The autobiography of Purplefood

My first conscious memory was the day me and my older brother went to help construct the Berlin wall in 1066. We hadn't had much experience in building walls at that point but the Russians gave us some bricks and a bit of mortar and we gave it our best shot. Needless to say our first try was all the Russians needed and we were promptly sacked after finishing the wall too quickly. 4 days later we were in Rome being interrogated by the Caesar Monty Python himself though fortunately my quick witted retorts to his interrogations soon had us laughing away like old friends and drinking 20 year old whiskey.

Unfortunately the next morning after waking up in a bed with the Caesar's wife; 2 panthers and a very flexible albino lady, it was back to the dungeons and all through that rotten interrogation, fortunately I managed to convince him it hadn't been me in the bed but my doppelganger so he let me off if I promised to show him how to hang a spoon from his nose. My dear brother, of course, was no where to be seen having vanished in a clap of thunder halfway through the middle of the night.

It turns out old Jeremiah (My brother) had gone through a rift in space and time, of course we didn't know that at the time, but he claimed later to have landed in the queerest place and spent 8 years apprenticed to a sandal maker before making off with his savings and opening an inn serving a type of alcohol made using the tears of palm trees and alphabetic spaghetti.

So there was me and Ceasar, two single men (1 single man and a husband with an understanding wife) stuck in Rome on Christmas eve with nothing to do. So we hopped on a zeppelin and flew over to New York. Though we had no idea the damned thing would burst into flames, stranding us in the middle of New York on Christmas eve. Anyway we needed a way to get back on our feet and celebrating. We first visited my old friend Vice-Roy Marbles who owed me a few favours for a job I did for him in Atlantis once, he gave us money and some food and before you knew it we were off on a blitzkrieg ride around the New York party scene.

In retrospect I should have thought actually using a tank for a blitzkrieg tour would be seen as criminally criminal rather than criminally ironic, though I'm told the penalty for being criminally ironic is just as severe as 18 counts of parking homicide and 23 counts of not stopping at a red light with intent to carry on and 2 counts of dancing with intent to groove. That said we can always see the past in 20:20 can't we?

So, there I am. In America's finest maximum security institution, Alcatraz the Second. Alcatraz the Second was, if anything, living up to her mother's name as the most inescapable prison. Situated in a separate dimension Alcatraz the Second was practically and litterally inescapable. I shared a cell with a fellow named Jonny Cash who claimed to be doing time for a triple genocide, though i found out later he was in for tax fraud, Jonny was a nice enough fellow but he kept trying to commit suicide which frankly got on my nerves more often than not. I debated letting him go through with it once but decided to stop him on account of the guards, who wouldn't move the body and so the smell would be horrible and frankly Jonny didn't look worth eating after spending 5 years in Alcatraz the Second.

I quickly made friends with a 'crew' who called themselves the 'Roman Ninth Legion' and only spoke Latin. In their own words they were in for 'All the crimes of Rome' which turned out to be nigh on 20,000 years. Unfortunate for them but at least they were established. They allowed me to join them less than a month later and after a small training bout i was promoted to 'Centurion' and given control of the gang's weapon making factory.

To call it a factory would be unfair, the Ninth Legion had carved out a huge chamber connected to their cells, the guards were seemingly unaware of this and the Ninth Legion carried on with their tunneling and fabrication projects. The actual fabrication was first carried out my the Ninth Legion themselves but as they became more and more confident they began to kidnap other prisoners to work in the factory.

About a week later I spotted Jonny, my cellmate, in the factory. Some may think it callous of me but I had hoped he was dead, either he had offed himself somewhere else or one of the minor gangs had killed him for some supposed indiscretion, as it has been mercifully quiet in my cell the past week. Unfortunately this wasn't the case and Jonny was alive and, unfortunately, well. He came to me a few hours after I had first spotted him and told me of his plans to turn his life around once his sentence was up, he was going to become a famous musician, he said. I bid him good luck and never heard of him again.

Life continued like this for more or less another year, then we were attacked. A race of interdimensional insects started to attack Alcatraz the Second. Unfortunately for them, the guards, acting more out of self-preservation than heroism or some other such noble instinct, armed the gangs and miscreants of Alcatraz the Second. In a pitched battle, villains and the lowest of society fought like heroes of legend as the held back the entire insect hive army, I am proud to be counted among those who defended Alcatraz the Second that day. Gradually we were pushed back until only a few of us remained, the Warden of Alcatraz the Second passed judgements on those who had sacrificed the most during the fight, Johnny was allowed back to his own time, the Ninth Legion were allowed back but just as they were being sent back tragedy struck. I don't pretend to understand the mechanisms of a space-time inter-dimensional teleporter however I know that pretty much nothing works properly after it gets hit with a plasma based mucus projectile fired from an insectoid symbiote. The teleporter, was annihilated and the Ninth Legion sent who knows where. They would have to wait a long time until they got back home.

With the teleporter out many still remaining in Alcatraz the Second sold their lives dearly in revenge for their lost freedom. Eventually we were pushed back further and took refuge in the power plant. De-activating the safety locks on the power plant we overloaded it annihilating both Alcatraz the Second, all remaining prisoners and the entire Insect Hive army. Fortunately i had found an emergency teleporter just a few seconds before the power plant went critical, its automated system teleported me to a strange and incomprehensible world.