Stories From The Head

Destroying The Ekka Plaster was getting PRE-TTY sick and tired of the way people treated him. Everywhere he went people cheered and applauded, spoke to him about interesting stuff, handed him presents, candy, even money sometimes. He hated it. But his mother, Pjæggo, loved all the attention and praise bestowed upon her son. Plaster was, after all, the manufacturer of The Ekka-Producer, a machine that produced Ekka. Not only that, he’d also been given the difficult assignment of inventing a machine which DESTROYED Ekka, seeing as Ekka was the most harmful product ever produced. Plaster hated his mother for loving him, and, being the custom in Plaster’s family, he ruined her life by spreading the rumour that she was not a virgin anymore. At first, people didn’t believe him, but when he pointed to the fact that his father had been notorious for “doing it” with women, they accepted Pjæggo’s non-existing virginity, and banished her from society. This gave Plaster the freedom he needed to produce the Ekka-Remover, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He knew what he had to do: He had to travel. After packing his suitcase, he sat down and waited for something to happen. “Hmmmm....nothing” he said out loud, all alone in his enormous bathroom. (Incidentally, the bathroom was the biggest room in the house, leaving almost no space at all to sleep, eat, watch boxing-matches, help starving hamsters, kill the starving hamsters, operate on them with glowing wool-mittens, contact the authorities pretending to be a terrorist fighting for young dragons’ right NOT to breathe fire, use a blender for sexual purposes, or listen to the radio. It did, however give you the opportunity to take amazingly long showers, and if that isn’t our purpose in life, what is?) “I wish my mother was here” he whispered. Pjæggo’s occupation before her banishment, had been as a travel agent, and Plaster hadn’t paid attention when she lectured him on the art of travelling. He could remember something about a set of rules, often referred to as “The 5 rules”. “THINK, GODDAMMIT, THINK” he shouted. Then for about thirteen days, he did just that. He thought. “Rule # 1: Leave home” he suddenly whispered. That was it! He’d remembered the first rule of travelling. And before you could say “Hey you! You with the hat. Yes, you. Come here! I want to share something with you. You see, I own a cat. It is a nice cat, fluffy and kind. Anyway, the cat has run away, and I want you to find it for me. You have? Well give it back. Oh, thank you. BYE THEN!”, Plaster had left the house. Standing in his garden, he didn’t really feel like his travels were getting him anywhere. “Rule # 2...rule # 2...” He couldn’t remember rule # 2. “Just as well” he thought, seeing as rule # 3 was “Always ignore rule # 2. Rule # 4 and 5 were easy. “Find means of transportation” and “Convince driver of means of transportation that he will be severely injured if he doesn’t transport means of transportation out of whichever country means of transportation is currently located”. (Some people argue that there should be a rule # 4,5 which says “Enter means of transportation”, because people travelling the world using “The 5 Rules” usually end up watching the means of transportation leaving the country while they themselves are left standing in queue, and then complaining to the authorities that they can’t understand why their travels hadn’t started. This opinion was considered dangerous, and people who uttered in public were shot). Plaster entered the boat situated between his garden and his tiny tool shed (he knew about rule # 4,5, as his mother had been one of the founders of the “Rule # 4,5 Gang”. Plaster would later read in a newspaper that Pjæggo had been shot spreading subversive information about travelling to a young boy). Now all he needed was some water to get the boat moving, and he’d be on his way. He telegraphed a local butcher-shop, and received 3 pints of water the next day. This was it. He was travelling. The first thing Plaster did was visit his uncle Hassemjølk. He ran a large corporation of young dragons, fighting for the right NOT to breathe fire. Their primary slogan was “No fire! No fire!”, and they were well on their way to becoming the second largest anti fire-breathing corporation in the valley they lived in. After two days living with the dragons, Plaster was getting tired of travelling. He wanted to get home to his wonderful bathroom to enjoy a long, cold shower, and then watch a boxing match. But he knew he couldn’t leave. Not yet. He had to retrieve the instructions for the Ekka-Remover. He went to see an old man who, of course, knew the location of the instructions: Bagdad. Plaster found an aeroplane, which he entered (carefully employing the 4,5. rule of travelling), and threatened to nail the driver’s testicles to the floor. Before long, Plaster was in Bagdad. He chose not to see the sights (The Temple of Life, The Cable Car, The Monument Of Wesserham, The Temple of Death, The Gigantic Wunderben and The Egg-Like Stone From Oldervika), and concentrated of finding the instructions. He met a young girl named Inninnipp, whom he married, and together they visited The Temple Of Hunger, where the instructions to the Ekka-Remover were located. They looked something like this:

All Plaster needed now was a good nights sleep, and in the morning, after satisfying Inninnipp’s needs, he would produce The Ekka-Remover. During the night, however, something terrible happened. Plaster turned into his brother Kempikvækk! This would not have been such a terrible thing (Kempikvækk was beautiful), if it hadn’t been for the fact that Kempikvækk was famous for NOT producing things. Several horrible things happened in the hours that followed: Inninnipp divorced Kempikvækk, the government passed a law which stated that young dragons could not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES stop breathing fire, and the world overflowed with Ekka. The only place that was unaffected by the Ekka was...Yes, you guessed it: Bagdad...

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