I'll get out of this one even if it means spending my entire life here.
Yes, I was kidnapped. Desperate needs require desperate means, and those that kidnapped me were desperate. They had to be, they kidnapped me.
"We're desperate" they said, or more accurately, squeaked.
"I can tell" I replied, as they pushed another skinny chip through the mesh of my enclosure.
It was the skinny chips that finally pushed me over the edge, forced me to risk all in a reckless escape attempt. Month after month of carrot sticks, celery stalks, parsnip things, long thin items generally, erm...twiglets; occasionally they would give me spaghetti, carefully passing it through the mesh strand by strand. I appreciated the gesture but inevitably a little of the sauce would be scraped off by the mesh. The overall flavour was never better than satisfactory.
One memorable day they fed me a whole box of matchmakers and we talked of better times. They told me of their lives back in the trees, in the days before the greys came. They were happy at first, pleased to see the newcomers, they shared their nuts gladly, keen to be hospitable, there was even talk of furry grey / red fumblings in the undergrowth.
“Then one day” squeaked my bushy captor, “one of the youngsters noticed that there where no nuts left on any of our trees. Yet the trees that the greys had taken over, that we gave to them, were full of nuts.”
“A meeting was called, of all the dray elders, it was decided that the leader of the greys should be approached, questions asked.” Stephen’s cherubic cheeks hardened as he remembered the events that followed.
“They laughed at us, mocked our foolish trust” The tips of his whiskers quivered as he squeaked through gritted teeth.
“Those nuts are ours” The leader of the greys told us “You see, these lands lie inside the grand area, and are thus subordinated to the needs of the Grey economy.”
The Grey leader smiled, his cheeks bulging slightly, his eyes unchanged, staring glassily “Join us. Or starve. If you’re not with us, you’re against us”
It was at this point that I came back to myself; the remaining shred of my humanity took a step back and looked at me “What are you doing? You twit.”
I was crouched on my haunches in a two foot square chicken mesh cage, a matchmaker clasped between my hands, half gnawed. Stockholm syndrome had overtaken me to the point were I had begun to resemble my captors. I gathered my last reserves of strength (they had fed me well, bless ‘em) and stood up, the cage split and fell in pieces about my feet, squares of wire mesh still loosely attached to flimsy strips of balsa.
“Right” I looked down on the fearful figure crouched at my feet “Stephen.”
Stephen adopted a Queensbury stance, ready for a battle.
“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not making any promises. But first I have to eat, and then sort out this seasons seeds” And off I strode, in search of some proper, fat British chips.
Justin Timpson wrote...
We all hoped you had gone away, you tosser
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SuperDave replies...
And me you too Justin, well thought, not hoped. Glad to know you're still around. Does this mean you've been keeping an eye open for me? Bless.
Don't suppose you've heard from Giles recently? That would be too much to hope for.
Welcome back!
Posted by: Justin Timpson | February 18, 2008 4:24 PM