The Big Pink

PROPHECY

  I spent a long and tiring day in the company of my friend next-door.

  He continued forth for many hours, spilling tide after tide of cantankerous comment into my unwary brain until I, utterly bereft of mind, saw that the only option was to be rude and shut the door. He stood there a number of hours but now, thanks to God, he has ceased his inane repetition of words. He talked such rubbish. I will try to set down a record of something of what he said.

  ‘The sea squid has wings. When it gets hungry, it raises its full form out of the water and SQUOOOOSHHHH!!!!! jets into the sunrise without so much as a hoodaloo. That will be last we see of it until it eats the sun.

  ‘Giant sea squids,’ he continued, ‘should be stamped into the ground as squished puddles of squoosh before it’s too late. I’ve written to the government but those pen-pushing bureaucrats couldn’t quash a fly let alone a giant sun-eating sea squid that has wings and can fly between the stars. That’s why, my friend, I’m speaking to you, urging you to do all you can to stop this menace before we die, we, our children’s children, we, our children’s children’s children, our children’s children’s children’s children die.

  ‘Our forefathers, if they saw us, would be disappointed without bound. How could it happen? Lifeformkind threatened with brain-sucking starsquids? I’m talking about the government. It’s time we took those bastards and strung them up. So my fellow bureaucrat I urge you, before it’s too late, form an alliance and squish the squishers before they squish you. I shall be your leader and live in a small tin biscuit box fused from the hearts of a thousand dark suns. Then I shall enter negotiations with the sea squids and ask them if they will join with us against the evil bureaucrats who seek to kill us all. When we have killed the bureaucrats then we can kill the evil sea squids, which seek to kill us all. Then, victorious, you, my person, will cart me off around the galaxy in the giant carcass of a hollowed seasquid to show our enemies that we are scared of no-one and then we shall kill them, o my brothers. Yea, and I shall stand, alone, and I shall remember those wise words that said to fight ever nobly on and kill, kill, kill, kill, and kill!

  ‘We must kill everything before it is too late.’