James Blond - Licensed to Drill
So I met up with my contact at the Casino Royale. It was Lola – the beautiful spy who loved me. She handed me a pack of cigarettes. I recognised the brand immediately – it was Doversnickerovs. She said they’d come from Russia with love. I should have realised the dame would double-cross me… it blew up in my face and I died. From then on I started to be careful – you only live twice, and I’d just used up my first.
Originally published Here
The name’s Blond – James Blond. I work on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, though I originally worked as a Carpenter – licensed to drill. I had been assigned to track down two evil criminal masterminds – Blowfish, head of an organisation called SEPTUM, and a rich madman called GoldDigit. He was also the Man With The Golden Gum – after chewing it he had the ability to turn people into gold with a single touch. He once touched his eye accidentally after chewing the gum – now he has a goldeneye. I found the second criminal easily – a trail of golden statues is easy to follow.
“Ah, Mr Blond, you have found me!” he said.
“Yes,” I said. Then there was silence. He didn’t think I was much of a conversationalist. He was right. He fell asleep. I asked my American colleague, Flex Lightning, to wake him. Flex attached him to a whisk and turned it on. “Noooooooo!” I cried, “You moron! I meant waken, not whirred!”
While he’d been whirring, GoldDigit had been secretly chewing his gum. I recognised the signs – he kept reaching out to touch us and turn us into gold. It worked on Flex. He made a beautiful statue. I held up a “Hands Off!” sign – GoldDigit was defeated. However, I hadn’t accounted for his secret weapon – a mutated cat with eight limbs. Octopussy. The cat had been bitten by a spider once and was now called Doc Ock. The beast drew nearer. “Drop your trousers!” it purred. I was terrified. “Doctor, no!” I cried. In desperation, I grabbed some water and threw at the cat. It didn’t like it. I defeated it completely by throwing a coin covered in a sticky food substance at it. I never got it back – I miss honey penny. I shot both GoldDigit and OctoPussy – live and let die, as I always say.
While working on the case of Blowfish, a sudden thought came to me – it was like being hit by a thunderbolt. I had been looking at a map of the earth, but then I realised that the world is not enough – Blowfish was not on our planet. He was a keen horticulturist as well as astronomer, and thus his latest project – the moonraker – seemed the most likely location for his whereabouts. The project had not been successful so far – there was nothing much to rake on the moon.
Flex turned up again. “I thought you were dead!” I screamed. “Honestly, you scared the living daylights out of me!” He smiled. “I was ready for GoldDigit – I had my Gold Repulsing Suit on. It turned me back to normal after a few hour – you’d already blasted them both and left. I think I’ll die another day…”
We hopped on a space shuttle, as you do, and went to the moon. Blowfish was there to meet us. We were captured, but he didn’t kill us straight away.
We engaged in a battle of wits. “Never say never again!” he said. “Never again!” said I. He didn’t like that. Lola turned up – she’d been working for him all along. “I’ve got something for your eyes only” she said to me, pouting. She slipped off her dress and was wearing only a white bikini and holding a shell provocatively. I didn’t even know that a shell could be held provocatively, but somehow she managed it.
However, I wasn’t to be fooled again – I shot her out into space before anyone realised what was happening. This maddened Blowfish even more. He had me tied up and placed in a pan, and lit a fire underneath me. Sweating, I hopped from one foot to the other as the pan got hotter. Soon some olive oil was added to the pan and began to splatter hot oil on fiercely. Some of it hit my skin – it burned. Now I now how frazzled eggs feel. All this time I refused to co-operate. Blowfish gazed at me serenely, rubbing his fins together. He was an evil animal loving genius – he was a fish, and he’d turned me into a parakeet.
“So…” I began, “what’s the plan here? Do you expect me to squawk?”
“No, Mr Blond,” replied Blowfish, “I expect you to fry!”
Flex piped up “you’re wrong, Blowfish, Mr Blond, him diamond!”
Blowfish was bemused. “So?”
“Diamonds are forever! There’ll be no frying tonight!”
Distracted by this stupidity, Blowfish and his cohorts failed to notice that I’d managed to wriggle out of my bond and jump out of the frying pan. Unfortunately I’d jumped straight into the fire. It hurt. “You idiot!” cried Flex, “look at what you’ve done to your suit!”
Blowfish went for his end game – he called in a killer robot. “This, gentleman, is the future,” he said, “which is why I’ve named him Tomorrow”.
I snarled and got my patented Killer Robot Killer out of an inside pocket of my suit jacket. “It’ll be dead soon enough, Blowfish, as will you!”
He laughed, a deep, evil, fishy laugh. “Dead? Dead?!? Mr Blond, surely you know that Tomorrow never dies!”
“Oh yeah… oops”
Tomorrow fired a round of lased blasts, grenades, and bullets in my direction. After the smoke cleared, I stood up, completely unscathed. Blowfish couldn’t believe his eyes. “What happened?!? How are you still alive?????”
“I ducked,” I replied. Blowfish’s fatal mistake was that he’d had extras in mind, who simply stand there and get killed, not heroes who are protected by guile, skill, cunning, talent, ability, bravery, hi-tech gadgetry, and improbable plot twists.
Tomorrow was confused by this turn of events and blew up. I shot Blowfish and everyone else. Flex frowned. “Do you actually have a license to kill?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, “But I do have a hotel room with a view to a kill.” Flex thought about this. “That’s just stupid” he commented. I agreed. Then I shot him. American side-kicks are rarely a good thing.
A young blond damsel walked into the room wearing a slinky black swimming costume. “What’s all the noise about?” she demanded, “I’m trying to sleep!” I looked at her. “Are you single?” I asked. “I think so” she said. I wondered if she was one of the good guys. Because she was female, I decided she must be. “How do we get out of here?” I asked, “this place is going to self-destruct in two minutes.” “Why?” she asked. “I think it’s something to do with Tomorrow exploding. Or Blowfish dying. Or something – it’s mainly just to add dramatic effect.” I wondered why she was wearing a slinky black swimming costume to sleep in – but it looked nice, so I made no comment.
Right on cue, a big display with "90 seconds to self-destruct” appeared on the ceiling. We both gazed up at it, admiring the artistry of the numbers. "85 seconds to self-destruct.” It was really cool how they looked modern but classical at the same time. "80 seconds to self-destruct”. I took her hand. She asked me if I was a stranger in paradise. I told her we’d better go.
We ran for 30 seconds. Then we asked each other what we were running to. “Oh yeah,” she said, “I remember now – there’s an escape capsule in the docking bay.”
“Perfect,” I said, “does it have a bed?”
"50 seconds to self-destruct”
We ran.
"40 seconds to self-destruct”
“Which way?”
She pointed back the way we’d just come. “That way.”
“Then what are we doing running this way?”
”I was following you.”
“But… you’re the one who knows where to go!”
“Yes, but you’re the big, macho hero, and I’m only a mere pathetic woman simply here to look pretty and make you look brave and heroic, and possibly do stupid things that you know you shouldn’t which will results in the needless deaths of hundreds but you won’t mind as long as I’m okay.”
“Er… yes, that’s true actually, and you do look very pretty.”
She batted her eyelids at me coyly. “Really? You think so?”
"20 seconds to self-destruct”
“Yes, but we really should be going. How far?”
“About 400 yards up there.”
“We’ll never make it!”
We ran as fast as we could, ran for our lives. Not quite halfway through we heard "10 seconds to self-destruct”
“We’ll never make it!” she screamed.
"9"
"8"
"7"
"6"
"5"
"4"
"3"
"2"
“We’ve still got a hundred yards to go, we’re not going to make it, we’re going to die!!!” she cried.
This was where experience came in. “Don’t worry, it always hangs on ׀” for at least 3 or 4 seconds, 1 will take 5 seconds or more, and zero can take a week.”
“Really? Wow… you are such an amazing guy…”
“Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooone”
“You’re right, that one took a few seconds on its own. Look, we’ve reached it.”
“Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
“How do we start this thing?!?”
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
“I think we press this button marked [START ESCAPE]”
“eeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
“I’ve pressed it, now it’s asking me to confirm whether this is really the option I wanted!”
“Well confirm it then!!!”
“rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooo”
The escape capsule blasted off just in time. Not that I was expecting anything different.
“So…” she said, “what do we do now?”
I yawned – this was all getting to be so old-hat to me. “Well, I somehow manage to get a message to M, we miraculously get picked up from wherever it is we go, and in the meantime… you know, just generally make love.”
“Oh right. Okay then.”
Camera pans out as two heads disappear beneath the covers (yes, this escape capsule has a bed…)
The call is somehow made.
The rescue in deep space is miraculously carried out.
No-one realises that they should have actually died from oxygen deprivation hours before being picked up.
The young blond is never seen again, but Mr Blond came back for innumerable sequels.
Written by CaptainD (writer, poet, reviewer, general weirdo)