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Doing time, part II

August 01 2024

Time traveller McHaggis is serving time, arrested under draconian laws. As he plots an escape, he bickers with fellow inmates and struggles with prison guards.
Screenplay by Chris Sampson

Previously: McHaggis was imprisoned due to new laws enabling the police to arrest anyone who “looks like they’ve slept rough” and/or “smells excessively”. As our man had just returned from medieval times, he fitted both descriptions. Part one of this story threw us into a strange scene, with McHaggis conversing with fellow inmates the Count of Monte Cristo, the Discount of Monte Cristo, the Miscount of Monte Cristo and, finally, the C*nt of Monte Cristo. The group’s arguing was interrupted by no-nonsense guard Crufts, who brings news of fresh draconian policy. Now read on…

McHaggis:
Who elected you spokesman, C*nt?

C*nt: Shut it, McHaggis! Crufts is right! You are a big loony! And a knob-end!

Crufts: If I might get back to my exposition? Now where was I? Oh yes: the powers that be have decided that instead of waiting for people to commit crimes and then trying to catch the culprit, from now on, everyone will be put in jail, and only let out if their appeals find them innocent.

[Shocked gasps from the cons.]

McHaggis: Everyone? You mean, everyone in Britain is to be jailed?

Crufts: Well, when I say everyone, I mean BAME types: gays, LGBTQPR’s or whatever they’re calling themselves this week! You know, the preferred pronoun brigade: blacks, Asians, anyone who’s got a bit of a suntan or who looks like he might have slept rough or votes Labour or Green. They’re bound to be guilty of something, if not now then eventually, so why wait for them to commit felonies before locking ‘em up?

McHaggis: That’s the absurd reasoning of racists and backwards Daily Mail/Express readers!

Crufts: Thanks! I didn’t think you’d approve!

McHaggis: I bloody well don’t!

C*nt: Does anyone else think that this opening scene has gone on far too long?  Isn’t it time to write “Fade to:” and cut to the next scene?

FADE TO:

II. EXT.  OUTSIDE PUB. DAY.

[Several drinkers and smokers huddle round their pints and ciggies outside a pub. Suddenly, a Victorian Temperance man arrives, with mutton chop sideburns, on a penny-farthing and takes a blunderbuss out of his jacket.]

Temperance man: Eat lead, mother-farquars! This’ll teach you to drink alcohol!

[He blasts the drinkers and smokers with his gun, then cycles off unsteadily, his drive-by complete.]

Survivor: Gasp! Another Temperance Movement drive-by! Summon the constabulary! Aargh!

[Survivor will have to change his name, for he has expired; dead of his wounds.]

To be continued in the next issue…

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