Following his heroic dash through the kitchen window our hero awoke some hours later, heroically face down and half-way up the garden path. Judging this to be as good a place to start as any he thus bounded over/through the front gate and onwards in the direction of the crumpet-shaped beacon emblazoning the sky above Trifle City.

  Deep into the night our hero hurried, cape fluttering in his wake, a portly moth with magnificent crumpet claws; yet our hero made it no more than a few streets before–

  “Halt!” an out-stepping halter did halt, their instruction conducted in an ear-piercing squeal akin to a dentist's drill inside a tiny cornet. “This fateful night you shall go no further!”

  Our hero however did indeed go further; several yards to be precise, all of it skidded on account of the undersides of his hero-boots being slick with butter. (See Previous chapter – there's no time to explain!) Once he'd picked himself up and wiped said boots on a nearby lawn (it was night, so no one would be watching; and grass loves a bit 'a butter) our hero returned and enquired of the halter as to why he should not have gone any further. “Because you have a date with destiny,” said said halter.

  “But I don't know anyone called Destiny,” Crumpet-Hands Man was certain, although the befuddled look on his face would not have suggested this. “And if I did know a Destiny then I would certainty not go on a date with them, for I am already in a long-term relationship...With heroism!” he roared, assuming the obligatory pose. (He assumed he was assuming the obligatory pose; he may have been mistaken. Was a cross-legged handstand considered heroic?)

  “But anyway,” our upside-down hero/moth/poser said, bouncing away on his head, “I have not the time for halting. I must be off, for I am beckoned elsewhe–”

  “Not so fast!” the halter himself beckoned, to which our hero replied, “I...must...be...off...for...I...am...”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  A brilliant witticism, you will agree; and yet it failed to cause the mysterious halter to crack even a smile; in fact the halter seemed incapable of producing any facial expression of note, be it cracked, fractured, or chipped around the udders like a certain dish of fallen cow-spread. (Previous, chapter, etc.) Having righted himself and inspected the halter more closely, Crumpet-Hands Man now realised that this stranger's face was entirely devoid of features; under the light of the moon it appeared as blank as the aforementioned heavenly body. Or a particularly dull boiled egg.

  “Agghhh! What in God's name happened to your face?” our hero thought it only polite to ask. “Did it fall off?”

  “No,” the halter responded with a squeak and implied frown. Our hero pressed the matter, “Did it melt?”

  “No.”

  “Did it come away in the night?”

  “No.”

  “Did you scrub it too vigorously with a shammy?”

  “Non,” the halter said, temporarily becoming French on account of a typo. Crumpet-Hands Man went on asking his questions on account of having nothing better to do. “Has thy face deserted thee through cowardice?” he bellowed, reassuming the obligatory handstand. “Are thou egg?”

  “Nein.”

  “Are you b'loon?”

  “What?”

  “Are you the World Apple Bobbing Champion Hamish McBobber, and have so many years of competitive bobbing thus eroded–”

  “No!” the faceless halter shrieked, the raising of his inhumanly high-pitched voice the sole means by which he could express vexation – that and he had our hero around the throat.

  “I am Preface!” he said, “the imperious villain whom will end your story before it has even begun!”

  “Oh putain...” dit l'homme aux mains de crumpet.