Chapter Two. Why Me? Penelope glared at Bernie and shreiked"You stupid fool!Look what youv'e gone and made me do!" "Oh my!Poor Jesse!"He murmed,seemingly oblivious to Penelope's anger. "What do you mean 'Poor Jesse'?We are the one's who are going to be put away for murder!" "Eh?Oh I see what you mean." Penelope's mind was in overdrive and she was frantically looking for something else to cast the blame upon. "But wasn't it an accident?"Inquired Bernie. "Shut up..now let me see..Eh? What did you say?" "When?" "Just a second ago!" "Oh...erm." This is one of the great failings of people in general and people everywhere else for that matter..asking someone to repeat something that they heard perfectly.The person who originally made the comment gets extremely bored by this and won't repeat it,or as in the case of Bernie they forget what they said. Penelope,being a rather dense person, believes that she has misheard, and continues in her efforts to cast the blame. Penelope suddenly realised that she was up the proverbial creek without a paddle,proverbial or otherwise,and took the easy way out by letting her mouth run riot while disengaging her overtaxed brain. "How could I be so careless!"she sobed.Amazed by the fact that she managed to sob something she tried again but it came out as a shriek. "Um."Replied Bernie. "I mean the overhand double flip is so easy!" "Um."Ventured Bernie. "But that skateboard was lying on the floor!" "Um."Said Bernie then:"What are you talking about?" "Axe throws!" "Huh?" "Well you see it's like this: Jesse was worried about me and he asked me if I knew any self-defence,and I didn't so he said that he would teach me ...um..Defensive axe throwing for Beginners.And then you got that note from a complete stranger who I don't know, who was ridiculing you..Oh I know! this stranger want's you dead and calculated that I would be doing the erm double twist underhand erm..flopsy do at Madnit I mean Midnight so he wrote the note telling you to come to the barn at Twelve but luckily you were late so you didn't open the door as I threw the axe at it." Fortunately for Penelope, bernie is also dense and does not realise that she is leading him up the garden path as it were. "Gee,"he murmurs;"You must be right!" "But what if Jesse thinks I did it on purpose?"She has momentarily forgotten that Jesse is in fact dead." "Oh he is such a kind person that he would never believe that." Replies Bernie in such sickly sweet adoring tones that Penelope quietly heaves over Jesse's prone form. "The sight of all this gore must be getting to you."says Bernie sympathetically"Let's get some fresh air." "Mmm good idea."she replies as she wipes the remains of her now liquidised dinner from her chin and follows Bernie into the still night air. "Perhaps we could tell Jesse that it was Injuns I mean indians that did it but we fought them off!"She shrieks. "I wouldn't like to lie to Jesse."replies Bernie meekly. "Well it wouldn't really be lying because you are 7/18976 indian.." "7/18977" "Whatever.. and you came in and startled me and the axe slipped and hit Jesse.So you see it's a near-truth." In Bernie's knowledgeable opinion a near-truth came under the same category as a little bit pregnant but he went along with it anyway. "Well.. okay, but if we fought the indians off then why has he got an axe sticking out of his head?" "Oh..good point..I know!The injuns,I mean indians tried to scalp him but they only got half way through his head before we stopped them and chased them.."Penelope's face fell. "Yes that's it!"Exclaimed Bernie more enthustiastically than the occasion demanded. Penelope would have given him a funny look but instead she said: "HE'S DEAD!!" "Yes there is that."replied Bernie mildly.Then the message got through to his brain and he collapsed in a flood of grief.Well not literaly... there wasn't actually a flood of the stuff or he'd have drowned he just sort of cried a little bit,well quite a lot actually but it still wasn't a flood. Jesse was slowly regaining conciousness during the above dialogue and wasn't dead at all, not even a little bit, well maybe a little bit of him was dead a few cells but nothing an Elasto-plast couldn't fix. Bernie came bursting into the rickety barn in tears just as Jesse fully regained conciousness. "What the hell is this axze doing in my head?" exclaimed Jesse. "Oh! Thank god youre alive!" Jesse pondered this statement for a few moments without managing to come up with a suitable reply, so instead he grunted.This appeared to please Bernie no end and he flung himself onto Jesse in a veritable torrent of emotion. It is at this point in the proceedings that the author points out to the reader the number of references to the weather and more particularly to rain that one uses when describing a person who is grief stricken. -***********- George bernard Shaw was wandering aimlessly around his library dressed in his silk paisley dressing gown with matching sliuppers looking for inspiration, but he couldn.t find him so he began looking through his vast collection of books. His eyes took on a new sheen as his gaze found a particularly old book.he sat down in a deep comfortable armchair and lit his pipe,he opened the book at the first page and began to read. -************- Some time later that same morning Farmer Barleymowe wandered into the Barn.He was dressed as usual in green wellies amock which looked rather like an empty or perhaps nearly empty sack of King Edward potatoes. At this particular moment in time the author becomes rather boring in his use of descriptive terms having used up his entire repetoire in the first three lines along withh all the words in the 12th edition of the Oxford Dictionary that he could understand. He was carrying his pithcfork (as farmers tend to do, for no apparent reason other than sticking in wayward lads backsides whilst they are hiding in haystacks) on the end of which was some hay and some fresh blood. He spied Mr Bloggs bodyless finger. This makes him annoyed and he begins one of monotenous speechs which doesn't directly involve, but somehow always mentions, the good old days. "Bloody kids.'ow the bloody 'ell am I meant to take over the bloody world when bloody kids leave bloody fingers lying all round the bloody place all the bloody time.It bloody gets to you after a bloody while." The more observent of the readers will have noticed the strange speech defect inherent in the above dialect. "I remember the good old days, I never used to leave bloody fingers 'ere, there and everybloodywhere. 'ell I used to bring them to my mother, god rest 'er bloody soul, all wrapped up nice loike in a 'ankerchief." For the slow ones amongst you, the farmer never pronounces his H's. Lisa Cameron Wood-Stoddart walked rather boringly into the barn. She had arrived on Gozo three years ago searching for the rare Sir Gomchiliwockian-thrisssnitomlian-gol-brimmmminiurtiuhjunnhunu commemerative stamp.(a not very famous person in Gozian history). Only Seven of these was ever printed because it was found that people could not be bothered to learn how to pronounce the name and therefore never asked for them. Lisa had managed to find out that six of these had been destroyed by irate shop-owners who couldn't pronounce the name either.But one of them was still intact!!Unfortunately this one was now on it's way to South Africa because some smart-alec had managed to pronounce the name right and had used it to post a letter. He had posted the letter the day before Lisa had found out where the stamp was located.Unfortunatly for Lisa due to the very small amount of people who actually travel to and from Gozo the next plane to anywhere from Gozo is not for 7 years yet and this is going to Madagascar via the Ukraine, with a three month stop off at Bolivia to refuel. Lisa does not want to go to Bolivia because of the extremely rare Bolivian finger eating ants which no-one has ever reported any sightings of but just very very occasionaly someones finger will mysteriously go missing in the middle of the night. Too bad Lisa. When she arrived in Gozo farmer Barleymowe immediately took a liking to her and offered her a room at his house for nominal services but then she thanked him and he immediately regretted his rash act. (the process of thanking him took 2 and a 1/2 hours.)She is boring.Very boring.Very very Boring, in fact she is boring that the world record for not falling asleep while she is talking to you required the second to be split into amazingly small divisions called Qazes (which are 100 times smaller than a nano- second) for it even to be measured.This time scale was tried and tested by Bernie Wheels but no body was really very interested. Farmer Barleymowe was extremely upset when she interupted his carefully prepared speech, but he decided that the more prudent thing to do would be to wander off to feed his Pig (again). The entire cotents of the barn appeared to yawn at the mere sight of Lisa including the burnt torch in the far corner, but they could not escape or fall asleep or for that matter Yawn seen as they are inanimate objects but take it from me they would have yawned if they could. -*************- Farmer Barleymowe wandered off in the general direction of his Pig.. Georgina he looked up just in time to witness something very parculiar. "My God!"He murmured,"that looks like a Multi dimensional walking dog kennel swallowing my Pig whole."Then he continued to throw feed in the direction in which the pig had once been. -************- The Multi-dimensional dog kennel sat alone well squated alone, underneath an old gnarled oak tree and sat there wondering why the hell Bernie had invented him(We asume the kennel is a he as its very difficult to tell what sex a kennel). I mean what good is a multi-dimensional walking dog kennel to anyone! So he could walk, talk, think, make smart and witty comments and was bigger on the inside than the outside but he was no use to anyone. After much thought and after totally discarding the theory of occams razor he decided that Bernie was too incredibly dense to have invented him all on his own so he came up with this rather bizarre theorum: Several decades ago some small green creatures called Lk'ghuns travelled to the earth in their rather lovely space ship which was called: "Henry" Not very dramatic perhaps but translated into english this mean: "A very nice space-ship owned by george of the Lk'ghuns called Henry." They decided by some strange method that someone in the vicinity of Gozo was going to attempt to destroy the world and they thought that the earth was such a lovely place with all it's trees and things that it shouldn't be destroyed so after lots and lots of pain-staking work they invented: "Keith." or in our own tongue: "A multi-dimensional walking dog kennel." and they then set about planting all the ideas in bernie's head and spreading the neccesary components around the island so as not to make it too obvious. The Multi-dimensional walking dog kennel was totally wrong,he had been invented because of extremely wild coincidence; the Lk'ghuns had never actually reachaed the earth but had crashed into Jupiter. The Kennel decided to begin a quest to find his creater and mentor, Bernie. But first of all he had to find out where HE was.He wandered around aimlessly for seveal hours before he came across the one and only shop in Gozo, where he picked up a map with an arm that suddenly sprouted from his roof much to the store keepers surprise and put it through his doorway where he committed it to memory. "My god!That looked liked a multi-dimensional walking dog kennel taking a map!"commented the store keeper then totally forgot about it as the kennel walked from the shop. It only took the kennel a few minutes to find Bernie's house and he decided that he would wait for Bernie to come out. He waited for several hours untill a rather excited Bernie emerged and than he followed him to the Barn. Most of what went on at the barn is rather confused but for some unexplained reason he found himself saying Antidisestablishmentarianism. He felt that the behavour of everybody in the barn was most unorthadox so he decided to go and investigate his surroundings. After being chased around a field for several hours by a rather shabby and ferocious German Sheperd dog who, It seems, would not give up until dead or zapped by several hundred cosmic rays, as the case may be, he found himself staring (with whatever Multi-dimensional Walking dog kennels for eyes) at a pig pen in which a farmer was feeding a pig (these are commonly found in pig pens). He decided that the farmer although evil looking may be the perfect subject to do his talking for him, after the incident in the shop he decided that he'd better refrain himself from behavour not usually associated with kennels and that he should speak through someone. He targeted the farmer and fired. At this point a rather happy and dazed Alsation had decided to make its entrance and pounced on the kennel. A Multi-coloured cosmic ray shot across the yard and hit the pig. "Damn !" the pig complained. This amazed the kennel then it realised that the pig was now his voice. The Alsation was trying to clamber into the kennel when suddenly its eyes met with several cosmic rays and it did the only rational thing it could ,it collapsed into a heap on the floor. The Kennel dashed into the pen and decided to swallow the pig until he could think of something to do about the situation. It then decided, with the pig in tow, to seek out Bernie which basically meant following the explosions and loud shouts of abuse. During this time the farmer had barly lifted a eyebrow ,partly due to the fact that he had lost them whilst testing out Bernie Wheels Amazing Pocket Combine Harvester but mainly because his brain could not cope with the concept of a Multi-Dimensional Walking Dog Kennel, so he decided to ignore and forget about it. -********************- Jesse awoke with a stabbing pain in his temple, Bernie had neglected to remove the axe buried in it. He surveyed his surrondings .He was lying in a very brightly coloured four poster bed. Directly in front of him lay a large vanity mirror and a strange hollow tubular device which Jesse deduced as being a strange tubular device,he's clever like that. In the mirror he noticed that he was wering a smallish Star Wars dressing gown with the words May The Force Be With You Bernie across it in pink letters. At this moment he realised he didn't have his gun, I said he was clever didn't I. This made him jerk upright and he hit his head on one of the posts and recevied a nasty knock. "Thank You", he murmed. The knock then set about pulling his hair and jumping on his head. He brushed It aside. He then wondered how he knew the knock's name was It. Strange ,never mind. He lay on the Bed for several moments trying without much luck to recall the events pertaining to his present situation.Then suddenly it all came flooding back to him in glorious technicolour with subtitles for the hard of hearing. "Oh Shit!" he wailed "What has she done !?!" Bernie chose that precise moment to come bounding into the room with a tray precariously balanced on the Bernie Wheels Pocket Tray Carrier. (Bernie went through a stage of inventing pocket things he also invented a pair of trousers with 16 rather large pockets in them for carryong his devices.) He lay the tray on Jesse's lap and watched him. The tray contained a rather odd assortment of eggs,toast,cheese, pancakes tea and red roses. Jesse eyed it rather dubiously. "Don't you want anything to eat?"Asked bernie hurtfully. "Erm..No I feel sick"he replied weakly. "Ah..I see,be back in a mo!"and with that he skipped from the room. Bernie spent the following 2 hours inventing a medicine for Jesse. Actually inventing the medicine only took 5 minutes but it tasted nice and much as he hated to he knew that medicines had to taste nasty so he spent the next hour and 55 minutes adding foul smelling potions to it.Then he stirred it up and went in to give it to Jesse. "Drink up" Jesse peered at the liquid which was trying its upmost to disolve the spoon. He tried to picture what it would do to his stomach. Bernie thrust the spoon at Jesse spilling some on the bed clothes which instantly began to smoke. "It's good for you",Bernie insisted. Jesse wondered how a liquid/solid that dissolves spoons and turns bed clothes into smoke at a touch could be good for him. In mid-ponder the spoon was shoved into Jesse's mouth and the liquid/solid was poured off (it wasn't as instant as it sounded infact it took several shakes before the liquid/solid was persuaded to leave the remains of the spoon). "Why Me?" Jesse managed to murmur as everything went black.