This time last year, Tracy Durbin was leading a hectic life. She'd just given birth to her third child, Ida, and was raising her two eldest children, Max and Fishman, on her own. Max had just entered his third year of primary school, whilst Fishman was apprehensive about his new life at secondary school.
"It was a bit of a panic, to be honest with you!" Said Durbin, 35, "I was overjoyed to welcome Ida to our little family, but things were a struggle, it always is being a single parent. There is help, but at the end of the day, you are facing this alone, and the support can only go so far."
The father of Tracy's two eldest children, who will remain unnamed, left when Fishman was in his infancy, leaving Tracy pregnant, with a toddler to care for, in a house barely fit for living.
The circumstances surrounding the father will be revisited later, but in late 2019, Tracy was living in poverty, unable to feed her three young children, and unaware of the horrors the next year would bring.
"There were times when I felt like i'd hit rock bottom. It came in waves, it was like every day became darker and darker, then something would come along, a letter from the government, or from school, a thousand new problems, a thousand new crises, and it just swept everything else that came before away, it got worst and worst. I didn't know what to do."
Tracy received support from several neighbours on Slade Street, where she lived in a dilapidated, and barely hospitable two bedroom house with her three children, and a cat named Trapp. "My neighbours were lifesavers, if i'm being honest. I don't know what i'd have done without them."
One of Tracy's neighbours, Lindsey Sanford, a 65 year old widow and former headmistress, said Tracy's situation was fairly common in the suburb of Clacton where they lived. "It's awful", she explained, "the deprivation around here breaks my heart. It gives me a better perspective on my years as a headteacher as well. Some of the children I had to discipline were nightmares, I don't think that's too strong a word! I had no idea what to do with them, they'd just keep misbehaving. But now I know why, they had such unstable and volatile home lives, it must have been sheer hell for them all the time. It kind of makes me regret making them swallow those tubs of glitter as punishment".
Lindsey, who lives alone in a bungalow and has three English mastiffs, Knuckle, Wayne and Mustardseed, recently organized a support group for mothers in the area. One of our undercover journalists, Keith Brown (from the Theatre desk) attended a meeting last year and described the atmosphere as 'electric', 'sublime' and a 'must see'. The group met on a Friday and spent at least 3 hours exchanging words and droplets of empathy and deeper understanding.
"What Lindsey's done is astonishing. She's clearly very influential in her cul-de-sac, I got the feeling these mothers would kill for Lindsey, and one can give no higher praise than that." Brown explained the impact of the meeting was like being "Spoon-fed orgasms of tender-loving-care until everything was alright."
Tracy and so many young mothers' lives were on the up. Christmas and New year were times to celebrate, times to rejoice at new beginnings, a new way of life for their families. "2020 always sounded sci-fi to me, I don't know why", Tracy told us (via Zoom). "When I was young I always imagined we'd have flying cars by now, or robots serving us meals or serving our country abroad. I always imagined the 2 minute silence on Remembrance Sunday would mostly be for fallen robots and no longer humans. Most people wouldn't get sad at robots dying, but I would. I guess i'm a dork like that! I think they have feelings too."
Tracy had plans for 2020, "I wanted to go abroad, I wanted to take my kids somewhere exotic, like America". Little did Tracy know that the whole world was about to change.
"Coronavirus, coronavirus, coronavirus, it's all we heard about. Suddenly life grinded to a halt. All these plans we had dissolved, all this hope suddenly vanished."
The nationwide lockdown on the 26th March began smoothly for Tracy and the residents of Clacton-On-Sea. The streets were described by one local verbose eccentric as "really quiet, it was unusual".
Then came the boredom, the pent up anger, the mass hysteria. "People were breaking lockdown rules. We noticed Clacton was a particular hot spot for ne'er-do-wells." Queen Spankz, the local Sheriff's mother explained. A solution was needed, fast. "We got this massive blackboard and started brain-storming ideas, you see?" Spankz, a former femme fatale and dominatrix, lead the taskforce into finding a humane and practical solution to solve the unrest in the town. "I was the first to mention Minotaurs". The mere mention of this word stunned the board room of assembled law-enforcement officials, local councillors, nurses and minor celebrities who made up the publicly-funded taskforce.
"It just came to me", explained Spankz, "I'd read about a similar solution in Chile, the authorities released a dozen Minotaurs from a white van then watched as the town submitted and stayed indoors".
Spankz faced a considerable amount of opposition from certain members of the taskforce. Some suggested more tried and tested means of getting people to obey the stay-at-home orders. "They wanted to create local TV and radio ads warning people to stay home. They wanted to increase the police presence on the streets. They wanted to issue fines if people broke the rules. All of these things were considered, but I knew none of them would work".
Spankz thought back to her line of work and the plethora of different methods she used to force her clients into submission. "Of course, Clacton County Council wouldn't be able to attach dog collars to all their residents!" joked Spankz, "but I began to think about submission in an abstract sense."
"Once I realized that the equipment in my attic I managed to keep hold of from my job was of no use in this situation, I started to think about other solutions. I read Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War', Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler and Donald Trump Jr.'s 'Triggered: How the Left Thrives On Hate and Wants to Silence Us' to try and understand the science of war and how the tactics of oppression work."
Spankz discovered there was an art to oppression. "It was really transformative for me, personally. I had the know-how, but I didn't have the tools". Trump Jr.'s book had a particular influence on Spankz. "The Shakespeare of the alt-right, the Oscar Wilde of reactionary internet trolling. I bathed in his honeyed words. I'd sit in the bath, champagne in one hand, Trump Jr. in the other, True Grace Rosemary and Eucalyptus-scented candles adorned the rim of the bath whilst Vivaldi's Four Seasons played on the stereo. His playful intellect and his 'come-hither' New Yorker machismo carried me through waves of wet, juddering ecstasy."
She then read about the Chilean Minotaur technique and, after some hesitation, decided to request funding for 12 adult male Minotaurs to be manufactured then shipped to the UK and dispatched to Clacton town centre.
The question was then: How does one 'manufacture' a dozen Minotaurs?
Spankz contacted a group of scientists who worked in cryonics, the practice of storing and freezing a human corpse with the hope of someday bringing it back to life when the science catches up. According to Wikipedia, the practice is regarded as a pseudoscience, but Spankz nevertheless trusted the expertise of the cryobiologists at L. Ron Hubbard University, Nebraska. One scientist in particular, Jebediah Patriot III Jr. opined that a fully formed adult Minotaur could potentially be rustled up in less than a month if the funding was there.
Patriot III Jr., who spoke in a Kentucky drawl, explained that creating such a monster wouldn't be as difficult as some mainstream brainiacs might believe. "Basically all ya (sic) have to do is inject a load a' (sic) juicey loosey (sic) to these here (sic) remayuns (sic), theyan (sic) ya (sic) watch the hair grow waald (sic) ya (sic) watch the horns grow long, ya (sic) watch the leyags (sic) and the arums (sic) grow long, ya (sic) watch his bloodshot eaaas (sic) and ya (sic) know that he gone get angry (sic) he gone get berserk (sic) like a horse with his nutsack tieeed (sic) with barbed wire".
Spankz was told the only way to bring a dozen Minotaurs to life would be to find a dozen well-preserved Human cadavers. The Chilean technique was developed by scientists in the country who had access to morgues, yet Clacton County Council didn't have the necessary clearance required to raid the local NHS hospital and purchase some cadavers.
"We needed access to the morgues and we needed access to the blood banks, we contacted Gareth Southgate because we knew he'd received access to the nation's blood banks as a reward for reaching the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup, but he didn't reply".
Spankz posted an ad on Craigslist and received a handful of replies, but mostly obscene images of genitalia. "One reply stood out" Spankz observed, "It was something about the shape of it, it wasn't too long and it wasn't too girthy, it was sort of chiseled, but in a healthy way, it didn't look surgically enhanced". Spankz also received a helpful reply concerning the cadavers. "This one guy told me he knew a dead guy, and that he (the alive guy) could lead me to him (the dead guy) and that his name was Guy (the dead guy)."
Spankz met up with the Craigslist user, who preferred to remain anonymous due to his celebrity status as someone who finished second on the fifth series of The Voice. "He led me to this cryonic freezer he and some friends had bought with his TV money. It was really disturbing for me at first to see this body, lying there motionless and dead as the night". The body would later be identified as Tracy Durbin's ex-husband who had abandoned her when Fishman was but a child. Durbin recalls her horror at learning this news. "I was really taken aback, but somehow I wasn't surprised, he always hung around with the wrong 'uns."
Lindsey Sanford, who knew Tracy's husband well, collapsed when she heard he'd become a frozen cadaver then a Minotaur. "It's beyond belief, he was like family to me. He and my late husband used to shoot grouse together".
Tracy's husband became the first corpse to be seized by the local council. Others followed. An unidentified man found in the local canal, a young woman found in someone's attic, an elderly local poet buried in a shallow grave and a couple of young teenagers who'd washed up onto shore, among others.
"In the space of a few days, good news just kept rolling in, the bodies just kept rolling in. I know it may sound insensitive, but we had an abundance of cadavers, we were swimming in the things, it was like God had heard our prayers and answered them." The scientists then got to work with the hormone injections. The science involved in this procedure is highly sensitive and highly classified, and News, News, News, News does not have the authorization nor a proficient amount of basic scientific understanding to communicate the procedure with accuracy.
What followed was nothing short of a miracle. Twelve fully-formed, adult male Minotaurs, brimming with life and filled with hormonal rage sprang into being. For Queen Spankz it was a revelation. "I was gobsmacked, these scientists had worked day and night transforming these frozen human cadavers into mythological beasts, I didn't know such stuff was possible."
Prospero had said "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep". But the scientists working with Clacton County Council had proven that this little rounded life was more of an up-turned semi circle, and sleep would eventually end if your corpse was frozen at freezing cold temperatures, thus debunking Shakespeare's ignorance.
Next came the small matter of rolling the Minotaurs out into the public sphere. The logistics of such a task were very troubling for Spankz and the taskforce. "Some of us wanted to go all in and just release them, this is what's referred to as the Chilean model. It had mixed results when used in Chile, but it still had it's supporters in the taskforce."
"The other option was called the America + option, where we'd just roll out the Minotaurs at a snail's pace, so that their presence would be barely noticeable, until the residents slowly get used to the oppression and the breaking down of societal norms, only realizing they're being held in bondage when it's already too late."
Some on the taskforce favoured making a deal with the people of Clacton in regards to the usage of Minotaurs, but this was swiftly shot down as 'watered down' and 'unpatriotic'. "We were in control, not the people" explained Spankz, "why would we want to strike a deal with these people? The whole purpose of releasing the Minotaurs was to get results. We wanted people to stay at home, you don't negotiate oppression".
After hours of relentless debate, the taskforce decided on the America + option. They released their first Minotaur, nicknamed 'Maggie' in the early hours of the 3rd of May. "It went fantastically" said Jennifer Lu, a member of the taskforce, "we were worried that 'Maggie' would cause an immediate public revolt, but the reaction was quite subdued".
Members of the public were initially curious about the new arrival in the town. Tracy described the mood in Clacton as 'cautious, but interested', "we didn't initially have any reason to be frightened. At first the Minotaur just lazed about and grunted like a baked beach hobo". But there were signs of what was to come. Lindsey Sanford noticed her allotments had been intruded upon. "The fuchsias were lopsided and I'd planted some sunflower seeds which failed to grow." This caused a tremor of panic to run through Lindsey and Tracy's street.
"We gathered the community together to ascertain what the hell was going on, and we all agreed it had something to do with that blasted Greek beast!". One resident from their street recalls being woken up in the early hours of the morning by a sound of running water. "I thought i'd left the tap on, but then I realized there's no running water in my house, my husband and I choose to live like Medieval Carthusian monks, and all of the trappings such a lifestyle entails. I looked out the window and saw this massive demon with horns urinating over our front lawn, now we don't know what to believe".
Word spread that this Minotaur was disrupting public order. The residents chose to bide their time and not contact News, News, News, News until they could be absolutely sure it was the Minotaur behaving badly and not some local ne'er-do-well like Cyrus the Toe Dojo, who claims to have perfected a martial art that focuses solely on wielding the power of the little toe. "It weirdly brought the community together. We genuinely thought it was just affecting our street, but then everything just accelerated".
New reports came in from other suburbs within Clacton, people started posting their stories on Twitter and the Snapchats. Stories of people walking home at night and being rugby tackled by a seven foot beast, of pensioners going to get a morning paper and being flashed then hearing a deep, guttural laugh, likened to Jabba the Hut's laugh upon discovering Princes Leia and Han Solo in 'Return of the Jedi'.
"We began to realize that this wasn't limited to our street" explained Durbin. "It was then that we decided to speak out". Durbin and several other residents created their own taskforce named 'Clactonites Against the Beast' (CAB), "The purpose of the taskforce was to try to string together all of these sightings and assaults, then alert the authorities".
But shortly after CAB launched their savvy website and their public appeal on TV, something bizarre started to happen. Their website had clearly been hacked, and their public appeal on local radio was somehow edited to make Tracy and her fellow residents sound like they were socialists. "If there's one thing us Clactonites hate more than marauding mythical beasts molesting our elderly pensioners, it's lefties." CAB initially thought the Minotaur infestation was a Communist plot, "We thought they were seizing the opportunity to perform a coup amidst the pandemic, it would be the perfect time to do so" Sanford thought.
But the attempt by the hackers to try and make CAB out to be a Communist plot made them doubt this particular conspiracy. They enlisted the help of an expert hacker, former actor and alt-right troll codenamed 'Larry the Fox'. What Fox found was a massive, wide-spreading conspiracy that made it's way up to Clacton County Council itself. "I went deep. You would not believe the things I found" boasted Fox, "I even found out the secrets behind 9/11, but you'd need to pay me if you wanted that information." News, News, News, News did indeed pay for Fox's information, but will not share it, because knowledge is power and power is wonderful.
Fox and the CAB then debated how they'd launch a counter-attack against the Council. So far, they were able to find evidence of at least 8 Minotaurs causing Havoc around the town, it was only when all out war had begun that they discovered they were up against 12, fully grown, violent, sexually virulent Minotaurs.
War escalated quickly. It made national and international news. Rolling coverage was broadcast on the BBC. Anderson Cooper of CNN even mentioned it in passing. "We knew this was a big deal when the American networks started to mention it" Durbin recalled. Footage of Molotov cocktails being flung at buildings owned by the local council quickly made the rounds on YouTube. As did CCTV footage of Minotaurs doing that thing that big kids usually do with playground swings, looping them around till they're impossible to reach for the smaller folk.
On June 15th a CAB member, who shall remain anonymous due to his celebrity status as the longest-serving member of the Emmerdale cast, crafted a bespoke, dirty, dirty bomb and lobbed it into the local library. "I deliberately aimed at the modern literature section, specifically yer' (sic) James Pattersons, yer' (sic) Dan Browns, and all yer' (sic) celebrity auto-biographies, Lee Mack's 'Mack the Life', Gemma Collins' 'The GC: How to be a Diva', no one would notice these are gone, and I think most people would say I've done a public service." We reached out to Mack and Collins' agents, but only received breathy, muffled voicemails in which individuals with Northern and Essex accents threatened us mildly.
CAB had limited funds. They launched a GoFundMe page to crowdfund the war effort, reached out to celebrities asking for donations and fished around in local fountains for spare change. A few celebrities, mainly Hollywood A-listers who had read about Clacton's Plight, responded with generous donations. George Clooney, known for his appearance in the 1985 ABC series 'Street Hawk', donated several functional flamethrowers alongside a dozen large wooden barrels of water. Vanessa Redgrave donated a large turquoise dildo containing anthrax spores.
The war was at full throttle. Despite the donations, the council still had better funding. Spankz, alongside a tightly-knit group of advisors, consulted several US army veterans trained in remote- viewing, the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means. One of the soldiers, Lt. Hank Schwartzman, described the magnitude of the task as 'harrowing'. "Even if the CCC had more money than the CAB, the tactics employed by the CAB were just as lethal, just as sophisticated. But I was brought here to utilize the psychic skills I learnt in the army."
Despite Schwartzman's claimed expertise, it transpired that he'd only read the Wikipedia article on remote-viewing and had lied about his ability to make ITV talk show host's heads explode by just staring at them on the TV. "It was £1,000,000 we'll never get back". Spankz was resolved to find new ways to psychologically manipulate the enemy. "I have a ruthless streak", she bragged, "I also used to own a burlesque club on Main Street called 'The Ruthless Streak''. She got to work as war waged on, houses were being razed to the ground, crops were dying.
Little did Spankz know that Tracey Durbin and the CAB were planning their own psychological offensive. Durbin recalls an idea coming to her whilst clobbering a local Tory councillor with Vanessa Redgrave's anthrax dildo. "When I was but a young girl, I harbored ambitions to become a mime artist. The dream slipped away, as dreams do, but I still thought about mimicry and physicality in a very abstract sense." We asked Durbin to describe this 'abstract sense', but she said nothing. She sat there, perfectly still, closed her eyes and stood up. She then proceeded to let out a deep, guttural roar and pounded her chest. She was like a woman possessed, something had overtaken her and it was deeply disturbing for us as journalists to witness this.
After a sleepless night spent lying in piss-soaked sheets, we checked our emails and saw that Durbin had contacted us. It turns out her freakishly monstrous display in the living room the previous day was her demonstration of the CAB's plan. "You asked me to explain our plan and I showed you, i'm sorry about your sheets". Their plan was to craft Minotaur costumes out of dead horses then work to physically embody and mimic their behaviors "We studied Jacques Lecoq in particular" Durbin explained. "We used my basement to train CAB foot soldiers to discover their Minotaur. It was an incredibly creative and collaborative atmosphere. We even brought in Philippe Gaulier to give classes, Philippe would end up leading the Minotaurs into battle."
The technique devised by Durbin and the CAB was designed to confuse and disorientate the real Minotaurs. "We had some of our fake Minotaurs learn seductive poses, meant to trigger the male Minotaurs into a frenzy of sexual panic. Not many people know this, but despite their apparent brimming sexual confidence, most male Minotaurs are impotent."
The rouse worked. The CCC and their twelve Minotaurs were utterly bamboozled and woefully unprepared for such warfare. Four of the twelve capitulated and drowned themselves in the local canal and Maggie, the proto-Minotaur and the first to be released, froze herself to death by enclosing herself in a frozen food chest in a local Best Buy.
The CAB, at the time of writing, have an upper hand in Clacton's year-long Minotaur war. But despite victory being on the horizon, the impact the continuing conflict is having on families in the area is overwhelming. "Ida's barely one years old", Durbin told us, "How can I raise three young children whilst also waging war on the tyrannical local council?" Lindsey Sanford, who lost her eyesight in the 'Battle of Abbotts Close', despaired at the disintegration of the once mighty town. "We once had the great Douglas Carswell as our MP! He boldly quit the Tories and joined UKIP, he was going places. Clacton-On-Sea was going places!"
Carswell's successor, former actor Giles Watling, has not yet commented on the vicious civil war taking place in his constituency. "We've heard sod all from Watling! He's meant to be our spokesperson in Parliament! I doubt he's even told the Government what's happening here. It's probably insignificant to him in his Ivory fortress, but for us, this war is destroying our families!" Sanford broke down and wept, our NNNN journalists didn't console her, as this is company policy. The next day we received an angrily worded e-mail from Sanford complaining about our emotional coldness. "I was clearly in a lot of distress but your journalists just stood there with their notepads and their furrowed brows."
NNNN would like to make it known that we sent Ms. Sanford a fruit bouquet and some Cadbury's Milk Tray.
It's clear that this Minotaur war, caused by rule-breaking amidst a once in a lifetime global pandemic, is taking a heavy toll on the residents of Clacton-On-Sea. But it's clear they don't plan to give up. The people we met have a strong, impenetrable inner mettle that will carry them through any crisis, whether it's a Coronavirus, a family tragedy or a dozen scientifically-engineered Minotaurs creating havoc in their streets and teabagging the neighbourhood curtain-twitcher until he spiritually combusts.
Through talking to these people, learning about their little lives, we here at NNNN have truly seen the brighter side of humanity. A side which puts collective unity and determination above selfish individualism and apathy. This little community on the Essex coast has grouped together and created something nothing short of miraculous.
Durbin, who remains positive about the end being in sight, has started to organize camp-fire sing-alongs for distressed residents. "We even brought in Joan Baez via Zoom to sing 'We Shall Overcome', there wasn't a dry eye in the house, I think we sort of needed that collective outpouring. It was truly cathartic. Max, Fishman and little Ida enjoyed singing 'He's got the whole world in his hands' and Nick Drake's 'Day is Done'. It's amazing that out of the rotten ashes of war a beautiful, fiery folk revival has risen from the ground. I even learnt who Jackson C. Frank was. He's sort of become a symbol of our movement!"
Queen Spankz and the taskforce at the Council also remain positive that the war will turn in their favour. "I don't care how many hippy love-ins these plebs have on the hillsides of our once beautiful town, we will not give in and withdraw our remaining Minotaurs. We're too far into this shit. I'm tired of celebrities endorsing their movement on Instagram and the Twitches. Go Fuck yourselves and stick your feelings where the sun don't shine, in fact, fuck your feelings." A few days later Spankz sent us a barrage of videos by American far-right political pundit Ben Shapiro, and a dozen of expletive-laden texts which NNNN have sent to the police. It's clear that Spankz and the Clacton County Council know that they're on their last legs. They're desperate. The good, honest residents of Clacton-On-Sea are winning their town back.
This article contains product placement. The turquoise anthrax dildos which Vanessa Redgrave donated to the CAB are available in the Argos winter catalogue. Donald Trump Jr.'s book 'Triggered: How the Left Thrive on Hate and Want to Silence Us' is probably available somewhere. Cyrus the Toe Dojo would also like to advertise his weekly Toe-Jiu-Jitsu classes temporarily held on Clacton Marshes. Lindsey Sanford has also made some delicious home-made jams which she will sell outside her home on Slade Street.
