A Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons Story
By Cwissy
Captain Scarlet walked quickly into the Officers Lounge looking completely dishevelled.
“What is wrong with you?” asked Captain Ochre with a slight grin at seeing Scarlet looking so unlike himself.
“I had the most horrible dream when I was recuperating from my injuries and it seemed so damned real too, ugh!” He shook himself.
“What did the Mysterons do to you?” asked Captain Magenta, wondering why a mere dream should leave the man so shaken when reality was so much worse.
“They weren’t in the dream at all; it was some wretched little leprechaun driving me nuts.”
“A leprechaun!” everyone there chorused at once in disbelief.
“Yes, a leprechaun. I don’t believe it either or even the reason why I should have been dreaming about such a creature even if it is St. Patrick’s Day ... er, I don’t have green spots on my face, do I?”
“No, I think we might have noticed that right away somehow,” Captain Grey told him with a smile and a slight head shake.
“You do realise you are going to have to tell us all about this strange dream of yours now,” Captain Ochre told him, looking forward to hearing all about it.
“I don’t even want to think about it again, let alone relive it,” Scarlet protested.
“Too bad but you are the one that mentioned it in the first place and talking about it should help remove the bad vibes from your system, so get on with it.”
“Yes, he’s right and we could all do with some entertaining anyway,” Grey told the hapless captain.
“You might not find it very entertaining at all.”
“Let us be the judge of that, speak man speak,” a smiling Magenta urged.
Captain Scarlet sighed. “Very well, but don’t complain if in turn it causes you lot to have bad dreams as well.”
The grinning captains made themselves comfortable and waited for Scarlet’s narrative, because as far as they were concerned the whole thing had been quite entertaining from the moment he strode into the room.
“It basically started off when I swatted a leprechaun with a green fly swat...”
“What? Why?” Captain Magenta interrupted with an incredulous stare.
“Are you going to let me speak or am I going to be interrupted all the time?”
“Sorry.”
“Good, now as I said, I swatted this little pest because it kept annoying me and kept accusing me of trying to steal its gold for some reason. It was dancing around on the table in front of me, with heavy noisy shoes, squawking away about how badly treated he was so I walloped him with a handy fly swat and that seemed to upset the little fellow badly, but he was the one being the pest.
“This is how the conversation went after that in my dream:
“‘You won’t get my gold, you won’t,’ the leprechaun declared.
“‘I don’t want your wretched gold, why would I?’
“‘You tried to kill me for it.’
“‘I did no such thing; I was trying to shut you up with a friendly little swat, that’s all.’
“‘There is nothing friendly about being hit with a green fly swat!” the leprechaun screeched. “You will pay!’ and with a magic word that sounded more like an oath, the little man disappeared.
“‘Good riddance,’ I declared, looking over to some colleagues who in the dream had entered the room when they had heard a lot of shouting.
“‘Good Lord! What have you done to your face?’ questioned Captain Blue with wide eyes.
“‘What do you mean?’ I asked feeling a bit befuddled.
“‘Your face is covered in green spots...’
“‘Wha...What?’ I stammered and then noticed that my hands were spotty too. ‘That foul little creature, just wait until I get my hands on him...’
“‘What foul little creature might that be?’ asked a confused Captain Magenta, who had entered the room with Captain Blue.
“‘A leprechaun.’
“‘Really, so how did you upset him?’
“‘I swatted the whining little menace didn’t I when he kept accusing me of trying to steal his gold!’
“‘What did you do that for; they are generally harmless little things, a bit playful and pranksterish, but basically harmless?’
“‘Harmless, do you call this harmless?’ I sputtered, holding up my spotty hands and pointing to my face. ‘How do I get rid of these?’
“‘Oh, apologise to him and return his gold of course,’ Captain Magenta had the look of someone who thought that he was stating the obvious.
“‘I don’t have his wretched gold, how many times do I have to say it? He was accusing me of trying to steal it and I wasn’t, so there.’
“‘There must be some basis for his belief...’
“‘There is no basis for it and I don’t have any blasted gold on me whatsoever!’ I shouted in frustration as I was starting to find my colleagues just as irritating as the leprechaun.
“‘What is that?’ asked Captain Blue, running his hands through a bag of shining gold-coloured coins.
“‘They are not gold, they are chocolate coins ... can’t you tell the difference!’ I was certain that everyone had gone mad.
“‘They look real enough to me,’ Blue told me whilst biting one of the coins really hard and leaving tooth marks in it. “See, gold is soft...”
“‘So is foil-covered chocolate! You are not that dense are you?’
“‘I’m not dense at all, you are the one keeping the little man’s gold and pretending it is chocolate.’
“‘You have brought this on yourself by being so unkind to him,’ Magenta stated with a morally censorious tone.
“‘They are chocolate; just ask Colonel White, he gave them to me apparently to cheer me up for some reason.’
“‘You certainly need cheering up, that’s for sure,’ Captain Blue huffily told me. ‘Fancy trying to hurt harmless little creatures and stealing things off them, I wouldn’t have thought you capable of such behaviour.’
“‘I don’t hurt harmless creatures and there was only one creature and he was certainly not harmless.’
“Captain Magenta tutted, ‘I wouldn’t have thought it of you either.’
“‘Look, come with me to see Colonel White and he will explain that the gold coins are made of chocolate.’
“I got up and tried to walk to the Control Room to see the colonel, but it seemed to take ages and I seemed to be walking in circles and couldn’t understand it. Captains Blue and Magenta disappeared on the way and I met Destiny Angel who asked me why my vest was on inside out and it was! I tried to take it off but the zipper seemed to stick because is was the wrong way around, so I took it off over my head and nearly suffocated when it became stuck. I really had to fight and struggle to get it off too and when I went to put it back on I managed to get my head through one of the arm holes – don’t ask me how but I suppose that is the way of dreams at times, anyway I did mange to get it back on properly in the end. It was while I was fumbling around with my vest and getting all tangled up somehow that Destiny vanished and was replaced with Symphony Angel and Captain Ochre, who seemed to be enjoying some joke amongst themselves. Suddenly Captain Ochre threw oatmeal in my face and I asked him what the hell he was doing attacking me like that.
“‘I’m making your green freckles fade and go away, of course,’ he told me in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. ‘You should be showing me gratitude and not anger.’
“Symphony jumped in then and said, ‘I think he is supposed to eat it to make freckles go away, not that it works. I mean I ate bowls and bowls of the stuff when I was a little girl. I hated it and it didn’t work at all. I later found out it was meant to give you freckles and I’d gotten it all wrong.’
“‘Great’, I grumbled and imagined that the spots might get even bigger and brighter.
“‘Maybe if we rub milk on them, that will work,’ declared Captain Grey, who had sprung out of nowhere and splashed a jugful of milk in my face.
“‘They all looked pityingly at me when I complained and told me that although it hadn’t worked I should still take heart in the fact that they had tried. They then suggested that I should see Colonel White about my problem. I told them I was trying to but was having trouble and the next thing I was actually in the Control Room and Colonel White was looking at me from his desk and frowning. Lieutenant Green wasn’t there for some reason and that Leprechaun was sitting on his chair and humming some tune to himself.
“‘Why have you come barging in here,’ unreasonably asked Colonel White, staring at me as if I was in the wrong.
“‘Where is Lieutenant Green?’ I asked, pointing at the wretched leprechaun, who was smiling deviously at me in turn.
“‘He is taking a much-needed break and Mr Leppy very kindly volunteered to fill in for him, wasn’t that really good of him?’
“‘Mr Leppy! He is not good at all, he is evil. Look at what he has done to my face,’ I pointed out my grievance.
“‘He told me all about it and it seems that it was all your own fault, fancy attacking someone smaller than yourself like you did ... you should be ashamed of yourself, that’s all I can say.’
“I am embarrassed to say it but I had a really great fit of anger and called them both names that I won’t repeat here and then I awaited sentencing by Colonel White for my outburst, but he just cocked his head and smiled at me as if I were a child who had just dropped his ice-cream and was squawking out for another one.
“He then said to me: ‘Here, calm down and eat this chocolate mouse. Chocolate is really good for people having bad fits of temper.’
“He handed me a chocolate mouse and ordered me, very forcefully, to eat it, which I unwrapped and bit into and the damned thing squeaked so I dropped it on the floor with a shout of horror, thinking it was real and pulled green hairs out of my teeth.
“‘That is a toy mouse,’ the Colonel roared with laughter at me.
“And there they were, the Colonel and next to him was the leprechaun who was now standing on the colonel’s desk, resting his hand on the colonel’s shoulder and both of them were laughing at me and that’s when I woke up in a cold sweat...”
Captain Scarlet’s narrative was abruptly interrupted.
“Colonel White and a leprechaun were next to each other teasing you and both of them were laughing at your reaction – that wasn’t a dream it was a nightmare!” declared Captain Grey
“It certainly was and it was very disturbing and I’m being interrupted again.”
“Sorry but I found the story disturbing too, and by the looks on faces, so did everyone else.”
“I understand, believe me I do,” continued Scarlet, “and now back to the story. I thought I was actually awake and hearing laughter from somewhere else but when I opened my eyes the leprechaun plus Melody, Rhapsody and Harmony Angels were all there in the recovery room and the leprechaun was standing on my bed bowing away to the Angels and telling them that they were the sweetest, daintiest and most beautiful flowers he had ever seen. This set the three of them off giggling like a trio of teenagers and they actually bowed back to the little beast – I couldn’t believe it.
“I told them to ignore him and that he was evil and they just giggled again. Melody held up a mirror to me and I saw that one of them had drawn a green moustache on me while I was sleeping and I was told to guess who had done it. Since I could see green dye on Harmony’s hand it wasn’t too hard to guess and I told them. It was when I demanded to know who had drawn smiley faces on some of the larger green spots on my face that they all turned on me and told me they should have drawn grumpy faces instead and they even criticised the pyjamas I was wearing and telling me they weren’t colour co-ordinated, as if I had a choice in the matter. It was horrible, so in a panic I started calling out to Athena, of all people, at the top of my voice and that seemed to make the Angels laugh so much that they were doubled over and tears were running down their faces.
“Athena came running into the room in wolf-form and asked what all the fuss was about and...”
He was interrupted again.
“She spoke to you in wolf-form?” was the question Captain Ochre just couldn’t help himself asking.
“Yes.”
“What did she sound like?”
“She sounded like Athena but with a raspy growly voice and I am being interrupted again.”
“Sorry, but I just had to know.”
The others nodded in support.
“Very well,” conceded Scarlet. “Anyway the leprechaun took one look at her, abruptly stopped laughing and screeched: ‘A werewolf, help, a werewolf!’
“Athena wasn’t impressed and looked really annoyed at the little man. ‘I am a wolfwoman, not some evil thing of legend and you have insulted me,’ she told him in her angry wolf-voice.
“The leprechaun screamed and tried to get away but the wolf was too fast and, with a loud growl and snap, Athena grabbed him and ate him up right in front of me and on my bed, even his clothes, except for his little green top-hat which ended up sitting on top of her head. She then declared that the leprechaun was very sweet and tasty, with enough crunch to make the meal most interesting. She then jumped off the bed and shook herself with the hat still in situ.
“I was horrified to say the least because I still was covered in spots and I asked Athena how I was ever to get rid of them and she told me that it was too late and that I’d have to live with it. It was then that I woke up properly in sickbay with a great jerking gasp. I dressed really quickly and vacated the place as fast as I could.”
“Oh, a dream within a dream, now that does sound awful and you must be wondering if you are dreaming now,” Captain Magenta told him.
Captain Scarlet hurriedly felt his body all over after hearing that horrifying remark and thought he felt solid enough. “I hope I am awake and this isn’t some further leprechaun mischief ... OW!” He felt his arm pinched quite hard by Captain Ochre.
“You are real and you are awake,” scoffed Captain Ochre.
“Thanks, I think.” He pulled a rueful face.
“I won’t say ‘my pleasure’ but you were entertaining all the same.”
The others concurred and Captain Scarlet felt a little less shaken by his ordeal but vowed not to be retrometabolised on St Patrick’s Day in the future if he could help it.
Cwissy
22nd August, 2024
Dear Cwissy, an amusing detour from your rip-roaring Spectrum adventures and a most enjoyable one too. I’m afraid that poor old Scarlet had met his match with that little green imp and who knows how it would have ended up had Athena not come along.
It leaves one as befuddled as Captain Scarlet to try to summarise it for potential readers: A green be-spotted Scarlet resulting from a counter-attack by a leprechaun who he had hit with a fly swat after having been accused of stealing its gold, and who is later ordered to eat a chocolate mouse, that squeaks when the Captain bites into it. But folks, this (and more) is only a dream or, as Captain Grey more accurately put it, a nightmare! Yes, but a very good read as well.
Dan.