The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Once upon a time there was a field. It was a nice field with some daisies in it. In the corner was a big shed with a donkey in it. The donkey was very lonely all on its own and would just sit around sulking all day. Then one day, the donkey noticed a really tiny person coming in to the field. He had blond hair and a big ginger beard. The donkey (whose name was Conkface) realised that this gnome-like person was the owner of the field, and was leading someone else in. This other person was still quite small (but not as small as the gnome was) with long hair and the largest forehead Conkface had ever seen. There was a moment's silence, and an exchange of twigs, and Conkface was led away and never saw the beautiful field again. 

Meanwhile, in a pub far away, in a distant land, another deal was taking place. Something rotten was ordering a pint of beer in the Arab's Head Tavern. The rotting thing turned out to be this guy called Pestilence. Pestilence went over and sat in a booth in the corner (which by now had started dissolving from the stench). He sort of absorbed his pint and left the building (which was now just a diminishing pile of sand). He went over the road to where he had left his horse (he was too cheap to afford a car, and anyway none of them were resistant enough). The horse was a magnificent beast called Parkinson, and Pestilence sort of climbed on top and rode away to meet his mates. 

When he arrived at the pond where one of his mates lived, he climbed off Parkinson and tied her to a tree. He threw a big stone into the water (this was the usual way of waking up Famine, who was a lazy bastard). Famine crawled pathetically out of his island hut, and waved in a can't-be-arsed sort of way at Pestilence. Pestilence shouted across at Famine to get a shift on, so Famine climbed aboard Dobbin (his shopping trolley) and floated across to the bank where Pestilence was sort of standing. Pestilence untied Parkinson and climbed back onto her. Famine was balanced carefully on one of the wires that made up the shopping trolley (normally he tied himself in a knot round them but was being daring this morning). He and Pestilence zoomed slowly off up the road to their final meeting place of the morning.  

There was a knocking sound, and a shadow went over and opened the door. Conkface the donkey was chewing the handle. His owner was picking some of the black tulips that grew beside the path. The shadow invited him inside. The shadow (whose name was Death, unsurprisingly) went and put the kettle on for the donkey's owner (who was actually called War, but was named after one of those crappy wars that don't get anyone killed, and only last about an hour). War sat down (Death floated about a bit) and waited for his drink. When it arrived, he decided it was best not to drink it, and asked for a Mint Julep instead (de-caffeinated of course). Death stared at him. 

There was another knock at the door. Death hovered over to the door and let whoever was there in. It was Pestilence and Famine. Conkface (who was still outside) was looking rather perturbed, as the black tulips had all just collapsed.

 They entered Death's residence and Pestilence announced that he had some great news. He had heard a rumour that the Apocalypse was coming. War was so excited he almost creamed his Lycra shorts. He ran outside and leapt onto Conkface (who was right in the middle of doing a shit). Conkface was really surprised and ran off, with War holding on for dear life. Death just stared again. Famine restarted his shopping trolley and pootled off after him. Pestilence sort of oozed back onto Parkinson and she began to follow the previous two. Death untied his bee and climbed on. The bee landed on Parkinson and crawled around for a bit. 

Pestilence, Death and Famine arrived at the Apocalypse's house to discover that he was indeed coming. Unfortunately...not in the way they thought. The Apocalypse was very embarrassed and put his clothes back on. His girlfriend, Marie, followed suit (Pestilence did try to dissolve her clothes but it didn't work). 

War felt very sick when he finally got to the Apocalypse's house. He hadn't realised donkeys were so annoying (this was his first). He also expected them to be a much smoother ride, rather like a Citroen 2CV. Conkface was not pleased, and finished having a shit. Death stared at him. 

Pestilence and Famine were now getting bored. Donkey shit was only funny for so long. They decided to go and annoy someone. They went to Tesco for a while and started generally making a mess. This pleased both of them, Famine because it ruined perfectly edible food and Pestilence because he could rot things. 

Meanwhile, Death's bee had stung Conkface, who proceeded to kick War violently. War burst into tears. Death was pleased because this meant his bee was now dead, and he had secretly been very ashamed of having to ride something that was actually alive. Death picked up the dead bee and flung it into the air. He tried to hover on to it to ride it away. The bee fell to the floor. Death had forgotten that even though dead bees were much cooler than live ones, they were really crap at flying. He levitated the dead bee and somehow managed to put it in his pocket, which was odd, because being a shadow he never even wore anything with pockets.

 War had by this time stopped crying, and had calmed the angry Conkface. He swooshed his hair back from across his forehead (out of interest, this caused Sweden to attack Denmark for winning the Eurovision song contest). He and Death thought it best to go and see where Famine and Pestilence had gone.

 Tesco was an absolute tip when Death and War arrived; yet Pestilence and Famine were nowhere in sight. At that exact point in time they were being hurled - which is definitely not the right word - into a prison cell. They waited until the policeman had gone back to his doughnuts. Famine walked out through the bars. The bars didn't last long though. The Milton Keynes' police department hadn't figured on having to keep anything as disgusting as Pestilence locked up and had foolishly used steel.

 It was about this time that it was getting darker. This was bad for two reasons. Firstly, Death wasn’t really a night person. He would have quite liked to be, but unfortunately, there was either no light and he couldn’t be seen of people just thought he was a normal shadow and hence ignored him. At this point two young lovers walked past. Death glared at them. They ignored him. This was possibly because nearly everybody ignored War, and he was in their company. Death turned his glare to War who had turned his attention to tying pink ribbons onto Conkface’s mane. Famine had gone to sleep in his trolley, because he never ate anything, he never really had much energy for anything and nothing would wake him, not even Pestilence could when he tried to dissolve Famine’s left leg.

 Meanwhile, Pestilence had got bored hanging around with his mates and dissapeared in the direction of ‘Ye Olde clube Xs’ a special tavern that never closed...until this night. The stairs eroded first and Pestilence couldn’t get up them. Unfortunately no one else could either and the people in there were stuck too. Giving up and going back to his greenhouse, Pestilence turned on his Decaystation and sat there playing it for 6 hours before passing out amongst the rotting food and furniture that constituted his house.

 Famine, still asleep in his trolley had been wheeled back to his pond and in the manner of all ponds, the trolley had been pushed in. A complex series of ropes and pulleys pulled the trolley towards the island, where it dumped the contents into a hole.

 Death, who was finding it increasingly difficult to find his way home, was getting very angry. He hadn’t brought his glasses and he didn’t have his contacts in what with leaving in such a hurry. He decided to eat the tulips that grew outside his house. Unfortunately, he was allergic to them and was violently sick. Quite a feat for a shadow with no mouth to speak of...or through.

 War and Conkface had returned to War’s flat. The Garish turquoise door and window frames prepared Conkface for the worst. Leading Conkface inside was the worst thing that had happened to the donkey that day. The wallpaper was Bright pink and the carpets were yellow and the doors were lavender. War pushed Conkface into the spare room and dragged in a bail of hay tied up in a red ribbon with a large bow. Removing his Manic's shirt he looked at his hairy body and admired the biro words he had written before he left in the morning.

 The next morning Only War was awake; he had to go into town to get another batch of alcohol free methylated spirits to relieve his anti-alcoholism. Several hours later Death, who hadn’t slept a wink last night, had spent the morning vomiting in public wastebins. Pestilence finally rose out of his decaying bed, and went to try and rouse Famine, who was still in the hole. Throwing a few large rocks into the pond, Famine eventually crawled out of the hole and into the trolley, which floated over towards Pestilence. Parkinson, who had a good nights sleep, was busy chewing some of the lush grass that grew around Famine’s pond. Famine started to sulk because he hated seeing things eating. Pestilence sort of climbed back onto Parkinson and they headed off towards the beach.

 Death, who had floated over to War’s place was eyeing up the bees that buzzed happily around the many flowers that grew in War’s Pink window boxes. Suddenly, with a move like lightning, Death launched himself at a bee. He held on for a few minutes trying to wrestle it to the ground and calm it down. Again, being naught but a shadow and having no physical weight what so ever the bee was impossible to wrestle with. Which was a shame, because in theory, Death was a very good wrestler. Eventually he managed to gain some semblance of control over the bee and he had fixed a harness and saddle by the time War came out of his bath to see what all the commotion was about.

 Inviting Death in War offered him a drink. War made himself a Campari and Soda, with ice, a slice of lemon, olive on a stick, and of course a very fetching pink and blue parasol only without the Campari. This caused America to declare war on the rest of the world, but President Steve Tyler saying sorry to his butler soon averted it. Death had a can of Kieser (alcohol free) beer. It made Death sick. Conkface, standing in the other room, with his hair neatly brushed into a pompadour and with his hooves painted purple and a pink bow on his tail. Conkface was so scared he daren’t move.

 The continuing misadventures of the four horsemen

 Meanwhile, across the road from death’s place Apocalypse was making breakfast. Marie was sitting on the chair looking angry. She was on again, for the second time that month. Apocalypse was making a full English breakfast with fresh orange juice and a pot of tea. He arranged it neatly on the tray and decorated it with a sprig of parsley from his home-herb set. Clearing the empty cans of beer his flatmates had left from the table. Marie grunted and took the tray. She started to eat it slowly with her pinky sticking out. Apocalypse went back to bed to lie on his board. He had pulled a back muscle during the nights activities. 

Back in a pub that was called Wetherspoons, Pestilence was sort of ordering a pint from what remained of the barstool he was sort of sitting on. After absorbing it, he heard a voice say ‘fancy seeing you here’ Shuddering he turned around to see Kitty, his wife. She smelt of wee and pestilence hated her, but for some reason she kept coming back even though pestilence kept taking the piss out of her (not literally).

She sat beside him and put her hand on his leg. She removed it soon afterwards as the maggots were beginning to tickle her. Pestilence sort of absorbed another pint of beer and then got up and sort of walked through the smouldering wall. He sort of mounted Parkinson, who had been tethered to a phone box. He rode down the wooded path towards the pond. To his surprise, Famine was not only awake, but he was making lunch. He tied Parkinson to a tree, where she immediately started to eat the grass that had survived being trodden on by pestilence. He sort of swam over to the pond and went inside. 

It was a mess, there was a sock on the floor, at least that was what it looked like at first glance. A small ginger-bearded head popped out and grinned, before disappearing again. There was a frenzied movement halfway down the sock and after a few minutes the small ginger creature crawled out, looking tired. It was the gnome. He had started a job in the area collecting cigarette ends and needed somewhere to stay. He had moved himself into Famine’s place during the night when he was away. The gnome was good at that sort of thing, getting on people’s nerves like that. Little did Famine know that the gnome intended to stay there for a very long time... 

Pestilence sort of poked the gnome and asked it if he could borrow some money, Pestilence had a problem with money, he tended to absorb it, rendering even the strongest of coins unusable and somewhat unidentifiable. The gnome had some business to attend to earlier in the morning, but he was almost as lazy as Famine and had missed what would prove to be a vital meeting about an up and coming business venture that The Gnome played an important part in. Realising the time, he crawled out of the sock and stuffed the contents of the pan into his small mouth and galloped out and off up the main road towards his offices. Pestilence and Famine looked at each other blankly and then went to the beach.

 It was a sunny day and the tide was out. Being particularly fond of doing nothing much on a daily basis, the pair decided to put their efforts to good use and began to dig a big hole with their hands. A time and energy consuming task, that required many breaks and lots of sweat from famine and Numerous complaints from Pestilence about the sand messing up what would pass for his nails if he had any real fixed shape on which to have hands. The hole was reaching a substantial size buy now, and they decided to sit in it to cool off.

 Some way off, War and Death were giving Donkey rides, War had gotten angry with Conkface and had tried to sell her to one of the donkey-handlers that frequented the beaches. Both old women refused to allow the Donkey with its bright hoof polish and bows into their groups on account of the other donkeys grouping together and deciding that they didn’t want any gay’s in the elite forces. Death’s bee had been buzzing around a small ginger child’s bourbon biscuit. As it turns out the small child is in fact Jenny, the local yob. She had been stealing bourbon biscuits from the real small children on the bouncy castle. Deaths Bee, had been trying to eat the sugary cream centre but Jenny had kept swatting it away. Death hovered over to the Bee and glared at the Yob as he steered the Bee back towards War, who was drawing flowers in the sand with a stick. Finishing, he jumped up and shouted hooray for flowers. (this resulted in a number of disdainful looks from everyone on the beach within earshot and the small mountain town of Andorra declared war of Hawaii for being bigger then it was. Nobody really noticed, least of all the Hawaiians) 

Famine and Pestilence had grown bored of their hole and decided to bury a palette in the huge hole. It was whilst they were filling it in that they were jumped on by Apocalypse and Marie who had come to the beach to sunbathe. Pestilence tried to dissolve Marie’s bikini but yet again failed. Disappointed, they went to the local arcade to play pool. Pestilence had spent a lot of time in places like these, there were always new things to do. He was particularly fond of the flashing lights and loud sounds. Famine however didn’t care much for the computers but liked the gambling machines.