Simon Darkshade
Mysterious City of Gold
Here follows a most bemusing Australian parody of Apocalypse Now, with many subtle and not so subtle references to cricket and football. (Only hint = 'Slats' is Michael Slater, former Australian Test cricket opener)
I dare say someone might enjoy the true evil hilarity of it.
Apocalypse Slats
The SCG.
Sh!t.
I'm still only at the SCG.
Three days I've waited up here, padded up. Ready for a call up that never comes. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back at the MCG. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing...When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the first eleven.
But the call has come. The ACB brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I'd never want another. They wanted me to go after Colonel Slatz, one time star player - an opener - decorated, honoured and loved. He had applied to be opener in the Australian team on many occasions, and finally he'd got in. Why the f*ck did he do that? If he'd gone for the middle order he could have made captain or coach, head of the ACB or the ICC. But he chose to open for his country. And now they were sending me to "terminate his contract with extreme prejudice..."
I was to join a rag tag bunch in a boat somewhere in country Australia. Apparently Colonel Slatz had travelled too far up a river, gone mad, and was coaching young local kids who revered him as some sort of God. It was rumoured he was trading in willow - Gray Nicolls two and four scoops. It was also rumoured he had turned savage and was teaching them how to show dissent to the umpire, how to send a player off when you'd caught him (on the first bounce ), and how to sh!t-can your team mates if you got dropped from the side. The ACB had given him one more chance to come back to the fold, and if he had, they might have got him back in the team. But he'd gone from them. They played me a mobile phone call they'd intercepted. I could hear Colonel Slatz's voice: "I have a vision. It is both my dream and my nightmare. I see a short ball coming at me and I nick it to square leg for four. I mean a nick to square leg for four...?" I'd never heard a man so cut up. He was quite clearly insane.
After meeting the boat and crew we travelled up the river. The mouth of the river widened, and the water depth got so low we needed a helicopter lift. Col. Blight, a former St Kilda coach was there. His boys loved him, but he was one gung ho sonofab!tch. We flew in low out of the sun, 20 gunships. "I play Six and Out. The Lee brothers music scares the hell out of everyone - us included!" We landed, and amongst the chaos he said this: "I love the smell of Dencorub in the morning... some day I'll coach again." These were his last words to me.
It may have been my mission, but it sure was Chief Len Pascoe's boat. He ran it. The forward gunner, Rod Hogg was a surfer from WA. The mechanic, Trevor Chappell, was some guy from South Australia and the light and the heat had really put the zap on his mind and hair. That and the underarm incident.
We journeyed up the river, and the more I saw the more I wanted to confront Colonel Slatz. He'd sent a letter to his son. "Dear son, I'm afraid that both you and your mother would have been worried for not hearing from me these past weeks. But my situation here in the Australian team has become a difficult one. I've been officially accused of playing reckless shots by the ACB. The alleged shots were a hook shot off Darren Gough, a tentative prod off Wasim Akram and a full blooded drive in the nets in Adelaide where I didn't call "HEADS!" and hit Justin Langer. The charges are unjustified. In the context of the Australian team they are completely insane."
We arrived at Colonel Slatz's camp, and were greeted by a man with a mop of blonde curls. "How you goin' Cobbers, I'm an Aussie, AN AUSSIE!" He said his name was Kim Hughes, and he too appeared mad. "They think you've come to take him away."
"Who?" I asked.
"Him. Colonel Slatz. His people love him. They love his reckless shots, but it's his words. Hey, man, you don't talk to Slatz. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-batsmen in the Doug Walters classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say hello to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say do you know that Brett Lee is considered an all rounder these days?"
"He's gone insane" said Hoggy.
"F*ckin' A" said Trevor.
"Wrong! Wrong!" said Kim, choking back tears like he had done those years before at his retirement press conference, "If you could have heard the man, just two days ago, if you could have heard the man! You wouldn't call him crazy!!" His bottom lip wobbled while he looked for the words that would not come.
"I want to meet him," I said.
I was taken to a small room. It smelled like slow death in there, malaria, jockstraps, Jason Gillespie. "Are you a cricketer?" came his voice from the darkness.
"I'm an opener," I said.
"You're neither. You're a messenger boy, sent by Indian bookies to collect a pitch report." He handed me a brown paper bag. "That's for Hansie. Did they say why they were terminating my ACB contract?"
"They told me that you had gone totally insane and that your shots off your pads were unsound."
"Are my onside shots unsound?"
"I don't see any shots at all, sir." He clenched a fist and stared at me. "I remember one time, in Calcutta, it seems a million years ago. I was coaching some local kids. We left the ground and THEY had come back and told every kid to NEVER play off the back foot... I wanted to tear my teeth out, to punch Greg Blewett... but then it struck me - THE GENIUS! If I had 11 such men our problems on the subcontinent would soon be over "
I went back to the boat and spoke with Trevor. He was agitated "I used to think if I retired after an evil innings then my soul wouldn't make it to heaven. Well, f*ck. I don't care where I retire as long it ain't here. So, what you wanna do ? I'll kill the f*ck."
"No," I said, "this is something I must do."
Kim Hughes returned to me - wild eyed. He was raving. "Do you know what the man is saying? Do you? This is dialectics. Push through the offside, no maybes, no supposes, no mad pull shots -- you can't get out lbw of a short pitched delivery, you can't go out into the WACA in June, you know, without, like, you know, with no pads -- what are you going to do when you go from here to Karachi or something -- that's dialectic physics, OK? Dialectic logic is there's only hit and miss, you either hit the ball or you miss it...."
They were going to make me captain for this and I wasn't even in their f*cking first eleven any more. Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like an opener, standing up, on the front foot, playing a lusty drive, and kissing the emblem at 100. Not like some poor, wasted, bitter rag-assed renegade. Even the pitch wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway...
I hit him repeatedly with the Gray Nics four scoop. He lay back, his eyes closed and the words came out...
"The Horror.... THE HORROR!"
I dare say someone might enjoy the true evil hilarity of it.
Apocalypse Slats
The SCG.
Sh!t.
I'm still only at the SCG.
Three days I've waited up here, padded up. Ready for a call up that never comes. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back at the MCG. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing...When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the first eleven.
But the call has come. The ACB brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I'd never want another. They wanted me to go after Colonel Slatz, one time star player - an opener - decorated, honoured and loved. He had applied to be opener in the Australian team on many occasions, and finally he'd got in. Why the f*ck did he do that? If he'd gone for the middle order he could have made captain or coach, head of the ACB or the ICC. But he chose to open for his country. And now they were sending me to "terminate his contract with extreme prejudice..."
I was to join a rag tag bunch in a boat somewhere in country Australia. Apparently Colonel Slatz had travelled too far up a river, gone mad, and was coaching young local kids who revered him as some sort of God. It was rumoured he was trading in willow - Gray Nicolls two and four scoops. It was also rumoured he had turned savage and was teaching them how to show dissent to the umpire, how to send a player off when you'd caught him (on the first bounce ), and how to sh!t-can your team mates if you got dropped from the side. The ACB had given him one more chance to come back to the fold, and if he had, they might have got him back in the team. But he'd gone from them. They played me a mobile phone call they'd intercepted. I could hear Colonel Slatz's voice: "I have a vision. It is both my dream and my nightmare. I see a short ball coming at me and I nick it to square leg for four. I mean a nick to square leg for four...?" I'd never heard a man so cut up. He was quite clearly insane.
After meeting the boat and crew we travelled up the river. The mouth of the river widened, and the water depth got so low we needed a helicopter lift. Col. Blight, a former St Kilda coach was there. His boys loved him, but he was one gung ho sonofab!tch. We flew in low out of the sun, 20 gunships. "I play Six and Out. The Lee brothers music scares the hell out of everyone - us included!" We landed, and amongst the chaos he said this: "I love the smell of Dencorub in the morning... some day I'll coach again." These were his last words to me.
It may have been my mission, but it sure was Chief Len Pascoe's boat. He ran it. The forward gunner, Rod Hogg was a surfer from WA. The mechanic, Trevor Chappell, was some guy from South Australia and the light and the heat had really put the zap on his mind and hair. That and the underarm incident.
We journeyed up the river, and the more I saw the more I wanted to confront Colonel Slatz. He'd sent a letter to his son. "Dear son, I'm afraid that both you and your mother would have been worried for not hearing from me these past weeks. But my situation here in the Australian team has become a difficult one. I've been officially accused of playing reckless shots by the ACB. The alleged shots were a hook shot off Darren Gough, a tentative prod off Wasim Akram and a full blooded drive in the nets in Adelaide where I didn't call "HEADS!" and hit Justin Langer. The charges are unjustified. In the context of the Australian team they are completely insane."
We arrived at Colonel Slatz's camp, and were greeted by a man with a mop of blonde curls. "How you goin' Cobbers, I'm an Aussie, AN AUSSIE!" He said his name was Kim Hughes, and he too appeared mad. "They think you've come to take him away."
"Who?" I asked.
"Him. Colonel Slatz. His people love him. They love his reckless shots, but it's his words. Hey, man, you don't talk to Slatz. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-batsmen in the Doug Walters classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say hello to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say do you know that Brett Lee is considered an all rounder these days?"
"He's gone insane" said Hoggy.
"F*ckin' A" said Trevor.
"Wrong! Wrong!" said Kim, choking back tears like he had done those years before at his retirement press conference, "If you could have heard the man, just two days ago, if you could have heard the man! You wouldn't call him crazy!!" His bottom lip wobbled while he looked for the words that would not come.
"I want to meet him," I said.
I was taken to a small room. It smelled like slow death in there, malaria, jockstraps, Jason Gillespie. "Are you a cricketer?" came his voice from the darkness.
"I'm an opener," I said.
"You're neither. You're a messenger boy, sent by Indian bookies to collect a pitch report." He handed me a brown paper bag. "That's for Hansie. Did they say why they were terminating my ACB contract?"
"They told me that you had gone totally insane and that your shots off your pads were unsound."
"Are my onside shots unsound?"
"I don't see any shots at all, sir." He clenched a fist and stared at me. "I remember one time, in Calcutta, it seems a million years ago. I was coaching some local kids. We left the ground and THEY had come back and told every kid to NEVER play off the back foot... I wanted to tear my teeth out, to punch Greg Blewett... but then it struck me - THE GENIUS! If I had 11 such men our problems on the subcontinent would soon be over "
I went back to the boat and spoke with Trevor. He was agitated "I used to think if I retired after an evil innings then my soul wouldn't make it to heaven. Well, f*ck. I don't care where I retire as long it ain't here. So, what you wanna do ? I'll kill the f*ck."
"No," I said, "this is something I must do."
Kim Hughes returned to me - wild eyed. He was raving. "Do you know what the man is saying? Do you? This is dialectics. Push through the offside, no maybes, no supposes, no mad pull shots -- you can't get out lbw of a short pitched delivery, you can't go out into the WACA in June, you know, without, like, you know, with no pads -- what are you going to do when you go from here to Karachi or something -- that's dialectic physics, OK? Dialectic logic is there's only hit and miss, you either hit the ball or you miss it...."
They were going to make me captain for this and I wasn't even in their f*cking first eleven any more. Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like an opener, standing up, on the front foot, playing a lusty drive, and kissing the emblem at 100. Not like some poor, wasted, bitter rag-assed renegade. Even the pitch wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway...
I hit him repeatedly with the Gray Nics four scoop. He lay back, his eyes closed and the words came out...
"The Horror.... THE HORROR!"
