Come-By



  COME BY!

  Copyright by Frankie Lassut 2015

  ***

  BETTER THAN AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN GRIMSBY (Depressed looking Werewolf spotted hitching a ride out of Grimsby, thought to be heading for Bognor-Regis ... may have frying pan into the fire syndrome).

  DEFFO BETTER THAN-HOWL (that was easy).

  BETTER THAN JURASSIC WORLD (Q1: Have all the Jurassic filmzzzz used the same script? Q2: Did anyone notice?)

  2015 came. After years of waiting for technology to advance the species the species had managed trick technology and had managed to manage advanced technology. Technology itself wasn’t sure it liked to be accompanied with advanced thinking; destruction technology found that so boring. Actually, people were instead living in Hell.

  The latest Terminator film hinted that everything was going to be ok and, as a result of the great news, people were living ‘Drudgement Day’ yet actually thinking that Judgement Day with the ‘hatred launched’ big bombs and stuff may actually be ... a refreshing change. Apocalypse hopeful men pre-queued outside of suitable buildings waiting for job interviews for jobs like ... sorting through rubble looking for blown off limbs. ‘Hope-y-kokey’ was in the air and every time an aeroplane went over people forgot terror and looked up, half-knowing that soon they could be a ‘rubble operative’ picking up bits of cannon fodder everywhere for minimum wage and overtime each week; life was destined to be good (humans are always at their best when the shit hits the fan, and at their very worst when there’s no shit but a really nice fan with three speeds, in a heat wave accompanied by a petrol shortage and a hosepipe ban).

  Women talked optimistically:

  “Yes Carol. If I find one of your dismembered legs, I’ll be really careful with it and I’ll take it home and wash it first and darn the leg if needs be, before I hand it in.”

  “Oh thanks Trish! I’ll do the same for you.”

  They hugged and shed a tear each, for friendship in a possible time of probable great celebration in the face of a managed disaster is a wonderfully emotional thing.

  Sarah Conneur asked her kids what they wanted for tea.

  “How about sausages, crafted from fat and rotting bits of various domestic animals (true, cos Jamie Oliver told us and showed us) and instant mashed potato ... hmmmm? And Sweet, straight from the field three years ago, frozen tasteless peas?!”

  “Ok. And how about a salad with some lovely red bland tasteless tomatoes?”

  “Oh mum! You know that we’re of a generation of working class kids who are used to ‘scientist abused’ bland, no taste stuff, but really, please don’t try and introduce cosmetics to our diets! Stop being a food aesthetics slave! Don’t worry, we compensate for the bland lives we live with weed. This is the great awakening mother. The Age of Aquarius! Duuuuh! You’re so not with it. Stop trending ‘duuuh’ mum. Duuuh isn’t a trendy thing to trend.”

  “But I’m Sagittarius, what do I do? Pretend I’m Aquarius? Order a birth-stone from Amazon? Dye my hair aqua-blue? Learn to read theTarot? Become a white witch?

  But then Masterchef came on the constantly on telly and interrupted her flow.

  “Oh! This saddle of rabbit is gorgeous!” Said Monica. Monica immediately started a trend.

  Within one day, you couldn’t get an air rifle in England for love nor money and ferrets were more expensive than designer Rotties. A week later there were no rabbits left in the entire UK and lots of people had had saddle of rabbit ‘once’. If people wanted rabbit saddle again, someone would have to start rabbit farms and hope that in a few years time supply could match demand. Maybe there might be some future in rabbit farming? Foreign investors began to buy up people’s allotments through ‘tax sexy’ offshore companies in order to start rabbit farms. This began a trend in farmers growing carrots and rabbit farmers bought them by the ton from supermarkets, but only straight ones of a certain length ... bent ones or ones that looked weird the rabbits wouldn’t touch and, the supermarket reject piles could be seen from outer space as little orange dots. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (a hero of our times if ever there was one) threw such a wobbler he crapped his pants jumping on the spot yelling ‘aaaaargh!’

  Away from the insanity of the post apocalypse cities and ‘in’ the insanity of the post apocalypse English Lake District, sheep farmers who were tucking into such delicacies as New Zealand lamb, Jersey Royals with their wives’ home made mint sauce for tea and Danish bacon sandwiches for breakfast, also saw Masterchef, which was closely followed by a dog food advert which stuck as close to bullshit as it could ... ‘Mmmmmmmmmmm your dog will love the mmmm juicy ... mmmmm tender chunks of BUTCHER’S mmmmmm MEATY REJECTS sllluurppp dog food (lots of happy dogs running across a field after a truckload of fresh steak ... after being starved for a week).

  Joss Naylor, Lake District shepherd, fell runner and personality, watched with interest and had a creative thought. He had spent most of his Sellafield wages (and ex Sellafield worker) on that Butcher’s animal seconds crap and now wanted his dogs to have something decent to eat ... now, what could that be? Hmmmm? thought Joss and the Universe, which loves a challenge, began to organise a little pressie for him.

  Rule No1 of the beautiful Universe: Ask no questions; just deliver (so be careful what you ask for).

  NB:

  I, the author, enjoy the freedom to use characters from one story, in another story if the occasion may be enhanced in order to entertain you the fabulous reader. So ...

  That very night, Joss (who honestly is very real. A Lake’s shepherd and famous fell runner ... I worked in the same place as him for a while, see The Atomic Shepherd, c’mon reader, make it trend) went for a pint at The Bridge Inn (where the World’s Biggest Liar competition is held). It just happened that a brilliant genetic engineer, a Mr Albert Falfa was passing through and Joss got talking to him. The engineer got on great with Joss as he was a fan of fell running but unfortunately wasn’t good at it because he had one leg six inches shorter than the other. Upon hearing Joss’s story and desire, Al Falfa told Joss what he could do for him and Joss was very keen, even suggesting that Al might try running ‘across’ steep hills rather than up them, with his short leg on the upper side? Joss took delighted Al’s number and promised to ring.

  Joss’s inspired book ‘Across Fell Running For People With One Leg Longer Than The Other’ has so far sold hundreds of copies for those people with stacked shoes who fancy jog-rambling where otherwise it was difficult without very, very expensive bespoke designer Nike Stacked-Sole trainers, which no one had thought of anyway (you heard it here first).

  The next day, Joss talked to Copeland Borough Council and said he had a plan to reduce the amount of tax paid by Lake District Traders who were selling far too many expensive 100% real wool sheep keyrings to tourists (they sold brilliantly because the wool had been washed in monosodium glutamate which contains traces of Cocaine). The Council liked the idea and gave it their full backing (providing no one knew and doubly providing they got some money for their charity ‘Poor Us’). Joss immediately upon return home got on his plastic ‘Sheep Lake District tourist shop phone’ and phoned Al.

  Al got on the internet to his favourite site i.e. dna.com and placed his order.

  A few days later he visited Joss and they both administered the DNA to Joss’s favourite dog, Meg ... she could be the test pilot.

  Al had done this many times, his most special job being for the British Government (can’t tell you about that one). He had also turned a Heronry at a country park called Coombe Abbey into a Pterodactylry and a rather strange one where he had injected a man with stag DNA which he had played with a little. You see, he orders the straight DNA to save time and then plays with it ... like a modern day chef with puff pastry (why bother making it?).

&nb
sp; Meg was injected with Velociraptor DNA, which had been AL-altered, so she just showed the characteristics but no physical changes, except her eyes, because Velociraptor eyes are fab.

  To cut a medium length story short, Meg would go out with Joss and when they spotted a tourist, or better two or three of them, all juicy ramblers ...