A Sad Sad Tale, Chapter One

Pre-book Interlude… Pre-Interlude… Printerlude

These events did not happen. These people, however, do in fact exist. Pray to God you don’t ever meet them. I’m serious. You will be provided with a small vomiting bag in the next few moments – if not, complain to your local newsagent. Hostesses will locate your nearest emergency exits for you, and please feel free to jump out of the story at any time.

Chapter One: Halo, NTV, and Illegitimate Timeschemes

Chilton screamed in fury, his corpse flying across the snow filled canyon, his weapons thrown even further.
“Arngh, you fuggin’ arsehole! You complete arse!” He took one hand off of his controller to punch his friend in the arm, who was almost crying he was laughing so hard.
“I’m gonna slice ya,” he said defiantly as he picked up a gently humming beam sword. Sam rolled his eye balls as Chilton audibly saw a spank brandin’ new Ghost.
“Woop woop-woop-woop woop-woop-woop!” he cried as his Spartan ran full speed towards the purple craft. Sam locked it into his sights, and loaded two new rockets into the launcher. He could clearly see a jet black Spartan running across the almost-bright white snow (“But black is soooooo damn swanky!” Chilton had argued. Sam had tried to explain the basic ideas of camouflage, but Chilton had just repeated the word ‘Waah’ until he gave up). The Spartan was carrying a beam sword, and was running straight towards a Ghost. Sam pulled the trigger.
Chilton screamed in fury, his corpse flying across the snow filled canyon, his weapons thrown even further.
“Arngh, you fuggin’ arsehole! You complete arse!” A few seconds later, he re-spawned, beam sword in hand.
“Ayyy! A new Ghost! Woop-woop-woop!” Sam sighed, and reloaded his launcher. He had gotten used to this situation quite a while ago. He had started getting creative with his advantage. He only had a little more to do to complete his penis drawn in his friend’s blood on the canyon wall.
“Mince.” He thought happily.
Corban twitched irritably. He wouldn’t say anything but Sam knew that he was bored. Suddenly Sam’s controller vibrated, arousing his attention. He turned from Corban back to the screen. Chilton had managed to swipe the Ghost and was launching a one man assault on the huge concrete construct Sam was positioned within. Plasma was scorching away Sam’s over shields; he dived back inside, filled up his rocket ammo. As often as he could, he ran out to launch a rocket, forcing Chilton into hiding – but each assault was short-lived. Chilton was almost upon him. Sam ran back, grabbed a plasma grenade, and took his last shot, accompanied by the blue glowing flame. The rockets blasted the craft into the air, and the grenade (which attached to the bottom) blew it apart. Sam didn’t notice the Scorpion tank slowly aiming at him from his left. A tank round exploded in Sam’s chest, splattering him over the far wall.
“God damn you, Chilton!”
“Ye-es! “YES!” Chilton threw down his controller in triumph of the new score:
Sam: 48
Chilton: 4
Chilton immediately began his victory jig. He ran around his house, bent over backwards limbo styli, jiggling his torso, flailing his arms and hands, all the while wooping a disgustingly large amount.
Sam picked up Chilton’s controller, hit Start and selected Leave Game. The Spartan in the game groaned, and fell out of the tank.
“Arrrnngh! You fuggin’ bastard!” Chilton cried, hitting Sam in the shoulder forcefully for every syllable. The Arrrnngh was a slur, and so a repetition of beats was inflicted.
“You-com-plete-and-utter-prat!” Chilton continued. Sam was curled up on the floor now, laughing the pain away.
Spunk.
Corban turned from watching the vague amusement of Chilton kicking Sam in the chest to look at Chilton’s mum who had just arrived in the living room.
“Uh boys – who’s that at the window?” They all stopped what they were doing to look at where she had pointed.
A depressed looking Robert had his face pressed against the window. As they all turned to look at him, he smiled hopefully, wagging his tail.
“Wait – Robert doesn’t have a tail.” Sam said blatantly. The tail disappeared.
Chilton’s mum – her name’s Julie, so I'm going to terminate her as a Milf-like item, and call her by her name… even though it’s not her real name, I’ll respect her decision to change her name – held up a walkie-talkie to her ear and opened the channel (Sam wasn’t sure where it had came from… but he was paying more attention to the blood seeping from his eye).
“Tracy, this is Julie. We’ve got a German out front. Yeah, he must have escaped from that Nazi-themed amusement park that exists. I recommend extreme caution – he could Blitzkrieg at any moment. Julie out.” They all watched happily as the Chilton’s father slowly crept up behind Robert, and cracked him over the head with a truncheon. Robert fell to the ground. Tracy laughed a half-evil half-satisfied moronic laugh. He then proceeded to kick Robert’s twitching corpse a few more times. Two Jewish women ran up, and kissed Tracy, before escorting him away. Julie scowled.

Chilton kicked Sam in the gut once more. He then picked up the TV ‘Box’ (that’s what Chilton calls TV controllers for some stupid unreasonable reason) and flicked on NTV (Noisy-Twat Vision). The information bar said told them that ‘New News’ was on – NTV’s attempt at being political. Half the show was dedicated to Chilton on a live feed to his toilet. The funny part was, despite talking to the camera unsubtly fitted into his bathroom at the same time each week about all the topics mentioned on the show, Chilton was completely unaware he was on TV. He merely assumed that Metallica were trapped in the walls of his house, and that at that time every week, they wanted to know what was going on in the world. It was, in fact, a clever ruse devised by NTV to fool Chilton into appearing on the show. He would watch the first half, which would inform him of worldly goings on, and he would then relay this to Metallica, adding his own opinions. It makes you realise how shit people are these days.
New News blared noisily onto the screen, with their mascot, Ded Babi, twitching and spurting bodily fluids and entrails around the screen in time to the opening music. Ned Dowling appeared next to Sam on the seat, his right eye throbbing with horribly oversized glee.
“Hey Nedwin.”
“Hey Sambert.”
On screen, the credits finished, and the view changed to a badly made set. Half the floor was missing, and if you looked close enough you could see the depths of Hell through it. Every now and then one of the crew members would have to throw in large amounts of sausage and meat to keep the ravenous hell demons at bay. Chilton didn’t like that bit.
“I could have eaten that sausage… and worn that meat,” he complained.
“Shut up Chilton.” Sam replied wittily, still moping up the gapping boot wound across his chest.
A man fell onto stage, stumbled drunkenly to a small director-like chair and collapsed onto it, panting for breath. Large amounts of his face were covered in bloody scars and gashes. Half of his nose seemed to be missing.
Between broken breaths, he tried to string together a sentence. A * indicates a cough or pause of some form.
“Good eve*ning.” An audience member stood up, wielding a cinderblock. “Its only afternoon, you fucktard!” He proceeded to throw the cinderblock directly at the presenter’s face.
“Good * afternoon. Welcome to this week’s * edition of New News *. I'm not your host*, Alan Garner. My name is Arthur Brown. Now * let’s look at the interest-o-meter for this week’s news.” A large phallic bar was brought out. Arthur plugged the very essence of the last week’s news into the bar. It filled up to about three of the eleven quarters. A sign lit up by the side of the bar saying Intermediate to Lower Bore-fest. Arthur mumbled something along the lines of ‘Stupid machine’ before kicking it. The bar rose up to Higher Funfest.
A single nervous clap-ette came from one audience member. He was immediately executed by an NTV security guard via gunshot to the head. No-one seemed to notice. Arthur coughed, and everyone focused back on him.
“Well, as you know, only squares report on life news – so let’s get straight into film news. Now, I know many of you are Usual Scum fans”, cheers and claps came, followed by steady gunfire, and the occasional scream. Arthur wiped a bit of brain from his eye. “So you’ll be happy to hear that a Usual Scum movie is being brought into commission.” On the other side of the screen, Sam stood up, walked over to Chilton, and promptly vomited on him. He then took the time to go and get a drink, wash his mouth out, go to the toilet, and clean his hands before coming back in, and sitting down.
Sam suddenly stood up.
“What the fuck?!” He calculated something in his mind quickly, then tilted his head back about 27.8 degrees, and vomited. It rained down on Chilton.
“Waah.”
Corban told everyone to be quiet. It took him around 9 years, and a hell of a lot in plane tickets to get to all six billion of everybody. But that’s a different story for another time. Ned grabbed the controller and turned up the TV.
“We managed to get director Stuart Gardiner to come and talk to us. Come on out Stuart.” Nothing happened for a moment. Then, from under a pile of coats and bags in the back corner of the set, there was some grunting and rustling. A very rough looking Stuart stood up, dressed in a black bin bag and very little else. There was a scar along his side next to where his kidney was located. He sat down in the chair next to Arthur. A pigeon flew down from an unseen window and landed in his hair. A dead rat was hanging from his ear, teeth clamped to the lobe. He seemed unaware of it as he rubbed the glass and cement from under his eyes.
“So Stuart, what’s in store for the Usual Scum move then? We remind you that there are four snipers in here with truth-detector scopes that exist.”
“Well, it’s going to be great. Hey, look over there!” Stuart stood up and limped off stage, pausing to take a bite from a cameraman. The NTV security guard shot another audience member.
Sam’s face was redder than physically possible. No-one could define facial features. He stood up, got out the picture of Stuart that he always carried, and ate it. The poison-filled picture started a slow and uneventful journey to Sam’s stomach.
Chilton looked his self-made watch. The hands were both bunnies from the Bunny Suicide books. They were the exact same height, shape and colour. If that wasn’t bad enough, instead of using internationally agreed times, Chilton had rigged up his own time system. There were eleven notches hacked into the watch, unevenly spaced around the edge. ‘No-one really cares about 3 o’clock’, Chilton had said. The eleven marks, instead of being numbered, had names of bands Chilton liked.
“Holy shit!” He shouted loudly, mainly at his pleasant, loving mother, though not for any particular reason. “It’s nearly Metallica past Megadeath!” Outside, a small Chinese man’s head exploded.
Chilton ran out of the room and into his small toilet. He rapped three times on the wall, angled the camera away from his crotch, (I really need to start charging for those shows, he thought) and towards his face. His NTV personal assistant gave him a five second countdown.
“Jesus,” Chilton muttered, looking in his mirror. “Make up have really cocked this up today.”
The NTV personal man guy person deally counted one, then none, and Chilton put on a fake smile.
“Stuart done makes a Scum film. He said poo. I had a sandwich in my head. I missed you mamay!” The NTV man began to slowly break down into tears.
Back in the… would you call it a front room? I mean, it’s at the end of the house that’s next to the road, but the front door to Chilton’s house faces out the back. (Take a moment to realise you’re not getting any younger, prettier, richer, or more popular whilst I laugh at you all). Anyway, back in the main room, the others gathered around Chilton’s eat-surface. Sam grabbed a knife and promptly rammed it into Ned’s skull, skewering it open. Amidst the screaming, and spurting blood, Sam picked a map from Ned’s skull, and laid it out on the eat-surface. Corban held out his hands and then closed them slowly, and as he did so, Ned’s head healed itself. Five minutes of close-up-looking-at of the map later, Sam grunted in annoyance (its one and a half octaves above Middle C).
“This plan to use to proof that I have at home, in the form of a recorded delivery, to prove that The Usual Scum is my work, and get Stuart sued for everything he is, therefore being easy and profitable is a really stupid plan.” He threw the map at Ned, who fell down. Because he is a pussy.
Sam grabbed everyone in the room (especially Chilton’s mum) and pulled them uncomfortably close to him.
“Here’s what we’re going to do; gahggoiakbs agjakngka aogjisjoegieog akghiehg.”
Corban complained (because he’s never happy).
“Sam, not only did you not use real words, but even if they had, that was nowhere near long enough to compliment a real plan.”
“Oh… I thought Voice-over guy had my back on that one…” Sam pointed to a relaxed looking guy who was leaning against the wall in the corner, looked idly at his nails. Noticing he was being looked at, he said hey.
“Hey,” he said. See, I was right.
Chilton hovered in (Boo from the Mario games taught him in exchange for his soul – but Chilton fobbed him off with a quality hand made clock).
“What’s all you t’spunks t’doing?”
“We’re making a plan on how to get Scum back.”
Somewhere in the back of Chilton’s mind, a small goat started walking down a hill. He smiled, and using up all his energy focusing on the goat, fell to the floor.
“Fuck it,” Sam said in annoyance. “This scene isn’t going anywhere. Let’s just run outside, get in a vehicle and drive someplace where it looks like we’re doing something. Maybe we’ll think of a plan on the way, I don’t know, I’m not a camel. Come on, let’s go!”
“Was that exclamation mark necessary?”