Chapter Fourteen Winner

This week's mystery writer was Michele Powles. You can download Michele's FABO bookmark by clicking on the image.

When Tania’s chapter twelve landed me in an alien landscape that might have been the past or the future, I knew dinosaurs needed be a big feature of chapter thirteen. But you writers took adding dinosaur parts to humans to a new level of amazing for your chapters. Additional yellow teeth, multiple dinosaur tails and bleeding eyes! Some fantastic writing this week, well done everyone! A special mention to repeat entrants Hayley Coupe, Georgia Fyfe and Caroline Moratti for the incredible stories you all keep producing. They’re getting better and better each week!

I’m constantly amazed by both the fantastic original content of many of the entries we get for FABO and the real technical skill that some writers possess. But something to think about when writing your next entry is Point of View. Who is doing the thinking in your story? This isn’t necessarily about who is doing the talking, but more who is telling the story. There were a few stories that almost made the top prize but for a small slip ups with their technique in this area. It’s totally fine to have different characters telling the story but it’s useful to know for yourself who is the narrator so you don’t slip in and out of your character’s heads mid sentence.

It was Angus Smith’s “Glurgglers” that took out the winning spot this time. He also guessed the mystery writer correctly – yes, me! Double well done. With an “abhorrent avalanche, a bevy of beasties, a clan of criminals, a dreadful dirty dance, an evil ewww, a foul felony, a gross and grotesque grotesquery, a horrible and horrid horror show, and an idiotic idiom iconoclast,” there is no doubt that Angus has both an amazing imagination and an incredible vocabulary. His prize is a FaboFurry and a ten dollar book voucher. Well done again.

Thanks again for all your entries. We love reading them, so keep them coming!

Michele Powles

CHAPTER 14:

MARX AND GLURGGLERS

Angus Smith, Auckland Normal Intermediate School

‘Oh great, this is just what we need!’ Remy moaned.

Lewis, still sedated by Calm, dozed against Too Cool. His newly obtained appendage flicked menacingly in midair, sticky like a newborn child. For a few moments they all just stood there. They were at a loss. Then the fairies set to work, waving high-tech-looking implements over Lewis’s tail and muttering under their breath. After several minutes of this, Remy could remain quiet no longer.

‘So, can we help him?’ Remy demanded.

‘According to the Majorproblemdefinerfixerupper2000,’ Ummm began sagely, ‘Lewis is incurable. Awe is a planet far advanced from anything we’ve handled before, I’m afraid.’

‘Bwa? Wha-?’ Remy stuttered, hardly believing what he was hearing, ‘But you’re freakin’ super powered fairies from outer space! Surely you can do SOMETHING?’

But even as he spoke, Too Cool was sadly shaking his head. ‘Sorry, man,’ he lamented, ‘It can’t be done. What we have here is a Code 73667 Matter Transfiguration Emergency. Only Jack Whoosh can solve a problem of these proportions.’

Before Remy could enquire as to whom in the whole bloody world was Jack Whoosh, Eyepod Nanoo tapped him on the shoulder and pointed along the tunnel to where stood five rather imposing doorways. From the third of these marched a man with a greasepaint moustache and glasses. What’s more, this man seemed eerily familiar. The newcomer waved to them, and then marched forward briskly until he stood before them.

‘If it isn’t Urchin and the Three Stooges,’ the man commented dryly. ‘Greetings, I am an automated program set up to welcome you to Awe. I’m on Earth mode at the moment.’

‘Aren’t you that communist guy?’ Remy frowned, straining to remember his stuffy history lessons with Mr Johnson.

‘And you’re the Princess of Bhutan,’ the automated android snapped. ‘State your business and I’ll see what I can do for you. Mind you, no tongues, not on our first date.’

‘Groucho, that’s your name!’ Remy exclaimed, as he finally remembered the essay he wrote on the history of modern comedy, ‘You were that guy from those old films, weren’t you?’

‘With sugar,’ Groucho Marx added, ‘No, you better make that two. I had a haircut booked for ten minutes ago and I don’t want to be late. Now what do you want? Awe is testing atomic life simulation at the moment, and we don’t want visitors ruining things.’

‘We, like, majorly need an Un-Timer right now, dude,’ Too Cool told him, ‘Like, straight away.’

‘As long as you promise to get out of my hair straight after,’ Groucho sighed, ‘Unless you want to be beheaded by Charlie Chaplin and Leatherface’s love child. That’s my barber for you.’

‘The Un-Timer,’ Eyepod put in sweetly, if not with a little bit of impatience.

‘Ah yes,’ the moustached man mused, drawing a cigar from the folds of his jacket, ‘go down the furthest tunnel up ahead on the left, and continue on until you get to two more tunnels. Take the left again, and you’ll be inside the Workshop. Are you following me?’

‘Yes,’ Remy nodded, frowning as he tried to take in all the details.

‘Well you’d better not be, or I’d have to call the police,’ Groucho retorted, ‘Anyway, once in the Workshop you’ll find an Un-Timer on the table. It’s as simple as that. Oh, and watch out for the Glurgglers.’

With that, the automated android collapsed and folded away into a miniscule metal beetle. It scuttled away, to vanish into some crevice in the wall. With nothing of any importance to impart, the ragtag group set off down the far left tunnel as advised. Ummm picked up the unconscious Lewis and slung him over one shoulder like he was a sack of flour. Remy winced at how carelessly his best friend was being handled. Lewis himself seemed unharmed though, and his tail had stopped swaying. Shaking off the prickling of disgust running up his spine, Remy marched on after the others. But his brain was working feverishly. He was still aching to discover more about the Jack Whoosh that Too Cool had mentioned. And what on earth were Glurgglers?

Remy tiptoed quietly, the lofty tunnels beginning to unnerve him. When they eventually did reach the Workshop, it was nothing at all like what he’d been expecting. If the tunnels leading up to it were lofty, then the great hall itself was absolutely, terrifyingly humongous. Benches were set at intervals along the rocky walls and machinery of all shapes and sizes lay concealed beneath tarpaulins; while in the midst of all this lay a deep pit, where a low table was situated. On this table were piled stacks and stacks of mechanical debris and mysterious knick-knacks.

‘Once in the workshop you’ll find an Un-Timer on the table, simple as that?’ Eyepod frowned doubtfully, running a finger idly through her wavy hair.

‘That table is, like, the epitome of untidiness,’ Too Cool stated solemnly.

‘Don’t be so negative, guys,’ Remy said cheerily, leaping down into the mess, ‘we’re bound to find the Un-Timer eventually.’

Ummm snorted as he dropped Lewis onto the ground. The two fairies stepped down to help Remy sift through the forbidding mountains of steel and plastic, while Eyepod shook Lewis’s shoulders in an attempt to rouse him from his coma. After many minutes of difficult toil, they still had not found the Un-Timer.

‘This is UNCOOL!’ Too Cool proclaimed. ‘We’re never going to find the doohickey-bob.’

That was when, of course, bad things started to happen. One moment Ummm was bending down to examine a stack of paper cups, the next he was caught in a headlock by what looked like a giant, slimy bogey in a Halloween costume.

‘What- eeeeew!’ Remy retched, as dozens more of the Phlegm-cum-Freddy Krueger monsters popped out from the trash piles.

‘You -sluurp- have disturbed our rest,’ the original abomination informed the disgusted Un-Timer-Seekers, seemingly chewing then moistening its words before spitting them out. ‘We are the –sluurp- Glurgglers and we will suck you dry of your

essence.’

‘You guys, like, have to run,’ Ummm winced, struggling in the damp stranglehold.

Remy was about to make a reply, when he saw something flashing out of the corner of his eye. The Un-Timer! Taking care not to make any sudden movements, he bent down and carefully picked up the glowing red implement. Unfortunately a Glurggler saw him. It leapt onto his back with a sickening squelch, causing him to drop the Un-Timer.

‘Too Cool! Eyepod!’ Remy screamed, pummelling uselessly against the caked, flaking abhorrent thing that had hold of his arms.

Eyepod was the first to act, leaping forward and snatching up the Un-Timer. She quickly punched in a secret code, resulting in the instrument beginning to bleat loudly. With a blinding red flash, both the mermaid and the Un-Timer vanished.

‘Eyepod?’ Remy moaned weakly as the Glurggler dragged his limp body back towards its cohorts.

‘I knew that convict would, like, ditch us!’ Too Cool snarled, as several foul aliens set upon him.

Looking about him, Remy saw that the trash lurking Glurgglers had Lewis by the ankles and were dragging him across the table. Too Cool was lost beneath an onset of green, while yet more of the Glurgglers were inserting a tube down the throat of the motionless Ummm.

‘Well isn’t this jolly,’ Groucho Marx remarked, materialising next to the downtrodden Remy. ‘Looks like those hideous tutu-clad witches’ explosive cupcakes can’t save them now, huh? Throw in a flying monkey and you get the Wizard of Oz.’

‘Can you help us?’ Remy enquired without much hope, as snotty tendrils dragged him ever backwards.

‘I’m an automated computer programme, of course I can’t help you,’ Groucho snorted, ‘Ah, isn’t this just lovely. An abhorrent avalanche, a bevy of beasties, a clan of criminals, a dreadful dirty dance, an evil ewww, a foul felony, a gross and grotesque grotesquery, a horrible and horrid horror show, an idiotic idiom iconoclast, a jumping jovial- well, who would’ve known? I’ve run out of adjectives.’

‘Will you shut up?’ Remy glowered, kicking out as a Glurggler attempted to stick a sticky green tube up his nose.

‘I’ll leave,’ Groucho sulked, blinking. ‘Anyway, I’m still late for my haircut. I might go now, just to be early. If you work that one out, you’re good.’

And he was gone. Remy wished he could simply vanish. About five or six Glurgglers (it was hard to tell) were on top of Remy, attempting to stuff a cord down his throat. Yelping in distress, he brought to use new reserves of strength to beat back the attackers. A sudden inhuman screech forced Remy to turn to its source.

A Glurggler lay, ripped in half, before a creature barely recognisable as Lewis. He had now grown dagger-like claws that sprouted from his fingertips. Gigantic yellow dinosaur teeth had appeared, disfiguring the boy’s facial structure. From the teeth dripped green slime. Yet despite all this Lewis seemed happy, his tail swishing to and fro in excitement. He grinned.

‘Hey, this is cool!’