I could not believe that my arch-enemy, Harold Loathsome, had chosen to hold our final showdown in a bell-tower. It just seemed so very cliched. Honestly, I had expected more from him. Maybe it was time I found a better class of nemesis.

And so it was rather begrudgingly that I hauled myself up the winding stairs that led to the tower, cursing Loathsome’s name as it quickly became apparent that there were far more flights of stairs than I had first imagined. Maybe that is how Loathsome intended to finish me – by wearing me out completely through such exertions, so that when I finally faced him he could cut me down without a struggle. That would be exactly the sort of twattish plan I would expect from the murderous cove.

As I continued my struggle against the stairs, another memory from my school-days bubbled forth from my brain. When I had attended St. Bumthrusty’s School for Boys, there had been a long-running rumour that the school’s bell-tower was haunted. Many people – staff and pupils alike – had claimed to have heard ‘unearthly wailing and moaning’ and some ‘ominous banging’ coming from the tower, with one teacher even claiming to have discovered some ectoplasmic residue in the room. The truth, however, was much less spectral and far more scrotal; the school’s bell-tower had merely been my favourite spot in which to hide girls from the town, whereupon we would indulge in some covert coupling, hence the frequent moaning and banging. And needless to say, that was most certainly not ectoplasm found in the bell-tower…

I smirked inwardly at the recollection, and was further buoyed by the fact that I had finally reached top of the stairs, thus ending my terrible escalatory ordeal. I rested myself against the wall for a momentary respite, but did not get to relax much before I was interrupted.

“Well, you certainly took your time,” said a rather snide, disembodied voice. Immediately I sprung to attention, my eyes straining through the murk of the bell chamber in an effort to locate the speaker. I soon picked out a top-hatted figure silhouetted against the early evening light which was snaking its way through the slats on the window of the room.

“Loathsome,” I spat.

“Lord Loathsome, if you do not mind,” the shadowy figure replied calmly. “Yes, I have a peerage now as well. I inherited it from an aristocratic friend of mine. Well, the dead have no use for such titles, you see…”

“You may call yourself whatever you wish, Loathsome,” I sneered. “I shall still only refer to you as ‘tosspot’, if it is all the same to you.”

There was silence from Loathsome, except for the sound of a match being struck as he lit himself a cigarette. I briefly caught a glimpse of one of his small, beady eyes in the match-light, before he lit his fag and discarded the match over his shoulder.

“Still the same old Likely,” Loathsome finally said. “As arrogant and up his own arse as ever. It is high time someone bought you down a peg or two, Likely. And I shall only be too pleased to take on that responsibility.”

I felt my muscles tighten as I readied myself for some kind of ruckus, but instead Loathsome slowly stepped forward into one of the few shafts of sunlight in the tower, finally revealing himself in all his foulness.

Loathsome still looked as loathsome as I remember him; he was a skinny and wiry fellow, wearing a long, dark-grey overcoat on top of a black suit, with a similarly dark top hat on his awful, greasy, straggly blonde-hair. He had a long, pointed nose, and his cruel, thin lips were contorted into some sort of wretched smile. The only change I could really observe was that he now sported an eye-patch across his left eye, leaving only one piggy eyeball free to glare at me.

In short, he rather resembled a bastard wrapped up in a cunt.

“I am glad you could make it, Likely,” Loathsome grinned. “I rather feared you were going to be late. Why, it is already ten to six, you know…”

“Why don’t you just stop wittering and make some sort of ruddy move, Loathsome?” I snapped, growing weary of his melodramatic performance.

“Oh no, Likely. No, no, no. I have been waiting for far too long to hurry this now,” my enemy responded, drawing upon his cigarette and blowing a smoke-ring in my direction. “Twenty-five years I have waited. Twenty-five years since you publicly humiliated me in front of everyone at this very school. Twenty-five years since you got me expelled. Twenty-five years since you had me exiled to Africa, to spend two and a half decades toiling in the burning sun. Suffice to say, I fully intend to really, really enjoy this moment.”

“To be fair, Loathsome, you deserved every bit of your punishment, You were, after all, a massive cock-end.”

“Please, do keep the feeble insults coming, Likely. It shall make killing you all the more sweeter.”

“You do not scare me, Loathsome. Not one bit. I have bested you many times before, and I dare say I shall do so again. You forget that I am vastly superior to you in every possible way.”

“Oh, you think so?” chuckled Loathsome, his lips parting to reveal rows of horrid, yellowing teeth. “I do beg to differ, Likely. I mean, you have been rather slow to finally catch up with me, have you not? And I do not imagine that you have any inkling as to precisely how long I have been tracking you, and messing with your over-privileged life…”

I froze. The thought of Loathsome stalking me was terribly nauseating. Why could I not be stalked by someone decidedly more attractive, and considerably more be-titted?

“I thought that would get your attention, Likely,” Loathsome jeered. “For you see, I have been following your progress quite closely…quite, quite closely indeed. And for such a long time, too! Right from the moment you opened a letter in which the writer threatened to cut you, early last year…”

My mind raced as I tried to recollect the moment in question, and then I remembered.

It was February, 1856, and I had received a mysterious missive from some lunatic threatening to cut me. The return address on the letter had led me to a house at Buckingham Place, where I had subsequently been drawn into an astonishing adventure involving murderous prostitutes and an evil old brothel-owner called Mrs. Dinklesuck. At first, I had assumed the letter had been a cryptic cry for help from one of her unfortunate clients, but this was later proven to be incorrect, leading me to dismiss the note entirely. Now, however, I could see its importance all too clearly. It had been written in the same hand as that used in the note which had been affixed to the first victim of Loathsome’s murderous spree at St. Bumthrusty’s.

“So it was you who penned that letter,” I mused. “How extraordinarily dull.”

“That was just the beginning, Likely! I had far more fun toying with you later that very day, when I took great pleasure in ramming your carriage off the road…”

“Egads!” I gasped. “I remember that! You made me spill some whisky, you utter shit-ball.”

“Wait, Likely, because it gets rather more brilliant still. A few months later, as you boarded the HMS Bastard to sail to America, I sent an assassin after you, to rough you up a bit. You know, just for fun.”

“Doctor Corkscrews!” I exclaimed, as I remembered my encounter with the murderous medic.

“Indeed, indeed. It is a terrible shame you offed him, Likely. He was under strict instructions not to kill you. I just thought his attack might keep you on your toes…” Loathsome stopped to draw upon his cigarette once more, before flicking the cigarette butt across the room. “And then – then! – I hatched a brilliant scheme to pilfer all the booze from the Likely Estate earlier this year. Oh, your face! It really was utterly, utterly priceless!…”

The news that Loathsome had a hand in many of my most notable adventures of the past couple of years set my head reeling, and I had to steady myself on the wall beside me. The fact that Loathsome has been manipulating me so made me feel rather sick, but above all it made me want to pound his putrid skull to dust.

“That just about does it, Loathsome,” I hissed. “I think I have heard quite enough. Now, if you will be so kind as to put your fists up, I think we…”

“Wait a moment, old boy,” Loathsome replied, rather too nonchalantly for my liking. “What time is it?”

“What in the name of shittery does the time have to do with anything?” I yelled.

“Oh, the time is very important, Likely. Very important indeed,” Loathsome answered, strolling over to the enormous bell hanging from the roof of the tower. “For you see, at six o’clock, this bell here will chime the hour.” Loathsome gently patted the side of the bell. “‘Tis quite a size, isn’t it? Apparently, this is the largest bell in the entire county, Likely.”

“I think I am looking at a rather bigger bell-end right now, Loathsome.”

“Very droll. Anyway, at six this bell will chime six times; and on each of those chimes the bell’s huge clapper will strike the inside of the bell with quite considerable force. Imagine, Likely, if someone were unfortunate enough to wind up actually inside the bell when that happens…why, I would think they would be pulped to a mash fairly quickly, don’t you?”

I slowly drew closer to the fiendish felon, knowing all too well that he was planning something awful.

“What have you done, Loathsome?” I demanded.

“Here,” said Loathsome, striking another match. “Take a look inside, Likely.”

I took the match from Loathsome’s hand, and knelt down to look under the bell. And there, manacled to the actual inside of the bell, was Botter, considerably not-dead, but looking rather the worse for wear, his face badly bruised and his mouth gagged. Furthermore, he had been stripped down to his underwear, which I felt was not only completely unnecessary, but also incredibly revolting. Truly, Loathsome was a most twisted individual indeed.

I rose back up slowly, but before I could return to my full (glorious) height, Loathsome delivered a swift boot to my beautiful face, sending me sprawling flat on my back. Loathsome laughed maniacally as he withdrew a revolver from his overcoat, and pointed it at my head. Blearily, I retrieved my solid-gold pocket-watch from my waist-coat, and tried to focus on the tiny clock face.

“I would say your time was running out, Likely,” Loathsome chuckled.

The blurring of my vision subsided, allowing me to read the time on my pocket-watch. Annoyingly, it seemed Loathsome was rather correct.

It was four minutes to six.

I had less than four minutes to save my own life, and to save Botter’s.

In that exact order.

- Lord Likely

Next Time in The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely: Time runs out as ‘A Lesson in Murder’ reaches its nail-biting, pant-soiling conclusion!

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“He…he’s DEAD!” she screamed, before swooning into a dead faint.

“Oh butter my balls,” I sighed, as the theatre erupted into a cacophony of cries and gasps, with people running to and fro in a delirious panic, falling over one another in a vain attempt to escape the horror that lay before them. I patiently watched this farce unfold before my eyes, until I decided I’d had quite enough, and attempted to take control of the situation.

“FOR THE LOVE OF COCK,” I bellowed. “WILL YOU ALL PLEASE CALM YOURSELVES DOWN, AND CEASE YOUR BLOODY WAILINGS FOR ONE BASTARD MINUTE, YOU LILY-LIVERED BUNCH OF USELESS TWAT-HOLES!”

There was a shocked silence as everyone froze in mid-panic.

“He can’t talk to us like that, can he?” a solitary voice asked.

“I can, and I shall and I can,” I said. “I am glad I finally have your full and absolute attention. Now, I shall ask again – is there a doctor in the house?” I then noticed a gentleman sporting a stethoscope sitting in the front row, seeminly oblivious to the pandemonium that had erupted around him.

“Excuse me, sir – are you a doctor, by any chance?” I asked. Still he did not respond, until he was gently nudged in the ribs by a lady sat next to him, at which point he seemed to finally realise something was afoot, and removed the stethoscope from his ears.

“Sorry about that,” he apologised. “I was listening to my heartbeat. I’m still very much alive, don’t you know. Wonderful news!”

I began to have serious doubts about this fellow’s medical credentials, but he was all we had, and so I grudgingly beckoned him up to the stage to examine the unfortunate victim of Archie’s brutal card-trick. The doctor clambered onto the stage, checked for a heartbeat using his precious stethoscope, felt the gentleman’s pulse and held a small mirror up to the man’s mouth, tutting and sighing as he did so.

“This man is not at all well,” the doctor said finally. “In fact, I would say he is suffering from a most acute case of not living anymore, or what we doctors like to call ‘being dead’. In short, sir – yes, this man is dead.”

“Speak up!” yelled a voice from the back of the auditorium.

“THIS MAN IS DEAD!” the doctor shouted back, before I could silence him.

“He…he’s dead!” repeated the rotund lady from earlier, having just recovered from her last faint, before swooning back down again seconds later. And so, with crushing, awful inevitability, the whole room exploded into terror-stricken chaos once more. I sighed.

“SILENCE, YOU BLOATED TUBES OF EFFLUENCE! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!”

The room fell silent again, indeed, so silent was the silence now silently shrouding the theatre, one could have heard a pin drop.

“Sorry,” mumbled one theatre-goer embarrassedly. “I dropped my pin.”

“Thank you. Now, listen carefully, ladies and gentlemen. There really is no need for alarm, we are – “

“No need for alarm?” cried a gentleman in the front row. “No need for alarm? That chap there is dead!”

“Yes. Yes he is. Thus, you have nothing to fear from him. It is not as if he is going to rise from the dead and feast upon you all now, is it?”

“He…He’s NOT dead!” screamed the fainting woman, pointing frantically behind me.

“Oh, what is it now, you stupid fat sow?” I sighed, exasperated with her continued outbursts. “If you are going to heckle me, you could at least have the decency to be consistent, I mean it is not – “

I was cut-off in the midst of my most excellent rant by someone pawing at my arm like an over-affectionate dog. Half-expecting it to be my useless man-servant, Botter, I swung around, fist clenched, ready to sock the little bastard right in his stupid face.

Imagine my surprise when I turned around to be confronted with none other than the recently late gentleman, looking rather the worse for wear, the playing card still held firm in his skull.

“Frightfully sorry,” said the man. “But I simply must dine on your brains now.”

“Shit-cakes,” I exclaimed.

- Lord Likely

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Lance and I watched for a few more minutes as the posse of men rampaged through the Red Rump tribe’s campsite, then we withdrew from our vantage point atop Cockshaft Canyon to formulate a plan to overcome this group of horseback bastards.

“I say we go down there, guns ablazin’, and shoot each an’ every one of ‘em dead,” Lance snarled, drawing his pistol from it’s holster.

“An excellent plan, Lance, however it falls down on one crucial point. There are but two of us, and at least twelve of them. By the time we had shot off our first round we’d be riddled so full of holes they could use our corpses to strain spaghetti.”

“Oh. Right.” Lance fell silent, his brow knotted in deep concentration. “Okay, then, what about we get a big ol’ cannon, wheel it up to the edge of the canyon and BOOM! Blow ‘em all to kingdom come?”

“Hmmm.” I mused. “I think that plan is possibly even more asinine than your first.”

“Ass-what?” said Lance.

“Never mind,” I sighed. “Now do be quiet, and let me think so that I may formulate a plan that is not completely and utterly bent.”

My silent ruminations were not to be forthcoming, however, as a loud voice broke into my thoughts from the valley below.

“LIKELY!” came the voice. “LIKELY!”

“Is he talking to you or me?” I said to Lance. Lance shrugged.

“LIKELY! I KNOW YOU’RE UP THERE! JUST COME ON DOWN, AND WE’LL HAVE A LITTLE TALK, MAN-TO-MAN!”

I froze. I recognised that voice from somewhere. The lilting, sing-song cadence and slight Welsh accent…

Then, I had a flashback.

I shan’t bore you with the details of my flashback, except to say it was in black and white, entirely in slow motion, and surprisingly dull. The upshot of it all was that I had indeed heard this voice from someone somewhere before, and that somewhere was aboard the HMS Bastard, where I had began my journey to America, and the someone was it’s captain – Huw Anchor.

What in the name of Thor’s mighty hammer was that swine doing here?

I crawled back to the precipice and peered over the top. Surely enough, there was the smartly-dressed form of the captain, flanked by two other familiar faces, Renchard Dirigible, his second-in-command and Jean des Lunettes, the awful Frenchman I had met while dining with the captain aboard the HMS Bastard.

“Well bugger me sideways,” I exclaimed quietly. “I have met these fiends before! What a small world it is, eh Lance?” There was no reply. “Lance?”

My finely-tuned sense of danger told me something was amiss, so I gently pulled out the antique pistol Ludlow had given me, and quickly spun round, holding the gun out on front of me. I saw Lance, on his knees, head bowed, in front of a burly figure who was pointing a rifle at the back of my poor brother’s head.

“Mr. Anchor wishes to see you both,” the figure growled. “Dead or alive, it makes no difference.”

“Tell him I shall see him…IN HELL!” I roared, squeezing the trigger of the pistol. Nothing happened, save for a dull thud as the hammer clicked into place. I silently cursed Ludlow for having lumbered me with a useless weapon, and gently rose to my feet, hands in the air.

“Or, we can see him now, I suppose,” I sighed.

“Oh! Your lordship! How lovely to see you again!” Anchor cried, as we entered the campsite. “It has been much too long. I do hope there are no hard feelings about the whole trying-to-kill-you-by-ploughing-our-ship-into-an-iceberg business?”

“Oh, not at all, Mr. Wanker. The sea-breeze did me the world of good, I shouldn’t wonder. Now if you do not mind, can you please tell me what in the name of Prince Albert’s golden cock-ring is going on here?”

“Certainly,” said Anchor, sitting himself down on one of the tribe’s comfortable sofas. “It is the least I can do, before I have you shot dead by my accomplice Herman, over there,” he indicated to the burly fellow behind me, who jabbed his rifle into my back on cue.

“Charmed,” I said.

“You are a well-travelled man, are you not, your lordship? I too travel a lot, but alas all I ever get to see of the various countries I encounter is the coast, before I am off again on another voyage. So, when my annual holiday came around this year, I decided to take in some of the sights of this great nation, and get to know it a little better. My holiday took me to some rather obscure, peculiar little places, such as a small town called Around Here, in Dinkle County. My! That was a rather colourful little township, I must say. Anyway, I was relaxing in a bar there, when I overheard two men engaged in a hushed discussion about the recent discovery of a large stash of gold, and what to do with it. One of these men was your brother, here, the other was an old fellow who seemed to be the one who had made the discovery.

“Now, an opportunity like this does not come along every day, your lordship, and I decided I wanted this gold for myself. So I assembled together this group of easily-bribed men from the town, and we paid this old man a visit, with a view to wringing the location of the gold from him. Unfortunately, he was not forthcoming with the information, so I…”

“You killed him, ya lily-livered piece o’ shit!” snapped Lance, angrily. Anchor motioned to Herman, who responded by smashing Lance in the back of the head with his rifle butt. Lance howled in pain.

“Please, do not interrupt me when I am telling my story. It is really very rude, you know,” Anchor droned. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes! So, I decided to terminate the discussion with the old man, and thought I might be able to learn the location of the gold from his partner, the incredibly rude Lance Likely, here. Unfortunately, tracking Lance down was rather tricky, and despite my best efforts he remained an elusive character. Eventually I had to give up and return to England, and back to work.

“But happily, Lady Luck seemed to smile down upon me, for when I returned to duty on the HMS Bastard I saw that one of my passengers was another Likely – your good self, Lord Likely. This could not be mere coincidence, I thought, and I reasoned that this man had to be connected with the other Likely in United States. So, I informed the most trusted members of my crew about the whole affair, offered them a share of the bounty and together we decided to ransack your cabin to glean further information. We abducted your man-servant so that you would think the sole purpose of the raid on your lodgings was for a kidnapping, and would not get suspicious of our real intentions, and then we turned the place over. There we found the letter of distress from yet anther Likely, your American half-brother Ludlow, so we made a note of his address and decided that when we got to America, we would pay him a visit.”

“Why didn’t you just follow me?” I asked.

“Mr. Dirigible here informed me that you were somewhat of an adventurer and detective, who had defeated countless criminals and miscreants over the years. We reasoned that only you could possibly scupper our plans, and we would fare better leaning on this Ludlow fellow instead. So, we agreed to sink the HMS Bastard with you on it, lest you interfere with our plans.”

“Of course, that was after your first attempt on my life failed, when I overcame your hired goon Doctor Corkscrews,” I remarked.

“Doctor who?” Anchor asked, genuinely surprised. “We did not hire anyone to kill you, your lordship. We already had our scheme all set out.”

I was confused. I had been sure Doctor Corkscrews was part of this terrible business, yet he was not. I was reminded of an earlier mystery, where my carriage had been shunted off the road by persons unknown, and where I had received a note threatening violence upon my lordly form, of which both instances had proved to be unrelated to the mystery at hand. Was someone else following me and trying to end my precious life? And if so, who? And why would anyone wish harm upon my wondrous self? This sort of thing was happening far too frequently for my liking, and further contemplation would be needed. However, for now I had to focus on my current predicament.

“Anyway, your lordship, thinking we had finally dispatched you, we headed off to see your brother Ludlow, hoping to persuade him to tell us how to find the ever-elusive Lance.”

“Ha! That is where you miscalculated, I fear. Ludlow would not give up such information freely. Blood is thicker than water, and – “

“Oh, you are quite right,” Anchor interrupted. “He did not give it up freely. But every man has his price, your lordship.”

“Not Ludlow,” I sneered. “He is a good, honest and decent man. If he told you anything, I will eat my hat.”

“Well, you shall dine well tonight then,” Anchor said dryly. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Likely?”

An all-too familiar figure stepped out from the shadows, his head lowered in shame. It was Ludlow. I felt my heart sink.

“I…I am sorry, Lordy,” Ludlow said, avoiding my furious gaze. “They offered me a lot of money, which helped me to get my book published…I just couldn’t refuse…please, forgive me.”

“Oh, Ludlow,” I shook my head sadly. “You utter, utter cunt.”

- Lord Likely.

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“Bollocks,” I exclaimed, as Doctor Corkscrews continued to advance upon me, seemingly hell-bent on running me through with his two bottle-opening devices.

“Do not try to resist, yer lordship,” he growled, “it’ll only hurt for a while…heh, heh, heh.”

Doctor Corkscrews, as drawn by my good self, using my finest inks.

“You shan’t get away with this, you blaggard,” I cried.

“Why not, may I ask? It seems I rather have the upper-hand, after all. Here I am, with two corkscrews that I fully intend to plunge into your stupid, fat throat…and you? You are weaponless, yer lordship. Or had you forgotten?”

“Au contraire, my dear doctor,” I replied coolly. “I think you will find that I have a very powerful weapon right here in my hand.”

The doctor looked down, and beheld my mighty Lord Palmerston, still throbbing away madly. I had been caught in the vinegar strokes when the doctor had intruded upon my ejaculatory evacuations, and my fully-loaded flesh cannon was more than ready to burst forth with my lordly juices.

“Ready or not,” I said, giving my proud member a couple more strokes, “here I COME!”

With that, my Lord Palmerston finally let issue an almighty stream of my mighty-man batter, which flew across the room and right into the hapless doctor’s eyes. He screamed, and put his hands up to his face in horror, dropping his corkscrews as he did so. Seeing my chance, I leapt off the toilet seat and grabbed the murderous medic, and then I forced his head down into the lavatory bowl. He thrashed about wildly for a while, then his body went limp as he finally expired.

“It is terrible to see such a promising career go down the toilet,” I wise-cracked, making a mental note to jot that particular gem down for future posterity. At that point, a young lad entered the bathroom.

“I heard a ruckus, sir, so I thought I’d just…oh!” he said, as he noticed the late doctor’s form bent over the toilet seat, with me stood behind him, carefully pulling my trousers back up. “Oh, I see. Terribly sorry to intrude, sirs.” Before I had a chance to explain that I was not indulging in a spot of buggery with the doctor, the young man had vanished. I sighed.

As I cleaned up, I began to wonder who on earth this Doctor Corkscrews was – or had been – and why he had wanted to kill me. Was he just a lone lunatic, or was there someone else, someone who may well have hired the doctor to terminate me? In short, what in the name of Greek sodomy was going on here?

The questions continued to run through my head as I made my way back to my luxurious cabin, and so distracted was I, that I failed to notice that the door to my room was unlocked, and left ajar. I casually strode in, still ruminating heavily on the evening’s events, when I suddenly realised that something was awfully amiss. I looked back at the door, then back into the room and noticed it was a terrible mess, with my luggage strewn about haphazardly all over the place, drawers emptied, glasses smashed.

“BOTTER!” I called, loudly. “What the cock is going on here? Come here and clean this mess up at once, or heaven help me, I shall beat you until your arse is nothing more than a bloody stump.”

There was an eerie silence. Usually, my threats of outright physical violence terrify Botter into action, but this time he did not come running. I began to get an all-too familiar feeling of dread, as I contemplated the facts.

Botter, it seemed, had been kid-napped, which was mightily inconvenient. I would no doubt have to go and rescue the little toad, and when I had done so, I would be sure to dock his pay for wasting my precious time.

- Lord Likely.

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Following the fracas at dinner, I left the dining room, stopping along the way to collect a few cabin numbers from some women who seemed rather eager to further make my acquaintance, as well as from a couple of men. Being a modern-thinking Victorian gentle-man, I gratefully took all the details thrust upon me, hoping to make use of them later in order to pass the time on our voyage.

I decided to adjourn to a nearby bath-room to tend to my raging Lord Palmerston, which was now throbbing so hard I feared it may explode and cause the HMS Bastard to become lost under the wild waves of my mounding man-batter. I locked the door of the bath-room and prepared myself for the (pleasurable) task of expelling my lordly juices. I sat back on the toilet-seat, and thinking of Queen and country (the Queen mostly, of course), I commenced the task of pounding Lord Palmerston, discharging the sperm-cannon, polishing the fleshy cane, bashing the bishop, firing the pink pistol, doing battle with the purple-helmeted warrior, rubbing the magical love-lamp, throttling the butler, scrubbing the pork-sword, shaking hands with His Majesty, exorcising the possessed, whittling the spam javelin, shaking up a cock-tail, drilling for white gold, slapping the trouser-snake, wrestling the one-eyed monster, thrusting the pink key into the hand-lock, waving the sex-staff, knighting Sir Penis, introducing Mr. Todger to Mrs. Palm…whatever you choose to call it, I was enjoying it.

As I was busily thrashing away, I slowly became aware that the door handle was moving, ever so slightly, as if someone was testing it out, to see if the door was locked. I paused, mid-jerk, and waited to see what would happen next. I hoped, eagerly, that it was one of the lust-crazed ladies from the dining-room, eager to lay her hands upon my muscular man-muscle, but something told me I was going to be sorely disappointed.

I was.

The door burst open all of a sudden, and a rather wretched-looking man strode into the bath-room, cackling loudly with his hands clasped firmly behind his back. He was wearing a terribly disheveled top-hat, from underneath of which some straggly, white hairs protruded. His disgraceful choice of head-wear was matched by his equally awful suit, which was not only ill-fitting but which was also covered in various stains, the origins of which I chose not to dwell upon.

The man stood in front of me, and leaned down to my eye-level, his small, beady eyes glaring at me from over the top of a small pair of half-moon spectacles perched upon a giant, hook-like nose. From this close proximity, I also caught a whiff of his disgusting breath, which smelt like something had crawled into his mouth, shat itself several times over, vomited and then died. I recoiled as he began to speak.

“Ah, Lord Likely,” he hissed, emitting further noxious fumes into the air. “I see I have caught you at an…awkward moment, heh heh heh.”

“Who in the name of Dutch bollockery are YOU?” I shouted, still clutching my cock-piece.

“A thousand pardons, your lordships,” the man sneered. “How frightfully rude of me. I think it only right and proper that you know the name of the man who killed you….”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name,” the man continued, “is Doctor Corkscrews.” At this point, as if he had spent ages carefully rehearsing this particular moment, the doctor produced two large corkscrews from behind his back and began waving them in my face. “I am afraid I will be screwing you now, your lordship. Heh heh heh heh…”

There was a pause. I looked at the demented doctor, then at my still-pulsating Palmerston, and then back at the doctor.

“I don’t suppose you would mind finishing me off before you kill me, would you?” I asked.

– Lord Likely.

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