This guy might look friendly, but I can assure you it’s not. To be honest, I struggle to even look upon it, such is the fear it instills in me, but look I must. It is imperative that I muster the courage for, without my gaze, I cannot divine its story. And I know from my scalp down to my toes that I must protect you with my warnings. This guy, its name… its name is The Brutaliser. It thinks it’s doing the right thing, hence the seemingly innocuous smile on its face, but I assure you it’s not. It’s gone way over the top and has lost all sense of perspective. The Brutaliser is eternal. When it finds itself a victim, it kind of peels a layer off of itself and then goes on to torment that victim for as long as it sees fit. The more you react, the
This is known locally as The Wizard’s Tombstone, because that’s actually what it is. It’s an interdimensional marker which blends in by taking the form of a common warning sign. So in this dimension it looks like a traffic cone, but in another it would look like something quite different. I can’t help you imagine what, as I am from this dimension and I am not sure what common warning markers look like in other dimensions. Any attempt I make at a description would likely be hopelessly inaccurate. Let’s think about it a little. Warning markers in this dimension come in a wide variety of types: prickly spines, too good to be true handsome types, unseasonably yellowing leaves, top marks on everything, bottom marks on everything, and switching cat tails. So a warning marker elsewhere could be anything from a pebble to a peach to a piranha. The problem with warning
Hugo was sad. I know he doesn’t look it as he hides it well, but he was sad. Sad from his head down to the space where his toes should be. Cindy was her name and Cindy was what Hugo called over and over: on the hour, like clockwork. In fact, forest creatures of a particular bent used his cries to mark time. ‘Let’s build this section of the nest within three Cindys’, they’d say. Or, ‘In five moons and fourteen Cindys, let’s meet on the old Silver Birch for a jamboree!’ In this way, Hugo became a part of the forest, even though he was a migrant brought in the mouth of a savage canine invader. It didn’t really console Hugo to be incorporated into the life of the forest. He didn’t want the forest, nor its inhabitants; he wanted Cindy and her warm bed near the fire. He wanted
He’s lost his feather, but I am sure you can tell that this is Prince Doily I. Just in case you were wondering, he’s originally from Rajasthan, but I found him on a stretch of the North Downs Way near Borstal in Kent. He’s only recently escaped from a locked drawer where he’s been kept prisoner for a century. Prince Doily I said we can call him Pridi for short, because it sounds a bit like ‘pretty’, which he most surely is. Pridi smiles when you say stuff like that to him, because he’s well into manners and enjoys a good fluff of his ego every now and then. Floral language is one of his specialities: he learnt the intricacies of it during a secondment to an illustrious Iranian court six hundred years ago. Pridi said he was glad to have met me and particularly commended me for my maxim: ‘manners
Colin was a JJytgHQp (pronounced Thrussup) and has been living in and around Leith Hill since Neolithic times. He and a band of 40 brothers and sisters arrived in Britain in 4036 BCE with not much more than the multicoloured shells on their backs. They were quite a sight to behold, or so I’ve been told, emerging from the sea at various points around the Welsh and Cornish coasts. Like merpeople, but with less cultural baggage. At first, the inhabitants of Britain didn’t pay them no mind, as the island was sparsely populated and sharing was not a problem. There were a few ladies, of course, who wondered if the JJytgHQp’s shells could be repurposed into shelter, wind chimes, or clothing, but no one was rude enough to try to take the shells off the JJytgHQp’s back. Except, of course, Rapskalbana. Rapskalbana was the most daring lady of Britain, although she