Kneecappings

"What happened to that stagnant Undine?" asked Bastulia as she and Jermander walked towards their next class.  Jermander looked sideways at her, his eyeballs sliding far enough round in his head that he could see the details of the edge of his eye socket quite clearly.  Bastulia didn't look back at him, focused on gliding softly above the ground, seemingly just throwing the question out there as casual conversation.  Jermander didn't believe it for an instant.
Bastulia was a baseline-adjusted Ancient of Mu-mu and claimed that this explained why she floated permanently two inches above any solid surface, and that she was compelled to ignore all base things and spend her time involved only in higher thoughts.  Jermander hoped that this was true, as most of his thoughts when he saw her were really quite base.  She was stunningly attractive, literally so, and when she turned a corner without sufficient advance warning people would faint and collapse as they saw her.  Jermander rather liked watching people collapse as he approached, even if it was because of who he was with.
"Nicky?" he said, trying to sound equally casual.  "I don't know, I think maybe she spent too long out in the sun and just evaporated.  Don't you see her in your swimming lessons?"
Bastulia pouted at him.  "They're not going well, you know!  Water's just a little bit too solid, I can't seem to sink into it properly and splash about like everyone else.  And... well, it's wet, isn't it?"
"Isn't that why you go swimming with the undines though?"  Jermander had, like just about every other male and lesbian female at Gorillamumps, tried to find a way to spy on these swimming lessons, and had been easily defeated by the geases laid around the swimming complex.  "Can't they shape the water around you so you can practice?"
"Meh."  Bastulia made a gesture with a hand indicating her dislike for the idea.  "It's not like it's a skill I'll ever need.  How come you don't go swimming?"
"Mostly the running water thing," said Jermander.  "I can't cross running water, it's a family thing.  I'm fine with holy symbols, use holy water as aftershave, and love garlic, but running water just does something to my feet and I can't get over it.  So swimming's only really useful for the ocean or swimming pools, and my country's landlocked."
"You should come to my lessons."
"I tried!"  The words were half out of his mouth as he realised what he was saying and he desperately cast around for an explanation.  "I... I..., look, this is kind of embarrassing...."
"You can tell me," Bastulia said, stopping and looking into his eyes.  Jermander hoped this counted as a connection and not just mesmerism, which he also had trouble controlling around her.
"I said that maybe I should go to your lessons as well... because undines aren't running water!"  He smiled at her, aiming for self-deprecating while cheering himself on inside his head.  "I said that we had similar aversions so it might make sense to help each other overcome them."
"Well, that should be alright, shouldn't it?"
"They said that the undines didn't like the idea," he said, truthfully.  "They're a bit edgy around vampires apparently."
"Oh.  Well, that's a shame," said Bastulia turning and starting to glide forward again.  "That might have been a bit more fun."
They walked and glided on in silence for a few seconds, with Jermander wondering how to restart the conversation again, and then Bastulia spoke.
"But no, your Undine friend isn't at my lessons.  I thought maybe she had a problem with me because I've been talking to you."
"No!  No, no problem," said Jermander quickly.  "I honestly haven't seen her lately, I thought she was hanging out with the other undines more."
"That's curious," said Bastulia.  "Do you think we should tell anyone?"
"No," said Jermander flatly.  "This is Gorillamumps.  Students disappear from time to time, and that's just part of the learning process.  I mean, last month, Mouldyvort got staked by that Pirate Captain and the school barely acknowledged it."
"Yes," said Bastulia slowly, "but the Pirate Captain did say it was an accident.  He didn't know that Mouldyvort was hiding in his room, and he did have a wooden leg."
"It's still a death," said Jermander.  "And that young mummy, two months ago, who got all unravelled playing netball."
"Yes, that was gruesome in a dusty, smelly kind of way," said Bastulia.  "There's not really anyone to apologise to in that case though, is there?"
"They did put up a nice little memorial stone in the Garden of a Thousand Deaths."
"All student deaths?"
"Uh-huh."
They had arrived now at the Old Stone Lecture halls and workshops complex.  Bastulia looked up at the ancient stone building and shivered, possibly a little dramatically.  Jermander liked the way she moved when she shivered though.
"What class is this?" she asked.
"Kneecappings," said Jermander, holding up two lump hammers.  "Want to borrow a hammer?"

Pyramid schemes

The horse's head arrived in a large, plastic-lined cardboard box labelled Corsican Confections. I opened the box, and discovered to my relief that it had been refridgerated for the journey and so was still fresh, if a little cold. I patted it once, feeling a little sentimental. I'd bought the horse only a few months ago for my youngest daughter to learn to ride on, and now her lessons would be interrupted until the insurance came through and paid for a new one. However, business was business, and even family couldn't be allowed to get in the way of that. I picked it up out of the box, slightly surprised at just how heavy it was, and tucked it into my second son's bed.

In a way I'd started off the whole chain of events myself by leaving the kids with Shark Timmy for the evening so that I could pop down to the dog track to do a little doping and make a little cash. The kids are fond of Timmy, who they call 'Uncle Spacker' for reasons I've not bothered to go into, so I figured they'd be safe enough. Only while I was watching Gracie's Favour and I can't believe it's a whippet stagger round Wimbledon dog track Timmy took it on himself to tell the kids all about pyramid schemes and how they make money.

The first I found out about this is when I overheard the neighbours laughing because the kids had been round trying to sell them a pyramid. I laughed a little myself and made a note of their names; I'd send the boys round a little bit later to put the mockers on their mockery. And I thought nothing of it, just youthful exuberance and hijinks.

Three days later I noticed that there was a twenty-five foot high pyramid in the back garden of the house three doors to the left. I was surprised that they kids had made a sale, all the more so because it took up pretty much all of the garden.

It turned out that the kids had hit on a real way to make money from their pyramid scheme: they were installing the pyramid overnight and then charging to dismantle it and take it away again. Not a bad little racket, if a touch unsophisticated in its approach. And it probably would have worked rather well if a rainstorm a couple of mornings ago hadn't inconveniently revealed that they'd fashioned the pyramid 'stones' out of cardboard and pretty much melted their pyramid into a soggy mess.

The neighbours complained, and I found it convenient to pay them to keep quiet. But business is business, even when it's family business, so I passed the debt onto the kids. So far they've not paid up, so this horse's head is a little reminder that a debt must be serviced. I have an idea that the kids are putting the thumbscrews on Uncle Spacker, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works out.

People like us

The kids were outside, lynching the goldfish. I was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for the Sunday roast, listening with interest as they tried, and failed, to drown it in the paddling pool. Finally the eldest, Jimmy, came in and tugged at a corner of my t-shirt.

"Daddy, can we have the toaster and the extension cord please?"

I sighed; although the toaster is only a cheap'n'nasty Tesco toaster, I'd only bought it a couple of weeks ago and thought that I'd a get a few more months out of it first. However, ransacking my mind quickly I couldn't think of anything electrical that we had that would be cheaper to replace, so I nodded.

Jimmy ran off to dig the extension cord out of the cupboard under the stairs, and I finished peeling the potatoes. I'd got them on the hob in a pan of just-boiling water when the power went off and I mentally kicked myself for forgetting that the kids would have used the first power socket they found, and so would have tripped all the fuses. I went out to the fusebox in the hall, and before resetting the switches, decided I'd better check that they weren't still playing with the toaster.

The kids had, in fact, got bored and run off over to the park to play kneecappings so I fished the toaster out of the paddling pool, unplugged it and dropped it in the bin. I looked at the pool, with Joey the Goldfish lying half in and half out of it, his arms and legs spasmed and his face blackened, and tsked to myself. If people were going to make promises to the kids they couldn't keep then they had to be prepared to take the consequences.