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The Lion, the Witch, the Water Closet, the Pointy Sticks, the Beavers, the Archduke Ferdinand, and the Other Things that Happened

By Bertha Darnrash

Prologue

There are certain characters in this story. Characters that spend a great deal of sentences running about, figuring things out, but mostly making a huge mess of things. Of the few people who do not appear to be the results of eating too soon before bedtime, we have four children who talk in British accents and have varying reactions to confusing or often misleading situations. The last name of these four siblings is Parsley. Parsley, as you know, is a green plant found in corny restaurants whose sole purpose is decoration, because if you tried to eat the stuff, you would soon wonder how vegetarians can live with themselves eating such bitter stuff, not to mention the fact the green always gets caught between your teeth.

One of the positive aspects that I'm sure will pander to you about the four siblings is that almost none of them almost never had bits of green stuck between their teeth, and as far as I can recall overlooking my notes, they certainly get very little green stuck between their teeth over the course of this story. Nevertheless, their last name was Parsley. Their first names were not, of course, Parsley, but they were all different, which may seem confusing and daunting at first to most readers, but is actually helpful, as there are times when the fact there are four different people comes as useful knowledge in following the roughly contrived plot.

According to the law of primogeniture, I shall introduce the first-born male first. His name is Pickle. A pickle is a cucumber that has been soaked in brine. It, like parsley, is also green, although it is much better tasting than parsley. You may be wondering why this child's name was Pickle. Shame on you. It is not a nice thing to make fun of a boy for having a girl's name. The decision of Pickle's name was left up to his father, who happened to be a cucumber farmer and pickle crafter. He was adept at pickling all sorts of things, from cucumbers to deviled eggs to small lawn ornaments. The only word he knew, however, was "pickle", and so when he was handed the birth certificate, he politely said "Pickle" in thanks and signed in the name his child would bear throughout his life. His wife decided to name the rest of the children herself.

In order to help the reader differentiate between male and female, I have taken the liberty of listing the second male character next. This may become extremely confusing and difficult to comprehend, because the oldest female child was older than he was, and so he was actually the third-born child of the family. Bear with me for just this moment. This boy's name was Edna. You may find this silly. I don't find it silly at all. Edna may be uncommon, but it is a perfectly nice name for a boy. Edna was scrawny, short, and otherwise known as the "grumpy" one. He had a poor temperament, which is perfectly inexcusable, no matter how many public loos your sister had locked you in, or how many times your older brother has used you for a footstool, or how many times your younger sister has vomited on your expensive clothing at your school recital. Still, Edna's siblings cared for him dearly, as all families everywhere do.

If you recall from earlier on in the story, Pickle was the eldest child, and Edna was the third oldest. Because of the fact that there were four children, this also made Edna the second youngest, which also made Pickle the fourth youngest. Edna's elder sister was the third youngest as well as second oldest, although please keep in mind that there is only one of her. Her name, I must inform you, is somewhat inpronouncable, and nobody ever seems to hear it properly. I believe it begins with the letter "S", or perhaps the letter "J", they both sound similar. Luckily for you, I have access to public records, and after I finished sifting through our dreary files, I came across the name Soopar Parsley. I am assuming that Soopar is this second oldest child. Either that or the third youngest. All you really need to know is that she is terribly sensible, a word which means "doesn't talk much, and when she does she's usually saying there's no hope".

In order to balance things out, the Parsleys decided to have another girl. This meant that their four children were formed of two of each flavor. You may seem it bizarre that their parents would be able to even things out so simply, but the fact of the matter is that the male carries the determining factor, and is required to fill out a bubble sheet prior to conception. Conception is a big word which means "the high point of a film". Unfortunately for Mr. and Mrs. Parsley (at least I think they were married) they were unable to choose at that point, after having three children, to make their second daughter be the first oldest or the third youngest, although to tell you the truth, they did not actually mind very much. Therefore, little Little became the fourth oldest child of the four. Her name was Little because when she was born, her father looked at her mother, and her mother looked at her three previous children who had been alive for a few years by now, and were perplexed that Little was not nearly as tall as they all were. So that way, in order to help give her a head start in school, they named her Little. Allow me to explain. Little's parents figured that if they named her Little, Little would be able to recall her name and thus differentiate between big and little and be much more advanced than the other students in measuring height.

After severely depreciating their bank account and raising their insurance rates, the Parsley parents were forced to move into a little house in Flanglorp, a small village outside of Wales. When Archduke Ferdinand was out for a walk with his wife and his two children Lennon and Kennedy, he remarked to his wife as he walked past the Parsley's house "I sure could do with a nice garlicy pickle right about now." At this point, Mr. Parsley, who could never give up his hobby of brining pickles, removed a particularly smooth pickle from the brine, which, due to its lubrication, flew from his hand with such ease that it picked up a great deal of speed and pierced the Archduke Ferdinand in quite a lethal spot.

This is not to say that pickles are bad. On the contrary, pickles can be quite delicious, as I myself have clearly stated. The moral of the story is that too much of something is usually too much. In this case, Archduke Ferdinand had too much pickle piercing his lung, and it was far too much. It does no good to blame Mr. Parsley too much either, as I hope I have explained properly and not too much, the entire incident was a complete accident, and because there were too much politics going on in Europe at the time, nobody had the idea to look too much into the incident, and believed that Ferdinand had indeed been assassinated, and such a thing was too much to bear. In an instant, Archduke Ferdinand was too much deceased.

All of a sudden, war broke out.

War is something that people never seem to enjoy too much, particularly the part about loved ones getting viciously and disgustingly killed, which seems to perplex the collective minds of government, bizarrely enough. One could very well state that there is a communication gap between a government and its citizens, regardless of the government, although foreign governments (read as: not yours) do not seem to be even dimly aware of this basic concept and feel that a government and its citizens are homogenized, meaning one and the same. It's interesting to note how such a generalizing notion is present among such diversity.

Because of this communication gap, governments are misinformed, and believe that people actually enjoy war. After all, people enjoy rugby and football, which are both very similar to war, especially when the fans get bored and fight each other. Perhaps you could write a letter to your government saying "Dear Sir or Madam, I would very much like to abstain from participation in your next war, if that is at all perfectly dandy with you." However, Mr. Pickle, as you may recall, only knew the word "Pickle" and so was not so adept at crafting such an eloquent letter. Thus, he had to get called to war.

If you've ever seen war movies, such as Lord of the Rings, which is a war movie with a bunch of contrived subplots and computer graphics wars, or Braveheart, which is a "chick flick" war because of the massive amount of screen time focused on the main character's massive pectoral muscles, then you have probably been extremely bored in your lifetime. Interestingly enough, this story also contains much about wars and contrived subplots, but on the plus side, contains very little about short hairy men and naked hairy men, and so I am hoping to bore you to amusement with a story about four children instead who have good taste in fashion and have not even begun to grow unsightly body hair. After all, these children hardly have green sprigs of parsley caught between their teeth.

It has recently come to my editor's attention that this story seems to not be going off to a roaring start. The truth of the matter is, I only mean to explain my motives in not following Mr. Pickle's experiences, as not only is war extremely violent, it can also be quite boring after a while. Therefore, I have not taken any care in researching his war experiences, as not only are records extremely incomplete from before a decade ago, I don't really care all that much for mustard gas. Mustard, however, is very delicious, and may go with pickles on sandwiches.

Chapter 1

Bombings are extremely unpleasant, which is another facet of war that people seem to be extremely displeased with.