A New Beginning.

Ah, the blank page on which a history not lived may appear as the backdrop to a play not written. Where a muse dances beyond reach and flashes glimpses of a plot before the startled eyes of Ron Yuteman who flounders flapping at his keyboard.

Thirteen characters wait like pet sheep. Some are fleshed and others only bones as yet but when the moment comes they will cavort before us. Doing what?

Thirteen.

Of course.

The number in a coven.

Witches and warlocks and mystic tales abound in Bogan Chitty. The sacrifice of innocents is meat and drink to the Council of the Damned so where better to find the devils work than in the shadowed realm of Bogan where comedy and carnage, catastrophically confused, connive to cause our chaos of the spheres. (I just had to get that out of the way.)

A title next, I think.

The Evil Coven of Bogan (nah).
The Bogan Coven (better, but nah).
The Coven (hmmmm).

COVEN – Part 1

We are in the Bogan Council chamber. All meetings are done with. The councillors have nothing to discuss or decide and, anyway, the CEO has given them decisive instructions not to make any decisions until he decides what decisions should be decided and who should decide who decides them. Most councillors are slumped about the table, doodling, drooling, drinking coffee or humming tunelessly. Their nine-hour working week is over and extreme boredom has set in. This is usually the time they devote to fighting among themselves and evolving intrigues, counter plots and other labyrinthine concoctions of the devious and underhanded kind but the events of the last few months and the memory of a Chinese take over threat has drained them of the need for scheming.

The excitement following the return of Deputy Mayor Roscoe Lunchpack because of the ASIO decision to solicit a little more Mossad support, has died down. Mossad and ASIO concentrate on the possibility that Sean Bean, released by the Chinese despite the Australian Foreign Minister’s fierce objections, may be more than he seems. They follow his every move and pick apart the foibles of this pitiful little man as if he represents the best the enemy can front. They pit their wits against him and deny his baffled, blank response is anything less than the subterfuge of a brilliant master spy.

The council has recently installed a pinball machine for times like this and Shizeknicker is pounding at it and cursing. Fondleschaft is working on a crossword. These two are the busy ones.


Axeman: God! I’m bored.

Mayor Porker: We’re all bored. Shut up and have a doze or something.

Lizzie: I can’t sleep, I wish I could. Anything rather than sit here all fed up.

Sean Bean: Would you kindly be quiet, I’m trying to read.

Grimy Hobo: Good on you, Sean. Found any words you recognise yet?

Sean Bean: Fluck off, Hobo!

Grimy Hobo: Fluck off?

(Normally so fluent in the language of filth, Sean’s cursing has become strangely idiosyncratic since his return from China. What the others don’t know is that the Sean Bean they now see is a cheap Chinese copy of the original Sean Bean. The original Bean was transformed into a copy of Kevin Rudd and may, or may not, be now living in The Lodge, Canberra.)

Roscoe: The weather seems settled.

Shizeknicker: It ist pissing down.

Roscoe: But settled rain, Herr Shizeknicker.

Axeman: (sigh!)

Lizzie: The hills are alive with the sound of muuuusiiiiic. With a song they have……..

Mayor Porker: Christ Liz!

Lizzie: Yes, your still upset because I got the part of Maria in that Sound of Prozac musical and you didn’t.

Mayor Porker: Piss off.

Fondleschaft: Vass ist diss vord ? Da clue ist: “A way in, not an egress.” Five letters.

Sean Bean: Clunt.

Fondleschaft: Nine. Zat vould make four down “cat” and da clue ist “Let’s have dinner.”

Sean Bean: Nothing wrong with crispy cat with a bit of rice. You have to burn the fur off with a blowlamp first though.

Winnie Quark: My most embarrassing moment!

Luke: What was?

Winnie Quark: It’s a game. We each have to tell the rest what our most embarrassing moment was.

Axeman: Jesus. Yours would be about now wouldn’t it, Winnie?

Ann Appuladay: I’ve got an Ouija Board.

Grimy Hobo: I’ve got a boil on my arse.

Mayor Porker: A what board?

Ann Appuladay: An Ouija Board. I brought it back from the states. It’s used to get supernatural messages from the beyond. Apparently The Pentagon swears by them, it’s how we got into Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s rumours that John Howard used one before the last general election but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Lizzie: How does it work?

Ann Appuladay: I haven’t actually used it yet but I think you sit in a circle around the board and each put a finger on this planchette thingy and ask a question. Then the planchette thingy whizzes about spelling out messages or just goes to a ‘yes or ‘no’.

Winnie Quark: Oooh, I’ve heard of those things. You shouldn’t mess about with them. People have died of those planchette things. You might conjure up the Devil!

Mower: Porky’s already here.

Mayor Porker: Arsehole.

Winnie Quark: No seriously. It was in New Idea about some girl in South America who played around with an Ouija Board and she got pregnant.

Sean Bean: The Ouija Board flucked her?

Winnie Quark: No, you rude thing. She just got pregnant and nine months later she gave birth to a goat.

Axeman: You’re kidding.

Winnie Quark: No. It was in the magazine. There was a picture of her feeding the goat.

Sean Bean: Breast feeding it, was she?

Luke: I bet her Nanny had something to say about that.

Winnie Quark: I’m sure I don’t know about that but apparently, when the goat grows up the family are going to sell cheese made from its milk. They’re marketing it as Cheddar Diablo and they already have lots of orders. We should be looking at initiatives like that in Bogan.

Sean Bean: Getting goats to fluck young women? Yeah, that would draw a crowd.

Winnie Quark: Marketing things, Sean. You needn’t be crude.

Mayor Porker: Anyone want a go at Ann’s Ouija Board then?

Axeman: Anything’s better than being stuck here just looking at you lot. Where is this board, Ann?

Ann Appuladay: In my car. I’ll fetch it – be back in a minute.

(Ann returns with the Ouija Board and sets it up. The thirteen members of the council spread themselves around the table and within touching distance of the planchette.)

Mower: Is there anybody there?

Sean Bean: Oooh oooh woooo hooooo!

Mower: If you are there please signify by knocking or by speaking or by moving……...

Sean Bean: Or bi-carbonate of soda.

Lizzie: Stop it you two, you’re spoiling it.

Ann: Everyone got his or her finger lightly on the thingamabob? Okay. Ahem. We would like to ask if anyone from beyond is in the room?

(Slowly but deliberately the planchette glides to the ‘YES’ label.)

Mayor Porker: Who’s pushing the bloody thing? Somebody must be.

Planchette: I . A-M . P-U-S-H-I-N-G . T-H-E . B-L-O-O-D-Y
T-H-I-N-G.

Ann: Who is ‘I’?

Planchette: B-A-R-T . R-U-G-A-R-

(Every councillor recoils from the Ouija Board as if they have had an electric shock. Ann is white faced with fury.)

Ann: That is not bloody funny. Which of you bastards is doing that? Well, this game is over. I’m……..

(The hair on Ann’s neck begins to prickle. Then she feels the hair on her head lift as the scalp tightens in shock. The others feel much the same and stare in frozen horror at the planchette that is slowly moving on its own.)

Planchette: W-H-A-T . I-S . W-R-O-N-G . A-N-N . A-R-E
Y-O-U . S-C-A-R-E-D . I . W-I-L-L . T-E-L-L . T-H-E-M
W-H-A-T . Y-O-U . D-I-D . T-O . M-E . A-T . T-H-E
L-O-D-G-E.

Winnie Quark: Oh dear, I said not to do this didn’t I? I knew it would end in tears. I really think we should stop now and pack it all away nice and tidy.

Planchette: T-O-O . L-A-T-E . W-I-N-N-I-E . I . A-M . B-A-C-K

(The air grows icy cold and shadows swirl in from corners of the room. For a brief time the fabric of existence wavers on the edge of dissolution. An agony sweeps through the councillors and a portion of the pain settles deep inside each of them and pulses like a breathing thing. This thing feeds upon the guts and sends tendrils to the brain. It heightens their senses and teaches them ancient ways from blacker times when the power of the spirit could conjure up a world that turned in darkness dreaming.

And then the world was gone – the world they knew.

But the dark earth remained.

A short time passes.)

Mayor Porker: Hello? Is anyone here? What’s happened to the bloody lights?

Winnie Quark: You just need to turn them on – like this.

(A green glow like the aftermath of diarrhoea slithers across the room. Porky can see Winnie sitting alone at the end of the table. The room is similar to the council chamber but a council chamber that has been sealed for ten million years.)

Mayor Porker: Where are the others?

Winnie: Oh, they’re still here but unnecessary at the moment.

Mayor Porker: So why are you here? What makes you special?

Winnie: Wrong questions, Porky. You should be wondering why YOU are here.

Mayor Porker: Who…what are you?

Winnie: I’ve already told you, Porky.

Mayor Porker: Bart?

Winnie Rugarse: Of course. Winnie was….malleable, convenient. You, on the other hand, are a very powerful lady, Mayor Porker. Together we are going to change the order of things. We both enjoy political power and have dabbled in the kiddies end of the pool but I am going to show you how to rule the world, Porky. With Winnie - uh, that’s me - at your side we will be unstoppable. We will need the others too for a while and it will be a steep learning curve but in a very short time Bogan will become our springboard to world domination.

Mayor Porker: Where are we, some kind of hell?

Winnie Rugarse: Not at all. This world is the place you feel close by when you are in pain, when you despair, when you grieve. This is the world in the dark places of your mind when rage drives reason back and when jealousy tears at the heart of you. This, my dear Porky, is the real world that the soporific wash of political influence and media manipulation cannot reach. You will find no positive slant on current affairs here. This is life as seen by death and I intend to give you all this benefit of second sight.

But enough of that for the moment. I just wanted you to know that I will be with you every step of the way. I’m going to send you back now. You will find things will be a little different.

Good night Mayor Porker. Dream well.


TO BE CONTINUED.