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TTHHEE WWIICCKKEEDD WWIITTCCHH OOFF TTHHEE WWEESSTT
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Copyright © 2013 Darrin Mason
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by copyright law.
Published worldwide by Philanthrium Press.
www.amazon.com/author/darrinjmason
CCHHAAPPTTEERR OONNEE
Son of a BANG! Son of a BOOM!
One by one they fell, their tiny bodies riddled with bullets. Dorothy
leaped over them and ran behind the house. Screw the yellow brick road.
The Wicked Witch of the West looked down from her broom. “I’ll get you
yet, Dorothy,” she said, waving her automatic rifle in the air.
Goddam it. All Dorothy had done was drop her house on top of the
Wicked Witch of the fucking East. She didn’t mean to. It’s not like she
drove the thing there. The wind picked it up and . . . ka-POW! That was
the end of that. Now the Wicked Witch of the West was taking pot shots
at her?
She looked out from behind the house. Seven little munchkins lay dead
on the ground. Four more were critically injured. The mayor of
Munchkinland was one of those injured. He raised his head which was
covered in blood and looked at her. “Get . . . Glinda.” Coughing, he
gasped for breath. Blood began to run from the corner of his mouth like
a river. Tears welled in Dorothy’s eyes. The mayor’s head dropped to the
ground. His eyes closed and he stopped breathing. Dorothy’s heart
missed a beat. She began to cry. She didn’t want to. She wanted to be at
home with her friends drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. But she
wasn’t with her friends. She was in a strange land surrounded by strange
people. She didn’t want to cry. But she did. Like a baby. But she didn’t
want to. She was just a little girl from Kansas, after all. Aunty Em, Aunty
Em. Yeah, Aunty Em who closed the trapdoor before Dorothy got there.
Aunty fuckin’ Em indeed.
Dorothy jumped up and ran, skipping this way and that as one bullet
after another whizzed by. Soon she was in a field of corn. She stopped
and looked around. There were cobs of corn as far as the eye could see. A
bullet whizzed by and tore a cob of corn off its stalk. It caused Dorothy to
near-on shit herself. She ran as fast as she could. Soon she could see a
man standing in the distance. She ran toward him, calling out to him for
help. He didn’t hear her. Another bullet whizzed by. She kept running
and kept yelling. Still the man didn’t hear her.
“What are you fuckin’ deaf?” she screamed. A bullet scraped her arm.
Blood trickled from the wound. Her arm felt like it was on fire. She kept
on running and she reached the man at last. She grabbed his arm to turn
him around. But it wasn’t a man. It was a scarecrow. It looked at her
with sad eyes.
“If I only had a brain,” it said, “I would know how to get the fuck off this
stake so I can run with you.” A bullet slammed into its neck, tearing a
hole in it. Straw dropped to the ground. The scarecrow looked at
Dorothy. “Run like the wind little girl.” Its eyes closed, and it was dead.
Dorothy looked up. There she was, the Wicked Witch of the West, on her
broomstick, with her finger on the trigger and a smile on her face. The
Wicked Witch was wearing a pair of rugby slippers. She had taken them
from her sister’s cold, dead feet. The Wicked Witch of the East had been
a great player in her time, playing more than fifty Tests for the Land of
Oz until a fucking house fell on her and ended not only her life but a
fucking great career. The Wicked Witch of the West pulled the trigger.
Click. Click, click, fucking click. Run like the wind little girl, indeed.
Dorothy ran, deep into a forest. Things went bump, things went boo. A
lion leaped out in front of her. GROWWWWWWWL. Dorothy wet her
pants. The lion fell back on the ground, laughing. Dorothy stepped back.
The lion saw her move and jumped to its feet. It bared its teeth which
shone like knife blades. Dorothy took another step back. The lion
stepped forward. “Please don’t hurt me,” Dorothy said.
“Please don’t hurt me!” a woman cackled. “Hahahahahahaha!”
Dorothy looked up. There she was. Again. The Wicked Witch of the
West. And this time she had a friend. A munchkin. The munchkin had a
noose around its neck. The other end of the rope was tied to the Witch’s
broomstick. The Witch pushed the munchkin and it fell forward toward
the ground. The rope reached its full length and the noose tightened
around the munchkin’s neck, breaking it and almost taking off its head.
The lion took Dorothy in its arms and bounded away, leaving a dead
munchkin hanging from the end of a rope tied to a broomstick on which
sat a woman whose sole intention was to get revenge on the girl who
killed her sister.
EENNDD OOFF SSAAMMPPLLEE
AABBOOUUTT TTHHEE AAUUTTHHOORR
Darrin Mason has worked much of his
adult life as a freelance cartoonist (he is an
Australian Cartoon Award winner)
whose work has appeared in a number of
Australian newspapers and magazines
(People magazine and The Truth
newspaper to name but two) and as a
producer at 4BC radio in Brisbane,
Australia. Throughout his life, he has had
the good fortune of meeting and picking the brains of such notables as
Vicki Wilson (former Australian netball captain), Patrick McNicholl
(multi-millionaire businessman and television actor), Michael Perlin
(director and producer of the hit metaphysical film 3 Magic Words), and
any number of Australian politicians from both sides of the political
fence. Throughout his career as a cartoonist he also met and studied at
close quarters the works of Gary Clark (Swamp comic strip), Malcolm
McGookin (The Sunday Mail in Brisbane, Australia), and the late
James Kemsley (Ginger Meggs comic strip). In his time as a producer
at 4BC he was fortunate enough to have met and learned from the likes
of Greg Cary (whose Morning radio show is syndicated throughout
Queensland, Australia) and guests too numerous to mention who were
and still are specialists in their fields of endeavour. Most important of
all, he is a fan of Batman (the 1960s TV version, the late 1980s/early
1990s Michael Keaton version, and the Christopher Nolan/Christian
Bale trilogy. You can forget the rest). As the Metallica song goes, nothing
else matters.
You can purchase the full version of
TTHHEE WWIICCKKEEDD WWIITTCCHH OOFF TTHHEE WWEESSTT
MMUUNNCCHHKKIINN KKIILLLLEERR
from Darrin’s Amazon author page
www.amazon.com/author/darrinjmason
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