The Second Adventure: A Cat Called Britain (A Caper in Time Part 1)

by Evan Forman and Michael Robertson - 22.12.14


Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Cocoon
Chapter 2 - The Crossroads Inn
Chapter 3 - The Graveyard
Chapter 4 - Pentasensory Voicemail
Chapter 5 - The Shadowmen
Chapter 6 - The Lost City of Ubo-Chazil
Chapter 7 - Butchers and their Cattle
Chapter 8 - Art History
Chapter 9 - A Giant Robot with a Minigun for a Face
Chapter 10 - Shattered Mirror
Chapter 11 - A Collector of Rare and Precious Things
Chapter 12 - The White Palace of Death
~ Five Minutes Earlier in an Inn, Inevitably... ~

"S

o then I pulled out my foldable broadsword, which is a story on its own, and I shouted 'the characters and events depicted here are in no way intended to resemble any persons or events, real or fictional, and any such resemblance is entirely coincidental. Motherfucker!' See, that part's funny because-"

"Yes, John, you told me."

"I did? Right, so anyway: as he's shooting through the air towards me with his scimitar, now he's distracted from the fight because he's thinking to himself 'what does that even mean? How can we possibly be sure that our reality isn't actually just an elaborate fiction constructed in another, more "real" reality? How did the legal authority that came up with that disclaimer define "real"? Then again, if everything we experience is fictitious, including ourselves, then aren't we just as real as the world around us, making this entire question pointless?' These were the questions that romped around the Doom Pirate's panicked subconscious like philosophical piglets in the mud as I duelled him above the clouds, sassed him in the sky, and finally jammed my blade into the back of his throat."

Aerin tried to repress a sigh. "Amazing. But you've still not answered my question."

"What made you think I was going to? I think it adds to my mystery and intrigue as the main character of your book."

John Boss and Aerin Liette sat across from each other near the back of The Crossroads Inn. The atmosphere was jovial and the drinks were free for the men who saved the town of Ludorena from the marauding bandits who had once terrorised the surrounding roads. The Inn's patrons had been regaled with the tale of the courage and camaraderie of John Boss, Aerin Liette, and their dear departed friend and ally Sir James Lockswell. Boss didn’t have the heart to tell everyone that in reality Lockswell was actually one of his many sworn enemies, mainly because spinning it into a sob story about a fallen comrade was what landed them the free drinks in the first place.

By this time of night, those who were listening to the story were pissed enough to readily accept that the weedy elf had not at any point in the story just stood off to the side of the bandit camp and looked on as two raging titans battled before his unblinking eyes. The revellers all raised their flagons to the memory of the fallen warrior before joyfully condemning themselves to further hangovers in the wee hours of the morning.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Aerin Liette was drinking to celebrate. But in the midst of the party there was something he couldn't stop thinking about: just who was John Boss? WHY was John Boss? What chain of events led to the person sitting here, eulogising someone who, just hours ago, had given their life trying to kill him? If you broke his spirit down into its basic elements, what would you find? Aerin asked these kinds of questions about everyone he met. Well, everyone he found interesting.

For the past minute or so, John Boss had been sitting quietly, staring at his glass and occasionally fidgeting with the crimson sheen of Nazir Al-Zahabi's red scimitar, which he'd laid on the table. Perhaps, unbelievably, he was starting to get tired. He'd already completed a round of boasting as well as the post-boast Q&A session followed by drinking and arm wrestling with every poor soul who dared to try. He now seemed to be observing the crowd while tapping three of his fingers on the wooden table. It had been quiet at first, but now it was just getting annoying, so Aerin tried to interrupt whatever internal orchestra Boss' fingers were playing percussion for.

"So...any idea where we're going next?"

Boss stopped the tapping and searched for an answer. "Hmm, not sure. Where would you say a man might find some excitement around here?"

"Well..." Aerin looked down at his not-quite-empty glass. "I think there's a brothel not far from-"

"Boring."

"What?"

"How many decapitations per capita?"

"What?!"

"What is the ratio of people who enter this brothel with a head to people who leave without one?"

"I don't know! Ideally, none."

"Exactly: boring."

"Well, where would you go? If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?"

Leaning back in his small chair, John Boss was silent for a few seconds. In his experience, Aerin had found that this vaguest and most interesting kind of question only ever raised further questions about the people who answered them. The continued silence answered; a pause in the riddle that was John Boss. Aerin finished his drink to fill the time.

Finally, Boss replied. "Somewhere new."

"Okay." Aerin pretended it was an interesting answer and gestured towards the empty glasses. "Another?"

"Yes, I'll go an-"

"No no." Aerin tried not to shoot up out of his seat; he needed to get out of this vague awkwardness. "I need to stand up anyway." He quickly walked down the short set of stairs before John could object and disappeared into the middle of the room where the bulk of the people were jabbering.

Aerin worked his way through the crowd and over to where a lithe barman was effortlessly gliding from customer to customer, casually firing drinks across the polished wood of the bar and tossing a towel over his shoulder as he seemed to slide over to where Aerin was standing. "Same again?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Two pints for the hero and his goblin friend, coming right up." The barman span around and was already filling up glasses.

Everything seemed to go quiet for Aerin as he swallowed, his earlobes suddenly felt warm and his hands threatened to break out into a cold sweat. Tonight, his life would be easier if he just took the drinks and walked back to his table, but some idiot part of him felt like it had to say something, anything. "Excuse me, What did you just call me?" "Yes, Aerin, ask him a polite question. That'll teach him. Wonderful. Prick."

The barman didn't do anything.

Aerin took another breath. "Hello?"

"Aerin, I don't think he's going to answer," called Boss from the other side of the room.

"Well maybe if-" Aerin turned around to face Boss, and stopped as he suddenly noticed why it was so quiet. "...oh."

Nobody did anything. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Nobody blinked. The world had fallen completely still and silent.

A waitress in front of Aerin had just been knocked over by some clumsy drunkard, and she was frozen in panic as the four flagons of mead she'd been carrying on a silver tray spilled over at once and never hit the ground. Aerin hadn't been frozen, but wasn't moving either. "...What?"

"See!? What did I tell you!" John cheerily replied "We'll barely even have to make an effort to get into trouble, adventure is simply drawn to me like a moth to a flame!"

"Are you always this nonchalant in the face of inexplicable horror!?"

"Not inexplicable, Aerin. I mean, come ON."

Aerin looked around in frustration and disbelief. "Alright then John. Tell me, WHY has the entire inn suddenly frozen still?!"

"Nope. First mistake."

"What?"

"Not the ENTIRE inn. Observe." John raised his empty glass off the table, and smashed it on the ground.

"Oh, no." Aerin slumped down on a stool. "Oh for fuck's sake."

"That's right Aerin!" Boss got up off his seat, slotted the red scimitar back into the sheath on his belt, and started to navigate through the maze of still limbs. "Natural phenomena don't discriminate, so obviously you and I must have been chosen! For what purpose, and by whom, is completely unknowable." He squeezed out of the crowd from behind two statues and ran his finger down the icicle of airborne mead. "But I have a feeling we're about to find out."

Aerin jumped off the stool as the barman's head snapped around to face them with a sickening crack. Blood trickled down from his nostrils, soaking into his white shirt. The muscles in his face were pulled by some external force into an unnervingly friendly smile. Aerin covered his mouth and staggered backwards when he noticed the man's belly, which looked heavily pregnant and was growing before his eyes before the undulating mass in his stomach began to slither up through his digestive system. Aerin had to look away and nearly fainted, John Boss only stepped back to avoid the oncoming splatter. All of the muscles in the man's upper body started to snap, the structural integrity of his skeleton must have been destroyed by now, yet he was still held up standing by invisible strings. The barman's jaw was dislocated with a pop, his neck inflated like a toad's and out of the expanding maw of stretched muscles, it became visible. It was a slimy dark green, and as it slid out into the light Boss could see that it was covered in what looked like giant leaves or scales. The man's raggedy body hunched over, the fleshy thing fell out of his torn face and hit the wooden bar with a loud slap. The spent corpse flopped to the floor.

John Boss cautiously stepped forward to inspect the mucous sac, which had now began to expand and contract silently as if it were breathing.

Aerin had backed away to the door and was hopelessly trying the handle behind his back. He whispered, "John what are you doing? Don't touch that th-"

"Shhh!" Boss gently rested his elbow on the bar, about half a metre away from the pulsating thing whose flaps of skin had begun to stiffen and plume at the top as if it were about to hatch. "Come on, you can come out now," he said - a hand kept close to his sword - reassuring the thing which was still covered in the barman's blood and stomach acids. As the sections separated and began to open, Aerin shut his eyes behind his hands and waited for the screams to start.

"Awwww, no," cooed Boss. "Look at you!"

"What is it?? What's happening?"

"Aerin, open your eyes."

Aerin peeked through his fingers, and then let down his hands as he saw what had happened. The thing had blossomed on the table into what was surely the biggest, most colourful and sweetest-smelling flowers either of them had ever seen. Each of the huge petals glistened with every colour, and converged into what almost looked like a cushion-y nest; inside which, bunched up and cozy in its little fluffy dreams, was a little white cat, who was fast asleep. As Aerin slowly approached, the cat's ears pricked up like radars before it got up and straightened itself out with a chirp, blinking the sleep out of its large eyes; its left glowing bright blue and the right glowing pink. Both John and Aerin were silent as they tried to work out how the overwhelming horror they had just witnessed had birthed something so small and innocent, which had now pattered off onto the bar and was rubbing its head on Boss's arm.

"That's..." Aerin stared in disbelief. "That's impossible!"

"OF COURSE IT'S BLOODY POSSIBLE IF IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE YOU WOULDN'T BE SAYING "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" LIKE A BLOODY IDIOT BECAUSE IT WOULDN'T HAVE BLOODY HAPPENED BECAUSE IT WOULDN'T EVEN BE POSSIBLE YOU TROGLODYTIC
FUCK!"

said the cat, who spoke with two voices, and who was now furiously wheezing through its pink button nose.

John stepped back from the bar a little and the cat collected itself. "I do apologise about the volume. New body, the controls are all in different places." The cat looked down at the barman's corpse and the flower that had spilled out of him. "I usually try to keep a low profile and go for "human" but, well, "floofy baby" is all I had to work with. The cat delved into the flower's centre and pulled out a bowler hat with a little blue ribbon and half of a twirly, thin moustache which it stuck on to one side of its face. "My name is..." The cat muttered to itself. "Sparky, lucky, blitzen? Boxer...BRITAIN! And I'll be helping you with...your..." It looked blankly at John and Aerin "...oh bugger, I forgot to pack the memor...right, John Boss! Put your hand on the bar."

John didn't question the cat, not even as it began to lick all the way up his finger.

It rolled its tongue around in its mouth and licked its lips. "Species: Brain. Location...I'm getting...Ludorena...Magnusshire. Third largest province in the wonderful world of..." It stopped and looked confused "...Wurld. Main continent on..." The cat raised its head to the roof as it inhaled deeply "...the planet Timperley." It suddenly furrowed its brow and stared intensely at a spot on the floor. And stared.

And stared.

John was the first person to venture a question "so, what are-"

"SHHH!"

Aerin wasn't sure he'd even breathed this whole time. Britain's ears seemed to be rotating around to scan the room. "I can't hear anything...that's weird, why can't I-" It looked up at the frozen inn. "Oh of course, I stopped time. Makes sense. What's today's date?"

Aerin wouldn't speak, so John replied. "'tis the 17th day of The Suffocation, year 14 of the 21st era."

The cat narrowed its vibrant eyes. "So what you're saying is...it's 2014."

"Yes."

"It is two thousand and fourteen. Here. Right now."

"Is there a problem?"

"Oh!" The cat backed up and sounded politely defensive. "Oh not at all, I just thought you lot would have grown out of the whole 'Swords & Sorcery' thing by now. I mean it's 2014 on Kaldazar III two galaxies down, and they have a Dyson Sphere now. That they bought with their own money!" The cat nodded. "And lives. They sold a tenth of the population's bodies to The Infernal Hive-Spirit of Molok The Ever-Conquering Terrorzoid. But, oh well, life is full of compromises. And now they have a Dyson Sphere."

John folded his arms and nodded, pretending to understand a word of what was just said. "And more power to them."

Britain snapped out of his contemplation. "Anyway! The good news is: the three of us are all going on an adventure!"

Aerin's confusion turned to dread. "What's the bad news?"

"Is it somewhere new?" asked Boss.

"But what's the bad news?"

Britain chuckled. "Well John, 'new' is definitely one way of putting it. So is 'going' now that you mention it."

"John! Are you crazy?! He's a..." Aerin pointed angrily at the cat. "She's a...he's-"

"I'm a what?"

He sighed. "Which one are you? You have a male and a female voice at the same time and one of your eyes is blue and the other's pink and you've got a moustache on one side of your face and the other has massive eyelashes and..." Aerin was just gesturing with his hand now, hoping to communicate through flapping.

The cat sighed. "Mr. Liette, I am a five thousand-headed Octomillipede who slithers across your constellations of stars as if they were grains of sand on a beach, and I'm currently trapped in the brain of a fluffy child! I don't even have space to remember how fridges work let alone your people's nonsense filing systems!" The cat dramatically exhaled. "You know, on Kaldazar III they just have Innies and Outies which you can push in or pull out depending on what mood you're in. I'm just saying, it's an idea."

Aerin shrugged the matter off. John Boss stepped in between them. "But back to the adventure."

"OOHHHHHH! Yes. That's the bad news!" The cat grinned.

"Oh, no." Aerin moaned.

"Since actual time travel is mostly impossible, I've had to improvise and bend the rules of existence a bit." Britain rubbed their paws together. "See, contrary to what Aerin's about to say 200 years in the future, this WAS a dream. All of it. Since you were born. Everyone you know, everyone you love. They've all been dead for years."

Both men were silent for a few seconds. Aerin shook his head slowly. "What?"

"I'll explain later." And with that, that cat exploded into a cloud of purple glitter, which slowly fell to the ground and left the room completely still again.

Aerin turned to John. "What." That hadn't been a question, just a quiet declaration of continued absurdity.

John and Aerin felt the building lurch beneath their feet, as if it had just lifted from the ground. Before either of them could react, the whole room began to spin and rumble. They both clung to the bar as gravity began to pull everything that wasn't nailed down into the centre of the room where the wooden floor had begun to smash and get sucked down into a shining vortex below. The force became irresistible and Aerin's fingers slipped. Boss tried to grab him but in a second he'd been pulled over the edge of the screaming vortex and was being smothered by the mass of statues, which got tighter and tighter before he could do anything but be thankful that the light had swallowed him, just as his bones had begun to be crushed.

He was sitting alone in the back of a long gondola. His body felt light and sedate and it didn't even bother him that the boat was flying above a infinite plane of pulsating geometric mush. He ducked slightly as large squares of
COLOUR span around in all directions. The boat seemed incredibly small compared to the paper-thin TITANS whose feet alone were taller than the

 

h               i               s               s               i               n               g


                       solid clouds                                                               solid clouds


                   , , , , ,                                                                             , , , / ,

                   , , , , ,                 solid clouds                                        , , / , , 

                   , , , , ,                      , , , , ,                                              , \ , , ,

                   , , , , ,                      , , , , ,                                              , , \ , ,

                   , , , , ,                      , , , , ,                                              , , , \ ,

                   , , , , ,                      , , , , ,                                              , , , / , 

 

of grainy gray and black mist. They were the people from the inn, but they'd been flattened out in such a way that Aerin could see every surface of their bodies, inside and out. He peeled away a fleck of wood on the boat as if it were just very realistic wallpaper to reveal whole paragraphs stuffed beneath the surface to give the boat its solid form. He took the start of a sentence between his finger and thumb and p u l l e d it out of the paragraphs as if it were a thread on wool. Aerin thought to himself "I sat in this boat as a child in Lieopes. I was scared that a monster would come up from the water and drown me and one day somebody pushed me into the river and I cried in the arms of a stranger and kept away from riverside streets ever since."

 

As Aerin read the coiling thread of words, he noticed that the words were solidifying into existence after he read them out in his internal voice, as he was thinking them, BEFORE he was thinking them.

 

He pulled faster and looked down the sentence string, which read:

 

"As Aerin read the coiling thread of words, he noticed that the words were fading into existence after he read them out in his internal voice, as he was thinking them, BEFORE he was thinking them.

He pulled faster and looked down the sentence string, which read:

 

He thought

THAT

 

THOUGHTS

 

WERE

 

MADE

Creepy poem,

OF

creepy poem.

WORDS,

Sofas delivered straight to your home.

 

We wanted to foreshadow issue twelve

AND

But that's a job for sunty's elves.

WORDS

"You still on the juice m8?"

WERE

"Naw, am off it."

MADE

We're no as cliver as Steven Moffat.

OF

Doctor Who's really good now innit?

THOUGHTS,

Owen sucks chodes

 

Peace xx

AND

 

PEOPLE

 

WERE

 

MADE


OF

 

THOUGHTS,

 

that maybe people could be made from words and letters too."

 

                          p

Aerin                u

            looked      from the words to see that the boat was now swooping

                                                                                                                                   down

             i      l      s

over f     e     d       of dead grass, which were riddled with large rectangular holes. He blinked. The boat was in a void where a network of massive steel beams covered in magical symbols extended from one end of infinity to the other and had gaps at certain points to interlock with other beams. He blinked. The boat had stopped in the middle of a perfectly still sea. Aerin looked around but his legs were stuck to the bench and his feet were fastened to the floor. The sea was suddenly covered by a white sheet of ice and followed by a blizzard. If he looked carefully, he could just about see the shape in the distance, a giant wicker man which burst into vibrant orange flames and lit up the surface of the pale blue ice all around. From the effigy's raised arms, burning chunks of wood began to drop, but they instantly stood back up and were now running towards Aerin. He panicked, he tried to shake himself free from his seat as violently as he could. He knew he should be scared, but he couldn't escape his light-headedness and his heart wouldn't beat faster. Just before the army of burning men could grab him with their charred wicker hands, Aerin Liette woke up from his nightmare.

 

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Cocoon
Chapter 2 - The Crossroads Inn
Chapter 3 - The Graveyard
Chapter 4 - Pentasensory Voicemail
Chapter 5 - The Shadowmen
Chapter 6 - The Lost City of Ubo-Chazil
Chapter 7 - Butchers and their Cattle
Chapter 8 - Art History
Chapter 9 - A Giant Robot with a Minigun for a Face
Chapter 10 - Shattered Mirror
Chapter 11 - A Collector of Rare and Precious Things
Chapter 12 - The White Palace of Death