SAVING MS CRAZY

Vengeance is Mine!

Sayeth somebody really important

When I was a kid in New Zealand during the fifties — yes, truly — get over it,— I was lucky enough to be sent off to the Sat’day arvo flicks at the Bughouse.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, and I suspect you might not, I’ll translate.

When I was a kid during the fifties, I often saw the matinee picture show at His Majesty’s Theatre. We called the theatre the Bughouse because it generally was.

It was opened in 1912 for live theatre but became a cinema around 1945. It was dark, dingy, and had a balcony from where youngsters could biff Jaffas onto the unfortunate heads of the downstairs cinema patrons. They were the plebs not lucky enough to have the extra threepence for admission to the posher upstairs circle.

I loved the Bughouse!

It had a thespian atmosphere, smelled of grease paint and unwashed costumes, and when performers came to town, the screen was rolled backstage, reverting the theatre to its heyday glory.

I watched many a Christmas Pantomime and live show in that place.

The “big” screen had a small tear that showed up when movies were projected onto it — it was very annoying.

But I digress.

The Bughouse was demolished in the late 1960s having been condemned to die, mainly because of earthquake damage inflicted over the years.

Anyway, the whole reason I mention HM Theatre is to tell you about matinee cliffhanger serials that used to play before the main picture show.

The serials were generally rubbish and played for about ten minutes.

Each “glorious” black and white movie had stirring music and over-dramatic leading actors who generally wound up falling to their inglorious, inescapable demise over a cliff. Or something equally spectacular.

The theatre would be in an uproar as we all moaned our disappointment and wondered what could possibly be left to tell the next week.

When next Saturday rolled around, the theatre would be filled with moans yet again as the serial began with a, “On the last episode of The Green Snot Kid, we saw the precocious brat narrowly avoid death when his three-wheeled trike plummeted over a cliff.”

Then they would play a subtly amended version of the previous week where the hero went over the cliff but miraculously survived the accident by being caught up in a shrub or some such nonsense.

The story would continue from there and end in another disastrous happening from which the actor was surely rescued the following week.

Stop with the ho-hums — I’m getting there!

I had to preamble all the following preamble to be able to post-amble what I am about ramble on about next.

Geez, I’m confused!

Read this if you want to catch up, or don’t. No-one cares. Well, Kristen might, but Krystal and I don’t!

In her story, “Killer Says Victim Did Not Light Up a Room,” Kristen Stark killed off my twisted sister, Krystal Lore, leaving me to bring to bear the long arm of the Lore 🤭, and show you just what a cliffhanger 1950s style is capable of.

Summary of Kristen’s story

Through a dumb set of interview questions, we learned that a slob named Jerry stalked Krystal because she didn’t light up a room.

I don’t deny that about Krystal.

She takes misery wherever she goes, but Jerry Berry had no right to extinguish her dismalness.

He stalked her for months, to every boring place she went until he snapped.

He was watching her at her nephew’s birthday party when drunk Krystal set the house on Fire.

Jer rushed in with a garden hose and extinguished the blaze and then, a few days later, Jerry returned and snapped Krystal’s neck because she still didn’t light up a room.

NB. That was the cliffhanger in Kristen’s original story; Jerry purportedly snapped Krystal’s neck, but did he?

What a moron Jerry was! If he had just left the fire to burn, Krystal would’ve literally lit up a room for the first time in her dingy life, and he would not have wound up serving life wearing a jolly orangey jumpsuit.

But not to worry, because that didn’t happen at all!

In the interests of transparency, I admit I am taking the neck-snapping incident right out of the equation because even an imbecile knows you don’t come back from that!

Jerry Quite Contrary had a huge change of heart following the house-on-fire incident.

He had planned to kill Krystal because she didn’t light up a room. He even followed her a few days later, sneaking up on her and wrapping his fingers tightly around her throat. Krystal cried out and that is when time took an about turn.

Right in the midst of choking Krystal, Jerry had an epiphany.

Jerry realised that Krystal’s not lighting up a room was why he should leave her alone. He hated girls who lit up rooms more than he hated those that didn’t.

Girls who lit up rooms were popular and giggly and always happy and twirling and stuff. Lots to hate there, especially as they wouldn’t give Jerry a second chance in the love game.

Stupid Jerry, trying to bat above his average!

Why didn’t he give Krystal a go?

Because she didn’t light up a room, she would quite likely realise that Jerry was her last chance for romance and throw herself at him, given the first opportunity.

Well now, see, I have a long memory and I remember what happened in the original cliffhanger version of this story.

Jerry killed Krystal, and the simple matter of fact was he was likely to do it again at the end of the next episode, and the next, until the series ended and Jerry finally succeeded in offing Krystal for good.

Time to avenge my twisted sister for something she knows nothing about.

Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing — I’m the one that grew up with this cliffhanger BS, remember?

Cliff-hanger rewrite — The part where the idiot cliff-hanger writer, ie Raine Lore, restores Krystal to her former glory sans gory neck-snapping.

Unbeknown to me and everybody else, Jerry stumbled away from putting out the fire at Krystal’s nephew’s home and experienced an overwhelming new feeling.

What was this new emotional state that was blazing in his gut and engorging his heart?

“Goodness,” he thought to himself. “I believe I am feeling pride in my community-spirited actions. I hope this doesn’t stop me from choking that dismal sheila.”

With contentedness swelling his portly figure, Jer made it home to bandage his first-degree burns and sort out his newfound self-righteousness. The foreign emotion of moral high-ground also swelled his head.

“I surely don’t want to end up in jail for murdering that unfortunate tart for not lighting up a room,” mused Jerry. “Instead, I shall seek her out and make her my bride.”

As it turned out, Jerry did not have to do anything, except for figuring out how to use the washing machine to wash his one and only filthy outfit — and then, how to get to my place.

While patting the last plaster on a searing blister, Jer answered his ringing phone.

“Yeah. Watcha? This better not be a sales pitch or crap like that!”

“Is this Jerry?” I asked politely.

“Yep, who’s this?”

“Jerry, this is Raine Lore, Jerry.” Notice how I used Jerry’s name repeatedly. It gives the impression that the caller is sincere.

“Who the fuck is Raine Lore Jerry?” he snarled.

Looks like my attempts to sound sincere failed. Never mind, try again.

“Jerry, this is Raine Lore, the twisted sister of Krystal Lore.”

I heard Jerry’s sudden intake of breath as my meaning sunk in. Before he could get distracted, I continued.

“Krystal tells me she has seen you out and about lately, and wondered if you would like to have dinner sometime. She asked me to invite you to my place because she lives in a disgusting hole with no lights to light up a room.”

“Figures,” replied big sucker, Jer, “Ahem, that’s why I like her so much.”

“Well, good!” I sealed the deal and gave the moron my address and a time for dinner.

Jerry was right on time.

I peered through my chintzy curtains as he lumbered his way into my front yard.

Good Lord! Perhaps I did him a disservice by saving him from the clink. His weight had ballooned!

In his stripy, black and white jumpsuit (possibly a leftover from his last imaginary dimension as a jailbird), Jerry looked like an overripe, landlocked bumblebee whose colour had leached.

I hastened to the door; my laser weapon concealed behind my back and met him halfway up the garden path.

“You that Raine Lore sheila?” Jerry panted. “Where’s Krystal?”

I smiled nastily. “Oh, she’s busy tarting herself up. She still won’t light up a room but I’m pretty sure she’ll fire up your generator.”

Brandishing my laser, I snarled. “But you’ll have to undergo my instant weight reduction method first. You can hardly see her looking like that!”

Jerry’s last words of dismay were, “That thing is shining a pretty light on my tummy. Does it work? Where’s …..…?”

Satisfied that I had eliminated the risk to Krystal’s life, I went inside to call her.

“Hey, Sis,” I greeted cheerfully when she picked up. “You know that creep, Jerry — the one who wears a disgusting stripy jumpsuit?

“Hey, Twister,” Krystal replied. “Do you mean that fat guy’s been following me around lately?”

“Uh-huh,” I answered preparing to deliver the account of my big coup de grâce.

“He’s kinda cute!” she declared breathlessly. “You know he put out cousin Cyril’s house fire. I’m gonna ask that fat boy for a date next time I see him.”

I slowly placed my phone on the table and backed away as if the device had some kind of weird hex placed on it.

Well, bugger me!

Krystal wants to date Jer, who is dead; Jer wanted to date Krystal, not choke her, and then make her his bride!

Looks like I’m down the cliffhanging-writing rabbit hole for quite some time — FFS, this is not how this story was supposed to end!

Going out of your brain trying to make sense of the previous rubbish? Try reading Kristen Stark. She’ll tell you what started it all:

Creepy Krystal wrote a letter from the grave.

Here’s a bit more garbage of mine co-starring the silly sausage, Kristen: