The horrifically powerful claw slowly contracted. Huge steel-hard fingers carefully grasping the long pole.

Painfully slowly the claw moved backwards, the stick following.

The Dark cursed as several marbles fell loudly into the tray.

The umpteenth billionth game of Kerplunk lost to the Light.

1.

The Godfather of Heavy Leslie glared out of the window at the enormous hole in Main Street.

A hole that was growing at an alarming rate.

Twenty feet from his studio the horrifically powerful claw contracted. Huge steel fingers closing as the guy with the funny boots and the long pole guided the operator via radio.

Painfully slowly, the claw moved backwards as the gaudy yellow JCB reversed.

The guy with the comically large boots dropped the pole and cursed into the walkie loudly as the bucket opened and several head -sized, marble-like spheres fell noisily almost to the ground.

The GoHL glared at the spheres, now hovering several inches over the hole.

This was going to be (another) weird day….

2.

Two o'clock.

The scruffy biker-type guy pushed the cold coffee away. Another hour and he could stretch his aching legs and have some dinner. Steak pie tonight.

He glanced out of the window, raindrops blurring the vow of the car park and his bike.

At least three times per shift he would state at the big Yamaha and muse that if he just walked out, he could be in Scotland for the dawn…

Instead of walking out, he answered the over-excited voice coming through his radio.

'Have a look at screen two mate! Need some advice on this one!

He swivelled around, grimacing as the chair screeched, the CCTV screens showed relatively clear roads, rain keeping most people at home. A old heavy goods struggling up hill, roadworks flashing orange on the approach and….

The chair screeched again as he jumped up, grabbing the hi-viz coat, all thoughts of sunrises over Scotland vanishing as surely as his chances of enjoying his steak pies any time soon.

On the second screen, glowing eerily in the darkness, several grey spheres, each the size of a bus, hovered above the Eastbound carriageway.

He cursed as the cold rain hit his face, this was going to be a weird bloody shift!

3.

In the Cafe of the Musee D'Orsay, smartly dressed tourists mingled with even more smartly dressed Parisians.

Smart cutlery clinked quietly on smart plates, as very smart pastries and very very expensive drinks were sipped from equally expensive and smart china.

Through the smart windows, the moon shone smartly down on the tables on the balcony.

The lady looked up from her battered and worn notebook, scratching her forehead with her trusty biro, as she tried to think of a suitably smart reply for the heroine to make to the rather caddish Frenchman who was attempting to seduce her.

The moon was beautiful this evening, if a little strangely coloured, almost marbled.

So was the other moon...the third, however, was the normal silver and grey moony colours.

She knew that most research trips tended to be slightly on the weird side, enjoyed and immersed herself in the weirdness usually, but three moons?

That was way too weird, even for Paris!

Meanwhile, in this particular reality…..

'What you doing up there, love?'

My wife addressed the legs dangling from the hatch in the landing ceiling. My legs actually.

'Looking for the kids' old toys, sure they're in a box up here?' I mumbled through the dust and fibreglass insulation, trying not to scratch now I had been forced to admit I'd spent the last hour or so crawling around the hot loft with a feeble torch, searching for a decade-old box which may or may not contain a battered old game of Kerplunk.

'Dog ate it years ago, remember?'

'The box?'

The Kerplunk, bits of plastic and marbles in his poop for weeks after?'

'Ah, yup...oookay…'

My itchy body followed my legs down the wobbly ladder in a cloud of fibreglass particles and disappointment.

'Another photo idea?'

I nodded dustily, saddened I wouldn't get the chance to play with plastic sticks and marbles before work.

And now back to the story…..

4.

In the almost total darkness of the warm loft motes of recently fibreglass strands gently floated downwards, illuminated rather prettily in the specks of sunlight bursting through the several chipped roof tiles.

In the far corner, next to half a roll of Kingfisher Contour and a 1950s television aerial, the box that contained a selection of old toys and broken bits of Action Man glowed, equally prettily.

The box crumpled slightly, causing the pretty glow to fracture as the ancient cardboard flattened under the unseen weight.

The pretty glow, not content in crushing the old games and bits of Action Man, expanded.

Joists creaked and plaster fell. Tiles slid noisily off the rapidly bowing roof, crashing noisily into hundreds of pieces as they smashed into the newly washed and gleaming motorcycle below.

The bellows of the occupants, thankfully clear of the house as it collapsed under the pretty weight, echoed off the dense cloud of what was left of the 1930s semi.

The dust cloud settled.

Bits of flattened furniture and house peeking out from under the massive marble sphere that now sat where number nine once stood.

5.

If it had been physically or metaphysically possible for the Light to blush, believe me, It would've been positively crimson.

The Light held out the offending utensil to the Dark, an unspoken question on what we'll call a face.

'You bloody knew that would happen, didn't you?'

The Dark flicked its black forked tongue over the unbelievably nightmarish upper teeth in what we'll reluctantly call its mouth, flicking sticky, slimy pieces of black walnut onto what passed for a floor in this dimension.

'And you didn't, love? Tsk, tsk, what have you unleashed on the monkeys in your irritating desire for cleanliness?'

'Cleanliness is next to Go…'

'DON'T!' Hissed the Dark, 'You know I'm still touchy about that! Big time!'

'Ok, sorry, how many times do I have to apologise over a stupid joke, eons ago, get over it!'

The Light swirled the two remaining Kerplunk marbles around the colander, watching their ever decreasing circles until both fell out of the suspiciously large hole in the base.

'You did this, just to avoid another thrashing! Go….Erm...Heave….ah bugger it! Who knows where or when the other bloody balls have or will end up down there?'

The Dark grinned a hideous grin.

'And Who knows what they'll end up being? Atoms? Raindrops? Melons? Planets? Oops!'

The Light threw the offending colander and the now useless game into the nearest black hole, cursing the Dark, and giving a happily retired, rather unassuming man from Delaware a rather unexpected toothache.

The Dark grinned, holding up the last remaining marbles.

'Two left, sure you can't do some more damage with these little fellas? One thing's for sure, we won't be playing bloody Kerplunk anytime soon!'

6.

Tom Devereaux, Professor of Veganism and Temporal Ethics, sat cross-legged, munching on an ethically produced and sustainably resourced carrot stick.

Between mouthfuls he was enthralling the students with his latest feats in Temporal Retroactive Interventional Protection of Ecology.

'So I convinced the dudes that meat is murder and by inventing cattle farming, they were destroying our future dudes..' He paused to soak up the righteous appreciation from his young acolytes, flicking his ponytail in a dramatic gesture, before continuing.

'So, as soon as the Temporal Flux stabilises, we will see how my brave intervention has benefited and blessed all of Humankind. Millennia of meat eating obliterated, the Dawn of a truly just, caring, vegan societ…'

At this point, this particular reality was truly blessed as a marble sphere, the size of a very large cow, landed squarely on Prof. Devereaux, instantly turning him into what looked very much like a vegan flavoured meat patty.

7.

In the butter and crumpet scented trailer the P.A. set the laptop down and beamed up at her hero.

'Oh, Mr Letterbox, it's simply wonderful! This will be the best autobiography ever published!'

Henry ignored the gushing intern and checked that the Ts and Cs section was completed to his personal satisfaction.

'It'll be a bleedin' long wait for the fans darlin!' Henry bit into another crumpet and hit send.

'My Bleedin' Wonderful Life by H.E.Lettetbox winged its way through the ether towards his publisher's offices.

Henry had chosen to stipulate that his autobiography was only to be published one hundred years after his death, this to 'ensure the birds mentioned in here won't get embarrassed or sue him and the bleedin' volleyball players in the FA don't get their knickers in a twist over the truth about his soccer career'.

It was also a ploy to ensure maximum publicity and advanced sales.

'Let's hope that the bleedin' hundred years countdown is a long long bleedin' way off eh, darlin'!'

Henry made a crumpet toast to the young lady just as a very dense marble sphere came through the roof of the trailer, it totally failed to stop its descent as it passed through Letterbox's bleeding thick skull.

'Shall I ring your agent or the ambulance, Henry?' Asked the P.A.

But, by then, the countdown to publication had already begun.

8.

'Da tower, she has a 296 or 294 steps; de seventh floor she has a two less a steps on the norde-a-face staircase.

De tower, she began a leanin' durin' da construction in de 12th century, due to de soft…." Marco's well rehearsed script faltered to a stop.

t this point he usually rounded the corner, revealing the iconic view and declared a ten-minute break, allowing the group of tourists to take hilarious photos of each other apparently holding up the campanile of the Torre di Pisa.

As he gestured theatrically to the tower, he dropped the yellow guide's flag (and the fake Italian accent).

'What the bloody hell…?" His native Mancunian failed to be noticed by the group however, they were much more shocked by the numerous gaudily-coloured plastic poles that some idiot had threaded through the building.

Two discarded poles lay on the plaza, along with seven gigantic marbles.

9.

'Sooooo…..' grinned the Dark through a mouthful of razor-sharp fangs and black walnuts, 'Sooooo.."

The Light grimaced, this was not going to be pretty.

'Sooo…'

'Just bloody we'll get on with it!'

'So, to recap; your fetish for cleanliness has, and correct me if I've missed anything, killed a world famous footballer turned actor, squashed the guy who would turn the whole multiverse vegan and save the planet, totally wrecked half of the infrastructure in many, many realities, roads, houses, historic buildings, transformed the Leaning Tower of Pizza into a game of Kerplunk, and caused a three-hour delay in the roadworks in Clarion County?"

'It's getting sorted. And it's Pisa! Just need the Man from Delaware to collect a few items, then hopefully all back to as normal as the multiverse can ever, will ever, was ever, be!'

'Pan-dimensional Kerplunk? You trust that brogue wearing monkey to assemble the most fiendish game ever devised? Good luck with that one, love!'

10.

A rather moist figure trudged up Route 208 through the still-falling rain. Beneath his raincoat a rather soggy cardboard box, containing two of the three artifacts he'd been tasked to collect.

The first had been easy to acquire. A trip to an old plantation house in Onancock, Virginia. He'd bluffed his way up to the second floor, to the museums archive rooms, and had sweet-talked one of the guides into giving him access to the exhibit store.

In the rather soggy box the ornate golden bonbon tray, etched with the family name, nestled alongside the second item. Yes, he mused through his toothache, the trip to Ker Place had been easypeasy.

The second had been a little trickier, and a lot more expensive. He'd had to sell several of his larger carved sculptures, burn two more, and had to forge a death certificate to comply with Tennessee Law.

The tubular golden urn now rode in the soggy cardboard box with the bonbon tray. The staff at the Plunk cemetery had been awfully sympathetic and rather surprised that he'd wished for their company logo to be etched into the exquisitely filigreed urn that would hold Aunt Edna's ashes.

A pickup truck flashed by, organ music blaring at volume four, in the downpour. The driver smiled an exaggeratedly complex 'I'd-love-to-stop-but-I'm-just-taking-photos-around-here-and-I've-got-a-truckful-of-kittens-and-they-dont-like-riding-with-soggy-brogue-wearing-strangers' smile and continued North, towards the Man from Delaware's final destination.

Six miles of further trudging through the rain, and the American-German church sat imposingly on the roadside, seemingly far too grand for it's rural surroundings, the old building would not have looked out of place in any historic town in Europe, and maybe it didn't – in another reality, but he was past worrying about these misplaced anomalies.

The Man from Delaware was simply too tired to care, he wanted nothing more than to complete his task, balance the Omniverse and go back to his beautiful garden and his carvings.

In the churchyard he carefully laid down his raincoat and fished the packet of gaudily-coloured sticks from his pocket. Carefully counting sets of six different colours, five in all, thirty in total.

In his jacket lay another thirty. This time thirty marbles, two short for the standard game, but he knew that when the time came the missing duo would appear.

The bonbon tray was set down on the raincoat, the 'Ker' name facing the skies. Next he placed the cylindrical urn into the centre well of the tray, pushing it gently until it fit, unsurprisingly, perfectly. The 'Plunk' logo running up it's length, in line with the 'Ker'.

He carefully threaded the thirty sticks through the filigree work, unscrewed the top from the casket and filled the upper half with the thirty marbles.

The rain beat down on the churchyard in Marble, Pennsylvania, lightning flashed, illuminating the golden 'Ker-Plunk' game. From out of the storm clouds came two beautifully glowing spheres, one Light, one Dark.

Shrinking as they descended, the spheres glided to a halt just above the open casket, touching each other in a blaze of pan-dimensional light, they sank into the cylinder.

One more flash of celestial fireworks and the game simply disappeared, resetting the Omniverse, balancing the multi-verse's infinite realities and causing a further three-hour delay around the roadworks in Clarion.

The Man from Delaware shrugged, picking up his soaking wet raincoat, feeling the rain in his brogues, he smiled without toothache, content that his work was done and he could go home.

(Author's Note: My Bleedin' Wonderful Life will be available in many good realities on 6/09/2119.)

Freewayriding

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