Despite the lack of the usual beams of sunlight lapping through the window, John awoke at 9.00am as always. He felt like he'd been on a horrifically long journey through several time zones — he'd always assumed that this sort of problem could be slept off, but apparently that just hadn't worked. The swan had already woken up and looked like it was experiencing roughly the same problem. For a second, John almost saw a knowing look on an otherwise expressionless face, as if the swan had been in the same situation as John in the not-too-distant past. John wondered why this was for a second and then tried to get up off the sofa, only to realise that Emily had fallen asleep using his head as a pillow and had decided to drool on him to boot. John woke Emily up, saw that she was embarrassed to a suitable extent, and then went to get a towel to dry his hair.

Having had breakfast, the pair set out to take the swan to 31 Basildon Road, otherwise known as the headquarters of the Royal Society for the Protection of Swans. Having braved both the darkness and a serious of generally-harmless cake monsters using only their wits and a couple of extremely handy glowing feathers, John and Emily covered the entire distance on foot only to find that the building was locked shut. Fortunately, there was a message on the door:

Sorry that I can't be here right now — something came up. Please look after Cedric until I get back.


Thanks, Grand Controller of the RSPS

'Please look after Cedric - do you think that's aimed at us?'

                             Quack!

'Who do you reckon Cedric is?'


                                Quack!

'John... is that really a serious question?'

'Well, yes, actually. I've never met a Cedric before.'


                                                         Quack!

Emily rolled her eyes. He seemed a bright enough bloke, but he had absolutely no common sense whatsoever. The swan seemed to respond to the name Cedric, albeit with a slightly shocked look on its face, but that was enough. However, she had no idea where they should go next. She suggested to John that they take the swan back to one of their houses — hers was closest now — but John said that they had to go somewhere very important first. He didn't explain any further except for saying something about needing to be sure about something.

Lluchmoor was beginning to get on Pyrodæmon's nerves. Pyro had explained quite clearly that they'd just have to wait for the swan to come to them somehow, but his brother's attention span had run out about twenty seconds later. Lluchmoor was now busy jumping in and out of the bubble of temporal distortion that surrounded the boathouse, causing the bubble to make an impressive swishing noise followed by a dull bass thump each time Lluchmoor crossed through it. At first the sound had been a novelty, but that novelty had soon worn off, and now Pyro had begun to sigh and roll his eyes every time he heard it.

They would have taken the car, but the roads seemed far too blocked to be safe in these sorts of conditions. They would have walked, but it was just too far to go. A taxi was obviously out of the question, and so John and Emily had ended up cycling. John's bicycle would obviously still be in disrepair, and so the pair decided they would just have to borrow a couple of bikes from the shop, leaving a note to explain just in case the world went back to normal while they were gone. John was completely used to cycling through the capital and Cedric seemed quite happy to ride up front in a basket, but Emily was having just a few problems. She hadn't ridden a bike in a while, and the (in this case, tautological) expression that it would be 'just like riding a bicycle' didn't seem to be helping right now. However, she soon got the hang of it again, and they were soon making good progress out of London and into the countryside. John still remembered the route despite the number of years that had gone past, and they eventually came to a small countryside lane, alongside of which lay a burnt-out Vauxhall Astra Merit.

However, unlike the pair of demons who we have seen traversing this road several times in the past, John didn't take the route straight to the lake, instead turning along a side road to head straight for the banks of the river. John had followed the winding roads flawlessly all the way to the very spot where it had all begun twenty years ago, following which he made his first major mistake of the day. Without thinking, he took Cedric the swan out of the bicycle's basket and put him on the floor, only to see Cedric respond by running away at top speed. Seeing this happen, he let go of the bicycle, which proceeded to succumb to gravity, and then yelped in pain as one of the pedals caught him around the back of the leg. Emily had already started to run after Cedric, but John was delayed for what seemed an age while he lowered the bicycle onto its side and started to limp after her. At first his legs seemed to be working OK, and although he could no longer see Emily in the darkness ahead of him, he could easily make out the glowing down of the swan. Trying in vain to catch up, John winced as the pain in his leg grew greater again.

Emily had nearly caught up with Cedric as the swan rounded the corner that took the path to the lakeside. Despite his incredible top speed, Cedric was beginning to lag now, and although she was starting to get a little out of breath herself, Emily was confident that she would catch up with the swan in the next few metres.

Pyro had leapt down from the towtruck almost before the pair had rounded the corner and was now heading straight for the shore in between the swan and the lake. Cedric was slowing down now and, oblivious to the danger, he failed to try to avoid capture by the putrid demon until it was too late. Emily could only watch as Pyrodæmon carried Cedric off towards the boathouse, and she yelled to John with the hopes that he would be in some position to help the ailing waterfowl. However, John had only just rounded the corner and seemed to be limping badly, and so Emily bit the bullet and went charging after Pyrodaemon. The demon noticed and went running along the boardwalk and into the temporal distortion containing the boathouse, but for some reason this didn't seem to put Emily off from following.

As Emily entered the boathouse, she saw the most bizarre scene in her life. At one end, a motorboat was parked and was bobbing up and down on the water in exactly the same way bricks don't, with its flashlight shining out into the darkness of the lake. Next to this particular boat stood two demons, namely Pyro and Lluchmoor, who were talking loudly, the focus of their heated discussion seeming to be the large sack cloth over which they were standing. A very-much-alive swan was slowly approaching the boat, looking intently at the two demons and thus not noticing the precariously-balanced can of petrol he was about to bump into. Meanwhile, two figures dressed in a ghostly sort of white, namely Cedric and Gerald, were standing over an unconscious child and debating over the fact that the Council would have to know what had happened. Finally, a present-day demon, namely Pyro, was standing looking very bemused at all this while holding a glowing ghost swan, namely Cedric, which he had until now intended to use to bring the world to an end.

Naturally, this sort of situation was untenable and had to come to a rapid end in the most destructive way possible. Within a few seconds, the two figures dressed in ghostly white had picked up the child and were departing through a vortex of some description which had just appeared in the middle of the room. By the time this had happened, Pyrodaemon and Emily had exchanged bemused glances and were both rooted to their respective spots, waiting to see what would happen next. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the knocking over of said petrol can by said very-much-alive swan, at which point Pyrodæmon recognised what was about to happen and realised that now would be a good time to leave — he didn't have the strength left in him to survive another explosion. Still unsure as to what to do, Emily saw Pyro start to head towards the vortex and made a split-second decision to follow him. The last thing Emily saw as she left the boathouse was a putrid man grinning and raising his hand to shoot an arc of fire into the petrol-soaked boat.

Three shakes of a lamb's tail later, the boathouse exploded, bursting the bubble of the temporal distortion and creating a combined heat and pressure wave which singed John's hair and forced him to the ground.

On the Subject of Pie Archive

AlexAshman

09.08.07 Front Page

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