“You’re never going to catch me!” Jeered the capering figure on the cliff tops just before the customs men caught him. The little figure stopped capering and started looking moody.
“Elno Thornbright!” The lead customs man was as broad as a bean but much taller. It looked as though just one more gust of wind from the storm that shatter the sky above like grandmothers best unused china, would send him reeling away like a influential yet panicking leaf.
“Maybe.” Said the little figure sulkily as it kicked a pebble off the cliff top. The pebble, who hadn’t really done that much with it’s life, hurtled through the air and scream in sheer delight as it plunged into the cappuccino waves. It had been the best day of the pebbles life.
It was far from the best day of Elno Thornbright’s life. In fact it was the last day of Elno Thornbright’s life which is never going to be much fun.
“I arrest you,” said the customs man importantly whilst waving his sword uncertainly, “For crimes against the King of the british isles, for illegally trafficking things what people want but cheaper, for stealing Danny Bungson’s favorite shoe and wrecking no less than eighteen ships …” The customs man blinked and tapped his forehead thoughtfully. It sounded hollow. “Hang on, got another one in there somewhere.”
A large man behind the captain cleared his throat. The skinny captain whirled on him.
“Lieutenant Fairchild! Can’t you have a cough sweet or something. You are so disgusting! All I hear is you hacking up mucous.”
The large man looked like he might cough impolitely again but then just said.
“Cough sweets won’t be invented for another couple of hundred years boss and,” the big man leant in to whisper: “He murdered fifty three people in cold blood.”
“Oo,” the captain said. “Drown them did he?”
He span back to the little figure who was obviously feeling rather bored and had started playing with a yoyo. Up and down the yoyo went from the palm of the little figure as the sky roared with prongs of fire and the thunderheads groaned like giants with tummy ache.
“Stop that!”
The little figure jumped and dropped the yoyo.
With a cry the yoyo joined the pebble in the soggy depths. They got married and; as the yoyo only knew crime from it’s master and the pebble was a low grade, rough cut sort of a pebble anyway, they spent the rest of their days galloping around on sea horses and robbing oysters of their precious pearls … but that’s a boring story which you may one day tell to your children to put them to sleep.
Back atop the cliff the little figure in the dirty blackish coat and the blackening white top had looked worried.
“I hope you’re going to come quietly.” The captain asked of Elno Thornbright.
He didn’t.
#
Elno Thornbright stood in the dock of Wadebridge court house. He had made an effort for the occasion by not killing anyone on the way in. He was fairly certain that this wouldn’t help his chances.
“Yes,” said the lawyer; carrying on a conversation as yet unclear.
“Pwitty confident you’ll just get a slap on the wist for this one. It is your first offense after all. He’s a waver close amyl fweind. Daddy shoots poor people with him.”
The lawyer suddenly turned his shiny pink face to Thornbright, there was definitely more face than hair, he looked like an egg in glasses.
“You’re not … you know … poor are you Thornbwite?”
“Nope.” Replied the little figure wishing that he still had his yoyo of death and chaos. He wanted to practice “Walking the dog.”
“Are you sure? The Lawyer said as he leaned in and attempted to look engaging.
“Yip.”
As a rule; Elno Thornbright was a man of very few words and the day after this he would be a man of considerably less.
The lawyer visibly relaxed.
“All wise!” shouted the judge as he finished his pot noodle and rattled the spoon loudly in the plastic container for any stray noodles.
“Pwisoner, how do you plead?”
The little murderous rascal thought for a moment and then made a sound like a cat trying to squeeze into a rubber glove.
“”Pleeeeeeeeaaaassseeeee!”.” He squeaked.
“Hmm, that’s pwitty good.” The judge sounded impressed as he took a pheasant out from under his wig. “I will take it into consideration as I contemplate your hideous and painful sentence.”
“What a weasonible chap.” Mouthed the egg-like lawyer and gave his client a friendly wink. The lawyer reflected that this brutish murdering, and most probably, product of Beelzebub’s correspondence course, was his best friend. He grinned, pulled out his mobile phone and wrote:
“BFF? 
” He pressed send. unfortunately for the lawyer with a head like an egg; it was Cornwall, and telephone reception is poor at the best of times, especially in the eighteenth century. This might have been the reason that the murderous little devil never text the poor lonely lawyer back. It may also have been due to the judges sentence.
“I say for all that long list of cwimes what I have spilled gwavy on so I can’t wead it: Elno Thornbwight should be hung, dwawn and quartered …”
The judge stood up hoping to look dramatic and important.
“And have his head taken fwom his shoulders and then to be buwied under a gweat oak …”
The judge pinched his pantaloons where they were riding up his bottom.
There was silence in the court house.
“Until dead.” The judge added.
There was an eruption of noise as reporters attempted to ask questions of the condemned man as their illustrators furiously scribble, sharpened quills and gave advice to one another on shading and depth perception. One voice rose above them all. It was as rich and deep as a great big cup of hot chocolate, though there would have been spiky finned things in it’s depth with far too many teeth for a single dental check up a year.
“I will wear death like a cloak and when the seasons change I will return to this world and reap my revenge. Mark you, bury me deep for I will return.”
“Peh,” said Captain Brightling of the customs men who was sitting in the front row and eating tuna sandwiches. “Whatever mate,” he said and took a healthy bite.
“Vey all fay vat!”"
#
“That’s one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.” The priest said to the long haired man who was slowly blinking at him.
“Oak is far too dense for a surfboard. It will sink.”
“Boat’s don’t sink.” Seabug pointed out. “And they’re made of metal.”
“Yes but they displace the air so relatively …”
“I think I’ll paint it black.” Seabug rudely cut in. “With a couple of eyes on it. That would be cool man.”
The priest, like all priests in any rip roaring roller coaster of a story, had lost his faith. Now when people say that they lose their faith it’s much more important than loosing say, your back door key. For one thing you can probably nip round to the neighbors and get the one you cleverly left there. Faith is different. Once you’ve lost it you’re not getting back in until you’ve found it again.
“You thinking about why you lost your faith again?” Seabug asked as he looked up from the piece of dark wood.
“Funnily enough yes!” The priest said loudly. “Would you like me to tell you about it.”
“Why yes!” Seabug bellowed back, “Even if you have told me many times before and there is no real discernible reason why you’d talk about it now.”
“Well!” Screamed the faithless priest … but then there was a timid knock at the door.
The two men went silent.
“That was a bit odd,”
“Yeah,” said the priest. “It made no narrative sense what so ever.
Behind Seabug and the priest, through the workshop window out in the Cornish morning sun sat a whisk and a F15 Tomcat having an arm wrestle. Both men fervently ignored the spectacle.
“Hmm,” said the priest.
They sat in companionable silence for another moment.
“Were you going to get the door?” The priest asked.
“Oh the door!” Seabug jumped up and scampered, barefoot, across the room. “Completely forgot about that.” He muttered.
“Who was it?” Asked the faithless priest when Seabug returned.
“It was a hamster dressed as a nurse. Do you think someone is playing with us?”
“Does make you wonder. Hope he stops it fairly soon because this story is starting to lose direction.”
“Oh yes,” Seabug said brightly. “The hamster in the nurses uniform told me that there is a surf competition next week. I’ve enrolled. Think you’d be up for it?” Seabug was looking through a series of sharp tools.
“No, I don’t think so.” The priest said quietly.
Seabug turned; his face a mask of shame.
“So sorry dude, I forgot.”
“Hey,” said the faithless priest flicking his hand dismissively and subsequently concussing a passing fly.
“It’s my problem.”
“Well man,” Seabug was uncharacteristically serious, “I’d love to surf with you again man.”
“Some day. Some day. Anyway, let’s get on with that board if you want to sink on it next week in front of Bonny.”
“Dude, I’m going to rip it and she’s going to love me!.
The two friends continued to chat and joke getting quieter and quieter until they were mouthing things at one another and furiously gesticulating …
Somewhere not so far away, beneath the trunk of a vast tree and deep, deep in the ground, something began to squirm.
#
Here we have the workshop. It is night and the stars freckle the purple face of the sky. There is the gentle hush of the sea as it laps the shore with it’s watery tongue.
A breeze carries the scent of high summer from the fields and downs and out to sea where interested fish who have come on holiday to the sea side poke their noses from the wash and take deep gill-fulls of the air.
Distantly there is the seductive thump of music and young chattering voices; the sound swept this way and that by the warm breeze.
Within the workshop all is dark and, for the moment, still. It smells of paint, wood shavings, suspicious tobacco and strong cups of tea.
Seabug’s latest creation lies on the work bench. Six feet and eight inches of varnished wood. It is not black. By some trick of the light it is darker than the darkest black. It is darker than the darkest cats most blacked out limo that it has parked in a coal shed to keep it out of the extra dark night.
Black, it is said by men in white lab coats, is the absence of colour. This is not an absence, it is a maw that greedily gobbles up light.
Four blood red fins run down it’s centre giving the impression of an ironing board that has suddenly found the merit of punk music.
But what is this? A shadow is moving in the garden beyond the window. It slips into full view and peers in. Two skeletal hands raise a vaguely spherical object and press it to the glass. After a moment a voice as dry as thirsty prawn whispers:
“Gnarly …”
#
“Observers say that the apparition was merely four feet tall and lacked exactly one head.” The pretty yet dumb reporter’s blue eyes were wide and sincere as she spoke into the camera.
“Last night on this very beach no fewer than thirty four young revelers saw, what is now being referred to as, the headless surfer.”
The reporter gave the viewers a cheeky wink because she’d forgotten what to say next. In the background a seagull waved in the vane hope that his mum was watching.
“So an interview,” She said as she touched the small headphone that was hooked into her perfect shell like ear.
“It was splendid.” The young man with large ears was nearly exploding with excitement. “The chap came running passed us with a great black surfboard under one arm and his head under the other. I’ve been to eaten you know so I’m pretty smart,” the large eared man grinned knowingly, “So when that fellow passed by I turned to Tarquin and told him that I had a suspicion that something strange was going on.” He snorted, “It’s not every day you see a chap with no head running around on a moonlit beach.”
“He was amazing,” sighed a rather plump ginger girl as she tugged on her hair and attempted to look wistful. “He just ruled the waves you know. Sexy too.”
“The advantage is,” said a small excitable man who was standing beside a large and passive surfboard, “is that he can lift his head up to see what sets are coming in …” He looked at his watch. “Oh, got to go, very busy. Yewwwww!” and with that he dashed off into the surf.
“And there you have it.” The pretty reporter said. The wind flicked her blond hair around her face. “The headless surfer of Polzeath.” She gave her most charming smile. “I wonder if he’ll make an appearance on saturday’s surf competition? Anyway, back to you in the studio.”
#
Later that morning … so late that the afternoon was waiting in the wings and ready for it’s own performance; a disheveled head of long hair and a nose protruding from among it popped out from beneath a blanket.
“Dude!” Seabug yawned, stretched, scratched as many places as he could reach and then sighed.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet and cast his spongebob squarepants duvet to the floor.
“New board!” he screamed and dashed into his workshop.
Slipping nimbly into his wetsuit he took up the great black surfboard and rushed into the dying morning. He didn’t notice the slight sheen of salt water that still clung to the black varnish.
It was the best surf of Seabug’s life. The board seemed to react to thought rather than movement. It didn’t go through the water, it seemed to simply glide across it in long lazy curves.
He felt as if he could do anything on this board. He snapped quick turns back and forth; feeling the raw power of the ocean through the soles of his feet.
On shore people clapped and whistled. One plump ginger girl was attempting to look wistful while obviously trying to look at him too and there was Bonny. She smiled her sweet summer smile at him and waved. He waved back and felt a blush begin somewhere around his ankles.
To distract himself from the beautiful girl who was smiling at him, Seabug took out the morning paper and nonchalantly did the crossword as he rode the barrels.
On the beach a young man with large ears frowned. He was fairly certain that he recognized that black surf board with the blood red fins. As a scholar from Eaten he was apt to notice such things. After a while he shrugged and went off to buy something.
#
“Headless surfer?” Seabug scoffed.
He was sitting with the faithless priest and eating the meal of heros, pizza and cold beans.
“As if such a thing could exist. It’s preposterous.”
The black surfboard was propped up in the corner of the surf chalet. It seemed to be listening.
“They say,” the faithless priest took a bean from the plate, “that he is the spirit of a long dead murderer, smuggler and shoe thief and that he has returned to take bloody and inconvenient vengeance on the people that caught him.”
“Who was that then?” Seabug picked a stringy piece of cheese from between his teeth.
“Two customs officers, one called John Brightling and the other; Robert Fairchild.”
“Peh,” Seabug waved a slice of pizza nearly taking out his friends eye. “He’ll be lucky, they’ve been dead for ages.” He took a bite. “I should know, Robert Fairchild was my great great great granddad or something.” He chuckled. “The only way that this spook could take any vengeance would be to do something like hunt down Robert Fairchild’s descendant and after humiliating him in front of the girl he loves in a surf competition, kill him in some extravagant way.”
He chewed for a while. “Which is daft as Robert Fairchild has no descendants. I should know, I’m his great, great, great grandson or something.”
#
“”You’re amazing.” Bonny cried as she let her clothes fall off.
“Yes,” said Seabug. “Yes I am.”
They were standing on top of a mushroom twenty three miles high and made of bird song. Seabug had sort of suspected that this day would always come. It was inevitable.
He ducked as a duck flew over head on a magic carpet; thereby explaining the origin of the verb.
Bonny levitated into the air and then turned into a flock of socks which wiggled away into the eye of a giant needle.
“Damn.” Seabug said. “I think this may be a dream.”
“It is.” Rumbled the mushroom.
His eyes cracked open and he sat up. He was on the floor of his workshop in just his pants. Looking blearily around he noticed the beer bottles and dead starfish.
“Uh,” said a pile of sand.
“Faithless priest? Is that you.”
“Unfortunately,” the faithless priest sat up. “It is me.”
“Oh dude. It’s the surf comp today. Let’s get going.”
“Stupid surfing.” The priest muttered as he tried to find his missing shoe.
“You’ve got to get passed it man.” Seabug said. “Swaisy was always going to be a more likely candidate for casting in that roll than you.”
“Shut up you bogy of Beelzebub.” The priest’s eyes burned a vivid red and smoke bloomed from his ears.
“You’ve got to tell me how you do that dude.” Seabug said.
“I smoke a lot of pot.” The priest explained.
The beach was packed with dooshes, wanna be dooshes and dooshettes alike.
People span and skimmed, flipped and rolled on the waves that came thundering into the bay but none flipped, rolled, skimmed, levitated, flew or fell asleep like Seabug on his magical board.
“I declare that everyone else sucks.” Cried the most important person of the village; the local wizard.
Everyone sighed and went home having had a very fun yet in-de script day in the sun which, itself, had started it’s fall to it’s watery bed.
#
Seabug bathed in the glory, in the admiration and in the dying sun which sat atop the horizon like a radioactive fried egg.
“Well done.” Came a voice from behind him and there she was giving him her summer smile, with her eyes bright as as highly intellectual super novas and her full lips curved like an expertly thrown cricket ball. “You were pretty good you know.”
Suddenly Seabug was embarrassed. He ran one big toe through the sand.
“Thanks.” He muttered.
“You know,” she said with her head on one side. “I don’t like you …”
Seabug looked up, he felt his heart tare and threaten to scrabble out of the nearest exit. His soul fizzled and died like a sparkler in a waterfall and his spirit was squashed like an overly macho rabbit taking on a steam roller …
“I don’t like you because you surf you know. I actually like you for who you are.”
“What?” Seabug asked. “You like me?”
“Yeah, course.” She said.
Everything inside him came back to life. His heart trotted back to his chest and started vigorously thumping. His soul sparked and drew out the letters B O N N Y, leaving tracers of colour in the mind. The humbled rabbit inflated and hopped off to become a steam roller driver.
Bonny was left in the twilight with a secretive smile on her face as she watched Seabug rush down the beach screaming:
“She likes me!! She likes me!! I think I can fly … umph. I can’t … but she likes me.”
The final probing fingers of sunset withdrew and went to prod about somewhere else in the world. Dusk settled and one by one the stars bloomed in their celestial meadow.
“You seem to have made him happy.”
Bonny turned to see the faithless priest who was staring into the sky as if searching for something. His hands were laced behind his back.
She tried to stifle a shiver as his dead black eyes met hers. It was like all the magic of the world had been drawn out of this poor man. He reminded Bonny of a child when they first hear that Santa is fictional, granted it was usually her that told them, but it was sad to watch none the less.
“He’s cool.” She said simply turning to regard the fleeing figure of Seabug. It appeared someone carrying a football was crossing the beach to intercept him. A very short someone.
Bonny blinked.
“Is it me,” she said slowly, “Or does that dude have no head?”
The faithless priest glanced down the pale strip of sand.
“Nope,” he said, “No head.”
“And what’s he doing to Seabug?”
#
“What are you doing to me?” Seabug asked the odd little fellow with no head. Oh no, there it was, tucked under his arm.
“That is my board that you are holding dude.”
The voice was old and croaky as if it had not been used for many a year, or the speaker had hit it really hard the previous night.
“Hey, get off.”
The funny little chap with no noggin was tugging with his free hand at the great black board.
“Mine,” he croaked again and a long skeletal finger poked Seabug in the ribs.
“You took it from my hanging tree. I want it back.”
And it seemed that the board agreed. It twisted in Seabug’s grip managing to thump him on the snoz.
“Ouch!” Seabug said honestly. “Bad bored.”
“It’s the baddest! It’s part of me. This is the most gnarly board in the world. Tremble in fear.” Said the head tucked into the corpse’s armpit.
“Here you go,” Seabug flung the board at the peculiar little fellow. “Didn’t want it anyway,” he lied.
There was the thump of approaching feet and Bonny appeared clutching a stitch in her side.
“I think I’ve broken this stitch in my bikini,” she said cooly and silently cursed herself for being part of a rather poor pun.
“What’s going on boys?”
She looked from one sheepish face to the other. The sheep looked back and then trotted into the surf wearing wetsuits, holding body boards and bleating about the glassy monoliths that they were going to catch.
“He stole my board.” Seabug said peevishly.
“I was the greatest villain of Cornwall. I murdered, I stole, I swindled, cheated and bamboozled. I also stole a shoe. I was sentenced to be hung, drawn, quartered, decapitated and buried under a tree …”
Seabug and Bonny politely looked at him.
“Until dead.” The headless corpse added.
Seabug and Bonny gasped; Bonny a little more quietly than Seabug because she had sort of seen it coming.
“He stole my board.” Seabug muttered.
“This board was made from the tree under which I was buried. It is a wicked tree, full of spite in it’s roots, vengeance in it’s bark and rage in it’s branches …”
“What about the leaves.” Bonny asked.
“The leaves? Well they’re just normal leaves init. So,” the head was thrust at Seabug. “It was because of me that you won the super surf splash cup, not your ability but my tree. I demand the cup …” One hand reached over and investigated the skulls eye socket; removing a stunned worm. “Oh and your life for you are the great great great great great … grandson of Robert Fairchild, or something like that.”
“No way, that cup is mine.”
“Yes way dude.” Said Elno Thornbright, for it was he that stood before them on the beach with … what? You already realized that? Oh. Well that’s sort of spoilt the twist. Keep reading though There is much more drama, there is even a smutty bit with all the details …
Bonny and Seabug had sex.
“Good for you?” Seabug asked.
“Yip.” Said bonny as she smoked her usual post coital cigarette.
The disembodied head coughed.
“Oh yeah, you were going to steal my super surf splash cup and kill me. I don’t think so.” Seabug stuck his chin out, his thumbs in his belt loops and his tongue in his ear.
“I challenge you, undisclosed stranger with no head. I challenge you to a surf competition. If you win, you get the board, my life and a two week break in Majorca.” The phantasmagoria n little swine looked excited. “REally, I’ve never been abroad what with doing lots of murder, pillaging and other such naughty things.”
“Indeed.” Seabug said. “And if I win, I get the board, to keep my cup and I get Bonny’s hand in marriage, for, it turns out that you are her great great great grandfather or something like that. What do you say to that undisclosed, vertically challenged stranger who’s lineage I know so much about?”
“You’re on.”
Seabug went to shake Thornbright’s boney hand. Thornbright had to swap his head to the other hand.
“You know, you could get a rucksack or something like that for that thing.”
“Yeah,” Thornbright said. “But I couldn’t really find the right colour, they were either too big or too small and the prices? You ever bought things in Polzeath? Daylight robbery I tell you.”
“Come on,” Seabug spat on the sand. “Let’s jam.”
The faithless priest flinched and clutched his head.
“Why did you say that?” he screamed at his own knees. “They say that in … “That film”"
“Oh god man, I’m sorry.”
The priest slowly stood up. Sweat was trickling down his face and he was breathing hard.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” He panted.
“Let’s go.” Seabug said. “One board, and one person returns. It’s surprisingly poetic actually.”
The author nods with a look of bewilderment on his pretty face as our hero and terrible ghostly villain wade into the eternal embrace of the rolling ocean.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” The faithless priest said as he shook his head. “A very bad feeling.”
#
The sea rose up to meet the corpse and the annoyed beach bum alike. The crests of the waves glittered with a flaming orange while the vast body of water took on a deep red glow like ruby though in other places it was crimson of fresh blood.
The competitors sat astride the coffin black board with Thornbright’s head propped up at the pointy end shouting instructions like a cocks.
“Paddle!” the disembodied head bellowed.
“That’s,” Seabug panted. “Not very helpful. I think your body is slacking anyway.”
“I’ve been dead for nearly a quarter of a millennia. Give me a break.” Thornbright said peevishly.
Seabug looked over his shoulder. He blinked. Someone was rushing into the surf with a longboard tucked under one arm. Even from here he could sea the crucifix glowing benevolently on the underside of the surfboard. It just couldn’t be …
“Oh bugger.” Thornbright muttered.
“Oy you,” he shouted. “No cheating allowed.”
“I cheat,” cried the faithless priest, “In the name of the Lord.”
“Oh god.” Thornbright said completely missing the irony of his statement. His body reached out and slowly slid its palm down Thornbright’s face.
“I rip it up,” scream the priest, “It the name of the lord!”
He threw himself onto his surfboard like a penguin onto a toboggan. He began to paddle.
Thornbright’s body seized the head and thrust it into the air.
“There’s a set coming in. This is ours.”
The water budged crazily in front of Seabug; a mountain of water.
“Turn you idiot!”
“What?” Thornbright said. “I’m a murderer not a surfer. Don’t shout at me.”
Suddenly the board twisted so it’s tail end was pointing at the wall of oncoming water. The board shot forward and the wave crested.
“Woooooooo” Seabug scream. “We’re surfing dude!”
“Shut up.” Thornbright said as his body stood up and withdrew a very long and very pointy dagger.
“Your time is at an end, I’m going to stick this up your nose.”
Seabug also sprang to his feet and pulled out a tin of beans.
“You think?”
And so they battled on the black board, dancing back and forth with quiet pings as the dagger struck the bean can.
“Noo!” Seabug cried. “You got me!”
Small organ beans scattered into the air like amputee bees.
With a roar Seabug bit the top off the can and guzzled down its contents.
“Beans!” he roared. He bent forward and nutted Thornbright right on the conk.
“Unggg.” Thornbright squealed and nearly dropped his head.
“‘At ‘rut! “At “ou ‘oo ‘at ‘or?”
“Because we’re in a fight to the death.” Seabug explained apologetically.
“Oh yeah.” And then Thornbright kicked Seabug in a private and very painful place. No, it wasn’t a private dentists surgery, it was somewhere far more personal.
Seabug scream and tumbled off the board and vanished beneath the surging wave.
“It’s mine! The bored is mine and the bloodline that caused my rather unfair and untimely death is no more.” Thornbright chuckled and lit a cigar.
Just a few feet away; Seabug tumbled within the wave. He span and tossed like a miserable sock in a salty washing machine. He could feel the pressure in his chest.
A Japanese fish, on holiday at the sea side, swam by and snapped a couple of photographs before swimming off to show its mum.
Seabug caught a glyphs of a people and yoyo riding sea horses and waving tiny guns about before they two vanished into the Mirk, then drove off.
Seabug thought he was doomed. He thought sadly of Bonny and all the plans he had made for them both: Get an ice-cream, hold hands and … well he would have just seen how it would have gone after that and now, he was going to die. Seabug was pretty sure that it would be the end of his tenuous relationship Bonny. He doubted she’d want to carry on with a corpse, although he could always ask.
Suddenly there was a gurgling in Seabug’s gut. A sort of bubbling.
Shouldn’t have eaten those beans. He said inaccurately and then a great stream of bubbles erupted from his bottom and shot him out of the wave.
He flew passed two struggling figures locked in a battle to the death, over the white horses and into the arms of Bonny.
“Wow,” Seabug breathed. “That was a strange sequence of events.”
Bonney agreed and then they got jiggy.
Meanwhile …
#
The two boards came together with an all mighty crash which sent the seagulls flapping into the air; squawking indignantly.
The pure white board shone in the last rays of the sun as the priest effortlessly steered it on the barreling wave.
“Be gone foul spirit.” He shouted over the roar of the wave.
“Be gone fouled fiend and back with you to hell.”
“Nope.” Said Thornbright and made a rude gesture with his free hand.
“Damn, thought that would work.” The priest scratched his head. Shrugging he turned his board to intercept the great black devil board. Despite having no face it seemed to snarl.
The two sheep, who appeared earlier in this nail biting story, looked over their woolly shoulders as the two surfers came up behind them on the wave.
“Bah,” one observed, a common curse among fluffy farm creatures.
“Bah,” replied the other both succinctly and accurately summing up the unified theory of everything, though in sheepish.
There was a bleat, an explosion of wool and the lingering scent of mutton chops.
Thornbright rubbed his mouth around which there was traces of grease.
“You monster.” The priest declared as he scraped his plate and put his knife and fork down with a satisfied sigh.
“I can’t believe you didn’t have mint sauce.”
“Makes my nose run.” Explained the headless little critter.
Suddenly a dude dropped in on them becoming entangled in their tethers. Unfortunately for the dude in question and all involved, he couldn’t speak.
The three of them struggled as a cross wave reared up before them.
“Pull the mute!” Cried the priest.
“You pull the mute!” Thornbright retorted and with that they were swept away into the vast mystery of the sea.
And everyone lived happily ever after … apart from the people that died … because they were dead.
The end.
© Oliver Kennett 2011
