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Copyright © 2013 Darrin Mason

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or

transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by copyright law.

Published worldwide by Philanthrium Press.

www.amazon.com/author/darrinjmason

CCHHAAPPTTEERR OONNEE

Son of a BANG! Son of a BOOM!

One by one they fell, their tiny bodies riddled with bullets. Dorothy

leaped over them and ran behind the house. Screw the yellow brick road.

The Wicked Witch of the West looked down from her broom. “I’ll get you

yet, Dorothy,” she said, waving her automatic rifle in the air.

Goddam it. All Dorothy had done was drop her house on top of the

Wicked Witch of the fucking East. She didn’t mean to. It’s not like she

drove the thing there. The wind picked it up and . . . ka-POW! That was

the end of that. Now the Wicked Witch of the West was taking pot shots

at her?

She looked out from behind the house. Seven little munchkins lay dead

on the ground. Four more were critically injured. The mayor of

Munchkinland was one of those injured. He raised his head which was

covered in blood and looked at her. “Get . . . Glinda.” Coughing, he

gasped for breath. Blood began to run from the corner of his mouth like

a river. Tears welled in Dorothy’s eyes. The mayor’s head dropped to the

ground. His eyes closed and he stopped breathing. Dorothy’s heart

missed a beat. She began to cry. She didn’t want to. She wanted to be at

home with her friends drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. But she

wasn’t with her friends. She was in a strange land surrounded by strange

people. She didn’t want to cry. But she did. Like a baby. But she didn’t

want to. She was just a little girl from Kansas, after all. Aunty Em, Aunty

Em. Yeah, Aunty Em who closed the trapdoor before Dorothy got there.

Aunty fuckin’ Em indeed.

Dorothy jumped up and ran, skipping this way and that as one bullet

after another whizzed by. Soon she was in a field of corn. She stopped

and looked around. There were cobs of corn as far as the eye could see. A

bullet whizzed by and tore a cob of corn off its stalk. It caused Dorothy to

near-on shit herself. She ran as fast as she could. Soon she could see a

man standing in the distance. She ran toward him, calling out to him for

help. He didn’t hear her. Another bullet whizzed by. She kept running

and kept yelling. Still the man didn’t hear her.

“What are you fuckin’ deaf?” she screamed. A bullet scraped her arm.

Blood trickled from the wound. Her arm felt like it was on fire. She kept

on running and she reached the man at last. She grabbed his arm to turn

him around. But it wasn’t a man. It was a scarecrow. It looked at her

with sad eyes.

“If I only had a brain,” it said, “I would know how to get the fuck off this

stake so I can run with you.” A bullet slammed into its neck, tearing a

hole in it. Straw dropped to the ground. The scarecrow looked at

Dorothy. “Run like the wind little girl.” Its eyes closed, and it was dead.

Dorothy looked up. There she was, the Wicked Witch of the West, on her

broomstick, with her finger on the trigger and a smile on her face. The

Wicked Witch was wearing a pair of rugby slippers. She had taken them

from her sister’s cold, dead feet. The Wicked Witch of the East had been

a great player in her time, playing more than fifty Tests for the Land of

Oz until a fucking house fell on her and ended not only her life but a

fucking great career. The Wicked Witch of the West pulled the trigger.

Click. Click, click, fucking click. Run like the wind little girl, indeed.

Dorothy ran, deep into a forest. Things went bump, things went boo. A

lion leaped out in front of her. GROWWWWWWWL. Dorothy wet her

pants. The lion fell back on the ground, laughing. Dorothy stepped back.

The lion saw her move and jumped to its feet. It bared its teeth which

shone like knife blades. Dorothy took another step back. The lion

stepped forward. “Please don’t hurt me,” Dorothy said.

“Please don’t hurt me!” a woman cackled. “Hahahahahahaha!”

Dorothy looked up. There she was. Again. The Wicked Witch of the

West. And this time she had a friend. A munchkin. The munchkin had a

noose around its neck. The other end of the rope was tied to the Witch’s

broomstick. The Witch pushed the munchkin and it fell forward toward

the ground. The rope reached its full length and the noose tightened

around the munchkin’s neck, breaking it and almost taking off its head.

The lion took Dorothy in its arms and bounded away, leaving a dead

munchkin hanging from the end of a rope tied to a broomstick on which

sat a woman whose sole intention was to get revenge on the girl who

killed her sister.

EENNDD OOFF SSAAMMPPLLEE

AABBOOUUTT TTHHEE AAUUTTHHOORR

Darrin Mason has worked much of his

adult life as a freelance cartoonist (he is an

Australian Cartoon Award winner)

whose work has appeared in a number of

Australian newspapers and magazines

(People magazine and The Truth

newspaper to name but two) and as a

producer at 4BC radio in Brisbane,

Australia. Throughout his life, he has had

the good fortune of meeting and picking the brains of such notables as

Vicki Wilson (former Australian netball captain), Patrick McNicholl

(multi-millionaire businessman and television actor), Michael Perlin

(director and producer of the hit metaphysical film 3 Magic Words), and

any number of Australian politicians from both sides of the political

fence. Throughout his career as a cartoonist he also met and studied at

close quarters the works of Gary Clark (Swamp comic strip), Malcolm

McGookin (The Sunday Mail in Brisbane, Australia), and the late

James Kemsley (Ginger Meggs comic strip). In his time as a producer

at 4BC he was fortunate enough to have met and learned from the likes

of Greg Cary (whose Morning radio show is syndicated throughout

Queensland, Australia) and guests too numerous to mention who were

and still are specialists in their fields of endeavour. Most important of

all, he is a fan of Batman (the 1960s TV version, the late 1980s/early

1990s Michael Keaton version, and the Christopher Nolan/Christian

Bale trilogy. You can forget the rest). As the Metallica song goes, nothing

else matters.

You can purchase the full version of

TTHHEE WWIICCKKEEDD WWIITTCCHH OOFF TTHHEE WWEESSTT

MMUUNNCCHHKKIINN KKIILLLLEERR

from Darrin’s Amazon author page

www.amazon.com/author/darrinjmason