A Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons Story

By Cwissy

During a short lull in Mysteron activities a month before Christmas, a group of Spectrum captains and Angels were relaxing at a large Spectrum Recreational Centre on the ground. Symphony Angel, Karen, had taken some art classes there in the past, when she had time, and she had invited her teacher, Lyssa, to join them by the poolside to meet some of her colleagues.

Lyssa, after introductions had been done, was quite distracted and kept looking at Captain Magenta, who was lying on a banana-lounge chair near the swimming pool. The other men and women noticed and nudged each other.

“Hey Lyssa, why do you keep eyeing Patrick off? He’s not that fascinating, is he?” bellowed out Captain Blue with a smirk.

“Sssh,” his girlfriend, Symphony, warned him. “You don’t want to embarrass her.”

It was too late, but Lyssa was not in the least bit embarrassed, Patrick blushed though.

Lyssa noted the reddened face. “I’m sorry, Patrick, but I was interested in your body and was trying to picture you naked,” she blurted out.

Everyone choked and sputtered with shock. Magenta quickly pulled a towel over himself and glowed even more. Captain Ochre had a brush with death caused by some liquid he had been in the act of swallowing.

“Careful where you spray that stuff,” uttered Captain Grey as he jumped out of the way of the expelled droplets. He thumped Ochre on the back as an afterthought.

“What are you lot carrying on about?” questioned Lyssa with a growing annoyance. “He has a very nice, neat looking body. Look how well proportioned it is and no flab at all... yes, very nice.”

All faces were staring at her goggle-eyed. Captain Magenta felt very uncomfortable; she had walked over to him and was poking his left arm.

“And see these biceps, not too much muscle and if we could wax off the chest and leg hair, well, he would be perfect.”

“For what?” Magenta gasped, edging his arm away from her. He noticed that she had that lean and hungry look.

“Modelling, of course. What else?”

“Oh... now I understand.” Karen rushed over to them and proceeded to have a tug-of-war with Captain Magenta for the possession his towel. “Let go, I want to have a better look.”

“No... it’s personal,” he told her, holding onto the towel with a tight grip.

“Don’t be stupid. You’ve been lying there topless and now you want to act shy.”

“I didn’t know anyone was watching me.”

“I wasn’t, that’s why I want to look now.”

Lyssa was shocked beyond belief. “Karen, do you mean to tell me that you’ve had the chance to observe all these men, day in and day out and have never noticed their bodies. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“I... I... I never thought of them in that... that way,” she stammered.

“Goodness, girl, look at them, really look. They all have passable bodies and this specimen here,” she indicated Captain Magenta with another arm jab, “What wouldn’t I do to get hold of him.”

The men snickered and laughed.

“Oh shut up,” wailed Captain Magenta, “I can’t help being perfect.”

Lyssa pounced on that statement with glee. “So, you’d be willing?”

“What modelling did you have in mind?” he gulped.

“Art students, you have heard that I run a class here and Karen’s been doing some drawings in her spare time and we often run short of fit young male models to use.”

“I’m not taking my clothes off in front of a roomful of women!”

“There are plenty of men in the class too.”

“So? I don’t care if there are and they have their pet dogs, cats, and goldfish with them, I’m not doing it,” he declared as his friends snickered again.

“Oh... come on. Are you telling me that no man has ever seen you naked or woman either for that matter?”

“I haven’t had any peer at me and draw little pictures.”

“Would it only be a little picture,” called out Captain Ochre.

“I can’t tell,” giggled Symphony. “He won’t let go of the towel.” She was still tugging on it.

“He could always put some Christmas tinsel and baubles in place to make it look like an even bigger picture.”

Much more laughter and coughing fits were heard as the others thought about that statement.

“Quit stirring you lot,” ordered Lyssa, “Or we’ll never get him to agree.”

“You make it sound as though I was even contemplating the idea!” exclaimed Captain Magenta with horror.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“That’s silly talk,” proclaimed Lyssa. “I don’t understand why you would reject such an offer to be immortalised for all times.”

Still more laughter met his ears as Magenta firmly shook his head in the negative.

“Do you have some strange anomaly with your body or something?” Symphony asked and then a horrifying thought struck her. “You don’t have a twin head or something like that do you?” she managed to gasp out.

“Good grief, no! Whatever put such a strange idea in your mind?” He was aghast at the suggestion.

“You getting all cagey and squirrelly as though you were ashamed of your body and that there was something dreadfully wrong with it.”

“Don’t you seriously think that if I ever had such a defect that I would have had such a dreadful thing like that removed as fast as I could?”

“Well maybe you became fond of it and even called it a name or something … you know, like Edgar.”

The others upon hearing this had such bad fits of hilarity that tears were forming on many of their faces.

“Don’t you think that perhaps you should think about giving little Edgar his very own colour-code name too?” gasped out Captain Ochre between cramped fits of laughter, almost rolling off his sunlounge, “Or... or you could decorate him for Christmas with his own little Santa hat.”

“Oh, shut up, you flipping idiot,” Captain Magenta crossly told Ochre. He was not impressed at all with this and he then had stern words for Symphony. “You should not be flying or drawing, you should be writing scripts for horror movies, where do you come up with such foul ideas?”

“You acting all weird like you are.”

“Weird! Who’s weird? It’s you that’s weird; you and your awful imagination. As if I would be lying here with a thing like that hanging off me, really!”

“Come on Karen, I would have noticed if he had something like that, or even a scar left over.” Lyssa sort of came to the harassed captain’s defence.

“Well, maybe it’s hidden inside his swimming trunks or something,” Symphony had not let go of her suspicions.

“Well I, for one, don’t want to know just what might be lurking in there,” choked out Melody Angel, she still had tears in her eyes too. “What a revolting idea.”

“Come on, someone with a body like yours should show it off to the world.” The art teacher stated to Magenta. “Take no notice of the jealousy of others, prove them wrong and be proud of your perfection.”

“Yes, Patrick, think of all the little old ladies who would appreciate the effort,” suggested Captain Ochre, now fully recovered from his previous laughing fit.

“Very funny. You pose for them then, there’s nothing wrong with your body.”

“Didn’t know you’d noticed,” he laughed.

“Ha ha ha!” Captain Magenta sneered.

“He is my second choice,” Lyssa informed Captain Magenta.

“Second best, eh?” It was his turn to smirk. That quickly changed when Symphony with a mighty jerk managed to win the tug-of-war contest. He hurriedly crossed his arms across his bare chest.

“Don’t be a spoilsport,” she admonished him. “Uncross your arms and let me look.”

“NO!”

“Karen, you shouldn’t have to do that,” Lyssa told her. “True artists can undress anyone with their eyes. I bet none of these men here would hold any surprises for me.”

The men squirmed and didn’t dare make any comments.

“But... but if I went around looking at people like that... well... they would think I was a pervert or something,” Symphony protested.

“With practise you won’t have to stare, just a quick glance is all that’s needed.”

“Then why were you ogling Patrick so much?”

“I wasn’t ogling. I was appreciating a real living work of art... there’s nothing wrong with that and he didn’t know, until your boyfriend opened his big mouth.” She gave Captain Blue a fierce glare.

“Sorry to deprive your eyesight of such beauty,” he laughed back at her.

“What’s so funny? He has a nicer body than yours.”

“How would you know, even with your x-ray vision?”

“Karen’s drawings, of course.”

“What?” He sat up straighter.

People were snickering at him now.

“Don’t panic. Your girlfriend has a real talent for male nudes, so she did a good job.”

“Karen what have you done?” Panic definitely rang out in his voice.

“Just exercises, dear, and I had to show them to my teacher.”

“I didn’t pose naked...”

“Almost.”

“Almost ain’t is!”

“I do know what you look like, so I just worked from memory and filled in the missing bits.”

“WHAAAA... Where are those pictures now?”

“Hanging up in the art room, of course.”

“WELL UNHANG THEM!” he screeched.

“Don’t be foolish, man,” Lyssa scolded him. “You should be proud of Karen’s abilities. She’s by far my best student and all the other teachers agree with me too. One of those pictures has won a prize...”

“IT’S IN A COMPETITION?”

The other captains broke down into yet more belly laughs and now had trouble breathing.

“Only a minor one, so far, for amateur artists. All my students have generously donated their best pictures to be in the competition and sold for a local pet rescue charity.”

“I won!” Symphony was overjoyed and started dancing around.

“Congratulations, that’s really great. You’ll be selling them next,” said Melody with a smile.

“It has been sold, a few months ago,” Lyssa proudly told everyone. “And I’m sorry, Karen, but I should have told you all about your wonderful efforts paying off much sooner, but I have been so busy lately and have only just now had time to relax a bit. I can tell all of you though; no student of mine has done so well, so quickly, and I’m really proud of her.”

Karen hugged her. “Oh... thank you, you are a wonderful teacher... Melody,” she turned to her, “You should take up drawing too.”

“Yes, do it,” Captain Blue jumped in, “Then I won’t be the only one suffering around here.”

Captain Grey leaned back in his chair and grinned. “You obviously haven’t seen that ineffectual effort she recently made at drawing a horse, it looked more like a fat depressed lop-eared moose, with a wrinkled nose and bandy legs.”

Melody was more than a bit annoyed at that comment about a drawing she had sketchily done to describe a type of saddle that was used in South America and so she felt a bit vengeful, “It wasn’t a horse, it was a portrait of you!” she snarled, glaring at him with narrowed eyes.

“So, she can draw, after all.” Captain Blue smirked, so glad that someone else was now being picked on.

“Ouch! That hurt, it’s not like you to be so unkind. Just for that, I might buy one of Karen’s drawings and hang it up in the Officers’ Lounge,” Grey warned him.

“You do and I’ll rip it off the wall,” Blue countered.

“Are you going to do that with the one that sold?”

“If I can. Hey, who bought that picture?” he asked Lyssa.

“That man who owns a local restaurant nearby, he’s going to hang it up there. They only buy the best for that place, so you should be really honoured.”

“Oh... Karen, what have you done?” laughed Melody.

“What do you mean?” Symphony was puzzled.

“I know of that man and his arty pictures; his favourite purchases all end up in calendars sold for charitable organisations. I must say that people in this part of the world are very generous and I have to add; good on you, Karen, for taking part in it.”

“OOPS!” Symphony covered her mouth to choke off a giggle, as she thought about the calendars that she had only just now realised existed at all.

“WHAT? You’ll have to stop that picture leaving the gallery and give him his money back,” Captain Blue sputtered in disbelief.

“Too late, the picture’s long gone. You’d have to go there and negotiate in person and make a big donation to his favourite charity or buy up all his calendars which have already been printed up; although, going from previous years, no doubt many have already been sold.” Lyssa informed him.

The others all roared with more laughter while quite a few of them vowed to hunt down those calendars for Christmas presents for everyone they could think of - all for good charitable reasons of course, as they justified it in their own minds.

Captain Blue groaned in real agony. “Oh... Karen, how could you do this to me? How would you feel if there were nude pictures of you plastered all over the place?”

“Don’t panic, you can’t really tell they are of you... not from your face anyway.” More choking snickering sounds filled the air. “Besides there is a nude picture of me hanging in a fine-art museum.”

“What? You never told me you posed at those classes.”

“I don’t.”

“Then... when did you pose?”

“When I was about two years old and I was hugging a big fluffy toy rabbit.”

“That hardly counts.”

“It did for my mother and she is so very proud of that painting. That’s why she loaned it to the museum so that others could enjoy it too.”

“I absolutely forbid you from loaning or donating any pictures of me.”

“I won’t have to, if they keep selling,” she giggled.

“You should never try to stifle talent,” Lyssa lectured him; “You should encourage her as much as possible, so that she can really blossom. Talk Patrick into posing, that would really help.”

“I’m not, I’m telling you,” Captain Magenta re-told her.

“Yes Patrick, you must. I don’t want you stifling Karen’s artistic abilities,” Captain Blue told him.

“If you’re shy, you could start with topless posing,” Lyssa suggested.

“NO.”

“Please Patrick,” pleaded Karen. “Decent models are really hard to come by. At the moment we have one that is shaped like an over-aged blimp with wrinkles and fat in all the wrong places and absolutely no one would want him on a calendar, even if he was wearing a Christmas hat.” Her description made all of them grimace at the thought of a Santa Claus wearing only a hat on his fat roly-poly body.

“Tough. I’m not doing it.”

“You’ll have to try to draw him some other day and send me the pictures,” sighed Lyssa.

“Could I do that, Patrick?”

“I suppose so,” he said gruffly, “As long as I’m not naked and the others let themselves be drawn as well.”

“Karen, the next time we come here you could invite your whole art class over for the day,” suggested Melody.

“Oh, good idea,” Karen was pleased. The men didn’t look so happy.

Lyssa started laughing for no apparent reason.

“What’s so funny?” Symphony enquired.

“I was remembering the last time I took a whole class outside of the art room to draw a male model. Have any of you heard of the Eden Plant Nursery, it is only a few miles from this place?”

They all shook their heads in the negative, as when they had time off they weren’t the least bit interested in going out and looking at pot plants.

“He sells lots of Christmas trees of all varieties this time of year, he used to anyway; I haven’t been there for years now, so I wouldn’t know anymore. Well, he ran around the place with so little on that he made Tarzan look over dressed, even with him wearing a reindeer antlers and holly leaves, and you can tell that at other times he usually wore nothing at all when no-one was around.”

“How could you tell?” asked Symphony.

“No bikini line, so to speak, and a hole in the wisp of a garment he often wore had the same tanned-coloured skin showing through as the rest of his body. Well, anyway I asked him if he’d pose for us and, unlike Patrick here, he was flattered. He agreed - on one condition, that we went to his place to draw him, you know, in a garden setting. He said he felt more at one with nature that way.”

“What was his body like?” asked Captain Ochre with a smirk.

“Not bad, a little on the stodgy side, but overall not bad. We all turned up in a minibus, set up the equipment and he wasn’t there. I felt annoyed and we had to waste valuable time searching for him. We found him in his honey-house and he insisted on all of us testing out some of his different varieties of honey he had in jars, as he’s really proud of his bees. We all tasted the different coloured shades of honey by dipping our fingers in the jars...”

“Ergh! I wouldn’t want any of his unhygienic stuff,” gasped Captain Grey with disgust. “Goodness knows where all those fingers had been.”

“We had to... I mean we couldn’t offend the man, could we? We licked our fingers clean before dipping them in the next jar, so...”

“GROSS! That’s even worse; you’d end up with human slobber in all the jars!” exclaimed Captain Magenta, equally disgusted at the thought.

“Oh... go on, there were only ten of us and we were all clean... cleanish and we didn’t dip in the same place as each other. The jar I bought I threw out, so don’t panic about me.”

“You actually bought some?”

“Yes, we all did, to stay on his good side. He didn’t charge us for posing, so it was the least we could do. I didn’t realise the consequences for us, though... Oh, we paid dearly for that honey tasting session.”

“Botulism?” queried Captain Grey.

“NO... It was when he finally got around to posing that it happened. He sat on a bee... a very angry bee at that.”

“Did it sting him?” asked Captain Ochre.

“You bet it did. Did he ever yelp and run about.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“He ran up to poor little Trisha, the shyest girl in the class, bent over in front of her and asked her to remove the sting - she nearly fainted. The other girls were all giggling like teenagers, so he came running towards me, the silly man. I don’t know how I would have handled him, because at that moment some bees swarmed down on us, because of the honey smell that lingered. Some of the girls started really shrieking and pawing at their hair and the commotion stirred up a couple of that man’s little yapping dogs. They ran around snapping at our ankles... oh, I tell you, it was a real disaster.” Lyssa seemed exhausted just from telling the story.

“So... no pictures then,” stated Captain Ochre trying his best to look nonchalant.

“Hardly, and that stupid man blamed me... huh... the nerve of him! It was his filthy honey that caused it all.” She looked fierce now. “I’m glad he was stung on the bum.”

Everyone chuckled at her outrage.

“We all had to grab our stuff and run for it. He yelled and screamed abuses something horrible - such language. He was angry all right. Even in the bus there were bees everywhere and that madman threw potted plants at it and accused us of trying to steal his wretched bees... talk about a mindless troglodyte. What a performance and he even threatened to strangle me. ME! I never upset people...”

Captains Magenta and Blue both made choking spluttering noises; the strangling idea had entered their minds once or twice that day.

“What was his name again?” asked a grinning Captain Ochre, “So we’ll know never to go anywhere near there.”

“The Eden Plant Nursery and his name is Tristan Holding.”

“Appropriate name for a bee-stung nudist.”

“Well at least that sort of thing won’t happen to you back here in the studio.”

“What? What are you talking about?” The grin abruptly left his face and broadened on the others.

“I told you; you were my second choice.”

The arguments for and against started raging again.

Cwissy / 1999 - 2024

 

This is another story I started writing last century and didn’t really finish until this one. Needless to say I had a lot of fun with this and kept thinking of ways to embarrass the two captains.

I know that if I were to try to draw pictures of these people, no one would be able to recognise anyone from their faces that’s for sure, let alone what species of animal, vegetable, or mineral they were supposed to be!

“Almost ain’t is!” is a quote from a book Dan has often mentioned that he read when he was young.

And now some comments from my long-suffering husband, who no doubt is very grateful I don’t try to draw pictures of him – ha ha ha.

________________________________________

Yes, you are absolutely correct there; in fact, even though I enjoyed your tale immensely, I couldn’t help throughout the first segment of the story feeling a great amount of sympathy for the captains, especially Magenta.

There were a number of very good lines in this yarn and it would be impossible to ascribe one as the best, but the exchange between Captain Grey and Melody, where he derided, what he termed her inept attempt to sketch a horse, receiving this rejoinder which would have to be among the top ten in the story: “It wasn’t a horse; it was a portrait of you!”

Shortly after the above exchange came Captain Blue’s turn in the hot seat where he discovers that a nude picture of him has been sold and now hangs in a nearby restaurant whose owner intends to put copies onto Calenders he sells. As his groans begin to border on sobs, he asks Karen how she could do such a thing, which leads to this barbed response: “Don’t panic, you can’t really tell they are of you... not from your face anyway.” – then, for Karen, comes the icing on the cake when she says that there is a nude of her which hangs in an art museum. After a well-timed pause she slips in the hook—“I was about two years old and I was hugging a big fluffy toy rabbit.”.

Now Lyssa steps in with the hilarious account of the day she took her art class to the Eden Plant Nursery run by its scantly dressed proprietor; a complete story in itself which defies paraphrasing and must be read in its entirety to be fully enjoyed.

By the way, that quote “Almost ain’t is” is from a book suggested to me and the other dozen or so members of our class by our humorist Latin teacher. I don’t know if many or, for that matter, if any of the other students took-up his suggestion but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and, over the intervening years, enjoyed rereading it and the many other books by that author, H. Allen Smith. A few sample titles would be: Life in a Putty-Knife Factory, Low Man on the Totem-pole, and Let the Crabgrass Grow. (I remember reading: ‘The Age of the Tail” about what would happen if human beings were suddenly born with tails. It was funny, but it does not date well at all.” CW).

A most enjoyable read.  Dan.