Dodos

Once upon a time, there was an old witch and a matricidal quintet of Italian chefs who crawled up five million miles of gas piping and out of a drain, all the way from hell. This pleasant culinary flock had flown back to Earth to watch their growing grandchildren (and, more importantly, the second part of the Gordon Ramsey biopic trilogy). The old witch had no purpose.

“How dead and empty are the streets!” she said.

But, alas, in their panic, her comrades had dispersed forthwith and forgotten all about her.

“This is starting to get boring here!” she called.

Then suddenly, horribly, she became struck with the notion that no mortal would ever even recall, let alone appreciate, her contributions to this world. And so, with the intention of writing on the walls her name in their blood, she caught up with her associates and slashed their necks with a machete she kept in her left stocking.

Curses, she thought, ghosts can’t bleed.

In one final act of desperation, she snatched a piece of passing card bearing the letters ‘T-O-T-N-E-S’ and tried to carve her name in tears. Bugger and chagrin, she muttered. Only then did she remember she had forgotten her name and could not cry after all. In the end, she decided to bend one corner of the card.

And shortly after, a northern squad of Hell’s bureaucratic fuzz came and recaptured the escapees, torturing them on the way with nooses made of red tape. The end.