Categories
Fiction

Return to the homestead

I opened the front door and the sea monkeys were yapping around my ankles, eagerly anticipating my return. The wife kisses me on the cheek and asks me how the weekend was, and I tell her that it was fine, and my parents are great, and how I transferred a hard disk from one of my father’s computers to another, and all sorts of other anecdotes about the curry that went from docile to underwear-threatening within the space of a ten minute walk et al.

And then she passes me this mornings newspaper, still unopened, and I put on my slippers and sit down in front of the roaring log fire and read how my stocks and shares are doing, and about Manchester United’s poor performance yesterday.

And the sea monkeys are curled up at my feet, snoozing in front of the fire, whilst my oil painting of my late great-great-uncle George looks down on me with pride from above the mantelpiece.

The smell of hot mince pies permeate my nostrils, mingling with the aroma of the beef and onion pie in the oven.

A little Beethoven would be appropriate, I think.

Categories
Fiction Peril

Screeching

So I was awoken at 5am this morning by an almighty screeching sound. At first, my mind tried to pretend that it was all part of the dream, but slowly I was roused into consciousness.

Then I opened my eyes, and instead of being in my bedroom, my entire bed was floating on a sea of molten lava, and there were all these weird twelve foot eagles circling around with flames dancing over their feathers. And in the middle there was this huge red beast with a face like a smacked arse – it must have been standing about four stories high – bellowing in this deep rumbling tone. The whole thing was really noisy, what with the bellowing beast and the screeching eagles.

Anyway, I punched them all in the face for waking me up and went back to bed, but I couldn’t get back to sleep.

I feel really rough this morning as a result.