In order to understand the momentous events that finally brought democracy to Torquay (Underground) one has to make reference to a noble Institution (Overground) called the Dole, which had led to massive migratory movements from North to South (compared by separatist Devonian historians to the Barbarian invasion of Rome) since it was obvious that the Dole was something better enjoyed in a mild climate than in a harsh one. 

One result (Underground) was a steady deterioration in the quality of the food supply. The denizens’ diet changed from tough, but wholesome, old yokels’ bodies nurtured on cider, venison, potatoes, and turnips (‘Good honest-to-God stinking rotten carcasses,’ as the older worms and bugs were wont to say nostalgically) to a lot of soggy young bodies un-nurtured on all sorts of plants and herbs previously unknown in those bucolic regions.

Which was almost certainly responsible for the unexpected death of King Slugbug the Sixth of Torquay (Underground).

His son, Prince Slugbug of Torquay (Underground), wept copious tears and inwardly gloated. It is not recorded whether he was acquainted with Prince Charles of England (Overground, despite his moribund appearance), but he would have sympathised with his plight. For he, too, had long been barred from the throne by a parent’s unreasonable refusal to die. Slugbug the Sixth had – bloody-mindedly and most gittishly selfishly – lived for centuries. More than three of them, in fact.

The secret of this royal longevity was, and was not, known. Everyone knew it was the First Bite which conferred it, but nobody, not even Prince Slugbug himself, knew exactly what the First Bite was. His father only whispered the secret to his copiously weeping and inwardly gloating son a few hours after the first cracks had appeared in his enormous mantle shield, and the first gases had started to escape, a sure sign that the end was nigh. As some of those gases had been building up inside him since the first sliver of Restoration cadaver had tickled his palate, his courtiers slimed away as fast as they could and at the moment of his death he was completely alone, except for his son.

For the last three centuries, whenever a new Picnic Hamper was lowered into the Communal Larder (usually accompanied by ritual wailing sounds from above, and a lot of flowers, which the grateful recipients assumed to be garnish), the specially armoured Royal Guards (known as Snails) had at once set about nibbling a hole in the container, so that the reigning Slugbug could get in. For the Slugbug, and only the Slugbug, had the right to the First Bite. The Snails, who had all, of course, received tough military training up north in the killing fields of Glasgow, would then form a protective circle round the Slugbug as he oozed his way through the hole in the coffin, and thence through the winding sheets covering the corpse du jour. His respiratory pore would enlarge as he took a deep breath, there would be a harsh CHOMPING sound, a huge SIGH OF ECSTASY, and then he would slowly squelch back out, his cheeks, indeed his whole body, bulging, and be carried to his quarters, from which he would not emerge for several hours.

What it was exactly that the Monarch took his subjects had never found out. By the time the viscous hoi polloi were allowed to join in the feast, the bodies in the Hampers were all more or less the same, except that some of them had a couple of quite odd, and ludicrously squishy, lumps of flesh on their chests. 

With the death of his father, Prince Slugbug became, through complex arithmetical manipulations that severely taxed the sluggish brains of the leading mathematicians, King Slugbug the Seventh – also, it was decided after further deep and disgustingly clammy thought, of Torquay (Underground). 

The moment he was crowned, Slugbug the Seventh (also known affectionately as Slugbug the Unbelievably Greedy Sonovabitch) squelched towards the Larder, and slid through the hole already made by the Snails. His nose told him at once that he was in luck. According to his father, only half the bodies – the ones without the odd blobs of flesh on their chests – possessed the First Bite. And this was one! Here was contained all the Potency that he needed for a long reign! He opened his mouth, and with his needle-like teeth sought immortality...

The CHOMP (and the subsequent huge SIGH OF ECSTASY) was heard even in the neighbouring churchyards, and the penis that had once obeyed the will – at least intermittently – of one Angus Stuart MacKensie, slid down the new King’s throat with a Linda Lovelacian ease.

It wasn’t till a day later that Slugbug the Seventh began to realise that something was seriously wrong.

Angus Stuart MacKensie had died young. He had (before dying, of course) kept extremely bad company, which may, or may not, have had something to do with his dying young. He was, the awful truth has to be faced, into Punk Gothic. He had been seen, for instance, slipping furtively into the notorious Nosferatu’s Cloakroom, dressed becomingly in a whisky-and-blood-of-gormless-local-yokel-stained tee shirt and jeans, and then stomping out, a new man, in purple leathers, a huge medallion depicting a castrated horned devil crucified on a cross with the words ‘Your turn, baby!’ engraved over it, and a hair style that was a cross between a dispirited macaw and a hatless chicken caught in a hurricane. No longer need he feel embarrassingly different at parties. He had been witnessed sliding even more furtively into a sleazy backstreet bookshop in Exeter and emerging guiltily clutching a copy of John Major’s Memoirs – even the Southern Kingdoms (Overground) were no longer safe! – wrapped in giveaway black plastic; and, worst of all, as it turned out, he had recently been seen to stagger, mincing and wincing with each step, out of Gored of the Rings, a local tattoo and piercing shop run by a man clearly related to both Edward Scissorhands and the Shrike in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, since people were wont to emerge with more holes than Bonnie and Clyde or the bridal sheets of two passionate Italian hedgehogs.

There may, as we say, have been no direct connection between Angus’ dying young and the bad company he kept, but there was a connection between the bad company he kept and Slugbug the Seventh’s dying young. 

Slugbug the Seventh swelled and burst on the tenth day of his reign. No-one ever found out why he had burst a few centuries earlier than usual, since no-one gave much importance to a small ring in the vainglorious shape of a stallion’s head which was found, intestine-covered, in a corner of the Slug Hall after the bursting. 

It had been his sad destiny to swallow the first pierced penis that had ever passed on to a floppier life that far south, and to have had his exit passage cruelly and fatally blocked by a Ritual Adornment. 

There was, however, a happy ending, if not to Slugbug the Seventh himself, at least to the story. He had burst childless, the whole iniquitous feudal system of Slugbuggery was overthrown, all future Bites were shared equally, and glorious British Democracy emerged to rule below, as above, ground in the happy Kingdom of Torquay. Amen.