By Kirsten Tona  

Once upon a very weird time, in a galaxy far far away thank god, there lived two men: Goodfella Blakfella and Prince Sticksie Treeplace.

The reason Prince Sticksie was a prince, was that his ancestors had come to Goodfella’s land and stolen it all—raping the women, murdering the babies, and putting chains around the necks and ankles of the men who totes deserved it because they had a different eye colour. Apparently this kind of behaviour was considered perfectly acceptable in the land from whence Sticksie’s ancestors had come; they had made in their own image a God Who obligingly gave them dominion over the beasts of the field, all the fertile lands, and most of the people they inconveniently ran into who were already occupying said lands.

According to their laws and religious tomes, inconvenient people (especially those with eyes of a different colour) were not people at all and could therefore be abused and ravaged with impunity, so that’s what they did to Goodfellas’ so-called “people”. They then installed themselves as Kings and began lecturing Goodfella’s non-people about the savagery of the ancient Goodfella ways, such as how appalling it was to spear someone once for a bad act and have done with it, as opposed to locking them in a box for many many many years which cost the taxpayer many many many bucks and made the locked-box-people sad and mad and unsafe for release. And then they released them. This was civilised. Punishment befitting the crime was not and they went to some lengths to show Goodfellas “people” that was the case, mostly by locking them in little boxes.

They called this process “Civilising the Natives”.

Prince Sticksie’s God approved of Civilising the Natives with as much violence, brutality, and malice aforethought as necessary on the one condition that the Natives in question had a different eye colour from the Civilisers. This was how you could easily tell the Civilisers from the Non-people, by their eye colour. As Prince Sticksie’s ancestors had red eyes and Goodfella’s ancestors’ were purple, they Civilised the fuck out of them until there were very few left, and those that were left bore marks of trauma so severe it was still traumatising their descendants in Goodfella’s time. But, you know, they had purple eyes so really they only had themselves to blame.

At the time of which we speak, Prince Sticksie‚ having inherited Goodfella Blakfella’s land from his red-eyed granduncle Prince Stickster III, was committed to the noble task of gentle custodianship of the land, and care and compassion for the Natives, whose ancestors had been there a hell of a lot longer his had but obviously had no care or compassion for it because they hadn’t dug it all up. Thus this Red-eyed noble custodianship and compassion mostly took the form of digging the land up and shipping it off to another country to keep it safe from the savage Natives. Thereby protecting the savage Natives from the evils of money, by ensuring they didn’t have any. Because, as everybody knows, money is very very very bad for Natives though just perfectly fabulous for red-eyed mining billionaires.

For this selfless behaviour Prince Sticksie was widely lauded and given medals, mining leases, and access to the forums where the major decisions about the country were made, where he advocated passionately for the rights of the purple-eyed Non-peoples not to be spoiled by wealth or bewildered by the complexities of managing the lands their ancestors had managed with ease and grace for tens of thousands of years prior to the advent of the red-eyed princes.

The purple-eyed peoples were very relieved and grateful to Prince Sticksie for his kindness in speaking on their behalf, he told the country’s decision-makers, who applauded him and gave him more titles and mining leases and cupcakes.

This pleased Sticksie enormously as there was nothing he liked more than adulation and cupcakes. His mother had not liked him very much so he had a deep need for such things.

There was only one fly in the ointment.

Goodfella Blakfella and his unruly gang of purple-eyed thugs had managed to get hold of a book detailing the Laws by which the red-eyed people governed the land.

At first, Sticksie was not bothered by this, if anything, he though it rather adorable that they were pretending they could read.

Problem was, it turned out they could read.

Not to worry, Sticksie said, even if they can kind of make out the words they’ll never understand the content, why, he barely understood it himself!! haha.

Problem was, it turned out, not only could they read but they could understand the Laws, better than he did. Haha.

Sticksie gritted his teeth and reassured his shareholders that the purple-eyed Natives were, after all, stone-age savages, and were probably just pretending to understand the Red-eyed Law books, egged on no doubt by the untrustworthy, trouble-making, Green-eyed people who were the red-eyed peoples mortal enemies.

He offered to test this theory by inundating Goodfella and the other Natives with an unprecedented slew of Law cases, designed to sap their will and empty their coffers. “We can keep this going for years,” he told the shareholders, “we have lawyers up the wazoo and these people can barely sign their own names.”

So that’s what he did.

Year after year, Sticksie threw court case after court case at Goodfella and his band of Native purple-eyed thugs, funded by the money he made from mining the Natives’ land.

And year after year, the purple-eyed natives withstood the vicious legal attacks, and proved themselves more than a match for the Law books and the bastards who wielded them.

Finally, after over 10 years of what Sticksie thought would be a short and relatively easy win for him and his partners-in-crime, the Law courts told the red-eyed Prince that they would hear no more of his absurd litigation logic. “Face it, mate,” they said to him, “you’ve been outwitted by the purple-eyed at every turn. Your viciously vindictive tactics should have seen you jailed years ago, the only reason you haven’t slunk away with your tail between your legs is that you are too stupid and racist to recognise exactly how stupid and racist you are. The purple-eyed people have been smarter than you. Significantly. Deal with it, and fuck on off out of here with your dickhead red-eyed mates and your totally unwarranted megalomania, we have to work out how much you owe the Goodfella contingent and that’ll take some time because it’s gunna be a lot. A real lot. Sucks to be you.”

Only they said it in Legalese.

There was much rejoicing throughout the land by the purple-eyed peoples and their allies, and Goodfella was petted and admired and made much of, but frankly, all he wanted to do was get his kids into a decent school then go fishing. He and his wife made sandwiches and lemonade and went on a picnic, and had a very nice relax, for a change.

Prince Sticksie fucked off to Africa and pretended to be deeply absorbed in totally unrelated matters but nobody bought it for a minute, his face was nearly as red as his eyes and he could be heard muttering in his sleep that stone-age savages with purple eyes didn’t orta ever be allowed to learn to read, it’ll all end in tears. His board members are currently whispering behind his back and practising pre-emptive press releases about Sticksie’s desire to spend more time with his family.

And thoughout Dwanaland, some sadly cynical people are beginning to think that sometimes the Good Guys do win after all.

THE END

© k.p.tona 2023

This article was originally oublished on Quaerentem.