The Dead Pirate Sketch

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And now for something completely derivative...

THE DEAD PIRATE SKETCH
by Laika Pupkino ~ 2016

In a shop call PIRATES PLUS a bored looking shopkeeper is polishing a cutlass. The bell over the front door jingles and a man wearing a long mack enters, awkwardly, trying to open and close the door while wheeling in what appears to be a pirate tied to a dolly.

“I wish to register a complaint! It's about this pirate, that I purchased not a half hour ago for our INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY celebration tonight, at this very boo-tique."

“Ah yes, the Nassau Bluebeard, what's wrong with him?”

“What's wrong with him?! He's DEAD! You sold me a dead pirate!”

“No he's not! He's just resting...”

“Just resting?! The man is room temperature and has no pulse! He's dead! Croaked! Snuffed it! Shuffled off this mortal coil! Gone to Pirate Heaven!”

“Nonsense, he's just feeling a bit peckish. He'll be right as rain after you've fed him.”

“And what am I supposed to feed a dead pirate?”

“Well brains, obviously. He is a zombie pirate.”

“A ZOMBIE PIRATE?!”

“Yes, so you see while he's not strictly alive, he's not exactly dead either.”

“No, I suppose not. But I rather fancied someone a bit more animated for my TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY party.”

“Well we can't very well stock living pirates, can we? They keep swashbuckling, and running away. And get enough brains into him and he'll be the life of your little soiree. Didn't you read the owner's manual?”

The man pulls a booklet out of his coat pocket and flips through it. “Ah yes, so I see. So where am I supposed to get human brains to feed my zombie pirate?”

“Well, if you have a chainsaw and can find somebody who's filled out an organ donor's card, that usually works. But here, I'll show you just how lively a zombie-pirate can be,” the shopkeeper says, and calls through the closed door to the back of the shop, “MR. GUMBY, WOULD YOU COME IN HERE FOR A MOMENT?!”

A loutish looking man who for some reason is wearing a straightjacket with untied sleeves dangling nearly to his ankles walks right through the rather flimsy door, shattering it.

“For the hundredth time! OPEN THE DOOR when you go through it!”

But Mr Gumby isn't really listening. He has once again injured his head, which is swaddled in a huge turban of white bandages. Flailing the long sleeves of his straitjacket, he bellows: "MY BRAAAAAAIN HURTS!”

“Really now, Mr. Gumby! That will be quite enough of that.”

Gumby clutches his head with the hands inside his floppy sleeves and screams, “MY BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN HURTS!”

“Come here, Gumby. We'll take care of that,” he says more tenderly, and when his flunky or slave or science project or whatever Mr Gumby is trots meekly over he starts unwrapping the sticking plaster from his head. When enough of it has been removed he opens Gumby's skull and yanks his rather fake looking brain out, “There, how's that?”

“Ahhhh, that's much better!” says Mr. Gumby and falls down dead on the floor.

The man in the raincoat looks rather alarmed, but gamely follows the clerk as he goes over to the dead looking pirate on the hand truck, wrenches his jaw open, stuffs the brain into it and works the jaw up and down with his hand.

The Pirate moans and stirs, straining against the ropes binding him to the hand truck, "RRRRRR!!"

“Can he talk?” asks the customer.

“Of course he can talk,” says the salesman, and says to the pirate, “Say something.”

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRR!” says the pirate.

“There you go,” says the salesman.

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRR!” says the pirate again.

“Well, enjoy your pirate! Thank you for shopping at PIRATES PLUS.” says the salesman, trying to rush the man toward the door.

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRR!” says the pirate again.

“Wait! Is that all he can say?” asks the customer.

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRR!”

“What more do you want him to say? He's a zombie pirate!”

“Well I don't know, something a pirate would say.... Yo ho ho, maybe.”

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!” says the pirate in a slightly different pitch.

The shopkeeper seems relieved by this. “There you go, he just needed to get warmed up. He'll be singing sea chanties in no time, now off with you! My lunch hour started fifteen minutes ago.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!” shouts the pirate.

“Are you sure he's capable of speech?”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAACHNIDS!” screams the pirate in terror, as giant animated black widow spiders swarm into the room and devour them all, until there are so many of them filling our field of view that the screen becomes completely black.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
.

At which point we pan back, out of the old wooden framed television the show is appearing on and into a cluttered and musty looking 1950's style English living room where a couple of transvestite housewives in frumpy dresses and ratty unkempt wigs are sitting on an overstuffed sofa pulled up very close to the TV set.

One of them leans forward and shuts off the set in disgust, and screeches at her friend in an exaggerated East London accent, “I swear, Phyllis. This show's turned to rubbish since Laika started writing for it! All she can do is recycle old gags. I miss Graham. I really do...”

“Quit yer yawpin!” her friend screeches back, “At least we get to be in this episode.”

“I don't see what we're even in for. It in't like like we get any good lines!”

“We're the transgender element in this story, obviously.”

“Well fine, we dressed up and done our screechin', can I go home now?”

They stare straight ahead for an uncomfortable thirty seconds, waiting for somebody to yell cut or something.

“This girdle's killing me,” says the one who wanted to go home.

“Well at least we didn't have to eat any Spam. I don't like Spam...”

“Oh Bugger! Why'd yeh have to say that?”

A quartet of black hooded Ninja's come sliding down into the room on ropes and start singing in robust manly voices: “SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! SPAM-SPAM-SPAM-SPAM!” while the women scream “SHUT UP! SHUT UPPPPPPP!”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
.
...Until our point of view dollies backward again, out through the room's window, revealing that the living room the two transvestite housewives are sitting in is on board a pudgy Spanish galleon, a drawing of a sailing ship actually, bobbing on a a see-sawing animated ocean, before it promptly sails over the tremendous waterfall that is the edge of the world.
.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

With sincere apologies to:
John Cleese
Eric Idle
Terry Gilliam
Terry Jones
Michael Palin
Graham Chapman

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Comments

Spam-a-lot

Reminds me of a Broadway show, "Spamalot" A musical.

Karen

ok, did i just stumble into

ok, did i just stumble into the middle of a Monty Python sketch or what.
funny

Re: "Did I just stumble..."

In celebration of INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY (September 19th - you can look it up on google), this month's writer's challenge is to write a story that includes Zombies, Ninjas, and "Pirate Spiders".

Several years ago, ERIN THE CLEVER wrote an RPG scenario where the players were facing a group of spiders on a ship armed with weapons (and using tactics) typically used by pirates. When some of the "pirate spiders appeared to be "zombie like" and started to use ninja style weapons, one of the players stopped the game and said "...We're fighting Zombie, Ninja, Spider Pirates?"

For anyone wondering about my stalled serial

laika's picture

OFF THE DEEP END, I'm busily writing some later chapters (17, 18, 19, 21, 26, 27) that I never finished, so that when I do go back and finish and post Chapter 10 I'll be able to post the whole serial on a weekly or twice weekly basis right through to the end... Sorry about the long (December? March 2017?) wait but I figure it's better to do this than a bunch of two month gaps that leave cliff hangers hanging. I'm going to start writing as soon as I post this.
~hugs and sorry for the wait, Veronica

... what, no lumberjacks? Oh

... what, no lumberjacks? Oh wait, now we know what they were doing out of the woods- they were watching the telly! ;)

I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime

You should always

Sammi's picture

.... Expect the 'Spiders Inquisition'.


"REMEMBER, No matter where you go, There you are."

Sammi xxx

nobody expect the Spiders

nobody expect the Spiders Inquisition!

I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime

LOL

erin's picture

Need I say more? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink?

Hugs and thanks,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

One apology was missing.

The readers. It's traditional to apologize for especially well crafted puns.

This story was great and just the thing to get me smiling in the morning. Thanks.

Fun

That was silly enough that a colonel could have interrupted it and shut it down.

Dead Pirate

I like it
Now for something entirely different!
Next the Lumberjack ?


ELIZA

She's Not The Messiah

joannebarbarella's picture

She's just a very naughty girl! I don't know where you get the energy or the inspiration, Ronni.

Ow!

Now my brain hurts.

LOL. For any youngsters who might be confused as to what's going on here, go download some Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes from your favorite pirate video site.

Any Idea...

Daphne Xu's picture

Any idea how I went from reading this story and its comments, to having a song called "Dunderbeck" echo through my brain?

-- Daphne Xu

-- Try saying freefloating three times rapidly.

Owwww

Andrea Lena's picture

My brain hurts. ❤️

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena