Suggested Audio Candy

 

 Nature “Underworld”

 

 

Deputy Irvine Bannister had had a rough evening thus far. The Rancid Monkey gig had turned into a full-scale riot and ended in several arrests, two of which were cuffed and currently residing in his back seat. In addition, he had inherited an inebriated Uncle Mick, who was way too far gone to possibly drive home tonight. Upon receiving the call to investigate this disturbance, Bannister had figured on killing two birds with one stone, despite the fact that he had a long-running feud with the old guy over a poker game which had turned heated, and agreed to acting as chaperone. His shift was supposed to have ended half hour ago and Irvine was feeling particularly embittered as he had planned a CSI marathon upon his arrival home. That wasn’t looking likely now, especially given the fact that he had just spotted Kevin stumbling from the thicket in front, closely followed by the infamous Yates Lodge Yeti.

“You’ve got to be shitting me”

Mick had been out cold in the passenger seat for the entire journey and was still rubbing his eyes as the Deputy ground to a halt.

“What is it Bannister?”

“That can’t be. We put that guy down last week”

Uncle Mick’s awakening was of the rudest variety as, no sooner had he spotted the lack of a front door on his cabin, than he became aware of his nephew’s friend being cast aside callously as Olaf turned his attention to the bright lights and began advancing on the parked squad car. Kevin was knocked straight out by the force of the mountain man’s right hand but fortunately for him there were now no shortage of playthings. Irvine instantly regretted his decision to prioritize releasing his firearm from its holster over unfastening his seat belt as the threat was looming large before he could get the safety off. Olaf thought nothing of bench-pressing an automobile with four passengers and lifted the patrol car by its fender, before flipping it on its roof as though it were an alloy roach.

Mick, who had swiftly sobered up by this point, was first to react and clambered across the dazed Deputy in an attempt to exit through the compacted driver’s side door. His decision to take a more awkward route from the wreckage was informed by the fact that ten grimy toes in dire need of a pedicure were currently camped outside his window. He managed to prise the door open and crawl out before becoming Olaf’s next pet project, clutching his left thigh which had been lacerated on impact.

“Help me Mick. Get me out of here”

Deputy Bannister was still shell-shocked but only too aware that he had jumped the queue and was about to be obliterated. He had been present as the Yates Lodge Yeti had taken enough shrapnel to take down a sperm whale before finally succumbing, and watched three of his associates perish that night. Indeed, it was the reason why the force had been stretched so thin this evening.

“No can do Bannister. Sorry”

Mick stumbled off, leaving the officer to make his own luck.

“You fucking bastard”

Irvine frantically wrestled with the belt mechanism, while Olaf stumped on the two sitting ducks in the back seat and put his callus-ridden fist through the fortified back window as though it were stunt glass. Callum and Eric, who had defied their probation curfew to attend tonight’s rambunctious shindig at Oakley’s, were so busy attempting to offer one another up as sacrifice that Olaf couldn’t choose between them and hoisted both from the wreckage by the scruff of their scrawny throats. This afforded Irvine the time he required to break free from his shackles and exit the same way as Mick.

 

 

Meanwhile, Callum and Eric had a far more ominous problem at hand. Neither of the boys stood a chance as Olaf taught them the meaning of FUBAR and slammed them against the vehicle’s underbelly with enough force to break Eric’s back against the chassis. Callum fared little better as he was the first to feel the wrath of the mountain man. Uncle Mick’s admittedly purty staple gun had become Olaf’s most prized possession in a short amount of time but this was its primary outing as murder weapon. He emptied almost the entire clip into Callum’s forehead and continued to click away at both eyeballs until which time as the seventeen year-old ceased any resistance. Stopping for a moment to admire his handiwork allowed Bannister, who was renowned for being a lousy shot, to fire off his first round and his bullet ricocheted from the rear wheel rim, knocking the mountain man’s precious stapler from his grasp. This infuriated Olaf to the nth degree and he glared at the Deputy with overspilling hatred for attempting to piss on his pumpkin patch.

Kevin was still spark out, Mick had collapsed a few feet from the cabin and was currently dragging himself towards the obliterated doorway whimpering like the coward he was, and Eric wasn’t about to go anywhere with his freshly-decimated spinal column. This made Bannister public enemy number one and the fact that he had had the audacity to relinquish Olaf’s toy from his grip sealed his fate all the more decisively. While the doomed Deputy rued his decision to only keep one in the chamber and fumbled to load his second; his opposite number stomped around the faltering sirens and commenced to charge like an unruly buffalo. After shoulder barging his new nemesis against the cabin’s wooden fascia with enough heft to provoke sufficient internal bleeding to kill the man in minutes; the mountain man opted not to afford Bannister the luxury of such a forgiving demise and punished him further for his foolhardy indiscretion.

 

 

Olaf had never before had the privilege of firing a gun and the fact that it was devoid of ammunition served only to aggravate him further. Through his limited powers of deduction; he figured it to be some kind of bludgeoning tool and, to his eternal credit, it proved somewhat effective. One skull-shattering blow was followed by two, three and four in rapid succession until Bannister’s cranium looked fit only for a nob of butter and some grated cheese. Before Olaf could become sidetracked by working out where to load fresh staples into this curious device, he struck again, this time pushing the butt of the weapon through the dead man’s doughnut-loaded midriff and entangling it in intestines and the like. Entrails were a particular favorite of his as there was just so much of them packed into a relatively meager receptacle. What was also noteworthy was that his mental age was that of an infant and there was just so much fun to be gleaned from having a rummage.

Mick had built this cabin with his own bare hands and would ordinarily have been mortified by the state it had been left in but right now he had far more grave concerns. As he identified Mitch’s discarded corpse before him as his own flesh and blood, only because he recognized his sneakers, it began to sink in. He rolled onto his back and was greeted by the overbearing shadow of his aggressor as Olaf stepped inside to deepen his woe.

“No. I’ll do anything you want. No”

Bargaining with nature’s cast-off was a decidedly long shot and the mountain man was having none of it. With one foot pressed firm against Mick’s shoulder blade, Olaf pulled the man’s right arm clean from its socket and began feeding him his own fingers. Uncle Mick never washed his hands after taking a whizz and the last tang on his palate was of his own potent urine. Asphyxiation followed as the Yates Lodge Yeti added another notch to his fleshy belt and pondered which part to claim as reward. The eyeballs were a must as his heavy-handedness earlier had lost him a couple of beauties and he was desperate to reconvene his collection. Mick had been brewing his own ale for years so there were plentiful containers spacious enough to facilitate such scattered around his decimated homestead.

Outside, Kevin had began to come to and was provided additional smelling salts as he discerned his sister’s voice from the thicket.

“Kevin!”

She rushed to his aid with Bijou in close tow and helped him to his feet but before the pair could share dialogue, Olaf appeared back on the scene and began sizing up the fresh meat.

 

 

“What the actual fuck?”

Bijou didn’t fancy sticking around for the answer to her own question and ushered Patsy and her younger brother towards the dirt track back to the main road without procrastination, before Olaf decided to stretch his legs once again. Kevin was nursing numerous knocks and scrapes and dangled between the girls with his weary arms draped over their shoulders. Aside from his heroines, adrenaline was his best friend right now and its flow was furthered still by the mass of internal organs and suchlike surplus strewn across their path. Fuck the woods; Bijou and Patsy would always have those precious moments under the moonlit sky, but didn’t relish another ramble for the foreseeable.

The mountain man started to pick up the pace and was beginning to gain ground when his penchant for stationery got the better of him and he stopped to retrieve his now unworkable stapler from the bloody remains. This bought them the extra time required to put some distance between them and certain death and they accepted this stroke of good fortune appreciatively. It wasn’t long before Olaf had resumed his manhunt and he let out an almighty roar of disapproval as he continued his pursuit.

“He’s catching up B”

“Keep going. We’ll be back at the road soon. Kevin, whatever strength you have left in your legs, I’m going to need you to use it”

Bijou didn’t have to tell him twice, despite the fact that he was currently exercising his third wind. Still, Olaf forged closer, staple gun snapping furiously behind them and ready to bust another clip or three. Eventually they were a mere hundred of yards shy of their checkpoint and, to buoy any flagging spirits, they could make out what appeared to be an oncoming vehicle traversing the winding mountain road. If they pushed, then they could still make it there in time to flag it down.

 

________

 

 

It had been an evening of mixed fortunes for Rancid Monkey. These four typically rebellious young men hadn’t expected the drama or taken into account the fact that they would need to get their drummer, ironically named Smash, to the nearest emergency room on account of his stray bottle-induced head injury. However, a few stitches and perhaps a couple of head staples would see him right as rain, while their rock & roll status will have been enhanced so they weren’t complaining.

“How you doing back there Smashy?”

Lead vocalist Ronnie looked through the partition to check on his band mate who could only muster a vague grunt. Bassist Tazer had it under control and was administering Jim Beam to the abrasion between swigs. In the driver seat, drummer Lenny was cursing ever getting his driver’s license. As if didn’t already suck enough being the most anonymous band member, he was also sick to the back fillings of chauffeuring them about in their tour bus. None of them ever took into account gas consumption or wear and tear on his tires, and Lenny was getting ready for an imminent showdown. He would let it slide for tonight as Smash was priority right now but tomorrow, over their morning latte, heads would roll.

He almost didn’t see Kevin and the girls until it was too late and slammed on the breaks just in time to stop shy of the withered trio.

“Help us”

Bijou’s plea was instantly recognized and Lenny was feeling hospitable considering the fact that he had almost ploughed them down.

“Tazer?”

“You made my spill my booze man. What the fuck?”

“Slide the door. Passengers inbound”

“Alright already”

No sooner had Tazer freed the latch than all three bundled inside and Lenny began burning rubber once more.

“Drive. Get out of here. We have to leave NOW”

Directly after Bijou pointing out the painfully obvious, Lenny received a second prompt in the form of the mountain man who was ascending the embankment to their right.

“On it”

 

 

The camper van, which wasn’t the nippiest at the best of times, just managed to accelerate fast enough to clear the danger zone in time, much to Olaf’s disenchantment. He clattered his fists into the tarmac like a petulant infant and his misery was further compounded by the fact that his beloved industrial staple gun no longer conformed to factory standards.

“Are you guys alright?”

Smash had momentarily forgotten his own anguish and was more concerned for the well-being of the new arrivals. The siblings were locked tight in embrace so Bijou stepped up as spokeswoman for the group.

“Just. Yeah. But our friends are dead”

“Bummer”

Words had never been Smash’s forte so Tazer picked up the reigns.

“What the hell was that thing? Looked like a fucking Sasquatch”

Bijou could only shrug as she was still processing the data herself after arriving late on the scene.

With that, Ronnie excitedly leaned through the partition once more and shared his light bulb moment with a most unamused audience.

“Guys. I’ve just had a kick ass idea for our next song. Yeti Confetti”

As if he hadn’t already failed at enamoring himself to his new acquaintances, he turned down Toxic Love Letter and burst into verse.

“I asked for a Yeti
All I got was confetti”

He’d be dead of an overdose by summer.

 

________

 

Back at the roadside, Olaf contemplated opportunity squandered and also being far too frivolous with his darling sidearm. He was miles from anywhere; the prospects were grim for finding a replacement by sunrise but he lived in hope. After dusting himself down and realigning his lopsided fleshy head gear, the mountain man disappeared back into his natural habitat.

 

 

 

Truly, Really, Clearly, Sincerely,

 

Keeper of the Crimson Quill

Copyright: Crimson Quill: Savage Vault Enterprises 2015