Monthly Archives: February 2015

CRUNCH!

CRUNCH! Zig felt his narrow backseats collapse furiously into his unassuming and extremely ill-prepared back. “Crunch…” Zig mimicked in a dazed voice. He reached out ineffectually before realising that his face and most of his frontal body was severely incapacitated by a rather voluminous airbag. “Crunch” Zig repeated apologetically. As he spoke the airbag popped and this gave him a grainy glance at his now oblong steering wheel. It had ventured precariously into the third dimension. Zig winced.

He clambered out of his mutilated automobile. For some reason, his transporter now had an uncanny resemblance to an overused, double-holed, pencil sharpener. The wheels on the left-hand side had become fused in a hot, rubbery embrace and now showed no desire of disengaging. Zig braved a glance at his car’s bonnet. Or where it should have been: a troll-like truck had invaded the position and was currently in the process of reversing from the depths of Zig’s car. The truck, surprisingly, was untouched; except for an insignificant disturbance above the left indicator lamp, all other evidence suggested that the truck could have been in a showroom the previous week.

Zig waved his arms dejectedly for the driver to halt his slimy retreat and pull-up on the side of the lonely highway. Unexpectedly, the man appeared to acquiesce, whipping his key out of the car and labouring his hefty frame onto the scorching road. The man reminded Zig of a rather grouchy, flattish toad, who has been forced to vacate his favourite lily pad by an energetic fly.

“ HEY YOU!” He started.  “You with the zonked car, wha’ dya mean scratchin’ my truck?” croaked the toad in what seemed to be an accent that varied from an inhabitant of the distant Corfu Islands to a Texas rancher respectively.

“Eh” inquired Zig insipidly.

“Doncha ‘eahh’ me” spouted the agitated amphibian. “You breaka my cah, you h’apoligise h’and pay up, h’okay?

Zig slowly came to his senses. He felt like his brain was a large, entangled bundle of coil that had been hacked, mercilessly, in two.

“Sir…” he said in an attempt to be respectful. “Sir…, you ‘zonked’ my car”, he indicated the smashed sedan.

“Ya stop h’in the middle of the ‘ighway, dats what’s gonna ‘appen!”

“My car stopped because its hind portions were raked by your truck!”

“Eh?” imitated the froggy man. “That ‘cause you braked in the middle of da road.”

Zig started to reply, but then paused. A manic glint had entered his eye and was spreading surreptitiously along his face. He deftly thwacked the pipa-like man, grabbed his keys, hopped into the gleaming truck and sped off. The repetitive ‘thump-thump’ of the truck driver’s preferred club music bizarrely brought memories of thousands of popping airbags. It was all strangely soothing.

Short Story: The Death of a Fish

Fantail goldfish (Carassius auratus) in tipsy fishbowlTerry gazed into the fish’s eyes. Bubbles stared back at Terry. The dull penetration of those eyes was so reminiscent of his uncle, Mr Felinus that Terry had to look away….

“Ooooh…” wailed the fishbowl as it involuntarily embraced the tiled, kitchen floor.
With only a moment’s hesitation, Terry began shuffling the debris into the nearby trash can. However, a familiar, gnarled hand clamped on his shoulder soon inhibited him from making much progress.
“Stop, you blithering idiot! Stop at once!” cried Mrs Felinus “Don’t mix the glass with the garbage. It needs to be recycled.”
Terry immediately changed his course of action. He jerkily dropped the remaining fragments into his pockets at such a rate that his pocked bounced against his leg as if it had a life of its own.
Mr Felinus clambered down the stairs at a rate akin to his droning voice. “Goodness me, was that the fishbowl that fell?” He spluttered pompously.
“Not fell, dropped! By this mongoose of a boy!” Mrs Felinus responded viciously. She was sprawled across the floor, in a manner that would have disgusted a sloth. “And now where could our Bubbles have gone to?” She whispered with an entirely different tone in her voice.
“It’s no good my dear, even if we did find him now, the fish would be dead,” Mr Felinus said grimly before he dropped his unwilling frame to the ground beside his wife.
He then turned savagely to his nephew “Boy, we heard you were an animal-lover. What do you have to say for yourself?” Terry remained silent as he fished out the last grains of glass from the newly formed water feature. Mr Felinus continued with venom “We thought it was the stray cat that we had to worry about, little did we know, that when your mother requested you stay with us, we were to host a murdering menace in our house.”
Terry left the room and scampered towards the main door. He slid into the doorway and waited, perfectly still. He thought he could hear the familiar meowing sound. Sure enough, a stringy cat emerged and pawed his way nervously towards him. He took something from his pocket, brushed of the shards of glass and laid it in front of the cat. “This came from our emergency supplies, you know,” said the boy as he stared into the cat’s hollow eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll make a plan for tomorrow,” he continued with a bitter smile. He patted the cat and then skipped towards the recycle bin. The cat purred happily and then started eagerly into the fish.