Patient Blue

Firebrand Muslim Clerics are not normally known for their sense of irony, but the demise of one such cleric would certainly fall into that category.

Gathered, together with his supporters in a small hockey stadium in the shadows of the mighty Himalayan Mountains in the bad lands of northeastern Pakistan, was Jihad Mohammed Hussein. He was a fat man completely bald, overcompensating for this with a thick grey lustrous beard.

His life hadn’t really gone to plan, his unwanted arranged marriage to Fatimah, an apt name with the emphasis on the fat, was disastrous. She was a dumpy plain woman with chronic halitosis and zero sex drive, thank Allah. She had a face and body truly suited to the wearing of the burka and the only parts of her that could be seen underneath this voluminous black cloak, her eyes, had a squint. They were childless, having only attempted sex once and what a farce that had turned out to be. Jihad was also addicted to hardcore internet porn and was particularly partial to watching blonds being fucked by men with huge cocks, his own being laughably small and underdeveloped.

This porn was slowly driving him mad with lust, envy, guilt and shame. But worse than the guilt and shame, was the fact that the internet was down. ‘Fucking Wang Pulse, a Kaffar plot,’ was an oath he commonly used now that he couldn’t access his favourite site, Blond Beavers. This coincidentally, was the very same site that Osama Bin Laden had been looking at just before the US Navy Seals burst in and shot him. It was still being debated as to whether or not Osama, had died the death of a Martyr, but one thing was sure he had certainly died with a huge hard on.

Jihad was an angry and frustrated man. He was preaching or more accurately haranguing his supporters and was reaching a fever pitch of fervour and certainty. He had really warmed to his latest theme; "The lascivious lust and corruption of the west and the Infidels obsession with sins of the flesh." ‘Lust will destroy them, lust will lay them low, lust will fog their minds and bring the Crusaders to oblivion. For without morals, they and their painted whores who drink alcohol and fornicate with many men, shall be cast into the pit of Hell. There Allah will chastise them for eternity whilst the true believers of the Prophet, may peace be upon him, live in the land of milk and honey and partake in all the pleasures of the garden of delight and the virgins that are waiting for them. Lust will destroy them lust’—

At this stage the ground beneath Jihad, his followers and the hockey stadium where they gathered, disappeared into a huge chasm that had suddenly opened beneath them. The last words heard from Jihad Mohammed Hussein as he disappeared down this chasm were, ‘Ah crap, that’s just not fair’ and then he was gone.

The mighty range of the Himalayas, from Everest to K2, engorged by red hot magma, rose by more than eight hundred feet in seconds. Shock waves emanated outwards from the epicentre causing gigantic earthquakes beyond any measure on the Richter scale. These quakes were followed by vast and devastating tsunamis that tore through the seas and oceans deluging large swathes of South and East Asia reaching the Middle East Africa and then Australia within hours. The death toll from this catastrophe was in the many hundreds of millions. Meanwhile, in Bognor Regis the sea turned a bit choppy.

It was a sweltering hot winter day without power, TV or radio so the news of the disaster was slow to reach Michael and the people of West Sussex and even when it did, what could anyone do other than mourn, or laugh depending upon your point of view, and try to soldier on in the face of an increasingly violent, menacing and unnatural environment.