Jim Hopkins: Tale of tunnels, ruses and those earrings

Twas a dark and stormy night, as the famous bad novel would have it.

Angry shafts of lightning slashed across the jet-black sky, briefly illuminating the giant, Tauranga-sized hailstones pounding savagely on the grimy windows of the twisted, rheumatic castle, rising from the Clifton like a giant, bony finger silhouetted against the jet black sky.

Great rolls of thunder shredded the very fabric of the air, tearing it apart as if some monstrous giant had blown his nose on a huge hanky.

In the mayhem of this maelstrom, small, furry animals cowered in the bushes, fearful the electrifying cauldron would reveal their whereabouts to the intrepid Gareth Morgan, who was prowling the grounds in search of a great project to invest in.

"Please don't make it me," said the wombat to the mongoose.

"I don't want a locater beacon up my bottom and a bunch of DoC guys with bad beards following me everywhere."

But Gareth, rainswept and sodden, had found something else to fickle his tancy. "I'm going to do Global Warming," he shivered.

Golly good idea, Gareth, ripper wheeze. Because things were certainly heating up in the castle. From its tallest turret came a maniacal howl of deranged satisfaction.

"Ah ha ha ha ha," shrieked Dr Jackal to Mr Hyde, "we've done it."

"Ah ha ha ha ha," shrieked Mr Hyde to Dr Jackal, "you're right!!"

They surveyed the bloodstained steel table in the middle of the lab where lay upon which a ghastly figure, the rusty bolts in its neck glowing radioactive green, a great, cliff-like forehead stitched above the glowering features of its visage.

"Ah ha ha ha ha," chortled Mr Hyde. "He is our masterpiece!"

"Ah ha ha ha ha," rechortled Dr Jackal. "Yes!!! He will rule our new empire. And now we have created Banksenstein ..." the monstrous creature twitched as it heard its name ... "our Shuper Chity is safe."

"Especially since I've given it my 'h'," said Mr Yde.

"Ah ha ha ha ha," Dr Jackal chortled chortlingly, "there'll be no feuding, no friction, no factions, no fighting ..."

"And without Maori seats, no melanin mandate either," added Mr Yde.

Somewhere in the dark, dank dungeons in the bowels of the castle, shackled to his past, the Hunchback of Harewera howled an anguished howl.

But Dr Jackal and Mr Yde had been distracted by a haggard figure bursting into the lab. It was Stephen (Igor) Joyce, Minister of Tunnels and love child of the great Irish author, James.

"It's oil very well for you in your sitting pretty soup and city hubblebubblewonder-world," said Stephen, sounding for all the world as if he'd just stepped from the pages of Ulysses. "But I've got a $3 billion problem."

"The tunnel," said Dr Jackal, who knew about such things because he'd had one as a pet when he was a boy.

"By all the powers of bubblin' Dublin and Molly on the seashore with whelks dancing on her kneecaps like the sun in Killarney, you're right!" gasped (Igor). "It's got to go. We can't afford it."

"Don't worry," sniffed Dr Jackal. "It was always too expensive. No one was ever going to build it."

"But I can't say that during a byelection," groaned (Igor).

"You can if you've got a distraction," chuckled Mr Yde.

CHAPTER TWO

In a gilded palace on the other side of town, two perfumed Nubian dwarves struggled up a stepladder, hauling a huge earring behind them.

"Put it on the left ear," commanded a motivating female voice. The dwarves did as they were bid. Suddenly, there came a timid knock upon the bejewelled door and in came Stephen (Igor) Joyce.

"Greeting, Queen Christine," he gasped. "I bring a message from Sir John. He wants you to be a distraction ... errr, Family Commissioner."

"Why not!" exclaimed the Queen, one giant earring knocking a dwarf to the floor as she nodded.

Meanwhile, back at the castle, care-worn scullery maid Sue Bradford threw down the wire brush with which she'd been scrubbing Genetically Modified Organisms off the organic vegetables. "It's an outrage," she told a gaggle of journalists who'd magically appeared by her side.

"I agree," yelled Peter Dunne, struggling to stay upright under the weight of his own hair. "We don't need a Winz Winz situation!"

But the more they objected, the more the people cheered and said, "Bravo, Christine" for Gareth Morgan was right. The climate is changing, although not the one he meant.

CHAPTER THREE

Clink! Clatter! Crack! Three goblets, full of human blood, touched in a triumphant toast.

"Well done, (Igor)," chortled Mr Yde. "The perfect distraction! No-one even noticed you scrapping the unaffordable tunnel. They were all getting their knockers in a knick about Queen Christine."

"Not so fast!!!!!!!" an anguished voice screamed from the doorway as a scantily-clad Korean damsel rushed in, two tiny scratches on her wrist shocking proof that she'd just been mercilessly and ruthlessly savaged by Dr Russell Norman. "I need that tunnel," sobbed the maiden. "To hide in!!! Every crim in greater Hauckland is out to get me."

"Oh dear," gasped (Igor). "I don't suppose a small underpass and some sensitive landscaping would suffice?"

Melissa's lip trembled sadly.

(To be continued ... )