Christmas wines of 2014

For Christmas wines this year we present for your pleasure (we hope) the continuing saga of, well, us.

For the red wine we chose to have the brothers gain super powers. This is the label we produced:

StuporMen

For the white wine we went with:

Cam Bo & Co

And, for a handout to go with the wine gifts we put together, as is our want, a brochure. Here is what that looked like.

First the outside:

And the inside looked like this.

And because it may be a bit difficult to read as it is I have laid out the panels of the brochure. First the outside page:

And the inside panels reads like this:

And now for the stories written to go with each. We'll start with the story of the white:

Cam Bo & Co.

In a saloon, Ralph sits at a bar room table waiting for his brother, idly thumbing the roll of notes he has in his hand. The notes are somewhat charred along the edges. He is trying to look casual and not actually doing a bad job of it considering that he is wearing a burlap sack tied off with a length of rope.

Colin comes in dressed in an old blanket and joins his brother. Ralph says, “Welcome back, at least you smell a bit better now.”

“Thanks a lot. So how we doing?”

“Not really sure yet. Well, for starters we’re alive.”

“That’s a good start, I like that.”

After a moments pause, he asks,  “Bro, do you remember anything of what happened, how we got here?”

Colin takes a minute to think, shakes his head, “No, not a thing really.”

”I’ve been sitting here trying to remember, not only how we got here but like all of it, my whole life, and it’s blank. What about you?”

Another silence. “Nope, you’re right, I got nothing.”

“Wouldn’t you say that’s a bit odd?”

“Definitely.”

“But besides that memory gap or whatever you want to call it, I have this nagging feeling like something doesn’t seem quite right.”

“Like what?”

Well, like you and me for one thing. I feel like we’re out of place or something.  Don’t you?”

“Kinda, I guess.”

“God, this type of thinking always gives me a headache. Okay, maybe we should do a little detectoring because the answers might be important. What are those 5 questions, the 5 ‘w’s’ that tell you what’s going on?”

“You mean who, what, where, when and why?”

“Yeah, that’s them. So the who is us.”

“At least as far as we know. Okay, sorry, check.”

“The what I’m not sure of, we’ll have to come back to that. The where is here.”

“Wherever this is.”

“The when is now.”

“Whenever this is.”

 “The why is why; Again there’s that bloody gap. So how do we fill in the blanks? Okay, we need to start pulling together some information on the where and when kinda’ shit and maybe that will tell us the why. I’ll look around for a paper or something. And we need a beer. I’ll be back.”

He gets up, straightens his burlap sack and tightens the rope around his waist. He heads over to the bar. “Okay,” he said over his shoulder to his brother, “to business.”

When Ralph returns he’s got a pitcher of beer, a couple of glasses and a newspaper. Before Colin can speaks he says, “I got another thing to add to the list of weird stuff.” He throws the roll of notes, now somewhat depleted, on the table, pours himself and his brother a glass of beer, sits, says ‘Cheers’, (they clink) he drains his glass, pours another one.

Colin raises an eyebrow and licks the froth from his lips, “So?”

Ralph places the paper down beside the roll of notes. “Without looking can you tell me what year is it?”

“No, but that’s not necessarily weird, sometimes I forget stuff like that, and a lot of other things, like my name.”

“Look at the paper now.”

Colin picks the paper up and looks at the banner,  “Well, according to this, it’s 1869.”

“Okay. Does that feel right? I’m really not sure. Now here’s the weird bit, for some reason I have this here Canadian Tire Money. Does that sound odd to you?”

Canadian Tire Money

“No.”

“So you’re okay with the idea of Canadian Tire Money?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Well the barman wasn’t all too sure about it, he took a bit of convincing before I could get the beer and paper in exchange for it. Now here’s the thing, for some reason I know that this stuff (he picked the bundle up and fanned it out) wasn’t invented until 1958.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty much. So what I’m thinking is that this stuff is out of time. And, because of how I feel, I think we are too.”

They pondered that in silence. Colin starts leafing through the paper, skimming articles on the construction of the new railroad, the influx of Chinese workers, the price of cows. He looks at his brother, “So you think we’re out of time? What do we do? Why are we here?”

“That’s more of those ‘w’ questions.”

Colin spots an item in the paper, he spins the paper around on the table for his brother to see. “Hey, get a load of this. Says here that one out of every four persons on earth is Chinese.”

They both sit back in their chairs, simultaneously they take a drink from their beers, and then they look around the bar.

“Ah, Ralph, how many people are in this bar?”

“I count six including the bar man.”

“And with us?”

“Eight.”

Both look at the paper, they look around again, they both say at the same time in the same awed voices, “We’re Chinese”.

“I never would have guessed.”

“Maybe that’s why we’re here.”

“We’re here to set something straight.”

“We’re here to claim our heritage.”

“So how do we do that?”

“The only way that feels right, we turn Chinese and we open up a shop.”

“Brilliant.”

Ralph was quick to add, “And if we’re Chinese, we gotta’ look the part, right?” The brothers turned their rather warped imaginations to the task. Colin started dressing up in bright colourful silk pyjamas borrowed from a house of negotiable affection. Ralph, however, with the limited amount of research he did on the topic (I think it was a page literally out of the Farmers Almanac he was about to use in the outhouse), got both the country and culture wrong somehow and made himself a sumo wrestler outfit out of old horses asses.

And so it was that with some paper notes out of the future, some midnight scrounging, and maybe a few items that may have been accidentally or temporarily liberated, they set up the infamous Cam Bo & Co.

They opened their shop in an old dynamite shack located in the big cavern of the new railway tunnel and used it as the front for their real endeavour. They put up shelving- some of which actually stayed up- built a counter out of old dynamite crates, and stocked the shelves. Since they never intended to have much in the way of actual store stock, they put empty tins and boxes on display, just for the look of things.

Cam Bo & Co.

They really warmed up to the idea of being Chinese and figured it was a perfect way to both blend in and to hide from the authorities (which they appeared to be a bit paranoid of naturally). They also made up their own language. It wasn’t Mandarin, nor was it Cantonese, it was Campbelleze, and no one could really understand what they were saying, particularly the Chinese. One transaction went like this…“You’o no payme’o cash’o, you’o no get wine’o?” And I guess that tells not only how stupid the whole language thing sounded but also reveals what their main item of trade was going to be.

Ralph insisted they sell chili as well.

So the brothers started to sell bootleg bottles of wine (which they made in the cellar they had dug out beneath the store), pails of chili, and topped every deal off with a new invention: misfortune cookies. Ralph made these using his rather sorry biscuit recipe but added wood chips to the flour because he said it would keep them fresher longer. When his brother asked him why he would use dirty wood chips Ralph would only say, “I washed them before I put them in. Well mostly. I did pick some bugs out.”

Colin was put to use in writing the misfortunes. In a collaborative effort they came up with sayings like ‘Your dog has run away with the postman’ or ‘You will be hounded by a ‘friend’ who wants money’. The fortunes were not always bad; every so often you got one like ‘Disregard last cookie’ or just ‘You’ll be sorry’. They also included unlucky numbers on the little slips of paper.

It didn’t take long for the Chinese to know better than to drink the concoction (or eat the food for that matter). They did find it useful though. They used the wine to dissolve calluses and warts. They also discovered, due to an untimely accident involving a bowl of wine used for callus removal and a little too close open flame, that it blows up very easily. After a little experimentation they find that it’s just a bit more stable than the nitro glycerin that they’ve been using to blow the tunnels out with. They started buying it by the crate load. Work on the tunnel progressed wonderfully.

As for the misfortune cookies, they found that they made good rasps to scrape off skin.

Now we have already mentioned the biscuit recipe so I suppose we should discuss just what was put into the chili.

You wouldn’t generally think that putting vegetables in food is a bad thing, but then you don’t know the Campbells. They hated them. The vegetables returned the sentiment. They turned on the Campbells whenever possible. And the Chinese versions were the worst, particularly the bok choy. Mushrooms were not so bad; at least most of them, and you could generally trust the beans.

They wanted to add some sort of meat to the chili but didn’t have enough money for beef. They did manage to get hold of a chicken however, but Ralph didn’t have the heart or the courage to kill it. Instead he named it Bob. They also thought about adding more water to the pot as well but figured that nobody would buy anything called Cam Bo Soup.

It has already been noted that the Chinese- the real ones- would not eat this stuff. The so-called ‘white’ people of town, however, did not have the same sense as the Chinese. In fact, in an error of epic proportion, they hired the brothers to provide food and refreshment for a barn raising. The people worked, they drank, they ate, and then far too many of them got violently sick. When they could walk again without leaving a trail behind, they went looking for the brothers. The brothers, just a step or two ahead of this tidal wave of gustatory outrage, headed back into the tunnel and locked themselves in the hidden cellar of Cam Bo & Co. It was literally one of those pitchfork and torches sort of moments.

As for the brothers sitting in the cellar, they couldn’t understand why the people thought their food was so bad and so, for possibly the very first time in their lives, sampled it themselves.

“This is really bad, isn’t it?”

“And it has a distinctive taste of 6 month old smelly socks. Yours, if I’m not mistaken.”

Ralph harrumphed, “I wondered where they had run off to. Help me fish them out.”

And they started to drink, siphoning off from the vat that contained an even more potent version of what for convenience sake we’ll call wine, in the dark, while the sounds of destruction continued on over their heads.

When the noises finally subsided Ralph and Colin decided they could poke their heads out to see if the coast was clear. They opened the hatch and somewhat tipsily emerged. The store was a mess. Actually it was several messes but you get the gist of the idea.

Ralph said, “Everything seems quiet, at least for the moment. Okay, I think now would be a good time to move on. I call scamper.”

“You got that right.”

“Let’s put together some stuff we can use at the next place. We’ll stash some here and carry what we can.”

“On it.”

From the wreckage of the store above they found one crate that wasn’t too badly damaged. They filled the empty bottles they still had down below from the spout of the tap and then put them in the crate. The tap was left dripping.

Drip, drip.

The brothers hid the crate in a far nook of the tunnel and then returned to the shop.

Drip, drip.

Sometimes everything happens at once. Call it coincidence, call it synchronicity, call it whatever you want. I think sometimes the fates just get bored and want to stir things up and the Campbell brothers are perfect foils for them.

Drip, drip.

The brothers had gathered together their gear and were in the process of dividing it up between themselves to carry (not without some argument).

Drip, drip.

Then in the cellar the chili (minus socks) boiled over and mixed in with the wine puddle. A foul smelling mist began to be emitted; only it didn’t smell like mist. And it was definitely thicker, almost gelatinous really.

Chili and Campbells and wine, oh my.

And yes, the drip goes on.

And what about Bob? The chicken, you remember? Ralph, standing in the remains of the store, backpack on and waiting for his brother to finish up, was holding it tightly under one arm and trying, unsuccessfully, to feed it some chili.

Drip, drip.

Colin made one last trip into the cellar (likely for a bit of a drink before they left) carrying a candle so he could see in the dark. The mist started eating at his shoes but he didn’t notice. He bent over to pick up the tin cup he’d been using before and that’s when the flame met mist.

Spoiler alert! One of the brothers explosively soils himself.

The first sound was something between a crump and a whump. The next was a definite kaboom, and was heard for miles. The explosion tore a hole in the skimpy fabric of space and time. It may not have destroyed reality, but it definitely put a severe dent in it.

Cam Bo & Co and Campbells, lock, stock, chili, and chicken, vanished without a trace. Okay, maybe there were a few stains left.

And as for the railway, the tunnel that was being blasted out was abandoned because of the deadly fumes and other offensive smells that were emanating from there. Even canaries would not go in; they would rather hang themselves in their little cages than be exposed to the gas. The proposed route, which would have meant a train would take about an hour to get to the next town, was cancelled. It was decided to build around. Train travel would now take half a day.

The town shriveled and almost disappeared.

That was the first story, and now for the second, for the red wine and label, is this little charmer called:

StuporMen

Warning: this story contains peanuts.

This is a story about time, space and, it must be said, alcohol. Oh, and two brothers who have a knack for screwing things up. But first we have to peer into the distant past.

It seems that our human ancestors managed to build up a tolerance for alcohol, ethanol specifically. They, the people who wonder about and research this type of thing, think it was a mutation that occurred as a survival mechanism for the species. The mutation meant that you and the people you hung out with (literally) could survive when times were tough by, guess what, eating things like rotting fruit and vegetables (and getting a little tipsy in the process). All of this was said (again, by ‘them’) to have happened some ten million years ago, give or take a few centuries. In later millennia, when the ‘them’ started to name these things, the little splice in the genome got the catchy name of the ADH4 enzyme.

So the great, great, great, great, great, great (wait, no, I’m not going to type all the ‘greats’ out, let’s just say that this occurred over 250 thousand generations ago, give or take) grandmother of the Campbells was responsible for the development of this particular little talent. Word is that the ape that Ralph and Colin were evolved from (and yes there is bitter argument here) fell out of the tree and didn’t feel like making all the effort to climb back up. Or maybe she couldn’t immediately climb, particularly after she had gorged on the rotted fruit at the bottom of the trunk. She just lay there groaning, scratching, and watching the tree spin.

After a while, when the tree had finally stopped spinning, and I think possibly after a nap, the she-ape was feeling a bit peckish again and started rooting around for something else to eat. She peered inside a little hollow at the base of the tree and saw some little green mushrooms growing in the niche. She knew better than to eat little green mushrooms; they were trouble. So instead she rooted around (again literally) and pulled out of the earth a small bushy plant and started nibbling at the little goobers suspended from the stems.

As she sat munching she raised a cheek and gave out a contented fart.

Such was life in those pre-times.

So about 250 thousand generations later two brothers arrived in the world screaming, and not in the normal sort of way as with the cries of the newborn infant. No, these two arrived as fully developed adults (again some argument about this statement) so, to say the least, there was something definitely weird about the appearance. Theirs was a story that already had momentum. No, let me rephrase that; there were two whole conservation movements behind their story: the conservation of energy and the conservation of momentum. The brothers suddenly came flying into existence. They were blasted from the mouth of an abandoned railway tunnel, screaming, like they were shot from a cannon.

Time was not having a good day. It was in a flux. You could say that it was all fluxed up. It was also right pissed off with having to deal with this annoying popping of bodies in and out of existence. But Time was patient. Time could wait.

Anyway, as I have said, the brothers, Ralph and Colin Campbell, came flying out of the tunnel entrance at the speed of scream, in harmony no less, and at a low trajectory. Two things assisted their landings.

Ralph got hung up in a staghorn sumac tree (which Ralph recently told me was technically not a tree at all, oh well, pretend it was). Colin fell into a convenient manure heap. After a few moments of silence both bodies started to move. Ralph fell from a branch of the non-tree to the ground with a groan and a thump, Colin swam his way out of the heap sputtering expletives. Both got to their feet and stood rather shakily and looked at the other.

“You’re naked.”

“So are you.”

“You okay?”

“I think so. How about you?”

“I seem to have all my working bits.”

“I can see that.”

“Ow, my head hurts.”

“Mine too. Must have been one hell of a party. Remember any of it?”

“Not a thing.”

“Where the hell are we?”

“Couldn’t say.”

They heard a noise like sizzling; both brothers looked down. There, by where Ralph was standing, was a still steaming freshly barbequed whole chicken. Both brothers looked at it.

“Take-out?”

“Must be.”

“Great, I’m famished, but I have to get cleaned up a bit first. Listen, there’s a stream or something over there.”

“Gotcha.”

Ralph picked up the chicken rather oddly, almost tenderly; it seemed to fit snugly in the crook of his arm. He carried it over to the stream, where he sat on the bank while his brother washed. Colin finished his ablutions and joined his brother. They ate and talked about their next move. Ralph didn't eat much.

Colin asked, “You want any more of this chicken?”

“No, it tastes a bit, I don’t know, off or something, and the strange thing is that I feel guilty about eating it for some reason. Besides, it gives me heartburn.”

“Your loss.” He took another bite. “Tastes fine to me.” Speaking around a mouthful of chicken, Colin added: “We need some clothes.”

Ralph responded with, “And I need a drink.”

His brother agreed.

They buried the remains, washed again, and began to follow a faint path by the side of the stream until they came to the edge of a dusty little town, a rather small, almost quaint, town.

There was a farm at the edge of it. It was laundry day, sheets and towels and underwear flapped from the clothesline in the wind. Like big fat naked ninjas they snuck up behind the barn and then into the farmyard. No one except for a rather sad old horse saw them.

On the line Ralph found a pair of bib overalls that seemed to fit pretty well. Colin ended up with a pair of trapdoor long johns. The rear buttons were missing.

They retreated behind the barn again and put on the clothes.

“We got clothes, well sort of.”

“Check.”

“So now we need to look for a bar.”

As was earlier stated, it wasn’t a large town, it only had one main street, and so it wasn’t long before they found and entered the ‘Clogg Inn’. Inside they talked to the bartender, giving him a bogus story about having being robbed by gypsies and having all their clothes stolen. The bartender, called ‘Puck’, said he would give them a couple of beers if they would wash the dishes. Ralph made Colin do it. There were a lot. Later on, over the cold beers, the brothers had a typical Campbell round table discussion. It was a little round table, the kind you often found in similar bars; this one was covered with a green terrycloth tablecloth to soak up the spills. They decided to - what else? - set up a still. I mean start a winery.

Over a dish of peanuts they discussed locations. “So where should we set up?”

“You saw that tunnel just up the rise from where we woke up? How about there?”

“Perfect.”

So what else could they do? They both checked out the tunnel, and instantly made themselves at home. It did seem perfect.

Behind an abandoned house in town they found an old fuel oil tank. They liberated it for the cause and managed, during the middle of the night, to drag it into the tunnel. This, they had decided, is what they would make the booze wine in.

Over the next few days, Ralph and Colin gathered information, begged for handouts, and did odd jobs around town to get a little money together (Colin got the oddest, licking stamps at the post office). From the townsfolk they started to find out particulars about the town: the failed railroad, the tunnel, and the past. The two brothers didn’t have memory of any of it. They thought they were just newcomers, foreign as it were.

And, let the banners fly, the angels sing, Ralph and Colin found actual jobs. Let me clarify that a bit - they both found the same job.

The brothers both got hired at ‘The Tire’ and took turns working at the gas bar. Sometimes they also worked in the big store that was a part of the same chain (well, more like the mother ship) and in the process accumulated a stack of cash bonus coupons, some of them legitimately. The job kept them fed and clothed. The bonus coupons, well, they helped with purchases they made at the big store for their ‘project’: the pipes and elbows and galvanized wash tubs, oh my. Plus, as an added bonus, they got an additional employee discount. Not bad by Campbell standards.

Soon they had also picked-up two end of season lawn chairs, they now had official furniture in their place. They complimented the décor with a hydro spool table, which they had found and rolled several miles (don’t start with all that kilo-whatsit stuff) down the road and to the tunnel.

From work they also brought home wooden pallets. It’s okay, they had asked the manager if they could take some and were told they could grab them from the scrap wood pile. Some ‘good’ pallets also somehow became part of the take home.

So for quite some time after that, after almost every shift, one or other of the brothers would carry home a skid. They started pulling them apart and then banging the wood in new configurations. Some of them held.

They built a shack. There was even a window in it (although it was so dirty you couldn’t see out). They tried to put a door on it but it just wouldn’t hang right, so they gave up. The door became a workbench.

Again from the big store, where there was some sort of promotion going on that week, Colin bought a small transistor radio. He brought it home and hung it so it dangling by its plastic strap from a beam over the workspace. The radio played constantly when they were working, so yes, it can be said the Campbells were radio-active. (Editors note: Sorry, the Campbells forced me to put that line in.)

Ralph munched on peanuts as he worked.The floor was soon covered with shells.

They used the wood from the skids to build the base and structure of the ‘decanting apparatus’. They installed the base in a rather large hole (that looked like it had been blasted out of the floor), then they strong-armed the tank onto it. As for camouflaging their efforts, they didn’t, everyone avoided the tunnel.

Here’s why:

There was a superstition about the old tunnel; people didn’t of their own volition ever enter it, not even the adventurous kids, not even on a double dog dare. There were tales of a great blast that had occurred years ago and after that blast the mouth of the tunnel blew smoke rings for three or more years. Recently the stories had returned to make another round of town because a short while ago there had been another blast coming from that direction followed by shrill screams that split the air.

The Campbells still didn’t put the pieces together.

So the old stories re-circulated. One was about the giant half-horse man named Rapf and his red clad Chinese magician elf. These two, it was said, gave cookies to bad little boys and girls. What’s wrong with that you might ask? Well, parents would tell their children that any child who got a cookie from Rapf or the red elf – well, bad things would happen. Just sayin’. The kids behaved. Parents had given a name to this pair; they called them ‘CamBo Claws’.

Around that time, due to a major delay in delivery, Mark’s Milk (the local town grocer, convenience, feed store, and post office), got in a shipment of rotting fruit. The Campbells bought it all, lock, stock and fruit flies, for deep, deep discount. They had their wine starter.

Ralph told his brother, “Rinse out the galvanized tubs. Use the good water. We’re in business.”

And so Ralph and Colin got down to work. Soon the aroma of sugars turning to alcohol permeated the chamber. The old oil furnace was almost filled to the top. They let it stew for about a whole week. It was almost ready. It would be, at most, just a couple more days.

With nothing to do for the moment except wait, and while waiting for his brother to get off work and bring back some food, Colin spent his time poking around at the very back of the tunnel, right near where it ended, and found, in a sort of hidden alcove, an old dust-covered crate full of bottles which still contained what appeared to be white wine. Some glowing little green mushrooms nestled close by.

When Ralph got back Colin showed him his discovery. Together they grabbed the ends of the crate and carried it back to the shack. After consulting they added most of this wine to the mix, their reasoning summed up by the phrase ‘it couldn’t hurt’. After a minute or so the sizzling and foaming seemed to stop and they decided to test the concoction. They used a long bent handled ladle to bring out samples.

They drank. They dipped. They drank again.

“Wow, this stuff is actually good.”

“So it’s ready for bottling?”

“I think it’s more than ready, it’s anxious.”

“Great. Okay, do we need anything else?”

“Ah, I think all we’re going to need is something we can use as a racking tube.”

“How about a vacuum cleaner hose?”

“Might work, we’ll go see.”

“Oh, and maybe a bit of that plastic screening to filter out the dead bugs.”

“You got it. I’m going to pick up some more peanuts too. We can stop by Mark’s Milk and get some on the way.”

“Let’s just have another little sampling before we go.”

“You were reading my mind.”

“I’ll serve.”

“Mercy buckets.”

He did, they did.

On the way outside and heading down to town they started to feel a change.

“Is it just me or are you feeling good right now?”

“Now that you mention, I’m am too.”

So they did the store run, actually running (which they haven’t been able to do for years). They ran and jumped and leapt and frogged and laughed and punched and pushed each other all along the way. They felt great. They were not even a little out of breath when they got to Mark’s.

Standing in the parking lot just outside the store Colin said to Ralph, “You realize what we have here? It’s like a damn magic potion. We’ll make a gazillion on this.”

“I feel great. In fact I feel super. I feel super, super, super great.”

“I think this brew must be the final solution.”

“Like the fountain of Yute, only grapier.”

“And all we have to do is bottle it.”

“Nothing can stop us now.”

I think that Time may have heard that last brash statement.

And on that trip they also discovered they had other super powers, some beyond the mere physical. The first was the power of salesmanship. Colin talked an old widow lady, who was out walking her dog, into buying a bottle unseen, untested (like a snake oil salesman he did play up the curative benefits of a nightcap or two). That was impressive. Ralph talked Mark into buying a case (sold to keep rats out of the seed stock) and had him throw in a free bag of peanuts. They picked up their stuff at ‘The Tire’, and Colin talked one of the cashiers into buying a bottle as well (a love elixir). He even got a promise for a date. Flushed with victory he headed out of the store and they both headed back to their lair.

The trip back was even faster, more boisterous, and more raucous than before. The only delay caused when the town cop stopped them for making so much noise and was going to give them a ticket. Ralph not only talked their way out of getting the ticket but also sold the cop four bottles of their brew (hair restorer).

Once back in the tunnel and laughing about the trip to town, they decided to have a toast in celebration, then had another, followed by a third. Numbers became rather confused after that, which was a shame. They should have been more focused on the bazillions they thought they were going to make.

They started horsing around again, running around, laughing, and throwing things. A bag of peanuts got sprayed everywhere.

So instead of stopping 'sampling', like true Campbells, they kept drinking. Maybe they were hoping this particular magic mutant wine would also have a super power for some sort of, I don’t know, law of diminished incapacity or something, like you wouldn't get drunk on it no matter how much you had. They would have been wrong, they were wrong. This stuff was Potent, with a capital ‘P’. Another good ‘P’ word would be paralysis.

With each drink they could feel new and incredible powers flowing through their veins (if not their brains). Ralph found that he could break boards with his bare hands. He didn’t feel anything, didn’t get a scratch. He wondered if his brother was the same. He broke a board over his head.

Colin barely noticed. He was staring into space.

Ralph started exploring his vast collection of body noises and found that he could burp smoke rings and belch like a sonic wall.

Colin barely noticed.

And Ralph saw that he had developed a form of x-ray vision; not only was he able to see through the little window they had installed on the shack (a remarkable feat in and of itself considering the filth-caked condition of it, this really was a super power) but everything else he glanced at was so focused it was realer than real. Detail was incredible. He could even take off his glasses and still see everything and more. He saw the little wad of Canadian Tire money still sitting on the spool table and picked it up. He could look through the bills and see, clearly, the other side.

There may have been some sort of emerging precocious or precognitive talent as well because there was something else too about the money; these bills looked somehow important to him. He rolled the bills up into a wad and held them tightly in his hand.

This didn’t stop him, however, from picking up and then frizbying a toiled seat at his brother’s head.

Colin too got a version of enhanced vision, it was the reason that he wasn’t paying much attention to Ralph. For him vision had become x-ray-ted, everything, again down to the smallest detail, looked like it was, ah, to state it mildly, fooling around. The knots on the wall boards were all intermingled and doing rude things to other knotholes. Even the dust motes were having an orgy. Everywhere he looked he saw sex. A little (very little at this point) part of his brain thought it might have something to do with the mushrooms. When Ralph threw the toiled seat at his face he saw something quite different, x-rated, quite erotic, heading to engulf him.

Colin’s jaw dropped in wonder, he forgot to duck, froze, and could only watch it approach like a deer caught in the headlights.

It was a perfect toss. It was a ringer. Ralph raised his money clenched fist in victory.

When Ralph saw the toilet seat nested around Colin’s neck, and saw the expression on his face (in all it's minutest details) he started to laugh. He laughed so hard that it would have hurt if he had been able to feel pain, but still he bent over, one hand clutching his stomach, the other holding the wad of CTC money. He was laughing tears.

Now, you might expect here some typical Campbell puerile humor. In an effort to elevate the proceedings and bring a needed note of class and restraint to the events that happened next we’ll quote from literature. This is an excerpt from Chaucer’s Canterbery Tales:

‘This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart, 

As greet as it had been a thonder-dent’

Now we’ll just substitute the name Ralph and translate it into modern English:

This Ralph just then let fly a fart.

As loud as it had been a thunder-clap.

In Ralph’s bent position said fart happened to be directed, or maybe aimed is a better word, toward the hydro spool table on which a solitary peanut sat, outcast from the earlier scattering. This peanut, now surrounded by a glowing corona of Ralph's internal gasses, blasted off into the air, pinged off the radio hanging from the beam (which changed the station to 'hurting music'), careened off another beam, and made a hole-in-one into the tank with an audible ‘ploop’.

The wine must have been incredibly peanut intolerant; without any warning it exploded.

The brothers would have been torn to something smaller than smithereens by the blast except that imperviousness still clung to them like a cloak.

Time, which has been patiently waiting for something like this to happen, saw this as an opportunity to put things right, to balance his ledger, and these StuporMen had unleashed the power that was needed to do so. He took all that explosive force, channeled it, opened a wormhole, and sent the brothers right back to where they had come from.

Lastly, the brothers developed a new thing; the power of Lethe (as in the river of forgetfulness, the one that you have to have the ferryman carry you across in order to travel to the underworld, to Hades), except it wasn’t lethal in the, well, normally lethal way of these things, you know, like, ah, dead (again because of the damn invulnerability). What occurred was in that other sense of Lethe, it made the brothers forget. It wiped the brothers' memories of past events so the brothers would wake up, as they often did, dazed and confused. They would forget that they had super powers. They would forget a lot of things.

I hope you enjoyed the stories.

Commercial message

Hi,

I'm going to take a moment here and do an unabashed plug for a new blog site.

My good friend Sid and I decided to do a mutual blog on the theme of cemeteries we have visited, either together or alone. The images you will find there were lovingly crafted from the finest captured pixels.

If you are interested then please, by all means, visit us at...

http://cities-of-the-dead.blogspot.ca/

Thank you for your time. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

I hope my brother doesn't find out I've used our blog for personal use. Shhhh, don't tell.

Colin

Christmas Wines of 2013

I'm going to do a minor edit of the intro I did for this year's blog entry from a few days ago and then add a word or three at the end of it. Here you go.

This is the story that goes along with the wines we made for this year. I haven't had the opportunity to download the images of the labels or of the pamphlet because of, well, the ice storm which hit a few days ago. I did have power for most of the time (thank Gord) but no heat and, more to the point, no internet access. I'll come back and add all those nice touches later on.

Anyway, this is the story we came up with.

Colin


So here it is me back to do some nice touching. I said 'nice' right? I can't decide if that sounds dirty or not. I'll add all the pictures and flourishes and, well, stuff, followed by the full story with pictures added.

Here's an example of the stuff.

Ralph and I did a bit of travelling this year, not together mind you (which would have been nice but just didn't happen), we each did our own trip and went to different destinations. Each place became a theme for one of the labels, and here they are.

And...

And because the story that I was working on (from ideas furnished by the both of us) was getting very long I decided, as per our want, to produce a brochure that would accompany the gifts of wine. I'll show the full pages first then add each panel solo because it's easier to read.

The panels...

And now it's time, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, for a little story...

The Campbell Brothers: A Cautionary Tale

Reading in the outhouse, before ripping out the sheet for, um, personal hygiene, Ralph came across an article in the ‘Who’s Not Who Anymore’ section of the newspaper. It said that one of the Lairds of Campbell had recently died and that the Scottish barristers Underhill, Underhill and Overprice were waiting for his heirs to make themselves known in order to process their inheritance. A small picture of the ex-Laird was included with the item.

Wiping himself with the next page and quickly pulling up his lederhosen, Ralph ran from of the outhouse looking for his brother. He stumbled up to him panting and handed him the page pointing at the article and the photograph, saying, “Look, isn’t this that weird Uncle Rufus, the guy that came to visit that one time? Well, he’s croaked. And who would have known, it says here that he had an estate, a whole estate. We could be royalty or something.”

“Wow, you know this could be the best shot we ever had, well, for money, for influence, for respect, for anything.”

“We’ll have to scamper to Scotland then. You’re right, we could probably get ourselves in line for some cash at the least, or something, like a title,” Ralph prompts again thinking to himself, “King Ralph the First”.

“How about co-regent?”

“Only if I get to sit on the throne first.”

“But how are we going to get there? We have no money.”

“We could mail ourselves. Plaster ourselves with stamps and jump in a mailbox.”

“Nah, takes money for stamps. We have to find a cheaper way.”

“Fed-Ex?”

“Same thing only even more expensive.”

“How about shipping ourselves C.O.D?”

“And who’s going to pay for us at the other end?”

“We could bill us to Uncle Rufus’ estate.”

“And be in storage for months maybe. No, we gotta’ find another way. And on the cheap.”

So it’s midnight at the docks. Two lumpy shadow figures somehow manage to get through a chain link fence (after much low voiced discussion and cursing), past a security guard (sleeping) and into the huge warehouse.

Colin says in a whisper, “Now there has to be stuff going to Scotland. All we have to do is find something big enough for us to fit in.” They separate and begin to look. The light from their small flashlights darts across the interior. After several minutes of search Colin, stooping to read a tag, calls to his brother, “Ralph, over here.”

Ralph appears by his brother’s side and peers at the tag being illuminated by the flashlight beam. “Glasgow, Scotland”. It’s attached to a big old steamer trunk. Another trunk sits right next to it.

After having a squabble about who gets which trunk the brothers dump most of the contents then throw in corn chips, pop, beef jerky and assorted snacks for survival. Colin was going to put in something green and had two cabbages. Ralph tossed them in a high arc out of the warehouse window into the water. Then they climbed into the trunks.

As they’re getting settled Ralph asks, “Hey, Colin, how do we go to the washroom?”

“Depends,” his brother replies.

Then they shut the lids. The steamer trunks became two steaming trunks once they had closed themselves in.

Early that morning the trunks were loaded onto ships. That’s right, two ships. One trunk did indeed go to Scotland but, since they hadn’t bothered to check both of the tags, the other trunk headed for points south.

Points South

Ralph, sits at a bar talking to three sailors, one being the captain of a ship in the harbour. He was pouring out drinks for them from a skin that he had. “I found myself on a cargo ship, dere I was. Somehow the crew found me.” Actually Ralph happens to be allergic to himself and being confined in close proximity to, well, quite literally, himself in the trunk he kept sneezing and banging his head on the lid. Between the bangs, the “ows” and the “%*#@%!!”’s, the crew naturally and easily zoomed in on his position. “Then they chucked me overboard and sailed away. That wasn’t very nice.”

He washed up on a shore, like a beached whale, barely alive. Natives found him there, took pity on him, and carried him back to their village. There they let him dry out for a couple days on a rack constructed in front of the headman’s hut. Amongst themselves they called him the big white whale man. They thought he was a gift from the gods. They never questioned which ones.

When Ralph got dried out he started wandering the area. He took to walking through the trails near the village. Ralph, always so nimble and spry, slipped, fell, crashed, clogged, and broke his way through many of the paths, knocking over trees in his path and destroying whole ecosystems. Usually narrow and hard to find, these ways became known as ‘Big White Whale Ways’, the native equivalent to superhighways.

The island, Ralph learned, was called Bogas.

On one of his hikes Ralph found a weird looking fruit lying innocently on the beach. It sort of reminded him of one of those monarch butterfly caterpillars but only really big and bloated. He asked the natives what it was and with hand gestures and miming and a few words of English they seemed to be saying that it was called the vomit fruit. If a plant could be pissed off this would be the one.

Morinda Citrifolia

In a ceremony around the fire that night Ralph was told about the sacred brew made from this fruit that helps them reach their inner selves. But, he was also told, the fruit was a vengeful spirit returned to life. Morinda Citrifolia (that was it’s actual name) had to be tamed and the spirit appeased. It had to be prepared in a very particular way or there were serious consequences.

The ceremonial brew was made and passed to the tribesmen. The natives passed out and dreamed the gods.

It didn’t work on Ralph quite the same way. He didn’t pass out and he didn’t dream gods. I guess he was used to a bit stronger brew. This stuff just made his head hurt and his tongue numb. ‘It needth a bit more kick to it’, he thought.

He saw a big lizard swallow one of the bloated caterpillar fruit once and after a second or two it got an odd look on its face and then exploded. Sometimes life is like that.

Ralph decided to make his own.

Almost immediately Ralph ignored how the natives said to make the brew and improvised. This made the god(s) very angry and as he held up the large lizard skin filled with the stuff, he was struck by lightning. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to Ralph, the gods always seemed to be taking pot shots at him. He’s been hit by lightning 4 times already. Anyhow, this electric stimulation somehow improved the toxicity of the brew.

To show his gratitude to the tribe for saving his life he wanted to make them a real Campbell meal. He took chunks of the fruit and some other plants and, for good measure, added in the more tender bits of what used to be a large lizard, and made chili for them. After eating and drinking their fill, after almost an hour, the combo hit. The natives spent the rest of the night vomiting behind the bushes, and they all got cases of the dire rear. The whole village stank like…you know. Ralph, who was getting a lot of sick but killing looks from the natives thought it might be a good time to hit the road, or the beach, or whatever. He took the rest of the concoction in the skin, a couple ripe fruit, and made his escape.

He ‘borrowed’ one of their dugout canoes and paddled away from shore. Because Ralph’s personality was bigger and heavier than the tiny boat could handle, not far from the island it swamped and Ralph got dumped into the sea once again. He was left bobbing in the choppy waters clinging to the partly inflated lizard skin that seemed to float quite well. It was hard to drink from though.

Time passed, currents carried the brother onward. A cabbage floated by. Ralph sneered at it.

Eventually he ended up at a further other different island called Nowhere Atoll. True to his unerring sense of direction he found a bar. It was named the Blue Bottle Fly Bar. And yes, there were several in attendance.

And that’s where he met the captain and crew of the tramp steamer Jordan Harbour, and after getting them all mightily droned (that’s drunk and stoned) on the Morinda concoction, convinced the captain that he had the keys to the locks of the Panama Canal and could get them through on the sly. And the captain believed him.

So with much stumbling and falling over and clinging to one another they boarded the ship and somehow managed to cast off and head for open water. Unknown to Ralph a couple of the Morinda seeds dropped out of the pocket of the grass skirt and fell into the planter of the cook’s herb garden.

That night Ralph got hammered. Okay, even more hammered. He was tired, he was pissed, he was still squelching from his last soaking, and in the cabin he found the lockbox (‘If I can open it, it ain’t locked,’ he said to himself.) with the ship’s rum supply, so he drank it and crashed.

When he finally woke up midmorning the next day and climbed on deck he found that all the crew was gone except, for some reason, several left boots. The Morinda seeds had not been idle. They had not only sprouted but had rooted, had grown, had blossomed, seeded, spread and taken over the ship. The plants were everywhere on board. They were eating through everything including the metal of the hull, which is not really a good idea on a ship, particularly one at sea.

So I guess it was fortunate that the ship ran aground on Red Frog Island. Ralph hopped ashore and, as per his usual activity, went looking for a drink.

The Jordan Harbour

There was a village at the other end of the island where he stopped for a while (he had by this time lost all count of days). Ralph, waiting for some sort of ship to come, kept himself busy. He figured out a way to make a still using bamboo for pipes and gourds for jugs. He went back to the ship and harvested the now fully ripe Morinda and started a fresh batch. He still wouldn’t remember the proper way to prepare the fruit. ‘Oh well’, he thought, ‘at least it’s impotent’.

One day, sitting under the thatched beach umbrella of his new venture, Ralph’s Open Air Bar And Grill, trying to sell gourds of Morinda to unsuspecting passers by (of which there were none, the villagers learned early on to avoid him, his bar, and the stuff), he saw a sail in the distance. To signal the boat he set fire to the bar.

Ralph's Open Air Bar and Grill

It started to approach and soon had moored itself just off shore. Two people came ashore.

So that was how Ralph met the pair of smugglers Tom and Cyndi DunneHyphenDunne. After a couple ‘free samples’ of Morinda he learned in the following conversation that they usually made their living by smuggling assorted novelties - snow globes and fake doggy doo doo - which they traded to the natives for decorative gourds and grass skirts. Ralph talked them in to giving him a lift off Red Frog Island and doing the crossing to Scotland. In return they could have most of the Morinda he had made. They loaded the gourds into the boat.

They let Ralph set up shop in the basement of the sailboat. He found it a bit dark and very damp but it seemed to have plenty of room. He pulled a pin out of something and hammered it into the wall so that he could hang up his skin and some of his other stuff.

The pin happened to be part of the steering mechanism connected to the rudder.

For some reason the boat would only turn left now. They kept sailing, doing starboard tacks (Ralph wondered if you got those in a hardware store) in larger and larger circles, spiraling ever southwards. Tom and Cyndi couldn’t figure out what was happening.

And Ralph soon realized that he had been had. His room was in fact underwater and he was rapidly running out of breath. He grabbed his stuff off the wall, mainly the lizard skin skin, pulled the pin out and went on deck. When Tom saw the pin in Ralph’s hand he knew immediately what had happened.

Words were said. Voices were raised. Fingers were pointed. Ralph was stranded at the next port.

The land of the Scots.

Colin, having survived his long trip, was eventually exposed when the lid of the trunk was thrown open and several women, in various stages of undress, peered in at him. Colin squinted up and smiled. The women did not share in the smile.

He grabbed the edges of the trunk and began to pull himself out.

The women glared at him and at the clothes he was wearing, which were theirs.

He started making his excuses, hands up to protect his face from the lipsticks, compacts, and other throwables ready to hand that were now being hurled in his general direction (he was glad this wasn’t a kitchen), and then fled through the dressing room door now at his back, into the hallway of the old theatre’s backstage, and out through the stage door.

He passed a poster as he was accelerating out of the alley and just had time to read that this was triumphant return of ‘The Glaswegian Burlesque Revue’.

‘Bloody ecdysiasts’, he said to himself. A skimpily clad mob followed.

That was how he ended up threading the streets of Glasgow dressed like a harem girl with major issues. What’s worse, having run through the crowd at a soccer pitch and across the playing field, had picked up a larger retinue of people intent on harming him: a soccer team and most of a bagpipe band.

Colin, in his haste, had crashed into the piper as he was playing the team’s anthem. They both went down in a wailing, screeching tangle. The bagpipe burst and the piper nearly did as well as Colin landed on the bag. As the silence and the shock still had the moment suspended, Colin, never one to miss an opportunity to get out alive, quickly got up - parts of pipe still tangled around his legs - and continued fleeing.

After a lengthy run headlong and lost and after several zigs, a couple of zags, and a hop, skip and a thump, he took an opportunity both to catch his breath and to look behind to see if he was still followed. He kept moving backwards because he’d learned early on that distance is often the true key to survival, at least for him and Ralph. He wondered then, not for the first time, where the hell his brother had gotten. Then, still not paying attention and still walking backwards, he fell off a bridge and onto the top of a train. Fate had smiled at him it seemed, but the smile was a crooked one.

He made himself as comfortable as he could on a train car roof and hoped he was heading in the right direction. In actual fact, contrary to most Campbell expectations, he was. He saw he had a run in his stockings. It started to rain. It got dark.

The train entered a station and the sign read ‘Stirling’. ‘Wow’, he thought, ‘I’m here’. Cold, soaked and shivering, he climbed down (fell) from the train and exited the station before anyone else could give chase. He got another run in his stockings. Once clear of the immediate area he snoozed in the comfort of a trash can.

In Stirling the next morning he looked up the phone number for the lawyers. It took several tries, a handful of begged coins, and some pleas for help from passers by to figure out how the phone contraption worked and finally make the call. The receptionist seemed happy to hear from him, as did the barrister - a Mr. Overprice - who picked up on the line shortly after. Colin told the lawyer who he was and also that his brother would have been there too but had gotten lost in shipping somehow. Colin was told to meet up in front of the law office in an hour. Together, they would make their way to the old Campbell place in the town of Dollar, 20 kilometers away, and there the will would be read. He cleaned himself up as best he could and found his way to the lawyer’s office.

In the car, after some polite conversation, Colin asked who else would be there, and who else was in line for the inheritance.

The lawyer’s response was, “Besides possibly your brother it would seem that no one else was willing to accept the offer. You are the sole benefactor”.

They approached the town and then began the drive up through a glen. Colin gets a glimpse through the trees to…, “Is that what I think it is, a real castle?”

Castle Campbell

“Indeed it is. Castle Campbell.”

They park, walk the short distance up to the castle, and through the entrance gate. Colin saw that he was stepping into a ruin. All he could think to say was, “Wow, must have been one hell of a party. This place is a ruin. What happened here?”

Mr. Overprice responded, “A revolt. Normally though it is the townsfolk who are revolting, this time it was the other way around.” He laughed dryly.

Colin didn’t get the joke.

Much of the place was indeed a ruin except for the big stone sticky up thing in the middle, the keep it was called, which was intact, well mostly intact. And in the keep, after the formality of the reading, Colin was taken to a drawing room where, behind a frayed tapestry, there was a massive iron studded door.

The lawyer continued, “As I said the estate is worth somewhere in the neighbourhood of two million pounds, minus a few minor details, the personal debts of the last laird, which are behind that door.”

Colin, still in the state of shock from the reading of the will, opened the door and immediately disappeared under the avalanche of paper that spilled out. When he swam to the surface he sat there a moment and then skimmed a few papers off the top and looked at them. There were bills - for everything - going back years. I mean decades. And many of the amounts due were in weird currency too… tuppence, thrupenny, whuppence, comeupence, farthings, groats (‘Groats,’ Colin thought, ‘they got groats, anything else, sheeps maybe?’). He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

On the advice of the lawyer, he hired an accountant; one that was familiar with all the olde currency who could do the number crunching. Colin sure couldn’t do it. Mr.Overprice recommended a certain Mrs.Olivia Orkney (actually related to the barrister although Colin didn’t know that). Mr.Overprice went to pick her up in his car.

Colin and the bills

Colin fought the temptation to set fire to the pile of bills.

Soon the old woman arrived. Colin had to carry the calculator and abacus from the car up to the castle. He put everything down on a table just outside the room with the bills. Then the lawyer left.

Colin spent several hours sitting at the huge table sorting paper and eating leftover haggis sandwiches (the only food that seemed to be available in the castle). The only sounds in the massive empty space were the sounds of the calculator clicking away, the clack of the abacus beads on the wires, and occasional sounds of the accountant tut-tut-tutting to herself as she toted.

Colin kept thinking to himself, ‘But I didn’t even do anything. This time it really isn’t my fault.’ Eventually it got to him. He had to get out of the accounting room; each click and clack was making his head pound. He lifted his face out of his hands, rose from the table, and said to the world at large, ‘I’ll be back’.

He wandered through the keep, checking behind doors and tapestries, looking in drawers; just generally being nosey. He couldn’t believe the mess in one of the rooms. It looked like an orgy had exploded. The bed was big though so he took it and had a nap.

On another foray he discovered ten barrels in the cellar containing something that, when he pulled the bung out and sniffed the contents, smelled interesting, faintly wine scented, fruity with an antiseptic undertone. Since he hadn’t had a real drink in who knows how long, he wondered if it was good (for a certain value of good) to drink. He siphoned off a cask of the stuff and carried it upstairs to ‘his bedroom’. The stuff, whatever it was, passed the time much better for him because it blanked out most of it. Sheep stomach sandwiches started to taste tolerable because he started dipping them in the stuff before consuming them. He started thinking of it as ‘the dip’.

By the time the cask was empty Colin had achieved what served him for normalcy. He grabbed a grubby robe from off the floor, slipped it on, and went back downstairs. Somewhat to his surprise the tally had just been completed. He was presented with the result.

There were, of course, the bills for the mundane stuff: electricity, water, privy cleaning, chimney sweeping, stonemasonry, blacksmithy, and all that kind of castle maintenance thing.

Then there came the not so mundane items: IOU’s (for mainly gambling debts), 10 barrels of scented sheep dip, a bill of several thousand pounds for several thousand pounds of haggis, bag pipe lessons, hookers (not rug makers), bag pipe playing hookers, and a whopping bill for a revolt from the people of Dollar.

And then there were the death taxes. He said out loud, “Wow, what if you can’t afford to die?”

Mrs. Orkney said nothing.

‘Okay’, he thought, ‘there’s still some money left, not a bad sum, surely enough to live if not regally then at least comfortably.’

Then the accountant presented her bill. Colin gulped.

‘Well, there’s still something, a few grand’, he thought.

After a phone call from Mrs. Orkney to the law office, the lawyer, Mr. Overprice, returned and presented Colin the bill for his services as well. He lived up to his name.

Colin, dejected, sat down hard on a chair. It broke under him. ‘Maybe I can still afford a pint of cider or something. At least I should have the title.’

As a parting gesture the barrister pulled something out of the inner pocket of his overcoat and dropped it onto the table. It was a scroll sealed with wax. The lawyer said, pointing, “That is a decree from the head of the Campbell Clan, the Duke of Argyle.”

Colin looked at the rolled paper but didn’t touch it. He’d never had a scroll before. It looked important.

Mr. Overprice continued, “Once the accounts are settled, as they now are except for the signing of cheques, your entire branch of the Campbell clan is to be lopped off, metaphorically that is, or rather historically, lock, stock and title. And just in case you are wondering what then is to become of you, you are either to be put in prison or put to work as a privy scrubber on the Duke’s estate, for life. Maybe both.”

You could tell that the lawyer liked to hear the sound of his own voice and was warming to his topic.

“Let me give you a little explanation. You see we needed a sacrificial lamb as it were, in order to have someone directly related to your uncle pay for his actions in life, for the sake of the citizenry of the town who demand it and for the nation, which, quite frankly, could use a little pruning of the more warped branches. You, with the way you dress, the way you behave, are definitely that person.

“Having murderous cutthroat ancestors is one thing, that just gives a place colour, a sense of history, but your deviant branch of the Campbells…”. He made a noise of disgust.

“Finally, since your uncle has indeed passed on, your family has lost the protection of powers that are, shall we say, higher up the royal food chain, including the Duke himself. Bob is definitely not your uncle anymore.”

Colin didn’t understand that reference either. The lawyer knew it too and chuckled to himself.

“You’ve earned his fate and our contempt,” and he threw in, for the first and only time, the words, mocking, “my Lord.”

“Now, as for the castle, it will be torn to the ground and then pissed on by the townsfolk. Oh we’ll keep part of a wall and maybe the top room of the keep. It is old you know. But in the main it will be made into a squirrel and bat sanctuary.”

He starts putting on his gloves. “Mrs Orkney and I will be here tomorrow morning with the cheques for you to sign. Oh, and likely the police as your escort to your new life. For tonight we’ll be closing the gate and locking it from the outside. We’ll be keeping the keys for your, um, protection. Have a good night.” They left. A hollow boom echoed through the largely empty space as the massive door closed. A heavy key turned in the lock.

Late that night, tossing and turning in bed (lumpy, uncomfortable, smelling of dust and dip) the answer came to him. Scamper. He sat up and looked around the gloomy room. ‘There has to be a way out’, he thought, ‘has to be’. He grabbed the old robe, checked all the usual exits (locked) and then headed up the stairs to the parapet near the bat room (there really was one here) and peered over the battlement.

There it was, about six feet over and four feet down from where he was standing, a drainpipe leading to freedom. He went to the bedroom and retrieved a couple of sheets, tied them together, then secured them to one of the battlements. He lowered himself down the castle wall somewhat and then started to swing back and forth until he could grab the downspout. There was a tense moment when Colin was left with one hand clinging to bed sheet and the other to the pipe, but he swung his leg around the drainpipe and got himself into a better position. He let go of the one and started to slide down the other. The drainpipe, unused to carrying the weight of a Campbell, had other ideas. About a quarter of the way down it broke away from the building. Colin fell backward screaming into disarray (actually a prickly bush). It hurt. It hurt a lot.

Luckily he didn’t break anything serious; it was all mostly scratches and bruises. He still had two good legs and he started to run. He didn’t stop running until he hit water and so with a big splash he fell into the Firth of Froth.

Something loomed close by. It was a ship. He dog paddled around it until he found the dock it was connected to and a ladder headed up. He snuck up the ship’s boarding ramp onto the deck and then hid himself under a tarp in a lifeboat. His stockings by this time were a shredded mess and the robe smelled like a wet sheep had messed in it.  Colin, exhausted from his efforts, passed out. Early the next morning the old hulk of a steamer headed out to sea.

Colin woke some time in the afternoon stiff and sore. He checked out his new surroundings and found emergency supplies left in the little boat: some sort of crackers and tins of Spam, a couple gallons of water. He munched on one of the crackers which was as hard as rock. ‘At least it doesn’t taste like sheep intestines,’ he thought. He managed to get it down with some sips of water. ‘Wish I had some dip.’

That satisfied him for a time. When it started to get dark he peeked from under the tarp and watched a couple of the seamen go about their duties. He’s starting to think that he might be able to sneak around a bit (not too many crew, not much activity) and maybe find the kitchen and some real food. He decided to wait for an hour or so.

That night, his torso emerging from the tarp, Colin reached out and grabbed a red painted handle intending to use it to lever himself up. The lever pulled down and the next thing he knows the lifeboat has launched itself over the side and into the water. Colin loses what little lunch he’s had all over the inside of the lifeboat.

So he sleeps for a while comforted by the rocking of the sea. Then he spends a week or so eating crackers and singing rude songs to himself.

Still under the canvas cover, he’s playing cops and robbers with himself with the flare gun he found in the emergency kit. He accidentally pulls the trigger. The flare ignites the canvas tarp, which starts to burn brightly (with a slight green tinge). The next thing to catch were the cracker wrappers (which Colin had not bothered to clean up), then the rest of the supplies. Colin tried to put out the flames but couldn’t. He singed his bathrobe. The boat itself was the last to catch.

“Oh, shit!”

Soon all that is left on the surface of a mildly undulating sea is Colin floating and holding on to this long paddle thingy. A cabbage floated by. Fortunately rescue arrived not long after, drawn to the location by the fire and smoke that was seen for miles. A waste scow headed south picked Colin up and then, a few days later, deposited him on the shore of an island.

Catching Up

Strange things always seem to happen to Ralph and Colin, well, like this. What do you think the chances are of two brothers just happening to meet at a small bar on an island in an out of the way location? How far out of the way? It’s so far out that it doesn’t exist on most maps, that’s how far. It is only a speck on some of the more detailed maps, an insignificant dot located somewhere in the South Atlantic Ocean closer to Antarctica than anyplace else.

The bar is the South Orkney Bar, the S.O.B., and it’s on, you guessed it, the South Orkney Islands (which, as I said, are bloody hard to find on the best of days). Colin walks into the bar and sees his brother Ralph already sitting at the bar and pouring a shot for the bartender from what appears to be a large wine skin.

They are naturally surprised to see one another at first. I mean, who wouldn’t be? After all the back slapping, the manly hug, and then the ritual sitting down and pouring of drinks, they get comfortable and begin to relate their stories to one another, the tales of how they ended up there. Colin was just finishing up telling Ralph all the sordid details of why they weren’t rich or royal or anything.

“But I didn’t even do anything. This time it really wasn’t my fault.

“And you remember, Uncle Rufus, he sponged on us like crazy when he came to visit, never paid for anything. Drank up all our booze, ate all our cheezies. I thought that he would think well of us with that death thing.

“All I got out of that was a massive headache and this really bad taste of sheep stomach in my mouth.” He pulled the robe closer around himself, took a sip of his beer and said, “At least we’ll be safe here for a while.”

A voice approaching from behind said, “You think so?”

Word really does get around fast, especially bad news like ‘Campbells are coming.’ This word certainly did. You almost might think it was some sort of telepathic link, except that long distance charges were later levied. Odd as in may seem this certain old accountant lady in Scotland had told her nephew, the local constable here by the way, in their weekly telephone call that this ill dressed and ill mannered Campbell person had run away before paying her.

So, an official delegation of, well, officials, approached the seated Campbells. The delegation was comprised of one rather pissed off constable and several large intimidating lads.

Getting right to the point the constable says, “You,” he points to Colin, “are not welcome here. I figure we can either send you back to Scotland or, and this is because I’m such a nice guy and hate doing paperwork, you can take the next ice floe heading north.”

The lads surround Colin. “But I just got here.”

“Too bad. You’re not staying here.”

The constable turns to Ralph, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“You haven’t done anything illegal that I know of, yet. You can stay but, and let me make this clear, only until you can book passage off our rock. Understood?”

“That’s no good.”

The constable bridled, the large intimidating lads assumed even more threatening postures, “You have another suggestion?”

“I’m going on the ice floe, of course, with my brother.”

So two brothers were put on that first ice floe heading north. “Well, for all the crap we went through, we ended up with nothing, absolutely nothing.” Colin absently stared out at the water and the fin zigzagging around in their wake. It seemed to be following them. He quickly took his hand out of the water.

Ralph feels the three seeds still remaining in his skirt pocket. “Well, buck up, we might have the main ingredient for our next batch of booze. I still have a couple of these Morinda seeds left. These things grow like weeds. Hell, they grow faster than weeds. They kill weeds, and wildlife, and most other stuff. Now if I can only remember the recipe…”

The scene fades as the brothers drift on.

Disclaimer: no actual fruit were harmed during the writing of this story, or lizards for that matter.



So there you have it, another tale of the Campbell brothers. I hope you enjoyed it.