Saturday 2 January 2016

Saturday, January 02, 2016 -

The Spanking Adventures of Butterfly McKendrick

by Susan Thomas
Published: Oct 22, 2015
Words: 16,748
Category: fantasy
Orientation: M/F
Click HERE for further details and purchase options.
OPENING EXTRACT
Chapter 1

In which Butterfly encounters the F. I.D., meets a Greek god and gets a very sore bottom.
Butterfly McKendrick was on her way to see her Uncle Dragonfly McKendrick. Her uncle was undoubtedly the cleverest and most eccentric of anyone in a family noted for its intelligence and oddity. His many inventions had made him immensely rich but he still lived in the small house with the large garden that he and his wife Posy had bought when they first married. The house looked in need of some tender loving care because Dragonfly McKendrick simply didn't notice unpainted windows or leaking gutters. Butterfly pushed open the front door, which was never locked, and made her way through the narrow walkways which was all that was left as every conceivable space was covered in bookshelves which in turn were packed with books.

She walked into the kitchen but her aunt, a wonderful cook, shouted, "Stay out I'm making turnip soufflé."

Butterfly stayed out for she loved her aunt's turnip soufflé and went out into the garden. Much of the garden was given over to animals: there were two goats, many chickens, a few geese, two turkeys, a whole host of rabbits and a peacock. At the bottom of the garden there was a beech hedge which shielded the wooden workshop where her uncle produced the fruits of his genius. She walked in. In the centre of the workshop was the weirdest contraption she had ever seen in a long history of weird contraptions created by her uncle.

"What is that?"

"Oh hello, Butterfly. It's my latest invention... a Fiction Insertion Device, or F. I. D. for short"

"What?"

Her uncle laughed, "I don't know, Butterfly! Really, with your ability I'd have thought you capable of at least taking a guess. I'll explain. The human mind has always created stories, fables, and tales. We tend to say they are not real but what is real? Well of course it depends on your definition of reality. If we take Tabor Staskorski's definition, the reality is there, it is just in a different dimension. The problem is then how do we bridge the distance between the story and its real self. I have found how to do that. It doesn't work well with music but I may be able to solve that; art is very difficult and moving images extremely dangerous. However, anything in written fiction is ideal. My machine can insert the operator into any fiction ever written. Of course you can't do anything much, especially to famous books, because you might change the plot and that would be awful. So, for example, you can follow Oliver Twist as he walks to London or see him in court after he gets falsely accused of picking pockets but not rescue him."

"Don't be silly, Uncle Dragonfly, you can't go swanning around in Oliver Twist with that thing, someone would notice."