Dave's words Andy's Drawing

Hades, a dive in Japantown quarter

Detective Anderson – Okay Wasabi, where’s your ninja?

Boss Nakatomi – You’re wasting my time, Flamegrill. (sips mojito)

Anderson crashes into kitchen. Cook spins round holding utensils, bandana wrapped around face. Fight!

Anderson chases cook up ladders onto roof. Cook turns. 

Anderson: This is the end, Watanabe.

Cook: Watanabe?

Anderson: You heard me.

Cook: I’m not Watanabe. I’m Wanatabe (shows passport).

Anderson: …right… awkward. Sorry to trouble you…

Cook: Yes, Wanatabe… with courage of a thousand eagles. And you would never make her happy as I do…

Anderson: Wha…?

Cook metamorphoses, giant eagle decapitates Anderson. End!

Bill's words Dave's illustration

Ext. A refurbished Victorian pub.'The Courage'

Int. Dave and Kieron settle at the bar, seemingly oblivious to their surreal environment. A barmaid floats over.

Dave: um.. what do you serve?

Barmaid: We have a selection of ales, cocktails, crisps, wraps and trans-dimensional portholes.

Kieron: Its some sort of theme pub, like that Scandinavian place that serves oxygen. You should try the local speciality.

Dave scans the menu.

'I'll have a Asgard. No wait.. a Erebus please.'

The floor opens up and Dave is swallowed up into infinite nothingness. The porthole closes, leaving

Kieron and the Barmaid. There's a awkward pause.

' Ill just have a mojito, please'

Dave lands in a vast flaming zombie cavern. In front of him sits the magnificent Hades, chewing on tortured souls. Dave stands up

' Things are about to get hot...WASABI HOT!

Bill's Illustration Nicks words

Before leaving home Bill already knew that this first meeting was going to be a disaster. He squeezed a spot on his chubby little neck that spat out a putrid pus resembling wasabi. The green gunk clung to the mirror like Bill clung to his hopeless dreams.

“I am not a failure” he repeated to himself as he wrapped a bandage around the wrist that he’d tried to slash the night before.

Later he went to the pub to meet the others.

He entered the building like a man entering Hades. Tentative, but ultimately doomed.

No one else had turned up.

He approached the bar timidly and asked for a pint of Courage. The barmaid misheard and brought him an excessively over-priced Mojito. Too embarrassed to complain he stood there stiff and awkward and drank the drink that he despised almost as much as himself.

Nick's Illustration, Andrew's words

The jagged rocks cut his hands as he awkwardly scrambled up the

sheer cliff face. A wind snapped down and stung his eyes. He grabbed

the rocks while he wrapped his thin meagre clothes around himself

trying to keep warm.

He hadn’t had time to collect anything useful when he fled. He had j

ust been sitting down to an early evening mojito and sushi in the ba

r, wasabe spread lightly on a pink tuna finger, when he heard the ba

ying of blood hounds approaching.

He hadn’t looked back.

“Courage man,” he spluttered as he ploughed on. He wondered where

they were now. And hoped they were stuck in that Hades of a jungle at

the mountain’s foot, with its slicing leaves and putrid smell.

Andrew's illustration, Kieron's words

It had been about a week without that particular thought, and like those of lost love ones, you cherish every memory, scared of the prospect that one
day, you wont have the courage to visualize any of the details.
I can’t put my finger on it, but this was different like that first taste of Wasabi or the best Mojito you ever had. And the knowledge that one day that might all vanish leaves me feeling awkward. I wish I had three heads like Hades’ dog,
that way I could keep it wrapped up in one, only that, purest of…

Kierons Illustration, Andy's words

Our first finger mission...

Six words, one chosen by each of us, were selected. Then each Finger wrote a paragraph of roughly 100 words which had to include our original six. They were
Wasabi, Courage, Awkward, Hades, Mojito, Wrap
These were then passed round in a secret ballot to another finger, who must illustrate their selected novella on a sheet of 'A' for the following month.