next up previous
Next: The new leader Up: No Title Previous: The thrilling end

A squint-eyed man called Stalin

After dreaming about heavy summer rain, the Niagara falls and a dripping water tap, Jesper could sense a theme and woke up in the middle of the night. The combination of free Pepsi at the circus and Jesper's urge to use every generous offer to the maximum, had caused a sudden desire to go out and find a bush. After some heavy thinking he realized that the dark room he was in was the circus caravan. Surprisingly he remembered where the door was. He walked to the door and opened it.
"Pretty windy today", he thought as he took a huge climb out of the caravan.

Jesper, who was one of the few persons that could make one celled creatures look like a highly enveloped life forms, had never asked himself the question:
"When do traveling circuses travel?" If he had done so, and if he by some miracle got an answer, he would have known that they travel at night, and that it was night right now.
The maximum allowed velocity for a caravan of the type Jesper occupied was 50 km/s, so the driver kept a speed just below 90. This was very annoying for the lady in the pink Cadillac convertible behind them. She thought she was in a hurry, and passed the caravan in a very wild and dangerous overtake, at exact same moment as Jesper did his potentially fatal action of climbing out of the moving caravan. Without knowing what went on, Jesper ended up in the back seat of the pink Cadillac. Jesper's first thoughts was that a moron parked its car under the caravan door. But quite soon he realized that the car was not parked. Since Jesper was fairly well brought up, at least better than an orphan pig, he knew that the back seat of the car was no good substitute for a bush. So, he knocked on the back of the lady at the wheel and said:
"I need to pee, can you please stop the car."
"Why didn't you pee before we started Jesper? Why is it always so that when we....", the lady begun but stopped in the middle of a sentence, and continued:
"God, I'm getting more and more senile every day. I completely forgot that you sat in the back seat Jesper."
"Ma!!?", Jesper said, not without surprise in his voice,
"Is it really you Ma?"
"Yes, of course! Who, else should it be?"
Since Jesper had no answer to that question he stayed quiet, but his mother kept on talking:
"Why can't you ever do something without forgetting the essentials. As a passenger the only thing to remember is to go to the bathroom before we leave. Your brother should never forget a thing like that. And, why can't you become famous like your brother? Because of him I give lot's of interviews to all types of magazines, and earn lot of extra bucks."
Jesper knew that he could argue that his brother was just famous because he killed people, and that she really should not be all that proud of him, but he had tried that argument before with no success. By the way, he had much more urgent things to talk to his mother about:
"Please, stop the car, or I have to pee on the new leather seats!"
Jesper's mother, who by the way was called Theresa, felt that she had something to gain by stopping the car so she pushed the brakes. Jesper ran out of the car and found a bush. Just before he started to pee he remembered something he learnt at sea on a windy day, similar to what he thought it was today.
"Always check the wind direction before doing certain things!"
He knew two ways of checking the wind direction. One was spitting, but he always manage to spit into a head wind, with known results... The other way was to throw something up in the air and see which way the wind brought it. He found a rock, which he threw straight up. While the rock still was in the air he saw something that made him stare. He saw himself. He thought that it must be some mysterious optical phenomenon, or could it be.... Then all became black as the rock landed on Jesper's head.

Still with his eyes closed, but more and more aware about what happened around him, Jesper could hear a conversation between two men:
"Did you hear about the escape attempt Wilfor-Toto did yesterday?"
"Yeah!"
"A good thing that the dogs found him, unconscious in the forest. He is now lying here in the cell room besides us. And I, Adolf Napoleon Stalin, was the one who took his fingerprints, all eight of them."
"EIGHT!!!", Jesper screamed, "but Wilfy only have six fingers!"
After opening his eyes and visiting the toilet, Jesper realized that he was in a prison cell.

Back in the Cadillac mother Theresa got a new sign that she was getting even more senile, when Wilfor--Toto came back to the car. She had thought that it was Jesper that she waited for. She was obviously wrong.
"Drive the fastest you can, or I kill you bitch!", Wilfor-Toto said as he entered the car.
"Yes, dear Wilfy, you know I do anything for you, my favorite son.", she said and left behind a smell of burning rubber.

Many thoughts bounced around in Jesper's head as he was lying in his bed in the prison cell.
"What had happened? Why was he arrested? Why did he have a headache? How could Wilfor-Toto have eight fingers? By the way, where was Wilfy?" Jesper was interrupted by the policeman Adolf Stalin, who came towards Jesper and said:
"I have visitors for you Wilfor-Toto!"
Jesper looked confused. The policeman had looked at him but talked to Wilfy. Was the policeman squint-eyed or... Then Jesper saw the visitors and he twitched. The visitors were the evil brothers of Killer-Abdul! A good thing that the bars protected him from them. The biggest, meanest and beardiest of the brothers spoke to Jesper:
"Hi, stranger. We heard on the radio that you were arrested. You don't know us, but we met your twin brother Jesper yesterday. He told us some things about you, and I must say that we were very impressed with your deeds. Our brother Abdul have always been our leader. But after a little incident yesterday, when he embarrassed himself in front of us, he felt that we no longer could treat him with the respect a leader must have.gif So he resigned from our group, and went to Tibet to live in a monastery as a Buddhist monk. We have come to make you an offer. If we manage to get you out of jail, will you be the new leader of our group?"
Jesper still looked somewhat confused, but that was nothing compared to what he felt. These men almost scared the life out of Jesper, and he was afraid that they were here to kill him. Because of this, he couldn't dare listen to what the man with the evil eyes and big beard had to say. However, something inside Jesper had told him that the man had ended his speech with a question. If Jesper didn't answer, the man with the beard would probably get very angry, and if Jesper responded 'Sorry, I didn't listen', that would also be rude. Jesper figured that a simple 'Yes, of course', was a polite, agreeing and hopefully safe answer, so he tried to calm down and answered:
"Yes, of course!"
The evil looking man nodded and said smiling:
"Great! You'll hear from us soon!", and walked away. Jesper didn't know what to make of that. The first part of the sentence: 'Great!', sounded fine, but the second part: 'You'll hear from us soon', almost made Jesper fall backwards of fear. After the brothers left, Adolf Stalin came back to talk with Jesper.
"The big man with the beard persuaded me to let you talk to him instead of letting you make the phone call the law gives you a right to do. He is a very persuading man, that friend of yours."
"He is no friend of mine! Why have you arrested me? What charges can you possible have?"
"Well to begin with, 43 cases first degree murder, 23 cases of assault, a few hundred cases of extortion, attempted blackmail, hijacking, illegal gambling, drug smuggling, and one case of parking offense."
"I can explain why I parked my car there. I was..."
"Save your explanations for the court, Wilfor-Toto", said Adolf and went to the other room. Jesper looked around, but could still not see Wilfy. He felt more confused than he normally did, and decided to recapitulate the situation, so he wrote down the facts so far:

Jesper felt that if he manage to come up with a theory that matched all the facts, he probably would understand why he was arrested. However, it was very hard for Jesper to see any connections between the facts. Except that Wilfy was included in 5 out of 6 facts, unless... Yes of course, Wilfy could maybe be included in the first fact to, if there wasn't any optical phenomenon that Jesper saw, but his identical twin Wilfy. So, Wilfy could have something to do with everything. But what?

Jesper lied down on his bed, with his head overfilled with unsolved mysteries. As he lied there, he noticed that he begun to slide towards the foot end of the bed. Jesper had never understood the meaning of Newtonian mechanics, that the gravitational forces from the earth is directed towards the center of the earthgif. But still, he was very surprised that he was sliding, it didn't seem right somehow! He was sliding faster and faster, until he ended up on the floor with a sore behind. He turned around and saw that one of the rocks in the floor, one that the bed stood on, came up from the rest of the floor. Under the rock Jesper saw a pair of hands, under the hands a pair of arms and under the arms (actually sort of between them but yet kind of under), he saw the bearded face of.... Then it all became black. The horror and excitement became too much for poor Jesper, who fainted.

next up previous
Next: The new leader Up: No Title Previous: The thrilling end



Patrik &
Thu Feb 26 10:10:12 MET 1998