Coven - Part 3

The Bogan councillors have been through a very bad experience. Visions, dreams, whatever, have distorted their world already distorted by the Ouija Board. An annoying loose end from the last series has been tied off (you think). We are now into a new adventure featuring the dopiest collection of local government dross ever voted into office. For this the councillors must thank not only their family and friends who gave so freely of their time and energy but also an electorate with all the political nous of a lightly buttered bun.

Luke, a religious man in the style of Donny Osmond, is especially worried by events. During a brief discussion with his Maker he requests a sign – and conjures up a demon which is now sitting on an empty display cabinet designed to hold civic awards presented to Bogan Chitty Council.

Grimy Hobo: What the hell is that stink?

Luke: I think it’s this thing. It just appeared. I can only imagine I’m still hallucinating. What does it all mean?

(About the size of a fat hamster, the demon has a vaguely humanoid shape. Its head is large and has the usual number of features in roughly the usual places. It has extremely sharp little teeth that it displays in what might be a good-natured grin. If forced to generalise then it is generally like a fat, naked, bigheaded Buddha with a relatively enormous willy. It leaps gleefully from the display cabinet to Grimy Hobo’s shoulder.)

Mayor Porker: Grimy, don’t move! What the hell is it doing? Grimy, I should move if I were you!

Grimy Hobo: Make up your bleeding mind, Porky! And get this stinking thing off me, I can hardly breathe and what’s it trying to stick in my ear. Aaaargh! Geddoff you dirty little bastard! You filthy, filthy little brute!

Winnie Quark: Well I must say, that’s not very nice is it? You shouldn’t encourage it.

Mayor Porker: I agree, Winnie. This is all obviously some kind of illusion created by our reaction to some very peculiar circumstances. We are all under a great deal of stress and it has temporarily caused us all to view things from a most unusual…. angle. I think we will probably be best to just ignore it and it will simply go away.

Grimy Hobo: That’s easy for you to say, you haven’t got a putrid rat pumping out your ear bits. Get it off me!

Mower: Stop making such a fuss, Grimy. It’s only a little thing, just grab it and yank it off…like this!

Grimy Hobo: Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Jeeesus Christ!

Mower: Ah. Yes, I see what you mean. It’s really in there isn’t it? Must have a dick like a fish hook. Sorry about that, Grimy.

Lizzie: Should we try pouring boiling water over it?

Grimy Hobo: You come near me with boiling water and you will regret it. I promise you that!

Sean Bean: What we need is a claw hammer. It would be like pulling a nail out.

Grimy Hobo: Along with half my brain you thick prat! Can’t somebody dab a burning cigarette on its arse like you do with leaches?

Winnie Quark: This is a non-smoking environment. I believe we all agreed on that so………..

Grimy Hobo: Somebody shut her up before I kill her!

A FEW MINUTES LATER.

(The dirty little devil has finished its mucky little deed. Grimy, getting things arse about face and too late as usual, now has a headache. The council are once more seated around the boardroom table and trying to conduct a meeting. The demon is asleep on the Ouija Board.)

Mayor Porker: I think we all have to agree on just what has happened here.

Luke: Yes, but what HAS happened here? Are we hallucinating? I don’t feel as if I’m hallucinating.

Mayor Porker: I hope nobody is suggesting that thing in the middle of our table is real. Sean, are you going to contribute to this discussion or stare out of the window all day?…….. Sean? …………. Sean, what is it?



(Sean seems frozen and mesmerised by something he can see outside. Their curiosity aroused by Sean Bean’s peculiar attitude, the councillors all move to the window that overlooks the main Bogan thoroughfare. They can immediately see why Sean is dumbstruck and they join his wordless panic.

The outside world revealed to them is no world they have ever experienced before and reinforces the suspicion that they are under the influence of some powerful narcotic. Where roads and pathways once bisected the jumbled chaos of Bogan Central shopping precinct there are now rivers of people stumbling through a landscape of revolving nightmares.

A vast section of the scene before them distorts and rises four hundred metres into the air before sweeping away to the horizon where it descends once more into the plain. Its place is taken by another section of the earth rushing in from the east. This is a part of the Gold Coast and it brings fifty hectares of ocean with it. The Gold coast sinks and drags foaming surf, tumbling and roaring, into a mile deep chasm that is swiftly closed up by Jimboomba lurching from the west to fill the void. The whole world seems to be turning, heaving, rolling and winding through a bizarre dance of fractal images made fluid by precise uncertainty. It is a world of reflections on the mirrored surfaces of mighty beam engines, pounding and pumping and changing stroke with every revolution of a colossal wheel that turns, wheel within wheel, in all directions at once.

The people can be seen travelling through this machinery by moving from one zone to the next that passes. As a bus leaves Jimboomba it is swept up by Browns Plains and the passengers step from the bus having completed their journey in seconds. An old man and his wife on their way to the doctors find them selves at Logan hospital with no idea how they got there but grateful all the same as the man collapses from a heart attack that has been brewing for days. Another old man dies from his heart attack because the engine drops him at Kentucky Fried Chicken. A child and its mother are separated and another child is reunited with its weeping parent while a third is left alone… again.

Mayor Porker sees the bewildering complexity of life and knows there is a pattern to it. If only she had eternity to wait for the pattern to emerge she could control this engine and the lives of everyone a part of it. The first step then is to find the place where eternity is kept. Who would know that?)

Mayor Porker: Get the CEO down here!

(A bell rings in the penthouse garden on the roof of the council offices. Prutile Frogshide, the Bogan CEO, turns slowly toward the sound. He is laying in his de luxe, double hammock and had been on the edge of sleep. This interruption to his four-hour rest period is inexcusable, particularly considering the source of the interruption that a glowing light reveals to be a demand for his presence before the councillors. Frogshide allows himself a moment of rage and the destruction of three acres of native forest on the slopes of Tamborine Mountain. He hates talking to that mob of imbeciles at the best of times, in fact he hates talking and there’s an end to it.

Goblins do not talk well and can only do so by micromanipulation of the sphincter muscle. This makes the goblin voice muffled, indistinct and often incoherent. Those things, together with a reputation for very bad breath, means your average goblin often finds it less embarrassing to be seen and not heard. Prutile Frogshide, like the CEO’s in most organizations – particularly local government, is a goblin.

Frogshide sighs and, with a blink, he covers his warted nakedness with a midnight blue lightweight suit, brilliant white business shirt and his favourite pink tie with fine gold stripes. He decides to use the lift rather than subject the councillors to materialisation. Within moments he is standing respectfully before the Mayor.)

Mayor Porker: Good afternoon, Pru. Have you seen what’s going on outside?

(When Frogshide answers he moves his lips for the seeming but like a good CEO, he talks out of his arse.)

CEO Frogshide: You have been looking out of the window, Mayor Porker?

Mayor Porker: Any reason why we shouldn’t?

CEO Frogshide: If you will forgive me, Mayor Porker, it’s not something the councillors and yourself do as a rule. You are usually wrapped up in your own schemes and machinations – quite rightly and most admirably, I hasten to add.

Mayor Porker: Perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking a look yourself and telling us what you see?

CEO Frogshide: Look out of this window? Ah, yes. Most impressive view, every bit as good, if not better, than my own view from my little attic.

Mayor Porker: Your penthouse, you mean. But please tell us exactly what you see.

CEO Frogshide: I see the jewel in the crown of South East Queensland. I see Bogan Chitty stretching as far as the eye can see.

Mayor Porker: And do you see ‘as far as the eye can see’ just a bit closer at times and do the closer bits sometimes whip off to ‘as far as the eye can see’? And is this all happening in a mixed and tumbled fashion?

CEO Frogshide: Oh, that.

Mayor Porker: Yes. That!

CEO Frogshide: You appear to be able to see The Confluence, Mayor porker.

Mayor Porker: The…….. ?

(The CEO walks to the widow and stands with his back to the room and the councillors. He wants his voice to be as clear as possible.)

CEO Frogshide: The Confluence, ladies and gentlemen. For some reason beyond my understanding you are now able to experience the true sight. Time and space folds and unfolds in most complex sequences and it is all part of the magichanical tissue which is the fundamental support of reality. There are, however, certain timeplaces where the energy of life is confused with the energy of when and here we find The Dandy, The Beano and The Confluence. If you can understand one it will lead you to the next and when you understand all three then there is nothing left to know. I believe the first may be found at Jimboomba. Find and become your familiar, Mayor Porker, then find the secret of The Dandy.

Mayor Porker: What do you mean ‘find and become your familiar’?

CEO Frogshide: Simply that. Councillor Axemen has already discovered his by accident and it sleeps upon your table. There are three levels. I can see that you, Mayor Porker, must run The Dandy down. The second is The Beano to be sought by Councillor Luke Skypilot but the third is the most difficult of them all and will require the application of a most singular mind.

Mower: I’ll take that little job. Me and my glock.

CEO Frogshide: It is not for you to choose Councillor Mower. The task chooses the man and in this case Councillor Bean is the chosen one.

All of the councillors except Sean: WHAT!!!!

CEO Frogshide: Apart from those few pointers I can’t help you. From now on you are on your own.

(The CEO smiles to himself and is pleased with his little spot of revenge as he imagines the idiot Bean struggling with the impossible. It will at least keep the annoying sods out of his way for some time.

In a puff of purple smoke and a scatter of twinkling glitter dust the CEO disappears.)

Grimy Hobo: Bloody hell, his breath stinks worse than ever.

Sean Bean: What did he mean about me looking for something? Is it dangerous? I’ve had enough fucking adventure over the last few fucking months, there’s no way I’m going into any more nasty fucking situations I’ll tell you that for fucking nothing.

Luke: We should be quite proud of the way we are taking this in our stride. Did you see the CEO just go poof?

Grimy Hobo: He’s always worn that pink tie, nothing recent about it.

Mayor Porker: Well, it looks like I’m off to Jimboomba. But what the devil is The Dandy?

Roscoe Lunchpack: The only Dandy I know is a pommy comic I used to read when I was a kid. It was very popular in the 50’s. Hey, Porky, perhaps you have to change into Korky the Cat. Ah, I remember it as though it were yesterday. Every week I couldn’t wait for the new Dandy. The front cover always featured Korky the Cat in some sort of comical adventure. It was a really good comic. You would be too young to remember that, Porky……… Porky? ….. Porky? Has anyone seen Porky?

Mayor Porker: I’m down here - and if anyone steps on my bloody tail I’ll claw their arse to ribbons.


TO BE CONTINUED.