LAST TALES OF MONKEY ISLAND – EPISODE 5

THE DEMON AND THE PUDDLE

...Tick – Tock!

Nine days, twenty one hours, fourteen minutes and sixteen seconds to the end…

It once was alive and throbbing, but black like tar in the darkest night. Then, when the Dark Lady strangled me for the first time with her smelly cloak, it started turning into the most unlikely shapes.

Fluorescent mass of ectoplasmic pulp.

Idle bunch of worms.

Burning concentrate of coal, sulphur and every sort of caustic acid. And other terrifying appearances, impossible to describe with the limited languages of the mere mortals..

That’s also because if ya make a mistake with the diaeresis on the fourteenth syllable ya’ll most likely get something like “scrotal tattoo”. Anyway, me heart’s always been there, feeding every fiber that would take part in those glorious days of grog, broken bones, rumbling bowels an’ oozing brains. It’s always been there, feeding those fibers on any kind of improbable nourishment.

A dimension where the old guts seem ta have been replaced with a heavy clutter of lethal gears; a dimension where the ancient, barbaric and unworthy order of things seems ta have been redefined by a bunch of unctuous spinsters who think they can undo their absolute lack of virility just by cancelling every sort of magic from the world… forever.

Well, we’ll see who’ll come undone at last, once LeChuck will have shown you an authentic sorcery from better days!

Right, considering the inner flexure of the pot and the roughness of the utilized metal, I may be able to direct some fluid a few tenths towards north – north – east. But if I could count on a humidity factor of 4.5, then I’d be sure that at least a part of it wouldn’t cake before the impact and…

LL: “LeChuck?”

LCK: “Shut up, Largo! I drank too many watered – down cocktails at the Club 41, and now I be tryin’ to work out the exact point where I should head the result of my urgent urination. I got only one shot, and I be goin’ to use it well, that is, I be going to hit the admiral on that horrible moustache. Y’know, if I were able ta tense the urogenital detrusor and ta work out the arctangent of the precise bounce angle on that pan, I’d could even produce such a squirt that…”

LL: “Oh, let it go, you get lost even when you start counting your toes. But I must agree about the unpleasantness of that moustache shaped like…what the hell is that shape???”

LCK: “It looks like something between a dental root-canal kingpin and the albumen of the egg of the South African turakoo.”

LL: “Yeah, that one, plus a sprinkle of a boot that was half digested by some kind of ancient Inca divinity. Anyway, listen to me. I tell you now, while those other cretins are lost in their foolish debate about miserable, useless… ”

G: “And you, please do tell me, what part of the design are you? Maybe the one traced by a great SEAGULL, when he let his divine droppings gently land on the paper while he was…”

LL: “Soon we’ ll be out of here. ”

LCK: “Yes, brown as a five wild boars casserole.”

LL: “Actually, we’re four.”

LCK: “Don’t try me patience, Largo! Remember what happened last time ya did it?”

LL: “Yes, and please let me tell you it wasn’t that nice to make me clean up the mess too. Anyway, what I mean is… we’re going to be free! Free to head for a mountain of gold and gems so… colossal, that some brains may blow up and fall to a million pieces even if they only try to imagine it. But… believe me when I tell you that an incredible escape awaits us, so we’d better think clearly about our next stage. So… I need to know exactly what you drew from that shabby old Voodoo Witch’s diary!”

LCK: “Largo, ye’re an imbecile! And ya wouldn’t even make a good blabberin’ and rustic magazine rack to cast aside down in the latrine of the dungeons in me fortress! How could ya ever think that I may have wanted to read ALL the pages of that diary IN DETAIL?”

LL: “Oh, Lord! Months and months of artificial manouvres and plots down the dra…”

LCK: “And most of all, how can ya believe that I could remember anything from that unpleasant reading apart from… those cryptic plans ta sabotage the course of our lives… and that odd page with some enigmatic writings and an absurd figure with twelve equal sides?”

LL: “A FIGURE WITH TWELVE SIDES OF EQUAL LENGHT? BUT... I BET IT WAS THE SAME SYMBOL I WAS TALKING ABOUT!”

LCK: “What? Weren’t ya lookin’ for a figure with sixteen grainy sides and a vertex that be half curved in the same way of an albino tortoise shell?”

LL: “I’D SAY NO! I REALLY WAS LOOKING FOR A FIGURE HAVING TWELVE SIDES OF EQUAL LENGHT!”

LCK: “Well, in that case… I guess I might have seen it… ”

LL: “Right. The time has come to know what you read in that diary… ”

PARTE I – THE TOMB OF THE TITAN

Episode V – The Demon and the Puddle

LCK:” Alright, ya fool! I’ll tell ya what I know, so maybe ya’ll stop hammering me nerves with yer inconclusive alchemical wanderings… well, I was hangin’ out in the forest of Flotsam Island. I’d stolen that diary, hoping ta find out more ‘bout shameful secrets and ancestral wizardry, but after a few pages I was only extremely annoyed by the style that was even heavier and more ungraceful than the author herself. I was just abou’ ta throw it down a well that was around there, when at some point… this figure ya be talkin’ about drew me attention!”

LL: “Oh, you must have picked up an unconscious bond with the glorious mysticism of the dodecagon!”

LCK: “No, it’s just that someone had scribbled this particularly vulgar drawing next ta it, and I found it very amusin’. So I could do nothing else but stop an’ focus on yer stupid dodecagon for a while. There was a name at the center. And there were three writings at the vertices, but they were now cancelled and impossible to read. They were laid like… y’know… as if they were… yes, so that they formed the beak of an Andean albatross.”

LL: “They formed a triangle.”

LCK: “That’s right.”

LL: “And what was the name at the center? THERE WAS something you could read, wasn’t it?”

LCK: “Napoleon Hellbeard.”

LL: “Napoleon… Hellbeard?!”

LCK: “Yes, but I didn’t really pay much attention ta him, since the next page described very well how we’d been controlled like putrid puppets made of flesh ta act in the worst comedy ever… ”

LL: “Napoleon Hellbeard! Napoleon Hellbeard! But of course! The unrivalled! The monumental! The supreme! The legendary terror of the seas who would scourge these waters with his flaming voodoo fury about thirty years ago!”

LCK: “Who?”

LL: “The one who permanently chased away the Navy from the Caribbean armed only with a thread of mucus! The one who defeated Death herself in a challenge of “Slaughter, hecatombs and tender hugs” and who feasted lavishly on her tibial plateau as a sign of mockery! The one who sacrificed his whole crew in order to celebrate a gruesome ritual and to dig up the most extraordinary treasure the early pirate generation had ever craved for: the Leviathan Lord!”

LCK: “Never heard of it. But I think I would have wanted him by me side! He would have really come in handy to cool me slippers with his tongue during the sultriest summer mornings!”

LL: “Yes, and then he would have died in an explosion of pus and abscesses like any other person you’d entrusted with this task. Do not underestimate the myth of Napoleon Hellbeard! He… basically, he marked the dawn of the age of pirates! He succeeded in demonstrating the superiority of the buccaneers’ anarchy over every other pre-established social structure! Not without a fair share of crunched heads, that’s obvious. His evil power was so grand and extraordinary that… ”

LCK: “Yeah, blah, blah, blah! Everything he did in his entire, miserable life, I could do it in three minutes, with me head replaced by a cocktail olive and me body accurately shaken with four parts of vermouth, three of whisky and two drops of angostura. Serve lukewarm and do not remove the floating hair.”

LL: “After hearing this, I think I’ll become a teetotaller.”

LCK: “Right, thank you for letting us know that ya never miss the opportunity to be so disgusting, that even the worst detritus of mankind thinks you’re… but… hey… ”

LL: “Hellbeard found the Leviathan Lord. And what if that prodigious treasure… contained the Sorcerer’s Gear? Or maybe a fragment of it? Yes, of course… the witch, Napoleon Hellbeard and the Gear are all tangled up with this secret and dirty business, and all because of the arcane webs of Fate. That’s the reason why the only thing left to do now is… find the lost legend! From the oblivion we shall uncover the red and heinous blaze which burnt these islands in the depth of their souls! We shall find… Napoleon Hellbeard!”

LCK: “LARGO!”

LL: “Yes?”

LCK: “REEKY BEARD BE MOVIN’!”

LL: “What? My mother’s here?”

LCK: “No, ya cretin! I be talkin’ about the revolting an’ podgy ol’ man at me left!”

G: ” Ha! Cortèz, prepare yourself a good pack of rollerbandages and disinfectant, because with this decision you’ve just shot yourself in the foot like you’ve never…”

J: “My demerit marks cannot be worth the preservation of such a tumour in the tissue of existence. I have nothing else to add to what you have just said, Admiral. May the prisoners be burned alive tomorrow at dawn. And may the Triad triumph, from now until the end of time… admiral! The fourth prisoner is… swearing!”

P: ” NYAAAAAAAAAARGGHH!!! BY a thousand glazed turkeys with curry! I’m half naked, chained, covered in mud, surrounded by strange wild men in a place I’ ve never seen before!!! Again!”

LL: “Have breakfast at the club, with more cockroach grub!”

G: “That… that was the slogan of the Blonde Beard Biscuits – Plus!!!”

P: “That slogan was rubbish!!!”

G: “No! Captain… Blonde Beard!!!???”

ADM: “Ha! Pirates! Always displaying crooked nicknames deriving from their obnoxious habits or their unattractive looks… ”

G: “Never take it for granted, try asking those poor cannibals on Bulky Island about “Digestible Dave”! And by the way, I’ll repeat it with the same disbelief… Captain Blonde Beard!!!???”

P: “Yeah, I know my name! And who the hell are you??? Show yourself!!!!”

G: “I can’t move! I’m trapped, just like you! We met on Plunder Island, more or less ten years ago! I stole your baking tray, counterfeited a reservation at your restaurant, stole your precious golden tooth with sly tricks and then you… hit me on the head with a pan!”

P: “If you’d really pulled all those pranks, a pan on your head was the least you deserved!!!”

LCK: “Oh, great, Largo! You brought with ya … a cook! That’s brilliant! The key element we needed from the start! And I don’t know how I couldn’t have thought of it myself! Lords of the Triad, it’s time ta grind yer guts and pull out yer hair in despair! We got a cook! And we won’t hesitate ta use it!”

LL: “This bursting sarcasm of yours betrays once more your inclination to go by the vile looks… but after all… one of the most ancient alchemical principles teaches us that man is never truly one but two… ”

G: “Like when a magician makes a mistake with that number of the girl cut in two?”

LL: “No. ”

LCK: “Like when two particularly brawny cannibals fight over your juicy carcass?”

LL: “No. ”

G: “Like when “Angus the Unnailer” said: “No, you fools, this axe hanged onto the wall is just ornamental. Look at how I unnail… ”

LL: “NO, DAMN IT! LET ME GET ON WITH IT! Sigh… as I was saying… in most cases these two equal and opposite parts of the human spirit fight against each other only in the kingdom of the mind. As a consequence, they cause doubts, inner conflicts and a crippling, neurovegetative dystonia. But the most furious, perverted and sadistic part of the two may force its way through the twists and turns of the mind. It may climb up from a purely cognitive realm and even change the flesh and the skin of the body where it dwells. Perhaps… thanks to the power of a tremendous curse which flares up only by the full moon. And should this happen when the other is not aware of it or does not remember it, then it may give rise to a fight… a fight which may go on for years and years! Two beings… fighting furiously against each other to death, and without knowing that they’re just… fighting against themselves!”

ADM: “Jailer, these data are not recorded in our Infinite Folder TM. Are you updating the files with what the prisoners are saying?”

J: “Uhm, no. I’m afraid I haven’t got anything to write with.”

ADM: “For goodness’ sake, then improvise! Write with your blood!”

J: “Al… al… alright, then… I’ll take that rusty awl and… AAARGGHHH!”

G: “Oh, I see what you mean. For example, I often happen to hear some voices here and there, telling me what to do, pick up or examine. The secret lies in doing everything they tell you to, without making a fuss about it.”

LL: “For example, Captain Blonde Beard… what could you tell me about that monster which is always tormenting you? What could you tell me about… EL POLLO DIABLO?”

There are names which seem to stop the heartbeat of every single thing in the universe for a moment. Names which seem to echo through matter and light, causing an icy, unnatural vibration.

G: “Brr! What’s this sudden cold? Anyway, that’s a stupid superstition.”

P: “THAT MONSTROSITY, THAT FREAK OF NATURE WHO DOES NOTHING BUT FOLLOW ME FROM AN ISLAND TO ANOTHER! HE SLAUGHTERS EVERY SOUL THAT CROSSES HIS PATH WITH HIS SUPERHUMAN MIGHT! AND MY PRECIOUS CHICKENS... EVERY TIME HE SETS THEM FREE AGAIN!!!”

G: “It’s just a stupid superstition… ISN’T IT?”

P: “I’M SURE IT EXISTS, THOUGH I SEEM TO BE THE ONLY ONE WHO’S NEVER SEEN IT! AND THE ONLY ONE WHO ALWAYS MANAGED TO SURVIVE ITS RAIDS! AND THE ONLY ONE WHO WAKES UP WOUNDED, HALF NAKED AND COVERED IN MUD AFTER EVERY DAMNED FULL MOON NIGHT!”

G: “Holy skipping monkeys… ”

LL: “No moon from this window, so we’ll have to… LeChuck… listen to me… play along with me, ok? Now listen to everything I say and try to… psst psst… ”

J: “Urghhhh… admiral… it’s as if a large ice cold spider were climbing up my spine. I feel… I have a feeling of looming death. I fear that the prisoners may be plotting something dreadfully sinister and I don’t think we should let them… ”

ADM: “Ha! What you would not make up nowadays just to stop carving your skins with an old rusty awl! Shut up and write! They are nothing but a mass of waste from the Grand Cosmic Plan! Remainders from an age no one will regret! Above all, they are chained and caged like rough beasts from the circus! They aren’t more dangerous than a bunch of salty and shelled peanuts!”

G: “Well, I tell you what: I’ve seen something you could do with peanuts that you couldn’t possibly ima… ”

LL: “So, gentlemen, If I were to ask you to look at that window, what would you answer me?”

LCK: “Uhm… I find it particularly attractive and worthy of attention too!”

G: “The window doesn’t seem important.”

P: “ARR! THAT’S THE CONSTELLATION OF THE COMPASS! ITS SHAPE REMINDS THE ONE OF A COMPASS!”

J: “Produced by the Triad. So may the window triumph too!”

ADM: “Don’t distract yourself with such redundant and nonsensical banter and go on writing. Anyway, they’re banal spheroids of plasma generating energy by thermonuclear processes of their nucleus and… oh, by the dirtiest, filthiest and foulest…. someone has… URINATED ON THE FLOOR! WHO DID IT?”

J: “I didn’t do it, admiral! I swear it!”

LL: “Captain Blonde Beard.”

LCK: “The latrine cleaner Blonde Beard.”

G: “LeChuck! Look, it clearly was LeChuck! He’s even got his underpants still down! Though I can’t understand how he could have done it with those chains still… ”

LL: “Threepwood is talking nonsense, admiral! The puddle is exactly under captain Blonde Beard and unless my memory’s playing tricks on me, the law of gravitation says that… a liquid can do nothing but fall plumb – line!”

LCK: “That’s right, the gestation law could never go wrong about that!”

ADM: “By the great Architect! Despite the obvious sematic inaccuracy, the two prisoners are right! THE ETERNAL LAWS WHICH MAKE THIS UNIVERSE SUCH A BLAZE OF HARMONY AND BEAUTY COULD NEVER, NEVER BE FALSE! IF THE PUDDLE IS THERE, MOST PROBABLY THE CULPRIT IS… THE AWFULLY UGLY PRISONER!!!”

G: “And these words may be related to at least three of the four people hanging in this cell. But since I guess you’re still talking about Blonde Beard, I’d like to point out that it’s not that difficult for LeChuck to direct his spurt towards… oh, you know what? Go to hell, all of you!”

ADM: “Definitely dreadful prisoner, what do you have to say in your defense?”

LL: “YARR! I’LL URINATE WHENEVER I WANT! TRY ME NOW IF YOU DARE! THE TRIAD SUCKS! I CAN’T WAIT TO BECOME A TINY BUNCH OF ORGANIC DUST!”

G: “Hey! That wasn’t Blonde Beard! That was Largo in the most atrocious exhibition as a vocal imitator that I’ve ever heard! Apart from the basic tonal and alveolar mistakes, I’d like to point out that Blonde Beard didn’t even move his lips!”

ADM: “Aesthetically absurd prisoner! I admire your audacious ventriloquial skills, but I can’t help brooding over such an flashy boastfulness! And I am most definitely upset. Therefore your wish shall be fulfilled.”

P: “WHAT? YOU’RE GOING TO LET ME LICK A HEAP OF SAWDUST A PRETTY GIRL’ S JUST WALLOWED IN?”

ADM: “Your colourful perversion of a handicraft sort will not help you preserve the integrity of your current corporeal shape! Jailer! Release the Captain from his chains! If he really can’t wait to begin his new life, his wish shall be satisfied!”

P: “I’D LIKE HER TO BE BLONDE AND WITH A VERY PROVOCA... HEY! STOP! STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

...Tick tock!

Nine days, twenty one hours, two minutes and forty – eight seconds to the end…

While that annoying bag of hair and mud shows off his tacky repertoire of sailors’ foulness, the jailer releases him and pulls him up his shoulders as if he were a thrash bag. All of a sudden, while they’re crossing the threshold, the nonsensical blabbering of that poisoner is cut off by a violent twitch. Blonde Beard falls unconscious. Reality is now echoing with a distant, demonic clucking, intertwined with the violent beat of a tempting flamenco.

LL: “Yes! The moon! Blonde Beard finally saw the moon!”

A twitch immediately follows, and then another, another, another… more and more furious and ruthless. Blonde Beard throws up, he twitches and twists with an inhuman viciousness, while his muscles tense and swell until they become unnaturally large. The air becomes thick, heavy, oppressive, just like when Satan himself takes off his shoes after a long morning jogging.

ADM: “You see, Jailer? Unhealthy pirate diet! This is what happens when you repeatedly damage your gastric system with decades of poor grog and skewers of sewer rat.”

J: “Uhm… Admiral… I don’t think he’s suffering from digestive problems right now. It looks more like… THE RESULT OF A GRUESOME RITUAL MEANT TO SUMMON SOME FEROCIOUS CREATURE WHICH WILL DESTROY US ALL FROM THE UNDERWORLD!

ADM: “A ritual? In the middle of this fortess? What are you blabbering about? Don’t whine and go up to the Purification Hall! There must be a reason why I am the right – hand man of the Baron Soze and you can be nothing more than the sandwich leftovers between his teeth, you stupid… ”

J: “HELP ME! HE’S GETTING HEAVIER AND HEAVIER! MY VERTEBRAE ARE BREAKING!”

SNAP! THUD! BANG! CRASH!

G: “MADRE DE DIOS... ”

«RRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARR!!!»

J: “ES EL POLLO DIABLO! Y el is trituratin’ mi vertebras!!!”

ADM: “POR EL GRAN ARQUITECTO! SOLDIéRES... WHAT THE HELL AM I SAYING? SOLDIERS! ALL SOLDIERS REPORT IMMEDIATELY to me! WE HAVE A 666 CODE EMERGENCY! 666 CODE EMERGENCY!”

J: “Uuuurghhh…. 666? But that’s the “Aggressive prisoner due to terrifying acid stomach” emergency! HE STILL DOESN’T GET IT!“

An incessant, piercing alarm starts scourging the air without a break. The admiral Cortèz rummages frantically in his pockets, looking for something. And every shred of the old captain’s gross humanity has been disintegrated by that hideous voodoo mutation. Now it’s a revolting, impressive, abominable plumed obscenity that’s almost 10 feet tall. The limitless power of its evil emanations seems to distort the space around it. Through the frantical cadence of his breath you can perceive his greedy thirst for blood. Mirrored in his heinous gaze, the rancour of a renegade, lost soul, chased away because of its depravation even from the darkest circle of Hell. Uhm… give me a beak able to disembowel a stone blockhouse, and see if basically he isn’t my twi… why is now Largo trying to imitate a chicken?

LL: “Cluck – cluck! Cluck – cluck – cluuuuck! POLLO DIABLO! Listen to me! You can easily tell from the noise I’m making that I obviously am a chicken!”

G: “One can easily tell that when you keep silent too.”

LL: “See all those men dressed in white? They’re psycho slaughterers! Sadistic killers who murder poor defenseless chickens! They sting them with sharp forks for their indecent play, and after having made fun of them with coarse jokes, they butcher them all so to cook them in some immoral tartar sauce! Blow them away! All of them! And set me free!”

ADM: “Now, where did I leave those damned bicarbonate pil… NO!!!”

A stone weighing approximately a ton falling down from a fifty floor tower. The impact of two colossal galleons during the most violent storm ever broken out. A volcano blowing up powerfully after years of quiet idleness. A vigorous and brave andalusian guitar! In a punch. The admiral is flown against one of the walls of the prison cell and crashes against it with a mighty and satisfying rumble of flesh, just like some scrap paper of little account.

LL: “Yes! That’s a good chicken! Now set me free, I’m a chicken too! Break my… where are going? Come back! Hey! POLLO DIABLO!!! Where are you going? Don’t go out from that door! I’m a poor chicken held in captivity! Cluck – cluck! Cluck – cluck – cluuuuck! Squuuuaaaawk!”

G: “What the heck was that last noise? Hey, mind the waaaall… ”

Crash!

G: “That violent punch he hit that wall with… hey, that support fixing the chains onto the stone has partially collapsed! Finally my feet can touch the ground. All that dangling was really getting on my nerves… but… the chains are still locked into the rock! I’m still trapped!”

LL: “COME BACK, POLLO DIABLO! WE HAD A CLEAN AND FRATERNAL DEAL BETWEEN BIRDS!”

G: “Nope, he’s gone out the door. You know, after all your imitation of a sweet, free – range hen wasn’t that bad. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll find a handsome covering cock who will love you as you are. Every morning, after having attended to his marital duty, he’ll bring you some tasty fresh worms and you will then live happily ever after while you’ll be brooding cheeping chicks and delicious breakfasts which you’ll cook in a saucepan with some butter. All in a swirl of feathers, cuddles and a pile of droppings.”

LL: “My hypothetic future as queen of the hen-house may as well be full of smart metaphors and interesting cues, but right now I’d rather focus on the fact that… the jailer’s keys are within your feet’s reach! Why don’t you… kick them to me, over here?”

Screams, shots, alarms and that demonic clucking are now orchestrated in an infernal symphony which shakes the building down to its grounds. The demon has started fighting against the soldiers of the Triad. From time to time I manage to hear something vaguely sensible in that incessant roar…

“NO! I AM VEGETARIANOS! I JURO, I AM VEGETARIANOS! NOOO!!! AY AY AY, EL BROKE MI PANCREAS!”

G: “Kick you the keys? Kick YOU the keys? After that you poisoned me, drugged me, deceived me and hit me with your Dancing and Singing Sextants? And what’s more, after that you’d been sadistically playing with that matter about Elaine all the time? Forget it! I’d rather flog myself with a cat o’ nine tails caked with infected blood until I strip off every inch of my skin! Then I’ll swallow a whole pulley and ask to be used as a… ”

LCK: “Matter about Elaine?”

G: “... then I’ll take a complete set of rusty coffin nails and I’ll stick them into my eyes strongly pushing in… ”

LL: “It’s nothing, really, just some pathetic married – life cliché about who would always leave the toilet seat up. Now, come on Guybrush! We’ve got a powerful enemy in common, powerful and well organized. Why shouldn’t we join forces?”

G: “... with acrobatic inertia and a fair share of monkey – keys. We won’t join forces because the last time I joined forces with your gleeful playmate I found myself with a rip in the bowels so huge that it could have been easily filled with water so to organize some pompous boat race of the America’s Cup! Now look at me while I grab your damned keys to salvation for me and me alone with a well planned swing of… the… legs… ops!”

LL: “Hey, thanks! Over there it’s perfect! LeChuck, get them with the tip of your shoe! Untie it, and then screw it back on! A bit more… Good… that’s good… put it there… alright… now see if you can pull it closer to your teeth. A bit more on the right, on the right! Raise your legs. Bend the sub-heel. No, not like that, or you’re going to break it. Less! Now turn that damned… ”

LCK: “Bingo!”

“Por el primer tiempo me nourisho de pollo en toda la mi vida! El primer tiempo! AAARRGHH! Esta punzada es muy pungéntes!”

I open the lockets and I set my feet on the ground. Fire. Flames. Acid burning the flesh of my legs. There’s something wrong. That explosion on the raft… must have smashed me more than I thought! My right leg is… swollen, bruised, aching. I can barely move it, really! But I… am LeChuck. I never indulged in whining since I came to the world and when I’ll leave it for the last time, I’ll do it sneering and spitting on the Reaper of the Fatal Lady.

On the other hand… that ridiculous ill fermented Threepwood mould would whine. That boastful Largo parassite would whine!

LL: “Oh, no, my lovely obsessive – compulsive buckskin jacket is all wrinkled now! Oh, no, my lovely obsessive – compulsive buckskin jacket is all… ”

I be tempted to leave him here whimpering in that curiously repetitive manner, but… if I want to survive in this age I need his overblown alchemical mystical blabberings…. I work the key into his lock.

LL: “Hey! That’s my eye!”

That was worth it. I REALLY work the key into his lock and I release him.

G: “Hey! Where are you going? Come back here! Release me too! Set me free! You putrid… ”

LL: “Ahr ahr ahr! So long, Threepwood! I promise you that once we become the undisputed masters of the world as we know it, we’ll visit the sweet petunia your carcass gave birth to. And after every stunning night of delirious binge and caustic cocktails, LeChuck will always have… a rancid and smelly watering all for you! Bon voyage! No, wait… BUENA MUERTE!”

G: “Come back! Come back! NO!!!”

Tick tock!

Nine days, twenty hours, fifty -three minutes and thirty – eight seconds to the end…

Out of the cell. Back in the cell. Out of the cell. Back in the cell. Out of the cell. Back in the cell. Using your jailer as a doormat where to clean the filth of your boots is like having them licked by all the angels from Heaven. Then we decide to leave that squawking Threepwood goose behind. Strange, I… I have some kind of an oppressive feeling. It’s as if the universe itself were whispering to me that an age of legendary battles is now over. Once and for all. Yes, I’m pretty sure I’ll never see Guybrush Threepwood again…

Tick tock!

Nine days, twenty hours, forty – four minutes and two seconds to the end…

We run back to our cell. I’ve never been good at this feeling thing. Threepwood’s still there, motionless in his chains. He keeps silent. He tries to scare us with a dark and scowling look, but the result is rather pathetic. It looks more like the performing anxiety of a salmon at its first itch.

LL: “Threepwood, now you come with us! We need your help!”

G: “Get off me! I’m not coming with you! STOP! I’D RATHER END UP IN A DELICATE WEDDING BOUQUET! DON’T TOUCH MY SACRED... ”

We touch them. Largo opens the locks. I grab his shins in a way that could easily lead to an inexorable gangrene. I drag him violently from his chains and I make him taste the floor. I let him deeply enjoy his sweat – and polygranular marble – fragrance. Then I drag him outside the cell, towards that endless and dark circle of hell. I’ m still fascinated by the interior of that black tower, by that colossal hollow cylinder of stone, whose walls are riddled with a thousand superfine boards, mounted together so to create the most feverish and dizzy stair I’ve ever run. There are a thousand small windows and as many armoured doors placed at regular intervals. A delightful choir of dreadful, agonizing cries are uttered behind them.

G: “Curse you! At least we could have saved Smirk! At least him! But… hey, these steps are dangerously steep and there’s no railing! Id’ say that… a tiny slip, a little distraction or an accidental sneeze, and we get smashed. And this is one of those things you’d never want to say when you’re being rudely dragged by a leg by a lumbering beast who dreams of nothing more than tearing you to pieces.”

LCK: “Belt up, you pathetic counterfeit buccaneer, or I’ll have you make the qualitative JUMP you’ve always wanted!”

G: “Now who’s more pathetic here, the counterfeit or the one who gets blown up by the counterfeit five ti…. ouch! Ahi! Aaah! Hey! St… stop!”

LL: “Uhm… now, going by the roars coming from upstairs, El Pollo Diablo is clearly still keeping the jailers and all the soldiers busy. But we can’t have much time left! We need to hurry up and go to… ”

“MADRE DE DIOS! EL POLLO DIABLO REQUIERES LIBERTAD POR TODOS LOS PRISONEROS Y AHORA EL IS COMING POR MI!”

LL: “And then… I should have made some researches about this odd phenomenon which causes people around the chicken to rave sentences in a strange hispanic language! And what is this sound? Like some large, heavy castanets…”

LCK: “Listen here, Largo! Every thime Threepwood’s head bangs agant a step, it produces a different sound! All that really has some potential! I’ll have ta try coverin’ some drums with his brains! Weave some violin strings with his slack sinews! Forge whistles with his swollen glands! And then I’ll entrust all these instruments to a band of maladjusted and violent minstrels, and enjoy all those guts screeching and cracking to some baroque polyphonic melody!”

G: “The only melody you’ll see me play will be your merry funeral hy… AHI!”

LL: “Merry funeral hype? Why should someone ever feel excited about that? But LeChuck, you… are clearly limping!”

LCK: “Yeah, yeah, but that’s nothing you can’t sort out with a good drink of propylene glycol and a loud fist fight against some mocking… ”

KA – BOOM! ...PLAF!

LL: “BY THE HERMETICISM OF HERMES TRISMEGISTUS! WHAT WAS THAT... THING... THAT JUST FELL DOWN?”

LCK: “Either someone’s just thrown away the leftovers from his colossal and disgusting roast turkey, or your improbable anthropomorphic devilled chicken has just lost his own fight for freedom and he’ s just become…. a tasty, bloody family size meat loaf!”

G: “Oh, no! Captain Blonde Beard!”

LL: “WE’VE GOT TO GET GOING!

THE SOLDIERS WILL BE ON OUR TAIL IN THE TWINKLING OF A TRITON’S EYE! GET DOWN, LECHUCK! QUICKLY!”

G: “AHI! UHI! AAAH! OUCH! YOU’LL! PAY! FOR! THIS! TOO!”

LCK: “Here we are!”

We’re at the ground floor. I drop the legs of my personal thorn in the side after having let him linger for a while over the vague ash-and-feet-fragrance on that last step. He gets up again. Dazed and fuddled, he catches sight of that colossal door riddled with handles, dials, mechanisms and levers of all sorts. Then he turns around for a while. A sorry look on his face, he spots a small corner where thick darkness drew a veil on Blonde Beard’s massacred, gutted dead body, which now lies in a filthy puddle together with cracked bones, mangled bowels, putrid organic miasmata and… uhm… what I wouldn’t give to bite into a juicy rare steak in moments like these!

LCK: “Threepwood! Don’t ya dally with that now! After years spent as the most insignificant worm, the time has come for you to be finally useful to our cause!”

G: “... cause? What cause? My slow and painful passing away, no doubt!”

LCK: “Not at all! Ya got to help us open this incomprehensible door! Largo and I have no idea how to do it! If ya help us we’ll be able ta get away from here! We’ll be safe!”

G: “Safe? Of course! Think I’m so stupid not to realize that your plan will eventually consist in you tearing out my lungs to use them like a drip mat?! But I warn you, you’ll have to throw up a good deal of bile before you can even tear a HAIR off…”

LCK: “Ohh, me sensitive colon is now trembling with fear! Come here, you! Have at it, and I’ll slit ya like a pig and have a toast with a goblet filled with yer pungent…”

“FUGITIVES FROM THE 1138 CELL! THERE ARE THREE FUGITIVES FROM THE 1138 CELL! MUSTER ALL THE SOLDIERS FOR THE EXECUTION!”

LL: “WHAT LECHUCK CLEARLY MEANT, and what I’ve been saying for some time too, is that now there’s no time for childlish skirmish between us, but we absolutely need to team up to escape from the the lair of these overblown wolves! Well, this huge gate is the only thing standing in our way to liberty, but… we have no idea how to combine all these levers and handles to open it. And that’s when you come into play.”

G: “What? And why should I know the combination which opens the door?”

LL:” Well, everyone knows that you’re some kind of genius when it comes to unravelling problems!

G: “What? Unravel? Who do you think I am, some kind of a graceful lace master?”

LL:“No, I mean… you’re a jigsaw – cracker!”

G: “But I hate those antisocial society games! Months and months spent slotting together small tesserae made of paper or human cartilage, and what for? To find yourself with a picture you already had on the cover, ready – made it and all that?”

LL: “Human cartilage? But where on earth do you buy your… ANYWAY THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT! Come on… you’re good at solving puzzles, that’s it!”

LCK: “Yeah, use this with that! Push that gimmick, close that other oddity. Pick up captain Kate Capsize.”

G: “Pick up? Who did you take me for? I don’t have a clue about how to open this what-d’yer-call-it!”

LCK: “Come on, Guybrush! Do what ya always do! Rack yer brain or I’ll have ta loudly rack some of yer…”

G: “I told you I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO… ”

CLAK!

G: “Ehi! I didn’t do anything… you just had to push it!”

LL: ” A SMALL DOOR OPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF A HUGE ONE! THAT MUST BE THE PRIVATE SOLDIERS’! LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!”

G: “Small door for private soldiers? But it doesn’t make any sen…”

” THERE THEY ARE! THEY MUST BE THE CHICKEN’S ACCOMPLICES!”

LCK: “THOSE BATTERED SOLDIERS FROM THE TRIAD ARE BACK IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING! RUN!”

Air. Wind. Freedom. The ancient smell of salt and raids, sent out from a magnificent ocean stretching out in front of us, conforted by the soft first light before sunrise.

The door opened on an immense wooden pier: there’s a colossal ship with no sails moored at the end of it.

On instinct, we all start running towards it. Or maybe I should say… Largo and Threepwood ARE running, while I… I got some serious problem! Pain. Me leg is… green, suppuratin’, broken. It throbs as if pierced by a thousand needles covered in acid. Pain. I can barely drag it. Largo and Threepwood are further and further. It be hard to be alive. But I can’t let go right now! I am…

“LOAD! AIM!”

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

I’m leaking like a ticking, bearded sieve. A bullet explodes and hits me straight in the chest! Another rips me zombie leg ta shreds. I taste the warm, salty smell of me blood risin’ up my uvula. I cough. Then I collapse like an old puppet. While I lay in a dark and red puddle, me limbs start freezing. Nothing that I can’t… can’t… give me only a second… a second… a second…

Tick tock! Tick tock…

TO BE CONTINUED

What will happen to LeChuck?

Will Guybrush and Largo manage to run away from Roca Redenciòn? Who is really Napoleon Hellbeard?

What has he got to do with the Voodoo Lady

and the Sorcerer’s Gear?

And was Digestible Dave really as indigestible as they say?

Find out about it, and keep up with the next episode!!!

Last Tales of Monkey Island

Plot, idea, writer:

Danilo “Voodoomaster” Lapegna

Thank you to:

Dave Grossman

Danilo “Iena” Puce

Michele “Mightypirate” Giardi

Cover:

Ciro “Olmo” Cangialosi

Other illustrations:

Daniele “Nemiant” Severo

Fabio “Il_Ratman” Venuto

Vito “Vitoner” Lanci

Logo:

Alessio Pianesani

This is a no-profit fan project. Every copyright is owned by Lucasarts LTD

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You can listen our Last Tales Soundtrack by Riccardo Messori on:

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