Bottom-Rock…

Big Bee stood contemplating his overlarge leather travel-bag.

“Stay-cation?” asked Teigue-the-Fool.

“If only,” smiled Big Bee, “unfortunately, men in my position can’t afford such luxury.”

“Busy… busy… bees,” sang Teigue, shaking his rattle.

“Indeed,” continued Big Bee, “and my plan to vaccinate the world by the end of the year has almost come to fruition.”

“You sound like a Bond Baddie,” said Teigue.

“Bond Baddies don’t save the world, they destroy it,” sighed Big Bee.

“Quite,” said Teigue, and then, “almost?”

“I just need to convince the rest of the K-Nine countries.”

“Ah,” said Teigue, “of course, most other countries of the world outside those of the K-Nine already have the ‘pandemic’ under control, and without the use of a vaccine.”

Big Bee looked blank.

“I-ver-mec-tin!” pronounced Teigue, with a flourish.

“Insufficient clinical trials,” blustered Big Bee.

“No need for clinical trials if it works in the field,” smiled Teigue, “which it clearly does, and without the initial spike in deaths the vaccine rollout produced, and it already has a forty-year safety record.”

“Damn I-ver-mec-tin! Damn, damn, damn I-ver-mec-tin!” growled Big Bee, clenching and un-clenching his hands, into and then out of fists, and shaking them alarmingly. “We’ll see.” He zipped up his travel bag with a resounding ‘zing’.

“Portugal?” asked Teigue-the-Fool.

“Portland bloody Bill,” snarled Big Bee.

A Questionable Science:

Love and Death in the Time of COVID

by Stuart France and G. Michael Vasey

‘The Gallows and Gibbet Inn’, proclaimed the sign, which singular nominal ought really to have aroused, if not my shackles then, at least my suspicions.

Too late, Anu was already tugging me over the threshold into the warmth, and the light, and the sound of voices, and music…

…They were all in there!

Black Jack Davey… Teigue-the-Fool… The Miller’s Son… The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… H.R.H. the Lord of the Elements, and one-hundred-and-one other far less savoury characters.

Most of them in their cups. Reprobates all! And what a tale they had to tell.

If you have ever wondered why all the public houses are shut.

You had better pull up a chair…