The 168th Greatest Story in the Universe - A Tribute
Created | Updated Jan 5, 2004
Part Seven
At that moment Terry Horowitz was completely oblivious the fact that Mr Norman Hurst was looking for him. To be honest, at that moment he was completely oblivious to everything going on in his life, and he wasn’t very happy about it.
Before any of this had started Terry had been in a fairly unhappy state. His last girlfriend, Janie Thompson, had decided that living with a cement mixer would be preferable to staying with him, and so had decided to leave and move in with Donald the librarian. Though the fact she had said that living with a cement mixer would be preferable to staying with him was the thing that annoyed Terry the most.
This was mostly because for the past two and a half years they had been together they had continually had roadworks outside their house, and he had continuously complained to Browborough council about it. However when he received no reply after two years, he decided to contact them to find out where his two dozen letters of complaint had gone. They didn’t know.
This was the final straw. In protest Terry decided he was going to lay on the piece of road they were working on. Unfortunately he fell asleep, and whether through ignorance or blatant maliciousness (the courts couldn’t prove either it way) Terry ended up covered in cement. However this obsession had virtually wrecked his relationship, and had led Janie to say the remark in question on the day she left. Ironically, a few days after she moved out the road works finished. It was only then that Terry noticed what a noisy street it was. Particularly on a Saturday morning, as his house was on route to the local Cricket ground for the amateur Browborough cricket team. It was on one of these mornings that Terry had happened to walk through his bathroom door.
And now he was here, a few hours later, walking though a brick passage with some guy in a waistcoat, blue jacket, trousers, shoes and hair style which wouldn’t have looked out of place in 1950s Britain. His name was Turk. Turk didn’t actually look much older than Terry, and - other than the fact that he seemed to know a giant green creature with a beer belly - he seemed fairly normal.
‘His name is Revo Recma,’ said Turk after Terry had quietly asked him who the creature was who’d dragged him through the wall of the pub he had just been in. ‘I don’t know where he’s from, but he’s does a good job, and as long as your on his good side - he’s a good laugh.’
‘And if your on his bad side?’ enquired Terry nervously, watching the creature walk not eight feet in front of him down the passage.
‘There are stories I could tell you, but…’ Turk looked the nervous Terry up and down. ‘You don’t want to know.’
Realising that there was a conversation going on behind him Revo Recma turned his huge head to look back at them. Terry almost flinched under his burning red eyes. ‘You talking about me back there?’
‘Don’t worry Recma, just warning this guy here not to be on your bad side,’ joked Turk.
Recma just snorted out a vague laugh, and turned his head forward again. This did not comfort Terry.
Turk grinned at Terry. ‘I think he likes you!’
Terry stared, stunned, at Turk. ‘I somehow doubt it.’
What Terry didn’t realise was that in Pavrelar, the place that Revo Recma comes from, this was actually a very comforting sound. To grunt at a Pavrelarm child would be like cooing at a human child.
Strangely enough cooing in Pavrelar, as many great minds who have considered other cultures differing ways may have thought, is actually the worst thing you can do. It’s all to do with Recma’s peoples’ history. Many years ago cooing was a very fashionable craze amongst all the hip and trendy Pavrelarm. But in a confusing twist, for the Telch tribe – their nearest landlocked neighbours on their multi-cultured planet – cooing was a sign that it was ok to go in and take all the male Pavrelarm’s wives and girlfriends. The fact that the wives and girlfriends actually quite liked the sound of this idea only further enraged the men of Pavrelar. This caused many years of war between the Pavrelarm and the Telch. Suffice it to say that cooing became a very unpopular thing to do. Again, this is an understatement.
Terry did not know this. He also did not know that he was walking somewhere that billions of people (admittedly not of Terry’s time) would like to get into - the headquarters of the Callack organisation. This was mostly because every member had a substantial bounty on their heads.
As they turned the corner of the brick passage way, they came up to a metallic door with a yellow strip of light making a ‘zum zum’ noise every time it moved up and down. Why it made a ‘zum zum’ noise while moving up and down was completely unknown to anyone other than the people who designed the device. They had planned to be very original and make it produce a more soothing cooing noise, thankfully (in this instance) wiser counsel prevailed.
‘Right, walk through there,’ spoke up Turk.
‘Why?’ enquired Terry.
‘Because that’s where we’re going.’
‘Oh. What does that yellow light thing do?’
‘It checks a signature in your body’s make up, for signs of someone who - shall we say – doesn’t have the best interests of our organisation at heart.’
‘Your organisation?’
‘Yes - the Callack…’
‘Have you done telling him all our secrets yet?’ Recma angrily butted in.
A thought occurred to Terry. ‘Couldn’t you just let me go?’
Recma smiled. ‘Where would you go? You’re invisible to most of your people, and someone in your situation will be taken advantage of one way or another. Because of that, and the fact that you’ve just seen the way to our hideout, we have to keep you quiet one way or another.’
‘But why have you shown me the way to the base?’
Recma almost cooed. ‘Just call it an assurance that we will get you if you tell anyone about us.’
‘But that just doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t you just leave me in the pub…’
Recma grunted – angrily this time. ‘In you go.’ Recma grabbed Terry by the scruff of the neck and threw him through the door. As this happened Terry Horowitz thought to himself that life had not given him many lucky breaks of late.
Life didn't reply, but Terry had
a feeling it was probably grinning.
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