Lockdown Season, Episode 3

Totally Made Up Tales

Another set of tales improvised during lockdown.

Music: Creepy — Bensound.com.

Here are some Totally Made Up Tales, brought to you by the magic of the internet.

Put your faith away. It will hold you later.

Try rubbing me. I'll pop out of my clogs.

Hardly anyone from Germany likes thinking hard about warfare.

It was a bright Tuesday morning and Linda was making herself some eggs for breakfast. She broke the eggs into a ramekin before pouring them into the bowl which, she'd read, is something that you should do. Having poured them into the bowl, she whisked them because she was making eggs of the scrambled variety.

As she whisked them, the eggs became frothier and frothier and frothier and threatened to over spill the edge of her whisking bowl. Not knowing quite what to do, she, nonetheless, didn't stop whisking and gradually a tendril of frothy egg spilled over the side of the bowl. This she felt was a disaster. Linda was a very tidy person and any threat of a spillage she was going to treat with the utmost seriousness. She brandished her whisk at the spillage on the floor and she whisked it.

Unfortunately by so doing, she made it even more frothy and it started to spread across the kitchen floor. As it spread, it starts to gain consciousness.

It eventually towered over her a frothy monster with an opening where its mouth would be. It breathed heavily on her, ruffling her hair back around her face. An eggy smell enveloped her kitchen, and she backed away, trapped between the fridge and the washing machine.

"It's time for breakfast," said the monster, as it gobbled her up.

The end.

Lights cast shadows. Shadows hide evil. Don't use lights.

Use your noggin wisely. It will let you down.

Screw you, Mr Blair! I want to eat you up!

One morning, Erica woke up to discover that her boyfriend Jonathan was missing. Normally this would not cause her concern, but Jonathan had been suffering from a very severe case of measles and certainly wouldn't have been well enough to go out for his own thing.

She went downstairs to the living room where he'd been sleeping on the sofa in order to be able to toss and turn in his feverish state. But he was nowhere to be found. She called for him, but there was no answer. She searched every room without finding him.

Being a sensible girl, she decided straight away to report the matter to the police, not to bother them, but just so that it was on record at the earliest opportunity. She picked up the landline phone in order to dial them, but mysteriously, there was no dialing tone. She went back into the bedroom and picked up her mobile phone, but despite being plugged in overnight, it had no battery.

She decided that the best thing to do would be to walk to the police station and report it that way, but when she opened the front door, something shocking greeted her. The whole house had been enclosed in a clear plastic dome, which appeared to be hermetically sealed from the outside world.

Some two meters in front of her front door, the dome curved down into the ground and she could see that there was a sign plastered on it on the other side.

It said, "Beware: Plague."

Is that the end? I mean, that could be the end.

It could be the end.

That can be the end. Why can it not just be the end?

It could be, "Next to the sign on the other side of the dome, Jonathan was waving at her."

The end.

One day, a scientist called Peter found the solution to everything. It was to dissolve it all in alcohol. He started with himself.

The end.

Michael had always loved riding his bicycle. He would get up early in the morning so that he could get a bike ride in before his day started properly. And once he day started properly, he would do as much as possible of it on his bike.

One year, he decided that he was going to push himself further and enter a really difficult race. He researched all of the possible bike races around the world and picked one which went over 300 miles through desert and mountains. But the most challenging part of this 300 mile race was the very end where you had to cross the channel to make it back to London.

He spent many, many months in training and built himself a series of little courses in his back garden that he could do to practice for these particular terrains. He wasn't able to build himself an equivalent to the channel, and so had to go further afield to practice the cycle-powered aquaplaning he was going to need in order to get home at the end of the race.

He decided that the Pacific Ocean was the best place to practice for the channel being as it was slightly harder, and therefore would see him in good stead for the relatively narrow distance of the channel itself.

Standing on the shores of Tokyo Harbor, he saddled himself up to his bike and pointed the front wheel towards the water. "Tally ho," he said, everyone around him looking slightly perplexed at his outdated and outmoded way of expressing himself.

He was last seen on the 31st of March 1978. If you have any information about his whereabouts, we would be interested in hearing from you.

The end.

Michelle had a problem with her neighbour. Her neighbour was incredibly noisy. Not just ordinary noise: this was the sound of someone who was learning to play the drums.

The end.

It was Michael's 13th birthday and he had decided to celebrate his entry into adulthood by telling the girl he loved that he loves her. He took out a piece of paper and his set of drawing pencils and made her a beautiful picture.

At the top, he carefully lettered the words, "Michelle, I love you." And he decorated the writing in his very best calligraphic style. Underneath, he drew a triceratops with a speech bubble coming out of it. The triceratops was saying, "No, really, I do." And just to be absolutely certain in a footnote at the bottom of the cards he added, "This is definitely not a joke. I absolutely do love you and this is why I have said it three times on the card."

Having finished his drawing, he stepped back, held it up, and was pleased with his work. He popped it into an envelope, wrote her name on the front, and dropped it into her locker the very next day.

He waited for the whole day for Michelle to say something to him, or maybe reciprocate with a note. Morning break passed and they walked past each other in the corridor, but there was not a flicker of recognition in her face. At lunchtime, he looked across the cafeteria at her, but she did not look back. Finally, when it came to afternoon break, he could bear the tension no longer. He sought her out.

"H-h-hi, Michelle," he stammered shyly. But she looked right through him and kept on walking. She didn't even acknowledge his presence.

He chased after her. "Michelle, I wondered if you got the card that I left in your locker this morning." But again, she paid no attention to him. It was as if he hadn't said a single word.

Michelle is now 36 and still occasionally hears whispers in the wind, as if someone is desperately trying to tell her something, but she can never quite make them out. And there never seems to be anyone there when she looks.

The end.

I almost cried. That's such a moving ending.

Trials and tribulations make you strong, but annoy you.

Buddism won't save you from the cost of living.

Rain fell on the high peak. Charlotte huddled close to Roger and wondered when the storm would pass. A little further along the low wall that they were using for shelter, were Fred and Barbara, the couple who had accompanied them to the peak. This was supposed to be a jolly outing on a summer's day, but all of a sudden the weather had changed dramatically for the worse.

Charlotte glanced up at the clouds and silently resigned herself to the idea that this was not going to stop, and maybe they were just going to have to brave the rain and get back down to their cars. And then, on a gust of wind, she heard just a couple of words. She thought it was Fred's voice and they were, "Eat them."

She turned to look at the source of the noise, but Fred was sitting all the way over on her left and the noise and seemed to come from the right. She puzzled on this for a while and then caught another snatch of words, which again, sounded like him, but came from the wrong direction.

This time it came from above, though there was nothing above them except for the cloud, but it was distincter this time. The first time she had thought it might've been, "meet them," or, "greet them," but this time it was definitely, "Eat them." And as she heard these words, she noticed that she was hungry, hungrier perhaps than she'd ever been in her whole life.

She turned her eyes on the other couple, but they didn't really seem that appetizing. And then, as she felt her stomach growl, she realized the warmth on her arm. The person next to her was, strangely, making her mouth water. The smell of him filled her nostrils, salty and damp, meaty, almost.

She had always liked that he was slightly plump, and now she had a reason. That fat dripping off him made her mouth salivate more than it ever done in her life. She removed the bucket and spades that she'd, perhaps foolishly, packed for their day out, and with one swift blow knocks him out.

Fred and Barbara jumped up and screamed, aghast seeing the death blow that Charlotte had dealt to her boyfriend. As they moved towards her, she quickly hit them over the head as well, although she was less certain about eating them.

The storm lasted several days, but Charlotte had a blissful holiday. She worked her way through Roger's meatier regions. She disposed of the less appetizing parts of him. And she drew pictures of the scene, as it unfolded in the valley below.

When the mountain rescue search party found her two days later, they concluded that the other three climbers, being inexperienced, had simply slipped on the wet path and fallen to their death. The only things that Charlotte had with her when she was discovered were a bucket and spade and a number of sheets of what appeared to be goat parchment on which she had sketched the landscape beneath them.

The end.

Well that's another waste of seven whole hours, Derek.

Proverbs very specifically aimed at people. It's one of those Derek proverbs.

There's a whole book of them.

Wait until death to tell me lies, Mr Blobby.

I really thought that was going to be “wait until death to tell me you love me”.

Rona and Kristen woke up one morning, wondering what the strange sound was. It was a distant, high-pitched squeal and it seemed to be coming from inside the house. They thought, at first, that it might be some piece of electronic equipment that had got into a weird cycle and needed to be switched off and on again. But after they'd wandered around the house, trying to find the source of the noise, they realized that whichever room they were in, it always seemed to be coming from all directions, as if it was in the walls.

Now, Rona, who was by nature a little bit impatient, started to suspect that Kristen was playing some kind of joke on her. She even accused Kristen of making the noise herself.

Kristen said, "All right, well, if that's what you think I'll go outside and then you can see if it continues." So Kristen walked out the front door and went to the end of the garden and stood just by the pavement at the side of the road. Rona stayed inside the house, closed the door, and could still hear the sound. In fact, if anything, the sound was louder, more penetrating, more aggravating.

Rona placed her hand on the walls where it seemed that the sound might be coming from and closed her eyes. The sound changed. No longer just a high-pitched squealing, there were lower frequencies resonating all the way down. She could almost feel the house vibrating with multiple harmonics, rich and dark. And they were no longer aggravating noises, but the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. Music, but that doesn't do it justice. Music like she never heard, music that she could feel she could live in.

The sounds seemed to interweave in a dance that captured the very heartbeat of the universe. And through it, she started to feel that there was a message, that she was not just part of the heartbeat of the universe, she was not just starting to come in sync with the whole of creation, that the creation was speaking to her.

After a few minutes, Kristen reentered the house. Rona didn't even turn. She was oblivious, swept up in the majesty of her experience. Kristen tried to get her attention, tapped her on the shoulder, shook her a little bit. But with every passing minute, Rona looked more and more vacant, more and more disconnected with Kristen, with the house, with the present time and place.

Finally, Kristen could stand it no longer. She shouted right into Rona's ear and the spell was broken. Rona turned. She looked at Kristen and had a vague memory, now slipping away like a dream on waking of having seen wonderful sights, but as each second passed, she became lesser than what they had been.

As Kristen held her, Rona began to cry. What she had experienced, she would never have again and Rona would never quite feel that Kristen ever understood her properly. Meanwhile, somehow far away and close at the same time, the heart of the universe continued to pulse.

You have been listening to Totally Made Up Tales, which were indeed totally made up by James Aylett, James Lark, and Andrew Ormerod. All of these stories were recorded without advanced planning, and then lightly edited for the discerning listener. Join us next time for some more Totally Made Up Tales.

When you die, put your ashes in to me.

Did I start that? No?

No. That was perfect. Very creepy.

I think it's meant symbolically.