A Yarn That Rhymes : End

The End?

Alan McDonald returned that night, in a huff, to find his house in disarray and police on the premises. He moved into Billy's house with him. The blood in his nails was chicken.

Billy underwent psychotherapy and now works at the farm. He earns much more and can buy many green shirts.

The police found Miss Maple's remains. Forensic evidence pointed fingers at Andy Foster.

The Chief of Police had heard Foster bragging about the women in his life. They found a lot of evidence at Foster's house on the Hill. He also heard the bit about Foster saying Hello.
So he waited outside and shot him.

The Master bought a new pair of sheep. He has still not been seen in public.

The Good Doctor bled a lot but managed to escape by sticking his scalpel into Dumpty's thigh. He is still at large.

The Citizens are quite well. Each one of them had a theory and each one knew how rotten Foster really was.

Jack Horner is now well and not unhappy. He has stomach ulcers due to the drug. He now works at the Midtown Cafe. He is quite traumatized. Not due to the incidents.
But due to the poem he found in his coat pocket.

" Jack And Jill Went Up The Hill
  Jack fell down
  And Jill was killed
  By the Good Doctor "

A Yarn That Rhymes - 4

Chapter 4

Two Days after Billy's arrest Miss Maple went missing. She was last known to be delirious and fevered. She kept repeating 'He is guilty'. The cops at the Royal Hospital thought she meant Billy. They were so wrong.

...

People who knew Mr. Horner described him as either 'disturbed' or 'disturbing'. At that very moment, snooping around the McDonald farm, he was both.

He was hoping to find a way into Alan's basement. That was before he found a scented pink handkerchief with an embroidered MM on it. Miss Maple had come here. Possibly to talk. There were signs of struggle - heel marks in the soil, a very large stamp of Alan's workman shoes.

Now it was a necessity to investigate.

Jack found the back door unlocked and unbarred. To some this would have been a sign of danger. But for Jack Horner, it was an invitation. He entered carefully, treading softly like a cat. The room was empty. It was a post-Victorian looking room with a fireplace. The likes you find in old British movies.

There was a chestnut chair in front of the fire and sitting in it, to Jack's surprise was a large tabby cat. Jack was a cat person. Despite himself he bent over to pick it up and that was the last thing he remembered. His body froze and he dropped ike a pin.

...

Jack was trussed up like a turkey and hanging upside down in a corner. The room was definitely Alan's basement. The stench was unbearable.

A figure sat in the opposite corner.

"Is that you Alan? It's not too late, boy. I can help you. Where is Mary?"

"Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner. Do you know that rhyme Mr. Horner? I especially love it. A very apt choice at this very moment."

The voice was muffled but Jack could have known that voice anywhere.

"Andy? What are you doing? Where's Alan? Where's Mary?"

"Keep quiet Jack. Alan is not in this chapter. I sent him to Boscombe with a fake phone call. A phoney call, wouldn't you say-"

"Cut the crap Andy. What are you doing here?"

"What do you think? I killed Miss Maple. Now it is your turn. Killing her was very easy. The girl was such a peach. I made her sit in that big chair up there. Told her I would confess to the murders for which Billy is being held. She just lapped it up like a silly cat. Then I slit her throat with my scalpel. Her head's in the freezer now. I like to eat brains to be cold."

Jack's only response to this was throwing up loudly.

"Aah! That must be due to the drug I injected. Won't kill you but it will make you so sick that you will beg me to kill you. Just like Jill."

"Don't you dare say her name you scumbag-" Jack couldn't get his string of expletives out because Doc Foster managed to gag him.

"Oh, Jack you were always so gullible. And dumb. You could never see what she was going through. She was pregnant. She came to me - her best friend. I di what I had to do. What was that? Don't mumble Jack. I can't hear you. Anyways, so I took her to my home on the hill. And killed her. I told you that she left. I wanted to spare you the pain, Jack. I care about you."

Andy Foster was busy talking but Jack had tensed up. He had heard something upstairs and It did not sound like a cat.Foster continued his monologue after removing the gag, "You know, how women always come to me Jack. I am such a good friend to them. So, when I saw Miss Maple one day, I took her. I screwed with her, in all possible ways, If you know what I mean."

"You were never good with jokes Andy. So just stop. Finish this while you are on top."

"Finish this! What do you mean Jack? I just got started. Please don't spoil the fun. So, as I was saying I enlisted Mary in my little project called "Get Jack A Job'. The rest was quite easy for a guy who can cut surgically and has a freezer at home. If only Mary hadn't gone soft-"

"So, what now Andy? How do you plan to kill me? Shoot, Cut or Inject?"

"Please, Jack don't shame me. I am a professional. One woman each year. All dead, waiting for you. Come to think of it. I even wrote a poem for you. Would you like to listen?"

"Entertain yourself, Andy."

"I like the attitude Jack. If your own heart does not get tired of pumping against gravity, I might as well let you go. Just Kidding! So, it goes like-"

was all Andy could manage to say before Chief Elijah Dumpty cracked him on the skull with an Oriental vase.

...

The Chief got Jack free and left him sitting in the chair. Jack was still paralyzed due to the drug. Dumpty went in search of Miss Maple's body and head.

The moment he went, the fallen Doctor stirred. He got up with a smug grin on his face. Jack opened his mouth to scream but found it stuffed with a gag.

"So, Jack looks like you won for the time being. I will just go say Hello to Humpty up there and be off. I will see you again next year."

Jack could do nothing but stare in horror as Andy Foster crept up the stairs. There was a gunshot and it was the last thing that Andy remembered before passing out.

...

A Yarn That Rhymes - 3

[Doctor Foster went to Gloucester,

In a shower of rain]

Chapter 3

Andy Foster was the local hero. He was a doctor. A very good one, apparently. He had published some paper in one of those fancy medical journals that yu only hear about. He had been in a war. He was well-mannered, articulate and distinguished. And single. Somehow that was a very big thing in this small town that was named a city. Billy Foster was Andy's nephew. Dr. Foster was quick to appear on the scene. In fact he arrived along with the Chief.

"So, what is the verdict Jack?", asked Dr. Foster.

Jack did not reply. There was some bad blood between these two. High school can be a tough place.

"C'mon now, Jack tell me. You can't hold what happened 19 years ago against me. Let's be professional."

Jack did not reply. He just swung out wildly. There was a noise - of Jack's fist connecting with the good Doctor's jaw. A couple of cops standing near him caught the Doctor. The Chief ,himself, restrained Jack using his ample girth as a barrier.

Jack and the Doctor had never been the best of buds. Foster was actually, a high school bully and Horner was the default punching bag.

"Chief, have the analysts completed their tests?"

"Yes, Jack. It is Sheep blood alright. We are taking in Billy right now. He is of course denying it."

"That can't be right Eli. Billy is a good kid. He may be a bit on the wild side but he is a chip of the old block. You gotta do something, Elijah. For my sake".

This was the Doctor trying to defend his nephew.

"Andy, the evidence is clear. I can't do anything now. We will interrogate him and see if anything can be done. But it's the Master, we are talking about.."

The Chief's silence was enough for Foster to understand that where their benevolent Master was concerned there was no question where his loyalty lay.

The police finished up their work quickly. There was not much to do anyways. They cordoned off the area. The Chief chatted with Jack regarding his ideas.

Jack and Dr. Foster stayed well away from each other at the crime scene. Very soon a small crowd of oglers had gathered at the farm yard. Wide-eyed kids, housewives with flour in their hair and curious men, each with their theory towards the motive of the crime.

Amidst all this confusion, there was a cry from one of the onlookers. The bewildered crowd parted to reveal Miss Maple who had fainted near a rose bush, presumably after finding out about Billy. She was immediately rushed to Foster's clinic which was the closest to the place.

...

Jack decided to talk to the McDonald kid, Alan. He was one of the unknowns in this equation. There was no evidence yet to associate him with the crime. The equation for Jack was very simple. Most of the times the simplest solution always worked. Billy had abducted the sheep with the aid of Miss Maple. She might have been an active participant or could have been another victim of love.

But this solution did not satisfy the equation. There was no reason to bleed the sheep and possibly kill them. Billy was not crazy. So the motive had to be money. But he seemed quite simple and well off. The presence of the lone head was a gruesome variable. Things just did not add up.

Why would Billy kill one sheep, for sure, and drain the other sheep and have a splash in his own backyard? Unless he really liked shepherd's pie

Alan McD, as he asked Jack to call him, was a cool guy in most senses of the word. He was supposed to be quite the catch in Sink City's social circles. He had dropped out of school, was a typical jock but was not dumb. And weirdly he was cold. Or at least his skin was.

That was the first thing Jack realized when he shook hands with him.

"I suppose you are here to talk about the little incident next door. Let me just say that Billy simply ain't the type of guy to do such a monstrous thing. He is a good kid, an able worker and a nice friend to have. But I don't know much about Mary. I was out at the cafe house on the day the sheep were reported stolen. Today I heard you come in and that's all. I was working down in the basement. Now that harvesting and all is done I have to get down to the storage stuff. The houses are not much apart but sound don't really carry all the way. That is all that I can remember"

"Well, that is an awful lot, Alan. Thank You. If only all people here would be as helpful as you - " Jack left the words hang. Because he saw something that interested him. Alan's fingernails were not clean. That is understandable seeing where he worked.

But if Jack was right that was blood in his nails.

"So, do you work with meat?"

"No. Not much. Just thee grainy stuff."

"Oh. OK alright. Well I will be off then. Seems like a simple case to me. Billy just went cuckoo. Mind if I look around later?"

"No. Always glad to help. See you later. Lots of work to do."

A Yarn That Rhymes - 2

Chapter 2

Life had never been simple or straight for Jack Horner. He was neither bright nor big and strong. 'Lean and young Danny DeVito' or maybe even Michael J.Fox (if I am feeling kind and contented) are the only words that could properly describe him. I believe that there are many types of people in the world. Some of them are the Model sort, ones you are meant to follow, then there are the Beautiful people, the ones who get followed around. Jack was one of the Lucky people. He got through stuff in school easily. Never much of a boy for books, he got into football, girls, and booze. He had no mum and his old man died soon. Something changed in him and around him. He left the Sink for good. Or so he thought.

Now he was back and he was as happy as the town people were. The Chief knew something about his work in the Big Apple. So, after a couple of days he asked his help on the case for there were no clear clues and the chief was no Sherlock. Jack had only the marijuana and eccentricity in common with that illustrious gent created by Arthur Conan Doyle.

...

Jack went to Billy's house the following day. Billy was a fine lad of 19. He was no good at school but was a very good worker on the McDonald farm.

"Hey there Billy, boy. How are things out on the farm? How's McDonald?"

"Hey there Mr. Horner. The farm's good, work's good. Ol' McD passed away couple o' years back. His kid Alan now runs the farm."

"So, you see anything when you were kissing Miss Maple?"

The boy blushed like a beet, "Ooh Mr. Horner, I wasn't kissin' Mary. We were just talkin'. And I told them cops too, I saw nuthin'."

"So, how is the shirt Miss Maple gave you on your birthday?"

"I am not even going to ask how you know that. But the shirt got torn off in the brambles a week before."

"Is that so? Mind if I take a look around?"

"No, Mr. H, make yarself at home."

Jack trooped around to the back of the house. He never forgot what he saw there that day.

...

The scene in Billy's backyard was one straight out of some horror movie. Blood everywhere. And one black sheep caracass right in the middle of it all.

A Yarn That Rhymes - 1

"Bah, Bah a black Sheep,
Have you any Wool?"

Chapter 1

"It had been a really long and boring day at the pastures. The sheep were getting restless. I think they had an inkling as to what was going to happen. You know you get that feeling every once in a while. That something bad is coming.", said Mary.
She was the shepherd for the Master. The Master was the single most influential man in Sink City. It also helped that he owned most of the businesses in and about town.
Mary was being investigated about the disappearance of the entire Black Sheep flock.
She said, "So, I took that side road from Pitter Patter Lane. The one which goes across Old McDonald's Farm. So, I was thinking, ya know, me mam's not gonna be home for like an hour, so I could just talk to The Boy Who Lives Down The Street - "
She was interrupted by a small cough from the man sitting right across from her.
He had been in the room even before she got there. Sitting in the dark, waiting like a lion for a gazelle. The only problem with that image was he was short.
Very short. Infact Mary could just barely see his chin above the table. He was the one who spoke now, in the kind of a voice that can be substituted for sandpaper, and questioned Mary.
"Miss Maple, could you tell me what was the colour of ,the boy, William's shirt?"
She was momentarily thrown off by the question but recovered quickly to reply, "It was green. I had gifted it to him on his birthday."
"Please continue, Miss"
"So, as I was talking to Billy, over his house fence, he says to me, 'Say Mary where's your sheep today?'. And I thought he was joking but when I turned around they was gone. Just like that. One moment they were there and then Poof."
"Miss Maple, do you expect me to believe that? Just tell us where you and your boyfriend hid those sheep and you can go."
"Course I do because it is the truth. And I did not steal them! ", she said with tears in her eyes.
"Come now, Mary. There you go, poor thing. Don't mind Mr. Horner here. He's just doing his job". This kinder soul was Chief Of Police Elijah Dumpty.
All the townfolk loved him. They called him 'Humpty' as a mark of respect and affection. Mr. Horner was an outsider as of yet. Jack Horner had once been a citizen of The Sink but he had left it all to be a Private Investigator in the Big Apple. Now he was back and no one really knew how to react.
The case of Miss Maple was straightforward according to Jack. She and her boyfriend Billy had stolen the Master's prize flock. They were either planning to sell them for money or ransom them.
But life is never that simple, is it?
Little did Jack know that he would find this case to be more complicated than Incy Wincy's Web.

Interesting, Huh?

1. John 3:16 gets all the fame but consider a few of its 'interesting' cousins like -

John 3:14
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life

Luke 22:7
The Last Supper

2. Metro Station is an American pop band, formed in Los Angeles, California.
In late 2006, the band signed a recording contract with Columbia/Red Ink.
They are best known for their Top 10 Billboard hit single "Shake It" from their self-titled debut album.
Their co-frontman Trace Cyrus is the older half-brother of Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus and Mason Musso is the older brother of Mitchel Musso from Hannah Montana.
Those two met on the sets of Hannah Montana after their respective mums introduced them to each other.
One music group to look out for in the years to come.

3.Pearls Before Swine is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Stephan Pastis, formerly a lawyer in San Francisco, California.
It is Pastis' fifth attempt to syndicate a comic strip, the first four including Rat, The Infirm, and Bradbury Road.
It chronicles the daily lives of four anthropomorphic animals, Pig, Rat, Zebra, and Goat. Although created in 1997, it was not published until 2000, when United Feature Syndicate ran it on its website.
In one word, it is awesome. If you don't believe me, see above. Or below

4. I saw Donnie Darko yesterday(or was it the day before that?). Honestly I can't remember.
That movie falls into the category of movies that you either love or you hate. There is no in-between. This brings me to the following topic -

An ontological paradox is a paradox of time travel that questions the existence and creation of information and objects that travel in time. It is very closely related to the predestination paradox and usually occurs at the same time.
In simpler terms, an object is brought back in time, and it becomes the object that was initially brought back in time in the first place.

That means D.D. goes through the wormhole at the end, emerges in the present at ETA 28:06:42:12 to replace his old self. This time instead of walking off into the night he stays home, in bed. So, that the airplane propeller falls on his bedroom and kills him thus preventing any of the intial 94 minutes of the film from happening and also preventing the end of the world.
So, does that mean I never really saw the movie.

Note: If he had walked off, we could just watch the 94 mins. in an infinite loop till apocalypse!

A few examples of ontological paradoxes -

• A man who does not know who his grandfather is goes back in time to find out who his grandfather was. He goes to the bar where his grandmother says she met him, where he meets a woman. After several drinks, he goes to her room and has unprotected sexual intercourse with her. When he wakes up he discovers it is his grandmother he was with, becoming his own grandfather.
  

• In the climax of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and Hermione travel back in time to prevent the execution of a Hippogriff, which they witnessed only by hearing the chop of an axe (and to save their friend Sirius). They hide the Hippogriff, and the executioner, furious at the disappearance, swings his axe at the fence, creating the sound they heard previously. Harry is also eager to discover the identity of the mysterious stranger he saw earlier standing across the lake, casting a spell that saved his life. Then he realizes he was the one who did it. He is able to cast the somewhat difficult spell, mainly because he knows he can do it, having seen his future self do it.

• In the episode "Out of Time" of Heroes, Hiro Nakamura spreads the stories of 'Takezo Kensei' in the past, only to learn them as a young boy and eventually go back in time to spread them again in the first place.

5. Confucius says so much, these days that people forget or don't know Zhuangzi.

In general, Zhuangzi's philosophy is skeptical, arguing that life is limited and the amount of things to know is unlimited. To use the limited to pursue the unlimited, he said, was foolish. Our language and cognition in general presuppose a dao to which each of us is committed by our separate past—our paths. Consequently, we should be aware that our most carefully considered conclusions might seem misguided had we experienced a different past.

Zhuangzi's thought can also be considered a precursor of relativism in systems of value. His relativism even leads him to doubt the basis of pragmatic arguments (that a course of action preserves our lives) since this presupposes that life is good and death bad.

In the fourth section of "The Great Happiness" (chapter 18), Zhuangzi expresses pity to a skull he sees lying at the side of the road. Zhuangzi laments that the skull is now dead, but the skull retorts, "How do you know it's bad to be dead?"

The point i am trying to make is you can easily win arguments of the type "How Do You Know That-"

Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao Waterfall when Zhuangzi said, "See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That's what fish really enjoy!"

Huizi said, "You're not a fish — how do you know what fish enjoy?"
Zhuangzi said, "You're not me, so how do you know I don't know what fish enjoy?"
Huizi said, "I'm not you, so I certainly don't know what you know. On the other hand, you're certainly not a fish — so that still proves you don't know what fish enjoy!"
Zhuangzi said, "Let's go back to your original question, please.

You asked me how I know what fish enjoy — so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao."