Fun with Larry and Barbara

Peter Clutchworthy was out of control! He knew that it was true, but couldn't quite figure out how it had happened. A few hours ago he had been respectful and sophisticated. Now he was hunched over a surgical table, his trousers around his ankles with the still quivering form of Molly Fippersnitch panting beneath him. And he didn't quite know how he'd got here. The melting snake-like things that had been obscuring his vision for an eternity, seemed to be clearing, but he could still see the figure of Heinrich Himmler doing the charleston out of the corner of his eye. Just how much Seraphim had he taken? Even though he couldn't remember, there was no doubt that he had, because he always hallucinated high ranking Nazi officers when high on the stuff.

Molly Fippersnitch was head nurse at The Care Home For The Disgusted (CHD), a place where poor souls who have lost the will to live go to be ignored and pumped full of drugs at the council's expense. Molly was a decent sort in her early fifties, with whom Clutchworthy had shared many an entertaining drink at various G-Bells establishments. Their current situation however, was a first. They were in one of the rarely used surgical theatres at the CHD — the one with the nice view of Town Hall Station through the window. Clutchworthy knew where he was because he and Maddog had snuck in here many times on Maddog's shift to smoke a spliff and down a few cans.

As if on cue, the door to the room suddenly burst open and the hulking figure of Maddog stumbled in. The face of the Welshman looked crazed as his eyes scanned the small room for an uncomfortable amount of time before eventually acknowledging that it was occupied. "Pete, Molls, wazzzzup!" he slurred as he lumbered over to the operating table. Clutchworthy quickly removed himself from Molly and pulled up his trousers, while Molly herself slowly sat up and dreamily attempted to get assembled. She looked a bit dazed, but was smiling. With any luck, she might not remember any of this when she came down, or sobered up. But Clutchworthy was starting to remember. Yes, it was all coming back now.

And as he remembered, he glanced across the room in the mirror and saw that atop his head sat Lord Bumbridge's favourite hat, the black fedora. The hat was how it had all started earlier. Clutchworthy had picked it up at the Institutional Club after leaving the Centre for Mind Control. He'd had a quick whisky at the bar there and then popped across the road to the CHD for a surprise visit with Maddog. Maddog was "Nutritional Engineer" at the CHD, which was just a pretentious institutional term for cook. Not that any real cooking was involved with Maddog's job, which consisted of microwaving packages of sludge and then arranging it on plates. The staff at the CHD was minimal, usually only 3 or 4 people on any given shift and the workload was nearly non-existent, so Clutchworthy's frequent visits were a welcome break in the boredom.

The CHD was a beautiful old building on Monson Road with grand windows and lofty ceilings. As usual, there was a puddle of urine in the lobby, which Clutchworthy had vaulted with ease. Floyd, the security guard, informed him that a patient upstairs had hung herself in the stairwell earlier, and that the staff would be drawing straws later to determine who would have to climb up and cut her down. She would unfortunately leak until someone did. In the ground floor hallway, a mindless loon was walking insistently into the wall, apparently perplexed as to why he wasn't getting anywhere. "Alright Ted?" said Clutchworthy as he passed the man, who responded with a series of grunts.

He had found Maddog in the kitchen with Molly, drinking beer and watching a DVD of "I Dream of Jeannie" episodes. He had joined them for an episode and a beer, until Maddog suddenly jumped up, grabbed the butler by the arm and lead him down the hall to the drug supply cupboard. The cupboard was supposed to be locked, but since everyone had a key, including some of the patients, no one really bothered. The last concrete memories Clutchworthy had were of popping a couple of something, inhaling a couple of something and then topping it all off with a Seraphim cocktail, which he believed might have involved both rum and gin.

The only other memory he had from the past few hours was the absolute certainty that he had spent them in the company of Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden, not Maddog and Molly Fippersnitch. He now looked over at Maddog and marveled at the state of the Welshman's hair, which stood straight up about 5 inches as though he had been electrocuted. Clutchworthy glanced at his watch and grimaced, "Christ, it's 6:30! Lord B will fumbling about like an infant, and mate, you've got a sound check in one hour!" Maddog, whose shift had ended two hours ago, was the guitarist from Hugo Sex Kitchen, who were playing tonight at The Other Forum. It was a big gig, in that the band hadn't played locally in six months, due to being on tour. Their following was huge and passionate and tickets to the show had sold out in 15 minutes. Maddog too, glanced at his watch in horror and then at Clutchworthy as the two exclaimed simultaneously, "Krell!".

Krell was a powerful stimulant derived from the poisonous slime of Cyanide Slugs. If you'd had an excessive night and needed to straighten up fast, this was the shit you wanted. Nothing else came close. The two men immediately reached into their respective pockets and each produced a single capsule. In unison, they popped them into their mouths.

As the two swiftly exited the room, they each suffered a moment of panic when noticing that Molly had disappeared, but as they reached the lobby, they heard her voice from above calling down a cheery goodbye. She was whistling the theme from "I Dream of Jeannie" as she cut down the body of poor Mrs Limpwhist, which plummeted 2 floors and landed with a hideous splat next to the two men. Suppressing giggles, they hurried out the door and went their separate ways.