Cuthbert stared at the stall vendor. He looked so different without his glasses and moustache, like his whole face was naked. He shuddered.
'I've been looking but I can't see anything,' Cuthbert grumbled. 'Let's call it a day and treat ourselves to a pity party sundae.'
The other man didn't squeal, like Cuthbert had expected him to. In fact, he didn't react at all. He just stared. 'I need that lamp,' he intoned. His voice was low and gravelly, and he spoke slowly as if he was talking to a small, young, particularly stupid child. 'Fetch - me - that - lamp.'
'We could get maaani peeedis,' Cuthbert called in a singsong voice.
The other man didn't gush. Not even a little.
'Do you do anything in a kitten heel?' Cuthbert asked, struggling to picture how fashionable cement shoes would really be. 'She needs to dance to entrance.'
The Fairy Godmother cocked an eyebrow. 'Now that is a euphemism I've never heard. What'd she do to warrant a whole new expression, rub some other guy's lamp?'
She held up a hand to stop his loud, stammering protests.
'Don't tell me, kid. I don't wanna know. No knowledge, no motive.'
Cuthbert reached out, trying to grab a handful of Friar Tuck's hair. 'I forgot how bald you are,' he griped as his hands met nothing but sweaty forehead.
'I'm not a fisherman no more,' he grinned. 'Packing it all in, I am. I'm going to retire.'
Cuthbert had never seen anyone with so few teeth look quite so blissful.
'I can live it up large now with the money I'm going to get selling my body.'
'Ermm...'
'Found it in the lake, I did. At first I thought it was one of them wish grantin' fishes, that's secretly princes in disguise. That's the dream, that is. Only reason I got into this stinking business in the first place.'
Cuthbert Tattersall barely managed to stuff down a scream. His hands desperately crammed into his mouth, he stared in horror at the beast in front of him.
It was huge - as huge as… a beast. A huge beast!
And it was ugly, as ugly as it was huge.
And hairy, too. Huger, uglier, and hairier than any nightmare Cuthbert could have envisioned.
In fact, if Cuthbert’s worst nightmare had had a baby with the nightmare of someone far more imaginative, and then covered it in glue inside a wig shop…
I spent a little time this week, while I was waiting for code to compile and interviews to be organised and sobs to stop heaving chests, to organise my massive all-of-the-Cuthbert-documents-ever folder; it’s a messy, haphazard collection that’s built up over the years – ideas that have struck me at three am, jokes I wanted to write down before I forgot them, scenes I’ve composed on long train journeys, slowly getting whole carriages to myself as I cackled and snorted and shrieked at my own illegible scrawls like a madwoman… The usual sort of thing.…
Continue readingWell, it’s June and, so far, 2016 has proven to be… challenging.
First, my flat flooded with poo and I had to frantically find another place to live. That wasn’t the best start to the year. Then I got engaged and started planning a wedding with my incredible (and incredibly patient) partner Sam.…
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I promised myself when I started this blog that I’d never spend a week not working on Cuthbert then post excuses about it. But I think I’m going to let myself break that promise just now.
This is my flat.
We’ve had some problems with it for the past sixteen months or so which have just gotten steadily worse and worse – damp in the walls, the wood floors rising.…
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Last year, I set up some error reporting to alert me when a user was redirected to a 404 page – it’s something I’ve set up if you’re trying to do an action but the game doesn’t have all of the information to do it, like you’re trying to talk but the code doesn’t know which character you’re trying to talk to.…
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