"Where's the Professor?" Cried Suzy, running into the front room with her collected coursework gripped tightly in one hand.
"Nutjob's Anonymous." I replied, staring intently at the game of Operation that I and Steve had been playing for the last twenty minutes.
"Not again!" Suzy cried. "People are going to start believing he's one of the Nutjob's, when he actually runs it!"
"Suzy, he may run it, but he almost certainly is one of the Nutjob's." I said. "Why do you want to know anyway?"
"He said he would have a look at my coursework before I handed it in."
"And you're wondering why he's suddenly spending so much time at his Youth Clubs for Lunatics? Reading your work would be worse than being locked in an asylum!" Steve cried.
"Rude." She said and slumped down to the sofa.
"Unfortunately, that's life." He grinned, as I reminded him for the twentieth time that it was now his go.
"Alright, alright." He chimed, impatiently. He reached for the Butterflies in the Stomach but Suzy jumped forwards and grasped his shoulders with her hands, causing the red nose to flare into life.
"Suzy!" He cried, turning to her irritated. "I was almost going to win!" He turned to me. "It doesn't count, because it's unfair."
Suzy grasped his shoulders again. "Unfortunately, that's life."
The Pine Resistance- aka the Paranormal Christmas Tree Agency to anybody with taste- was a year old that month. It was also a year since a possessed branch had jumped out of the undergrowth and attempted to strangle me to death. My neck had almost fully healed, but I still had to go to the hospital occasionally. We'd discovered a lot about the Christmas Tree's in the year and had managed to devise the perfect weapons against them. Sadly, because of the law- that pesky thing! It always get's in the way- we weren't allowed to keep these weapons in the house, rather in a dull storage facility about half a mile away, which wouldn't be too useful in the event of a widespread apocalypse.
Although I imagine that in the case of a widespread apocalypse, we may be slightly more concerned about the widespread apocalypse rather than the bus journey to the weapon storage.
As I said, I still had to go to the hospital occasionally, and the day after the Event of the Operation Sabotage was one of those days I had to visit. Steve, the only one of us who owned a car, offered me a trip and I accepted, but then began to wish I hadn't when I discovered his girlfriend, Elise O'Hallain, was tagging along with us. I had nothing against Elise, she was a suitably pleasant human being, but the way in which she and Steve flirted in varying languages was simply quite irritating. It was like having a vacuum cleaner's nozzle forced up one of your nostrils then turned on and off repetitively whilst some terrible music- such as Black Lace's Agadoo- played forever as a hideous remix from every single corner of a room painted a sickening shade of orange. Actually, looking back at that comparison, I can tell why my parent's volunteered me for counselling when I was six. The car came to a stop in the hospital car park and Steve almost had a heart attack at the price of the parking tickets. I told him that a hospital would be the perfect place to have one. He looked at me with all the amazement of a sedated goat. The three of us hopped up the curving stairs and passed the barrage of ambulances to get to the big entrance. I waved at the receptionist who knew me quite well by now and she told me that Doctor Rasheed was ready for me. I went through and met him, sitting down on the uncomfortable chair to the side of his desk. He had a nearly bold head and a flower of grey hair expelling from the corners of his head. He asked me some questions and then began to squeeze my neck. "Has it been hurting?" He asked.
"Yes." I replied.
"What does it feel like?"
"Someone taking his fingers and squeezing my neck twice a month."
"You are a very sarcastic man."
"Thank you." I smiled.
"It wasn't a compliment."
Once he'd finished causing me pain and asking me if I had experienced any, I was released with some painkillers and told that I shouldn't return. I asked what I should do if my foot fell off. Rasheed told me it was unlikely and left me at that. I found Elise and Steve in the waiting room, flirting and so I held my hands over my ears as I told them we were ready to go. We climbed into the blue Citroen Saxo, perching on the particularly comfortable covered seating and once more I couldn't help but wonder what the point of having seat covers was. Out of annoyance, I finally asked.
Steve, looking at me through the mirror with the pity in his eyes, replied, "To stop the seats from getting dirty."
I looked at him scrupulously. "But what's the point, because you're never going to see the seats if they're always covered."
He was just about to give me a reply when the car rolled and the roof and windows crushed slightly. There was a pattering blinded to me slightly by the throbbing in my mind and ears but it slowly got louder. I swung myself around and used both legs to kick out one of the windows, three, four, five times. The window smashed and I crawled out and then instantly felt myself with fear. For storming over the car, as furious as the agents of the Devil they were, were a hoard of Paranormal Christmas Trees. And they all turned to face me.
No comments:
Post a Comment