Is it wrong to eat people? Read online

  Table of Contents

  Is it wrong to eat people?

  Chapter 1.

  Through a perfectly orderly and flourishing morning, in a perfectly orderly and prosperous street turned an automobile that was neither orderly, prosperous nor flourishing, an automobile that could only loosely be called an automobile, in the same way that a duck can only loosely be described as being an eagle. It was in fact a five-wheeled Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede.

  Only three were ever made, and two were created to be crash-tested to see if they were safe.

  Chugging along in the back of this dilapidated vehicle was Little 032EHM. He was staring solemnly out of the window at a cow in the middle of a park. A cow in a park in the middle of the city is in itself quite unusual. However, what made the cow especially unusual was the fact it was twelve-foot high, covered in purple spots and going OOOOOHHH WAAAAH in a deep resonating voice.

  Certainly most people would be disturbed to see such a sight, except for any child under the age of twelve as Little 032EHM was. For Little 032EHM saw nothing wrong with twelve-foot high purple spotted cows numbed as he was by children's television populated as it is by creatures much stranger.

  The twelve-foot high purple spotted cow didn't alarm Little 032EHM's parents. They didn't even notice them, as they were "unimaginative rubbish" as Little 032EHM's grandmother would say. She often called Little 032EHM's father and mother unimaginative rubbish, especially after Little 032EHM's father had named him after the family Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede's licence plate.

  The story goes that Nigel Andrews, Little 032EHM's father, couldn't afford to get personalised licence plates for his

  Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede so he instead changed his name from Nigel to 032EHM, the licence plate of the Pronsonbee. When a son was born to Mrs and Mrs Andrews they decided like many families do, to name the son after the father, so Little 032EHM was christened, which made Mr Andrews Big 032EHM. Mary Andrews, Big 032EHM's wife, only agreed on the understanding that she would be able to name their second born. So one year later Wash and wax was born, named after a type of floor polish Mary Andrews was exceptionally fond of. She tended to sniff it more than spray it, which may explain a few things.

  The other reason Little 032EHM's parents didn't notice the cow is because parents will automatically ignore anything that common sense said they shouldn't see. I was having this exact conversation the other day with an elephant I had just met in an elevator. He agreed with me.

  Now that I have explained why little 032EHM is called little 032 EHM I'm just going to refer to him as Little.

  Now Little was in his parent's Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede for a very good reason, or at least Little's parents thought it was a very good reason. You see Little's family lived in the city in an apartment block and like most parents of children who live in apartment blocks Little's parents believed that a few hours in the good fresh country air could clean out years of dirty city air.

  Little's sister Wash and wax wasn't coming to the countryside today because she was ill with a chicken pock, just one chicken pock, but a big one. She was therefore to be looked after by Miss Esmeralda, an ancient gypsy woman who said she could tell your future, contact the spirit world and levitate as well as general cleaning and childminding.

  Today Little and his family were travelling to the countryside and specifically Vaudeville farm, the home of Uncle Mick and his amazing, spellbinding, totally fantastic performing pigs because it was the birthday of one of the pigs that starred in the Uncle Mick and his amazing, spellbinding, totally fantastic performing pigs show. The pigs name was Big Agi, and she could fly a plane, walk on a tightrope, juggle and do many other amazing things. Little and his family had bought Big Agi a present.

  Now there's nothing pigs love more than swill and mud. I won't say what's in swill and no you can't make me, but pigs love it. The mud was the finest of mud, a special type made especially to give to pigs as presents.

  So Little and his family had brought a swill cake in a bucket and a couple of rubbish bags full of the finest mud for the birthday party. Rubbish bags are not an ideal way to carry mud as you will soon see, nor is a bucket for a swill cake.

  Also travelling with Little and his parents was Bopi the pug dog. Pug dogs are a special type of dog, they can't swim, have no road sense and are often found chuckling to themselves about a joke that only other pug dogs would find funny.

  Bopi was Little's favourite pet and constant companion. Bopi was fun to have around but wasn't much use when it came to serious things like homework. At the moment Bopi was growling in a bemused way at one of the bags of finest mud that was making slurping and slopping noises.

  Little didn't notice the slopping bags as he was too engrossed thinking about not wanting to go to the farm. He would have

  much preferred to stay home and watch Japanese fighting cartoons, and so was staring in a huff out of the Pronsonbee's window despairingly at a light apologetic sort of rain that was slowly forming rivulets down the window. As he stared at the rivulets they stoped running and began to solidify into ice crystals.

  “Turned a bit nippy all of a sudden, hasn't it?” Big 032EHM said, his breath tingling in the frigid air. Before anyone could reply they were startled by an ominous sounding crack of thunder followed almost immediately by a thump on the roof that shook the whole perambulating velocipede. Everyone inside looked about, even Bopi, then another thump.

  "What the" shouted Big 032EHM "What are you doing back there?"

  "It's not me dad" said Little

  As another thump thumped into the roof.

  "What is it then?"

  "Look" said Little's mother.

  As from the sky, a large green frog landed on the windshield cracking it slightly. Then another slammed on to the bonnet of the Pronsonbee.

  The family became silent as out of the sky fell another frog followed by the sound of it slamming onto the bonnet.

  Then another and another and another.

  "What is that?" shouted Big 032EHM.

  "It's frogs. It's raining frogs" said Little

  "That's absurd" said Big 032EHM "It can't rain frogs."

  "But it is dad! It’s raining frogs."

  "No that's just silly; frogs come from ponds not the sky."

  "But it is, its frogs dad, frogs" shouted Little.

  Bopi just rolled his eyes in a way that suggested that human grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and how tiresome it is children to be always explaining things to them.

  3 miles away an impossibly long juggernaut hammered down a narrow country lane decapitating hedgerows and smashing through branches weighted down with the worlds largest gelatinous after dinner dessert. As the juggernaut sped on the voluminous victual on the back started to slide pulling the juggernaut from one side of the road to the other.

  In the Pronsonbee the family watched as more frogs rained down.

  2 miles away the juggernauts air-horn sounded as it ripped through a picket fence and flattened a metal road sign. `Welcome to Rabsby', the mangled sign read as the truck entered the eastern end ‘Population 300'.

  The family turned the little car into the western end of Rabsyby

  1 miles away the juggernaut thundered towards the twinkling lights of the town below.

  The family slowed for a ice cream van as suddenly a dazzle of eight huge headlights glared down towards them.

  An air-horn thundered into the night air, as the twelve wheeled juggernaut slewed sideways across the ice into Rasby' main street.

  "Oh bugger," said Big 032EHM loudly as his foot slammed on the brake. "Bugger", is what parents say when they want to swear properly but can't beca
use children or old people are present, which is a shame because you never really learn to swear properly until you learn to drive.

  But at the moment 'bugger' had to suffice as Big 032EHM slammed on the brakes, causing the Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede to de-perambulate rapidly.

  The brakes on the juggernaut also shrieked as the great vehicle's front wheels plunged into a pothole causing the truck to flip most impressively,

  Now being the clever people you are I'm sure you are aware that when a car decelerates rapidly the car slows down but anything inside not restrained tends to become air born and fly into the windscreen. As both the swill cake and bags of finest mud were unsecured this is exactly what happened.

  The juggernaut jack-knifed in the air over the Pronsonbee before crashing and ploughing relentlessly through a line of shops.

  Little and Bopi saw the whole thing as if in slow motion. The Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede slowed dramatically and the bags of mud and swill cake took to the air.

  Little's and Bopi's eyes followed their trajectory as the bags of mud and the swill cake flew towards the front of the Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede before hitting the dashboard, windscreen and steering wheel and exploding, coating the entire front of the Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede and both Big 032EHM and his wife from head to toe in finest mud and swill cake. Outside a pretty orange mushroom thumped up into the night sky. A wall of flame dashed across the wooden rooftops, feeding hungrily on the rotten dry timbers. Within moments, the remaining shop facades teetered forward and crashed into the street's melting sludge.

  Thw juggernaut finally came to rest in the sitting room of Agnes Porridge.

  The Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede meanwhile skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. Big 032EHM sat shocked, Little's mother's mouth simply dropped open and stayed that way, Bopi smiled that funny gummy dog smile pugs have and Little just stared. I mean you don't see your parents covered in mud and swill with the backdrop of a war zone everyday do you.

  Outside the muddy cabin frogs continued to fall. The frogs fell hitting parked cars and pedestrians alike before getting up stunned in a sort of daze and hopping around.

  Snapping out of his daze Big 032EHM wiped the inside of the windscreen and steered the Pronsonbee perambulating velocipede for the side of the road. The vehicle hauled itself to the curb, shuddering to a standstill before commencing to rattle gradually and surprisingly sideways until Big 032EHM yanked on the handbrake with a sort of strangulated squeal. It was then that the clearly marked police bicycle, playing the police song, you know the one that goes nee naa nee naa, thumped directly into the rear bumper.

  The whole Pronsonbee Perambulator jerked forward then backwards as the policeman tried to untangle his front wheel which had improbably tangled with the Pronsonbee's rear bumper. With a sigh and dodging frogs the policeman climbed down from his mount, slammed down his official police Big hat over his yellow helmet and, kicking frogs to left and right of him, strode forward to the Pronsonbee Perambulator. Upon reaching the rear of the Pronsonbee the policeman looked down upon the improbably caught front wheel of his official police bicycle before giving the bumper of the Pronsonbee an almighty kick, but not quite the same kick they use in police dramas to open doors.

  The bumper obligingly broke from its mountings and lay cracked quite neatly in two on the road.

  Big 032EHM jumped out of the Pronsonbee Perambulator.

  "What are you doing?" he shouted heatedly, before realizing he was shouting at a policeman.

  The policeman looked up in the unnerving way predators do before attacking then sauntered over. Completely ignoring the blazing town, the blazing lorry blocking access to the road and the giant now blazing jelly.

  The policeman produced a small smile learnt at police college "Tell me, sir just how fast were you going when you backed into me?”

  Big 032EHM was stunned

  “What do you mean? You hit me"

  "I don't think so. Why weren't you looking in your rear-view mirror?" Asked the policeman taking out his little book using smile number 24.

  "I can't," said Big 032EHM, clenching his fists.

  "Oh," said his adversary. "And why not?"

  "Because it's in the glove box."

  The policeman's smile got bigger moving from 24 to a 36 as he circled closer to the Pronsonbee Perambulator and asked Big 032EHM's for his licence.

  "Why do you need my license? What did I do wrong?" Big 032EHM replied.

  The policeman's smile threatened to engulf his head, as he was on commission for traffic offences "you were travelling at 45 in a 30 zone." The policeman said this whilst totally ignoring the fact that the juggernaught fuel tanks had ruptured and fuel was spreading rapidly

  "Come on, officer," "you know I was only going 35." Big 032EHM replied, flinching as a frog almost hit him.

  "No you weren't!" quipped Little's mother taking a sniff from the floor polish she kept in her hand bag, "I told you, you were speeding! I told you not to go fast. I knew you'd get a ticket!"

  Looking at the policemen she smiled the smile of a woman who cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.

  "Shut up!" grunted Big 032EHM.

  The policeman continued, "I'm also charging you for going through a red light covered in mud." and smiled whilst still completely ignoring the spreading tide of liquid death.

  "Officer," said Big 032EHM looked around him at the devastated street the traffic light was a now a melted construction of modern art. "You know as well as I, that light was yellow not red and the mud only happened when we stopped just now."

  Little's mother piped in again, "no, the light was most definitely red - I told you it was red - I told you."

  Infuriated Big 032EHM yelled, "Shut up!"

  "Hey! Don't yell at your wife!" yelled the policeman, ignoring the fact that the jelly had super heated an was starting to fire off small blobs of liquid fire napalming the walls around him and filling the street with acrid smoke as well as melt the tarmac.

  He then turned to Little's mother and asked, "Does he always talk to you this way?"

  "No, only when he's been drinking." Little's mother calmly replied.

  However, if not for the accident, the mess of the swill cake and the finest mud and subsequent police and fire appliance intervention then Little would not have been late arriving at Uncle Mick's Vaudeville farm. This was fortunate for had Little and his family arrived on time aliens would have abducted them as well.

  Chapter 2.

  A strangely blurred object confronts us, something simple magnified hundreds of times. As we look closer and tilt our head just a little bit to the side we see it is a magnification of an eye.

  The eye is shown on a tiny screen. On the metallic surface below, the words SPECIES IDENTIFIER are finely etched. There's a touch-light panel across the top and on the side of the screen, it flashes HUMAN in larger red letters.

  There is a shape under the machine, a carbon-based organism descended from a primate. More specifically a forty something, stout and tattered homo-sapiens looking shape, an Uncle Mick looking shape.

  For his part Uncle Mick is just staring, staring into a great blurry void, as his eyes are the only part of him that seems to work. To him the whole world is ceiling. He watches it turn from white to bright white, and then back to white again. The bright white is very quick, sometimes only a flash, but it was during these flashes that he could sense his body being moved.

  Uncle Mick was in fact being moved, he was being moved very quickly down a corridor on a trolley, which was proceeding to crash through several sets of doors.

  The world to Uncle Mick was still flashing white then bright white, when he heard voices. The first voice he heard said,

  "He's here"

  Then a second voice said something worrying it said "Good. Take him into the frightening room."

  Uncle Mick's body moved into another room, a very white
room.

  Here the first voice said: "More machines, more machines we need more machines, the ABEREEG, the NGBP monitor and the POOAVV, please. Also we want the machine that goes 'Poing', make sure it's not the one that goes Ping"

  The same voice then shouted "Put that probe away, that's completely unnecessary and you know it gives us all a bad name."

  Uncle Mick could feel his legs being roughly moved about as they were put into stirrups. The voices continued;

  "Switch everything on!"

  Everything around Uncle Mick flashed, beeped and went Poing, and definitely not Ping.

  The first voice then said "Oil him up. An oiled body is so much better for conducting the electricity."

  At this Uncle Mick really started to wake up, even half unconscious he knew a statement like that wasn't just plain terrible, it was fancy terrible. It was terrible with raisins in it.

  Then the world went black.

  When Uncle Mick awoke again it was to a spinning room and the overpowering reek of ammonia strong in his nostrils.

  “Human.” A voice came to him out of the darkness.

  "Human."

  Uncle Mick brought his eyes into focus and made out a vague form screwing the cap back on a bottle of very strong smelling substance.

  At least the headache was going, but Uncle Mick was now left with purple spots in front of his eyes. As he looked about, through the dancing spots, he could see the chamber he was in, it was vast and circular. All around him he could hear beeping and poinging noises, but not a single ping and he could see flashing lights and the fact he was strapped into a chair.

  "Human" that voice again, somehow slimy and reptilian

  Uncle Mick tossed and turned.

  The chair Uncle Mick was strapped into looked much like a dentist's chair. His legs were forced upwards into a sort of sitting crouch and his face felt strange and floppy, like you often do at the dentists. However, Uncle Mick was not at the dentist, as he was slowly realising, he was somewhere much worse. For as Uncle Micks world came into focus he got a good look at his captor, it was a horrible sight, so horrible that every part of Uncle Mick was scared. The pigs that had been captured along with him and had come around earlier were looking terrified, and trying to hide under each other in a cage as they too had seen the alien.