Episode Four: Turn Eleven: A Priest too Far.
A Short Distance Outside the Village of Ardglass…
Jump onto the float and defuse the feckin bomb! Ignore driver!
…Ignoring the pain of his slightly crushed foot,
Father Reilly jogs after the milk float, dramatically throws himself onto the back, and lands amongst the dozens of empty glass bottles rattling about the now half-empty milk crates. He hopes the pain in his groin is just the pain of impact, and nothing to do with the many shards of glass he suddenly seems to be lying on.
He starts looking frantically for the bomb.
It doesn’t seem to be on this part of the milk float.
Under it, perhaps?
Keep following the directions! Try to STOP BEING BURNT, and Grab Brown before he can leave me!
…"YOOOOOOUU AAAAAAAAAAAARSE!" screams
Father Fusco.
"YOU GREAT BIG FECKIN’ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARSE!"He deathgrips the steering wheel with one hand, wipes the scalding tea off his face with the other, and notices
Father Brown trying to escape both his wrath and the milk float just in time to desperately try to grab the fleeing priest’s cassock and hold him back.
…But Father Brown is naked! Father Fusco grabs hold of thin air, which is probably the best thing he could have hoped for in the circumstances, and Father Brown leaps off the milk float and throws himself in the direction of the incoming truck.
The milk float inches closer towards the truck.
It looks quite big.
Father Brown charges out and hijacks the incoming truck, attempting to crash it somewhere out of the way!
…”Death to the Engliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish!!!” shouts
Father Brown as he leaps bravely out of the milk float, the ancient battle cry of his family shooting up from the depths of his subconscious to express the life and death nature of everyday rural priesting. He looks behind him as he throws himself towards the incoming truck.
”'GO ON WITHOUUUUT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” he helpfully adds.
…The onrushing truck knocks him to the ground, smashing his legs and his arms and his liver to a paste as it drives unstoppably over him.
VALIANTLY leap onto the oncoming truck, leg pain be dammed, and tell the truck driver he's an awful sinner for interfering with Church business and will go to straight to Hell if he doesn't stop that. The gobshite.
…On the other side of the truck,
Father Lars has a little more luck. He leaps as valiantly as he can at the side door of the cab, and stands on the step in the rushing wind as he prises it open.
”Hey! You there! You awful gobshite! You’re a feckin’ sinning gobshite, you know that! You’re going straight to Hell if you don’t stop that!”The driver turns to look at the naked priest berating him from the suddenly open door of his truck and, entirely distracted, completely forgets to turn to avoid the out of control milk float hurtling towards him.
There’s a bit of a bang.
When the truck skids to a halt more than a hundred metres further down the road, the front of the cabin blown off, the window shattered, and the driver
…seriously wounded with blood pouring down his face,
Father Lars steps off the doorstep and stares uncomprehendingly at the destruction spread across what was the roundabout.
…His once immaculate hair has been ruined by the blast.
As he walks up the road towards the crater, a hand that he, through the grace of God, manages to recognise as
Father Fusco’s falls from the sky, bouncing off his naked shoulder and landing at his feet.
He picks it up, instinctively trying to pocket it in a cassock he lost long ago.
And then!
A miracle!
No more than twenty metres from the epicentre of the explosion, Father Lars comes across the
…broken and battered body of
Father Reilly, lying in a rather strange posture on the ground but clearly conscious and breathing!
”Feeeeeeeeeeeeeee-“ groans Father Reilly, breathing heavily and trying to point to the sky.
Father Lars looks up just in time to see the burnt out carcass of the milk float fall from heaven.
…He leaps out of the way!
…Father Reilly is not so lucky, and the milk float seems to emit a strangely comic whistle as it hurtles down towards him.
He is thoroughly squashed!
Father Lars falls to his knees with grief, shaking his fists at the sky.
”You bastard! You great big heartless bastard! Why is it always the best ones that get taken! They could have all been Pope one day! I’ll never forget this, Lord!! I’LL NEVER FORGET THIS!”One priest is naked! Another is naked and has burnt his groin and been crushed to death by a truck! Another priest has been blown up but was at least fully dressed! Another priest has been crushed by falling debris! One church has been burnt!
The directions don’t seem very useful now.
Father Lars 6.25
Father Brown 5.25 (RIP)
Father Fusco 2.25 (RIP)
Father Reilly 1.25 (RIP)
Well. Terribly sorry about that, GSF. You so nearly did it. You will be remembered as the nearly-highest-ever-scoring priest.
DH, sorry. You threw yourself at an oncoming truck and rolled a 1. And then a 2.
Micelus, also sorry. You would have been sacked for being the lowest placed non-dead priest anyway (unless defusing the bomb had worked).
As it is, Father Lars is the victor, and Fathers Tiruin, O’Feckerty and Errol will accompany him in the next Episode. I hope you can live up to the excellent standards set by your predecessors: I will miss them dearly.
Episode Five Ahoy!