AFPanto 2001 – Part Two – Meet Jack
A periscope emerges silently from a flat expanse of water.
It’s tubular, yellow, and suspiciously exactly the same as you’d expect a submarine to look like. You can even see the brilliant blue eye of Captain Daniel Angerous as he scans the horizon for signs of the Evil Depth-Star. Little does he realise that the Depth-Star has already seen him, and a Photo torpedo is at this moment heading on a collision course with the innocent Yellow Submarine. Angerous spots the approaching attackers far to late to do anything about them, and for the minutes he has left, he regrets ever having heard of – let alone becoming a part of the Navy of – the Land of Submarines. Any second the Photo torpedos will hit. There is a flash. In the town where Dan was born lived a boy who hated the sea, and his friends all left the town for the land of Submarines. And he lived a life of ease, in a small cottage overlooking acres of farmland. Which, as far as the eye could see, belonged to people who weren’t him. Jack – for this is the person who is doing the gazing – is a reasonably tall, unreasonably handsome, irritatingly visually perfect male person. And he is currently bewailing his lot in life. “Fah (He says, for this is what people in fiction do) I don’t belive my mum. I mean, not giving me my pocket money! What sort of mother does she think she is, anyway? “We don’t have any money” she says, like that’s some kind of excuse. Any real mother would have sold her soul to make sure I’m happy. I have to have my pocket money, my Playstation II needs a new memory card, and Christmas is coming! If she can’t afford to give me my pocket money, how’s she going to buy me presents? I’m doomed! I had to go shopping the other day. I mean, me. She‘s supposed to be the one who does the shopping and stuff, my job is to make sure the house is safe. I went into the fishmongers, and they only had fish that had built in harmonicas. I said, I told ‘em straight, “I’ve had Tuna fish four nights running already”. And it’s not as if it’s my fault we haven’t any money, I had a job once. It wasn’t my fault I had to leave because of illness. Well, the boss getting sick of me, anyway.” At this moment, his mother, whose name, incidentally, is Melody, came back home. “That’s it.” Melody said “We’re finished.” “How?!” “Because I met a friendly policeman, who rapidly became an unfriendly policemen when he found out whose cow this was. Apparently you owe the government £800 in tickets for going up a one way street!” “I was only going one way!” pleaded Jack “Yes, and it was the wrong one. Didn’t you see the arrows?” “I didn’t even see the flaming Indians! And it wasn’t a fair cop” “Why not?” “Well, he said ‘Blow into this little bag’, so I did, and I registered fine. Then he said ‘Blow into this other bag’, so I asked him ‘Why?’, and he said “Cos my chips are hot” “Well, whatever. We haven’t any money left, I spent the last of the money that we had in the world getting you out of trouble. We have no food, no electricity, and no phone line. There is nothing left to sell apart from…” “From what?” “Hilda” “We can’t sell the cow! How will we get to market?” “What will we buy things with if we could? The alternative is to start by selling your Playstation…” “I’ll sell it right away” decided Jack, and drove the bovine to the nearest Used Cow Lot. [To Be Continued]The content of this site is © Nicholas Avenell 2001-2006 (With a couple of exceptions, read the page)
Last modified by 
Aquarion
Aquarion