The Hangry games; part seven

When last we left them Niamh, Anna, Seamus and Nabilia were in a tent, ready to commence bakeoff. Five ghostly companions surround the near blind Angphu after they have struck Satan's gong.

                There is an island in the world that can only be seen by the eyes of the sun and the full moon as it lazily makes its way across the daytime sky.

On the island that is hidden somewhere around the British Isles the ocean has stabbed the land, over the course of untold years scraping a deep ravine far into the isle. When the tide is out patches of sand are shadowed by the high walls of rock. Halfway between the turbulent water and the clifftop is a long ledge. If you are in the right location on that ledge then you would see one of the many secret temples of Satan the evil one.

                At that particular moment in time the massive rock temple vibrated like a phone in the throes of some terrible power. Within the temple, surrounded by wall mounted candles five terrified ghosts and one blind human named Angphu awaited their fate. A gong had been struck and something terrible had been set in motion.

                “Tell us Bob, if we struck the gong, how bad is it on a scale of one to brown trousers time?” Oscar (one of the ghosts) asked with his brows furrowed in thought. The response to the question was not encouraging.

                “Never mind brown trousers pal, get yourself a mop, bucket and worry about the colour of the floor.”

                The floor in question cracked and shattered as something mighty punched it way out as if the floor was made only of biscotti and not of thick stone slabs.

                A gigantic being climbed out of the hole. Its cheeks were a scorched red and a fearsome beard of ashen white flowed from its chin to its large black belt. It was garbed in the reds of hell.

       *         

                Meanwhile in a marquee on the same island, not too far away from the troubled temple three living human beings were surrounded by guns. One half of a human being was with them and blithely unaware of the danger. The three year old had found a tub of raisins and was helping herself. Her name was Nabila and the three other people were called Seamus, Anna and Niamh.

                On two remote control cars were cardboard cut-outs of the British celebrities Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins. An awful pseudo-feminine voice came out of mounted speakers that were just outside of the ring of inward facing guns on tripods.

                “Time to get your big pin in your hand and beat some eggs because today we’re starting with a simple challenge. Simple, but exciting nonetheless!”

                “That really doesn’t sound anything like Mel” Niamh commented.

                “I think it’s supposed to be Sue.” Anna replied.

                “How can you tell?”

                Anna shrugged.

                “It just sounds like whoever recorded it was trying to do Sue.”

                “The challenge is pretty simple,” The voice continued. “Each of the contestants involved in the Hangry games was given food. Some of them were even given piping bags and rolling pans!”

                Seamus looked confused while Niamh and Anna looked aghast. They had indeed been provided with food, but they had eaten a great deal of butter and chicken. The rest of the food had been left in an Anderson shelter and a badly damaged car.

                Did this mean that they needed to win bake-off with no ingredients?

                “As usual the winner will gain the honour of that most sought-after prize, the best baker! If that’s not exciting enough for you folks then don’t worry, there’s more!”

                Niamh started fluently swearing under her breath in panic.

                “As well a gold star for the winner we’ll be giving a silver bullet to the looser!”

                The mounted guns each rotated and adjusted and switched on lazar targeting to point between the eyes of each of the three adults.

       *         

                Angphu could not see the beast but he did not need to. He had heard something large smash its way out of the floor of the temple. He could feel heat coming in waves from the body of a large object.

                “Who dares climb the sacred staircase to the most secret tower of Satan the holy king?”

                His voice sounded strange, like a bellowing speech flung through a thousand of incomprehensible furlongs.

                “Um. We’re not in a tower?” Tan-the-man used the polite voice he reserved for angry and idiotic clients who had too much money to be spoken to bluntly.

                “How dare thee question the word of Satan’s mouthpiece?” The creature turned its eyes and glared at Tan-the-man.

                Many a mortal would shudder under that terrible gaze (I don’t want to discredit any of our heroes, but at least one of the ghosts was searching for a mop at that moment) or they might cringe at the size of the belly that could easily house a human sized pile of flesh. Our man Tanveer merely shrugged and gestured outside.

                “We’re in a ravine.” Out of respect for the size and power of the enemy he managed to keep the easy smile from emerging on his face. It was the grin he wore when he managed to point out that one of his fellow human beings was being foolish with no apparent difficulty on his own part.

                “Ah, son of a-” (I’m not going to list the curse words of a creature of hell. I assure you they are among the foulest sounds that can be shaped by tongue and teeth. I’d write them down but if you say them in the wrong order you can accidently summon a nest of zombie snakes) “- Am I summoned unto the temple? Tis long indeed since I have answered summons. Let us begin anew and ignore those misspoken lines.”

                The giant sucked in a deep breath into lungs that must have been four feet high.

                “Who dares tread the hidden pathways into Satan’s temple, the porch of his kingdom where the weight of hell drags all souls to fall and burn in agonised eternity?”

                No one wanted to answer that question.

                “No matter. I have managed to manufacture glasses that spy the truth in all things.” The creature plucked a small pair of halfmoon glasses from the nowhere and crammed them onto his face. “Ah yes, I see. A fool in ship beyond his comprehension has dragged you all hear to play at games of death.”

                “A fool, you say?” Dave asked. It was impossible to tell if he was curious about the fool or offended on behalf of the fool in question.

                “Yes. Someone who realised that this island lies almost perfectly between the gravity of heaven and hell, trapping ghosts like space debris caught between the earth and the moon.”

                “Oh. Is that why we’re all ghosts?”

                “So SufeonO knew we would become ghosts here?”

                “Indeed.” The creature plucked a scroll from the same nowhere that had contained the glasses and opened the roll of paper, letting the length of it tumble to the floor like an escaped loo roll. “None among your number is upon the list of sinners, but I may do as I wish with any who walk upon Satan’s doorstep.”

                “Right, let’s steer clear of Satan’s doorstep.” Angphu suggested helpfully

                “I think we’re on Satan’s doorstep.” Alicia stared around the room nervously.

                “Ah crap.”

                “Satan must be rich. Imagine having a whole temple for a porch.”

                “Has anyone seen a mop lying around I can use?”

                The beast interrupted the disparate conversations.

                “No doubt this halfwit hoped to use the temple and the altar to revive some of you, but here is what I think of that!”

                The creature caught the alter between his hands and crushed it as easily as Victoria Sponge is squeezed in the hands of a child. The strength of the creature was breath-taking. It took another deep breath and laughed wildly as its gargantuan belly wobbled like a bowl full of jelly.

                “Hang on a minute,” Alicia noticed the belly, the naughty list and the halfmoon glasses. “Are you Santa Claus?”

                The gigantic creature looking very sheepish all of a sudden.

 *

                In the tent the impersonated woman’s voice continued to narrate.

                “So, bakers one and all, you have one hour to prepare a classic Victoria sponge!”

                 They had felt the tension watching bake off before but they had never felt like the stakes had ever been so high.

                “Wait,” Niamh desperately spoke to the cardboard cut-out. “We’ve not got any ingredients. Surely you need to teleport our ingredients to us!”

                There was a pause.

                “Time to get your big pin in your hand and beat some eggs-” The Sue-voice started the whole speech again.

                “I reckon whoever set this up must have just set up a recording.” Seamus commented.

                “But they’ve set it up wrong. How can we explain to them that they’re wrong? Are they even listening?”

                “Maybe there’s a microphone?”

                They spread out as precious minutes slipped away. Anna was the first one to step close to the guns.

                “Oh no, what do we have here?” A new recording began playing. “It looks like someone wants to win the silver bullet early!”

                The gun in front of her fired a bullet right between her eyes.

                The projectile pinged against her helmet and Anna collapsed with an ugly dent between her helmet’s eyeholes.

                The two Irish folks ran to help their friend, triggering the very same proximity detector.

                “My, my, my, it looks like everyone wants a silver bullet!”

                Luckily it was Niamh who had crossed the line first. The silver bullet pinged against her helmet. Niamh had suffered no prior blood loss and injury, so she was not knocked out. She didn’t fall over but she did stop still and start swearing. Seamus had also come to a halt, realising he could not help Anna if his brains were blown out of the back of his head. He's a smart lad.

                “What are we going to do?”

                “I don’t know, maybe the gun only goes off when you get too close?” Niamh was trying to rub her head where she had hit herself, but this isn’t really something you can do with a helmet and gauntlets on. “How the hell are we supposed to know how close is too close?”

“I don’t know, but didn’t she fall over backwards? Why don’t we grab her shoulders and drag her back?”

                It’s actually quite hard to drag an armoured individual by their shoulders. Add in an invisible line that means death and you’ve got a real pickle of a scenario. They had to lift her and grip under her armpits and start to pull her back.

              “Support her head, it’s flopping all over the place!”

“She’s not a baby, she can support her own head.”

Clunk

                “Oops.”

                It came as quite a relief when Anna muttered to them.

                “You guys… You guys are awful at this.”

                “Oh my God, you’re alive!”

                “Yes, wearing metal seems to have more than one advantage.”

                It had of course been Anna’s idea originally to wear the helmet. She didn’t want to point that out having just criticized her friends. It would be a shame to appear arrogant and critical all at once.

                “Let’s help get you away from the guns, friend.”

                At this point Niamh accidently crossed the line again.

                The gun pointed at her face and clicked impotently.

                “Wait a minute, was there was only one bullet?” Tentatively, Niamh stepped back over the invisible line. Another empty click.

                “They’ve got at least two bullets.” Anna was feeling her forehead. The dimple in the metal meant that the helmet was now firmly pinching her head. She decided to worry about that after the bake-off. “Right. Let me just try and stand-up.”

                Four Irish hands helped her to her feet and it was lucky they did because she immediately felt dizzy and awful. She was going to fall over backwards but the two were strong enough to hold her up.

                “I might need to sit down.”

                “We should get out of this tent.”

                “No.” Anna murmured. “Food. In the cupboards. Let’s not be hungry again.”

                Even with a head ache and dizziness Anna was not willing to lose sight of the bigger picture. A lot of escape room mentality assisted her in this, also there was a day when she forgot to buy food before a long hike and had to watch a cheerful man turn grumpy. (That’s a dig)

                “Got a lot of nuts and raisins and stuff.” Niamh was pulling out packets.

                “Jam too.”

                The quantity of jam was impressive. Clearly whoever organised the games had wanted the Victoria Sponge makers to have a lot of different options for the jam. The individual must have been some kind of philistine, raspberry jam is the only jam for a truly correct Victoria Sponge.

                “There should be buttercream too.”

                Tubs of Betty Crocker buttercream emerged from fridges that also contained eggs. Seamus pointed out the pragmatic issue with the food-hoard.

                “How the hell are we going to carry all of this?”

*

A blind Angphu was struggling to wrap his head around the events unfolding within the temple of Satan the evil one. He had felt the presence of a large creature and head the voice above him that seemed to come from a faraway realm. He was picturing something with horns. Something satanic.

“You look like a twenty-foot-high Grecian Father Christmas!” Tan exclaimed in surprise.

 “No. I don’t.” The creature replied sheepishly. It was lying though. Certainly, its wrinkled old skin and bloodshot eyes looked terrifying alongside the epic size and strength of the creature but it still resembled the seasonal character.

“Does this mean you’re the one true Saint Nic?”

"I think I was once, yes." The creature seemed to deflate a little, looking sad and ashamed.

"But... Wasn't Nicholas a good guy?"

"Once upon a time I was one of the good guys." The creature tugged its beard thoughtfully and the familiar image made it seem much more human all of a sudden. "I gave some gold to some women to save them from prostitution. A lot of the stories got exaggerated though."

"You're basically in charge of Christmas though, right?"

"Oh yes, I put a lot of work into that. Got some decent money from the Coca cola ads too." The giant man fingered his soot stained red clothing guiltily. "I'm supposed to do pawnbrokers, children, repentant thieves... To be honest with you being a saint is a lot of hard work. I've got a mountain of unanswered prayers."

"People still pray to Saint Nicolas?"

"Not so much these days, I fell behind when children started sending me their greedy little letters."

“Was that before or after you sold out to the company selling liquid cocaine to the population?” Tan-the-man flashed a cheeky grin up at the thing’s face.

“Everyone was doing cocaine back then, get thee off my back!” Roared the creature. “At least in times of yore we did not enslave our children to addictive devices!”

Angphu cringed in alarm at the size of that voice.

“Let’s not make Kris Kringle angry, eh guys?”

“Aye, don’t make me wroth, else I shall set my pussycat upon thee!”

This did not quite strike the chord of fear that the fallen saint had been hoping for.

“I’m not actually afraid of pussycats.”

“I think they’re kind of cute.”

An enormous hand reached into the earth and picked up something that looked kitten sized in proportion to the arm. It was a large tiger with purple and black stripes upon its skin. It appeared to be transparent.

“Well, Mr Tiddles has not eaten geist-flesh in a long time. Perhaps he is hungry.”

The poor ghost tiger was flung into the middle of our dearly departed heroes. It did not enjoy the experience and roared viciously, looking to take out its anger on something nearby.

That something happened to be Alicia’s hand. The incorporeal appendage was torn clean off. She shrieked in pain and a whirlwind of fury was suddenly whipped up around her.

“THAT WAS NOT A NICE THING TO DO!”

The giant was bowled over by the power of the angry poltergeist. She hadn’t felt this angry since she had last seen a dirty oven and it was immensely satisfying to bully the mouthpiece of Satan.

“I think now is the correct time for a tactical retreat.” Oscar commented.

Everyone ran towards the exit of the temple. Then they all ran back for the blind Angphu and started shouting confusing encouragement at him.

“This way, follow our voices!”

“Left a bit, you’re going to walk into the wall.”

“Ow.”

“Sorry, my left, not yours.”

Angphu tried to accept the apology gracefully while stemming the tide of blood from his now broken nose.

The hell being leapt to its feet. It tossed a part of the broken alter at the retreating party. Rubble was flung alongside the stone of the alter.

“Quick, Angphu, there’s some armour on that fallen statue, put it on.”

He desperately tried to attach the ornate armour to himself with his eyes seized shut. The demon behind them stretched its arm back ready to cast rocks at the party again

                At this moment something entirely unexpected occurred.

*

                Back in the marquee the three friends had tried to pile everything into a rudimentary bag that they had created from the aprons provided for the bake-off. Nabila was trying to wear one of the aprons as a cape.

        In the end had to give up on the apron bag concept (very difficult to work with textiles without needle and thread) and decided wear them. They piled everything they wanted into a fold created by holding up the bottom of the apron.

Nabila decided to pretend that she was deaf to the “let’s go”.

                Anna and Niamh tried gently persuading the small one to follow but this was to no avail. The practically minded Seamus decided instead to grab the raisins that she was happily eating and walk towards the exit. She screamed in protest and chased after him.

                “You can have ‘em back when you stop crying and start being more helpful!”

                This would have been a great plan if they had not all been tottering in the balancing act of carrying aprons full of food. She just grabbed the tub of buttercream from Seamus’s stack and ran away.

                He sighed and turned around.

                “One of us is going to have to carry her.”

                This of course meant less food.

                “Let’s get everything back to the car. We can do it in two trips.” Anna only had a small pile herself. It’s hard to carry food and metal clothing when the ground keeps insisting on spinning around and around.

                When the three crossed the threshold proved to be a dangerous mistake.

                “Oh no, leaving the tent before the show is over? I guess that means everyone wants bronze instead of silver!”

                “That can’t be good.”

                “Perhaps we should run?”

                The remote-control car holding the Sue cut-out came slowly towards them. The image of the lady was smiling and wobbling and yet it carried an ominous curiosity. What was the bronze prize?

                “Guys,” Niamh couldn’t tear her eyes away from the advancing image any more than her friends could. “We should really get away from that thing.”

                Nabila was curious about the moving object. She ran up to it and saw what to her eyes was a fat and funny shaped bottle of drink. She picked the bronze “beverage” up and tried to remove the pin that sealed it. This didn’t work so she ran towards Niamh to ask her to open the surprise.

                “Oh my God, that’s a grenade!”

                Niamh threw the device to the other side of the room. Nabila shrieked in protest at the apparent robbery but then jumped when it exploded on the opposite side of the room. Loud noises being one of her phobia's she led the retreat out of the tent, running towards the car that they had left behind them.

*

                Back with the ghosts and monster trumpets sounded and angels sang. Enough of the toxic smoke had cleared so that a pearly white cloud surrounding the temple could be seen.

                From the cloud emerged a man in robes with a beard upon his chin.

                “Oh my God is that…”

                “Is that Jebus?”

                “I think you’ll find that it’s pronounced Jesus.”

                The Greek giant behind the group dropped the rocks in shock and bent his body in a hasty bow.

                “Jesus… Long-time no see… How art thou these days? How fares thy father?”

                “Never mind that.” The white man with the brown beard said. “I’m here for my friends.”

                “Friends?”

                “Yeah. You know, I’m Jesus so everyone is my friend. If the six of you could step this way please.”

                “But porch of Satan… The rules that thy father wrote…”

                “You want me to get my Dad? I can go and grab my Dad if you want.”

                “No need, no need.” The Santa giant was still grovelling in his deep bow.

                Tan’s ghost phone began vibrating. Bob was calling again. She answered.

                “Hey Tan, how’s it going?”

                “Well I was trying to help Angphu get some armour on, then Jesus turned up. Or at least I think it is Jesus, the dude’s white so who knows?”

                “Ah crap, Jesus was middle-eastern, wasn’t he?”

                The image of Christ flickered and changed colour.

                “Hold on, is that you making the Jesus?”

                “Yeah, the moon is almost in the same phase as when I died so I can throw some fancy illusions. You’d know this if you’d read the instructions. I’m at the river mouth generating the illusion.”

                “Can I do illusions too?”

                “Never mind that, get the armour on Angphu. I can only hold this mirage for a short space of time. I’m only supposed to use them to lure people to a watery grave.”

                The image of the messiah had stared vacantly into the middle distance while Bob was on the phone but it came back to life once he hung up.

                “So yeah,” Continued the false son of God. “Let my friends go or I’ll set my dad on you.”

                “Hold a moment,” The monster looked up. “I thought thee to be a man of peace, sire?”

                “Ah, yes. A Man of peace. That’s me.”

                “The intent was to have thine exalted father beat me peacefully?”

                “Uh. Yes. That was the intent.”

                The conversation was floundering and this was terrible news for everyone. Jesus Christ was famously an incredibly gifted orator. Bob could do oratory but doing it in the character of one of the holy Trinity was difficult.

                “Tell me something, oh lord of mine.” The monster grinned wickedly as he laid a trap to prove his suspicions. “What is the name of thy mother?”

                Everyone sensed there was a trick and Angphu hastily shoved his hands into a gauntlet.

                “Mary.” The man in the pearly white clouds looked nervous, this answer felt too easy.

                “Her husband?”

                “Joseph.”

                “What is the name of thy sister?”

                An awkward pause.

                “Blasphemy!” Howled the demon triumphantly.

                “Game’s up lads. Everyone, run towards me!” The saviour waved the crowd towards him. “There’s a bridge across the ravine that no one noticed before. My clouds are hiding it.”

                Tan’s phone began vibrating again as the rest of the spirits led Angphu towards the image within the pearly white fog.

                She picked up the call to answer Bob.

                “Good one finding the bridge. Can’t believe we didn’t spot it before.”

                “There’s no bridge.” He said hastily. “I’ve lost control of the illusion. It’s trying to lure Angphu into the water. You have to hurry because I’m running out of batt-”

                Tan looked horrified.

                “Anghu!”

                Angohu stepped trustingly into the white and vanished.

 *

                Quick-marching towards the car seemed like a great plan but it had its faults. Namely that the Mel cut-out was now following them and was not hampered by the inconvenience of exhausted lungs and limbs.

                They reached the vehicle but the little remote-control wheels kept on coming. Seamus lost a few jars of jam as he rooted around in his pocked for the keys.

                The enemy with the grenade kept on coming. It became clear that they could not get inside in time.

                “Keep moving!”

                They came to the edge of the cliff and spotted a downward path covered in mud and scree.

                “It won’t be able to follow us this way.”

                The path was incredibly steep so they had to progress slowly and carefully. Even Nabila slowed down showing an unexpected awareness of her own mortality. That was very out of character for the young one.

                The small wheels had reached the top of the path but they had a reasonable head start. As the cut out went on the path the incline proved to steep and it lurched over. The grenade exploded.

                Niamh lost her balance on the edge of the blast. Seamus and Anna instinctively tried to catch her and the three fell. Nabila’s shield activated as she harmlessly lost her footing. The path became an uncomfortable slide.

                At about the same time that Angphu was stepping blindly into nowhere their pathway turned sharply inland and all of them were thrown off the bend by their momentum. They plunged into the ravine.

                Five minutes later two canon shots were fired.