Like a pair of gravity defying Slinkies our heroes ascended one of the mattress factory's many rickety staircases; this they did warily; it was clear that the factory had been abandoned for some years, for it lingered in a state of disrepair, a crumbling, wood-wormed, hollowed-out frame better suited as a shelter to spiders, roaches, weeping moths, and some penguins which had gotten lost in a snowstorm. In order to fend off such creepies, crawlies and sub-Antarctic birds, and to bring a much needed illumination to the shadowy corridors, via a brisk rubbing together of his crumpet palms our hero summoned a halogen glow. With his palms now beaming with all the the wow! of an oncoming milk float's headlights our hero lit a path through the narrow dereliction of the factory, while simultaneously scenting the walls with the rich aroma of toasted crumpet. Still suffering the hangover/serious medical concussion of his recent pirouette through masonry, upon sniffing the fine toasty scent Detective Pilchard immediately felt himself rejuvenated. “Is there nothing you cannot accomplish with those crumpet hands of yours?” he basked.
Our hero smiled. “Detective, I am yet to encounter a situation which cannot be resolved with crumpets.” To reinforce this statement our hero emitted a chuff of wind from one of said hand-crumpets, expunging the dust from a directions sign on the corridor wall.
“Marvellous,” the detective spluttered, coughing up a lungful of asbestos. “Simply *retch* marvellous!”
Crumpet-Hands Man bowed (and retched) appreciatively. Having consulted the now dust-less sign he said, “I believe we should *retch*/head this way. Onwards!”
But lighting, chuffing and inducing bronchitis in ear-eyed detectives were mere parlour tricks when compared to the heroics our hero's doughy extremities would shortly be required to deliver...
Having chuffed/reached the uppermost floor of the mattress factory, Crumpet-Hands Man and Detective Pilchard came upon a vast expanse – an expanse ripe with the whiff of danger. Across a wooden-decked floor thick with fluff our heroes proceeded uneasily into the ambush-ideal murk of the factory's uppermost expanse, the very air laced with the stench of danger (and decomposing memory foam.) The tin panels of the ceiling were few and rattled against the wind; gutted pillows lay about the place like fallen soldiers; stacked around the walls, akin to giant pulled teeth (that you can sleep on) were hundreds of moth-eaten mattresses.
“Be on your guard, detective,” Crumpet-Hands Man did whisper his warn. “My crumpets are tingling, which can mean only one of two things: Either I'm being electrocuted,” (a quick check via his crumpet-voltage meter proved this not to be the case) “or there be danger in this here vicinity.”
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Despite adopting a pirate accent for no apparent reason, our hero's apprehensions were indeed warranted, for moments later a figure enrobed in a pinstriped nightgown and matching nightcap announced his presence from atop the furthermost gantry.
“Gentlemen,” the figure boomed with villainous orchestration, his features and stature both menacing and gnome-like, “it seems you have stumbled upon my evil lair! And not before time!”
“Nor after time.” Crumpet-Hands Man winked to his partner. “For for no man time no waits no, no?”
There was an awkward silence. A wagon-train of penguins squabbled over a map. A distant gunshot signalled the untimely passing of a moth.
“So,” Detective Pilchard asked of the pyjamaed figure, if only to break the silence, “who are you, then?”
“I,” the figure announced with a dramatic hoisting of his arms, in the process dramatically hoisting his nightgown a little too high for our heroes' dramatic tastes, “I am... The Slumberer!”
“And what should we call you?” Crumpet-Hands Man asked. There followed another long and awkward silence.
“Urm... Well, like I said... The Slumberer,” eventually said said The Slumberer.
“I see,” our hero didn't. “And what does this name of yours imply, exactly?”
Having somersaulted from the gantry to the factory floor, The Slumberer took up a brass candle holder from somewhere and lit the candle somehow; the ominous light cast his dwarfish features in crooked, flickering underglow. “I am the inducer of slumber, the encroaching gloom of the jaded twilight,” he spoke, stepping towards our heros. “The bedtime story which speaks only of nightmares. The late-night cheese which causes indigestion. The rancid nutmeg in your bedtime cocoa. The–”
“Hmm, cheesy nutmeg.”
“Urm.”
Detective Pilchard went on licking his lips, snuffing the villain's monologue of its gathering momentum; Crumpet-Hands Man's rather sonorous yawn, which he apologised for afterwards, snuffed the villain's candle.
“But do not be fooled by this villain's sweet-scented pillow talk,” the yawner yawned to his lip-licking lackey (i.e.: Our hero said to the detective.) “Sleep is all very nice, but I fear that this baddie has a more lamentable plan of snoozery in store for us.”
The Slumberer giggled, retreated into the shadows as would a wolf into its cave. (Or a slice of bearded toast down the back of a blah.) “You are indeed correct, Crumpet-Hands Man. My plan is indeed most devious; it is just a shame that you and your fish-faced friend will not be around to thwart it! Boys!”
Upon The Slumberer's command a dozen or more henchmen in matching pinstriped pyjamas emerged from behind the stacks of festering mattresses; Detective Pilchard spotted them first out the corners of his ears; he also spotted that these henchmen were brandishing:
“Pillows...”
“Damn them,” Crumpet-Hands Man sneered, flexing his crumpets as would a knight unsheathing his sword, for a lifetime of bitter experience (and library books) had taught our hero that a gang of pyjamaed henchman armed with pillows were a dangerous foe.
A dangerous foe indeed...
