The Spindlegrin Saga: Episode 136

Loki succumbed to the midgets song,
The midget then did do him wrong,
Now he resides beneath the floor,
A vast expanse without a door.

The mints who sung their song so sweetly,
whilst stacked up in their packet neatly,
made a cryptic prophecy,
about an obscure mystery.

Underneath the cleanroom floor,
Loki finds that life’s a bore,
and with his job dissatisfaction,
makes a plan to put in action,
but just for now he is quite doomed,
under the floor he’ll stay entombed,

His curriculum vitae,
will never be sent away,
because the fascist mailer daemon,
all his mail will be receivin’
its job to stop employees leavin’
at least before Friday evenin’

Camped beneath the faulty logic fruit tree, Loki has been having a rather bad time of it.

While it’s true that The Mints had recently recited a ballad so beautiful that it moved him to tears, it was about a subject so chilling that Loki had spent the rest of the night in a fever dream, convinced that he was a small torque wrench named Flynn.

During this dream, the midget, from the previous episode, who bore a striking resemblance to Ken Russel, stole Flynn with the intent of inserting him up Kate Bush’s arse. Coincidentally, at exactly the same time, Kate Bush, who after consuming great quantities of a Buckfast and paint stripper shandy, of her own recipe, had become convinced that a diminutive version of Ken Russell was trying to bum her nether regions with a screaming ratchet. The next morning she would experience a gastric condition that she’d later describe as the “Wuthering Shites.”

By the time he woke from the terror induced hallucinations, the mints had finally shut up and Loki started to calm down a bit.

At some stage in the last 10 hours he had stubbed his toe which was now red, swollen and had started to emanate that distinctive aroma of burning wasp fat, which will be familiar to those of us who spent many a childhood summer, working in the Hymenoptera Mines of West Athlone. With limited access to medical facilities, antibacterial creams or qualified gicktoe specialists, Loki was forced to improvise, which in this case meant sitting down on a nitrogen pipe, pulling off his boot and giving the offending toe a vigorous rub. To much alarm, Loki would discover that his rubbing was so vigorous that it had summoned the fabled Toe Jam Genie from popular folk tales including: The Chiropodist and the Elves, One Thousand and One Fungal Infections, and The Walt Disney Guide to Cultural Appropriation.

Now, most reasonable people would be somewhat freaked out by the discovery of an actual, factual genie living under the nail of their left big toe, but Loki had become desensitised to this kind of nonsense after the previous episode’s revelation that the Polo Mints he was carrying were not only sentient, but had formed an a cappella group. Also, being an engineer, he was a materialistic type and really just wanted his wishes.

“Oh Genie from this toe jam, black,
I just want to go right back,
to my dull and boring cube,
with its stash of ethnic food,
and its walls of greenish felt,
behind which, that goblin dwelt.”

He intoned, expectantly.

The genie had a look that suggested he was embarrassed for Loki but was also used to people making this kind of assumption about him.

“You should be so lucky mate.” he shrugged.

“Look, it’s not like I don’t want to help you out and it’s not that I can’t do wishes, it’s just that I’m a practicing Dadaist and as such am ethically bound to deconstruct cultural and social archetypes through the application of magic for surrealist purposes. Now, if you were to wish that your knee had the Bismarck growing out of it, I’d be glad to help you out.”

As if to prove a point, he transformed himself into a medium sized RS-232 printer cable.

Loki considered the offer for a moment, but although his knees were legendarily bandy, he doubted that the addition of a German battleship would count as an effective treatment.

“I think I’ll pass, but how many wishes do I get?”

“As many as you like, mate. There’s fuck all demand for surrealist magic. It’s a buyer’s market right now… Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to replace your head with an inverse cat spliced with a fish slipper?”

Loki wasn’t really in the mood for Genie guff, rigmarole or monkey-paw shenanigans. At least this genie was being upfront about the inherent danger of subjugating reality. Most other genies you read about would rather you snooker yourself into getting trapped in an ironic hell of your own devising. It was all a huge scam, of course. You’d wish for world peace, find yourself being ruled with an iron fist in a world where the Axis powers won the second world war and then the Genie would offer to reverse it provided you bought a timeshare, signed up to a pyramid scheme, or payday loan with an interest rate so high that the contract comes with a set of log tables printed on the back. Channel 4 News had been padding out slow days with articles about it for at least the last six months.

Loki was about to wish for the services of a world class contract lawyer when The Mints started up again.

“Let us sing the clean room blues,
hoping Loki will not loose,
his sanity again today,
‘cause then he’ll never get away.

Hear us sing with minty hole,
wrapped up in our shiny roll,
listen to our warning toll
donky donky donky doll.

The Kerder has not gone away,
to this please just let us say,
if you decide to sit down,
take us out or we will frown.

Hear us sing with minty hole,
wrapped up in our shiny roll,
listen to our warning toll
donky donky donky doll.”

The Genie looked lost in thought for a moment.

“You could wish for some less shambolic rhymes! Or maybe a packet of Murray Mints that quote Shakespeare!”

Loki knelt down and started banging his head, repeatedly against The Faulty Logic Fruit Tree.

Who, or what is the Kerder?
Will The Mints ever get a record contract?
What is the point of The Genie?
Will Loki ever realise that he can eat the fruit of the faulty logic tree?
Will we ever find out how things are going over in Buckminster Abbey?
These answers and more in the next thousand episodes.

Most bits © Loki 2000. Extra bits © BO’C 2000. Director’s Cut © Loki 2018.

Feel free to pass the saga on as long as it is not altered in any way. You are not allowed to sell the saga in any shape or form. You have been warned. I will release the High Price Lawyers.