Sir Reginald Has More Hair On His Chest Than You Have On Your Head

[benchilada]

            “You know, until last year I didn’t have a problem with boats. Since then, though, I’ve not been very keen on them,” said Sir Reginald, “I’ll also have you know that I’m using the word ‘boat’ very loosely here.”

            “Keep insultin’ my boat and I’ll make yeh swim,” smiled Gavin.

            “Don’t fuck with me, you sawney bastard. I know a shitty boat when I see one, and this,” he said, breaking off a piece of the prow with one hand, “is a shitty boat.”

            “Hey, that was like that for a reason!”

            “And the motor you’ve got on this thing. It sounds like its grinding kittens.”

            “Why d’yeh think the exhaust smells like burning hair?”

            “I like kittens,” frowned Reginald.

            “You think I didn’t know that?”

            The two fell silent for a bit, Reginald rummaging through a knapsack full of dreadful things, Gavin consulting charts and maps that were clearly drawn two-hundred years ago by a spastic with no hands. The waves of the Loch Maree slapped the side of their vessel with a decidedly lazy effort. Reginald pulled out a small-necked bottle with a very large cricket scrabbling in it.

            “You have a job to do,” he muttered and set it on the planks. “You still haven’t told me how you convinced the conservation authority to let this…vessel…touch their blessed lake waters.”

            “Oh, they don’t know. Nobody does. Watch this,” said Gavin, spotting an man sitting on the banks.

            “Hey, you stupid twat! How’s that tiny prick between yuir legs doing? Doesn’t seem like yuir wife back home gives it much waxing! She may not have time for you, but she fucks me like she was sixteen and I was Daniel-bloody-Craig.”

            The man on the shore waved happily and shouted something about the weather.

            “Just a regular sort’a cloaking spell, but with a few tweaks. It was a bit harder than the usual, since this is a conservation area and my lovely, lovely boat belches hell’s own smoke out its arse.”

            “See, you make fun of your boat.”

            “That’s because it’s mine. It’s self-deprecation. It’s the same as why I won’t tell you that your face looks like somebody shat on it, stepped on it, then shat on it again, but you…well, you can say that all yeh like.”

            Reginald reached into his bag, pulled out a fresh monkey hand and bent up the middle finger.

            “Very clever, Reginald.”

            “It’s the only reason I brought this thing along,” he laughed and threw it into the water.

            “I still can’t believe that all these years I’ve lived within spitting distance of the Sapphire Tongue of the Danish Kings.”

            “Well, I can’t believe I’ve known you for fifteen years and you’ve never let me look at your charts.”

            “I’ve known you for just as long and you’ve never let me touch a single thing of yuirs! I remember the time in Paris that you said that I could never…borrow…anything from the Louvre, because you’d claimed it all first.”

            “It’s true, I spat on the threshold and everything.”

            “It’s in France, Reginald, the threshold has probably been spat on a million times since the place was built.”

            “Yes, but they hadn’t spit with such fervor and intent.”

            Gavin killed the engine and flipped through his papers again. He stuck a jeweler’s loupe in his eye and peered closely at the edge of one map, then moved it aside and looked at the center of a different chart. Without looking up, he thrust an outstretched hand at Reginald, who passed him the GPS tracker.

            “I think this is it. Yes, this is it,” Gavin confirmed. He reached into a paper bag next to him and pulled out three rocks that were wailing quietly. “I’ll drop these sounding stones into the water while you do your own check.”

            Reginald reached into another paper back and grabbed a handful of red wheat. He tossed the grains into the air, where they promptly disregarded the wind and fell straight back down.

            Reginald looked over at Gavin’s maps. Gavin looked down at Reginald’s wheat.

            “Well,” said Reginald.

            “Aye,” answered Gavin.

            “I haven’t seen any…you know…yet.”

             “Neither have I. Not that I really expected any. I mean, this thing’s underwater, how could it be guarded by a beagle?”

            A wretched sound, like a rabid dog eating a hawk, cut through the air above them. They looked up and saw the beast that circled above. It was fifteen feet long, with a wingspan over twice that; it was a massive sea eagle with the head of an enormous bulldog.

            “Yeh’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” said Gavin, smacking his forehead with his palm.

            “What? What, did you forget to carry a fucking two?”

            “No, I just assumed that bu’eagle was some stupid Gaelic word for beagle.”

            “You didn’t research it? Did your mother beat you when you flunked your A Levels?”

            “Did yuir mother beat her pregnant belly with you in it?”

            Both men fell to the deck just as the horror made a dive for them. Its spittle-flecked jaws snapped just above their hands and the wind from its wings buffeted the small craft.

            “Fuck!” shouted Gavin. “If only you’d—”

            His voiced was drowned out by a half-dozen shots from Reginald’s revolver. Two tore through the bu’eagle’s wings and one struck it in the side of its head. The creature wailed, and did not attack again, just circled above them.

            “I was going to say ‘If only you’d brought something more powerful than a pistol!’”

            “I only thought I was going to be shooting at beagles, you daft bastard!”

            “Here, what’s a natural enemy of an eagle?”

            “The what?”

            “What’s the fucking natural enemy of an eagle?”

            “I don’t fucking know! Does anything eat eagles? Bulldogs? Americans on the fourth of July?”

            “Oh fuck all this clever shite,” shouted Gavin as the bu’eagle prepared for another attack.

            “Clever? I don’t hear anybody in the boat being clever, you—WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” Reginald screamed.

            Gavin smiled, and as the bu’eagle dove again he pointed a tiny metal tube at it.

            Reginald covered his eyes with his hand but he could still see the light. He could feel his skin reddening, and just as his hair started to smoke, it was over. He cautiously opened his eyes just in time to see the creature—now just a charred lump of nothing with wing bones sticking out of it—smash hard into the surface of the lake.

            Gavin was laughing as the boat was rocked by the waves created by the impact. His entire arm was lobster red, all the hairs burned off and the skin starting to blister.

            “Never thought of that before,” he grinned.

            “That’s because sunpipes aren’t intended as fucking artillery weapons!”

            “It worked, didn’t it? Anyway, yuir just jealous that I have one.”

            “Of course I am, but for heaven’s sake, my head is smoking and your boat’s on fire.”

            “Fuck!” shouted Gavin as he rushed to splash water on a few planks that were quietly crackling.

            “At least we’re here,” frowned Reginald. “I’ll convince the lake to let us down to the bottom.”

            “Aye, get at it,” said Gavin as he checked the rest of his boat.

            Reginald grabbed the jar-of-cricket, a clear glass globe the size of a grapefruit, and a tight bundle of lightly-colored twigs. After a moment, he grabbed a glass vial and slipped it into his jacket pocket when Gavin wasn’t looking.

            Gavin came over and checked Reginald’s inventory.

            “That’s it? A giant bug, a glass ball, and…is that an ash-faggot?” he grinned.

            “Oh, very smart, you’re the only one who’s ever thought of that,” frowned Reginald. He began chanting, and occasionally shouting, in languages that these shores had never heard. He threw the glass globe about ten feet from the boat, and as it sank in created a perfect column of air all the way to the base of the lake. Reginald quickly threw in the cricket jar, which shattered and released the insect. It ran swiftly down the sides of the cylinder, stilling the water. Finally he threw in the bundle of twigs, which split apart over the hole in the water, sticks flying apart to brace strange steps made of water.

            “There,” smiled Reginald. “A pleasant walk to the floor of Loch Maree and the tongue is ours. I propose that you keep it for the summer and fall, I’ll get winter and spring, and we can alternate custody on weekends, when—”

            Reginald fell silent as he felt the barrel of a gun in his back.

            “Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t any of you bastards not want to kill me?”

            “Not likely. You’ve fucked so many of us over the years that’s we’d all like a little payback. Don’t worry, though, I’m not going to kill you. That would be rude. Still, you are going to walk to the bottom of the stairs, get the Sapphire Tongue of the Danish Kings, come back up, and offer it to me. And then you can swim back.”

            “You’re so generous.”

            “But first,” said Gavin, his voice emotionless, “why don’t you throw the last spell component into the stairwell?”

            “What last component? It’s open, there’s nothing else that—” He stopped again as Gavin reached around and patted the pocket that Reginald had put the vial in.

            “That one.”

            “Oh, that’s not a spell component, that’s not necessary.”

            “Yuir a shitty liar, Reginald. Now throw it in.”

            Reginald carefully pulled out the vial, uncorked it, and tip out a tiny shriveled thing that smelled like a rubbish tip.

            “Oi, that’s a hell of a pong!” shouted Gavin, covering his nose.

            “Well, there are a few reasons I keep it in a glass vial.”

            “What’s the other?”

            “It shouldn’t get wet.”

            “Well, if we…you…are going to get the tongue, you’d better get it wet, right?”

            “I suppose so,” said Reginald, his face dropping as he tossed it down the column of air. “But I’m not going to help when the fucking sea monster comes.”

            “The artifact is only protected by that,” smiled Gavin, gesturing at the dead bu’eagle. “There aren’t any sea monsters in this loch.”

            “Well, there’s one now,” mumbled Reginald as he fell to the deck of the boat.

            “Here, what the fucking MARY MOTHER OF GOD!”

            Gavin emptied his gun at the massive tentacle that erupted out of the circular stairway of water. The tentacle didn’t seem to mind, but it did focus its attention on the Scotsman, pulling him into the depths as the column collapsed around it.

            Sir Reginald sighed at the loss of a friend, but also at the loss of both the Sapphire Tongue of the Danish Kings as well as his only mystically-preserved freshwater giant squid.

            “Well, if I can’t have the tongue, I suppose nobody can,” he said to himself as he pulled the ripcord for the boat’s engine. It snapped off in his hand, but the motor sputtered enough to catch fire. Reginald kicked the wood it was attached to until the engine broke free and sank into the water. He grabbed a pair of oars and sat down for the row to shore. As soon as they hit the resistance of the water, the oars split in half and began to float away.

            Reginald sighed again, then spotted a man on the banks.

            “Excuse me! EXCUSE ME! I seem to be stranded out here! Do you think I could get a little help?”

            “Yes, the weather certainly is wonderful!” answered the man before waving and continuing his walk.

            Deciding that the third sigh’s the charm, he reached into his knapsack and pulled out a lunch pail. He unwrapped his corned-beef sandwich and cracked open a hard-boiled egg, deciding to enjoy the beauty of the loch as he drifted to shore.

            Four hours later—still only halfway to the banks and completely out of tea and water—he no longer found the lake quite as fucking beautiful.

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Love,

benjamin
Who always seems to be the one who always has to sit next to--and, as such, shout at to scare him into closing his damn mouth--the crazy guy with the trash bag who's yelling at the far-too-polite black guy across the aisle to "Shut up and go back to India!"