THE TALES OF MISTER CARBON BUSINESS
NUMBER EIGHT
MISTER CARBON BUSINESS and the TEETH SIREN
THE END
It was a large, sunny day in the middle of January when Mister Carbon Business was awoken with a pin.
'Ouch!' shouted Mister Carbon Business and looked round to see his assistant, Pov, holding said pin. There was something oddly blank about his eyes. Maybe they were fake.
'I'll thank you not to do that,' said Mister Carbon Business, annoyed.
'Will you?' asked Pov.
'Yes.'
'Go on then.'
'Thank you.'
They stared at each other until Mister Carbon Business could see small beads of mustard forming on Pov's brow.
'Pov,' he said, pointing at his brow, 'your brow's going again.'
'Damnit!' exclaimed Pov, removing his brow and beating it loudly against a nearby wall. Satisfied, he flattened it out and returned it to its rightful place.
'Ping!' said Pov, in three pieces.
'Yes,' said Mister Carbon Business.
It was then that he saw Piston Jack sidle into the room, his arms going.
'We need to talk,' whispered Piston Jack.
'We are,' Mister Carbon Business informed him.
'Oh, right,' said Piston Jack, looking rather put out, and began to gaze around the room wondering what was supposed to happen now.
Pov turned around and began to draw a small picture on the wall, depicting Mister Carbon Business climbing up some steps holding a broken pretzel.
'Anything you'd like to talk about in paticular?' asked Mister Carbon Business, stamping on a jackhammer.
'Yes, but we can't have Pov here listening.'
'Very well,' said Mister Carbon Business and, very carefully, greyed Pov out.
'Ingenious,' said Piston Jack.
'Yes,' said Mister Carbon Business as he slid Pov into a corner.
Piston Jack was just about to speak when there came a loud, piercing, chattering noise, sort of like a cross between a helium-filled chicken and a banshee with a set of radioactive dentures.
'Ough, my ears' said Piston Jack, clutching his kidneys.
'Er, Jack? Those are your kidneys,' pointed out Mister Carbon Business.
'Very well,' said Piston Jack, unabashed. 'Ouughh, my kidneys!'
But by this time, it was too late as Mister Carbon Business had also heard the noise and his legs stopped beating.
Piston Jack could only watch as Mister Carbon Business fell to the floor, clutching himself in various places and swearing as the strange noise wracked his body.
Pov would have helped, but he was currently greyed out and was looking at his unfinished picture remorsefully.
The noise stopped as stupidly as it had started, and, somewhere far away, a man began to fart.
Mister Carbon Business pulled himself together and rushed to help Piston Jack, who appeared to have lost his right shoulder. Meanwhile, Pov had managed to return himself to normal and bolted out of the barn in search of the sauce.
It wasn't long before Mister Carbon Business and Piston Jack nyloned on and pelted out to follow him, Jack complaining all the time about his incomplete anatomy.
'It's over there,' said Mister Carbon Business as he spotted a tall, thin wooden tower with a sort of outhouse thing on top of it.
'And here's Pov,' said Piston Jack.
'Put down that ketchup and follow me,' said Mister Carbon Business to Pov, 'We've found the Source.'
When they reached the door, they found that there was an inscription upon it. It said,
'To open this here dore, you must perform these here tasks without Hesitation. Once you have finished the tasks, you will discover what lies within. Time, as always, is of the eßence.'
'So what are the tasks?' asked Piston Jack.
'You must stuff an armchair in your mouth, run round in a spiral yelling at a supermarket, steal five packs of fertility tablets from a nunnery, board up the windows of that there bomb shelter, and finally...'
there was the sound of a large brass band inhaling...
'Bring me...'
A drum roll...
'So what are you waiting for?' snapped the sign as Piston Jack, Mister Carbon Business and Pov snapped back to reality, 'Do it!'
'Er... bring you what?' tried Mister Carbon Business, confused.
'A drum roll!' yelled the sign shrilly and swung off its hinges, hitting him in the face.
'Why don't we just go round the back?' said Pov, taking a bite out of his drum roll.
'Okay,' said Mister Carbon Business, 'but don't finish that drum roll. We may need it.'
Mister Carbon Business, Piston Jack and Pov edged round to the back of the outhouse thing and tried the back door. The handle fell off.
'Oh no,' said Pov, curling an elephant.
'Fraid so,' agonised Mister Carbon Business.
'We're just going to have to take that drum roll of yours to the sign,' said Piston Jack, his ears in a mood.
They edged back round to the front of the outhouse thing and rapped on the door.
'Shut that racket up!' said an old woman wearing a shirt.
Piston Jack frobbed the door and they all piled in, ignoring the sign, which was now firing coleslaw at them and cackling manically.
Inside was an old man sitting at a desk which had hundreds of small, flashing bananas set into it. He looked round as they entered.
'Mister,' said Piston Jack, 'you ought to go on a diet.'
The old man did not look up. Instead, he activated his Teeth Siren again, sending waves of muesli down Mister Carbon Business.
'That's it,' said Piston Jack, 'One more move and I'll sue you.'
The old man looked scared for a second or two, but then an evil grin spread across his face. Pressing an apple on his desk, he rocketed upwards at an alarming speed.
'Adios,' he said as he smashed into the ceiling and fell down again. Small chickens waltzed round his head. Piston Jack looked triumphant.
'I'm suing!' yelled Piston Jack.
'And I'm Chao-Ling!' yelled Mister Carbon Business.
'And I'm Yecki-EEng' yelled Pov, sproinging to attention.
Making loud Oriental yells of 'Ya' and 'Yee!' and peppering their opponents with small round sharp things, they advanced upon the Welsh Home Guard, who had appeared from nowhere, and were armed with Bumble-Bus Cannons.
Unfortunately, however, this small wooden outhouse thing on a rickety wooden tower was not built to accomodate one old man, a vindictive signpost, a strange weirdo called Piston Jack, Mister Carbon Business, his mutinous assistant Pov, fifty-nine Bumble-Bus Cannons and the Welsh Home Guard, and was soon a large heap of twigs on the ground in which aforesaid persons were struggling and making various pained noises.
'Oh well,' said Mister Carbon Business when they had extricated themselves from the kindling, 'at least we stopped the Teeth Siren from kidnapping all those whale-sharks.'
'It didn't capture no whale sharks!' protested Piston Jack.
'That's cos we stopped it,' said Mister Carbon Business.
'Oh, right,' said Piston Jack.
'You know, you never got round to suing that old geezer.'
'Yeah, I was looking forward to that.'
Mister Carbon Business had an idea.
'You could sue Pov here,' he said, indicating Pov.
'Okay,' said Piston Jack. He took careful aim and sued Pov right between the limbs.
'Ough, my limbs,' said Pov and fell over.
THE OTHER END