The Return of Olilolo

"I hereby call this meeting to order!" cried Doyle, banging a large and imaginary gavel against the table. Bruce covered his ears and braced for impact, not entirely aware that the hammer which he had hallucinated into Doyle's hand was not real.

Stu nodded sincerely at Doyle's pronouncement, apparently satisfied that the meeting had, indeed, been called to order. Bruce uncovered his ears, cautiously, perhaps fearing another hammer swing.

We were seated around a table for the first official olilolo meeting of the year. Empty pie trays littered the scene, four or five deep in some places. Doyle attempted to sweep the mess aside, but the piles of rubbish toppled and scattered even further in every direction.

"Doris will get that," Doyle shrugged.

One of the trays still contained half a pie crust that landed directly on my lap. It sat there, covered in poppyseeds like a sorry pile of pastry, pathetic and defenceless, until I put it out of its misery. Did I taste a hint of rosemary on that crust? It must have been an amazing pie...

Doyle continued. "Now, who knows why I called this urgent meeting?"

"No idea," grunted Stu. "But it's about damn time."

"You told me this was strictly culinary," I frowned, searching for another scrap of pastry amongst the rubble. I wanted another hit of that rosemary.

Doyle shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Yes, well, that may have been a little ruse on my part, I'm afraid. This meeting is 50% business, 50% pie."

"I'm sorry," interrupted Bruce, "but who is Doris?"

Doris was an employee of the olilolo "empire" (as Doyle termed it), officially Doyle's assistant but effectively an overworked cleaner and housekeeper. It had once taken Doris eight days to clean the top floor of the olilolo headquarters - after the company Christmas party went slightly awry.

Several thousand fireworks had been exploded indoors; a stairwell had been coated in oil in a misguided attempt to create a "slippery slide" (three necks were broken in the process); and a troupe of circus animals had been acquired by Doyle through what he described as "quasi-legal" means.

The fiasco ended with a lion scrabbling down a fiery staircase and running onto the street where it, flaming, devoured seven children.

Doris had been fired for that incident.

"Doyle, she hasn't been around for three months," I replied. "We got rid of her."

"What? Who fired her? They're fired!" He smacked the table with his gavel and Bruce burst into tears.

"Look at this place," he continued, gesturing around him. "You wouldn't even believe this is a boardroom. In fact, I hardly recognise it. Wait. Where are we?"

We were at the local pie shop - on Doyle's invitation. The shop was famed for its menu of exotic ingredients and cringeworthy puns. The absurd ingredients were often necessitated by the owner's rigid insistence on always using the puns: his menu featured such items as "The Pienapple", "Jaelpieno Pie" and "Porcupiene Happieness".

"We're in heaven," replied Stu simply.

That, apparently, was enough for Doyle, as he pressed on with business once more.

"As you all know, I called this meeting together for a very important reason."

Stu nodded, approvingly. Bruce continued to stare at Doyle in horror. I licked another piece of poppyseed poppieseed pastry.

"Now does anyone know what that reason is? Because I have long forgotten it. I think I wrote it down on a piece of paper, but that might have been a squirrel. I'm not sure."

"Is it about the website?" prompted Bruce.

"Ah yes," said Doyle. "As you all know, the olilolo website is currently under re-reconstruction as we attempt to locate a search engine that will enable us to find a website containing wordpress templates. And they have to be free templates. I can't stress that enough."

"How is it that you're familiar with wordpress?" asked Bruce, the look of sheer terror on his face now unmistakable. "Yet you've never heard of Google?"

"Also I need a computer," added Doyle. "So far I've just been writing my blog posts on a typewriter and faxing them to the internet."

"What?" I said.

"Don't," muttered Stu beneath his breath, shaking his head slightly. "Just let him believe."

Somewhere, someone was receiving very strange messages.

"In any event," continued Doyle, "this will be our tenth new wordpress template in two years, and we've only written three articles during that time."

"And one of those articles was just an affiliate link to a now-banned dong supplement," I reminded him.

"Well we had to generate revenue somehow," replied Doyle. "And I believe the term is quasi-legal."

"No, it was definitely banned," I said, rearranging my trousers uncomfortably. "It had some awful side effects. Apparently."

"Pretending that we're all oblivious to Dave's dong issues," said Stu, "what's the plan of attack now?"

"Well they've got this pump-" I began.

"No, I mean about the website."

"Oh. That makes more sense."

"We need to generate content!" announced Bruce boldly. For a brief moment, a glimmer of confidence swept across the young man's face. We all turned to look at him, eagerly hoping for an answer to all our problems.

"Oh, did you want me to... continue?" he stuttered. "I didn't really have much more than that."

He burst into tears.

"I think we should write a wacky story," I suggested. "One with a series of implausible events featuring us as characters. Set in a ludicrous locale with larger than life characters."

"The usual, then?" said Doyle. "Those stories always run out of steam. And they end so bluntly."

At this moment we were interrupted by the owner of the establishment, an eccentric and outlandish man by the name of Mr Pierre Impie Espienosa - although he preferred that we called him by his initials.

"Buonasera! Gentlemen! How are you?!" he cried, the mixture of Italian and English difficult to understand beneath his thick African accent.

"Everything's great, Pie!" exclaimed Stu.

"It's been too long!" said Bruce.

"So it has!" the old man replied, checking his watch. "Why, it's been four hours since breakfast! Mi sei mancato molto! Where have you been?"

As Doyle began to apologise, I took in my surroundings. The pie shop was packed with young customers, as it so often was. The scent of herbs and spices wafted freely on the breeze. Colours swam before my eyes... and merged together. Something was wrong.

I turned back to Pierre Impie Espienosa and attempted to refocus my vision. 'Pie' was an Asian man, of Kiwi descent; he was currently wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt and pointing jovially at the new sign above the restaurant:

"Welcome to Dirty Hippies! Buy nine pies, get one 25% off!"

The sign was emblazoned with the flag of North Korea.

"Dirty Hippies" had always attracted a more adventurous crowd, a younger demographic who tend to wear multi-coloured clothing and smelled distinctly of herbs... was that a whiff of coriander I detected in the air?

It seemed this younger demographic was drawn specifically to the obscure and exotic ingredients used in the pies at Dirty Hippies. They were particularly drawn to something on the menu called "Lucy in the Pie", obviously a young-person reference to something I didn't fully understand.

But I'd ordered this pie for the first time today - with extremely satisfying results. Indeed, the pie had begun to "cuddle my belly from within" (the only way I can describe it) and it filled me with a sense of warmth and free-spiritedness.

At that moment, my ears began to smell the number yellow.

"Dave, are you okay mate?" asked Doyle, who had now been replaced by a hairy potato. "You don't look so well... and that's saying something, considering how you usually--"

The universe sneezed. I can't describe it any other way than that. Seventeen different colours burst into existence and they all tasted like driving.

"I... I think I'm hallucinating," I said.

"You didn't eat the Opieum, did you?" replied the potato. "The one with poppyseeds - it's laced with heroins. All the kinds."

Pierre nodded.

"My brain is vomiting colours," I said. "There's a tiger behind you on a red jet ski... you look like a root vegetable, but not the kind that I would want to eat... and Bruce and Stuey are making out. Furiously."

"Well, at least you're still seeing some things straight."

"That's not the word I would use."

Pierre reached into his pocket and extracted a small baggie of tablets. "This will calm you down," he winked, sliding it across the table surreptitiously.

I looked at the label blearily, making out a single word:

Diazepiem.

"You have a problem, Pierre." I said bluntly. "Seek therapie."

The Drug Test

The Sasquatches stood in a line, shoulder-to-shoulder, shuffling slightly. They stared timidly at the grass. Before them, an authoritative figure paced backward and forward, throwing them a dirty look once in a while, even pausing to spit on the ground angrily once or twice. He was wearing a referee's uniform.

The Sasquatches were naked.

"Is this really necess-" began Doyle, the team captain of the Mansfield Sasquatches, but he was drowned out by the referee.

"SILENCE!"

The word echoed several times and it rang in their ears for a full minute and a half.

"I think you all know why you are here," whispered the referee eventually. "There has been an outbreak of cheating in this competition, and we are determined to put a stop to it. Touch football is intended to be a clean sport."

He frowned for a moment, evaluating the nude team members before him, who were most visibly unclean.

"Drugs, gentlemen. Performance enhancing drugs. Stimulants. Amphetamines. Anabolic st-..." he paused, observing the members' physiques. "No, probably not that one. But there's got to be something..."

He handed Doyle a large bucket, twenty or thirty litres in size, and nodded.

"Uh...?" said Doyle.

The man frowned. "Your sample, please."

Doyle looked around awkwardly. They were in the middle of Field 1, with a crowd of confused onlookers scratching their heads nearby. Eventually he complied.

"Now pass it along to the next."

Doyle passed the bucket to David, who awkwardly received the bucket with one hand while using the other to cover his privates.

"Your sample, please," repeated the referee.

"What... you mean... right here?" stuttered David. "In the same bucket?"

"Yes, yes, we don't have all night. Just swirl it all together, we can't afford to drug test everyone individually."

"I'm not sure if that-"

"Just do it!"

David complied slowly, removing his trembling hand from his groin, and attempted to deliver his sample.

"I can't! I'm too nervous!" he wept.

"NOW!" roared the man, charging angrily. David urinated in fright.

The bucket was handed from member to member, who delivered samples in a surprising variety of colours.

"I think you all know there will be serious repercussions for your actions," announced the referee, picking up the bucket with one gloved hand and a moderately disgusted look on his face.

"But ref-" interjected Sam, who was struck down immediately by the man's closed fist.

"I don't want to hear your excuses!" he barked, spitting angrily in four directions at once.

"But we never took any-" began Dani, who fell victim to the referee's uppercut before she could finish.

"Lies!" he shouted. "One look at the scoreboard and we all know what happened!"

He pointed to his scorecard. 7-7. A draw.

"The Sasquatches didn't lose their last game!" he crowed happily, as if claiming victory. "A hilarious proposition, and yet here we are!"

"We can explain!" cried Sarah, but she was mowed down by a hailstorm of bullets.

"Twelve seasons!" the ref yelled. "That's how long I've seen your team fail. Week after week. Yes, you won a few games when the opposition was literally disabled, and once you even had an athletic fill-in who helped you win a game. But this time it was different. You tied fair and square."

The Sasquatches looked around at each other in surprise. Could it be... had they possibly... improved?

"No," said the referee, "I would have none of it. NONE OF IT. There is a reason for this madness, and I shall see the universe restored to its natural order."

 * * * 

One Week Later

"... dangerously elevated levels of sodium and creatinine, surprisingly high levels of glucose indicating disastrously unchecked diabetes, at least sixty different metabolites of cannabis... possible LSD usage, although it's hard to tell because some idiot mixed all the samples together..."

The doctor stood in the touch football clubhouse, reading the results of his analysis to the referee and the Sasquatches, who were seated around him. He continued:

"Cause of unusual odour remains undetermined, although the novel colour was probably due to excessive beetroot consumption."

Matthew nodded simply.

"However, there was no indication of performance enhancing drug use. In fact, the low levels of testosterone across the board is concerning. I would actually consider prescribing--"

"Alright, that's enough!" snapped the referee. "We've all heard enough. I caught the buzzwords: 'testosterone'... 'metabolites'... 'glucose'... Clearly you boys have been doing some pretty hard stuff!"

The Sasquatches hung their heads in shame. Bruce attempted to hide his bong behind his back, but the referee caught him in the act.

"Aha! Got you! What do you have to say for yourselves?"

Kristen raised her hand timidly.

"Yes?" he asked.

"We're sorry! Please don't punish--"

An arrow pierced her shoulder and she reverted to silence.

"You will not be allowed to play in the finals," the referee announced. "For this season, you will be stripped of all your points and relegated to the bottom of the ladder. I hope this teaches you all a lesson about cheating in sports."

No one spoke. They dared not remind him that they were already at the bottom of the ladder, and would never have made the finals.

The referee left the room, and the Sasquatches tended to Kristen's wounded shoulder.

"Does anyone know any girls who can play for us next week?" asked Doyle.

Tenille opened her mouth to speak. An anvil landed on her head.

The New Recruit

The Sasquatches sat in a humid, pitch-black darkness, the steady drip, drip of a leaking pipe blending rhythmically with the wheezing snores of one of its members. The smell of fried chicken, stale burger crumbs and long-discarded fast food wrappers, lingered potently in the air.

The walls rattled gently as the snoring continued, the air vibrating with anticipation. A voice spoke.

"When is she coming?"

The snoring came to an abrupt stop.

"Wha-?! Who's there?" moaned a sleepy voice.

"It's just me -- Aaron," replied the team captain, Aaron Doyle, with a depressed sigh. After eleven seasons of continued failure on the football field, he was beginning to resent the dismal attention span of his players. "Please try to stay focused for a few more min--"

The snoring resumed, ferociously drowning out the captain's voice, rattling the walls and the air with surprising force.

The remainder of the team sat in the dark room without speaking: David, occasionally delivering a silent yawn which smelled oddly of burnt fish sticks; Yongas, shifting uncomfortably in his seat to adjust something between his legs; and Sian, performing endless sets of push-ups in a woefully misguided attempt to inspire her teammates into action.

The snoring subsided.

"Is he awake again?" asked Yongas, trying to squint through the darkness in Bruce's direction. "He's not dead, is he?"

"I don't know, let me check," sighed Aaron, heaving himself up onto his feet to check on his team mate. "Oi, Brucey," he called, groping blindly through the air. "Are you okay, mate?"

He slapped the air and made contact with Kristen's face.

"Oops, sorry Dave," he said. "Nice chops though, bud."

He finally made it over to Bruce and gave him a poke. "Speak to me, buddy. You hurtin'? Was it that fifth bucket of jerky? I can't imagine five kilos of beef jerky is healthy for any man, but a bet's a bet, and you lost, remember?"

The snoring returned - a feeble sign of life.

"Good enough for me," Aaron shrugged, sitting back down on the couch and landing clumsily atop a startled and unimpressed Danielle.

"Two hundred and twenty," gasped Sian from the corner of the room, finishing her eleventh set of push-ups. "Come on, guys, get it in ya! We need to traaaiiin."

Stu merely grunted. David licked at a pile of nearby burger crumbs, cautiously assessing their edibility. The tempo of Bruce's snoring did not change.

"I thought she'd be here by now," mused Kristen, plucking self-consciously at something on her cheeks. "Did she say when she would arrive?"

Aaron shifted uncomfortably in his seat, a struggling Danielle still trapped beneath him.

"About that," he muttered, twiddling his fingers nervously. "I may have... led you on a little bit. Our newest member was not very... cooperative."

"What were her exact words?" asked someone else, the source invisible within this pitch-black room.

"Well, to be entirely truthful, it was something along the lines of... 'I would never join the Sasquatches even if you paid me a million dollars, which I know you don't have'. Naturally, I accepted her challenge, robbed a liquor store, and bribed her to attend this little meeting."

"You got a million dollars from a liquor store?"

"I... yes," stuttered Aaron, shifting more nervously than ever in his seat, a squashed Danielle hammering his back with her feeble little fists, which bounced off his body like pathetic little bouncy balls.

"Didn't a bank get robbed just last week?" continued another one of the voices in the room.

"Yeah," said another, "that bank was like three blocks from your house, Doyle. You didn't rob a bank to hire this new player... did you? She must be really good!"

David gagged in the corner of the room; it seemed his experiment with the burger crumbs had gone awry.

"I didn't rob a bank. Like I said, it was a video ezy--"

"I thought you said it was a liquor store."

"Do they even have video ezy anymore?"

"It was obviously the bank."

"No," struggled Aaron, "it was like, one of those hybrid liquor-video stores."

"That's not a thing that exists."

The light came on suddenly. Everything was illuminated: three couches, arranged in a U-shape, with a large square coffee table in the middle. Empty cardboard buckets, boxes, cartons, wrappers and cups littered the table and floor, their contents long since devoured by the hungry football team who now lay slouching around the room.

David was on the floor licking at a pile of burger crumbs, which was now revealed to be swarming with ants.

Dani had managed to grab hold of a nearby lamp, and was now forcefully whacking Doyle around the head with it in a renewed attempt to get him off her.

Sian was soon discovered doing pullups on the roof, two metres above everyone's head.

Kristen was resting her head in her hands, so that both sides of her hairy face were conveniently hidden from view.

Bruce was now standing, with meaty sweats dripping from his shirt like a torrent of rainfall.

Stu was playfully fighting an invisible foe with an imaginary lightsaber, while seated.

The location of Yongas' pants was unknown.

And another girl stood beside the light switch: Camille "Painstorm" Layt.

'Painstorm', a lovely girl in almost every way, had a reputation for sheer ruthlessness on the football field. Her eyes now glinted dangerously at the sight before her...

"What are you all doing in my house?" she asked. "At 4am in the morning?"

"Camille!" exclaimed Aaron positvely, leaping to his feet and striding over to her. He extended a hand hopefully but she did not shake it.

"I thought 4am was a weird time for a meeting..." mused Kristen.

"Yes," snapped Camille, her eyes glinting dangerously. "It is."

"Well," spluttered Aaron, dancing to his feet. "Since we're all here anyway, perhaps we could take this opportunity to discuss business."

He rubbed his hands together hopefully. Camille simply folded her arms.

"Like I said, we are prepared to offer you a generous salary of one million dollars."

Camille laughed. "Have you even seen me play?"

"No, but you'd be a million-dollar player! You'd be an instant pro."

"Paying a person one million dollars doesn't automatically make them a..." began Camille, but then she sighed. "Okay, fine. Send me the money and I'll do it."

"You will?" gasped Aaron, excitedly. "You mean it?"

"Sure," shrugged Camille, "but on two conditions: firstly, I guarantee nothing."

"Understood," nodded Aaron determinedly.

"And secondly, you must vacate my house immediately."

"I'm afraid that's going to be a deal breaker," frowned Aaron. "We've already moulded ass grooves into these couches: we're in it for the long haul."

Camille sighed. "There's a 24-hour McDonalds down the street, you know..."

"For real?" asked David, looking up from the floor, excitedly, and removing a hand from his pants. "How far away?"

"About eighty metres," shrugged Camille.

Stu rose to his feet slowly and pointed a finger angrily at his sister: "I'm afraid that's going to be a deal breaker."

"I'll drive you there," she pleaded. "I will literally drive you eighty metres down the street to McDonalds if it means you will leave my house."

The Sassies looked at one another thoughtfully. It appeared they had stumbled upon the jackpot...

* * *

Four Months Later:

"Alright team, gather round," grunted Doyle.

It was a humid night, and the final match of the season had been hard-fought and incredibly exhausting. The final score was 14-1.

The Sassies hobbled over to the sideline, panting heavily, in desperate need of water, air and beef.

"As you know, it was a difficult season for us, but at last, the horror run is over."

"I don't know," mused Stu. "It seemed fairly par for the course if you ask me."

"That's what I thought too, but according to the Guinness World Records, we now have the longest losing streak in the history of sports." 

"Any sports?"

"Any and all, according to the official wording."

"That's quite unambiguous."

"They wanted to make it very clear that we were the worst."

"I guess your plan failed, then, hey?" asked David.

"What plan?" replied Doyle.

"The plan where you robbed a bank, and paid Camille one million dollars. And then she joined the team."

"Huh?"

"And Camille bought us all new gold-plated jerseys."

"I don't remember that."

"You're wearing one right now."

"Oh. So I am. It's kind of heavy."

"Yes. In hindsight, I'm not sure gold-plated jerseys were a sound investment."

"Well, you know what they say about hindsight."

"Yes, I do, but I'd be surprised if you--"

"It gets the early worm."

"Of course it does."

The lights to the football field switched off suddenly, putting an abrupt end to the season.

The Sasquatches stood in a humid, pitch-black darkness, the steady drip, drip of fresh sweat blending rhythmically with the wheezing snores of one of its members. The promise of fried chicken and burgers wafted on the breeze. A hard-fought season of touch had come to a close. It was time to celebrate.