A misty graveyard. Moss covered gravestones are just visible in the foreground.
A grave comes into view; shovelfuls of dirt can be seen flying out of the hole in the ground. The sound of two voices slowly becomes audible.

“That’s why I don’t eat donuts I know how they put the hole in, my cousin works at the factory and he told me”
“I suppose that’s why the label say’s caution: may contain nuts”
“They certainly taste like your cousin’s nuts”
“How would you know what my cousin’s nut’s taste like?”
“I don’t know how your cousin’s nuts taste”
“Just as well, I'd hate to think you were insulting my family”
“Your sister does though”

There are sounds of a scuffle breaking out. The sounds change from the sort of sound that a smack on the head with a shovel makes to the sound of a head being knocked off of a large wooden box.

“I”
(Thump)
“Told”
(Thump)
“You”
(Thump)
“Not”
(Thump)
“To”
(Thump)
“Talk”
(Thump)
“About”
(Thump)
“My”
(Thump)
“Family”
(Thump thump CRACK).

A man’s head pops out of the top of the grave revealing a shock of hair and a large nose.
“Look what you done, you made the box crack. We won’t be able to sell this coffin back to the undertaker”
A voice coming out of the grave replies “just shut up, and get me out of this hole”

The head disappears into the grave but returns a fraction of a second later lifting out a very small man who has bright orange hair, a bright red nose and who seems to be dressed as a clown.
A coffin is passed out of the grave and is followed by a man who is also dressed as a clown (but stands out more for the reason that he is at least three times the height of his partner).
The large man bends down like a tree being felled, He looks in at the corpse’s face that is visible in the crack.
“You made me bruise him, the doctor’s gonna be really P’d” he says, rubbing his forehead “And you got my clown suit covered in dirt; do you know how much dry-cleaning costs these days?”
“Why don’t you put it in the washing machine like I do?”
“It ruins the fabric. I like the freshness of dry-cleaning”.

The two men load the coffin into the back of an ice cream van and get in. stopping only to light a large cigar each, they drive off into the swirling mist’s.

Inside the ice cream van it looks just like you’d expect an ice cream van to look, sweets are piled on shelves all around the rear compartment, there are two large freezers buzzing and clanking and there are boxes of crisps piled at the back door. There is no sign of a coffin.
“Tink” says the large clown driving.
“What?” Says the very small clown who is standing on the passenger seat.
“Remind me why we have to dress up as clowns again?”
“I told you manual, it’s so no one pays any attention to us while we dig up coffins and load them into the van. We look less conspicuous”
“I’d have thought that would make us more conspicuous”
“It’s reverse psychology. If you were out walking at night and just happened to see two clowns robbing a grave then loading a coffin into the back of an ice cream van what would you do?”
“I'd wonder if I was seeing things”
“And would you tell anyone what you saw?”
“No way”
“Why not?”
“I’d get locked up for being mad”
“Exactly, if you saw something that looks so obviously like a hallucination then you’d end up convincing yourself of that fact that it must be one”
“Doesn’t it hurt being so clever Tink?”
“Only when I'm talking to you Manual, only when I'm talking to you”.

The ice cream van arrives at a large warehouse and Tink and manual get out, they walk down opposing sides of the ice cream van toward the rear doors.
“Do you think...” says tink, turning around to see his large accomplice not there “Manual?” He says with a slight waver in his voice.
“Where are you?” He starts to walk back the way he came, not realising that manual had done exactly the same thing and that they were now walking towards each other. As they both rounded the same corner they almost jumped out of their clown suits with the fright.
Behind them there is a large sign on the side of the warehouse; it reads,

Madame freekey’s
Wholesale and retail
Chemist.

Tink and manual go around to the back of the van and open the doors. Tink stands on the exhaust and a false bottom opens in the base of one of the freezers. Tink reaches into the space and pulls the handle of the recently acquired coffin, “grab the other end” he says.
“I know what to do” said manual, totally forgetting to do what he had to do.
The coffin drops with a splintering noise and Tink starts to swear very much like someone who grew up in a very rough orphanage.
The reason that tink swore very much like someone who had grown up in an orphanage was that he grew up in an orphanage.
On the first day that Tink arrived at the orphanage he met manual.
Manual was getting a thorough beating from four other boy’s when Tink stepped into the fray and said to the biggest of the boy’s “if you want to fight someone why not fight someone your own size”
The head antagonist of the looked down at Tink and said to him, “well one thing’s for sure mate, that aint you”.
Tink’s rage knew no boundary. He had to be pulled off of the four boys’ by three very fit, and very strong, gym teachers. After that day they had been together every day since.
Tink lifts the coffin off his foot with one hand and throws it at least thirty feet into a coal cellar just at the side of the warehouse. “It’s ok, I think my foot took the most damage”.
The reason that tink was an orphan was that his parents had been killed by freak accident’s.
He had been with his mother at the local fairground, his mother worked on the DOUBLE DUNKER stall.
He sat watching her sit on a narrow plank of wood suspended over a tank of water while people threw balls at a target (if they hit the target she would fall into the water beneath). Luckily for Tink’s mum not many people threw at her target, they all liked to try to get the other target.
The reason the other target was so popular was that suspended over the water was not, as was Tink's mother, a dwarf. It was Messy Tessa, the fairground’s fat lady.
A woman (so fat that if you got her to wear a ball gown she’d look like a mobile marquee. so fat that when she walked past you thought you’d witnessed a solar eclipse. so fat that her shadow weighed twenty pounds. so fat that if she cut her finger she’d bleed gravy.) who made a far BIGGER splash.

But... on this day a mother told her young boy that they didn’t have the time to wait in the queue to dunk messy Tessa, (it took almost a half-hour to get Tessa out the pool, back on her plank and refill the pool). “Throw at the midget instead” said the boy’s mum.
So the boy paid Tink the money, picked up a ball and threw it...
Not only did it hit the target. It sailed in an arc so true and precise, that a passing trigonometry student dropped his strange smelling cigarette and went straight to work on an applied physics paper that was three years overdue. (He passed then went on to discover time travel. but that's another story).
It dropped Tink’s mum into the water below her a fraction of a second before Tessa dropped into the pool.
The wave caused by Tessa made Tink's mum fly out of the pool (like a cork in a bucket of water when you throw a brick in) and sail into the near distance.

Fortunately a strong pair of hands caught her.

Unfortunately they were the hands of the local rugby team captain just as he was about to feed the ball into a scrum. Tink’s mother was kicked to death (and for thirteen extra points).
Tink's father died as a result of drowning in a vat of scotch that he “fell” into (it was a good trick he had going at the brewery “accidentally” falling into a vat and having a few mouthfuls as he was helped out).
His co-workers said he’d put up a brave fight and managed to get out five times to go for a pee.
His last words were said to have been “either I'll finish it, or it’ll finish me”.
The funeral was delayed for three weeks to give the undertaker time to get the smile off of Tink’s dads face.

The reason that Manual was in the orphanage was that his parent’s couldn’t afford to feed him.
They weren’t poor by any means, in fact they were very rich, it was just that manual had an appetite that seemed to be unquenchable.
So his parents decided that he would be better off if they gave him to someone who had the necessary means to raise him. Manual was abandoned on the doorstep of a fast food restaurant.
The manager of the restaurant took pity on the child and kept him for three days.
Which just happened to be the amount of time manual took to eat all of the stock, and put the manager into serious debt.
The next day manual was found on the doorstep of the orphanage in a greasy cardboard box.

“Lets get in out of this fog, it gives me the creeps” said Tink.

Tink and Manual walk over to the building and enter.

Part Two

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