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The Purloined Princess: Chapter Sixteen

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

In Which I Throw Somebody Out Of A Window And Then Get Beaten Up

Impetuous, I leapt from Alfonso’s back and began to sprint to the city gates. I heard Selladore call out for me, somewhere far behind, as though in another world. All that mattered now was Astra.

With the grace of a sunbeam I raced betwixt the baffled guards, who could only turn and call out to me in vain. I lighted over the city streets, unable to think of anything but my beautiful wife. The city was but a blur. I shouldered my way through the throng of peasants and followed signs for the cathedral, readying myself for the fight of my life. I could hear the church bells!

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The Purloined Princess: Chapter Eight

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In Which Battle Breaks Out And I Get Ever So Slightly Carried Away

The cannonball burst through the ship’s hull sending splinters the size of bananas stinging through the air, pinged neatly through a bewildered crewmember’s torso, and came to rest in a collection of grain sacks. The newly disembowelled pirate glanced down at the gaping hole in his stomach, murmured something inconsequential, and collapsed backwards into a collection of pots and pans.

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The Purloined Princess: Chapter Four

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In Which We Cross The Desert And I Go Temporarily Bonkers

We spent the next evening in the wizard’s clearing, figuring that we’d already been doomed once so what the hell difference did it make. The next morning we set out early after a breakfast of delicious sausages (which Margaret did not approve of one bit) and an entire wheel of cheese, which we devoured in about fifteen minutes and had us all gaseous and bloated for the whole morning on the woodland trail.

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The Berlin Diaries – Spoken Word, Finally!

/ Dan Hackett / 1 Comment

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Oi you lot, guess what.

No wait, don’t guess, because there’s no point, because I’m going to tell you in around a hundred and fifty words’ time, and anyway you lack the means to actually respond to me beyond yelling at your laptop screen and, though it certainly tickles me to imagine you getting all red faced hollering at a small plastic oblong, in the end t’would be only a waste of both your time and mine, although I suppose I’ve already wasted my time by writing this – and wasted yours by making you read it – and so basically, what I really want to say is: I am deeply sorry for ever starting this sentence which is, to be frank, so lengthy as to be obscene, and I wouldn’t at all blame you if you logged off your computer right now and went for a lie down rather than read the rest of this god-forsaken shit-heap of an article. Continue reading →

Travelling Back In Time To Break My Father’s Nose, or, The Weirdest Story I Have Ever Written

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Do you think you could beat your father in a fight? What about when he was in his prime? My uncle asked this very question at my father’s birthday dinner last weekend, and my father, without a hint of irony or humour, gazed straight into my eyes and told me he would ‘massacre’ me, even now. He’s 59 years old with a hernia and a beer gut, I am 25. The hubris. This simply won’t stand. Something must be done.

I am going to break your nose, old man. Not now, not today, while you’re old and feeble and your best years are behind you. There’d be no satisfaction in that, there’d be no challenge. No, father, I’m going to go back to the 1980’s, I’m going to find you, and I’m going to make you wish I’d never been born. Continue reading →