clutching a sketchpad full of crude renderings of the local streetwalkers.

Thankfully, I am now over the worst, but still this damned disease sticks faster than syphilis and the - how you say? - retour en arrières... flashbacks are debilitating.

I was at Claridges taking high tea with Viscount Melbourne yesterday, when I demanded a mousse au chocolat then sneered at the mention of Queen Victoria. I was rightly taken out back for a swift kicking.

How much longer must this this shame continue?

BllllluuuuuurghhH?!!!

Auhhhhhh.... non n n n nnnnnnon non... nous arivons?