The Wrath of Malory

Mimosa Minipas and her yappy handbag dog fled screaming from Malory Tennyson’s Cloudbank Cabin for Arthurian Studies, pursued by a swarm of fairies – cute little fairies with spiky pink hair and big blue eyes, towering, menacing fairies with dark, dark eyes and coal black curls, and translucent fairies tripping on the hems of their papery gowns.

It was completely dark inside Cloudbank Cabin except for the lights twinkling on the photocopier and the paper shredder, as if all the electricity in the place had been concentrated into the operation of those two devices. The copier continued to spew out fairy pictures. The shredder divided and multiplied them and puffed them out as a buzzing angry horde, to be picked up by the wind and follow Mimosa out the door and into the woodlands.

Dagonet the Jester cartwheeled around the cabin laughing maniacally! “We have not had an evening like this since Malory banned Halloween celebrations!” he cackled.

Little Plump Jo, the current Artisan in Residence at the cabin was frozen in her place on the couch, unable to look away from the revolving chaos, unable to run after Mimosa, unable to even think logically about how to stop it.

“Turn off the photocopier and shredder, check the fuse box and then evict all these Ai Lemurs!” That was the Border Collie, Intellectual Dabrowski, the self-appointed alpha dog of Little Plump Jo’s five canine writing companions taking charge of the situation. The Dabrowski dogs were able to hear Malory Tennyson and the Arthurian characters and facilitate communication between the real and the fictional realms for Little Plump Jo.

“They won’t turn off!”

“They are being powered by Malory’s anger! They won’t turn off till he calms down” informed Dagonet.

“It’s those Ai Lemurs causing it. You should have just given them a treat.” That was Sensual Dabrowski, the kindly English Springer Spaniel.

“But we didn’t have any grubs and insects to offer them,” barked Psycho Motor Dabrowski, “so what they wanted was to come in and assist us with the writing in the cabin.”

“You should have refused them at that point! This is an illustration of the saying no good deed goes unpunished” pontificated Intellectual. “I packed off the original Ai Lemur to the captive breeding program, because it was one of an endangered species. And it apparently felt it should bring back all its offspring and friends and relations, just like one of those heartwarming animal rescue stories.”

“Malory was cranky even before the Ai Lemurs started helping in inverted commas” observed Dagonet. “He started yelling the minute Mimosa Minipas’ first picture of Sir Lancelot as a fairy with pink hair and blue eyes came out of the copier! He insists that Sir Lancelot must have dark eyes and coal black curls.”

“And then it just got worse when the Ai Lemurs started colouring in dark eyes and black curls and feeding the pictures back into the copier. Malory didn’t like the ‘darling little wings either! So then they started feeding the copies into the shredder and the side blew out of it when it became overfull.”

“It will stop when the ink runs out.”

“No, the ink started running out ages ago. It just prints them almost transparent. And the copier moves from one paper drawer to the next automatically and was loaded up to print the whole of Mimosa’s book. It won’t stop until Malory calms down!”

“How can we calm Malory then?”

Psycho Motor Dabrowski started to lope around the room, running in circles with his tongue hanging out, howling “Arooooooo!”

“What are you playing at, Psycho?” demanded Intellectual.

“I am a slack jawed yokel bringing humour to the situation.”

“That is not funny, Psycho! It is disrespectful to slack jawed yokels everywhere!”

“It is meant as humour to make horror appeal to children, like that Scooby Do does it.”

“It is not helping Psycho! Malory is beyond any appeal to jesting.”

“Sometimes in battle (and I regret to say sometimes at other times) I get to the stage where I cannot control my rage. At those times the only person who can calm me is Her Majesty Queen Guinevere” volunteered Sir Lancelot du Lac.

“Well T.H. White got that part of your character description right” barked Intellectual. “I am not completely sold on his depiction of you. But we do see that aspect shown in the story of the Queen’s abduction by Meliagrance,”

“I will go and fetch her” announced Psycho Motor.

“No, Psycho” woofed Emotional Dabrowski.” She would not be able to calm Malory. Dagonet the Jester said that Malory thinks of Regina Penman, the secretary of the ARC Arthurian Readers Club as his lady. Little Plump Jo will have to get Regina to come and sort this out.”

“And fair enough too! It was Regina that suggested that Mimosa should come here and show her work to Malory. She caused this mess. She can clean it up!” grumbled Intellectual.

Little Plump Jo stirred from her horror induced immobility, reached for her phone and called Regina Penman. “She says she can get here in half an hour.”

“But we can’t let Regina see the place in such a mess and she definitely can’t be allowed to see the Ai Lemurs. She would have a pink fit. She would not want any AI anything in Cloudbank Cabin, even though Malory himself tried to use it to produce a Galahad, when Sir Lancelot was not producing a perfect son quickly enough for his liking! We need to get rid of these Ai Lemurs before she arrives.”

“Call the Exwyrminator!”

Thurifer Dwarf the Exwyrminator arrived, surveyed the scene and declared “I have told you before – I am an exterminator of insects and bugs. I don’t do rats, bats, cats, wyrm dragons or whatever those things are!”

While Thurifer Dwarf was talking the Ai Lemurs saw the illustrations of insects and bugs on the side of his cart and rushed out to inspect it chittering excitedly to each other. “Meals on wheels!”

“There you go, Thurifer!” exclaimed Imaginational Dabrowski. “You have a new work force. You can advertise as the ‘The Environment Friendly Extermination Service. We do not use overpowering scents.’ I am sure the Ai Lemurs would happily work free for an All You Can Eat Buffet. Just take them away quickly now before we sell them to your competitor.”

By the time Regina arrived, the lights were on again, the printer had finally stopped spitting out pink haired Lancelot fairies and Malory was quiet, in the exhausted aftermath of his fury. All seemed orderly and settled in Cloudbank Cabin. Regina queried why she had been summoned from her warm bed to attend to an emergency situation.

Little Plump Jo explained that Mimosa Minipas and her handbag dog had fled from Cloudbank Cabin and were possibly still running through the dark woods and implied Regina’s responsibility for the fiasco. Regina went out into the dark woods to find Mimosa.