'Twas a fine sunny day in the far-off imaginary land of 'round the back of someplace sudden and surprising'. Birds sang, flowers flowered and the hills were suspiciously green (witchcraft methinks'�.or perhaps fertiliser, or maybe even amusing hybrid of the two, 'Witchiliser?'). This is all before a big black cloud spread out over the land like a big sprawled out cloud-shaped cat with a superiority complex, spoiling the whole bloody scene. 'Twas a cloud of singing nuns, cascading o'er the mountain tops singing songs of pure menace and destruction (they were currently levelling a large forest with a practically demonic rendition of 'baa-baa black sheep'�.

The village people became quite riled about this (because in their opinion one simply cannot have too much wood and deforestation is a sin that just cannot go ignored without a long hard session of kinky-whipping. Only when such a session has occurred is it permissible for one to ignore whatever one wishes to) and shook their fists angrily towards the sky. That is people of the village did, not the actual village people as in the gay Indian and his friends who sang 'YMCA'. Because that would not help the current situation at all, though it would be pretty damn funny.

The village 'folk' as I shall refer to them from here on, had themselves a conference (all in the space of a few minutes, because of course cascading singing nuns tend to be an emergency) and tried to decide what was to be done. One idea was launch ferrets at the swooping female clergy in hope that their little ferret teeth would attach to their wings (no, not wings, robes'�.same thing) thus causing them to plummet in a pleasing spiral fashion in a ball of flames, holy water, and ferret fur. Quite where the flames would come from I don't quite know so before you ask; don't.

In fact, as it turns out one of the other ideas was to launch flaming balls into the nun cloud to bring the wrinkly old bastards down. Flaming balls by the way are the most abundant local foodstuff consisting mainly of chilli and elf parts. The flaming balls were made into balls by poor little orphan children powered by solar fuled light bulbs (these were actually electric children instead of the boring old mutant variety as you might expect. I mean i'm sorry if this disappoints anyone but mutant children can be fairly hard to obtain these days for inclusion in crazy tales of nun invasions, this just isn't the Victorian era anymore). For some reason, no-one ever thought to employ some sort of machine to do all this far more efficiently without violating electric children welfare laws. I guess no-one must like solar light bulb-powered children very much I guess, which makes sense if you think about it.

Anywho, back to the crux if the matter, the flaming balls were not literally balls that were of fire as I may have led you to believe, because to eat a ball of flame would simply be foolish. I just really felt that this point needed to be made. In the meantime, the quite literally heated argument about balls 'n ferrets (the anti-nun devices not the local rock band) had enabled the cascade (I love that word) of wailing clergy to do the most terrible of things....and raid the teacake factory! (Insert suitably dramatic music here).

Now this may not sound much to you but to the industrious folk of Muffington (named after everyone's favourite flour-based product of course) this was a full-on redder than red (ultra-mega-super-shuffly-tomatatatatao red) alert disaster. The teacake was Muffington's primary export and source of income, and the only reason it was named Muffington and not Tea-cakes-burn or something daft like that is because that would sound infinitely more crap.

The cascading (there's that word again) cloud of nuns aimed purposefully at the factory, streamlining themselves for speed like big, flying nun-shaped penguins (which makes so little sense that the very idea should be stood in the middle of a random mob a not-so-rare commodity in these parts and pelted with rotten fruit) before making a final somersault to land smoothly in the company outdoor swimming pool. Here they splashed and flapped around in a most undignified manner, all the while still singing and gargling like a bunch of crazy-yet-holy-ladytramps (which the second to most evil kind after the lesser-spotted toilet loitering variety of southern Brazil).

After this disorganised kafuffle had more or less sorted itself out (kafuffle being the exact literary term that accurately describes an army of celibate women of the church trying comically to free themselves from a swimming pool after having cascaded down into it from above) the lead nun spoke out. She was identifiable only from the very special she wore that gifted her the ability to deliver dialogue rather than remaining silent like a big, stone, gargoyle parrot. It was of course a fez. 'I have a fantastically huge intellect, one to rival even that of a whooping sea dolphin cruelly bred with a crafty cunning weasel and a bemused Bavarian brain badger (a great word for scattergories! Hear this, for it is the word of god, you're teacakes are ours! Aiiiiieeeeee!'� Which is exactly the kind of thing that an all-powerful celestial manifestation such as Michael Winner (the calm-down dear, it's a commercial bloke) might say.

Sweet Jesus, she's got a hat! Take her down!'� yelled a voice from somewhere in the bushes. Just how they had assembled and hidden themselves in a bush in a matter of minutes remains a mystery, but the angry village folk emerged suddenly from no-where. Well, at least as close to no-where as one can get in a bush whilst armed with a digital ferret launcher (these did not launch digital ferrets though, because such creatures are subject to immense greed and corruption and may go feral on the internet and run up a hugalicious credit bills and play the stock market like the fiends they are.

The fastest man on the trigger amongst the freshly-emerged bush crew let loose a tenacious howling ferret (the only kind of ferret powerful enough to penetrate the thick wall of melodic murderisation expelled by the nuns) directly at the lead fez-wearing religious tea-cake bandit. In a perfect world, the small mammal-shaped projectile would have kerswooshed out of the launcher at supersonic speed and then bore teeth-first through an unsuspecting nuns skull (you just don't get action like that anywhere else). Apparently this is no perfect world.

The ferret merely managed to slide out of the barrel with a faint hint of brown smoke and a minute fanfare and plopped furrily to the floor, before scuttling off in search of gold for the ferret empire. The majority of the nun cloud had now gained access to the factory and had began merrily pilfering bakery, storing them randomly about their person (make of that what you will). However the occasion, as with all nun-based events involved a ritual hokey-cokey complete with accompanying DJ playing the music (who was a benevolent skeleton named Tony forced into working for these mean old women on the condition that he was not to be used as whale bait which if he thought about it wouldn't really have worked anyway, whales don't even exist and if they did would certainly not be tempted by a bit of bone. A ramrod-sized bone, maybe. But a bit of bone? Nein).

In response to the failed ferret attack, the nuns angrily piped up and wailed a nunnified version of 'we are the champions'� at the poor village people. But not the village folk, no, this time it was the actual Village People that I refer to. They had actually been hanging around for the past 5 minutes, (well not exactly hanging aroundthey were fully clothed which is probably for the best.) and had positioned themselves poolside on deckchairs, sipping cocktails provided by a handsome little monkey butler. Oh my God, I so want one of those. The construction worker with the handle-bat moustache barely had time to raise his glass in respectful acknowledgement to the classic queen song before his head spontaneously exploded. This was promptly followed by a particularly fetching pattern of similar cranial destruction amongst the terrified and confuzzled village folk. All 300 of them suddenly turned tail and tried desperately to flee the carnage (exactly while it was deemed necessary for them to turn their tails while they did this is unknown as is why they had tails in the first place . Maybe it's a bondage thing? The mystery rages on) whilst flailing their arms in a comical fashion and throwing their ferret launchers to the ground. Angry and upset ferrets then proceeded to scuttle in every which direction in search of gold and infamy as I'm sure you're aware all ferrets do. It's the law.

The nuns, happy with what they had achieved, did a merry little victory dance and then performed a synchronised back flip, all 300 of 'em (yep that is a hell of a lot of nuns, which is scary, but just imagine that synchronised backflip; wow). The chosen victory dance was that daft old YMCA thing with which the surviving village people joined in through fear of exploderisation. The back flip at the end was the nun's own little touch, and what's more they all went 'Weeeee!'� when they did it. Which is absolutely awesome when you think about it, I mean they're bloody nuns, for the love of fuck's sake and they're doing a back flip , all at the same time and going 'Weeee!'� ; The very idea is fantastically magical, it really is

Anyway, things aren't looking too good at the moment are they? The nuns have free-reign of the teacake factory thus beginning the inevitable economic collapse of the village. People have died (which is typically a pain in the ass for any modern civilisation, especially if the deaths happened through head-sploderisation which doesn't even have the decency to exist in most realities) and there has only been two instances of dialogue in the whole story! But not to fear, as help, it would seem can come from the most unexpected of places.

By the way, if you've managed to get this far without nodding off, finding something better to do, or spontaneously committing suicide (which I always feel is something that just ruins the day, one Minute I'm happily webternetting, and then Whoop! I'm dead. Whoop! Being the exact noise one usually emits upon death) then I do believe congratulations are in order

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...