Fic: The World Just Keeps On Ending (1/6)
Branching out into writing for more fandoms, I am! So here's my first (and most long-winded!) foray into the land of writing for Boosh... strangely familiar territory, as I used to write the funnies for theatre back in the day.
(And I still have - and use - my Canadian Improv Games Regional Champions 2000 keychain, ffs. Sometimes, I bloody miss theatre. But I bloody well digress, don't I? You ain't here for my story...)
Title: The World Just Keeps On Ending (1/6)
Author: doctorpancakes
Word Count: 1112 (this chapter)
Genre: fluff/angst/giggles
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Rating: PG-13, this chapter, for some colourful language and mature themes
Warning: existential crises
Disclaimer: I may have pasted googly eyes and the appropriate outfits onto a pair of socks and named them Howard and Vince, but I don't technically own the Mighty Boosh, or they'd be having it off with each other a lot more often.
Author's Note: This seriously started as a bit of theatre, which at one point read a lot like a Samuel Beckett play, and somehow eventually turned into Mighty Boosh fanfiction. Do not try to understand my brain. I'm pretty sure my brain cell is dancing taco named Jefferson who smashes his head repeatedly into a typewriter, and that THIS is how my ideas come into being. Also, I own Mingus at Antibes. It's a great record. I can't follow Howard (or, it turns out, my Other Half, whoops) as far as The Weather Report, though. Feh. Thus:
The day began like any other - or at least as much like any other as days got in their little world. Howard Moon rolled quietly out of bed, pausing for a moment to reflect on how still and peaceful Vince (Noir, that is - his longtime flatmate/sometime bandmate/mostly friend, noted boot-fancier and former jungle boy) looked as he dozed gently in the morning light. Howard wondered what he dreamt of. Shiny things, dancing banana trees, magical trousers and whatnot more than likely, he concluded, tiptoeing past Vince's bed. He dressed quickly (trousers: beige; shirt: louder), dusted off his moustache, and strode triumphantly into the flat. It was their day off.
Howard had been up for some time by the time Vince emerged from their Fortress of Solitude: he surmised that a considerable amount of time had elapsed, as he had long finished doing the washing up from breakfast (chutney and cheese baguette) was already on his third cup of tea (and his second rotation of Mingus at Antibes). Vince danced into the kitchen, hips swinging: he would have a lot more time to get things done in the day, thought Howard, if he didn't insist on his absurdly detailed morning routine of waxing, varnishing, straightening, glittering, and God knows what else. Howard thought Vince looked fine first thing in the morning: barefoot, hair undone, unpolished and unpainted, his only adornments being the flush of sleep still spread across his cheeks, and the slightly oversized and threadbare Rolling Stones tshirt he slept in, though he most certainly would never (not ever NEVER) say so out loud. Vince, however, thought Howard could use with a bit more sparkle, on the other hand. Anything could be improved by a little sparkle, he thought. The man was just so... tweedy.
“Alright, Little Man?” said Howard. “Sleep well?”
“Yeah, genius,” replied Vince. “Dreamt I'd got these wicked boots from a little shop in Tottenham Court Road, made by this leather belt with googly eyes glued to it who said his name was Devendra O'Hanrahan. Was a bit gutted when I woke up and discovered that the boots weren't real. They were well massive! How about you?”
“Whatever dreams may have come in the dead of night were long forgotten by morning,” mused Howard. “I thought we might have a picnic lunch and then play a game of Scattergories.”
“Scattergories? That's dead boring. You've got the recreational taste of my Nan! Anyway, it's my day off, I expect I've got something planned,” said Vince.
“You expect?” Howard raised an eyebrow at his companion.
“Well, you can't expect someone as in-demand as me to remember all of his social engagements, do you? I pencil them in on the fridge calendar!” he said, his eyes scrolling through the days of the week.
It turned out that someone had indeed pencilled something in for their day off. Vince was quite sure it wasn't in his handwriting, but read it aloud anyway.
“A-ha! It says here for today: World Ends. Must be the name of a really wizard band playing tonight or something, or is it that new nightclub across the road from Sainsbury's... No, that club's just called DANCE, MOTHERFUCKER!” he shouted in New Wave Band Voice, accompanying the club's name with the appropriate roboty avant garde arm movements. “Hmm, World Ends... You know, I don't remember writing this. Did I write this?” he raised an eyebrow at his companion.
Howard rose from the sofa to inspect the note scrawled on the day's refrigerated entry.
he squinted at it a moment.
“No, that's Naboo's,” he concluded.
“If it's not one of mine, I wonder what it means, then? He's got the date circled in red biro and all,” said Vince, brow furrowed in concentration.
“He did say we could ring him in Ibiza in the event of an emergency, but I hardly think this qualifies,” said Howard, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
The point was moot, however, as Vince already had his mobile out and was poking impatiently at Naboo's speed-dial number.
“What d'you want?” came an irritated voice at the other end of the line, barely audible over the sound of the kind of God-awful cheerful techno music that hadn't much changed since the mid-1990s, and that people with no taste still liked to dance to.
“Alright Naboo, it's me, Vince,” said Vince. “Howard and I've got a problem. It's a bit of an emergency, actually.”
“You haven't been into my stash of potions again, have you?” asked Naboo. “And if you've been poking around in the super-secret cabinet marked SHAMANS ONLY in big black letters that I keep locked again, you're on your bloody own, mate.”
“We haven't been messing about with your shit, I swear!” said Vince.
“Then what? What's the emergency then?” asked Naboo, quickly losing patience.
“You know how you've got today's date circled on the fridge calendar, with the words World Ends written in? What's that mean, exactly?”
“Oh, that. That today, is it? It means what it says: the world's going to end tonight.” Naboo seemed strangely nonchalant about his revelation. “Look, I gotta run - I've got a game of strip Scattergories to get back to. And don't call back again unless it's an actual emergency. It was nice knowing you guys, bye!”
Click.
Vince stood in stunned silence for some moments before Howard could wait no longer to begin his interrogation.
“Well, what did he say?” he demanded.
“The world's going to end tonight,” Vince's voice was now barely a whisper. It was as though all the energy and excitement at the prospect of a new day drained out of him in that moment, through the soles of his boots, soaked through the kitchen floor, dripped down through the downstairs ceiling onto the floor below, ate through the floorboards, and was absorbed almost unseen into the soil beneath it all, swallowed into the crust of the earth, so diluted that it was as though it may as well have never existed.
“You what?” exclaimed Howard. “You mean, end as in... end?”
“Yeah,” said Vince, bracing himself with one hand against the refrigerator door, head spinning as reality hit him square in the face like the bottom layer of a jar of that all-natural peanut butter that goes all hard if you put it in the fridge or forget to stir it up. “As in, no more world. No more you, no more me, no more Ibiza, no more boots by Devendra O'Hanrahan...”
“No more Mingus at Antibes,” added Howard, just then beginning to register the gravity of the situation.
“So... now what do we do?”
Onward, to chapter 2...
(And I still have - and use - my Canadian Improv Games Regional Champions 2000 keychain, ffs. Sometimes, I bloody miss theatre. But I bloody well digress, don't I? You ain't here for my story...)
Title: The World Just Keeps On Ending (1/6)
Author: doctorpancakes
Word Count: 1112 (this chapter)
Genre: fluff/angst/giggles
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Rating: PG-13, this chapter, for some colourful language and mature themes
Warning: existential crises
Disclaimer: I may have pasted googly eyes and the appropriate outfits onto a pair of socks and named them Howard and Vince, but I don't technically own the Mighty Boosh, or they'd be having it off with each other a lot more often.
Author's Note: This seriously started as a bit of theatre, which at one point read a lot like a Samuel Beckett play, and somehow eventually turned into Mighty Boosh fanfiction. Do not try to understand my brain. I'm pretty sure my brain cell is dancing taco named Jefferson who smashes his head repeatedly into a typewriter, and that THIS is how my ideas come into being. Also, I own Mingus at Antibes. It's a great record. I can't follow Howard (or, it turns out, my Other Half, whoops) as far as The Weather Report, though. Feh. Thus:
The day began like any other - or at least as much like any other as days got in their little world. Howard Moon rolled quietly out of bed, pausing for a moment to reflect on how still and peaceful Vince (Noir, that is - his longtime flatmate/sometime bandmate/mostly friend, noted boot-fancier and former jungle boy) looked as he dozed gently in the morning light. Howard wondered what he dreamt of. Shiny things, dancing banana trees, magical trousers and whatnot more than likely, he concluded, tiptoeing past Vince's bed. He dressed quickly (trousers: beige; shirt: louder), dusted off his moustache, and strode triumphantly into the flat. It was their day off.
Howard had been up for some time by the time Vince emerged from their Fortress of Solitude: he surmised that a considerable amount of time had elapsed, as he had long finished doing the washing up from breakfast (chutney and cheese baguette) was already on his third cup of tea (and his second rotation of Mingus at Antibes). Vince danced into the kitchen, hips swinging: he would have a lot more time to get things done in the day, thought Howard, if he didn't insist on his absurdly detailed morning routine of waxing, varnishing, straightening, glittering, and God knows what else. Howard thought Vince looked fine first thing in the morning: barefoot, hair undone, unpolished and unpainted, his only adornments being the flush of sleep still spread across his cheeks, and the slightly oversized and threadbare Rolling Stones tshirt he slept in, though he most certainly would never (not ever NEVER) say so out loud. Vince, however, thought Howard could use with a bit more sparkle, on the other hand. Anything could be improved by a little sparkle, he thought. The man was just so... tweedy.
“Alright, Little Man?” said Howard. “Sleep well?”
“Yeah, genius,” replied Vince. “Dreamt I'd got these wicked boots from a little shop in Tottenham Court Road, made by this leather belt with googly eyes glued to it who said his name was Devendra O'Hanrahan. Was a bit gutted when I woke up and discovered that the boots weren't real. They were well massive! How about you?”
“Whatever dreams may have come in the dead of night were long forgotten by morning,” mused Howard. “I thought we might have a picnic lunch and then play a game of Scattergories.”
“Scattergories? That's dead boring. You've got the recreational taste of my Nan! Anyway, it's my day off, I expect I've got something planned,” said Vince.
“You expect?” Howard raised an eyebrow at his companion.
“Well, you can't expect someone as in-demand as me to remember all of his social engagements, do you? I pencil them in on the fridge calendar!” he said, his eyes scrolling through the days of the week.
It turned out that someone had indeed pencilled something in for their day off. Vince was quite sure it wasn't in his handwriting, but read it aloud anyway.
“A-ha! It says here for today: World Ends. Must be the name of a really wizard band playing tonight or something, or is it that new nightclub across the road from Sainsbury's... No, that club's just called DANCE, MOTHERFUCKER!” he shouted in New Wave Band Voice, accompanying the club's name with the appropriate roboty avant garde arm movements. “Hmm, World Ends... You know, I don't remember writing this. Did I write this?” he raised an eyebrow at his companion.
Howard rose from the sofa to inspect the note scrawled on the day's refrigerated entry.
he squinted at it a moment.
“No, that's Naboo's,” he concluded.
“If it's not one of mine, I wonder what it means, then? He's got the date circled in red biro and all,” said Vince, brow furrowed in concentration.
“He did say we could ring him in Ibiza in the event of an emergency, but I hardly think this qualifies,” said Howard, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
The point was moot, however, as Vince already had his mobile out and was poking impatiently at Naboo's speed-dial number.
“What d'you want?” came an irritated voice at the other end of the line, barely audible over the sound of the kind of God-awful cheerful techno music that hadn't much changed since the mid-1990s, and that people with no taste still liked to dance to.
“Alright Naboo, it's me, Vince,” said Vince. “Howard and I've got a problem. It's a bit of an emergency, actually.”
“You haven't been into my stash of potions again, have you?” asked Naboo. “And if you've been poking around in the super-secret cabinet marked SHAMANS ONLY in big black letters that I keep locked again, you're on your bloody own, mate.”
“We haven't been messing about with your shit, I swear!” said Vince.
“Then what? What's the emergency then?” asked Naboo, quickly losing patience.
“You know how you've got today's date circled on the fridge calendar, with the words World Ends written in? What's that mean, exactly?”
“Oh, that. That today, is it? It means what it says: the world's going to end tonight.” Naboo seemed strangely nonchalant about his revelation. “Look, I gotta run - I've got a game of strip Scattergories to get back to. And don't call back again unless it's an actual emergency. It was nice knowing you guys, bye!”
Click.
Vince stood in stunned silence for some moments before Howard could wait no longer to begin his interrogation.
“Well, what did he say?” he demanded.
“The world's going to end tonight,” Vince's voice was now barely a whisper. It was as though all the energy and excitement at the prospect of a new day drained out of him in that moment, through the soles of his boots, soaked through the kitchen floor, dripped down through the downstairs ceiling onto the floor below, ate through the floorboards, and was absorbed almost unseen into the soil beneath it all, swallowed into the crust of the earth, so diluted that it was as though it may as well have never existed.
“You what?” exclaimed Howard. “You mean, end as in... end?”
“Yeah,” said Vince, bracing himself with one hand against the refrigerator door, head spinning as reality hit him square in the face like the bottom layer of a jar of that all-natural peanut butter that goes all hard if you put it in the fridge or forget to stir it up. “As in, no more world. No more you, no more me, no more Ibiza, no more boots by Devendra O'Hanrahan...”
“No more Mingus at Antibes,” added Howard, just then beginning to register the gravity of the situation.
“So... now what do we do?”
Onward, to chapter 2...