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Tuesday Tales
on Thursday
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The Clockwurk Labyrinth
If mew missed the thrilling start of our latest adventure, here are the catch up links...
And now here's the next chapter...
~ Chapter 13 ~
The Snorrgs
Parsley, Humphrey, Smooch,
Pandora and Amber were right behind me before I could get up. Winston had backed up and the six of them
unleashed hell into the blackness as I edged backwards rather carefully under
the gunfire, stood up and took my place in the line and opened fire again.
Smooch had his night-vision goggles on too and was shouting.
“Dudes, there’s something coming up fast on my 9!”
I glanced and saw another of the things.
“Humphrey yelled. “And another on my 3!”
“OH FLUFF!” I spat and rummaged in my pocket fur the
miniaturizing ray gun. “Hit the deck!” I yelled as I fired once dead ahead,
once to my left and once to the right, the laser-beams blasting out and making
a squelching, sizzling crack as they hit their targets. We had a solid wall at
our 6 so I knew there was nothing there unless something was headed down the
wall.
Gun-smoke and cordite filled the passageway from our gun-fire
and my ears were ringing, I knew I shouldn’t have taken my ear defenders off. Torch beams swiftly shone, cutting through the
oppressive darkness and revealed our now rather shrunken attackers.
“Ewwwwwww!” Pandora said as she saw one of the now much reduced in
size, slimy slug-like creatures trying to escape under the nearest pile of rubble.
“Jeez dude, thank cod mew thought to shrink them!” Humphrey
said. “I don’t think my katana would have been big enough to deal with those.”
Amber pulled a pair of sugar-lump tongs from her pocket
[don’t ask me why she had sugar-lump tongs, because right now I have no idea]
and picked one of the icky, slimy things up and Parsley shone his torch straight
at it. It made a pitiful screech,
obviously it didn’t like the light.
Winston said soberly. “Jumping jeepers Basil, mew have no
idea how close that was and it would have eaten us, and the other 2 as
well!”
“What the fluffing fluff is it?” Parsley asked.
“It’s a Snorrg,” Winston said. “They’re like the garbage
collectors in here, they slither around during the darkest part of the night
and devour all organic matter in their path...”
“Eeeeew that’s nasty!” Amber said and dropped the thing into
a small glass jar and then did the same with the other two, sealing the lid.
“Well I think we’ll just keep them in here fur the time being.”
“Mew do know that there’ll only be one of them left in
there?” Winston said. “They will eat each other, it’s really disgusting!”
Amber gave him a half shrug and replied. “Survival of the
fittest!”
Parsley snorted with laughter as he peered at the angry blue
Snorrgs in the jar, then stopped abruptly as he said rather soberly. “Has anypurrdy effur
shrunk any living creature before?”
We all glanced at one another with rather bewildered
expressions. “Nope, I don’t think so,” Humphrey said thinking about it fur a
moment. “No, the miniaturizing ray guns have not been used or tested on organic
matter before.”
“So do we know the long term effects of blasting organic
matter with the ray guns?” Parsley asked.
Humphrey shook his head. “Nope!” he answered.
“So they may not stay that small fur long?” Parsley continued.
“It’s a possibility that they may pop back to full size at
some point, but as I’ve neffur actually experimented on organic matter before,
we’ll have to use these little fellas as our guinea-pigs,” Humphrey said with a
wry smile as he tapped a claw on the jar watching as the Snorrgs were squaring
up to one another and adding. “Ok Snorrgs, break it up otherwise I’ll get Amber
to tip mew on the floor and leave mew fur someone to squish!”
The slimy, little Snorrgs slithered away from each other
immediately and sat at equal distances apart.
“Looks like they’re not stupid!” Smooch grinned and then said. “Can I
keep them, I’ll make a nice home fur them back in the bunker?”
“Mew want to keep them as pets?” I laughed.
“Sure, look at them,” Smooch grinned. “They’re epic and I
could train them...”
Six voices said. “Train them fur what?”
Smooch’s eyes glittered wickedly in the low light and I knew
that look, oh how I knew THAT look. He
beamed at me and said. “Yep, we could breed Battle Snorrgs!” He laughed and
laughed and laughed as he thought about being a Snorrg Commander, he was seeing
it furry vividly in his minds-eye; riding atop one of the huge blue beasts heading
into the fray with his legion of loyal Snorrgs following behind – I took an
imaginary pin and popped his fantastical fantasy bubble. “Dude, how do mew know they wouldn’t turn on
mew the minute they were full size?”
He shrugged and said. “With time, patience and love anything
is possible!”
Well I couldn’t argue with that, so I said. “Dude if mew
want them, mew have them but if they do become a purroblem or pose a threat mew
know what we’ll have to do.”
Smooch nodded and took the jar from Amber and carefully
opened the lid. He took a snack bar from
his pocket, opened it and broke several crumbs off before dropping them
carefully into the jar. The Snorrgs rushed towards the crumbs and devoured them
like ravenous beasts. When all the
crumbs had gone, they reared up and made the cutest squeaking sounds mew’ve
effur heard. “Awww look,” Amber cooed.
“They want some more!”
Smooch dropped some more crumbs in and the Snorrgs ate like
they been starved fur a furry long time.
“Now listen here little blue dudes, mew can have plenty more of that but
mew need to behave and play nice with one another, in other wurds no fighting
and definitely no eating each other!” he instructed. “Do mew understand?”
Surprisingly the Snorrgs, now in a neat line-up seemed to
nod. “That wasn’t so hard was it?” Smooch
asked and the Snorrgs moved side to side swaying in the affirmation of no.
“Excellent, now mew be good, I’ll put a couple of holes in the lid and then
mew’re going in my inside pocket fur a bit and don’t wurry if mew hear any loud
noises, ok?”
The Snorrgs nodded, split apart and went to opposite sides
of the jar. Smooch turned to Parsley and
said. “Dude, can mew put a couple of small homes in the lid purrlease?”
Parsley held out a paw and his lethal 6” claws shot out and
glinted menacingly in the low light.
Using one claw only he deftly punctured 4 holes in the lid and Smooch
closed it tightly before placing it in his pocket fur safe keeping.
I was looking at the map as it had changed since the last
shift in the maze and the quickest way seemed to be dead ahead where the furst
Snorrg appeared. “I think we should go this way,” I said pointing to the new
faster route.
The rest of the team peered at the new route and nodded.
“Let’s get going then!” I said leading the way. “Move out!”
Pandora suddenly blurted in her odd, little foreign accent.
“Could ve use the ray gun on the Old One?”
We all stopped and looked at her. Now that was something to ponder. “That’s not a bad idea Pandora,” I said
brightly. “Winston, do mew think we could shrink the Old One?”
Winston replied. “I don'’t know Basil, it might wurk.”
“Ok then,“ I replied. “Let’s add the ray gun to the
possibilities section of eradicating the Old One.”
* * *
Fudge awoke, his head felt like
it was full of fluff and fuzz. He slowly
opened his eyes thinking that he’d passed out from paint-fume inhalation
earlier in the bunker. He stared
straight up, blinking numerous times trying to get his vision clear, his mind
clear and rid himself of the awful feeling of dread, which he couldn’t quite
put his paw on.
In the next second he tried to spring up and found he
couldn’t move. He looked down and saw he
was strapped, rather tightly to a huge stone-slab. Panic rose up inside him; faster than a lit
match under the mercury in a thermometer. He gulped, eyes wide as saucers and was about to scream like gurl, when a little voice in his head said effurso calmly, dude don’t panic, relax a
moment and think about your purrdicament... what would Basil do?
“What would Basil do?” he muttered to himself
like a mantra, offur and offur as he slowly took stock of his situation in a
more controlled way. The more he said
it, the calmer he became and began to assess his heinous dilemma in a more
logical manner.
Glancing effury which way, he took in the scene; he was in the
middle of a huge circular stone area, the fetid walls some 25ft tall. It was open to the sky which was inky black
with no stars at all. Torches were
positioned around the walls effury few feet, held in place with rusted metal
brackets as the flickering, yellow flames cast spooky, dancing shadows all
around the expansive, roofless rotunda. A monstrous pile of bones lay piled up not far from his position in the centre and he could see small creatures skulking around the edges keeping to the darkest shadows trying their hardest not to be seen.
“Not good,” he murmured to
himself and as his eyes grew accustomed to the weird light. He stared straight up and noticed that there
were several things suspended about 10ft above the ground, he stared harder and
realised that they were cages and as he focused more, he saw that effury cage
but one had someone or something in it. “Oh fur fluffs sake!” he whimpered quietly as his
tail doubled its already ginormous size and twitched side to side in severe
apprehension.
“Hey! Hey mew down there!” a voice whispered from above him.
Fudge peered through the gloom and saw a rather skinny and dirty paw
waving from the nearest cage. His eyes
narrowed and he whispered. “Who are mew and what do mew want?”
“Shhhhhhhh,” the voice answered softly. “Let’s not wake the
guards.”
Fudge glanced around again and that’s when he noticed large
lumpy shapes slumped against the walls, he indicated with his paw. “Those
guards?” he whispered.
“Yep those troll guards, now shhhhhh,” the voice said
softly. “We don’t have long before the Old One comes back and starts the
mind-invasion.”
Fudge started to struggle again but it was useless, the
straps had him pinned good and tight and he tried to feel around with his paws
fur anything that would release him.
“Stop moving!” the voice hissed. “It’ll make the straps
tighter!!“
Fudge ceased his struggle immediately. “How the fluff do I
get out of here?”
“Mew can’t,” the voice answered sadly. “Not until mew’re
released into one of these cages.”
“Oh mew’ve got to be fluffing kidding me?” he replied
quietly.
“No, I kid mew not, and do I look like I’m kidding?” the
voice hissed.
“So what’s this mind-invasion thing that this old dude’s got
in store fur me?”
The paw suddenly vanished inside the cage and the voice said
no more as a fanfare of trumpets sounded.
Fudge looked around and saw five small, purple rabbit-like creatures with huge floppy ears and glittering whiskers emerging into the
circle through a dilapidated archway carrying rather ancient looking trumpets. They were closely followed by a tall robed figure who's aura was actually visible; twinkling black motes swirled around the entity in a disconcerting but rather mesmeric way and they eeked out from his body like lapping, black smoky tendrils tasting the air.
The figure strode forward sending the announcers and their
trumpets flying in all directions. Small cries echoed around the space as the purple creatures hit the ground with soft thwumping sounds and then scurried off into the veiled darkness around the edge of the walls. He
stopped at the edge of the stone slab and peered down at Fudge from under his
cowl-hood. Fudge gagged as a
horrendously putrid stink suddenly filled his nostrils and the robed figure tossed his
head back and laughed with such maniacal menace, it was pant-wettingly
terrifying. The cowl hood suddenly flew back and revealed the thing inside the
shroud.
Fudge's eyes bulged in abject horror, he screamed like a gurl and in the next instance, it all went black.
**AND CUT**
OH MY COD!
See Mew Next Tuesday Fur The Next Thrilling Chapter
in
The Clockwurk Labyrinth
This is
Commander Basil and The B Team
Offur and Out Until Next time
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