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When Huey Met Kandron (On Topic, about 6,000 words)


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#1 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 13 September 2004 - 12:36 AM

Hullo people!

This is my offering for the quiz… I hope you like it! It’s just pure fun, so don’t take it too seriously or anything.

Incidentally, yesterday (Sept 11) was my birthday. I am 19 now.

When Huey Met Kandron

Clutching his briefcase in apprehension, Huey LeMue, veteran TV personality, interviewer, travel writer, and wit, regarded the imposing architectural vision before him. He had begged and pined for this assignment, to do a feature on a prime-time lifestyle programme on the almost-as-renowned adventurer, swordsman, professional problem-solver, and sexual athlete Kandron Hector Devore. Although now he was feeling just a little off-put…

Checking his agenda, he gulped. Yes, this was the address. Somewhere deep in the wastelands of Buckinghamshire, England, yet the Home Counties he knew and loved could have well been on the other side of the moon. The sky was iron-grey and roiling with clouds, and the property in question (or what he could see from the other side of the twelve-foot-high stone wall with barbed wire and spikes and broken glass atop it) seemed to be a huge granite-and-iron edifice with a single, malevolent tower out one corner… He gulped and regarded the gates… they were made of single huge blocks of black-painted iron, on which was written, in suspiciously red paint, “TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT,” and underneath was “SURVIVORS WILL BE STABBED.” Tentatively Huey reached out and pulled the iron chain dangling from the gates… in the distance could be heard a grating, keening screech followed by a single, loud, bell toll… followed by footsteps getting closer to the gate…

With a whirr the solid iron gates slowly opened and, diminutive between their bulk, was the object of his study, Kandron Hector Devore. Five feet eight inches tall and slender yet obviously terrifyingly fit and lean, and with jet-black skin, pale silver hair, and eyes the colour of neon lamps, Kandron regarded the journalist as if Huey were little more than another tabloid hack.

“So,” he said, “You’re Huey, am I right?”

“Er… y-y-yes…” Huey stammered.

“Ahh, I have been… expecting you…” Kandron smiled, one side of his mouth distending much further than the other. “I think you’d best come in…”

Huey hesitantly entered the courtyard as the iron gates swung shut behind him. The house itself was built of polished black granite and strips of stainless steel, and was vaguely rectangular, but with a garage appended to one side. Before the garage was a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado, in black, except the trademark fins which normally adorned the back of such a vehicle had been removed and attached to the sides instead. Huey noticed – with a chill – that the fronts of these fins had been sharpened to form a pair of deadly blades capable of slicing a man clean in two. He shivered.

Kandron advanced across the drive to the oaken front door and unlocked it with a big iron key he acquired from his trouser pocket. He then pushed it – but to no avail.

“Damn it, I forgot the other lock,” He reached into his other pocket and took out a small silvery key, and slipped it into a small, black-painted Yale lock in the door. With a click it opened, and Kandron entered, holding the door for Huey.

The main hall had a marble floor with a single grand staircase up the centre which split into a balcony which ran all the way round. These balconies had a further pair of stairways which led to the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors. The general colour scheme was a mixture of black, deep purple, and silver… with large painted panels showing artistic impressions of Kandron victorious over various obvious heroic types… one of them featured Kandron holding aloft his twin blades over the corpse of a stereotypical knight in shining armour while the distressed damsel, still tied to a stake, looked on in fear. This was mainly troubling because of the blood soaking his arms up to the elbow… and the guts of said knight dangling limply out like pre-packed sausages. Eep, though Huey. Here I am, unarmed except for a notepad and a tape recorder, alone in the middle of nowhere with the sort of person who at the very least fantasises about the dismemberment of authority figures...

“I see you like my paintings, Huey,” Kandron said.

“Oh, yes, they’re, well, very interesting…” Huey stammered.

“Of course,” Kandron said, most calmly. “May I offer you a drink?”

“Yes…” Huey said. “Tea?”

“Sorry,” Kandron smiled. “Tea’s off. You’ve got to choose from tapwater or La Fée Verte. We don’t have – “ here Kandron adopted an expression of disgust – “tea in this house.”

“We?” asked Huey. “So you’ve a family or something?”

“No,” said Kandron, “I have a… lodger. You’ll be meeting him later.”

Huey was not at all looking forward to the idea of meeting the person who would lodge with this maniac. After all, what rational person had a car with blades along the sides?

They progressed through the door on the left, Kandron in the lead, and entered a huge oak-panelled ballroom. “Ah yes, the ballroom… It doesn’t get used that much these days, but… you never know…”

They exited the ballroom and entered an almost-as-well-stocked library, replete with large, heavy, and intellectual books, including a complete set of the newest Encyclopaedia Britannica, thick textbooks on literature and art and history.

“Oh of course… the library… Now, truth be told, I don’t really read any of these that much, most are for show. But… look on the bottom shelf for a true insight into my reading preferences…” Reluctantly, Huey looked at the bottom shelf… James Joyce’s Ulysses… nothing too bad there… the Iliad… the Aeneid… The Silmarillion… The Day of the Triffids… Paradise Lost… Evidently Kandron was into various epic and literary stuff… with the possible exception of “A Complete History of Torture,” which Huey most worryingly noticed was bookmarked about halfway through. He swallowed.

Travelling through the library, they came to the drawing room. It was very plush, with a deep, crimson, shag-pile carpet, a pair of black leather sofas, onto one of which Kandron leapt clean over the back into an effortlessly relaxed sprawl.

“Well…” he began. “I suppose I’d best tell you a bit about the house rather… I built it, basically… not all myself, of course, but I designed it. It’s a nice place, don’t you think?” Huey was not sure exactly what to think of it.

“Well…” Kandron adjusted his feet so they flopped over the arm of the sofa, “Technically I pay no tax on it at all; I don’t exist. You see, the Inland Revenue and the surveyors both believe my humble abode unsafe for habitation, mainly because they were too frightened to come and look at it. So technically, I’m just a squatter… It’s a perfect arrangement.

Huey was a little taken aback by this. “Well, I suppose that huge Cadillac costs you enough to run anyhow – “

Kandron laughed and slapped his thigh. “That huge Cadillac? Oh, you mean the Razor Roadster? Never! Okay, I have it MOT’d every so often, I do that properly, because if it blew up on the road it could cause some serious megadeath and I don’t want that, it would be irresponsible – “

Huey pulled the frog out his throat enough to speak, which had jumped there at the gleaming mention of his car as the “Razor Roadster”. “So, blowing up and obliterating passers by is irresponsible, but chopping them in half with the blades on the side isn’t?”

“Oh no. Think of it as genetic cleansing… those stupid enough to stand so close to it while it’s in motion, they deserve to be chopped in half!”

“I see…” said Huey, swallowing. “So, how much does it cost you to fuel the thing?”

“Not much,” said Kandron. “I buy petrol on a wholesale basis before the tax people get to it… Why, would you like to go for a ride in it?” His smile widened at one corner, which was disconcerting… why did Kandron only seem able of smiling fully on one side? Huey dared not ask.

“No thanks…” Huey muttered. “What about your stance politically?” he asked, beginning to master his nerves.

Kandron raised an eyebrow. “Slightly to the left of Tony Blair. So…” he paused as if enumerating something, “that makes me level with Combat 18, the BNP, Jean-Marie Le Pen, his splitter Bruno Megret, George W. Bush… I think you get the idea.”

“So, how did you vote at the last election?” Huey asked, his voice quavering a bit less now.

“I didn’t,” Kandron replied. “I’m not registered to, and besides, why should those imbeciles get any indication of my confidence? No, as long as they leave me well enough alone, their sovereign authority can stop at my walls. Especially if they’re from the Labour Party!”

“I see,” Huey said. “So, well, let’s have a look at it like this. You don’t like Blair, am I right?”

“Damn right,” Kandron replied. “Truth be told, I haven't time for bloody politics at all. All show and no blow to a man.”

“So, why not live elsewhere other than in Britain? You could have, for the same sort of price that it would’ve cost you to build all this stuff, got a nice little pad round Nice, or Tuscany... or maybe you could have set up home in the States?”

Kandron smiled his razor-sharp grimace. “Well, I chose to set up my fortress here simply because it’s got the right sort of climate… it’s cold, wet, constantly overcast, and I’m sensitive to sunlight.”

Huey took that on board. “Well, do you mind if I asked you a few questions about the ‘Affair’ as it has come to be known…?”

Kandron looked manically happy at this idea. “Whyever not?”

Huey gulped and cleared his throat. “Okay, so, where to begin? Do you think it was at all a good move to engage in it? That’s to say – “

Kandron replied, “ – Did I learn anything from it? Why yes I did.”

“And what was that?”

“That, in the adventuring/mercenary business, other people are all out to steal your credit.”

“Oh.” Huey replied. “That it?”

“YES.” Kandron said firmly, as if to also say something along the lines of, “You’re not going to benefit from my wisdom, you pathetic little hack.”

“The other thing worth noting,” he carried on, “is that nothing is more important than looking after number one.

Huey giggled half-heartedly at this… “Right. Well, Kandron… The question that’s on everyone’s lips is this – is there any special woman in your life at all?”

“No.” replied Kandron. “There is not, thankfully. And please, don’t say that it’s ‘the question that’s on everyone’s lips’ because it isn’t. How many people have you heard in the street saying, ‘I wonder if Kandron’s getting his rocks off?’ or anything like that?! Let’s get one thing clear, Huey – I am not a tabloid icon. I am not a half-arsed celebrity. I’m a professional personage who got lucky – “

“Yes, well, that’s what people are wondering, though. Are you getting lucky at the moment?”

Kandron gave Huey his most poisonous 1,000-yard glower and, with great resolution, said, “No.”

Huey reached into his briefcase and pulled out a pair of photographs and showed them to his subject. They depicted a certain Drow male wearing bare-arsed lederhosen, being felt up by a large bald-headed guy. “Is this you?” he asked.

Kandron inspected the photos. “Never. Why would I have painted the entirety of my body white? Not a good photoshop job at all.”

Huey looked downcast. “Odd. I believed them,” he said.

“Look,” Kandron snarled. “My buttocks are the same colour as the rest of me. Would you like proof?”

Huey balked at the very idea, and made to stow the incriminating photos back in his briefcase, but Kandron lashed out a hand and snatched them off him. “We can’t let you keep those photographs, Huey. Who knows what sort of foulsome lies you might perpetuate amongst people with them? I think it’s best if I keep them for now.”

He reluctantly gave the black-skinned, white-haired psychopath (for that was that as which he had come to regard Kandron) the photos and shut his briefcase.

“So tell me… What are your plans for the future, then? Huey asked.

“Sod all. Next question. I have another 700 years to live at least, so I’m going to take each day as it comes.”

Huey hesitated. “About that Cadillac – “ he began.

“The Razor Roadster?”

Huey gulped. “As you say, the Razor Roadster. Why did you acquire it?”

Kandron stretched. “Well, I wanted something that was noticeable, oozed class, unorthdox, and extravagant. You couldn’t see me driving a common-or-garden Jag now could you? Bloody hell, round here, everyone and his wife’s got one of them… no wonder the sum total of personal debt in Britain comes to over a trillion pounds.”

“So,” said Huey, “You got yourself a bigger, more outrageous vehicle, and put the fins on the side?”

Kandron nodded. “Oh yes.”

“You could have acquired a nice little Audi TT if you wanted a convertible, especially as there’s only one of you? It’s more efficient and better for the environment…”

Kandron twisted his face into an all-too-readily-familiar expression of contempt. “What, do I look like a bloody hairdresser?” he snarled. “Now then, Huey, you are going to come along and have a ride in the Razor Roadster and you are going to enjoy it.” Huey jumped as, from nowhere, a razor-sharp knife embedded itself in the back of his seat, inches from his head. “Comprendez?” smiled Kandron.


Kandron vaulted into the driver’s seat, Huey climbed – albeit with great reluctance - into the passenger’s seat. Turning the key, the Razor Roadster’s engine started up, with a low growl as if it was hungry. They reversed out from in front of the garage, turned round, and no sooner had the huge gates opened than it sprang forwards, shot through the gates, and turned to the right, towards the town of High Wycombe. Very few people were on the roads, being as it was, a Sunday afternoon; this could only be a good thing. Kandron was obviously having great fun; his silver hair was flying in the breeze.

“How fast are we going?!” asked Huey in vague fear.

“Oh, not too fast,” Kandron replied. “About ninety or so.” This was alarming; since the road was a little narrow and not that straight. “Would you like me to push it to the limit?”

Huey gulped. “No thank you!”

Kandron chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ve almost had her take off before, with the sideways blades acting as wings!” Huey did not know whether this was meant in jest or for real, as when he glanced over to the speedometer, he noticed that it went up to over a hundred and seventy. “Of course, that was going over a speedbump, but still…”

They were approaching a roundabout, and Kandron had had the good sense to actually slow down to navigate it, especially as it was a roundabout onto which the M40 emptied itself, even if it was only to a mere sixty miles per hour. They exited onto the London Road, heading into High Wycombe. There were quite a few other road users about, not that this concerned the drow at the wheel.

“Christ almighty!” cursed Huey, panting for breath. “What sort of engine do you have in that thing?!” he shrieked as the Razor Roadster screeched to a halt at a set of traffic lights.

Kandron smiled menacingly. “It’s not the standard engine you’d get in one of these things, I’ll admit to that. But the other thing is, on my travels I did actually pick up a few magical scrolls, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that an Improved Haste spell seems to work endlessly on mechanical components. Nominally it’s a six-litre job, but with that spell on it… I think you get the idea. Oh hello… what’s this?”

Kandron looked to his right. Alongside him was a small but very heavily modified car, laden with four individuals all with matching Lonsdale baseball caps, sat in red sports seats, a stylised flame decal emerging from the front wheels, and a huge and unnecessary spoiler on the back of their rusty-looking GTI, not to mention the mindless “throb, throb, throb” noise effusing from the boot. Their windows were open, and Huey could hear the passenger seat occupant say something about how “this beast should shit up that huge slug no probs, eh, Howard?” Kandron thought to himself, Body kit, skirts, lowered, stickers, sports seatbelts, huge alloy wheels, 1400cc. Heh, it probably needs that bass booster system to propel it up any significant incline...

The lights turned to amber, and the boy-racers began to creep forwards ostentatiously. As they turned green, Kandron gunned the accelerator on the Razor Roadster and it shot past them with almost no effort. Not only that, but as Kandron shot forwards, he wiggled the back of his car slightly so as to send an alarming scratch down the paintwork of the one alongside him. The cheap front-end body kit was caught on the end of the blade and half torn off, while the Razor Roadster calmly shot up to seventy, and the draft blew the passenger’s baseball cap clean off his head, upon where Kandron stretched, caught it, and jammed it onto Huey’s skull. Huey promptly passed out.


Inspector Tom Stebbins of Thames Valley Police sat in his office in Banbury looking at a photograph from a speed camera on London Road, High Wycombe. He picked up the phone and dialled the Chief Constable.

“Yeah, well, I’m a bit stumped, boss. You see, in High Wycombe, the ‘truvelo’ speed camera picked up this modified black Cadillac convertible shooting past it at way over twice the speed limit… Yes, I know that we ought to find the bastard and ban him for at least six months, but there’s a problem… his number plate is blank… Yes, I know that there’s only one black Cadillac convertible registered in the whole of England… but all the same, it belongs to Wayne Rooney… What do you mean, you’re a Scotland supporter? I mean, he had enough trouble with his brothel-creeping exploits last year, but still… Very good sir. Right away. Will do.”

Inspector Stebbins looked at the black-skinned, silver-haired individual and terrified-looking journalist in the front seat of the car, the former of which was flashing the V’s at the camera.

“Sorry, Wayne,” he said. “Oh well, there’s always Michael Owen.”


Kandron burned past a turquoise bus. His hair was flying backwards in pleasure, Huey’s was flying upwards in terror. The Razor Roadster pulled in sharply in front of the bus, causing a number of waiting pedestrians to fall over like dominoes to avoid its lethal fins.

“You know,” he said to Huey, while his automobile charged along the streets at a less-than-advisable velocity. “I’ve always loved going out for a cruise every now and then. But I’ve never really had that much of a chance to push this thing very much…”

Huey looked petrified. “Not while I’m in here you won’t!” he yelled, and flung open his door. Kandron, though, calmly told him that if he got out at this speed he would not be responsible for scraping him off the tarmac later. They were fast approaching the extremities of High Wycombe, and Kandron was raring to floor the accelerator, which he did as soon as the “National speed limit applies” road sign became visible. Huey’s teeth chattered in terror as the Razor Roadster seemed almost to raise slightly, the he figured that the sideways blade-fins had something to do with this. The engine was screaming under the bonnet, a combination of V8 power and alteration magic.

“Shit!” Huey swore as they burned through the last junction after a village called Stokenchurch. “We’ve only missed any way of turning around there! Now how are we going to get back… next roundabout’s not till Reading!”

Kandron smiled like the maniac he was, and muttered, “No problem…” Then, pulling up the handbrake, he steered wildly to the right, sending the car spinning wildly round 180 degrees. Huey looked terrified, as they sped off back towards the fortress. They burned through Wycombe as if the Razor Roadster was possessed, scattering pedestrians and similar in their wake. By the time they arrived at Kandron’s black iron gates they had several police cars on their tail… said police cars arrived, while the Cadillac they were searching parked sedately. The police drove in through the gates when Kandron pressed a small button round the corner of the garage… The section of road between the gates flicked up, and the plods landed in the field opposite with a satisfying crunch.

People are not meant to bend that way, thought Huey, shuddering.


Huey returned to the fortress quaking with terror. Why me? he lamented. I could have been doing on-the-ground reporting from Fallujah or Najaf, but oh no, they send me to do this lifestyle slot on this maniac... First he admits to being an absinthe fiend, and then he throws knives at me, and then takes me for a ride in his Cadillac convertible with blades on the side and some sort of ungodly souped up engine... now what?

Kandron stood before Huey, looking a little bit guilty.

“Oh, but of course… it was most rude of me.” he said. Huey was led out the hall, up the grand staircase, and then on the first floor they paused.

“I think, first, though,” he said, “you ought to come and take a look at this floor first though…”

Huey was led into the first room on this floor, which was very long and seemed to contain a jury-rigged obstacle course – spiced up with razor-sharp spikes, pit traps, and similar items. “Well,” Kandron began, “I had this installed a couple of years back because it never hurts to keep in shape.”

Huey had a look round the place. “Well, it certainly seems pretty impressive.”

Kandron smiled his razor smile. “Would you like a go? Though I’d best warn you it’s not easy…” he asked.

Huey gulped, but overcame his nerves. He was not going to let this – this maniac – overcome him, he was onto a winner here. “Sure, I’m game…” he said, removing his fleece, but in reality he felt less than confident about his ability to complete the course.


Huey arrived back at the start (the room was a giant loop all the way round the floor) out of breath, bleeding, bruised, and generally exhausted. It was over half an hour later, and the combination of rope-swings across spike pits, clambering over twelve foot walls, and balance beams while vicious blades came scything across towards him, had taken their toll. Kandron was standing casually, arms folded, his face adopting an expression of “I’m better than you, and I know it,” holding the stopwatch.

“Well,” he said, “That was certainly exhilarating, wasn’t it? In fact, I’m surprised that you even managed to get all the way round…”

“Oh no,” Huey said, smugly smiling. “I was following Dr Gillian McKeith’s abundance diet. No coffee, white bread, red meats, pasta – “

Kandron cackled in derision. “That killjoy bitch? The one who wants us all to eat raw veggies, seaweed, carrot juice, mountains of beans, organic vegetables, and drink nothing but mineral water and herbal teas?”

Huey opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted. “Watch and learn. According to her dieting book, I should have died years ago and my body wouldn’t decompose until 2350 or thereabouts, but I’ve been eating red meat, fried mushrooms, and similar for decades and it’s not done me any harm. I’m the fittest person I know, and not once did any quinoa, alfalfa, or aduki beans pass my lips! What’s more, I’m not surprised that on her diet you need to be told to go three times a day… you could get a job in the light artillery if you were with her regime!”

Kandron then took at run up and set off at a furious pace down his homegrown obstacle course. Just under eight minutes later he came round the other end of it, unscathed and barely out of breath. From Huey’s lips could be heard a vague “wow!”

“I take it,” Huey said, “you follow Atkins then?”

“No, I just eat well, visit the bog regularly, and take plenty exercise. My mother would have lived to be over 1000 if I hadn’t killed her off, and she wasn’t into any faddy diets!”

Huey blanched at this. “You… killed your mother?”

“Well,” said Kandron. “Sort of. I merely was holding a serrated dagger at chest height. She tragically fell forwards and unfortunately landed on the point of said knife throat first. But you can’t say the overbearing bitch didn’t deserve it. She hated me from the day she squatted me out on a hearthrug, and I can prove it.”

“How?” asked Huey.

“Because she told me.” Kandron replied. Now let’s get going.


So the journalist and his subject ascended further, onto the second floor. “These,” Kandron informed him, “are the guest suites, of which there are six. Not that anyone comes to stay here, but… you never know… And, at the end of the passage there is the bathroom, which is of no interest at all to you, I’m sure.”

Hmmm, thought Huey. I wonder if there’s a body in the bath? He then shuddered at the thought… probably there was more than one body in the bath, knowing Devore. While Kandron was inspecting one of the guest suites for some reason, he slipped to the end of the passage and peeked round the door. It seemed a rather mundane bathroom, with a black marble toilet, a polished stainless steel sink, black tiles all over the floor, walls, and ceiling, and an ebony medicine cabinet. Looking over his shoulder, he inspected the medicine cabinet. Travel sickness tablets (after all, charging everywhere in the Razor Roadster probably did that to people), haemorrhoid creams, Senokot (now what was wrong with Kandron’s bowels? If he followed the Gillian McKeith diet he wouldn’t have this problem, or so Huey decided), Elastoplast, antivenin for the Australian fat-tailed scorpion, and morphine-based painkillers. There was also a large bath with shower attachments (all in black and silver) and no windows.

“Huey?” came a drow’s voice from the other end of the hall.

“Coming…” Huey sighed, running towards the source of this name.


The next floor was reserved for storage and general oddments; Kandron did not bother Huey with such trifling details, but at the far end of this floor was a small iron door marked “Private.” Kandron unlocked and opened this to reveal a long spiral staircase; Huey at once understood that they were in the small tower he had seen from the road. At the top was Kandron’s room… it was circular, windowless, and alien. The carpets were crimson and thick, the walls were coated in stainless sheet steel, against one slightly flatter wall was Kandron’s bed, a four-poster with black velvet hangings and black satin sheets. On the wrought-iron bedside table was Kandron’s current bedtime reading (“The Dancers at the End of Time” by Michael Moorcock) and a large, black, dribbly candle. On the other side was an anniversary clock, although it was huge and black-painted. On the sides of the walls each side of the door were what Kandron said were his favourite paintings… the first one was, of course, of him, standing astride the bloodied corpse of some other drow… possibly a woman, and a very brawny looking woman at that… with a crossbow bolt stuck in her forehead. A brass plaque underneath informed Huey that this showed “Nioptolma Profaned,” which meant very little to him. The other painting was radically different to anything else in the house. It featured an angel wrestling with a devil against a bleak, grey background. In the corner it was signed “Bernard Yslaire.”

“Well,” Huey remarked. “This is certainly an… interesting… bedroom. Personally I could never get to sleep if I were surrounded by heavy, oppressive hangings like those…” Huey’s attention was drawn to the minibar in one corner of the room. “What’s that? Absinthe?”

“Bingo.” Kandron remarked. “I’ve got loads of it in the cellar… You see, whenever something nice or fun comes along, people tend to ban it in a welter of moral panic. So, just in case the government decides to ban the sale of this veritable King of Aperitifs, I placed a mammoth order with the La Fée company… I figured that, at 2 glasses a day, with each glass being louched from one 25ml shot, and thus each bottle holding 28 shots… I just needed to divide the expected 182,625 days of my existence by 28 to determine the number of bottles I should order. It came to, as I’m sure you’ll have worked out by now, 6,523 bottles of it, which should last me for the foreseeable half-millennium.”

“But,” asked Huey, “What if you have guests over?”

“Huey,” Kandron replies, slapping Huey’s shoulder. “Nobody EVER comes over as a guest. Trust me.”

I wonder why, thought Huey.

Huey was apprehensive. “So… erm, if this is where you sleep,” he commented, “where’s your lodger?”

Kandron’s eyes lit up and Huey was led wordlessly downstairs.


“Well,” Kandron said, “No great fortress-home like this would be complete without dungeons and a torture chamber. And that is what I think I’d best show you next.” They wended down the grand staircase and then round behind it to a small, slippery stone stairwell which went deep into the earth. At the bottom was a parade of small, cramped cells behind iron grilles. Huey looked especially shocked at the rats which scurried across the floor and the bleached bones in some of the cells.

“Don’t worry,” Kandron said. “They can’t hurt you, unless you disturb them too much, in which case their spirits might just come back and rip out your throat with their teeth. But apart from that, they’re totally harmless.”

Huey was not convinced, and was even less convinced when at the end of the passage he noticed a large iron door with the words “Torture Chamber” inscribed on it.

Kandron smiled coldly at this. “Well, as a certain horror hostess once said, ‘If you need anything else whipped up, this is the place to be.’ Want a look?”

“No thank you…” stammered Huey. “I’d rather not…”

“Hey, don’t worry…” Kandorn hissed. “They’re not actually in use at the moment. Anyhow, aren’t you curious?”

“Erm, no, really, I’m not…” stuttered Huey. He was plainly casting around for ways to escape this frightful place… how did he know that Kandron wouldn’t slap him on the rack as soon as he went through the door.

“No, I insist…” said Kandron, opening the door and pointedly shepherding Huey through it. The torture room was windowless, lit by flaming torches, and made of black stone and stainless steel fittings. Various implements of pain and punishment were strewn about. “Now, what do you fancy?” Kandorn said in a worryingly cheery voice… almost like Peter Mandelson on heat. “A spot of the Piniewinks?” he said, pulling out a pair of thumbscrews. “Skeffington’s Gyves?” he said, walking over to a strange iron hoop with spikes along it, to whose use Huey was at a loss. “Or are you more of a traditionalist and prefer the Rack, or the Cat o’ Nine Tails? We can provide any form of pain and torture here…”

Huey edged towards the door slowly in fear.

“Hell, you’re a hack, you’ll be used to pillorying people!” Kandron said, clacking the top parts on a large oaken pillory. “But then… the pride of my dungeon… both types of iron maiden!” Kandron yelled, as a small boy with a new toy train.

“Both types?” Huey asked in fatal curiosity.

“Yes. There is this type… which is an instrument of torture…” the drow explained, opening a traditional iron maiden with large spikes coating its inside. Disturbing pieces of rotting carrion hung from its spikes. “Or, for the more psychological torture master, we have this type of iron maiden… which is torture on instruments…” Kandron leapt across the room to a massive ghetto blaster on which the volume was at its maximum, and pressed “PLAY.” The room shook with screaming guitars and off-time drums, and Huey curled up in a ball as if trying to shut out the noise… “MAKE IT STOP!!!” he yelled, and Kandron hit the “STOP” button.

“How ironic,” he sighed.


After Huey’s hearing had returned, he made so bold as to inquire after the lodger. Kandron replied that he would be coming to that, eventually… And eventually was to be rather soon, as the other side of the torture room was a large, one-person condemned cell. Kandron knocked on it, and a terrified voice said, “Come on in…!”

Inside was a six-foot, heavy-set young man of nineteen or so summers. He was chained to a writing desk with a Parker fountain pen, a candle, and a small crate of ink cartridges. On one side of him, a huge pile of closely-written manuscript, and on the other side, an equally huge pile of blank pages. “Erm… hullo!” said the lodger.

“Yes, this is Johnny… he’s my, erm, lodger.”

“You mean your sl – “ Johnny began to shout, but Kandron drowned him out.

“Yes… Johnny enjoys sitting in this condemned cell writing about my exploits. It’s an excellent arrangement… especially as although he’s a parasitic, grasping loon, he isn’t a bad writer… Aren’t you, Johnny?” Kandron’s smile showed a razor-like look of menace.

“Oh yes,” Johnny replied. “By the way, I’ve just finished the next part for your approval. Sir.” He added this last word very hastily, as if he did not want to risk displeasing Kandron… his mind was obviously shot to bits by the twin iron maidens in the next room…

“Excellent!” hissed Kandron.


There we have it. I hope you like this little piece, even if it is almost twice as long as my usual offerings, and Kandron told me to write it or he’d tie my weenie in a granny knot… ARGH! GET OFF ME! NO! NOT THE THUMBSCREWS ON THE TESTICLES!!!! NOOOO….

[In a different, altogether more precise and cultured handwriting style] Yes, well perhaps it was for the best.

#2 Guest_Serena_*

Posted 13 September 2004 - 02:02 AM

This was . . . different.

I found it actually rather creepy. It was still fun, but rather creepy.

But it fits right in, and I'm glad you shared. :mrgreen:




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