Oh my God, thought Nathan to himself: It’s gone! All that work and it’s gone.
Yes, the manuscript which he had so tirelessly worked and slaved over all those years ago and had resurrected from the trash at his parent’s house was gone. Who were the suspects?
Could it be King Goona, that charming schizophrenic who is always stealing other people’s ideas including Nathan’s articles, maxims and intellectual property…. Hmmm … Surely not since he had already hacked Nathan’s computer and his emails and his phone since he was really clever on that level.
He had the help of the Goona-sniffers though and they were a good bunch who would look for shit for King Goona. Perhaps one of them for a stipend perhaps took the manuscript? They were rewriting as Nathan panicked. But then there was General Moi known for that reason as Misuse of Information and he and King Goona were close in their attempted destruction of Nathan and his eventual demise due to hang ten-ing too many times for cigarettes and drinking too much Pepsi Cola… extra helpings of lasagne didn’t help.
That heart of Nathan’s wouldn’t last. Nathan had heard General Moi, head of the Red Planet crime syndicate and gun club where they shot effigies of Nathan in various compromising positions – he had heard the general say: “Please let him die, so I can get the manuscript and burn it for Satan” … and when he said burn it he meant it as the fourteen million dollars King Goona planned to make from the book online. He would make millions of copies sold from the hardcovers and the film rights et al … King Goona planned to open a school in Afghanistan and sent them each a copy of Nathan’s book with the hero’s name changed to King Goona …!!! King Goona had a good heart really and that was why Nathan felt sorry for him once again.
“Such is the work of Satan,” thought Nathan aloud as the manuscript had also been changed on his computer as well. They had added the word foreskin a number of times, too many times to be acceptable for the general public thought Nathan. It was hopeless. All was lost. Even if Nathan tried to read the manuscript on the computer and correct it, they would change it again.
“Well, here’s to sleeping on my left side,” Nathan said to himself as he began to look around for more clues and he lit another cigarette.
Someone had taken his lighter the previous evening and the week before that he had a black lighter and then a blue one – what wickedness these Satanists get up to!
King Moi had argued politely earlier that morning that he demanded the respect of Nathan and that he insert a foreskin into the book. Well, there was already a foreskin in the book, argued Nathan! … Well, there was hell toupee … tee-hee as Nathan imagined General Moi’s avatar on the world of Red Planet as Uncle Fester or something far more sinister. There was a price to pay and it appears to be the manuscript… “No, no, no you are very naughty,” Nathan could see General Moi shaking his finger at him for these very revelations.
It was obvious someone had gone through the trash in the bags in Nathan’s kitchen looking for something and it could have been the pigeons who walk in through the back looking for the bag of seed he so lovingly fed twice a day. But that was impossible since the door was locked and closed. But them who had the key to the place?
Could it be the owners of the sleek white van which would come and go and who Nathan thought were the undertakers at Poopsin Place? They had waved happily as they departed and Nathan had only gone out for a packet of cigarettes. He trusted the management implicitly. Then there were the neighbours who used to feed the previous tenants chooks both in reality and on Red Planet … were they responsible?
Madness! It’s madness!! Who would want a lousy manuscript which Nathan hoped to make a lousy few grand from? It wasn’t Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms! Would they rape it of its ideas and then rape it again after he was dead? There had to be some sort of law against Nathan turning on Stan or Netflix and seeing a viking movie about his very manuscript.
I know I’ll ring Mum: “Mum someone took my manuscript, you know how I was always going on about someone stealing it and copying it off emails and the internet?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Mum, I’m not being silly, it’s gone, it’s really gone!”
Nathan felt another heart attack brought on by talking to his mother coming on. He daren’t talk to his father as he couldn’t … well … have another heart attack. He was sure he’d had one the previous evening as he woke up feeling like one of the walking dead.
“Ha, ha, ha ,” laughed General Moi in the background, “ He will soon be dead and the second portion will be played on Prime in no time, meanwhile there’s the rights in Germany and Scandinavia not to mention the pornographic movies I will star in as a result of my noteriety…”
Nathan added the second portion because General Moi and King Goona were forever pissing him off. He did have a soft spot for General Moi for some reason…
Then on Red Planet he heard someone being interviewed and grilled about why they took the manuscript. And why the socks! the pretty, pretty socks!! It’s a furphy, Nathan discounted and if you have eliminated the impossible, no matter what remains however improbably must be the answer to quote Get Smart.
“Bloody hell, it’s on the chair. I see it, it’s on the chair,” and Nathan had five more cigarettes and then went and got himself a cask of wine just to add to the situation… of three bottles of Pepsi. Meanwhile King Goona used the time that Nathan was on his computer dot write this story to use it as a zombie computer and change more of the manuscript he had so lovingly typed. Yes he had lovingly typed the word ‘foreskin’.
And this ends another five minute mystery at Poopsin Place that famous place of witchcraft and Red Planet where Nathan fights the good fight and struggles to survive the forces of evil and tobacco. A place where Nathan loses all his socks and can’t find them. A place where his trakky daks disappear and he sometimes finds them… The strange place where ever since he stopped wearing undies they stopped disappearing!
Cult Film Alley 