Here's the first chapter of a crime fiction novel I had to write for school.
In my defense, it's my first ever attempt at writing something at all funny.
Enjoy!

There’s movement in the star-clad city. Not just the usual sinister movement of the nightlife that causes mothers to indulge in fits of paranoia as soon as the sun sets and their daughters aren’t home – the lurching and strutting in alleyways, silver flashes in the dark, the forms slumped in doorways with eyes half closed. No, there is something else moving through this world, something that doesn’t belong.
A junkie pulls his drooping eyes from his despair for a moment and glimpses a hot pink feather boa trailing a figure before disappearing around a corner. A hobo is roused from an inebriated stupor by the echo of furious giggling somewhere in through the night.
“For Yahweh’s sake, what’s the world coming to?” he grumbles to himself, and snuggles back into his newspaper blanket. Something that sparkles with multicoloured sequins takes his tattered old beanie and replaces it with a Santa hat before he knows what’s hit him. “What the…?”

Meanwhile, a man shuffled around his dank apartment somewhere in the city holding a cup of old coffee and wearing a tattered brown dressing gown he likes to call his technicolour dream coat. The light pouring in through the window from the street outside was the only source of illumination as he settled down at a rickety wooden desk to indulge in his illicit passion. If he were ever found with this book he would never again see his beloved haberdashery or even, heaven forbid, his technicolour dream coat. He shuddered at the thought, looked around him, and turned the page.
Here was what he was looking for – Julian the Poor, patron saint of fiddle players. This would be the final addition to his list of patron saints of musical instruments, and then he could move onto the patron saints of particular fruits. A strange sound from the street below travels through a small triangular shaped hole in the window and into Haines’ ear. It was a sound he had not heard for many years, and at first he thought it was just the distant memory of days gone by creeping into his thoughts. But when he heard it again he new it was real. But surely not…He jumped up, looked out the window, but saw nothing.
“Must ’ave been ’maginin’ things,” he muttered, trying to reassure himself, but he had a sneaking suspicion that came from somewhere around his left ear that this was not true. That sound, that sound was what in the old days they had called…laughter.
Memories flooded back, vivid as light dancing before his very eyes. He saw a child on a swing giggling in glee. “Higher daddy, higher!” Saw a man who smiled at him with the most wonderful toothy grin he’d ever seen. His eyes went hot and tears began to run down his cheeks and drip onto the page before him. He attempted to walk across the room, but it became but a stumble, a desperate stumble, as if he could somehow escape what was inside himself.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was rudely disturbed from his sufferings when he felt his head hit hard against something and he realized he was on the ground. He had tripped. He sat up and looked around but couldn’t see the offensive object. But he was so sure he had tripped on something. Determined to distract himself from his thoughts he started crawling around the floor on his hands and knees, feeling the weathered old boards with his weathered old hands, and low and behold there was a small rectangle only as big as his hand slightly sunken below the surrounding floor.
“Strange, I’ve never noticed tha’ afore,” he reflected aloud, before realizing that that area of the floor had heretofore been covered with a rug that was, oddly, actually attached to the boards. It has been quite an effort pulling the old thing up, and he remembered thinking to himself that maybe that rug was there for a reason…
Investigating the rectangle he noticed a notch in one of the sides and thought it might be some sort of trapdoor, but it did not budge when he tried to open it with his hands. He had an idea, disappeared somewhere, and came back with a crowbar, which he wedged into the notch. He pushed all his weight onto it, using every bit of his (feeble) strength and eventually it gave and next thing he knew he was sprawled on the floor with his face over an opening. Stale, cold air caressed his cheek and he thought he heard a faint whisper that seemed to entice him, invite him, beg him to explore this intriguing enigma he had discovered.
He reached in to the hole. Whole arm submerged in the stale air, he felt around until his hand grasped something. He began to pull it out and right then there was a knock on the door. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. No one ever knocked on his door. Ever. His imagination went wild with images of the supernatural, of secret societies and sacrificial rituals…The knock came again.
“’Oo is it?” he asked, his voice broken into a falsetto.
No answer. Just another knock, not loud, nor forceful, but persistent. He picked up the only weapon at hand – the coffee mug he had been drinking out of. Armed, he felt a little more secure, and so he gulped, opened the door and when his eyes adjusted two forms seemed to materialize out of the darkness. A voice greeted him, a voice that seemed to resonate with inside his very soul.
“Hello Haines.”

Good morning Clotilde city. I’m Hubert Smith, you’re the people of King Titus, and it is so great to be alive today in this grand city under such swell rule. Hail King Titus. Timothy Quigley sat up in his white single bed, slipped on his grey slippers and strode to the bathroom just as an important news broadcast was about to be announced. It was five-thirty in the morning, the sun was only just showing signs of rising, and he was ready for another hard-hitting day at work keeping the city safe from lawless scum. He breathed in the no-nonsense scent of un-perfumed shampoo, his little daily indulgence – to him it spoke of practicality and sensibleness, none of that useless smelly stuff for him thank you very much. He dressed, looked himself in the mirror with a stern grunt of approval and just as he was walking out the door he stopped dead in his tracks. That wasn’t right. That’s wasn’t right at all. He put his hand on his head. Only hair.
It’s all right, he told himself, nothing to worry about, just a little…mistake. Beads of sweat began to form on his forehead, drip down his nose, and he walked slowly back inside, picked up his hat and placed it on his head. There. Everything was fine. He’d heard people made mistakes sometimes, that it was only natural; he remembered one time back in second grade when he had used a teal pencil instead of a dark blue. He didn’t know how it could have happened. He was so embarrassed his eyes had almost begun to water in front of the whole class. This was much, much worse than that. This was his sergeant’s hat, the symbol of what he was, that proclaimed to the world: I am a man of the law, I uphold the noble principles of order, justice and righteousness, and there’s not a thing you can do about it because I am the law.
Not a good start to the day, but he was sure it was not an omen. He didn’t believe in silly superstitions. He was a man of principle and logic, not some airy fairy stinking hippy. Definitely not an omen. No question about it.
He walked out the door again and this time everything was in order, without a doubt. With confidence regained he strode across the landing and down the stairs and he was stopped dead in his tracks, again. Two people emerged from the apartment of that suspicious hermit that owned the haberdashery down the road: the first is a woman with long hair like fire, eyes like blazing ice, wearing a dark purple poncho embroidered with red roses and fluoro green flares from the bottom of which peeked fluoro orange boots; the second, Quigley was not sure if it was a woman or a man, had a crew cut and wore a deep green cloak embroidered with the same red roses over a black jump suit with a silver labyrs, a double-headed axe, on the chest. The woman approached Quigley and, in a voice that smelt of honey and pumpkin, asked,
“Are you all right? You look a little pale.”
Quigley flared mustered all his courage, flared himself up to his full size like a puffer fish or a threatened bird fluffing its feathers, attempted to hurl her a look of stern disdain, and strode away, making sure she did not miss his hat and could not see his shaking hands.

The instant upon arriving at the station Quigley was told that the Chief wanted to see him in his office immediately.
“We have a bit of a situation on our hands, Sergeant, and King Titus wants it solved and the disturbance eliminated immediately.”
“Sir,” barked Quigley.
“Last night an abomination appeared in the city similar to the vandalism committed three months ago, if you remember.” He remembered all right. God damn hippies stirring up trouble, leaving anarchical messages throughout the city, trying to undo all the hard work that had gone into building this perfect society.
“Now, thankfully we were able to stifle any unrest caused without too much difficulty that time, but this time the King is…he has grown concerned. I have chosen you personally, Quigley, to head this case. Don’t let me down.”
“Sir.”
“To date we know very little about those responsible, except that they belong to a group who call themselves the Dionysian Brigade – some sort of revolutionary, hippie, feminist movement with their sights set on destroying our superb government, which they call a ‘phallocracy’. You’d better see the pictures.”
Quigley was getting worried. He wondered if these events had anything to do with the outlandish two people he had seen earlier, and had a sneaking suspicion that they did, that there was some movement in the city that had been building up right under their noses.

...

Intrigued? I sure am