1.
Daniel
Loligo was sad about the move; for he was a Loligo Vulgaris or a common
European squid, The Mediterranean Sea was his home and now his mother had moved
them right across the Atlantic Ocean where the common species of squid is the Illex
illecebrosus, bunch of short fin suckers thought
Daniel. They may be called Shortfin Squids but they are considerably larger
than the European squid. Daniel himself was only 40 centimetres long and at age
18 months out of a maximum 3 year lifespan Daniel would grow no more than
another two centimetres, the Illex’s grew to over 60cm despite having a shorter
lifespan and so poor Daniel felt afraid of his new classmates.
Until he
noticed a beautiful female and she gave him the eye, by that I mean she changed
the position of her lens to meet his (human’s change the shape of their lens to
focus on an object.) He walked over to her, she was wearing a cheerleader’s
uniform and in all eight arms she held her water resistant pom-poms, “Hi,” said
Daniel, hoping that she wasn’t a Semelparous organism like some species of
squid (meaning they only bonk once in their entire life and normally right at
the end of their lifespan, what a sad bunch of frigid organisms,) “What’s your
name?”
“Ali Gills,” she shyly beamed back at him,
“are you new around here?”
“Yeah my mum
and I just moved from the Mediterranean,” replied Daniel.
Just then a
large Illex shouted from
the other end of the water polo park, “ALI!”
She jumped,
“oh, I’ve got to go, sorry,” she spoke so softly and nervously, got up and
whirled off to the young male squid. Daniel turned away but just as he did so
he saw the male give an evil stare.
As he moved
away the squid swam up to him, “Hey small prawn, what do you think you’re doing
talking to my girl?”
“Johnny!”
yelled the Ali, “please don’t hurt him!”
“Sorry mate,
I didn’t kno…..” Daniel started but before he had time to finish what he said Johnny
had raised his arms, and began to beat his fins. Suddenly he lunges forwards
and wrestles Daniel to the ground in a Kung-Fu-come-squid type manner. Squid’s
cannot throw a punch but they certainly know how to fight. Daniel suspected
that Johnny had brushed over some eggs because he doubted that Ali’s reproductive
glands were ready to produce a chemical known as Beta MSP yet. Female squids coat their eggs with this
chemical produced from their sexual organs and if a bloke brushes past they
become very hostile and a bit edgy. It just so happens that male squids tend to
be attracted to the eggs, it’s the squid equivalent of a good night down the
pub.
“You on the
Beta MSP’s or what?” shouted Daniel, raising himself on six of his legs and
raising another two in the air.
Johnny
laughed and swam off, “leave the girl alone prawn!” Kicking him back down
before he left. Poor Daniel could see starfish hovering around his head.
2.
Daniel was
both hurt and embarrassed and reeled back to his rock where his mum was hanging
some washing out on the line, she noticed his stress, he could clearly be seen
whereas normally his chromatophores (pigment and light reflecting organelles)
enable Daniel to change colour to suit his surroundings. “What is wrong?” she
asked.
“I hate it
here! That is what, I hate it here, why did we have to move from the
Mediterranean?” he bawled as he swam under the rock and hid his shame.
“The
fishermen were hunting us so much, we were virtually becoming extinct,”
explained his mum. This wasn’t true; the European Squids are in ample supply.
However the people of the Mediterranean had a taste for squid so the chances of
them landing on a plate somewhere in Andalucía were very likely.
“That’s a
chance I’m willing to take!” yelled Daniel and stormed off.
Suddenly his
mother noticed an old Japanese Flying squid standing quietly in the doorway; he
had many ringed markings around the back of his head which told them he was
old. He was very small and lightweight, “Hi,” said Daniel’s mum.
He spoke with
a quiet Oriental accent, “I am the janitor; my name is Mr Todarodes I have come
to fix the air flow system in your rock.”
“Oh yes, err
do come in, we’ve been having a lot of bubbles coming through,” she noted that
he was watching the bad behaviour of her son and sighed, “Don’t worry about
him, he’s 18 months old, you know, typical teenagers,” she sighed.
He came in,
he looked upset, she guessed he was too low in the ocean, the Todarodes
Pacificus, or Japanese Flying Squid favoured the upper layers of the water and
although favoured more cooler waters than the surface of the Pacific here it
must have seemed freezing for him. Daniel finally came out from under the sand
he buried his face into but was still angry with his mum, noting Mr Todarodes
he held off arguing with her and swam off, she called after him, “Daniel!” but
it was no use.
The next day
he spotted Ali Gill again and she came over to apologise, “that’s ok, yeah I’m
alright,” he told her.
“Johnny is
not my boyfriend anymore, I mean he was, but I left him…..” she quirked up.
Daniel seemed happy with this but when Johnny noticed them talking he came
over. Some squid-like karate moves put Daniel down to the sand again; Johnny
shouted down to him, “if I find you talking to my girl again I’ll make calamari
out of you!” Little did any of them realise but the janitor Mr Todarodes was
hiding behind some seaweed, watching them through the school fence.
Daniel
decided he needed to learn karate, so he went to visit a school of martial
arts, he swam in through the door and looked around, lots of young squids were
chanting “We are the Illex illecebrosus; toughest Ommastrephidae in the
Atlantic, no retreat no surrender!” while doing punches in unison. Daniel was
unsure about joining but when one young squid turned and looked at him with an
evil smile he left quickly, it was Johnny and his whole gang were there. Daniel
knew he could not join there and so he swam home depressed.
Johnny and
his gang followed him and cornered him off just near his home and they
addressed him, “Oi, prawn, what do you think you’re doing, think you can do
karate do you?” quipped Johnny causing his gang to laugh.
Daniel told
them to go away but they began to take turns bullying him, kicking him and
wrestling him to the sandy seabed. Daniel knew he was in a bad way, they would
finish him off when suddenly Mr Todarodes appeared, “Stop!” he ordered and they
all looked at the frail old flying squid and laughed, “Or what?” one asked. Mr
Todarodes flew over to the little illecebrosus, taking him out with a single
tentacle, wrapping his tentacle around him he used him to propel himself over
to the others, in seconds each of his arms had panelled the other gang members,
smashing them to the seabed. Shocked and afraid they all got up and swam for
their lives.
Mr Todarodes
held out one of his eight arms and helped Daniel up, “thanks Mr Todarodes,”
said Daniel, just as shocked as the others but pleased to see him.
“That is
fine Daniel-son, are you okay?” he replied, as he said this he waved his
tentacle over Daniel’s hurt arm and the pain magically went away.
“Yeah I
think so, thanks but I could have taken them if you hadn’t come along,” he
uselessly pointed out to which Mr Todarodes grinned at and began to walk back
to his shell. “Hey, don’t laugh,” Said Daniel and swam after him, thinking
about it he continued, “Oh, ok, probably not. Say, how did you do that, I mean,
wow, like that was amazing…hey, could you teach me karate?”
“No,” said
Mr Todarodes and went into his shell.
“Please,”
pleaded Daniel and repeated it, as annoying teenagers have a tendency to do,
until he had no choice but to agree. “Be here tomorrow and we will see,” said
Mr Todarodes. Jumping for joy Daniel thanked him and whisked away home, he was
the happiest cephalopod this side of the North Atlantic Drift.
3.
Mr Todarodes
lived in an upturned conch at the end of the apartment block of stones, Daniel
swam up to the shell and looked about but he could not see him. He was anxious
to get training, hoping by the end of the day he would be pulling off deadly
karate chops and round houses. “Mr Todarodes!” he called to no effect and so he
repeated himself more than once.
He looked
inside the shell, Mr Todarodes hushed him; he was sitting on the sand holding a
pair of chopsticks in the air with one hand, some minnows swam about him and he
was trying to catch one in the chopsticks, he missed and growled. The
concentration on his face told Daniel to be quiet as he tried again to catch
one but failed. “Blast it!” he said, giving up.
“Have you
ever caught one before?” asked an intrigued Daniel.
“Yes
Daniel-son……” He replied to which Daniel looked impressed until he continued,
“…but only with a net.”
“I’ve come
for the training, you know, the training Mr Todarodes?”
“Yes,” he
simply said and swam over to the corner where his car was parked. I say car but
it was more like a submarine convertible covered in barnacles and whelks. “You;
clean this car,” he said.
Daniel
looked upset, “what?”
“Clean the
whelks off the car,” he ordered. Whelks is the common name applied to various
kinds of sea-snail, many sea molluscs species are merely mistaken for whelks,
the true whelk is known as a Buccinidae. However the whelks surrounding Mr
Todarode’s car was the variety Nucella lapillus, more commonly known as the Dog
Whelk or Atlantic Dogwinkle, although Mr Todarodes often described them as
“blasted dogs!” These whelks had a modified toothed chitinous structure called
a radula which acts like a drill to bore holes in the shells of barnacles and
suck out their pulp insides, faster than a kid with an ice-pop. Seeing as the
car was made out of barnacles Mr Todarodes considered the things a pest and
threat to the very surface of his vehicle. Daniel looked upset but
never-the-less got to work by trying to pull the whelks off the barnacles but
did not get very far.
“NO!”
shouted Mr Todarodes, sweeping a tentacle over the car, “like this; whelk on,
whelk off….see?”
“Ok Mr
Todarodes, whelk on, whelk off,” he said and went about using the method shown
to get all the whelks off his car. When he had finished Mr Todarodes did not
even thank him and Daniel went back home in what can only be described as, a
teenage strop.
The next day
he came back, hoping this time he would be shown some karate moves, however Mr
Todarodes only directed him to the fence surrounding the conch, it was old and
beginning to get tatty. “This fence needs to be varnished,” instructed Mr
Todarodes. Daniel sighed and picked up a paintbrush. “No!” yelled Mr Todarodes
and held his own belly towards the fence, not from the front mind, oh no, you
are thinking of humans again, no, Mr Todarodes holds his belly from the back
and opens up his anus. “Ewe, easy mate!” suggests Daniel.
“Like this!”
says Mr Todarodes and Daniel can hardly watch as he sprays his ink-sac from his
hind gut, almost pure melanin it can be squirted with its proximity as accurate
as Leonardo Da Vinci with a paint brush. Daniel takes a quick peek hoping his
master is not displaying his anus any longer and sees that he is not; he is
pointing at the fence with his fourth arm, “Now,” he orders, “ink the fence!”
Daniel half-heartedly
does his chore, he inks the fence from top to bottom then he goes home. The
next day though Daniel is sure that he has done enough chores to begin his
training but Mr Todarodes orders him to “Ink the fence!”
“But I have
done that!” yelled Daniel.
Mr Todarodes points to the other side of the
fence, “not this side Daniel-son,” he informs.
Poor Daniel
sees red and shouts at the top of his voice, “Are you having a laugh mate, I’ve
cleaned the whelks off your car, I’ve inked your fence, I was supposed to be
learning karate Mr Todarodes but you have just been using me as your skivvy,
this isn’t bob-a-fucking-job week y’know!” And with that he goes to storm off.
Mr Todarodes
yells him back in the sternest of voices yet, “Daniel-Son, come back!”
“What?”
asked Daniel, turning to face him.
“Whelk on,
whelk off,” he said, and Daniel sighed, swimming over to the car.
“Not there,
here!” he said, pointing to where they were standing, Daniel sighed again and
did the action like he was pretending to take the whelk off.
“HEY-YA!”
shouted Mr Todarodes, kicking an arm at him. Daniel was amazed; he had blocked
it with his move.
“Now, ink
the fence!” ordered Mr Todarodes and yet again Daniel blocked the kick coming
at him harder and faster. Ripples in the water went in all directions as his
master sent a barrage of blows towards Daniel and he blocked them all with
faster reactions. Being that the squid’s arms are attached to its head as
opposed to its body, just like Mr Tickle, this lightning hand-to-eye
coordination is actually normal behaviour but Daniel is a teenager and normal
behaviour in any species in that period of their lives is beyond hope really.
“Wow!” said
Daniel, he was amazed.
“Your
training begins tomorrow,” Mr Todarodes told him.
Daniel went
to leave. Unlike many Cephalopods squids do not have external shells; they have
a gladius, or a chitinized internal shell however Daniel, like many of his
friends supported wearing one on their head as a fashion statement (it’s all a
bit silly really but you try telling these kids, they never listen) and so he
picked up his hat and suddenly thought of something he had to tell his master.
“Hey Mr Todarodes, I’ve had an idea, we could do one where I hang my shell on a
hook, you know, shell on, shell off
kind of thing, what about that?”
“No,”
replied Mr Todarodes, “I think that’s enough, we’ll leave that to Jackie Clam
for the parody of the remake.”
4.
Daniel was
feeling better about himself, so much more confident as he trained everyday
with Mr Todarodes he plucked up the courage to ask Ali out on a date. She was
delighted and so Mr Todarodes allowed Daniel-son the use of his car. Mr
Todarodes thought it would be good for Daniel to ease the worry of the karate
tournament that he had accidently signed his apprentice up for when he paid a
visit to the evil karate school that Johnny and his mates attended, he thought
he was just signing him up for a free prize draw to win an automatic barnacle
removal kit.
Daniel was
nervous of the date; she seemed to really like him. Man, he was glad he wasn’t
a shallow water species of squid that had a hectocotylus, in which instead of
his manhood he has one of his arms specialized to store spermatophores and
transfer them to the female. Structurally, hectocotyli are muscular hydrostats.
Depending on the species, the male may use it merely to store and transfer
sperm to the female, or he may wrench it off and present it to the female.
Daniel didn’t relish the idea of this wrenching an arm off malarkey and the
rumour that went around the school playground back in the Med put him off the
idea of any hanky-panky up till the point he was old enough to realise that he
wasn’t a shallow-water squid at all. Even dirty magazines for the shallow water
species had to have “beware when wrenching,” warnings on them.
No matter
how much he told himself he wasn’t a shallow-water squid rather a deep sea type
of Cephalopod he couldn’t shake the notion of the wrench. “Are you okay?” she
softly asked him as they embraced each other squashed in the backseats of Mr
Todarodes car, man there was no room to swing a catfish in there.
“Yeah, I
guess so,” he replied.
“You know
you don’t have to do this tournament if you don’t want to, Johnny is tough.”
This made
him all the more certain that he had to fight, to prove himself to her but he
did not say this, just continued to kiss her her under the gills, then across
her mantle. She had a beautiful mantle. Then he felt her caress his underside,
he had no reason to be concerned, I mean he was no Onykia ingens (otherwise
known as a Greater Hooked Squid for reasons that will become clear before the
close of this lengthy parentheses section for this Subantarctic species are
rather well endowed. When erect, the penis may be as long as the mantle, head
and arms combined, they are undeniably “hung like a sea-donkey, if indisputably
such an animal exists.) Mind you, all deep water squid have the greatest known
penis length relative to body size of all mobile animals, second in the entire
animal kingdom only to certain sessile barnacles, another good reason for Mr
Todarodes to hate those barnacle fuckers. To add to his confidence that she
would be impressed by his manhood we must remember that the actor playing the
part of Daniel, Ralph Minno was of Italian descent. Ali Gill shrieked with
delight (despite the scene being edited from the final cut, but hey this is the
book, EL James watch out mollusc sex is the new bondage.)
From thence
forward they were in love, but Mr Todarodes was now keen to make him put his
lustful thoughts to one side and continue his training, copying a sideways move
and pinch from a neighbourly crab. However one day when Daniel went to his
training session he found an empty bottle of fish oil lying on the seabed and
heard the destructive noise of bashing shells inside. He swam in cautiously to
see Mr Todarodes smashing his car to pieces, little bits of barnacle were
flying off, “take that you big cocked bastards!” he was yelling.
Daniel
reeled up to him and Mr Todarodes shows him a photo of a beautiful young female
Japanese flying squid, “wow, is that your wife?” Daniel asks.
“Yes,” he
whimpered “today, it should have been our anniversary, wha wha wha!”
“What
happened to her?”
“One day we
went for a romantic swim, too close to shore, a fisherman’s net caught her,
whisked he away from me. I swam for my life to the quayside where there was a
restaurant that backed right up to the sea, from there I could see the people
eating, I jumped up and that is when I saw her, she was lying on a bed of
noodles……dressed in spring onion and oyster sauce! Wha, wha, wha!”
“Oh my, I am
sorry,” Daniel looked again at the photo, “hey, she does look tasty though….”
“WHA, WHA,
WHA, WHA, WHA, WHA, WHA!”
“Huh? Oh, sorry, sorry, I meant she looks
beautiful, in the photo like.” He tried to patch his statement up but knew it
was too late, he swam out and Mr Todarodes told him there would be no training
today. Daniel thought cool, I can go home
and study my new issue of “shallow water babes,” complete with warning
messages.
5.
It was the
day of the tournament, that morning Ali was riding her seahorse but she came to
watch later on. Daniel strode inside not knowing what to expect, he hoped Mr
Todarodes would be up on the routine but he confessed he knew no more than
Daniel, “but this is my first time at a karate tournament,” pleaded Daniel.
“Me too
Daniel-son,” replied Mr Todarodes, it did not give him much reassurance.
The hall was
packed, lots of squid celebrities in attendance, Squid Rock was performing a
warm-up set with his heavily plagiarised tune, “All Summer Long,” (kettle,
black Mr Author??)
The most
talked about appearance was from the famous actor Squidward Tentacles from the
US hit soap opera, “SpongeBob SquarePants.” He paraded about draped in
expensive seashells with an entourage of sexy mermaids and puffing on a joint
of top quality seaweed, keen to point out to everyone that the creator of the
show is in fact a marine biologist and didn’t just copy facts from Wikipedia.
Someone gave
Daniel the low down on the rules and a Cuttlefish called him over for the first
match, he shouted “Squids in!” (a joke that will be wasted on those not from
the UK, that is why I left in the rather poor quality Kid Rock gag, you got to
keep those Americans happy.)
The
cuttlefish was a master of martial arts, a monk of the shoalin temple that
would bravely lay down his life for the honour of his beliefs, the fact that
after his death his bone would be shoved into the bars of a cage and used as a
calcium-rich dietary supplement for a budgerigar while an old lady peered into
the cage pointlessly chanting “who’s a pretty boy then?” did not register in
his mind.
Daniel and his
first opponent squared up. Daniel took on his first fight and won, feeding on
the glory of that moment he went onto triumph all other matches and made it to
the semi-finals; so did Johnny.
The
semi-finals came, Johnny won his and Daniel’s opponent was Johnny’s friend from
the same karate school, conveniently. His sensei instructed him to break his
knee with an illegal move, “but sensei,” the boy protested.
“Don’t
argue,” ordered the master.
“But sensei,
squids are invertebrate, we don’t have knees!” he explained.
“Just do
it!” he demanded and the boy went back to the fight, he flew a punch directly
into Daniel’s arm and the crowd gasped as the crack could be heard and not
believed. Daniel cowed over in pain and was escorted off to see the
doctor. The boy was automatically
disqualified. Daniel was through to the final but the doctor told him he could
not continue.
“Do that
magic shit,” asked Daniel to Mr Todarodes, desperate to continue.
“I cannot,
it would against the rules….” concluded Mr Todarodes.
“Please!”
Daniel pleaded, knowing his pride was in shatters, his revenge had not been
completed but mostly because his newfound girlfriend was watching and he really
wanted to get her in the ink-sack. In turn Mr Todarodes had learned about
friendship and also, to bend the rules slightly, after all he contemplated; they
were breaking the rules, so cod knows
we should too. So he rubbed the arm of Daniel and he came back out in true
Hollywood fashion to a blaze of cheers from the crowd. But slightly annoyed
looks from Johnny and the sensei.
The
Cuttlefish asked quietly if he could continue and Daniel bravely nodded. He
then announced that the fight would continue and both Johnny and Daniel stepped
into the ring. A few moves into the round and it’s now clear that Johnny has
the advantage, Daniel is protecting the leg. Johnny is pulled up by his naughty
instructor, “sweep the leg,” he orders.
“But
Sensei….”
“Are you
deaf?”
“But….”
“No buts get
on and do it!”
“But Sensei,
you really need to study the anatomy of a squid…..”
“I said no
arguing….” His master was now pushing him back into the ring, “Sweep the leg!”
Squids doesn’t have legs, they have
eight limbs that are commonly referred to as arms, and two longer ones which
are tentacles, thought
Johnny, my Sensei is a doughnut, he’s not
following this story at all; I mean it’s factual and that….So, what limb do I
sweep, and I haven’t even got a broom?
Whilst Johnny was thinking this Daniel had moved into his
crab pose, on the side with all his arms in the air. Johnny thought no more of
it and knew he had no choice but to do as his master asks. He haphazardly flew
at Daniel and with the perfect timing Daniel launched out and pinched the bully
right on the mantle, sending him spinning over and crash landing into the
rocks, unconscious. The crowd went wild and screamed Daniel’s name, Ali was
flushed with admiration and attraction, Mr Todarodes was impressed and proud of
his student, Daniel was overjoyed to have his revenge served and the readers of
this story were overwhelmed with relief that this story is coming to a close
and they can go back and check some gossip and look at their mates baby photos
on Facebook.
Daniel stood
admiring the crowd and much to his Sensei’s disgrace Johnny took the trophy off
the master of ceremonies and presented it to Daniel, “You’re alright Loligo,
good match!” he said, all was forgiven and the ocean was still once again.
Until a big net suddenly swooped over the whole tournament hall and it was
pulled out of the sea by two white bearded men in blue uniforms and silly blue
hats, “Arrgh, there be good calamari tonight skipper!” one yelled and the other
laughed.
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