Bad Machinery by John Allison for January 16, 2023

So, for calibration, when Erin says this is the worst night of her life… when she was 16, she was hypnotised into marrying the headmaster, who was secretly an immortal 19th-century occultist, as part of a Satanic ritual to open a portal to Hell — because her best friend Esther, who had been the first choice, had recently made herself ineligible for the role in a caravan in Wales with The Boy they were both interested in.

When Erin’s sister and friends showed up to disrupt the ceremony, Erin, along with her erstwhile husband, was sucked through the closing portal into Hell, where she was promptly widowed by a hungry demon. As she had been evicted from the universe, everyone remaining on Earth, including her sister and parents, forgot that she had ever existed, so no rescue attempts were mounted. Stranded in Hell, she made the best of it, and, primarily through a bad attitude and schoolgirl pluck, she fought her way to the Bone Throne, defeated Robot Hitler, and for the next three years reigned over Hell as Mordawwa, Queen of the Underworld.

Eventually she got tired of this, because it turns out it isn’t actually better to reign in Hell than to be a junior reporter at the Tackleford Cormorant, and she defeated Xaffej the Indefagitable, Guardian of the Great Fiery Elevator, by tricking him into scorning her (because, as we know, Hell hath no fury like…), and returned to Earth, where still no one remembered her. Despite the inconvenience of people not being able to remember she was there unless they were looking directly at her (that effect’s faded over time, but her family and former friends still don’t remember her), she eventually secured herself a dead-end job at a dying newspaper, and that’s where we’re at now.

So, uh, Erin’s standards for the worst night of her life are pretty high.

Oh no. The bricks!

Jack, this is the worst night of your life too, or Lottie, Shauna, Mildred, Sonny and Linton’s too. Poor Phyllis deserves a hymn.

So … Jack’s plan is to throw flaming bricks at the night hero/creeper?

Mildred has a sweet nature.

Oh, that baked him good.

A dramatic finish is most entertaining, though…

The nice thing about having a bad memory is that I can’t remember what happens next, so it’s ALL new again.

By the way, I love their expressions in the last panel.

ahem

A hymn for Phyllis:

And did those wheels in ancient time, / Roll upon England’s asphalt clean: / And was the ginger Queen of Hell, / In her right-hand driver’s seat seen!

And did her headlights so bright, / Shine forth upon the street this late? / And was this car of Erin’s driven here, / To Mountbatten Gravel Pit Estate?

Bless this car of burning oil! / Bless this Fiat Panda’s tires! / Bless Phyllis: From whom smoke roils! / Bless this vehicle on fire!

She did not cease to give her all, / Nor did her motor burst into flames: / Till she had brought here Cheviot Hall, / To carry out Jack’s crazy aims!

(Apologies to William Blake, John Allison, and ELP.)

Buildings to right of them,

Buildings to left of them,

Night Creeper in front of them

Suck’d and sipp’’d;

Slurrp’d he did at the souls around,

Boldly they strode and well,

Into the jaws of Night Creeper,

Into his mouth of Hell

Strode the five.

(Apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.)

I wonder of the Dark Creeper can get filled up?