Missy - Sends 21st century men to the 17th century

‘Thank you, my dear.’ The woman held aloft the book. ‘Recognise this? It’s your first most-precious manuscript. The only remaining copy of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won. Priceless and really rather dull, but Saffron soaked it in antidote.’ She licked the corner of a page. ‘Tastes very slightly of apricots. We all like apricots.’

She slammed the book down on the table. ‘The recommended dose is about a page.’

The agonised Mandeville led the members in falling upon the manuscript, tearing the priceless pages to shreds, cramming them into their maws, chewing and gagging and swallowing, flailing as their limbs burned and spasmed. Punches were weakly thrown. Faces were slammed against the table. But, eventually, all the men took their medicine, falling back, gasping and croaking into their chairs.

Of the priceless, incredible manuscript, the only surviving example of Shakespeare’s handwriting … nothing remained. Even the Surgeon was chewing grimly on a scrap of the cover.

‘Will we live?’ croaked Mandeville.

The woman just laughed.

‘Damn you, woman, will we live? You told us we would live!’

The woman laughed some more, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a lace handkerchief. ‘Oh, bless you. Only stupid people trust what they’re told.’

Mandeville closed his eyes as his fellow Scoundrels, gasping and groaning and swearing, twitched and fell unconscious.

It should be noted that the members of the Scoundrels Club didn’t die right there and then. In fact, ‘there and then’ took on a whole new meaning, once they’d woken up and found themselves on the Mandeville sugar plantation in the eighteenth century. '

***

‘Let me explain a few things to you, gents,’ he said, spitting in their direction. ‘This here is an highly lucer-ative sugar plantation. We’re in the business of making the Mandeville family stinking filthy rich. Only problem is that yesterday I woke up to find my whole workforce gawn. Can you believe it? The whole lot scarpered. Why, when I get my hands on them, I’ll hobble them all with a chisel, you see if I don’t.’ The large man momentarily lost himself as if in a rather gory reverie before finding his subject again. ‘Anyway, that leaves me with no slaves and a lot of sugarcane to be harvested before these storms get worse. Filthy work it is, filthy. Anyway, there am I at my wits’ end, when up pops a female pirate with you lot.’

‘A female pirate?’

‘Hey, it takes all sorts to make a world, that’s what I say. She pops up with you lot – a bunch of bankrupts shipwrecked on the way to New South Wales.’

***

The Missy Chronicles: Dismemberment