The woRLd AcCorDINg tO STiTch©

And now...Just when you thought it was safe to return to Fall's Wind

The world according to Stitch
Chapter 2.
The Umpire strikes Jack

When we left our hero he was in the middle of a bloodthirsty battle with his nemesis Doctor Octopus.
When we left Timothy Stitch he was in the middle of a dirt road with a bike horn protruding from his mouth.
Shoelaces still firmly caught in his belt buckle, Stitch lay curled up on the road in a state of shock. His oddly twisted position had drawn the attention of various passersby, but not to the point that anyone could be bothered helping him. So there young Stitch lay in some sort of trance, his life flashing before his eyes. Well to be honest, the main events of that morning flashing before his eyes. (His long-term memory had been severely damaged in a freak beaver accident when he was three). Images of him waking up at 4 a.m flickered in front of him. He remembered finding the vacuum cleaner had been left on and his marble collection had mysteriously gone missing. Then climbing a tree in Farmer McKinnon's orchard, then falling out of a tree in Farmer McKinnon's orchard, then slipping in and out of conscious in Farmer McKinnon's orchard, then climbing another tree in Farmer McKinnon's orchard, then mistaking farmer McKinnon's cricket ball for an apple and pocketing the ball only when he'd chipped a tooth and finally accepting the Nobel Prize from Humphrey Bogart for his range of cancer-fighting cheeses, then realizing he'd made that last one up ('Gee, this is a long sentence' thought Stitch, not realizing he was only making it longer by thinking this). Yes, that freak beaver accident had sure wrecked havoc with Stitch's memory (to the extent that every time he woke up he had to check the name on his underwear tag to make sure he was who he thought he was.) This often led to Stitch spending the day under the impression that he was in fact 'Calvin Klein', 'Elle' or 'Rio' (a Brazilian exchange student).
And so, there young Rio sat, dazed and confused, watching the pretty colours go past, oblivious to the fact that a new character was about to be introduced in this new paragraph.
"Well I know now," said Stitch through a mouthful of horn. "I just heard you say it."
It is a well-known fact that country villages always have a rich, retired family living in a manor somewhere, drinking wine and hunting wild game every second day.
Well not Fall's Wind. It would appear that their application to have said family somewhere in their midst was lost in the mail. In fact the closest thing the town had to someone just over the poverty line was the Sinclair's. Mr. Sinclair was a tired-looking man who would often give a large donation to the community and then just as often would ask for it back. A Grand Prix fanatic, he'd spent his earlier years betting various amounts of money at the local track. When the money ran out he started to bet his vital organs and then, after losing, he'd explain that he hadn't realized you required at least one of your kidneys to live and that the bet was off. It was at this very track that he had said hello to his future wife, a red-haired Formula One driver, and said goodbye to his pancreas, a necessity to his health and well-being.
Now, twenty years, half a liver, two fingers and a spleen later, he had gathered up what was left of his money and anatomy and moved to the village to retire. He still had a somewhat hard life however owing to the fact that Mrs. Sinclair, thanks to the wonder of car collisions, was missing something as well - a considerable number of her marbles. Even before meeting him she had something in common with young Timothy Stitch.
The locals all knew her routine. At 8:15 p.m. every night she would slip on her lilac bathing suit and go for a refreshing swim in the backyard. The only reason the locals paid any attention to this was the fact that the Sinclair family didn't own a pool.
Often the gossip topic in the Fall Inn at the end of the day was the hours Mrs. Sinclair would spend doing perfect backstroke through Mr. Sinclair's vegetable patch. Many a fragile African violet had suffered a terrible death at the hands of Mrs. Sinclair's swimming. Not to mention her extravagant diving off the imaginary diving board, which as I just explained, I won't be mentioning. This routine continued until that fatal night when Mrs. Sinclair was sucked into an imaginary pool filter near the compost heap and almost drowned. Needless to say, now days she only paddled in the shallow end amongst the begonias, so I won't say it. Although the doctor had told him not to time and time again, Mr. Sinclair had gone out that morning leaving Mrs. Sinclair at home alone. Paranoid, confused and seeing her chance to escape, Mrs. Sinclair had climbed out the bedroom window and fallen to the ground below. Luckily nothing was broken except the door-to-door salesman who had conveniently been there for her to land on. After thanking the salesman as the ambulance drove off, Mrs. Sinclair had decided to reunite herself with her love of cars by going to the neighbouring town to get back her driver's license, which had been revoked after the Great Turkey Massacre of 1989. Not realizing that driving to the testing centre would probably go against her if she wanted to renew her license, she drove through the town, past the clock tower, the Fall Inn, the bakery, the post office, the clock tower and then the Fall Inn again, before working out she was lost. The oval had been named after famous Fall's Wind cricket umpire, Marcus Square, the only member of the club who knew enough of the game that he didn't have to make up the rules as he went along. Luckily, the team captain, Felix Straw, had put a stop to this with a nasty blow to the head, meaning the team could go on playing however they wanted and Marcus was never the same again. This rule-less form of cricket, suited the 'Fall's Wind Tapeworms' just fine. They had never lost a regional match, owing to the fact that they'd never actually played one. To keep this record going they continued never actually playing, so that there was no chance of losing. Thanks to the incapacity of their umpire, who now spent most of his time tapping his head lightly on solid objects, the team could do what ever they liked. And if that included never actually playing, but keeping the club going as a front for dangerous binge drinking, so be it. (Did I mention they never actually played?)Instead of face neighbouring towns, the 11 men would split into two teams of 5 with one person playing on both sides. (This often got quite confusing when the player had to bowl to himself.) They were scheduled to play or rather not play a match later that day, but Stitch had bigger things to worry about, (not that the team not playing worried him.) Somehow tangled up into an obscure shape, was unfortunately a situation Stitch would often find himself in. Once he had got his head stuck between the bars of a large, iron gate and given that both his hands were already wedged inside in the same pickle jar at the time, he tried to release his head with the soles of his feet. Those yoga classes did come in handy after all, or at least they would have done if Stitch had bothered to go to them. Luckily a passing nun had taken pity on him. Unluckily she almost put him out of his misery with a shotgun. Now he was in another stressful predicament similar to the iron gate problem (only he hadn't been stuck here for a week yet). The sound of a car racing towards him caught Stitch's ear. Paralysed with fear, he tried to shout, but the horn in his mouth only let out an annoyed honk, so he stopped, fearing this would only provoke the driver.
Angry, disappointed and to be honest a bit peckish, Mrs. Sinclair had been driving back home from the testing centre, despite the suggestion that this was probably not a good idea, when she saw up ahead in the middle of the road a small, ragged-looking boy doing fortune cookie impressions. Suddenly another image flashed before Stitch's eyes. The fatally lethal death of his father, lying in the middle of the road at the hospital as a car came roaring towards him. What an ironic place to die. The hospital. Now this situation was looking all too familiar. The car came closer and closer, then reversed then came closer, stalled, came closer and then screeched to a halt in front of him and out jumped a tall lady with flaming, red hair and a shoe size to match.
By now Mrs. Sinclair's usual 5 o'clock paranoia had set in.
"Get in!" she screamed. "The Germans are coming!"
Stitch didn't want to be rude, so he wasn't.
"Honk" he said, immediately before discovering he had swallowed the horn in his shock. Mrs. Sinclair scooped up the pretzel-shaped Stitch and dropped him in the passenger seat of the car.
"You don't want to be sitting out there," she lectured, starting the engine. "You'll catch the plague."
"Honk" Stitch agreed, not too sure what else to do.
"You look terrible." Mrs. Sinclair noted, "Do you need help with something?"
"Honk, honk, honk, honk, honk" Stitch honked, (and it was lucky Mrs. Sinclair was fluent in honk or she wouldn't have understood.)
Ten minutes and four broken pliers later, she had removed the bike horn from it's position lodged in his esophagus.
"You're lucky I've seen some surgical procedures." she exclaimed, "Where would you be if my cousin wasn't a vet?"
"Spain?" Stitch asked uncertainly, not fully understanding the purpose of the question.
"So, what are you, a fortune cookie or a pretzel?" Mrs. Sinclair asked, noticing that both had recently been used to describe this entanglement of pudding-stained urchin sitting next to her. Stitch didn't answer as he was still trying to work out the bit about the Germans coming, twelve sentences ago.
"What are you, a slow reader as well?" Mrs. Sinclair asked.
"I don't know," said Stitch, who didn't know.
"Look, if you've got a little proverb inside, you're a fortune cookie." she explained.
She read his shirt - 'This shirt belongs to me.'
"Who's me?" she asked.
"You're you, Ma'am." Stitch answered politely, wondering if this was trick question.
"No, what's your name?"
"I'm Rio, Ma'am" Stitch answered after checking "like the underwear brand."
"But that last sentence says your name's Stitch."
"Oh yes, Ma'am - Timothy Rio Elle Calvin Klein Stitch" he explained going through his clothes drawer.
"My name is..." began Mrs. Sinclair.
There was a long silence. Then there was a shorter silence that was so close to the long one it was hard to tell when one started and the other stopped.
"Your name is...?" Stitch prompted.
"Stop prompting me!" Mrs. Sinclair screamed, shocked at Stitch's indecency. "Or I'll have you arrested."
Stitch resolved never to prompt again.
"My name's Jacqueline Sinclair, but you can call me Jack."
"But Jack is a boy's name, Ma'am." Stitch said recoiling in horror.
"So is Timothy, but you don't see me teasing you."

Stitch uncoiled.

"Good." he said
"What's good?" Jack asked

"It's good 'cause now I don't have to call you Ma'am anymore and the writer doesn't have to call you Mrs. Sinclair anymore either." explained Stitch "You've saved him eight characters every time he types Jack instead."
They had been driving for a while now and thanks to the belt/shoelace dilemma Stitch still resembled a Christmas present bow.
"Why don't you take off your belt?" Jack suggested.
Stitch removed his belt and his trousers fell down revealing two pale, bread crust legs and a pair of bright, red underwear. Could this underwear be the very thing that would make Stitch change his way of life? Or was it perhaps it was the way of life that would make Stitch change his underwear? No matter which came first it would be a crucial element to the story unraveling before us. They were just driving up to the clock tower, as Stitch, now without belt, pants, shoelaces, shirt, watchband and marble collection had finally got himself untangled. Replacing his clothing (as in putting them back in their place, not putting on new ones), he looked out the window to see the mighty Fall's Wind Tapeworms, recovering after an exciting game of uncricket, as this less restrictive version of the game had come to be known.

Felix and the cricket team always climbed up to the roof of the clock tower and got dreadfully drunk to celebrate a win and since they hadn't actually played they guessed that qualified as a reason.
"Stop the boat!" yelled Stitch.

"Do you mean car?" queried Jack.

"Yeah you can stop that too." he said jumping out and climbed up the rickety ladder to the roof.

Felix had been a close friend of Stitch's father Percy, but that wasn't his fault. Stitch had become quite close to him and never turned down a chance to frollick drunkenly with Felix after a match, or in this case after a not match.

Jack began to follow, but was walloped with a cricket bat, Marcus Square had accidentally thrown. Marcus had developed a bit of a fetish for cricket bat-throwing after the bludgeoning incident. Many an unsuspecting club member would be coming around the corner and then wake up in the Intensive Care Unit thanks to one of his cricket bats.
"I was wondering when that was going to happen." said Jack, checking for internal injuries.
"The title did kind of hint at it."

Up on the roof Stitch had discovered from a sloshed wicket-keeper who kept breaking into song that sadly the cricket team couldn't play today as they had lost their ball. Stitch couldn't help thinking he could help in some way. Like he had something he could give the team. Like there was something in his pocket that might be of some use. Reaching deep into his pocket Stitch quickly pulled out a melted chocolate bar and shared it around.

"Stitch, me boy!" said Felix through a mouthful of chocolate, beer and five cigarettes, leaning on the rusty railing. "I have something very important to tell you."

"Ever since your dear old dad died, you've been like the sister I never had..." He slurred, making Stitch blush "So I'm going to tell you the secret to eternal happiness."

Stitch sat closer, eager to hear the wisdom come forth gracefully from the old man's mouth.

Felix belched then continued. "It's something that can change your life and make you feel all warm inside. It will hold you on the cold, stormy nights and watch over you during the drowsy, summer afternoons."

"Love?" asked Stitch dreamily.

"Money." said Felix "And lots of it."

"Oh," said Stitch. "That was a bit of an anti-climax."

"I'm getting older," Felix explained, which made since given that you can't get younger "and I want you to have the fortune that I have built up and hidden away over the years."

"Where is it hidden?" Stitch asked eagerly.

Felix was about to reveal the fortune's whereabouts but instead, took a swig from his beer and toppled gracefully over the railing to his death, snagging his pants and pulling the ladder down with him.

"You didn't say where it was hidden." Stitch called to the trouserless corpse below, stating the obvious, and not realising the terrible predicament he was in. Stuck with nine drunken cricketers on the roof of a clock tower, which just happened to somehow be on fire as well. (Sorry I just added that last bit then.)

How will Stitch escape the clock tower inferno?

How will he find the fortune bequested to him?

What has Marcus Square got against Jack that warrants cricket bat abuse?

Find out in the next superfluous episode of THe woRLd AcCorDINg tO STiTch©