Trifle City Council Headquarters. Mayor's Office. Tuesday. Probably. With a characteristically petulant slamming of so many desk draws, Mayor Sperkins was in the throws of a foul temper tantrum – not to mention several bouts of livid lobs, toilsome tosses, and horrendous hurls of horrible hostility. (One of Canterbury's finest prog bands.)
Being an investigator of great repute, and graced, lest we forget, with two eyes where his ears should have been, upon pussyfooting into Mayor Sperkins' office, Detective Pilchard immediately picked up on his boss's sour temperament; he also picked up a chair; the mayor told him to put it back and sit himself upon it, for she was in no mood for witticisms from previous adventures.
“I apologise for keeping you waiting, detective,” the mayor grumbled with not a trace of sincerity, scuttling behind her oaken desk like a mayoral mouse inside a grand chunk of cheese furniture. “But, as I'm sure you are aware, the disruption to the city's water supply is still ongoing – and it is effecting us all.”
Due to being (almost) entirely of the male persuasion, and therefore having no interest in trivialities such as cosmetics, dos (as in 'hair' dos) or basic hygiene, Detective Pilchard rarely paid much attention to the lay of a lady's hair. (Due to having his eyes surgically relocated into his ears, lest we again forget, paying attention to anything without turning his head side-on was problematic; even at this moment the detective was sitting before the mayor's desk with his chair at a right angle, facing the window.)
Yet even a blind badger with a bag over its bonce could tell that the mayor's mane looked particularity unkempt today. Mayor Sperkins told the detective to kempt his opinions to himself...
Like all public servants, spiteful Napoleons in waiting, Mayor Sperkins had what one might term a complex regarding her height, standing as she did no higher than five-feet tall altogether. (Three-feet two dismantled, four-inches flat-packed.) Due to the disability of her diminutiveness she made great efforts to appear taller, employing such aids as high heels, stilts, and wearing her hair in the Pisa style, all towering and leaning. Today, however, her stacked and usually imposing haircut appeared dishevelled, floppy – and, moreover, sticky, as though all the proverbial bees proverbially living inside her proverbial hive-like hair had climbed atop it, downed a bottle of mead, and proverbially vomited over the sides. To peer at it from a distance (or at least squint one ear-eye sideways from across a desk) the mayor's bonnet resembled a volcano which had erupted a great spaff of rancid strawberry blancmange. If a certain detective did not know any better, he could very-well imagine that a magical unicorn with a bout of cramps had done a big pink poop on the mayor's head. To the untrained ear, one might go as far to suspect that an elderly elephant with eczema and a steaming saveloy in its ear had fallen from the sky and exploded across–
“Thank you, detective! I get the idea,” her with the sticky hair interrupted. “I didn't summon you here for your illustrative descriptions.”
Then why have I been summoned? Detective Pilchard wondered; only when the silence in the office had become excruciating did the detective actually ask the mayor aloud, “Then why have I been summoned?” The mayor thumped her desk, causing everything atop it, including the detective, to jump.
“Why do you think?!” she thumped again, pointing to her tangled hair. “The ongoing spate of water blockages, of course!”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
The spate of city-wide blockages had begun some weeks earlier with several not particularly newsworthy instances of taps running dry. (Under normal circumstances, Trifle City's taps ran wet, or at least distinctly moist, so this change in their substance was immediately noticeable.) Initially, no one paid these water dispensary issues much attention; it was only when a mysterious pink and sticky fluid began flowing from said taps – along with thousands of toilets, showers, hose pipes, radiators, hot tubs and, lest we forget, bidets... shudder – that people literally stood up and took notice.
“And believe me, detective, when your bidet squirts a chilly pink jelly directly up your bot-bot,” the mayor said, shifting awkwardly in her seat, “you quickly stand up and take notice!”
Despite lots of investigation from lots of infrastructure people and stuff, no one could explain from where this strange gooey substance was originating, or even what it was; all anyone knew was that it was as pink and unpalatable as a fast-food milkshake, just as impossibly thick, and was plugging every waterway in Trifle City!
Oh, it was horrible stuff, this goo: wet, gloopy, tacky, fowl – and everywhere! It oozed from bathroom taps like pink snot from chrome noses; it bubbled from water fountains like a foaming fondue of salmon mousse; one couldn't run a bath without the risk of becoming set in this icky cement, frozen forever like some naked fossil cast in raspberry amber. As the weeks wore on and the goo-related cases continued to escalate, rather than risk flushing their toilets, citizens were reduced to the medieval practice of throwing their bathroom waste from their windows.
“Is that what happened to you?” Detective Pilchard asked of his mayor with all the tactless innocence of a child. “I only ask, what with your hair being a bit of a sticky mess, like?”
The mayor shook said sticky head, like. “No, thank heavens. No poo-poop up here,” she said, scratching at her clumped and decidedly pink fringe. “I was taking a shower when I found myself under a sudden deluge of this undisclosed...stuff.”
The mayor sighed disconsolately, for a brief moment allowing herself to appear vulnerable, likeable, even amiable – or at least a 'lil bit less of a witch. “I tell you detective... For as long as this pink plague continues to infect our city, I don't know how long I can maintain order. Anarchy has risen from lesser emergencies. Surely it can only be a matter of time before this strain on my citizen's lives begins to–”
“BHAAAARP!”
Startling both himself and the mayor, the detective let rip an abrupt firecracker of a burp. “Goodness! I am so sorry,” he apologised, bringing a hand over his mouth – albeit too late to prevent a second oral expulsion from rippling his moustache. “You see, madam mayor,” he BHAAAARPED a third and final time, “I was competing in the annual Trifle City Pickled Onion Eating Competition until late last night, and I fear my third place haul is repeating on me.”
“That's quite alright,” Detective Pilchard was rather surprised to hear his queenly mayor excuse. “I myself was also shovelling down the spicy shallots until long after dark.” To confirm this statement, the mayor expelled a delicate eructation of her own. “Goodness!” she blushed, tittering, so unlady-like, like. “Excuse me.”
“Oh, no problem. No problem at all,” Detective Pilchard smiled. He picking himself up off the floor, righted his chair, ensured that he still had both of his earbrows.. “I respect any lady who can gorge on fermented vegetables to the point of vomiting, and still appear radiant the next morning.”
“As would any man!” blinked an inconspicuous and somewhat crumpety light fixture in the far corner of the room. As said light fixture made it serendipitous manifestation via head-bounce, Mayor Sperkins sighed an onion-scented sigh. The detective was again knocked back several yards, and to the verge of coma.
