The adventures of William the 5th

It was just after I saw the flying pig that I heard it.

The pig had just disappeared into the clouds, (funny thing was, its tail was straight) when I heard it creep up from behind. The sound of a thousand whistles. It seemed a tad strange to hear a sound like that, especially when your standing atop a vanilla milkshake. I mean, have you ever heard a whistle let alone a thousand when you were standing on top of a milkshake? I thought not. Needless to say I wanted to know who was making that unearthly racket. So I turned around. And came face to face with it. A gigantic purple steam engine, cowcatcher and all, hurtling straight at me! I strafed to my left and the thing missed me by an inch. And straight down I went, down into the milky depths of the shake.

Now the thing about drowning in a vanilla milkshake is you can’t see a bloody thing! I’m told it’s even worse if it’s a chocolate milkshake! Try as I might I couldn’t rise to the surface. I tried swimming, paddling, groping and finally tap dancing. Nothing worked and I sank to the bottom.

As I sat there on the bottom, freezing, head on my folded arm, I thought to myself, why not drink it? That’s what it’s there for so why not fulfill its destiny and save myself while I was at it? So that’s what I did, I opened my mouth and sucked the entire contents of the glass in. Now I was alive… and full.

As I looked upwards at the brim of the glass I realized I had a new problem; how the fuck was I going to get out. Climb? Glass is pretty slippery even when it’s not wet. And after a vanilla milkshake I was in no mood to do anything, let alone climb. So I sat down and leaned against the glass. I guess all that milk made me heavy because the moment I leaned against it, the glass slipped off the table and landed on something soft.

I crawled out.

There was soft white porcelain all around and a big red and white sign that said ‘A banana must be eaten’.

I had nothing to do so I walked on down to the sign. There was a button labeled ‘down’ next to it, so I pressed it. An elevator door appeared and opened. I stepped inside and traveled down to basement number 1,45,987.

As I exited elevator I found myself inside a subwoofer. It was playing some Rage Against The Machine. So I did the only normal thing I could think of and surfed the sound wave into the great wide open. It died after a wile and I found myself in a freefall.

Crash! Bang! Shatter and Splat!

I assumed my liquid form (You’re probably wondering why I didn’t do this earlier on with the milkshake incident, well, I didn’t know I could do it) and flowed onto a stamp. Big mistake. I was stuck and posted.

Nest thing I knew there’s this fat guy in a red suit with white fur and a pink nose looking down at me. Oh no I thought! I’m at a village people concert! But then I spotted another sign that said ‘Santa’s Little Workshop’. Whew!

FYI, Santa’s Chinese. I mean, think about it, who else can manufacture so many cheap toys, still maintain a decent profit margin, always get the order wrong, find the address no matter what and slide down the chimney? Fuck! It’s obvious! The fat guy is Chinese and his last name Ling. All that nonsense about Rudolph and his shiny red nose was a result of the historic affection the Chinese have for live animal fights. BTW Rudolph won, 7-1.

Now Santa had no fucking clue as to what I was, to be honest, neither did I! I was as shocked to see him as he was to see me. I was even more shocked to his lovers, all 75 of them and all male. Santa scratched his head and did the only thing he could, he called the Pope. Now the Pope is not that guy at the Vatican. That’s a farce. The real Pope sits in an orbiting spaceship made entirely of gingerbread. And eats candy canes all day.

I was sent up without delay. Now let me tell you, that gingerbread spaceship that the pope has is something else! Truly a work of art! Marshmallow beds, the new PlayStation 3, VR, every single movie ever made, ever, 451.1 surround surround surround sound, a massive plasma TV, a big blue sky for the ceiling, a beach, a golf course, cars, an F1 track, planes, chocolates, books, lots of pot, a 324 foot bong, beer fountains, a harem, a cinema, the entire cast of Cats, Elvis, Marley, Dylan, Hendrix, a rainforest, a beehive, two soccer stadiums (Complete with football hooligans), 400 fireplaces (Risky business on a gingerbread ship), a snooker table, a bowling alley, radio controlled cars, boats, planes, …. Small place, but cozy. Anyway, now the Pope, the real deal here, asks me. What’ll you have? To which I replied “Scotch, on the rocks”. Done. So we sat, or rather, floated, there are no chairs there, just anti-gravity, which is a pain in the ass (Ironic?) after a while.

I stayed there for a few years. And one fine day I just got tired of the entire deal. Pssst, the old fart watches porn too. But you didn’t get that from me. So I turned myself into a dream and woke up in someone’s room. Sunlight filtering through the window, birds chirping and all that jazz old Armstrong sang about.

And I yawned. Yawned, yawned and yawned. Nice and big! Tongue out, arms outstretched and head tilted back. Now those of you reading will probably feel like yawing too, even if not immediately at least a few minutes down the line. Is it because of the story, maybe, but it’s more to do with the fact that yawning is contagious. If there’s someone next to you and they catch you yawning they’ll probably yawn too. An interesting little fact I read about. Right, now back to the story.

I was in a little girls’ room. Pink walls, N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys pasted on them, lace, flowers, dolls, pink curtains and a satanic altar. Woah! Back track, satanic altar??? Kids these days I tell you!

So I got the fuck out of there. Turned myself into light and sped straight out. Smooth flight, till I hit a mirror. Now any of you who have ever traveled as light will know that hitting a mirror at that speed is not funny. You get reflected and as far as I’m concerned that word ‘reflected’ does not do the experience justice. Words like ‘crash’, ‘collide’, ‘slammed’, they all have a sense of pain. Not because we’re sensitized to those words but because they just sound nasty. “Poor ickle thing, you were in a crash? Aaawww”. Tell someone you got reflected and they’ll look at you with such a comic expression you just want to wrench their heads off! “Hey ma, guess what? I was reflected today!”, “Jonny, shut the fuck up and go clean your room”. Sad but true.

I turned back to liquid and evaporated myself.

As I lay there among the clouds I reflected on my life. The things I had done and the people I had met. Places I had visited and the things I had learnt. It was here that I realized that there was one thing about my adventures that still bothered me. Why was that damn pig’s tail straight?