The End of the Beginning

by Rob Marshall

On the day Britain drowned, the last surviving Monarch was holed up in a Los Angeles motel, snorting cocaine through the barrel of a $20 bill – BANG! BANG! – he thought of his family, guillotined, but he mainly thought of the girl he once saw on the Underground. Across oceans, the girl he had seen on the Jubilee Line all those years ago was clinging to a support tower of the Millennium Dome by her manicured fingernails; as a Double Decker Bus floated past, the girl accepted her fate, but how could she let go when she’d never let go of anything in her life? The last surviving Monarch didn’t see the assassin lurking on the grassy knoll outside his motel room – BANG! BANG! – the first shot crashed through the TV screen, but alas, the second slashed his jugular vein and he slumped to the floor; from under the floorboards he could hear growling and rumbling (he assumed it was the sound of death), as if soaring from the very centre of the earth. In icy waters, the girl drifted in and out of consciousness, she remembered all the men she had ever loved (not one good man between them) and she let go. “They think we’re extinct,” the leader snarled, his giant head lifted slowly and acknowledged the thousands of pairs of eyes; the cavern was filled with the rancid stench of Jurassic bodies. “Let’s go,” bellowed the leader; whilst above, Los Angeles shopped.

6S

Rob Marshall is the 18th pale descendant of King Kong and sometimes dreams of mermaids.