Fiction: Blind Moon

March 31, 2026, 9:53 pm , by Richard Lutz

(Recap: A canine bacteria will kill off the British population. It is up to two scientists, Ed Slager and Kumar Kumar, to save the nation!! This is what happens next, dear reader. Tighten your seatbelts……))

 By Richard Lutz

‘What’s  the bloody diff between ricotta and cottage cheese?’ Andy Mountbatten Windsor asked. He was sweating over the prep table. ‘I mean, who’d know in this place?’

The former prince was having troubles with his meatless lasagna. The layering wasn’t working. ‘Appalling slop.’ he muttered and wiped his chubby hands on his apron, an apron blessed with a portrait of his late mother.

Boris Johnson, retired Prime Minister, came over and peeked over Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s tense shoulder. ‘Sir Randy, old chum, the sauce is too loose. Stiffen it up.’ he  guffawed. ‘You know about that kind of stuff.’ 

‘Y’see you old prune,’ said BJ,  ‘Ricotta is typically firmer than cottage cheese and often used in baked recipes like lasagna.’ Johnson waddled away, braying to  no one particular in the prison kitchen: ‘Where’s bloody Mandy? Checking up on the boys in the back passage no doubt.’ Another bellowing guffaw.

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, he of the gloopy recipe, was doing five to seven at Magnolia Prison for selling state secrets during the Canine Death Vaccine Scandal. The absent Lord Peter Mandelson was handed out a straight five on identical charges. Johnson (‘Just call me Twat’) pleaded guilty to soliciting cash for inside information on the immunisation deals. He begged  leniency from the High Court. He was chucked into Magnolia nevertheless. All three comprised BlueShiftC in Prison Kitchen Unit2.

Mandy appeared. He was nonplussed. He summoned Andy and Boris into the sanctity of the canned goods pantry. He swept back his hair, now streaked with silver. His  prison uniform was pressed and drycleaned. ‘News from The Corridor.’ he pronounced in a stage whisper. ‘McCreath’s been transferred to community service last night. In comes…’

Boris beamed. He loved intrigue. Andy grimaced. A newbie was tricky.

Mandy swept back his hair again, created a grand gesture with a cracked ladle and announced: ‘And in comes, the infamous Sir Kumar Kumar.’

Andy melted. ‘The death dog doc?’ Mountie loved trash headlines. Lived  by them. Died by them. Chucked in jail by them. ‘Here at The Magnolia? At The Maggie? Kumar Kumar? The Canine Killer?’

‘Woooooff,’ barked Boris.

++++

In his cell Dr  Kumar Kumar was writing a letter home:

‘My Dearest Rasheen,

I think of you and our two beautiful daughters- our little jewels- all day and all night. The nights  are worse. They stretch forever.  I am so glad to hear that Auntie Suni  is there as support until my release.’ He swallowed hard: ‘…and that dear Uncle Asif is laying out for school fees and ballet lessons.’

Kumar Kumar, still Lord Kumar of Redditch West Central West, put down his pen and sat at his sparse cell desk. Magnolia Prison huddled beneath the wintry Ayrshire Hills eternally shrouded  by funereal clouds.  He  thought of Ed Slager, his boss, who headed the campaign to stop the deadly disease. He had tried to save uncounted number of human lives, exterminated millions of diseased dogs. He was now dead after contracting the rampant canine infection.  Despondency draped across Kumar’s slim imprisoned shoulders.

Tears ran. But Lord Kumar’s eyes were dead. They’d been dead since his arrest. But he knew someone had to take the blame. Take the heat, as his legal team loved to say.

After all, six hundred thousand people died from canine bacterial infection. Downing Street needed blood. It picked former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to lead The Independent Tribunal. His brute intelligence, his no nonsense thuggishness, his infamous sullen temper was just the one way ticket. His tribunal was quickly set up and he howled for names.

Names of those that made a bundle for selling inside information off the back of the life saving vaccine industry; those that leaked the information; those that misused the secret information; those that allowed it to happen. And crucially, those that turned a blind eye. Kumar, as a senior health official, was that ‘blind eye’ and eventually he was offered a special place in The Maggie for that perceived negligence.

His prison memoir now ran to 123,000 words. Publishers dangled £10m on his release. He needed the money.

Kumar reported to his first  7am kitchen BlueshiftC to be greeted by Andy and Mandy. He was accosted by the former Prince:  ‘Ricotta?

Sir Kumar took a step back: ‘Pardon?’

Boris’s voice boomed from the cold room: ‘Dicey word round these parts, Koomster.’

Andy continued: ‘One has a stable load of lasagna to whip up for E wing by lunch and I’m light on the ricotta. Cottage cheese just won’t do.’

Kumar was culinarily lost: ‘And… that means?’

Mandy popped his streaked  silver head above the pots and pans hanging like steel carcasses:  ‘It means we have 27 lasagnas swishing around in a swamp and have to serve them by 11.45.’

BJ  completed Mandy’s mealtime analysis: ‘Central Supply gave us the bloody wrong cheese.’

Andy said: ‘It’s all gloopy. And tasteless.’

Boris said: ‘Try this. The Eton Special.’ He leaned over the cooker and spit into the bubbling sauce. ‘It adds a certain piquancy.’

Andy followed suit into a defrosting mound of apple crumble. ‘Funny that. Same  in the forces.’

‘Good old Blighty.’ Johnson smiled. ‘I love tradition.’ Kumar was gently led to the veg chopping station and advised to refrain from digital self amputation. 

Mandy was in a tense mood. ‘This waiting game is getting on my nerves. Driving me nuts.’

‘I thought Gordon promised early release if we coughed up more names.’ Boris  scratched his head, still topped by a load of matted straw. ‘Who else we have? We  turned over half the country….and I’m still here on my fat arse.’

Andy sniffed the lasagna sauce: ‘I offered up Chips Hepburn. He trousered  the North Korean bung and still boozes at the club.’ The former prince contemplated dried grease on a frying pan. ‘And I threw him Twiggy Rose-Valentine on a platinum plate. Brown’s mob wouldn’t bite.’ he shrugged, a faded royal shrug.

Boris said: ‘I gave them all the bank transfers from those Texas crypto chaps.’

Lord Kumar of Redditch West Central West peeped his head out from the chopping blocks. ‘And I ignored the whistle blowers and the unions.’ 

‘And still Gordon wants more meat.’ Mandy fingered an errant thread on a sleeve. ‘Boris, how about Jasif and his Leeds constituency? He was up to his neck in backhanders with those  Essex block chain monkeys.’

Andy took a noisy shlurp of  his latest masterpiece: ‘Block chain? Sounds like something that plagued the old Jag.’ He vanished into the bowels of the prison kitchen loo. 

Mandy sighed. ‘That boy…he’s got a billion dollar family and a ten cent brain.’ The kitchen wall  intercom buzzed. No one answered.

Kumar chipped in as he cut radishes: ‘Brown makes an unofficial visit here later this week.’

‘Nothing unofficial about it.’ Boris announced like a foghorn. ‘Grumpy Gordo goes by the rules. He’s coming about letting us out. His office promised that deal. We got more names.’ The phone relentlessly buzzed.

Mandy brushed away the mischievous thread. ‘I’ve known Gordon for decades. A stone-cold hardass.  But honest. That’s why Tony hated him. If Brown says he’s flashing the get out of jail card, I believe him.’

‘Me too’ said erstwhile PM Johnson. Andy returned to the kitchen and picked up the insistent intercom. ‘Peter, it’s for you. Sounds code red.’

Mandy grabbed the receiver. He listened. He nodded. He pursed his lips. He puckered them. He swept fingers through his silvered hair and then slowly replaced the receiver. 

Boris had the itch of urgency: ‘The Brown visit?’

‘No.’ Mandy said. He looked towards Andy. ‘But your six kilos of ricotta is on its way.’

+++++++

That night, the night after his initial BlueShiftC, Lord Kumar sat in his cell.

“Dear Rasheen,

The desolation is overpowering. I feel more lonesome than ever. I share kitchen  duties with a trio, all of whom you know by reputation. They’re The Three Stooges of Stir.”

Kumar laughed. Good for the memoir.

He continued:

“Please offer thanks to Cousin Namid for purchasing our family ski chalet. And the Tesla.  And paying  in cash too! Deposit the  money under the girls’ names in the holiday account. Re name it ‘Memoir’. I’ll explain later.”

Kumar Kumar giggled. A tiny tinny laugh that rebounded off every stone in Block 12. Above him, through his window, the December stars threw down sparks of light. The moon was a blind uncaring eye. He was asleep in seconds.

+++++++++

Two days later, Boris was whipping up a mountain of unedible cottage pies. He turned to Kumar Kumar: ‘Bit more jalapeño and we’re there, Your Lordship.’ 

Johnson was armed with a plastic spatula and was in full polemical flow. ‘Gordo’s  got something on the whole cabinet. I can smell it. Especially when it comes to that sanctimonious prig that runs the Home Office. Little bit of trouble with having two families and flipping homes. Usual stuff.’

Mandy was uncomfortable. Andy said: ‘Is flipping homes good or bad?’

‘Both,’ Boris said. ‘Good if you like money. Bad if you’ve been elected.’ Mr Mountbatten Windsor contemplated these finer points of political etiquette.

Mandy sighed and tied off his apron with a prim double clove hitch: ‘When Brown gets here tomorrow, we hand over those new names. Then we’re out.’

‘And we do in that greasy backbencher Kevin Estragon,’ BJ spit, ‘who suddenly stumbled across 250k while sitting on the Vaccine Prevent Committee.’ Johnson turned to the veg station: ‘That right, Koomster?’  Lord Redditch nodded, chopping. ‘And while we’re at it,’ Johnson roared, ‘how about that Westminster bunch  that grabbed  cash from that Palm Beach health care crowd?’ His kitchen chums smiled knowingly. Brown’s visit was imminent.

That night, as the light dipped  behind winter’s cloudy hills, Kumar recounted a conversation he overheard:

‘Rashi, God bless our royal Prince. He has the intellect of a vacuum cleaner. But is a sweet chap. Here’s some kitchen chitchat  I picked up between him and Boris about deciding who to rat on: 

Andrew: Let’s go  for those  MPs  who took the Kazakhstan vaccine dosh. Can’t think of a better lot to kick in the goolies. Them Kazzos were big on waving the bucks.’

Boris: ‘Big too on promising to drop  five hundred k into your Arkansas microchip wheeze.’

‘That was no kickback. It was for facilitasation of bilateral negotiations.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘No idea. Mummy’s old barrister told me to say it in court.’

‘Glad that kept you out of the slammer.’ Boris then whispered: ‘As for the Kazakhstani donation…?’

Andrew: ‘They never paid me.’

Boris: ‘We know’ 

‘How?’

Boris: ‘Front page of The Daily Mail, you silly clod. Day eighteen of your court case. You  were  stitched up by your dodgy doggie pals from Kazakhwherever. You  really do have a memory of a motheaten sieve.’

(Guffaws and indeterminate whispers follow)

The next morning, Kumar peered out of the heavily glazed kitchen window. It oversaw the inner admin car park. His work colleagues stood behind: ‘Nothing from Brown’s mob yet?’ They crowded behind Kumar like gabbling geese, all asking the same questions simultaneously: ‘Anything…any thing at all?’

Kumar peeked between the iron bars: ‘Government cars still there.’ 

Boris was jumpy: ‘Gordon’s ghosting us.’

‘We wait..patience.’ A single bead of sweat shone on Mandy’s shiny forehead.

‘We gave that haggis munching bugger every name we got,’ Johnson growled  ‘and he’s gonna blank us.’

Kumar saw his publishing deal fade like smoke.

Andy tried to help:  ‘I could throw him Fergie. She musta done something wrong.’

Mandy continued his mantra: ‘We wait.’

‘Megan and Harry?’ Andy was trying hard. ‘’They’re walking talking begging bowls.’

The Mandy mantra was in full flow: ‘Patience, gentlemen…’

Boris was tetchy:  ‘Patience, Peter, is that it?’ Mandy nodded. Boris snarled: ‘And continue waiting..waiting, My Dark Lord, always waiting.’

Mandy: ‘We wait.’ Kumar kept his eye on the  parked convoy below. There was a hint of movement.

Kumar watched drivers gather behind their wheels. He watched unsmiling staff packing into back seats. He watched Brown heave his bulk into a passenger seat of his Range Rover and immediately bolt a phone to his ear. He watched cars silently kick into action. He saw the cavalcade slowly head towards the Magnolia gates.

’Waiting.’ Kumar repeated,  ‘Waiting, always waiting for Gordon Brown.’ The black cars snaked into the mist and vanished into the fading winter light. Evening crept in.

‘Always waiting. Waiting. Always waiting.’ said Lord Kumar Kumar to no one. The blind moon edged over the horizon. ‘Waiting’ he said ‘…waiting for Gordo.’

Ends