by Kate Janossy
Austria is a beautiful place. Rare flowers blossom in the lush Alpine meadows, lambs frolic with their kindly shepherds, everyone is polite and no-one ever breaks the speed limit. They all live happily together in their boring middle class community. But in Bad Aussee there is a curse. Once, long ago, a particularly sick and twisted devil worshipper erected a shrine to the Demon King of Festering who lives in the most flat and fetid of the Far Dimensions. And so it was decreed that the Holy Potato Hut Shrine shall be visited by recurrent infestations of creatures spawned in the flat dimension of Cmbrydgz, and they shall bring infinite shit upon Austria. They come to worship their Demon King and venerate His name - the dreaded name of EXPO.
Demons and Minor Denizens
The Goodies
It was a beautiful Summer's day again in Austria and all Hilda's guests were enjoying spending far too much money on their uneventful camping holidays, until over the horizon there appeared a big black cloud. This made the Austrians happy because it gave them something to complain about and the possibility of an exciting Alpine storm to discuss. However, this was a storm with a difference. It heralded the start of the period of constant rain when the dark spirit of EXPO descends upon Austria.
Soon shit cars began to cross the bridge between the dimensions and appeared outside the Potato Hut, spewing out their obnoxious, pissed-up occupants. Much Gösser was quaffed and gradually the foetid aroma of demons drifted towards Hilda's. The Austrians waited with dread for the demons to get bored of ranting at each other and decide that it would be fun to go and be offensive at some terrified tourists. Sure enough, it was not long before the nice campsite for normal people was invaded by horrible creatures shouting "was kostet das Frau" and "neun hundert vier und funfzen." After Rolf had chundered in their urinal a random bunch of demons decided it was time for some shagging so they went to find Heidi and Julie Andrews for some rampant exchange of bodily fluids.
So off they went to the idyllic Alpine meadows, their presence polluting the atmosphere and casting a spell of fear over all the fluffy little animals. It did not take long for them to smell out what they were after, and soon Heidi was in their power. Julie Andrews was shrieking horribly, which is not unusual but managed to attract the attention of a knight in shining armour who came galloping up on a gleaming white charger.
"Bum" thought the demons (or words to that effect).
Then came a distant thundering noise and a faint "toot toot". The demons ran away and hid because they knew that sound and it scared even them.
"That was easy" thought the knight. "Sorted! Now Heidi will be really grateful - fwoorrgh, heehee, etc." But before he could ask Heidi if she came there often, a cloud of dust zoomed over the horizon and Rhino appeared shouting "toot toot" in a particularly threatening manner. His horn was broken, which was his best bit, so he was in a foul mood.
"A charger??!" he shouted, "You call that a charger? Yooou Wot ??!! I'll show you a charger" and he instantly produced a incomprehensible circuit diagram and began to spout forth mind-numbingly tedious electronics bullshit. This was too much for Sir Knight who developed spontaneous liquefactive necrosis of the brain and died horribly. Heidi, however, survived due to being a stereotype blonde-haired shepherd girl bint with big tits. She is therefore obviously on for shagging anything but has no brain and is possibly even more tedious than Rhino in electronics mode.
Rhino then proceeded to fettle the dashing white charger which of course blew up after a few seconds. This was a bit messy since it was a horse. Heidi then ran away because girls can't cope with blood and guts, specially when it involves cruelty to animals. The demons cautiously emerged from their hiding places to find a dismembered horse and a confused Rhino. They congratulated him on his spectacular symbolic demonic gesture, and they all went off to shag some sheep (which were more attractive than Julie Andrews).
After this spot of demonic bestiality, the creatures of EXPO went to say hello to their mates in the underworld as is traditional on trips to Austria. The deep, dark and dismal holes where the beings of the underworld live never failed to impress the demons. Not only was it permanently cold and wet and appallingly squalid, but the loose chossy shit, hanging death and potential instant floods engendered feelings of dread that the demons could not hope to achieve in their own lair. Basically they were jealous, and were forced to go through occasional trips to the underworld to remind them of what they were trying to recreate on the surface and steal some of the cave beings' tricks. On the pretext of friendly curiosity, the demons penetrated gradually deeper into the lair of the cave beings, and made complicated and tedious measurements to try to understand how to create such grimness. This was no use whatsoever of course, but being immensely stupid the demons continued to go through the ordeal known as "caving" whenever they accidentally failed to drink enough beer. The cave beings knew their game of course and never gave away any of their secrets, but gave the demons occasional new "finds" to make sure they kept going down into the underworld where the beings could have great fun chucking rocks at them and shifting bits of cave around.
While the demons were in the underworld the Austrians had had a crisis emergency general meeting of the town council and associated victims. They had come up with a cunning plan. It is well known that demons and monsters cannot resist food and beer, so Hilda and Karin set about creating a meal that was so astonishingly stodgy that the demons would explode, or at least be permanently immobilised. They invited all the demons to a dinner in honour of the great EXPO and fed them this meal and copious quantities of alcohol. To their astonishment, weeks of Shorn s slops had toughened the demons' stomachs so much that they actually enjoyed the meal! To make matters worse Alehouse had arrived only that day and was happily quaffing bucketfuls of their worst fizzy lager piss.
Desperate measures were called for. They planted the idea of a food challenge in the demonic minds, and being evil creatures the demons chose the most horrific challenge imaginable - 10 Mohr im Hemd chocolate puddings. Hilda and Karin were now confident of their success. However, they had not counted on the arrival of Cake with the incredible 15 dimensional infinite capacity stomach, who with some effort put away all 10 puddings and some beer with no ill effects and saved them all from the carnage that would have ensued had anyone else attempted it. The demons left Hilda's happy, pissed, and comfortably full up but a bit disappointed at the lack of projectile vomiting.
Hilda and Karin were dismayed at their failure and now wary of underestimating the powers of EXPO. Their next tactic was to pick on the demons' weakest point - caving. They prayed to their god to send them a saviour, and sure enough he sent down to earth a son. His name was Bob and he was to be sacrificed and made to suffer to rid the world of evil. He disguised himself as a demon named Bloodworth, and prepared to suffer the ordeal of caving. This would surely end in Certain Death by Keenness but he was determined that the demons would die with him and his bravery would not be in vain.
Meanwhile Hilda set about corrupting Shorn to pollute the wondrous Lard - cure for all keen-sickness. She pointed out that slavery is not really very fair and offered him pleasures beyond his wildest dreams and a new computer (which was more exciting), then she taught him how to cook food that would free him from his chains tying him to the stove. Soon the demons began to experience the horrors of lentil, carrot and coriander slop.
It was not long before the demons decided that even the dreaded Vesta was better than lentils and headed for top camp. Here they encountered Bloodworth whose job was to keep them away from the revitalising Gösser supplies at base camp.
"Let's go caving" he cried and the demons were too stupid to resist the infectious keenness. This went on for four days continuously, after which the demons should all have died horribly. Bloodworth was puzzled, until he discovered Alehouse's secret supplies of Gösser which he had painstakingly lugged all the way across the plateau. Those who had been deprived of Gösser had long since escaped to base camp in dejected sobriety. Bloodworth realised that even divine keenness could never overcome the power of Gösser, so he escaped back to Heaven where he got a severe bollocking from his Dad.
However, Bloodworth was not a complete failure. He had managed to persuade Flash that photography would be a good way to reveal the secrets of the cave. The others thought this was a great idea, but then demons are pretty stupid and may well have confused this with another very similar word. Soon it began to dawn on them that these were not the kind of moist dark holes they had in mind, and there was a distinct lack of tits around. Before they knew it they ended up far too far down the cave, cold, knackered, bored and generally having a shit time. This almost annihilated five demons, but they just lived to rant about it.
Meanwhile at base camp, Shorn had been terrified into submission and was cooking proper lard curry slop again. However, the influence of Hilda was not completely wiped out. Her spirit remained and slowly a strange dislike of mouldy pans that smelt of piss developed among certain demons. This eventually enabled the spirit of Hilda to possess Cake and cause her to poison the pans with the dreaded disinfectant! Several demons became ill and even the beertent, source of all foetidness, became a little less grim. But not even disinfectant could destroy the true festerosity of EXPO, and the resultant ranting extravaganza was thoroughly enjoyed by all.
The beasts of EXPO all survived Hilda and Karin's petty attempts to get rid of them, but eventually these little annoyances together with their own ranting became too much. The joys of being offensive began to wear off and the demons began to misbehave. Some were seen committing crimes like washing and tidying up and urinating in toilets, and Petel the heretic dared to admit that he didn't like the EXPO song "This Corrosion", which must be played at all times as it is The Best. So says EXPO who causes all tapes to mutate into the wonderful "Floodland." The Sisters of Mercy are true children of EXPO.
Eventually they realised it was time to leave. The demons were needed in the Flat Dimension which was getting far too nice in their absence - even hordes of tourists were failing to make it sufficiently grim. So they left Austria to recover, so that they could experience the joys of trashing it again another year.
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Table of Contents for Cambridge Underground 1996
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