How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis: Book Two (15 page)

The success of our rescue mission put everyone at ease and introductions were made in an air of friendship and mutual respect. Beautiful, right? Two different species, once enemies, now allies, helping each other survive in a perilous world. I can hear violins swelling just thinking about it.

The truth was our little union made us targets for both sides. If our arrangement was discovered the shit storm that would rain down on us would be fierce and final. Every silver lining has a cloud.

Still, we were in the middle of nowhere and everyone else was busy fighting a war, so we at least had time to enjoy a meal. The frogwoman was keen to try out the pots we had brought for her and set to fixing dinner for us.

Like Nabbo, their names were impossible to pronounce. The magic that let us understand what they said in English didn’t translate their names for some reason, so I decided to give them names. This could be seen as condescending—it’s not very politically correct to try and overwrite someone’s culture with your own—but we needed to be able to call them something.

“You’re Pitt, you’re Jolie, and the kid can be Suri. That okay with you?”

The frogmen (yes, I know one of them is female, stop being pedantic) were fine with it, but Claire took issue with my naming scheme.

“Suri is Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ kid. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s daughter is called Shiloh. And why are you giving him a girl’s name?”

“So what?” I said. “It’s just a name. And why do you even know this stuff. You should be ashamed of yourself, you stalker.”

Of course, trying to shame the Guilt Tripper Supreme got me nowhere, she brushed it off without taking damage.

The food was amazing. If we could get Jolie to teach us to cook half as good, we could open a restaurant and give up the whole hack ‘n’ slash business for good.

“She’s an excellent cook,” said Pitt. “It’s why I married her. And of course for her great body.”

Jolie tittered and slapped Pitt in a flirty way.

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but frogmen didn’t wear clothes. So his wife was nude. If you asked me what kind of body she had, I’d probably tell you she had a very nice personality.

“Do you ever eat humans?” asked Maurice.

Why? Why would he ask? Nothing good could come of a question like that.

“No,” sad Pitt. “You people taste disgusting.”

I
really
didn’t want to know how he knew we tasted bad. I looked for something to throw at Maurice, but he seemed content with the answer and there was no follow up.

We stuffed our faces and then set up camp nearby.

I didn’t want to be too close to the water in case the lizardmen came back, so we found a small clearing about five minutes away and put up our tents. The general mood was upbeat and optimistic. For everyone else, that is. I knew the universe too well to consider this anything else other than a temporary lull in proceedings.

The next day, Pitt showed us how to fish. While Jolie had been delighted with her pots and pans (the girls had exceeded their remit and bought far more kitchen stuff than I had told them to), Pitt was a bit more wary of the spear I’d had made.

He inspected it closely, tried biting it, and threw it around to get a feel for it. But once he actually used it to spear some fish, his attitude changed for the better. He landed a giant tuna-looking fish on his first attempt and yanked it out of the water with a big smile on his face. And when a frogman has a big smile, it’s really big.

“My old spear would have broken on something this big,” he said as he gutted and cleaned the fish with the knife we had given him. His normal tool for the job was a flat stone with a sharpened edge.

Spear-fishing lessons took the form of him showing me, Maurice and Dudley the correct form and action, followed by us doing a horrible imitation. Pitt wasn’t very patient and used the ‘shouting and screaming’ technique of teaching. Eventually, we managed to throw the spear in a straight line, but the really hard part was being able to hit something other than water.

It turned out the frogmen had another kind of magic they used to help with fishing. Pitt crouched down and placed his fingers in the water. He made a series of movements similar to those Nabbo used to create fire magic, and the water around his hand began to glow.

Within a few seconds, fish from around the lake came towards the platform, and then swam in a tight group just to make hitting them easier. Maurice watched this with eyes like saucers, and muttered, “Aquaman!” under his breath.

We all tried to copy the finger moves, but like with the fire magic, none of us was able to get it to work. We carried on practicing with the spear and slowly improved with Pitt’s guidance. And by guidance, I mean relentless shouting.

Meanwhile, the girls just sat around chatting with Jolie. Sure, they were learning how to cook, which herbs and vegetables to use, how long to leave it to simmer and all that stuff, but really they were having a good chin-wag. The kid was pretty much permanently attached to Flossie, which Dudley seemed to be keeping a close eye on.

As evening rolled around, we had caught a number of fish—well, Pitt had, we’d managed to fire a couple of warning shots—and enjoyed another superb meal. As we sat around feeling full and lazy, Nabbo lit his pipe and took a big puff.

“What’s in the pipe?” I asked him.

“Pondweed,” said Nabbo. “It grows everywhere. You just have to dry it out and stick it in your pipe.”

“It rots the brain,” said Pitt.

“It’s medicine,” said Nabbo.

“What kind of medicine?” I asked.

“The kind that makes you feel better,” said Nabbo. “What other kind of medicine is there?”

“Can I try some?”

He looked at me through a cloud of smoke, then passed me the pipe. I took a puff.

I’m not a stoner, but I have smoked weed a number of times. I’ve experienced the crappy stuff where you wonder if it’s really just oregano, and also the alien-looking mutant spores that leave you paralysed with a rictus grin on your face. One hit from Nabbo’s pipe was enough to make me realise I’d never really been stoned before.

The world got up and left, and a new world sat down next to me. This new world was my friend.

“The problem with this,” I said while giggling, “is that it makes normal life a lot less interesting.”

“Easily solved,” said Nabbo. “Smoke weed every day.”

I passed the pipe to the others who had been watching my transformation from grouch to giddy schoolboy. They each took a nervous toke, and started grinning.

I sat on the edge of the platform with my feet in the water, watching the fish and thinking about becoming a drug dealer. If the pondweed was easy to collect and prepare, we could make a lot of money. People always want to get out of their heads, and I was sure the people here were no different.

Imagine being the first person to discover heroin. Sure, there’s some drawbacks and problems with being a drug trafficker, but think of the profit!

I turned to discuss this amazing business opportunity with Maurice to find I was alone on the platform, which was now bumped up against the bank. When had that happened?

I looked around. Pitt and his wife were in the water, playing with the kid. Nabbo had probably gone for his bathroom break. I was too relaxed to feel panic, but I was a bit miffed at the sudden disappearance of my party. I stood up to get a better look and saw them in the distance.

Maurice and Claire were walking away, hand in hand. Dudley and Flossie, also hand in hand, were near them, but heading in a slightly different direction. Two things became immediately clear to me. One, they were going to have sex. And two, it wasn’t their first time.

As I’ve said before, I’m not the most observant of people. My interest in what other people get up to is limited to whether or not it will inconvenience me. But I really should have spotted the signs.

Now that I thought about it, whenever we split up to do jobs, they always partnered up the same way. Even when we were staying at the inn back in Fengarad, I only assumed Maurice and Dudley shared one room and the girls the other. They could have been shacked up and banging away for weeks for all I knew, the dirty little sluts. And I mean all four of them.

Did I feel jealous? I guess so, as much as anyone would. I didn’t fancy either Claire or Flossie, and had never thought about them as anything other than mildly annoying, but it’s hard to see people around you happy if you aren’t. It’s just a reminder you don’t need.

Not that I would want them to stop just to make it easier on me. I’m not the sort of person who thinks my life would be better if other people’s was worse. It’s not like them not having sex meant women would suddenly start throwing pussy my way. It doesn’t work like that. They’d just be less happy and I would be the same miserable me.

Truthfully, I didn’t have any problem with them shagging. Good for them. Of course, I felt a little sorry for myself, but nothing had changed, really. My life would continue the same, and at least I had weed.

I sat down in Nabbo’s chair and took another puff on the pipe. Nothing happened. It had gone out. There was always the cooking fire, I could light it off that. I half rose out of the seat before noticing had also gone out. The whole time we’d been here, the fire was always burning, except now. It was just so typical of my life, I couldn’t help but smile.

The universe always had a way of letting me know how much of a fuck it didn’t give about me.
Don’t be sad
, it seemed to say.
Things might seem bad now, but they could always be a little bit worse.
Let me show you...

There was no way to know how long Nabbo would be. I sighed and moved my fingers the way Nabbo had shown me. Of course it wouldn’t work, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do, might as well give the universe another opportunity to laugh in my face.

So it was something of a surprise when a small blue flame appeared on the end of my finger.

I stared at my finger for what seemed like forever, although I was still a bit stoned so it may only have been five second. With my other hand, I touched the blue flame dancing on the top of my index finger. It didn’t feel very hot, but it was definitely there.

A gentle breeze drifted in from across the water and the flame went out. I continued to stare at what was now just my finger, then I repeated the hand movements to bring the flame back. Nothing happened.

I tried a number of times, but I couldn’t make it reappear. It was fine, though. The flame had definitely been real and if it was possible once, it meant it was possible again. Just knowing that made a huge difference. Now I just had to figure out
how
I’d done it.

My first thought was that the weed was responsible. Perhaps it contained some magical ingredient that allowed the smoker to do magic. But there was one flaw in this theory, which was Pitt. I had seen him do magic with the fish-calling, and he didn’t smoke. Then again, Nabbo was on his pipe pretty much 24/7, so there was always a cloud of smoke hanging over the platform. Second-hand smoke magic?

It seemed a bit of a stretch.

My other thought was that the weed had put me into a very relaxed state of mind. Just before I managed to produce the flame, I had reached a point where I really didn’t care, about anything. Not about the others going off together, not about being alone, not even about whether I’d be able to produce a flame.

If not giving a fuck was the key to being able to do magic, I had the potential to become the greatest wizard this world had ever seen.

Of course, trying to not care about something you actually care a lot about is no easy task. That’s where the weed came in. It had got me to a place where I stopped caring, I just needed to get myself back there and see if that did the trick.

Since everyone seemed to be busy doing their own thing, I went back to camp where I could get a fire going the old fashioned way. I took Nabbo’s pipe with me, which was a bit cheeky, but he could always make another one. And I had saved his life, which was an excellent trump card to use as my excuse.

It didn’t take long to start a fire. I leaned in to light the pipe and took some nice, deep drags of pondweed. The effects quickly washed over me and I returned to the warm bosom of stonedom.

But the flame still wouldn’t work. I tried it a number of times, all to no avail. Even though I was stoned, I couldn’t recapture that feeling of general ambivalence from before. I cared too much (not something I ever thought I’d have to worry about).

What was at stake was so huge, it was impossible to act like it wasn’t. I couldn’t help but get worked up about it as I made the finger movements.

I took a break and attempted to calm myself, but my head was too full of the possibilities and my anticipation remained sky-high. Of course, there was one other way for a young man to release some of his tension. Yep.

To be absolutely clear, this had nothing to do with everyone else getting laid and me feeling lonely. This was for science.

I went into my tent and took care of business. I’m not sure what the world record is for quickest wank, but I’m pretty sure I smashed it. As I lay there, slightly out of breath, the sheer ridiculousness of what I was trying to do made me giggle uncontrollably.

Eventually, my amusement at myself subsided and I tried to make magic happen. It worked first time. Flame on! I couldn’t believe it.

I burst out laughing again. If I had to jerk off every time I wanted to use magic, it was going to make battling monsters very tricky—not many fights allow for a fap break.

Still, I could use magic!

The flame danced on my finger. It wasn’t a fireball, but it was a start. I blew it out and crawled out of the tent to find the rest of my party standing there with confused and slightly judgemental looks on their faces. The judgemental part may have been my imagination.

“What were you doing in there?” asked Claire.

“Er, magic,” I said. Which was true on a number of levels.

Producing a flame there and then was not an easy thing to do. All four of them staring at me expectantly was a lot of pressure. I raised my hand and moved my fingers. A flame appeared.

They were suitably stunned. And then they were shrieking and jumping up and down, hitting me with a barrage of questions. I told them about how being stoned had put me in the right frame of mind (I skipped over the other part) and they were keen to try it for themselves.

We sat around the fire and passed the pipe around. They quickly got stoned, but there was a slight problem. Unlike me, there reaction to being baked wasn’t a zen-like chill, it made them horny—literally the opposite of not giving a fuck.

They started giving each other sideways glances and flirty looks. None of them were able to produce a flame, unsurprisingly. Not often you need a bucket of cold water to get a fire going.

I know I said I didn’t begrudge them their fun, but this was just irritating. Go off and shag yourselves silly in private if you want, but don’t get all hot and bothered in front of me. That’s just rude.

“There’s something I want to say to you all,” I said. Their attention returned to me, reluctantly. “I know you guys have hooked up and are couples now.”

They seemed surprised I had figured it out.

“Ah, yeah” said Maurice. “Sorry about that.”

“We didn’t want you to feel awkward, that’s why we didn’t mention it,” said Claire. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, sorry,” joined in Flossie. Dudley also mumbled something apologetic.

All the apologising was annoying. It wasn’t even sincere, the smug bastards.
Sorry for having loads of sex when you weren’t.
I wonder why Hallmark never printed that card?

“I don’t care about that. I feel awkward most of the time already, you lot fucking isn’t going to change that. But I assume you haven’t been using any kind of contraception, so there’s a real danger one of you might get pregnant.”

This dose of reality wiped the smug sympathy from their faces. Colin-Fu, black belt.

“We really don’t need the extra problems something like that will bring. Right?” I looked to them for confirmation.

They said nothing.

“Look,” I said, “it’s not like having a baby would be the end of the world. People have been having kids in difficult situations since, well, since there have been people. It’s normal. All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t be helpful right now. Having to travel around with a pregnant woman, dealing with the birth, keeping the mother and baby safe when we get into fights… it’d all be a huge pain.”

Nobody agreed with me, but they didn’t disagree, either. They sat there fidgeting.

I continued. “All I’m saying is, if you do end up with a bun in the oven, I will be leaving the group to go off on my own.”

Claire stood up, face contorted into a mixture of disbelief and outrage. “What? Why?”

I held up my hands. “Hey, I’m just being honest with you guys. Like I said, being in a tough spot has never stopped people having kids. I’m sure you’ll do just fine without me.”

“Why do you have to be like this?” said Claire. “That’s a really shitty thing to say, Colin.”

The Sorceress Supreme was about to unleash her arsenal of guilt-inducing weaponry, I could tell. Well, fuck that.

“I know we’ve come a long way together,” I said calmly, “but once you have kids, everything changes. One for all and all for one becomes women and children first. Which is fine if it’s your women and children, but I don’t want to become a nanny to a bunch of sprogs, thanks very much. It’s your choice to have kids, and it should be your responsibility to look after them. Don’t you think that’s fair?”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Claire was the only one standing. She was also shaking with rage. “So, you’re saying we have to stop having sex or you’ll leave.”

“What? No. How’d you come to that conclusion? There’s lots of ways to have sex without getting pregnant. Handjobs, blowjobs, up the arse. All I’m saying is I don’t intend to have my already crappy life turned into a bigger bag of shite just because you were having too good a time to remember to pull out.”

Claire face got redder and she looked like she might explode any minute. “I am not going to have sex up the arse just to make you happy.”

“Well it wouldn’t just make me happy, right Maurice?”

Maurice was caught a little off-guard. “What? I mean yes. I mean no. Wait, what are we talking about?”

“Well, you can forget it,” Claire screamed at Maurice.

“But I didn’t even…” Maurice was at a loss for words.

“And you,” Claire pointed at me, “you’re just jealous.”

“Yep, you got me, Claire. I’m super jelly. So jealous, that I’m encouraging you to have anal sex. Because that’s what you do when you’re jealous, isn’t it? Try to convince the people you’re jealous of to to take it up the shitter. A well-known cure for jealousy.”

Claire seemed unable to find the words to express her feelings. She turned to Maurice and pointed at him. “No!”

“It wasn’t even my idea!” said Maurice, a little unconvincingly, if you ask me.

Flossie suddenly got up. We all waited to see what she had to say. She stood very stiff with her head bowed, staring at the ground. “Ah… Ah… Ah don’t mind taking it in the boom.” She slowly turned towards Dudley, still intently gazing at her shoes. “Ah mean, if that’s what you want.”

Dudley’s face did the kind of gymnastics that would’ve scored a perfect 10.0 at the Olympics. I can’t say for sure what was going through his mind, but my guess would be something along the lines of:

Oh my God, this is it. The dream! The dream!

No, wait, it’s a trap, she’s testing me. I should say I don’t want to.

But what if it’s my one and only chance? How can I say no.

Take the shot! Take the shot!

“Izzat what you want?” asked Flossie bashfully.

Reddest of all the red faces, poor Dudley eeked out a pitiful, “Nooooooooo...?”

“You can forget it. All of you. Flossie, you’re sleeping with me tonight.” Claire grabbed Flossie by the arm and yanked her towards one of the tents. Flossie looked back at Dudley apologetically, just before she disappeared behind the tent flaps.

Maurice and Dudley shared a sorrowful look with each other. I don’t think they knew what had just happened, other than something precious had been tantalisingly hung in front of them, and then cruelly snatched away.

I sat back down by the fire and lit the pipe from my finger. And that’s how you teach people not to go around flaunting their good luck in front of those not so fortunate. Works like magic.