Lluchmoor had more or less lost count of the number of souls they'd gathered, but hopefully this would be the last one, after which all the rock cakes and Bath buns in the world would be his, or at least a decent number of them — he wasn't greedy. He asked Pyro how many exactly there were left to go, and Pyro replied that he had no idea as to the supply and demand for baked goods in this particular part of the universe, and would Lluchmoor please shut up and let him concentrate on driving. Lluchmoor informed Pyro that this remark was rather unfair, as Pyro's driving was awful no matter what was going on around him, to which Pyro replied by asking Lluchmoor if he'd ever tried driving a bloody tow truck along a stupid little country road. Sensing that this turn of events would probably end with someone being ignited, Lluchmoor had the sense to apologise and offer Pyro a share in his rock cake empire.

Meanwhile, somewhere inside a small brown paper packet, John Pie was just regaining consciousness. He'd had a bad week, to be fair, and this was just the straw that was trying remorselessly to break the camel's back. As Emily helped him up, everything started to feel a bit surreal, but at the same time he felt a sort of happiness which had eluded him for so long. He smiled and thanked her, and then levelled his head and went back to the problem at hand.

'You said you have a swan missing — who exactly is this you that you're taking about?'

'The RSPS — the Royal Society for the Protection of Swans. We're here to protect Her Majesty's most important guests.'

'Guests?'

'Yes. It's a little known fact that the swans have been guests here for quite some time. They fit in very well, don't you think?'

'What now?' John was beginning to wonder whether regaining consciousness and putting on a brave face had been a good idea, but he was getting painfully curious now.

'I mean, I think they've adapted brilliantly. I must admit they look a little different to the rest of the waterfowl around, but they've got the whole quacking and hissing business down to a tee now. We've been helping them settle in for quite some time now, and the Queen is quite distressed to see one of them go missing.'

John laughed and pointed out that if swans weren't from the same place as the rest of the ducks, then the Royal Family were some kind of giant lizards. The Grand Controller pointed out that they were closer to being birds than lizards, although they did have the same sort of ankle joint common to all archeosaurs, but upon seeing the impatient and pained look on John's face, she retracted her last statement and decided it would be best to leave the sarcasm for later and stick to the truth. Emily seemed to be finding it all rather funny.

Mrs Bewidigeldi was feeling lonely again. None of her favourite documentaries had been on the television recently, except for Watership Down, which she watched to see all her favourite bunnies but which reminded her of the cruel realities of life and the need for peace and harmony in the world. She sighed. She didn't even have Mr Lluchmoor to speak to — he'd been a bit of a strange chap at first, but he'd turned out to be a nice polite young man and Mrs Bewidigeldi had warmed to him. He always said such nice things about her various oven-baked wares and he would always listen to her talk about life while he tucked into a warm Bath bun and a nice hot cup of tea. She didn't really understand why he had to keep on gallivanting off in that oversized truck with that peculiar Mr Pyrodæmon, but they obviously had their reasons.

'For the seventeenth time, yes, this is the last one...'

'Are you sure?'

'Am I sure? Do you want me to wake him up and ask him?'

'No, please don't. I don't want to see him struggle like that again — you know I don't like this.'

Lluchmoor was beginning to wonder whether it was all worth the bother — why couldn't he just live a normal happy life, taking on the sort of honest work that his inherently evil brother was incapable of doing. At the risk of sounding cynical, he pointed out to Pyro that the amount of pain this was causing to so many people might not be balanced out in terms of that he stood to gain, at least as far as his guilt was concerned. Pyro asked Lluchmoor whether his father had been a devil or a milkman, and Lluchmoor spent the rest of the journey occupying a perturbed silence.

The 'real' Grand Controller was busy microwaving a triple chocolate muffin, an idea which had seemed a good one at the time, and was therefore almost completely oblivious to just about anything else. Her sole link to the outside world was via BBC Radio 4's Long Wave service, which she was 'monitoring' in the hope that England would win The Ashes again. The little flashing light which had tried to make itself noticed about fifteen minutes ago had recently become upset and started to make a beeping noise, necessitating an increase in volume of the radio. After fiddling with the radio's controls, the Grand Controller promptly forgot to deactivate the microwave, the inside of which was now coated with a rather warm and sticky layer of ex-triple chocolate muffin. Furious, she went over to the little flashing beeping light and slammed her fist on an unassociated button next to it in the hope that this action would put an end to the frankly very irritating audio-visual experience. It didn't — the noise simply grew louder, leading the Grand Controller to pour a fresh hot cup of tea into the speaker which was producing the offending noise. This tactic proved more successful, and she sat down again, feeling very much that so far this had not been a good day.

As he watched the flames lick around the diesel-soaked sack, Pyrodæmon started to get an odd feeling. Maybe it was just the fact that they'd come back to use the ruins of the boathouse again, but then he realised it wasn't that — something just didn't feel right. This didn't feel like the last one, even though he knew it was. Or did he? He was sure of his research — the thirteen members of the council (he'd easily seen past the lie that there would only be twelve — films were good for something, after all), each of which he'd found and poached with perfect precision. But somehow he felt as if something had happened here by the boathouse without his knowledge, and someone had thwarted his plans before anyone could possibly have worked out his intentions. Upset, he made his way towards the nearest village, where he bought an entire half-pound of jelly babies and began to decapitate them with much anger.

On the Subject of Pie Archive

AlexAshman

21.12.06 Front Page

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