9. Sal Oberon and the Moronic Morass of Miseducation Policy

Sal Oberon sat at the reassuringly bland, pale-polished circular table, in an indeterminate office at the Forest Council of Complying With Everything and Anything, lightly and outwardly drumming his fingers on the wood whilst heavily and inwardly invoking the triple pox of two shrivelled tits and a puckered arsehole each on his soon-to-be inquisitor overlords.

‘Mr Obiwank . . .’ the first began, as the second prepared to dutifully write up any old tripe that would later serve as ‘a true and accurate cover story of a true and accurate record’.

‘Oberon,’ our hero auto-replied.

‘Yes, quite. Mr Obiwank. It has come to my attention that you have recently violated policy, possibly grossly. Tell me about what happened, but don’t forget I’m on your side, I’m just trying to help, this meeting is informal . . .’

Sal Oberon blinked. The second overlord’s biro hovered expectantly over the mauve triple-carbon-copy-leafed notepaper with its informally headed corporate branding. Sal Oberon scowled and gave the impression of thinking carefully, but actually, whilst scratching his balls under the table, he wondered absent-mindedly about just how that stick that appeared to be shoved up her arse had got there exactly.

‘Mr Obiwank?’

‘I’m sorry. What?’

By which he meant ‘what the actual bollocks are you flapping on about now, you deranged harpy, bringer of doom and soul-sucker of my life; go haunt and infest another poor fucker two rungs down the food chain from me; why can’t you see I can’t raise the effort enough to give even half a toss, let alone a full toss, about whatever your petty grievance is this time?’

‘What . . .’ intoned the overlord with careful and prolonged patience, in a manner of continuance rather than outright aggravation, which would have required a requisite level of humanity, ‘I am saying, Mr Obiwank, is that, let me clear, you have violated policy by . . . teaching forest children . . . real things. Tell me about the real things, Mr Obiwank.’

Sal Oberon arched an eyebrow and practised the art of zen meditation whilst simultaneously daydreaming of choking the odious one with her own power necklace.

‘Mr Obiwank,’ she sat up stiffly, ‘you are aware that telling children real things is highly suspect practice, especially as you, Mr Obiwank, are also not their designated indoctrinator.’

The biro overlord hovered her instrument of compliance and doom, still unable to scratch a word. A bead of sweat quivered on her temple as the effort of sustained carpal tunnel cantileverage began to take effect. Sal Oberon met her eyes with his own and turned down his lips, slowly. The chief inquisitor overlord waited. Sal Oberon waited. Our hero stared at the far wall in apparent cogitation. He raised a finger to speak, the biro quivered, and he put his finger down again. The bead of sweat slipped down to a greasy chin.

‘Mr Obiwank, I must insist . . .’

Sal Oberon sighed deeply.

‘Remind me again, if you would,’ he said, finally, ‘because I’ve forgotten, or I’ve mis-disremembered, or something, what Policy says here.’

The biro, finally, scratched down onto mauve paper, much to the relief of its holder with the trembling wrist. The chief inquisitor duly obliged, not because she wanted to, necessarily, but because it was designated protocol:

‘Policy, Mr Obiwank, is very clear. Let me try to help you, because I’m only trying to help here. The policy is that, on no account will there be a deviation from the policy, which has been written, by someone once, and which shall not change, because it has already been written, and nothing can change because it’s in the policy and the policy is all, and the rule of policy is that children will be taught only by approved indoctrinators, and only what the indoctrination, which is what was once written by someone, once, actually is. That, Mr Obiwank, is very clear, I think you would agree. Now, please tell me why you chose to deliberately and wilfully break the rule of the policy.’

Sal Oberon scratched his chin in an effort at pretending that he considered the chief inquisitor’s points, and the chief inquisitor herself, to be valid.

‘I do appear to be most graciously apologetic. However, I don’t actually recall the requirement to attend training on this matter. Please bludgeon me senseless with the requisite deficit of concern in order to correct the errors of my communications.’

The chief inquisitor’s stick shifted into a marginally less comfortable position a good way up her rectum. The biro overlord scratched away at the mauve hell of her own free will of life choice, simultaneously overcome by carpal aggravation and an almost orgasmic degree of self-flagellation. The chief inquisitor closed her eyes in standard preparation for a patronising tone of voice:

‘Mr Obiwank, if you persist in portraying this very serious incident as mere frivolity, I will have no course of redress but to refer this grievance to the High Arch-Super Counsellor-General himself, and I shall be duty-bound to follow this up, personally, with a strongly worded letter of very serious disapproval. I should make this clear, Mr Obiwank, as I have the duty to be clear, and because I am only trying to help you, after all.’

Sal Oberon re-engaged his braincells at the pause following the chief inquisitor’s last words.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Indeed. I’m one million per cent fully in partial agreement.’

The chief inquisitor frowned briefly before proffering a benignly unbenign smear of a soulless smile.

‘Mr Obiwank. Stan, if I may . . .?’

‘Sal.’

‘Yes, now, Stan. Children are very delicate creatures. You do understand that, don’t you? They need all our fullest attention and not, and I can’t emphasise this strongly, or clearly, enough, Stan, they do not need ideas above their stations. Yes? I was once a child, you see, and so I am an expert in such matters, and I’ve been an expert in knowing what I’m talking about for many, many years, Stan, and that makes me quite an expert, all told, you see, and what I am expert in knowing is that children do not need any invitation whatsoever, at all, on no account, or any encouragement, from those not following Policy, that will be the likes of you, Stan, to think for themselves. Good Lord, no. Whatever next? Where will that lead us? Let me help you here, because I can see that my superior knowledge is needed, and because I am only trying to help. That, Stan, will lead us all down the road to Ultimate Thermonuclear Meltdown and Sure-Fire, Non-Reversible, Hell-in-a-Handcart ‘Bugger it All, We Might as Well All Give Up and Go Hide Under the Stairs in Amongst Our Own Rising Tide of Shit Till We Die from Suffocation’ Anarchy. Anarchy, Stan? Hmm? You see?’

Sal Oberon pondered potential material for his next storytelling session, prompted back to the Land of Living Torture only by the chief inquisitor’s second and ever-so-slightly more distressed ‘Hmm?’

‘Hmm,’ our hero intoned. ‘So, just to be clear here, if I may . . . the Forest Council of Complying With Everything and Anything is of the policy opinion, and decision, that children are little more than pustules of approved-information-injectable, low-grade, organic micro-matter, not to be provided with anything by the way of remotely useful cognitive enhancement opportunities lest they become, at some point, self-aware, which would result, ultimately, in a potentially irreversible reconfiguration of the present status quo of consumer docility, unquestioning wage slavery and facile acceptance of The Rules, whose purpose is to serve and benefit the upper echelons of the food chain and ensure that The Rules, which have been written and shall not change, continue to remain as The Rules, unchangeably and for always?’

The chief inquisitor blinked briefly as the biro inquisitor’s instrument of compliance and doom spluttered out its agonised death throes of ink and broken plastic bones at about the same time as its holder’s carpal tunnel collapsed in on itself, inducing a sharp squeal which she desperately tried to conceal (out of respect for policy and protocol).

‘Yes, Mr Obiwank. Indeed.’

‘Good,’ said Sal Oberon. ‘Just so that I know. For future reference. Now, if I may be relieved . . .?’

The chief inquisitor smiled without much evidence of benevolence therein.

‘Of course, Mr Obiwank. I’m glad that we’ve had the opportunity to talk and that I could help, as I am only trying to help you, of course. Warm regards.’

Sal Oberon stood and flapped his greasy wings free of their stricture, leaving the indeterminate office without further ado. Ten minutes later, after extricating himself from the slippery bowels of the labyrinthine Council Offices, he stood outside in the dripping apathy of a wet Wednesday afternoon under a miserable grey cloud of abject rancour. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up into the air.

‘Hello, Mr Sal Oberon . . .’ came a small voice at knee level to him. ‘Have you got a story today, huh? Have you?’

Sal Oberon took another drag and blew the smoke out again at length. He looked down at the small blathering pile of snot and expectation, looked up into the sky, looked down again.

‘Come on, Fucker. Go get the other poor fucked-ups rounded up. I’ll tell you all another story about real shit — bloody revolution and anarchy and the warped ideology of states of mass suppression, probably.’

‘Huh, Sal Oberon? Will there be jelly, and dragons, and unicorns with fluffy glitter farts, Sal Oberon? Will there be?’

Sal Oberon stubbed out his cigarette and sighed.

‘Yeh, maybe. If you like. Come on.’

Fight the good fight, he told himself. Fight the good fight.
 
 

8. Sal Oberon and the Pillocks of Non-Person Orientated Procedure

Sal Oberon sat in contemplative meditation, riffing on Universal complexity but, more specifically, on the density of moronic ‘non-person orientated’ people out there, as a gaggle of waiting children sat around him, dribbling and waiting for the master’s effervescent insight.

‘Children. Listen. It transpires that the incidence that comes under the category of being nice to someone no longer figures as, well, just that. What we seem to be obliged to suck up, my little ones, is that being nice actually equates to a gross occurrence of not following procedure. Procedure, dear ones, is all, apparently.’

Sal Oberon leaned in towards the huddled mass, as quiet and as utterly flummoxed as they were.

‘Come closer, my poor future-indoctrinated no-hopers. This is the way things ought to be: procedure can tickle my fat, hairy arse. You know? Yes, you do. Procedure is to people as a slap round the head with a wet lettuce is to instructive learning.’

One child picked his nose and wiped the stringy bogey down his friend’s sleeve. Sal Oberon pretended not to see, and also he couldn’t muster the energy to even care.

‘Look,’ he sighed. ‘Maybe if I tell it as a story instead of trying to slide up sideways with a sneaky gallon of wise words . . .’

The children brightened instantly.

‘Ooh, a story. Please a story, Sal Oberon, huh?’

Sal Oberon groaned. This was the future he was speaking to, nay, blessing with the wonder of his learned experience.

‘Fine. Fine. Right, a story it is.’

He lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the face of the nearest child, who spluttered, but who came up smiling.

‘Once there was a poor shat-upon fairy geezer called . . . oh let’s call him, say, Sal Oberon . . .’

‘Really, Sal Oberon? He sounds like you.’

‘Ye-esssss,’ Sal Oberon uttered. ‘So, this poor shat-upon just happened, one day, to actually feel like giving a shit about someone he interacted with on a daily basis. This someone was poorly. Sal Oberon phoned him up and asked him how he was. A conversation ensued. Sal Oberon then said goodbye.’

‘Huh?’ said several children, if not directly then by mouthing it.

‘Exactly: huh? Well, it transpires, my little future fucked-ups, that being nice is anti-procedure for The Powers That Be, a.k.a. The Forest Council of Complying With Everything and Anything. Oh yes, it’s anti-procedure on account of the possibility of the damned Unions declaring it a degree on the wrong side of hassling. Yes, I can see you’re as non-plussed as I am about this.’

‘Huh?’

‘Indeed.’

Sal Oberon stubbed out the cigarette on his boot, standing up to shake the filth of ‘procedure’ from his coat.

‘When you reach the age of futile resistance to wage slavery, little ones, don’t forget the wise words of old Sal Oberon. Don’t accept the bullshit that having a give-a-shit conversation with someone, even and especially a worse off than yourself lowly editing-elf, amounts to hassling that someone to get their arses back to work, will you?’

The children all obediently shook their heads, not at all conversant with their master’s teachings. Sal Oberon headed out of the hollowed-out tree stump that served as a teaching space.

‘Farewell, fuckers. Till next time. Don’t let your usual teacher know how I taught you real things, if and when they turn up.’

Sal Oberon shuffled off, contemplating whether or not to let the said usual teacher free from his temporary incarceration, strapped up by the nether regions in a nether region of the campus. Sal Oberon gave no more consideration to the matter of ‘being nice to working colleagues’, unionised or otherwise, hoping with all the ill-will he could muster that the overlords of said colleagues and himself might readily choke on their own procedural alphabetti-spaghetti.
 
 

7. Sal Oberon Gets Right Royally Shafted in a Middle Management Kind of Way

Sal Oberon sat and surveyed the scene: the two drones were perched on the edges of their tight arses in front of him, practically falling off the precarious instruction manuals underneath them, and one intoned, ‘But really, Mr Obiwank, we have to follow The Rules.’

Sal Oberon sighed at length. ‘The Rules’ were ingrained in the air. One of the drones, as tight-lipped as she was tight-arsed, put on her best serious face. Sal Oberon resisted the urge to tell her to shove her rules as far up her tight-arsed crack as she could possibly muster. The other drone could only mindread as poorly as the first, fortunately or unfortunately. The invisible Rulebook floated around in the tight little room like a squeaky bad dog fart . . .

No-one at The Gathering at the fag end of the forest showed that they understood a single thing in the story that wasn’t The Rules. Sal Oberon looked around hopefully, but the array of frowns and officially concerned faces around him suggested he might as well go and slam his own bollocks between a couple of masonry blocks for all the good he was doing here. Nevertheless, stupidity or bloody-mindedness contrived to drive him to give it one more push.

‘You do know The Rules aren’t real life, don’t you, right?’

The assembled of The Gathering mumbled and grimaced at one another. Sal Oberon picked something out of his ear in a manner that he hoped might be nonchalant but was really just a way of stopping himself from punching everyone hard enough in the face to knock a modicum of sense into them.

‘Look, The Rules are just a control thing. They let the controller feel important. What’s the point of this controller if they don’t have anyone to control? Right? Someone controls the controller, and so on and so on. Freedom, fellow Little People, is freedom from other people. That’s all.’

Sal Oberon looked around hopefully again. Some of The Gathering were uncomfortably squeaking on their indoctrination-padded undergarments. Sal Oberon blasted on with an increasingly resigned attitude of ‘well, just fuck ’em then’.

‘So, when your common or garden Shyster Magnet (that’ll be me) gets told in no uncertain terms that he can’t let some pixie piss in his garden by the Forest Overlords, and the pixie promises to shit daily on the doorstep of yours truly because he’s pissed off he can’t piss in the forest without prior permission, Sal Oberon reflects that The Rules can go take a running jump . . .’

Sal Oberon surveyed the scene and no-one got his rampant analogies, it was clear. He waved his hand dismissively.

‘Fuck off, the lot of you. There should be Rules about people like you not understanding about not complying with The Rules and so forth.’

The Gathering of the Little People duly fucked off, not at all getting the intended irony, and Sal Oberon scraped out his Tale Weaving equipment to hammer out a therapeutic stream of largely offensive swear words and bile.
 
 

6. Sal Oberon and the Equality of Opportune Doom

Dear Mr Obiwank

Re: your communication dated September 2, nominal year of Our Overlord 2013, to wit, quote:

Dear the Council, Fuck off. Regards, S. Oberon.

We have, regrettably, been unable to administer timely response due to regrettable circumstances which have, regrettably, resulted in us being forced to periodically give a shit (or, regrettably, seeming as if this were, in fact, the case). This is, you should be aware, entirely your fault.

It should be additionally noted that, due to incorrect addressing of your complaint, we have been unable to reply in a SMART-targeted, timely fashion. It should be appendagely, additionally noted that any further complaints correspondence should be directly addressed to the Complaints Officer by name (please note that the names of Council Officers are not released due to data protection protocols).

We regret the lament inherent in your communiqué, Mr Obiwank, and we sincerely trust that we, The Council, might one day muster the requisite wherewithal to give a shit.

Warm regards

The Council
 
Sal Oberon folded the neutrally-coloured, logo-embossed paper back into its pasty aubergine-tinted envelope with the crinkly plastic see-through address panel peeling itself from the edges. He stared with pointed effort at the nameless drone of a Council clerk sat at the pale beige and rounded, safety-cornered, utterly uncluttered desk in front of him.

‘That’s a pithy little anecdote, Mr Obiwank . . .’

‘Oberon.’

‘Yes. That’s a pithy little anecdote, Mr Obiwank, but regrettably, it doesn’t explain your unauthorised three year absence from normal functioning society, now does it?’

Sal Oberon briefly fluttered his greasy wings, pondering which choice morsel might readily reduce her to a gibbering wreck if she deigned to patronise him one more time, before side-tracking himself by grumbling incoherently.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Obiwank?’

Sal Oberon growled.

‘It’s not an anecdote. It’s a letter. From your lot.’

‘Yes. Indeed.’

‘There’s a lot of apathy around in the Forest. Regrettably. I’ve been out of the loop. Again. Fell into the effluent discharge, overspill from Council HQ, no doubt.’

He flapped the envelope aimlessly. The Council clerk drone raised an eyebrow.

‘Hmm. Indeed, Mr Obiwank.’

‘Oberon.’

‘Yes. Well. Regrettably, it would seem that you need to fill out an Equal Opportune form.’

‘A what?’

‘Form 326b/111. An Equal Opportune form. Council policy, which your unauthorised absence from normal functioning society has prevented you from engaging with. Everyone has the right to be fairly convenienced by officially pointless Council bureaucracy.’

Sal Oberon gently pushed the second letter in his possession, the Unauthorised Absence Summons, across the uncluttered pale beige desk.

‘I’m not paying this nine hundred groat charge. Please feel free to shove it somewhere unseemly.’

The clerk drone raised her other eyebrow.

‘Mr Obiwank . . .’

Sal Oberon sighed.

‘. . . your attitude is regrettable. Please fill out this Equal Opportune form . . .’

Sal Oberon folded his arms and slouched his wings over the edge of the chair. The clerk drone scowled.

‘Very well, Mr Obiwank. We’ll do it together.’

‘I wouldn’t do it with you if you were covered in chocolate and strung up by the nipples underneath a drip tray behind the bar.’

The clerk drone shuffled uncomfortably in her chair before fumbling with the regulation plum-coloured pen and the aubergine-tinted Form 326b/111.

‘Mr Obiwank, what is your self-recognised ethnicity? Pixie, fairy, elf, goblin, imp, mixed-troll . . .?’

‘None of the above. Breathing entity.’

The clerk drone frowned.

‘Mr Obiwank?’

‘Other.’

She wrote in careful plum on the aubergine form.

‘Do you consider yourself either dyslexic, dyspraxic, disabled, dysfunctional, dystopian, or dysenteric?’

‘Dysinterested and dyseased [sic].’

The clerk sighed.

‘Mr Obiwank. Please do take this seriously.’

‘Write it.’

She wrote it.

‘What, Mr Obiwank, is your sexual preference? Straight, bi, semi-curious, homosexual, trisexual, quadrosexual, experimental, or unhealthily abnormal?’

Sal Oberon lifted an eyebrow.

‘Inorganically leaning.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I have a penchant for screwing cotton socks and old rubber boots. Next question?’

The clerk drone rustled the paper and pressed a staple into its corner, just in case it escaped no other leaf attached to it and, more importantly, because it was Council protocol and it needed SMART-focused filing.

Sal Oberon frowned.

‘Are we done here?’

‘That will be all, Mr Obiwank.’

‘Oberon.’

‘Yes.’

‘And the nine hundred groat fine?’

‘I’ll pass it on to the Department of Internal Affairs and Extenuating Apathy.’

Sal Oberon stood up and shook off his wings.

‘Good. Pleasure doing business with you. I hope your tits drop to below your ankles in your old age and that they trip you over in many splendid and comedically karmic ways.’

The clerk drone averted her eyes to ruthlessly file her form.

‘Yes,’ she mumbled. ‘Warm regards, Mr Obiwank.’

Sal Oberon shuffled out of the cubicle, stepped out into ‘normal functioning society’, and sniffed the toxic effluent of squalid forest air, kicking an errant toad in the face, making it croak out of its arse as he went by.
 
 

5. Sal Oberon Wakes Up and Smells the Coffee (after a Long Sojourn Away)

Sal Oberon woke up with a root beer hangover and an unhealthily fungal eleven-year stubble on his chin. He scratched places he couldn’t remember having, thinking what had happened to time, what was the point of quadratic equations (inexplicably), and was the thing that had seemingly evolved from the half a pizza he’d left, pre-hibernation, still edible? He checked his watch: half past Monday — or something.

Sal Oberon, Master Storyteller and Part-Time Shyster Magnet, fixed coffee. He stared at the eight feet high pile of junk mail on his doormat, wondering absent-mindedly if his landlord had died and forgotten to tell him. He picked up a random envelope and opened it: ‘Congratulations, Mr Obiwank (Sal Oberon rooted around behind his ear for a red biro with which to wearily spell-check the moronic mass illiteracy, the memory of which lumbered back up on him like a large toad squeezed into the dream of a pretty nymph princess), ‘congratulations on being selected to receive A LIFETIME’S SUPPLY of non-returnable BADLY SPELLD JUNKMAIL! Oh yes. Your liff is complete. Fret no more, Mr. Obiwank: you’re [sic] blood pressure is our pleasure! FREE fore liff!’

The pot on the stove hissed. Sal Oberon made coffee, not yet sufficiently stirred in himself to care greatly at the largely squeezed toad of mass illiteracy. It belched in a metaphorical manner and hopped off into a dark recess of his mind: ready to pop out with a small amphibian fanfare at some point in the not-too-distant future, its pretty nymph princess costume popping a few stitches at the edges instead and in the meantime.

The doorbell rang and Sal Oberon moaned wearily before levering open the front appendage to his formerly rented abode (landlord status pending), blinking in the light.

‘Sign this.’

Our hero stared with heroic grace, one index finger holding up an eyebrow, also holding in the mush of his root-beer-deranged brain. ‘What?’

‘Sign.’

‘What is it?’

The shadowy disembodiment of a voice that lurked beyond the proffered, held aloft and slightly aubergine paper managed to express its discombobulation without further recourse to actual words. Sal Oberon spoke in a slower tone, as was customary, he found, when dealing with the more flexibility-challenged: ‘What is it that you’re asking me to sign?’

There was a pause, and then: ‘This paper.’

‘Yes, but what is it?’

‘It’s a slightly aubergine form. Sign it.’

‘Why?’

‘It needs your signature?’

Sal Oberon stood on his doorstep and a blinding flash of epiphany flushed down on him from a great height, delivering unto him the purpose for hibernations, lobotomies and voluntarily overly-deep enemas: you don’t get out of life without the pink form of bureaucracy giving you the right to take your last breath and the pasty maroon form to say you can start mulching into the undergrowth. Sal Oberon sighed.

‘What do I get in return for my signature?’

There was another pause. ‘You get this slightly aubergine form with your signature on it, which says you’ve signed the form, which is slightly aubergine. Sign here.’

Sal Oberon gave in and signed the form. The shadowy disembodiment of delivery thanked him from the very depths of his tick box and disappeared up his own slightly diminished agenda. Sal Oberon clicked the door closed quietly and filed the slightly aubergine form on his eight feet high ‘to do’ list. Our hero dragged his sorry arse off towards the toaster, wondering if re-hibernation might be a crime punishable by death and whether that might come under ‘irony’.

When the second doorbell chimed, Sal Oberon through [sic] his red biro at the door. It shattered into a bloody mess of ink and abject apathy.

‘Bugger off.’

‘Delivery for Mr. Obiwank.’

‘He’s dead. He slipped on the toast of the eternally buttered side down. He accidentally impaled a lung on a plastic fork.’

The doorbell chimed. Sal Oberon regretted the purchasing of bloody Greensleeves, Ad Infinitum. The doorbell continued to chime and showed no signs of ever not chiming again. Sal Oberon answered the door.

‘What?’

‘Sign here.’

‘Why . . .? No. Don’t bother . . .’

Sal Oberon signed the mustard form, the indigo form, the puce and magenta form, and the off-beige form that stated that he’d signed the mustard, indigo, puce and magenta, and off-beige forms. He took delivery of the proffered appendage to his life, slammed the door and sat down with it before the delivery drone had had time to even think of disappearing up his own agenda.

The package sat in Sal Oberon’s lap like a turd might. He unpeeled it, carefully, as you might. The folder was municipally non-coloured, though it had a catchy logo: Council of the Forest of the Congenitally Be-Dwarfed, De-Hibernation Policy and Procedures (a Guide for Breathing, Shitting and Quadratic Equations), Volume 1 of 64 (pages 1-1684). Compulsory Reading (on mauve-form-actioned threat of eviction, excommunication, or any other order of the Council’s spontaneous choosing). Read by Tuesday, and sign (every page). Twice. In turquoise ink. In the right-hand margin. Countersign your own signatures for proof of identity. Twice. Re-read for accuracy. Proceed to start of list.

Sal Oberon added the policy document to his ‘to do’ list. A largely squeezed toad of a metaphorical nature and moronic mass illiteracy croaked brightly for a second, mistaking the ‘to do’ list with itself, before retiring to the crack between the floorboards. Our hero’s foot came down, missing it by a pretty nymph princess’s split seam.

Sal Oberon reached for his rudimentary Tale Weaving equipment, blowing the dust from its cavernous innards. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right . . .’ (though he wasn’t entirely sure what would be next, and right seemed to fit the bill right enough).

Dear the Council

Fuck off.

Regards

S. Oberon
 
Sal Oberon, Master Storyteller and Part-Time Shyster Magnet, was a little rusty at his game, coming out of hibernation as he was.
 
 

4. Sal Oberon Seeks a Mate

‘WLTM: Pretty, sweet fairy with slightly damaged wings; access to own Tale Weaving equipment and ability to drink like a trout in a puddle of shallow sorrow under a dripping wet sky laden with existential angst; GSOH; no Melodramatics need apply. Failing all of the above: strange freak/weirdo from wrong side of the bracken, of no fixed lineage or state of wing disrepair (however, must have at least rudimentary access to Tale Weaving equipment — even if it’s somebody else’s and used in the middle of the night by excessive creeping around following breaking and entering and without prior permission). Apply to: PO Box 3333, 63rd Knobbly Stump on the Left, East 98th Mole Furrow, Forest of the Hopelessly Lost . . .’

‘Nah,’ said Sal Oberon, screwing up the paper he’d just scribbled on and breaking the first Golden Rule of the Guild of Master Storytellers: never, ever throw away any story, no matter how crap. Sal Oberon threw it out of the window.

‘What’s this?’ came a haggard old voice from outside, and after a few moments of concentrated consideration, the voice shouted out, ‘Bloody hippies. Sitting on your arses all day writing bollocks. Get out of the house and meet people, Loser Boy . . . Get a life!!’

With that the little old and mentally unstable fairy, with her tightly buttoned-up overcoat on, shuffled off to hassle a couple of homeless goblins who were obviously up to no good, lying around pretending to be apathetic and waiting to be verbally abused by someone.
 
 

3. Sal Oberon Practises Zen Meditation Breathing Techniques on the Wing

Sal Oberon is surrounded by morons . . .

‘What’s a moron?’ one of the children sitting at his feet asked.

Sal Oberon sighed.

‘A moron,’ he began at length, ‘is only marginally higher up the food chain than your common or garden cretin . . .’

‘Uh?’ grunted the child.

Sal Oberon pursed his lips irritably.

‘Which, in turn,’ he went on, ‘is slightly higher than an idiot. Then come the illiterates, the throwbacks, the nobodies, those who aspire to be nobodies, and the complete wastes of DNA . . .’

The children sat with question-marks screwed across their faces.

‘Look,’ said Sal Oberon a little tetchily, ‘do you want to hear this story, or what?’

The children all brightened up at the essential keyword and looked forward, no doubt, to some happy tale involving fluffy bunnies, lots of cuddly cute rhyming, and an over-abundance of patronising repetition designed in anticipation of exceptionally limited attention spans.

Sal Oberon shuffled his wings into a complex arrangement of greater comfort and drew in a deep breath. ‘Good,’ he said, and started again . . .

. . . Sal Oberon is surrounded by morons. He was winging through the Forest, fairly zipping along, a good percentage over the speed limit, when, with some alarm, he noted yet another moron precisely three and a half nano-millimetres behind him and travelling at the same ‘minimal-life-expectancy’ velocity. So, with calculated risk, and, overloading on irrationally vexed chemicals recently discharged with some rapidity into his brain, due to the crass invasion of his personal body space by the moron so close behind that he was almost actually inside him . . . he slammed on the brakes . . .

‘Wow, Sal Oberon,’ squealed the brightest of the children at the Gathering (the others merely sat and stared, dribbling and wondering when the bunnies might make their entrance). ‘Wow. Did you crash and mangle up the moron and die yourself too? Did you?’

Sal Oberon narrowed his eyes at the mound of excited dribble in front of him.

‘Ye-eeeess,’ he ventured slowly, and ‘Does your mother know you’re out? Hmm?’

He carried on with his tale. ‘Anyway . . .’

. . . there he was, slapping on his brakes and making some rather choice and tasty obscene gestures, I can tell you, with one hand behind him and half an eye on the way ahead, and the cretin behind only decided that . . .

‘Sal Oberon?’ the bright one piped up, quizzically. ‘Where did the moron go?’

‘What?’ Sal Oberon replied.

‘The moron, Sal Oberon,’ the child repeated. ‘Is there a moron and a cretin chasing now? Or did the moron have to go home for his dinner?’

Sal Oberon thought carefully, and after several seconds of careful cogitation, he said, ‘Yes. Both of the above.’ (Which didn’t help the bearer of the question much but did serve the storyteller’s intended purpose). ‘So,’ he went on, quickly. ‘Anyway . . .’

. . . the cretin behind only decided to speed up even more!! I mean, what an imbecile!! What a demented, moronic, plainly brainless act of wanton stupidity, at several wingflaps past the speed limit, in the outside lane of the Forest ring-road expressway. There are no words, no Venn diagrams, no bar-graphs with helpfully pretty colour-coding, no usefully user-friendly Help-Me-Quick-I’m-A-Dumbass-Can’t-Even-Find-The-On-Switch-Click-On-Me-NOW-Big-Red-Fat-Flashing-Stupid-Button to rightly describe how low down on the evolutionary scale of mind-numbing futile inanity that moronic, cretinous mound of puerile sap-for-brains actually rated out there . . .

‘Cool, Sal Oberon,’ the loquacious one said (though, it may be truthful to say he didn’t altogether get the entirety of the storyteller’s finest turns of phrase and carefully wordcrafted nuances). ‘Did you get squished and die though?’

Sal Oberon squeezed the bridge of his nose wearily and wondered why he sometimes bothered.

‘Noooooo,’ he uttered apathetically. ‘I practised the art of breathing and meditated on beautiful thoughts of serenity and inner peace.’

‘Like what, Sal Oberon?’

The storyteller leant forwards on his log. ‘Well . . .’ he concluded . . .

. . . Sal Oberon dropped into a haven of inner peace and tranquillity. He breathed . . . in and out; in, out; in, out. Peace . . . and then he slammed on the brakes again and thought beautiful thoughts of the moron behind pulling a full-lock skid at warp factor 27, snapping his wings off in the process in an extremely high velocity head-on collision with a rather hard tree, breaking his face, neck, legs and both funny bones in nine and half million assorted and painfully different places . . .

‘Whoa,’ exclaimed the child with a certain degree of respect, whilst all his assorted brethren dribbled profusely, still hanging on gamely to the hopefully imminent arrival of Mr. Fluffybunnykins and his irritatingly cheerful little rhyming-couplet narrator friend.
 
 

2. Sal Oberon Seeks Gainful Employment

Sal Oberon sat and surveyed the Forest before him, chewing on a lump of toxic by-product of indeterminable origin, found recently floating in the stream. The Forest of the Knobbly Goblin; the Forest of the Crippled Fairy; the Forest of the Sexually Depraved Sprite: all of these names. The proprietors of Yore (three and a half generations after the Ancients had moved up the property ladder, upping sticks to an, as yet, unpolluted Woody Glade), had failed to fill in the required application forms for ‘permanent name status’ (at least, not on the pink, maroon, turquoise or ever-so-slightly beige copies) and had therefore foregone their rights to such. Sal Oberon sat and contemplated the shithole simply known as a Forest (downgraded from Enchanted Wood, and a long way short of being a Woody Glade), pondering its position as the official dumping ground for all sorts of toxic magic by-products with no bureaucratic course of redress.

Suffice is to say that with all that magic shit clogging up the sanitary system, it’s no wonder the fairies’ wings started dropping off from acidic erosion, the elves started getting high just by sitting on the mushrooms and the pixies all went bad. It was only natural then that the place kept changing name, all by itself, without the aid of bureaucratic intervention, mauve balloting papers, planning meetings, steering groups, or formal written constitutions. Strange shit can happen when you live in a toxic magic dump.

Sal Oberon sat and surveyed the Forest of the Neurotic Nymph, desperately trying to avoid seeking gainful employment. He sighed. It was all very well telling stories but no landlord would take a nice little yarn in lieu of a month’s rent, and particularly not his landlord (who owned several hundred properties in and around the Forest, ranging from fairly respectable ex-tree stumps to the average little puddle of mould with its one room and en suite outside door). The evening edition of Jobs for the Hopeless Cretins Who Don’t Work in Local Government lay open nearby:

Undergrowth De-Viscosity Technician: Must have own gloves. No brain required (certificate of authenticity essential). 5 Groats per year. Apply on mauve, watermarked paper, cut into a perfect equilateral triangle and carefully folded into exactly 27 smaller and equally perfectly equal triangles.

Snail Speed Research Assistant: Must have qualifications. Any qualifications appropriate (though not yours).

Tree Officer: Required immediately. Must be able to count. Apply in lemon or aubergine ink, in some vague language format of forgotten antiquity. PhD essential. No idiots need apply. You are an idiot. Sod off.

Toxic Magic Forest Denial Officer: Qualification in Basic Lying essential (preferably educated to Advanced Deceit). Salary: 2.6 Million Groats. (Maybe).

Trout Licker: You won’t be qualified. Go away now.
 
Sal Oberon sighed the heavy-hearted sigh of the pitifully hard-done-by. A gang of marauding pixies staggered past with cans of beer in hand, aerosol-spraying the toads and spitting at little old fairies with arthritic wings who wore overcoats, despite it being the height of summer.

‘Oi,’ shouted one of the yobs, ‘get a job, you waster.’ They all laughed together in that demented cackle of cretins-in-arms. Sal Oberon couldn’t even muster the energy to make it to abject apathy.

‘Fucking hippies,’ the pixie with the brain today shouted out.
 
 

1. Sal Oberon: Master Storyteller and Part-Time Shyster Magnet

In the beginning, there was Light. But it only lasted a few days before it sputtered into a feeble death and blinked out. The celestial light salesman had done God up like a kipper.

‘Oh yes, er, Lord,’ he’d said (he’d only just been created himself and so was a little green at this game), ‘oh yes, this new forty umpsquillion watt bulb is all the rage in, er, um . . . some parallel Universe which may or not have been created yet, somewhere . . . um . . .’

God narrowed His eyes a little.

‘Go on,’ He uttered.

‘Well,’ went on the shifty one, ‘it’s your lucky day, Guv’nor, er, Lord. Just so happens that I’ve come into possession of, um,’ [quick mental and imaginary calculation], ‘sixty two billion of these little beauties, er, units. Yours for, er, let’s see . . . what units of currency have you created to date?’

God pondered.

‘Truth, Integrity, Love, Honour . . . maybe funny money on Credit Cards by Tuesday . . . if I can work out the logistics of those damn little metallic strips . . .’

There was a moment of apparent brow-beating.

‘Tell you what,’ said the salesman, ‘tell you what, Guv’nor, Lord, you can have the lot. Every last one of them. All for the price of Eternal Salvation. Can’t be fairer than that, now can I?’

God pondered more . . .

‘C’mon, your Lordness Guv,’ the salesman plied, sniffing out the weakness beginning to trickle in (just like they showed in the training videos). ‘Look at the lovely pretty colours. They come in mauve too, y’know. Think what Christmas’ll be like with all these bulbs up all over the place . . . and you only get the one Big Bang now, don’t you? Not your every day scenario . . .’

The patter was starting to flow.

‘Think of the little baby Jesus. You’re going to need something a bit special to get those strange blokes from ZZ Top out there to the middle of nowhere. Look!! A lovely new plastic star to light the way!!’

He held up one of the bulbs for inspection.

‘Use them again and again . . .’

God wavered. ‘Welllllll,’ He began: ‘How long will they last?’

The salesman looked visibly pained.

‘Last? Last, your Guv’norliness? They’ll LAST for EVER. And a day. Give or take a millennia or two because of improper wear and tear.’

He whipped out his contract and proffered God the pen with which to sign away His rights under Sections 1a) to 9,437e).

And God said: ‘Hmm, welllllll, OK,’ and signed His name on the contract (which immediately fizzed through the paper as the Name of God cannot truly be known — Creator’s Clause 46(b) (iii)-(vii) inclusive in ‘Contract to Build Universal System of Harmony and Life’ issued by CelestialSoft VirtualPlanets UnLimited: though that’s another story) and technically rendered the whole thing null and void (though neither party were to realise this episode until the whole sordid affair was dragged through the courts some millennia later). Anyway, it came to pass that God bought sixty two billion units, the shifty salesman earned himself an Eternal Salvation (and scarpered quickly for a new life in some celestial tax haven at the back end of beyond Beyond), and, one morning, a few days later, just as God had got up and gone to the bathroom to attend to his daily ablutions, he pulled on the lightcord and . . . BINK!!
 
Sal Oberon sat in the middle of the hugest tree trunk in the forest, surrounded by his fellow Little People and told his tale: ‘ . . . BINK!!’ he concluded, and there was a respectful silence (except for the hissings of the fire in the stone hearth, the rain outside and the smoke being spat on high up above them).

‘So,’ came a voice from the shadows, ‘what does it all mean?’

Sal Oberon pondered, chewed on a fern root which he’d pulled up, spat it out and stood up, stretching deliberately.

‘It means, my friend,’ he replied, ‘that the bastard who charged me forty five groats for five minutes so-called work JUST to tell me my fridge motor’s screwed had better watch his back because if I ever find out where he lives . . .’

Sal Oberon left the Gathering of the Little People, stepping into the pouring rain, moaning to himself something about how every bastard’s on the make these days . . .