The Lady And The Box

Dive into Pete’s log, an android from planet Hy Man who, along with Mex has been sent to earth to discover the ways of us humans?

So far, they have discovered “hot” means more than just burn your mouth food, “cool” means more than just the inside of a fridge and the meaning of “chilling”, “chilled” and chilly” are as varied as dishes in an Indian takeaway.

Please read on…

It was Woody’s idea to take me to the Edinburgh festival and Mex was happy to follow. We were sitting in an Indian at the time working our way through a selection of curries as hot as Bunny’s temper .My stomach was on fire, I was burning up and sweating at the same time.

“What is this stuff?” I said.

“It an Indian.” said the blond on the next table- like that explained everything.

Normally I’d be enjoying the background music; but I was feeling all tight and crunchy, like one of those packets of crisps. What I needed was a long, lean stretch followed by a position of great twisting, that would help my digestion.

Then I heard of the lady in the box.

Apparently, there was a lady who could squash herself into a box and I was curious. I am a robot of great flexibility, a yoga expert and if a woman can squeeze herself into a box, I want to know about it.

“We’ve just seen a contortionist,” said the blonde on the next table.

“Cartoonist?” said Mex.

“No, contortionist—street performer,” said the blonde. “She folded herself up into a square box . . .”

“Whatever for?” muttered Mex.

“And she can twist…” said her partner “…into knots that would turn a seaman’s hair.

He produced a video that stopped the restaurant and almost put Mex of her Jalfrezi.

“All you could see in the end…’ sniffed the blond, “…was her leotard.”

* * *

I had to go. I took a chance and headed for the back door.

Nobody noticed, the blond was giving her partner “what for” about the seaman comment, while Woody was explaining to Mex the difference be seaman and semen and the waiter was trying to shut them all up with free mints.

* * *

As I entered the festival, I could hear the roar of applause. The street was chock-a-block with people and noisy-cars, buses, and drilling mixed with music, applause, and chattering; people speaking languages and accents I never heard.

I was buzzing off my Teflon tits.

The only music played on Planet Hy Man is the sort of elevator music that puts everyone into a comma and the cars we see are limos driven by robots.

I gazed up at the castle; a piper blasted into the street.

“Am I near the Royal Mile?” I shouted.

“Just around the corner,” said the teenager, “you’re almost there.”

I continued past a magician with a dog; skidded on a leaflet, righted myself on a drunk, ignored the insult, and continued.

It was slow work working through the crowds, but finally, I made my way onto Mount Pleasant. I passed a seedy-looking man with dreadlocks yelling into the crowd.

“You ain’t seen nothing like this, me hearties,” he yelled and pulled a bunch of flowers from his pants.

“Jesus!” muttered someone.

I walked on; past two men playing drums, past a dark man in a duffel coat sniffing into a bottle in a bag.

“Pound for coffee,” he said.

I gestured to my empty pockets then, reading the brown man’s upright-middle-finger gesture, quickly moved on.

The street was lined with performers competing for the attention of the crowd; it was hard to keep moving. I ended up sandwiched between a young girl lamenting her one-night stand and an elderly woman moaning about her bunions; right in front of a man wriggling about in a locked straitjacket.

“Let me tell you a story,” grunted the performer, “of Alcatraz and my escape.”

The crowd muttered and jolted forward. I was about to move on when I heard a chainsaw start up. I turned to see a large, hairy, masked juggler pose with a chainsaw.

The sound drowned out everything.

“Alcatraz the inescapable,” shouted the escapologist.

The juggler tossed the chainsaw into the air. The crowd gasped as his thick muscular arms caught the saw.

The escapologist watching his audience dwindle nodded to his sidekick, who wheeled on a unicycle . . .

“Alcatraz, oh Alcatraz, the place where no bird sings.”

The crowd was silent as he leveraged onto the unicycle, his arms still twisted in the straitjacket. He was a thin man with a thin ponytail and birdlike features, which at the moment were pinched with discomfort as he balanced on the unicycle.

The older woman cheered bunions forgotten.

“This is way better than the lady in the box,” she said. “I mean how long can you stare at a box?”

“Is she still there?” I said.

“Oh yes, she’s still there with a sidekick for comedy.”

“Comedy in a box?” said someone from behind. “hardly call it that.”

I marched up the steep hill of Cockburn Street past more food shops and the smell of waffles,

chocolate, and chips.

“You see the lady? The one in the box?”

“Aye, something else.”

“Where?”

The young man whistled through his teeth. “Just keep going, ignore the comedian he as funny as herpes.”

The street was lined with tables and chairs, people sitting, talking, artists drawing, manipulating balloons into weird shapes.

I pushed through the crowd, skidded to a stop and stared at the Perspex box. Her limbs folded about her body—and all I could see was her leotard.

“Come see the impossible,” shouted the comedian, “a woman who can tie herself into knots any seaman would be proud of.”

Nobody laughed until that I caught the comedian’s eye.

Full of festive spirit and desperate for a twist and fold to sort my rumbling tum, I shouted

“Bring me a smaller box and I show you a few knots a seaman has never heard off.”

Cont. next blog …

 Kerrie Noor Is A Comedy, Romance & Sci-Fi Author based in Scotland. Explore her recent work on Amazon or contact her for more information

Brexit The Planet Hy Man Way

Dive into Pete’s log, an android from planet Hy Man.

He has a way of looking at things that has you wondering, laughing, and at times, glad you’re not a robot on a strange planet.

Pete is a robot that bends like playdough, smells like something familiar and, for those into licking… tastes like something you’d like to lick again…

Mex has licked once, by mistake, in the dark. It’s a story involving a power cut, candles, and a storage heater. A story both Mex and her robot Pete agreed to “keep to themselves’ as the licking of robots by a Man Spy is strictly prohibited on planet Hy Man and, judging by Bunnies’s reaction, not much admired on earth.

Please read on...

I have spent the last month listening to the radio while learning to drive and my confusion has reached greater depth than when Bunny tried to explain to me the “keep em keen treat em mean” approach favoured by both her and her so-called platonic pal Don.

A platonic relationship which as Woody maintains is as plausible as him being a “six-foot giant,” and as Woody struggles to reach the top shelf of a news-stand, I assume he is being sarcastic.

Woody's sarcasm has reached new heights since trying to teach me to drive. Which if I had a heart, I would find hurtful. I mean it was he who talked me into it, claiming that teaching me would be a breeze.

“You’re a robot,” he said. “Driving should be like second nature to you.”

I didn’t the heart to tell him I am a robot of great flexibility and not designed for mechanical things. When I turn my head, it swivels 180 degrees which makes exiting a roundabout about as safe as lighting a fire blindfolded with a flame thrower.

Mex, however, tried to educate Woody, not easy when sucking on a mega sour apple. Now completely off the sugar, she was working her way through whatever she could find to suck, and she looked like she had a mouthful of vinegar.

“Only the lowest order robot drive on Planet Hy Man,” said Mex wiping a dribble from her chin.

Woody looked at her and laughed-spurning Bunnie into action.

“If you're going to teach X man (referring to me) to drive then we are coming too. You can take us to Asda.” She said.

“Asda?” Said Woody, “what about the roundabouts…the junctions.” He looked from me to Bunnie. 

“He’ll never make it.”

Bunnie unmoved had made her mind up, she was hellbent on finding Mex something sugar- free, dairy-free and as they were going to Asda, cheap as chips.

“If you must suck on things,” she said to Mex “then at least choose something softer, tastier and…”

“Lick-able?” Muttered Mex followed by a forget I said that blush.

“I was actually going to say something less dribble-ie.” Muttered Bunnie bristly shoving Mex out the door.

I wanted to impress my friend, show him what I was made of, so I didn’t argue. And when the two women flopped into the back seat giggling about “standing on ceremony” and “this will be a hoot.” I let my head back with my best care-free laugh, flicked the car into gear, turned the ignition on and stalled it.

Which being as it was an automatic had them all, I think, impressed…

Mex and Bunnie sniggering like school girls began flicking through the radio channels…they had a love for all things newsie; obsessing about Brexit, independence and the need for coexistences.

“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’ I said finally starting the car.

Woody told me to concentrate and as we headed towards the first roundabout my stomach lurched.

It was the size of a launchpad which Woody explained was a bonus. The size scared me, I began circling it fearing the exit and after the fourth circle, Woody began to grind his teeth as Bunnie joked about “dogs chasing their tails”.

After the fifth circle, Woody gave up reassuring me favouring instead an army like order.

‘Forget about Brexit and take any frigging exit.” Were his exact words…

I, in the middle of trying to understand the difference between a speed sign, the actual sped of a car and the rich tapestry of fingers gestures, stalled yet again.

His shouting didn’t help, and I was just thinking of telling him as much when a horn blasted from a juggernaut of a lorry loomed up my rear.

Even the women stopped laughing.

‘Just frigging indicate and exit.” Woody hissed.

As I headed off some exit to god know where Bunny started talking of “political exits”, “dickheads in power, and “it is all going nowhere just like “X man here”.

“There is always someone uselessly tooting his horn.” Said Bunnie.

And Mex, instead of her usual “she doesn’t know what she talking about” comment agreed, even laughed when Bunnie asked, “if Hy Man also sported dickheads”.

“We had a Brexit type thing once on planet Hy Man,” said Mex, “the men tried to leave, set up somewhere else. They talked of truth, justice, and the manly way …it lasted as long as their so-called, manly ways did. In the end, they ran out of hemp, water, and matches.”

“This is why I didn’t want you to come.” Said Woody “how can anyone concentrate when you two talk bollocks?”

I took a deep breath and tried a few calming yoga mantras. I had just stopped at the traffic lights and was in the middle of attempted a hand brake start despite Woody insisting that a hand brake was not necessary. Woody was giving me the tutting of a lifetime and I was frazzled.

“Forget about all this Brexit bullshit.” He said. “Let's just get to Asda.”

I nodded to the finger gestures from the cars behind. “Are they laughing with me or at me?” I said.

‘Neither,” muttered Woody and finally took over.

As we headed into Asda I for the first time went straight for something sweet, sickly and long.

Mex laughed “something to lick?” she said at the cashier.

The attendant with a look of disdain on a par with the juggernaut driver asked Mex to leave.

“This is a family establishment,” she said showing Mex the door.

“It seems leaving Asda is a lot easier than other exits,” I said to Woody he laughed and this time it was Mex turn to mutter “dickheads”.

First Published www.kerrienoor.com

Kerrie Noor Is A Comedy, Romance & Sci-Fi Author based in Scotland. Explore her recent work on Amazon or contact her for more information.