back in the red: THE CATS PYJAMAS
written by Kelly Cowley:

The entire crew had been totalled. A cadmium 2 leak. Everyone was gone- except him.

He being Dave Lister, the ships Stasis booths con, who had been informed of the disaster earlier that deep spaced day. Not being the type to dwell under the storm clouds, he'd opted to take a little holiday in sun to cheer his spirits. Holly mentioned something about it being quite a lengthy jag to the Fiji islands, but what the Hell! Lister had never been in a hurry his whole life.

So cracking open the bottle of Marijuana gin that he'd half inched from a drooling Gamehead on Miranda, Dave boogied on down to the Copacabana Hawaiian Cocktail Bar, where he bumped into Peterson, Chen and Selby. In reality as we know it, this lowlife trio perished 3 millennia previously. However they all appeared very alive to Lister, who was presently on an odyssey through a Trip-out mega metropolis.

Arnold Rimmer, the ships hologram watched the pitiful revels from a distance, speaking in irritated, hush-hush tones to the disembodied head displayed on the wall monitor.

"Look Holly, how am I expected to cope with this while at the peak of my post-mortem depression!"

"You gotta to keep him sane, man."

"Why? I mean Lister's mental stability- Would you miss it? Would you even notice if it were gone?"

"Well if you can't help, I suppose I should, like, turn you back off." Holly pondered aloud.

"Oh here we go- existential blackmail!"

"Yeah, too right dude. Now you just like, do your stuff, while I plot our thingy...whatsit...course."

Rimmer tried to not let Holly's sloppy syntax disturb him (but he bet his bottom doubloon he was the only literate left onboard). He sulked his way over to Listers table, where the dozy dormouse was playing "Armpit- name that tune" with an imaginary Chen. Now Rimmer was not the master of an exponential amount of things, but with small talk he was an utter buffoon.

"So Listy, you're alive then."

"Are we nearly there yet?" he slurred scousily.

"Where?"

"Fiji, Smeghead!"

"Well I doubt it somehow."

Lister grumbled and turned back to the vulgar banter of his extremely private party.

"Look Lister I reckon it's high time for you to sleep it off."

"And Peterson reckons you should smeg off!"

"Well Olaf never was one for a witty repartee, but I must admit that's a pretty impressive put down for a drunken, dead moron!"

"Are you still here?"

"Only in spirit actually."

Lister giggled as if the hologram had made a joke.

"Listen to me Lister; I order you to cease carousel with these figments of intoxication and go to your room!" Rimmers electronically generated vocals crackled with anger. Lister performed a cartoonish parody of the full Rimmer salute, which he rounded off with a two-fingered salute of his own. Rimmer's temper blew a fuse.

"Fine! Turn fruitcake! I'll just nip off and tell Holly to prepare for a lobotomy, shall I?"

Rimmer was near tears by now. He wanted his mum. Well possibly not his Mum, she was such an insufferable hag. But he was in serious need of a nurturing, inspiring role model type in this dark hour. He stormed back to the sleeping quarters to read Napoleon's war diaries.

Lister sat still and silenced from the outburst. Then, for no adequate reason, he was in stitches again. He turned to entertain his cronies with the secret of how Rimmer kept his underpants- but they had disappeared. Weird. Then he remembered. They were dead. That's it- Holly had said! Everybody's dead! Smeg. That meant he was all alone. And suddenly Lister felt so down, he thought he might fall through the floor.

 "Hey" she said.

He looked up. She was stood where the Disco ball hits the varnished pine. The jukebox had switched from Rastabilly to a Hugo Lovepole ballad as if telepathic to Listers mood. The girl was dressed in a racy red number, which sparkled only minutely less than her lagoon blue eyes. And she had a pinball smile, which she wore in that wicked way gin induced hallucinations always do.

"I love you, Kristine." Lister whispered feebly, as he shuffled across the dance floor towards her.

The Kochanski sprite laughed in his face. A schoolgirl laugh.

"I'm too classy for guttersnipes like Dave Lister." She taunted, impishly. "He had bad breath and couldn't add up! I was thinking of handsome Tim the whole time we dated."

Lister listened to this vivid nightmare in devastation. The death of his crew, being marooned in deep space, even being the last remaining member of his species were downers he could handle. A harsh word from Krissy- could blow his world to pieces.

"And now Tim and I are together forever." She continued, merrily. "In the afterlife."

Lister closed his eyes. Her beauty made them sting.

"Hard Cheese, Smeghead." She cooed.

She pulled him to the ground and clawed at his clothes. This is one powerful trip! thought Lister. He opened up his eyes- they met a stare that twinkled like road lights in the dark. It was that creature who evolved from Frankenstein. It was sniffing him. It had Lister pinned.

"Oh, its you," stammered Lister "What do you want?"

"Hungry." the Cat leered, gluttonously. He gave Lister a second nasal appraisal.

This was too much. Was he now destined to be eaten alive by an over grown pussycat?

"Let me go you smegging savage!" yelled Lister, squirming.

"Buddy, I have to eat!" moaned the Cat.

"I'll give you food then! Please don't eat me!"

The Cat frowned and released the human. "Eat you! Monkey, you're nuts. Have you smelt you?!"

Lister rose shakily and regarded the bipedal black Tom.

It beamed at him. "I wouldn't eat you anyway. You gave me Krispies. I like you."

Now Lister smiled back. That was the nicest thing he'd heard all day. The day was getting late now; possibly 3:am though was it hard to tell in the perpetual night of deep space. Whatever the time, Lister was feeling far too shell shocked to be awake for much longer. Acknowledging that he was reeeeeally drunk (which was never a good sign for his well being) he elected to catch some "Z"s- ASAP. And luckily sleeping, along with pool skills and curry consumption, was in Listers top field of expertise.

"Cam on, Cat." he said, gingerly offering a piggyback. The Cat pounced onto Listers unstable shoulders and the odd pair staggered a paralytic promenade back to the bunkrooms.

Inside the bunkrooms, Rimmer was sat in the pink glow of his student's desk lamp pretending to revise. What he was actually doing was concentrating on the gibberish in his textbooks, in order to steady his posture so he wouldn't fall through the stool. This was seriously depressing him. Emotionally Rimmer was feeling as fragile as eggshells. And when the "Alive" brothers toppled in through the hatchway, he felt a thousand messy cracks deep inside his soul.

"Rimmer, look who I found!" Lister chirped.

"El Furball. Joy of joys."

"Hisssssss!" The Cat retorted.

Lister rolled his eyes and opened his locker, to be almost chloroformed by the avalanche of noxious washing that poured down upon him. Smeg...if only I had some sap to do my laundry, he mused as he fished out the Krispy ingredients. Meanwhile, Rimmer and the Cat bickered.

"Look why don't you just hiss off! I've already got my hands full here sustaining sanity."

"Sanity..." the Cat mulled over the new word. "I don't think Cats have that!"

"Oh indeed they don't. However I wager they possess qualities rhyming with it. Methinks a word beginning with the letter "V"? That is if you flea-bitten gimboids even read!"

The Cat screwed up his perfect nose. "Jeez Buddy! Meeting you was like finding a grease stain on a silk waist jacket."

"Krispies up!" said Lister, breaking the evil-eyed glaring match.

"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah..." the Cat purred as he sat up to the table.

Rimmer cleared his throat, wanting to make a little speech. "Err... David?"

Lister gawked at the hologram, as if he were speaking Albanian. First name monikers were alien to their exchanges. Smeg, he thought, time for the lecture. Rimmer beckoned Lister to come out of earshot of the Cat (which was pointless because, a) The Cat had an awesomely acute sense of hearing, and b) The Cat didn't give a smeg about anything Goal-post head had to say anyway!).

"What is it Alfred?" said Lister, feeling awkward and sluggish from booze.

"It's Arnold! Arnold...Jonathan Rimmer BSC SSC. Remember it squire, because it looks like you and I going to be stuck together in this clapped out space juggernaut for a considerable amount of time. Is it not enough that I'm now in sole command of this futile mission back to earth? No! Because I also have highly evolved house pets and do-lally computers to cope with! And all this while trying to come to terms with my own demise. It's preposterous! So from here on in, I'm demanding some respect and subservience from you. And I'm certain if you obey orders, our relationship will go just..." Suddenly the side effects of Marijuana Gin got the better of Listers vertical capabilities and he collapsed through Rimmers image, "...SWIMMINGLY!" He concluded, rising to a falsetto pitch.

Crumpled in Rimmers feet, Lister began to snore. Revoltingly. The Goit.

Rimmer turned his wild eyes to the cretinous kitty still feasting at the table.

"Shoo! Go on, scat! I'm officially putting the Cat out for the night."

Having lioned down his supper, the Cat yawned and stretched until his pompadour spiked. It was time for his main snooze. Gracefully, he sprang up to the bunk with the pretty Fucheal posters.

"Oh no, your not sleeping in here. Those beds are for registered personnel only."

The Cat immediately leapt down again, though he wasn't adhering to Rimmers bureaucratic command. He had actually recoiled because the blankets of the top bunk were smeared with a spicy smelling orange substance, which the Cat feared would stain, and possibly even corrode, the fabric of his 42nd favourite suit. What a feline tragedy that would be! So instead he curled up, kitten tight, on the spotless sheets of the lower bed.

A delirious grin crept on to Rimmers rage-swelled face. He called for the computer.

"Holly, have you got a tick?" he inquired with crazed calm.

"Smeg off. I'm busy with star charts, guy. Gotta keep my hand on the wheel."

"Well that's truly doodley!" Rimmer snapped. "I just happened to be wondering if it were possible for a dead man to commit suicide?"

Mercifully, Holly released a sedative into Rimmer's system turning his anger into jelly. Within seconds the hologram lay prone beside Lister, the last human, who was now mumbling something about pinball machines in his sleep. Holly smiled. After their first delicate day, his crew had finally settled down for the night. And aside from the engine drones and skutters jittering to the midnight movie, Red Dwarf was silent. Satisfied that all was present and correct, Holly turned his attention back to the climatic chapter of Agatha Christie's 'Sparkling Cyanide'.

The End