Post by wilgutspleens on May 14, 2021 19:05:42 GMT
Dust motes float in the still, cold air, illuminated by the shaft of light from the one tall narrow glassless window. It was a cold morning and the rime of frost had not yet thawed from the bare unpainted walls. A single coiled electric heater, mounted on the wall, glows a dull red, filling the room with the smell of burnt hair but contributing little in the way of warmth.
A squat broad figure hunched in long coat, is sat at a desk, head flat on the desktop, arm outstretched, the index finger is rolling a single penny back and forth, back and forth. The other hand holds the butt of a fat stogie, long dead, cold and dead, rested on an overflowing ashtray.
“What to do, what to do” a statement so devoid of inflection it doesn’t merit a question mark.
Spleens has never really settled at Coont Road. Oh, Bastid was a mean and stupid orc alright, the kind Spleens knew how to use and the Coonts did their motley, raggedy arsed best to flatten and maim all who came against them but something was missing, some vital spark.
And then there was Barry. Something was happening to Barry. He had changed. Spleens had never really understood the strange little goblin, but this new, different, Barry was, well weird. Scary weird. He had followed Spleens from team to team and it was impossible not to keep him on. He was an inexplicable force on the astro-granite and he cleaned everything, for free, twice!
His obsession with cleaning and cleaning products was distasteful, and probably unhealthy. He seemed unaware of anything else. Even when Spleens was annoyed with him and started him on the Line of Scrimmage, he seemed grateful for the chance to whiten the centre-spot and carried a small tube of Cilit BANG! (tm*) Stain-off Centre-spot Whitening Compound everywhere with him ever since in case the opportunity arose again. Strange, eccentric, bizarre behaviour but normal for Barry
This new, different Barry was, well, weird. Scary weird. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it but something was different. Darker. Eldritch. Barry had an aura and not a nice one. Spleens found himself making excuses to avoid him, taking a long detour from his office to the team room to avoid passing the little janitors office that Barry called home.
He becomes aware of a noise on the edge of conscious hearing. A scritch-scratching, of the most delicate nature, the rubbing together of the paws of the smallest mouse might make such a sound, the feet of a cricket slipping on a chrome door handle might hint at such a scintillating sibilation.
It is accompanied by a strange high pitched ululating murmur like the song of an inebriated Mayfly. Curious, Spleens rises from the desk, discarding the cigar butt, he walks quietly along the corridor.
The sound emanates from the room with Janitor on the door. Carefully, quietly, Spleens looks around the door into the room. Perched high on a tall stool, crouched with his knees up by his ears Barry is hard at work. Totally absorbed in his labour, Barry is completely unaware of the rotund coach standing behind him looking over his shoulder.
Barry has an opened packet of pins on the work bench and a pot of Cilit BANG!(tm*) As-new Clean n Shine Pin Head Polishing Paste, he has a pin clamped in a tiny vice and he is polishing the head with a gnats wing. On the work bench is a growing pile of super polished pins. They shine like a dozen tiny supernovas.
Barry is singing through closed teeth in a very small voice so that he can barely be heard a mantra repeated continuously “when these is clean all is clean, when these is clean all is clean”
Barry turns to face his coach, his head turns as if it is on bearings, his eyes fix on Spleens eyes. “Those eyes…they are not his eyes“ thinks Spleens “His eyes have always been Dungfly coloured these eyes are…these eyes are…..”
Barry was looking at him with eyes that were not his own, that is to say, something was looking at him with Barry’s eyes that were not his own. They were the brightest lightest, most uncomfortable yellow that Spleens had ever seen, that nasty ugly shade of bilious yellow isn’t really any proper colour at all, the colour that no one would wear or ever have painted on a wall. It made Spleens want to squirm away but his gaze was held, locked onto the dreadful eyes.
Barry’s mouth opens slightly “The Bang!” he murmurs
“The Bang?” Asks Spleens in a quizzical tone , then reflectively “The Baaang”
Then jubilantly he cries out louds “The Bang” Then louder “The Bang! THE BANG!”
He turns and pulls off three flip flops a reverse turn and pike in the corridor and then turning without pause cartwheels back to where Barry sits.
“We are putting the BANG! (tm*) back together, Barry, we are on a mission from a Nameless Non-corporeal Entity from the Nether Regions of an Unspecified Non-Denominational Place of Eternal Damnation”
Barry wonders why he has a sudden inexplicable urge to go see penguins.
Season 28 SAC entry Wilgut Spleens and (all new) Cilit BANG!(tm*)