You: Good afternoon, sir! May I have a word?

Me: Oh, we shall have words. What’s your game, boy? Have out with it, or I’ll splice your jib-line with a saucy affront!

You: But sir, I mean no offense, I merely wish to speak with you on some matters.

Me: Then you leave me no other choice, you nap-gully. You worm-ridden milk-sopping, half-shaded Turkoman! You sow’s biscuit, you plopping, feeble, spindly-gummed rag-chewer! Unsheathe your tongue and have at me if you dare, I can take whatever you may have, and give tuppence change!

You: Why, the severity of it!

Me: What’s this then, not saucy enough for you? Then let me go on to list the peculiar things found between your grandmother’s knees: A miniature paddle-wheeled steamboat, a Jew’s harp, a dented pie tin, a jarred pygmy suspended in formaldehyde, a crumpled ball of wispy cotton scraps, and a swarthy stevedore dripping with sweat.

You bathe in a crock, you balmy pigeon’s pudge, you listless shift-toe. A pox upon your many ears. You mumbling trundle-bed, you mottled spittoon! You feeble, feckless bungler, you smudge-addled cross-jaw. You deafened, lip-smacking bung-whittler, you flat-nosed, ingrown, marmeladed blanket-weaver. I wipe a tear and cross my heart when I hear your silly folderol.

You dune-diving ham raker! You cause vaporous excess, you bilge-drinking Mahomettan gunny-swab.

You: Sir, this truly is too much. I surely am no pigeon’s pudge, at long last.

Me: What then? God strike me blind if you aren’t a pigeon’s pudge, and a rare pudding of a one at that, you thug, you brindled scab on the snaggle-toothed grin of a flop-house Sally! You’ve keened your last rube, now for your comeuppance!

You: You are surely not the man to do it, boy.

Me: You rum-steeped bangtail, you trencher, you sandle-sniffing, limehouse trolley dodger! You pusillanimous, ill-postured tiddlywink! In a moment I will retrieve my truncheon and give you the rewards your life of mung-battery and infanticide have earned you! You lunch bucket, you… you trace horse! You eel! You moon-eyed, traitorous shovel-toothed demagogue. You are nothing more than a leprous attic-dweller, and may you stay that way until you are pulled down to the sauciest depths of hell, for I would not give a farthing to spare your stenchy soul from the hungriest hands in Hades, you bottle-beaked scuff-rug. You trench-fingered lickspittle. You raise my ire. You cause.. you literally cause me to retch, you mash-swill, you buckle-kneed raisin pastie! You illegitimate fish-monger’s punch-lolly!

You: Enough! I am beaten, sir, please, I beg a reprieve from this affront!

Me: Never! No longer will my wrath be staved!

[Stabs you]

Me: Do you not remember me? Oh, it was long ago, with I a mere boy, and you a well-heeled Lothario, a rascal, and a rake-about-town!

You seduced and then scorned my mother, destituting us, while elsewhere you plied still your ruthless trade. How many others succumbed to your sweet promises, only to be turned out onto the high road?

The dirty streets of London were my bed and my mother’s grave, and so shall they be yours! Do your dying eyes remember this face, once-fresh, now fiersome? Whisper that you cannot be forgiven.

You: I… cannot… be… forgiven

[dies]

Me: Mother, now your trespass is avenged.

[dies]