By Frampton Jones

Shaun R is dead. I witnessed his demise, and it was almost too terrible to describe. Shaun died to a machine made of bone and metal. It looked almost like something contrived to please a demon, and I have no doubt that a demon dwelled within it. Whether Shaun summoned the demon himself, or accidentally attracted it with an aesthetically appealing and warm device, we will likely never know.

There was a terrible roar. A terrible smell. Motion to defy the senses and alarm the mind. What monstrosity had Shaun R cobbled together in his shed? What horror has he unleashed upon the island? For I cannot trust that this will be the last of the matter.

Folklorist Idris Po tells me that the lethal device resembled a bicycle – something familiar, apparently to people who started life elsewhere. Two wheels, and a seat. Proof if any further proof were needed that Hopeless is truly an island of sanity in a great sea of madness. How can anyone possibly balance on two wheels? Perhaps it was the unbalance that sealed Shaun’s fate. Perhaps the demon in the device was so affronted by this unnatural mode of travel that it ate him in self-defence. I think I might have been persuaded to do so in similar circumstances.

There wasn’t a great deal of Shaun to collect up and bury. Much of what remained had been badly chewed by the skull mounted on the front of the machine. Fortunately there was a shell-like construction within the shattered remains of the machine into which we were able to collect the chewed remains of Shaun. It seemed appropriate and safest to bury man and machine together. It also spared us some unpleasant labour separating the two. On the whole, given how self-determining the device seemed before it destroyed itself, burial seems a good choice – leaving it around might provide too much temptation for anyone else who craves speed and a way out.