[NOTE: This is the first fiction I’ve written for a couple of months. I feel very out of practice, so I decided to write whatever interested me. Tomorrow I’ve got to get into doing my third Robin Hood novel so this is warm-up. Sorry about the long absence. I hope to get to catch-up on people’s posted stories in the next ten days or so and then pick up on overdue stories I’m due to deliver. No promises, though, since work is heavy and I’m still sorting through my mother’s estate. Anyway, onto the story. For the record, there are no new characters in this tale, none at all. If you don’t believe me, ask Who’s Who in the Parodyverse.] ***     She was dead, wrapped in plastic.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Any ideas?” asked the sheriff as he squat beside the corpse of the popular cheerleader. The body was still damp after being hauled out of the river. The deputy kept the gawkers from the fisherman’s diner as far away as possible.     Champagne sipped her coffee and examined the dead girl more carefully. “Professional job,” the blonde detective judged. “Clean blow under the sternum, missed the ribs, surgical, fast. She wasn’t expecting it and the assailant was close up.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll get forensics to work out what kind of blade it was,” the Sheriff promised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Six inch curved steel knife,” Champagne supplied. “But it’s the other marks that are as good as a signature.”     Deputy Joe waddled over and leaned in to see. “That big red circle on her forehead? She was attacked by daleks?”     Sheriff Andy shook his head. “That’s the mark of a sink plunger. A sacred sink plunger of a defunct Egyptian sect and its last remaining killer.” He wiped his forehead and sighed. “Cobra’s back. And she’s killed again.”     Joe looked down at the girl in plastic. “Cobra killed Imke?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” sighed Champagne. “Fifth time this month.” ***     Cobra moved silently and swiftly over the rooftops, somersaulting across the shingles of the little town. The sun was a red smudge over the forest. The shadows gathered.     Ahead was the abandoned sawmill.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I guessed you’d come here,” Champagne said. “Either you’re easier to read than you think or else you wanted me to find you.”     The trained killer dropped down into the alley beside the detective. “You need to talk to him,” she insisted. “And this time you need to listen.”     Champagne shook her head. “I’ve heard his crazy talk before. We all have.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you haven’t listened. What if he’s the one making sense and we’re all mad?”     Champagne shrugged. “You’re lecturing me on sanity? Imke’s going to be furious tomorrow when she finds out you killed her again. Oh, and Sam and Julia say you’re barred from the diner. This has to stop, Christine.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And it will,” promised Cobra, “when we work out what’s really going on. Look, just try to hear what he has to say, okay?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or you’ll kill me?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Deliver us, deliver us, deliver us from evil,” muttered the homeless man crouching by a meagre fire in the sawmill ruins. “The aliens and the demons, the monsters in their towers and the scientists in their basements. Deliver us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh yes, this was well worth me delaying turning you in,” sighed Champagne. She liked things to make sense, and the odorous tramp didn’t.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You asked me once why I keep killing people,” Cobra said. “Andy thought it was a compulsion. Tim said I was a sadist. But here’s the reason, this man right here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t trust them,” the hobo warned, huddling deeper into his battered leather coat. “Don’t trust what you see. Don’t listen to Lucifer. Don’t believe what they tell you. Don’t expect tomorrow.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t suppose you have a gibbering lunatic to English phrasebook on you, do you?” Champagne asked him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No time and no space. No home. Our houses are a trap.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He sees something,” Cobra explained. “I don’t know what but something. I can glimpse it too, sometimes, just at the moment when I kill. As I end a life there’s a… a clarity. An expectation.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“An expectation of what?”     Cobra looked a little embarrassed. “An expectation that they won’t come back to life tomorrow.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Things are getting weird,” said the Mayor.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tell me about it, Jamie,” sighed Champagne. “I talked with old Zaurius today. And with Cobra.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You caught her again?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s been shacking up with Zane behind his garage. The clues were easy, like they always are. She’s always shacking up with Zane or hiding out with Porter if she’s not lurking in the water-tower. It’s always the same – and that’s kind of my point.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think there’s something behind all of this?” the Mayor puzzled. “I don’t know. This town’s pretty idyllic until that weird stuff happens. But it happens so much. If it’s not Cobra or Imke killing each other then it’s that big shaggy sasquach-thing in the woods stalking little Lissie or its cattle ripping over at the Carrington ranch or whatever.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think…” said Champagne slowly, “that we’re close to a breakthrough. Tomorrow for sure.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If Cobra doesn’t kill Imke again,” said Jamie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, yes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what’ll you do?”     Champagne tried to fight the clouds in her mind that were pushing her towards sleep and reset. “I’ll see if I can get Carl to guide me into the woods as far as the old Indian camp,” she reasoned. “That’s where Shawn disappeared each time. I’ll look around there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s a long way from town, Champagne,” the Mayor warned. “Things get a little strange that far from home.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Our houses are a trap,” Champagne said, remembering what the old bum had shouted. She looked beyond the river to the night-darkened treeline beyond. “Sometimes I wonder what’s going on here at Hood’s End. Tomorrow I’m going to find out.” *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

    

A very intruiging opening. My first reaction was how it reminded me of the old Byrne FF story where Dr. Doom had Reed and co. trapped in Littleville (sp?), in that it seems the heroes are in a small town with no seeming remembrance of their past lives. Then I noted it appears to be all former posters, so maybe this is some version of the Village from The Prisoner (which I've never seen, but know enough about to make the connection).

At any rate, I'm eager to see what happens next.

...only a little bit spookier and with more death.

Welcome back! I've been trying to keep the board going but there will be an inevitable gap in my posts when I'm out of town for a week starting next weekend.

I partly had in mind the earlier FF#84 story that Byrne drew upon, but as Kirk noted I was also channelling Twin Peaks.




It's something to come back to later at an appropriate time.

There are several cultural references wrapped up in Hood's End.




I've just been going back and replying to stories that I missed. Your output has been notable.

Sorry for the delay in answering. I've now read everything I missed, and if I haven't posted an answer after your story or here then it's because the board's eaten it again.

So here's what I'd have replied to the older stuff:

AIP - Taking Things in Stride - Makes me nostalgic for the days when Lisa would simply seduce the judge.

AIP - A Random Shooting Part 1 - A good start to trigger off some dire consequences

Part 2 - I always enjoy your "thriller" style and this story uses that in spades

The Order of the Red Velvet Masquerade Part 1 - Wins the award for "Best New Title for a PV Story" but also has some intriguing developments in its own right.

The Nine Worst Avengers - Well reasoned stuff from Hat, although he omitted Ronan I and Ares from the list.

The Silver Age Dimension Part 1 - Well gosh! This is so much better than those grim and gritty cookies we usually get nowadays.

The Silver Age Dimension Part 2 - Seems strange that the butler didn't come each day to polish the big statue's... curves.

The Silver Age Dimension Part 3 - From now on our regular Hatty should say "Merciful Maple Leaf" as well.

The Silver Age Dimension Part 4 - Brap just loves slumming round the alternate realities.

The Silver Age Dimension Part 5 - Ah, part 5. That's always where the complications set in in these Round Robins.

"Lost" in Translation - Damn teaser fragments and their "now I want more" goodness.

Abandoned Legion 8 - Excellent stuff (but to continuity nitpick, Akiko and Deadeyes met and talked in Deadeyes #3).

The First Day of the Last of My Life - A nice concept start-up that requires some follow-through now. Proceed.

Concluding Part of Chad and Ronnie: Fugitives Interlude - Well done for tying up the storyline and bringing things up to the starting line for the next bit. That can be tricky.

AIP - A Random Shooting Part 4 - So politics rears its ugly head (and nearly gets it chopped off by Chiaki)

A Silver Aged Tale - This had an amazing four-coloured dot-printed 60s feel.

Silver Age Dimension Part 6 - Vizh's dress sense is a multiversal constant.

AIP - A Random Shooting Part 5 - Know what's better than mystery ninjas? Mystery gorillas. Mystery ninja gorillas. Mystery ninja gorilla zombies. Just saying.

The Painting - This was a very special piece, and one of the best stories I've read from you. Well done.

Illustration Looking for a Story - Great art from Vizh, of course. it must have been great fun getting the model in position for this one.

Take Flight - Living dangerously with fast bikes and vendor hot dogs.

Good to see you around here again, and with a story to boot! I don't really have a clue as to what's going on, but then I'm a bit sleep deprived and likely to only be moreso (I have to take my aunt to the airport at 4am, which really doesn't suggest much point in even getting to sleep at all.)

I'll have to page through the Who's Who to check up on your "no new characters" claim, and maybe see if I can deduce what's going on. Still, I always enjoy a Champagne mystery, and repeatable murders are certainly mysterious...

This is a fun little mystery we've got here...well, from our point of view anyway. I imagine the people getting murdered every day are probably getting tired of it.

I had actually debated making Cobra the Citizen Z in Abandoned Legion, but wasn't sure of her status so I left her be.

~Hat~

It's not just a mystery - it's a way of life.




It's a bit ambiguous. A long time ago, at the end of the Technopolis War, I had the Abandoned Legion dissapear. It wasn't clear if they'd been killed in action, or if they'd gone away with Technopolis, or if something else had happened.

HV, Cap, Cobra, and Paste Pot Pete all vanished (until their posters return), in line with my usual unease about continuing to feature and especially to develop characters whose regular writers are no longer active on the board.

A long time later DK wrote a story in which it looked like Cobra might have turned up again and then been murdered. He never finished the story arc so I'm not sure if it's "DK canon" or whether that was meant to be the real Cobra or not. My general feeling is that it probably wasn't Cobra - poster character deaths should be a big deal, not an almost-off-screen end to establish a new villain as a big threat.

There's no reason not to explain what became of the original AL. It'd be a good story premise. It's just not one I want to write. It would probably have to get into whatever HV was up to, and maybe even explain the whole HV thing through history. I was once going to attempt that since it was so long since the poster was around, but then he turned up for a few weeks and seemed interested in picking the character up again.