DISCLAIMER:  As well you know it is unusual I start with a disclaimer as I do feel it’s pretty obvious in all cases that the characters in my stories are not based on anyone I actually know but in this case I thought I’d better make it abundantly clear due to the reptilian nature of the main character.  So, in short, not based on anyone I know.  Therefore please enjoy, if that is the right term for such a vile figure...

“So, to skip to the end...

  “The wife did it,” said Derek, dryly.  “Very predictable really.”

  “Why did you do that?” asked Barry, who was sat on the same section as Derek.

  “Do what?” said Derek.  His hands seeming tiny as he rested them on his huge gut.  

  “Reveal the ending!” interjected Kim, a middle-aged frump on the same team.  “I sky-plussed that,  I was going to watch it tonight!”

  “Well, you didn’t miss much,” chuckled Derek.  “Now get back to work.”

  Kim turned back round and flipped herself back into available with a begrudging punch of the 

keys and took another call.  Derek smiled.  His chubby features almost burying the joy in fat.  He’d 

learnt early in life the joy of being nasty.  He’d spent his school and summer holidays mercilessly

torturing his younger siblings and cousins, intimidating them with his physical mass, taking delight 

from spoiling their fun, from breaking their toys to denying Father Christmas.  For Derek his life

was a wicked game.  He lived to annoy, and as he’d got older, he’d got so much better at it.

  As he monitored his staff to make sure he was going to get HIS bonus this year he chortled to

himself at just how simple it was to ruin the joy of others.  It really was as delightful as taking

candy from a baby, and just as easy - stupid kids!  Not like they can brush their their teeth at that 

age.  As his podgy fingers roamed over the keyboard he smiled at the thing that had given him so 

much joy over the years, four little words that ruined other people’s good day by not sugaring any 

blow ...”Skip to the end!”

  Derek however never saw anybody spit in his tea, he was never aware of people rubbing his 

biscuits against their groin before placing them on his saucer, and he was certainly oblivious to 

people rubbing their fingers down their sweaty cleft before handling his many sandwiches.  No.  

Derek instead went about his day in blissful ignorance, thinking delightfully to himself that no-one 

could ever get back at him.  The cup of tea with two hobnobs (feeling strangely warm?) landed on

Derek’s desk and he dunked them in the tea with a lustful abandon, the crumbs finding a sweaty 

home on his chin.

  Derek’s phone rang sounding like a shrill, angry, robot bird.  There were only two reasons it ever 

sprang to life, one was a complaint from a customer over a holiday quote that had gone sour, the

other was because a staff member had finally screwed up one too many times.  Derek picked up the

phone feeling gluttonous desire inside that it was the latter.

  “Derek Coombs” he spat out, slovenly.

  “Yep ...yep ...yep.  Okay, just send me an e-mail with the details ...No, I can’t come and get 

them.” 

  Sometimes Derek would scoot around the office on his little chair if he had to see 

anyone, but personnel were on the whole other side of the building and there was no way that was 

going to happen.  As he flicked open the new electronic envelope a smile crept slowly over his

massive features.  It was good news.  It was his least favourite team member, Simon Chadwick’s  

final probation report.  He had failed to make the grade, not by much, but enough so that, under the 

Conservatives new employment laws (Thank you David Cameron, thank you.) he could be 

dismissed.  Admittedly if Derek wanted he could keep him on and extend his probation but why do 

that, it would just prolong his bad stats.  Although it was Derek’s choice realistically there was no 

choice.

  Derek placed his stubby little fingers on his chair rests and heaved his way out of the chair.  He

couldn’t scoot round to Simon’s desk due to it’s positioning near the wall.  He longed for the day 

when he could trounce around everywhere in one of those mobility scooters, he would then have an 

excuse to summon everyone to his desk and not move to see anyone.  He wheezed over to where

Simon was sat and placed his hand gentle on Simon’s shoulder.

  “Simon,” began Derek with a smile.  Simon looked back nervously at the man known

unaffectionately by the rest of his team as “Jabba”.

  “Yes’” Simon replied, anxiously.

  “I’ve got your probation details in,” Derek said, blankly.  “So, to skip to the end...you’re fired.”

  Simon’s face dropped.  Derek could feel the eyes of everyone on his team turn and glare at him.  

Derek offered a fake half-hearted pat on the shoulder.

  “Don’t shoot me.  I’m just the messenger,” said Derek, as if he had no choice in the matter.  He 

eased himself back into his seat and just glanced over at Simon.  He was sat just looking at the 

screen, not knowing what to do with himself.  Slowly he began to pack his things away; the “Best 

Dad in the world” mug, the pictures of his children and the good luck card he’d taken with him to 

bring him luck after being made redundant from his previous job.    No-one wanted to see anyone 

lose their job during any time, and his colleagues didn’t know where to look or how to feel, that is, 

everyone but Derek, of course, who chuckled quietly inside as he removed the last of his personal 

memento’s from his desk.  Derek just sat there, his huge frame dwarfing his computer as his podgy 

fingers typed merrily away, pretending to be busy, a quiet glee sparkling through his system as this 

gem of a highlight helped to twinkle an otherwise dull day.  

  For Derek the rest of the day involved the most depressing of things ...Actually doing some work.  

Complaints came in and he had endless stats to compile and graphs to complete to show how well 

he was doing in managing his team to make sure his own bonus got paid.  He waddled through the 

call centre of CJD holidays like a titan; a gladiator of a call-handler who had finally achieved 

something more after doing his time speaking to the general scum that rang in.  When Derek left 

work that night he did so with the knowledge he was one day nearer retirement with his pension 

getting ever fatter with the contribution his monthly bonuses were addingt.  He got to his 

Volkswagen Polo (Some prize cunt had prized off the L from the back of it.  Derek looked forward 

to the day he found the bastard who had done that,) and opened the door when a call startled him.

  “YOU FAT FUCK!  I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” came an angry yell. Staggering towards him 

was a furious Simon Chadwick; his eyes glazed over as an afternoon of alcohol had rendered them 

only partly functional.  Simon stumbled forward, swearing as he came.  Derek held his ground and 

as soon as he got within reach rammed the car door straight at him.  Simon bounced off the door, 

spun through the air and hit the ground with a whimper and a panicked sob, like some pathetic over-

grown newborn.  As far as Derek was concerned he could fucking stay there.  Wimp!  The real 

world wasn’t there to help losers like him, it was to help go-getting winners ...like him.  He 

squeezed into the Volkswagen Po o (...Son of a bitch that did that...) turned the key, and left Simon in a heap on the ground.  Derek needed to go home and have a shower, wipe underneath his folds and put on something smart so he could seem semi-respectable for his team leaders lunch.  Every 

month all the supervisors got together for a meal and tonight they were heading for Foo Yung’s

Chinese buffet.  Derek was delighted with that.  An all you can eat buffet for him was less of a 

bargain and more of a challenge.  It also meant he got to avoid his stupid wife for yet another night.  

They had got together when they were both in their heady twenties and overcome with heavenly 

desire.  Now he could barely stand to look at her, and was pretty sure that was how she felt about 

him.  Now any excuse to avoid here was greeted like the arrival of a long-lost friend.  Derek said 

goodbye to his wife with a barely concealed fake smile and squeezed through a doorframe that was 

designed to let two people pass through comfortably.

  Derek arrived at the restaurant only to find that his colleagues were already sat at the table, talking among themselves, enjoying a drink and laughing without him.  Bastards!  Derek shuffled forward and pulled the last seat out and squeezed onto the wooden chair that groaned as his ample weight strained every sinew of wood but, somehow, managed to remain upright.  Derek swiped a menu off the table and perused the details while his colleagues carried on like he wasn’t there.  He had to admit the people he worked with were merely a distraction to the buffet menu that he was about to devour.  For most people fifteen pound a head may be seen as a risk if you didn’t know if there’d be enough you would like on that menu ...for Derek, it was a bargain.  

  “Can I take your order, please?” asked the waitress, as she wandered over with a smile and pleasant demeanour at the ready.

  “Well I don’t know about everyone else but I’ll take one of each starter,” said Derek with a slavering wheeze.  The rest of the table went quiet at the announcement.  The waitress could not disguise her worried look of concern, however.

“Erm, sir?” she began, fearfully.  “Whilst it is a buffet, whatever you leave in the starters you will be charged f-”

  “I said I want ONE of EACH of the starters!” repeated Derek, coldly.

  “One of each of the eighteen starters?” the waitress queried one more time.

  “YES!” said Derek, antagonistically.  “I’ll have that with a pint of Carling, and then I’ll take the chicken curry, beef in black bean sauce and the king prawn chop suey, please.”

  Derek handed the menu back as he threw out a contemptuous “Please,” that managed to sound like an order.  The rest of the team leaders stared at him with disparaging eyes.  As far as Derek was concerned they could do.  He knew that they only invited him because they couldn’t deliberately ignore him, but it didn’t matter.  He was there for the food.  That was how he was going to enjoy himself.  If hell was other people then heaven was an all-you-can-eat buffet where you can ignore you’re scummy colleagues in a deluge of food and drink.

  As his order arrived and the other team leaders tried with increasing difficulty to avoid looking at him with disgust, Derek switched his focus to his eighteen starters and began to devour them like he was a condemned man, chomping on the ribs and nuggets and seaweed and vegetables, savouring the different textures as the food made a brief stay in the hotel known as “Derek’s Mouth” before taking the journey to their new home in Derek’s stomach.  While everyone else talked and ate or ate and talked Derek simply feasted, decimating his starters in the same length of time his smarmy colleagues finished their one or two.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go and make some room for the main courses,” said Derek rubbing his stomach and groaning, bringing a similar response from everyone else at the table.  Derek gingerly waddled off to the toilet, evacuated, whilst moaning profusely (so much so that the rest of the restaurant could hear him!) and returned cheerfully.  Conversation stopped as it always did when he returned, a few people made attempts to talk to him as they always did, but he shrugged off their pitiable efforts and settled down to the next set of courses. The food was delicious and he ate with a gusto and a passion that had left much of the rest of his life.  Most of the food managed to make its way inside him, but somehow bits of chicken and beef still managed to lodge themselves in his jowels.  The rest of the evening for Derek was utterly forgettable as chat turned to shit like “The X-Factor” and “I’m a celebrity get me into there”.  Jesus they were a boring bunch.  When the bill was eventually placed down there was the usual battle over how to pay.  “Shall we all chip in a little?”, “Let’s just pay our own bill, “ etc.  Derek had had enough of them at this stage and was just looking forward to getting out the door.

  “Let’s ask for separate bills and just have done with it,” he said, decisively.  The other team leaders looked round at each other.  They didn’t really want to do that but none of them had the balls to really say anything against him, so they meekly agreed and called the waitress back over to split the bill.  She took the bill back with a smile and took details of everyone’s order including the drinks and brought back each person’s individual tally with a hospitable smile noticed by everyone except Derek who just sat there in a stuffed stupor.  As money was placed down and people attempted to work out what ten per cent of nineteen pounds fifty was Derek swiftly merely removed the exact amount for the bill and put it on the table.  One of his fellow supervisors sat next to him noticed this and after furrowing her brow decided out of politeness that she had better mention it to him.  She knew that Derek had a fearsome reputation but surely his not leaving a tip was a simple error, bearing in mind the feast he had just gorged on.

  “Ooh, Derek,” she began, meekly.  “You’ve not left a tip.”

  “Well, Sue,” replied Derek, sarcastically, “To skip to the end, I didn’t think there was anything there that was exceptional, so I’m not leaving a tip.”

  Sue looked down at Derek’s plates that were devoid of even the tiniest scrap of food and sauce.

  “But ...You ate it all,” she countered.

  “IT WAS FOOD, OF COURSE I ATE IT!” shouted Derek.  The whole restaurant now stopping to stare at this ogre of a man.  “If I’m to give a tip then the service I receive had better be frigging exceptional, I mean they’d better suck my dick or something!”

  Derek’s colleagues had turned away in disgust from his drunken rant.  The blood from Sue’s face had drained as she finally understood why no-one ever stood up to Derek.  The rest of the restaurant who had overheard Derek where looking equally appalled as the creature that resembled an obese, shaved yeti seemed intent on ruining everyone’s dining experience.  The waitress who had smiled serenely came back to the table and picked up all the plates with the different amounts of money and, still smiling, asked if anyone would like a mint.  All the supervisors declined as their stomachs had been well and truly turned by Derek’s abysmal attitude, that is all but one of the supervisors.

  “I will and bring more than one mint!” ordered Derek, slovenly.

  The waitress headed back into the kitchen with the cash and picked up five mint imperials and smiled broadly as she watched the five white balls roll comedically in her hand.

  “MAX!” she shouted.  From the back of the restaurant’s kitchen the family dog, a butch German shepherd bounded through like it owned the place, even though it clearly lacked the financial clout to obtain a business loan.

  “Here you go, Max.  Have a taste,” said the waitress as she lowered her hand.  The dogs eyes seem to grow wide as it proceeded to slurp and slaver over the small white balls, savouring the taste and going crazy with desire for the tasty white treats.

  “Okay, Max, stop now.  Max, stop now!  MAX, STOP!” she ordered.  The dog did so and slunk back away.  It my have enjoyed the feeling like it owned the place but it still recognised who its master was.  The waitress brushed a tissue over the mints and placed them gently on a saucer, the innocent mints tinkling merrily as they jostled over the miniature plate, oblivious of their previous patron and just sat there glistening away, waiting for Derek to shovel them into his eager gob.

  The waitress scamped cheerily through the restaurant up to Derek’s table and placed the mints down happily next to him.

  “Cheers, love,” said Derek as he scooped the mints up in his chunky fingers and started popping them in his mouth, avoiding any sort of sucking and just chewing on them straight away.  The rest of the guests grabbed their coats and spoke in hushed tones, planning to meet somewhere else straight after the meal to avoid spending any more time with Derek than necessary.  While everyone else made tracks out of the door in a suspiciously swift manner Derek faced his usual struggle to get out of his seat, the chair groaning as he pushed himself off, fortunately, somehow, the glue and joints managed to hold together in spite of the strain placed against them.  By the time Derek had wrapped his coat around himself everyone else had disappeared, leaving him to make the relatively short drive home alone.

  He headed back to his Volkswagen Po o (“Oh, when he found out who did that!”) and squeezed himself inside.  The drive home only took about fifteen minutes and was easily worth the risk of being stopped.  He turned the key and set off for home, like every other person who drink drives Derek thought he was doing just fine but the truth was he was pretty fucking far from fine, the alcohol coursing through his system was merely acting like the world’s worst best friend, assuring that everything was okay while the truth was masked in a drunken haze.  Derek of course was vile and unlikeable most of the time but the drink in him was now making him unbearable, not that he knew this, as far as he was concerned he was just feeling confident and happy with his lot in life.  That is until the flashing blue light became noticeable in his rear view mirror.

  “Bollocks!” spat Derek as he pulled over.  As the copper got out of his vehicle in Derek’s wing mirror Derek breathed into his hand and sniffed.  In spite of the mints and the huge amount of Chinese food he had wolfed down his gullet the rank stink of alcohol still clung fiercely to his breath.  He wasn’t looking forward to this.  Three sharp raps hit his driver’s side window and as Derek looked up to see the officer performing a patronising twirl with his finger to indicate he wanted him to role the window down.  Derek pressed the button and felt an icy blast slither into the car, which felt like the perfect combination of weather mixed with the cop’s icy demeanour.

  “Good evening, sir,” said the cop in that way they do to make “Sir” sound less like a compliment and merely supplicant.  “Have you enjoyed a nice evening out?”

  “Yes.  You?” replied Derek, curtly.  If the cop wanted him to provide a noose to hang himself he would have to do a better job than that.

  “Not particularly.  Have you enjoyed a drink or two tonight. sir?” asked the cop.  Derek considered lying but the stench on him would be floating through the air and hitting the cop’s nose any second, if it hadn’t done already.

  “A couple,” responded Derek with a shrug.  “Why did I do that shrug?  That was so fucking pantomime!” thought Derek, cursing himself for such a giveaway gesture.

  “Sir, would you mind...” began the cop before Derek cut in.

  “Look, let’s just skip to the end where you give me a fixed penalty,” interrupted Derek.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I hadn’t finished,” continued the cop.

  “I know but you might as well skip to the end and give me an on-the-spot penalty,” interjected Derek again.  “For my sake, for your sake, for the countries sake ...It’s for the best.”

  “Why would it be best for you not to blow into this tube, sir?” asked the cop.  Derek let go an involuntary sigh.  This pissed him off.  If he said “Skip to the end” then that meant “Skip to the end” not elaborate as to why we should skip to the end.  Derek knew if he’d get out of this now he’d have to use every single one of his call handling skills.  Derek switched his brain over to work mode before speaking.

  “Fine,” began Derek.  “Look the reality is that I’m not gonna give you a breath sample and yes, I know that that’s a criminal offence, but I’m not gonna give it.  Like I’ve said I’ve had a couple.  Now this means that by the time you’ve squeezed me out of the car, got me into your car, driven me to the station, booked me in and got the authority to take either a urine or blood sample then a fair share of that alcohol in my system will have dissipated so you’ll just be wasting your time AND taxpayers money, both yours and mine, in prosecuting and processing me when there are a HELL of a lot more dangerous people on these roads.  If you pick up one of those bad boys you get the glory, you get the headlines and maybe a way out of doing this shitty traffic job in the middle of winter, no offence.”

  “None taken,” replied the cop, anything but unoffended.

  “If you take me in tonight then yes, you get warm on this frigid evening, but to be honest I’m a waste of of money and a waste of your valuable time that we can scarcely afford in this economic climate.  If I were you I’d just give me a fixed penalty for fifty quid and then we can both be on our way.”

  Derek looked up at the cop who gazed out at the grim winter weather and back to his car.  The night seemed to close in around him as the weight of Derek’s words pressed against his soul.  Derek was suited to working in a contact centre, he had the gift of the gab and when he wanted and could still pull a salesman’s trick out of the bag.  The drink, unpleasant as it made him at the restaurant. also gave him a modicum of charm when he wanted it to.  These days it just so happened that he never wanted to.  The cop seemed to be chewing hard on Derek’s words as he stared into the middle distance for answers that only he knew at this stage.

  “Tell you what I’ll do,” said the cop, opening his jacket.  “Result!” thought Derek, trying hard to keep the emotion from his face.  “I’ll give you your fixed penalty, but you can have the maximum, which these days is three hundred quid.  Have a good evening, sir.”

  “You to,” said Derek.  The cop handed over the fine and it was as much as Derek could do not to tear it up and throw it in the back of his Volkswagen Po o (“Oh!  Painfully and slowly!) but then he wouldn’t be able to appeal against it.  Any parking or speeding fine he usually appealed against (and won due to the lazy justice system in this country when it came to enforcing said laws!) in spite of his eloquent speech about accepting any punishment doled out.  He had no intention of doing that.  Derek waited for the cop’s lights to dim and disappear before he started back to home.  For Derek this had been a disappointing night and he wanted it to end with some sort of highlight.  The drink had taken the edge off his usual bad mood at having to hang out with those losers, especially that silly bitch who insulted him over his lack of desire to tip.  Fucks sake!  You can guarantee that there’d be one asshole who seemed to make it their personal mission to ruin his nights out.

  As he pulled into his drive he couldn’t help but notice that the light in the upstairs window was still on.  There was a chance the night could be salvaged if he could get some.  Derek opened the door, and squeezed himself out of the vehicle and headed inside.  Leaving his shoes in the foyer, his pants on the stairs and his shirt and undies on the landing he headed into the bedroom wearing only his socks (he might have been aroused at this stage but couldn’t tell over his huge gut.)  He went over to the bed where his wife, Sandra, lay sleeping, remembering better days when she was young and knew the joy of being alive.  Derek moved over to her, the bed lurching like it was being buffeted by tidal wives.  She couldn’t help be woken as the mattress tipped her to him like she was being pulled toward a black hole.  Derek felt her warm body next to his and although he had no way of seeing it, he knew his body was reacting to hers.  He slid his hand round her back and pulled her to him.  She was warm beneath her nightgown, her outfit was anything but sexy but the combination of her body-heat and the alcohol was having a powerful effect on him.

  “Derek, no, not now,” Sandra said as she tried to force his booze-sweating body away from her, instead he merely chuckled and pressed her against him, his tenuous hardness rubbing against his own tummy as his laugh became a disturbingly throaty gurgle.

  “Let’s just skip to the end,” Derek mumbled into her ear.

  “Derek, please no!” Sandra responded more firmly.  In his youth his extra weight was appealing as it was tempered with a layer of firm muscle beneath, but these days the muscle had been replaced with an extra four layers of fat that made sex less appealing and more like a feat of engineering, right now his feet of flesh were trying to move her legs apart, the muscles so used to powering his fat about his daily work were at full use trying to force his affection onto his much beleaguered wife.  She attempted to fight but her eight stone sopping wet weight was little match for his eighteen stone as he forced his way onward and in.

  The pounding of his temple was more effective than an alarm clock for waking him up as the beers and Chinese food combined to twirl his senses so that the nerve endings in his brain seemed to feel everything.  He knew that the paracetamol and Ibuprofen were downstairs but he also knew that every step would feel like a knife in his brain every time his feet met the all-too-thin stairway carpet.  There had to be a closer option that could do the job and allow him time to lie in bed a bit longer and recover before heading downstairs to deal with her.

  The bathroom?  ...Too far, he wasn’t in the mood to walk anywhere.

  His wife’s bedside cabinet? ...That might work.  She was known to occasionally keep some headache pills in there.  She’d used it as an excuse often enough.  Derek rolled over and opened the drawer, his sausage mitts moving matter around in search for any sort of pain-relief, not looking but letting his fingers scramble about for anything tablet-shaped, coming across foam ...earplugs, paper ...Don’t know what that is ...A seven ...A seven?  Derek removed the seven and spun it in his fingers.  A seven?  His pained expression changed as he spun the seven anti-clockwise to reveal what it really was ...An L!  The bitch had his L.  It had been her that had turned his Volkswagen Polo into a Volkswagen Po o!  Oh she was gonna pay for that!  The headache seemed to drift into insignificance as he got up and marched downstairs.  He had so longed to meet the scum-bucket who had turned his car into an object of ridicule (anyone seeing Derek get in and out of his car would’ve argued that he did that himself!)  He could hear her in the kitchen pottering about.  His rage mounted as he heard her timid, mouse-like movements.  He couldn’t believe she would do this to him after everything he’d done for her.  He marched up to the kitchen, the offending L clutched tight within his porky fingers.  As he made the kitchen doorway she was stood there with her back to him.  Derek merely stood there breathing hard through his mouth (the fat had long since blocked his sinuses) and waited till, eventually, she turned to face him.

  “Morning, love,” she said without a hint of any emotion in her voice.  “Do you want a brew?”

  Derek put the L on the work surface and watched as her eyes froze in terror.  His hand moved through the air with alarming speed, the back of it connecting with her cheek and sent her sprawling over to the cooker, her head banging against the knobs at the front.  Derek wiped the blood from his knuckles and started to walk over.  Had his attention not been so held by the sight of the blood on his hands he might have noticed his wife grabbing at the frying pan and her turn with a look that was anything but mouse-like as she brought the pan down, edgeways, onto his head.  The hard metal edge split Derek’s scalp sending a trail of blood down his forehead, the line starting hot but ending cool as it made its way down to his eyes.  His legs crumpled from the shock of the blow and he he grabbed the sink for support, stunned.

  “You, bitch.  I’ll ...Kill you,” Derek said, unconvincingly.  Sandra however was not gonna take any chances with that comment and started screaming as she pounded his head with the frying pan until Derek had been turned from human consciousness into a huge pile of decaying flesh.  It was only when the kitchen tiles were almost covered in blood that she decided to stop hitting him, pocket the L and call for an ambulance.

 Detective Kevin Abernathy wandered through the police station with a cup of coffee in one hand and a vegetarian sausage sandwich in the other.  His fellow officers teased him mercilessly about it but his improved health and sense of well-being when he stopped eating meat all outweighed any comments by his carnivorous colleagues.  As he headed down the corridor he saw one of his colleagues smirk slightly while exiting an interview room.

  “All right, Claude.  How’s it going?” Kevin asked.

  “Same as always,” Claude replied in hushed tones after he closed the door.  The mirrors in this place may have prevented people seeing outside the corridor but the doors were far from sound-proof.  Kevin looked through the glass at the heavily-bruised face of Sandra Clampton and instantly knew her story (or so he thought) as he’d seen it in her dozens of times before.

  “Usual story then?” Kevin asked before sipping on his coffee.

  “Yep, husband killed in the kitchen with a frying pan, wife beaten and raped before, assault kit confirms that.  No jury in the world would ever convict her but we still have to go through this rigmarole all the same,” Claude replied, dismayed that this had to even eat into his valuable time.

  “The wife did it,” chuckled Kevin.  “So predictable,” he continued before making his way to his own desk to investigate some real crimes.”

FIN   

Now, you may well wonder “What the hell was the point to any of this?”  Well I’ll tell you.  While most humour is derived from the unexpected, some gags are telegraphed.  They have a big sign on them saying “Get ready for this!” and in spite of the fact that they should feel obvious, they are sometimes funnier for us knowing they are about to happen and so I wanted it to be with this story.  I wanted to write a story where, in spite of the predictability of the opening line, you still felt like you wanted to get to the end and find out what happened to the utter scumbag in the story.  I hope it worked.

I’ve been Mister Chatable ...Still.

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_694/1339460590zWh4j5.jpg

So a new story for all my loyal peeps who have been waiting so patiently for something new from me for so long.  I present to you...

THE DEADLIEST PREY

  “Man ...Is the deadliest prey,” began Colonel Clearly Von Turnbull.  Of corse he’d only been a Colonel in a mercenary army, sustaining the measly rank of Corporal in his enlisted duties.  Also his name wasn’t Clearly Von Turnbull, his real name was Oswald Swayles but no-one wanted to hunt their fellow man with someone called Corporal Oswald Swayles, whereas Colonel Von Turnbull was a fearless warrior who people would willingly traipse through the jungles of the world with.  “Today you will be hunting down someone who is armed only with wits and cunning.  In many ways these are the things that we should fear the most.”

  The gathered throng he was addressing were six billionaires who had each paid two million dollars in cold, hard, untraceable cash and had communicated with Oswald only via an untraceable mobile address that bounced off passing blue-tooth signals and gave no indication of Oswald’s origins.  They had been instructed to destroy all and any communications they had made with the Colonel and to come to the agreed location in a roundabout route.  Along with the billionaires stood Oswald’s personal guard of four highly trained marksmen to make sure that things didn’t get too far out of hand.  They stood there resolute, knowing in only thirty minutes to handle an environment whose shadows and light could trick the sharpest of minds.  The billionaires listened to Oswald’s rhetoric with an assortment of hero worships or arrogant indifference, some looked at him with puppy-dog eyes others with disdain while they picked their nose and looked on their discoveries with yet more disdain.  It did not put Oswald off.
  “It is important we stick together and we follow the rules.  One ...We don’t wander off.  Two ...We don’t point weaponry at each other and we will walk in formation to prevent that from happening and the last rule and for yourselves the most important ...Whichever one of you makes the winning shot gets their stake back,” Oswald said.  Behind Oswald a diesel engine chugged away and a forklift truck carrying a large wooden box flattened the undergrowth and trampled down the foliage making an industrial path through the jungle.  The billionaires attention now piqued; some with ambition others in fear.
  “There’s your prey, gentleman.  A homeless man from the outskirts of Paris, we don’t know his name but his temperament seems suitably animalistic,” said Oswald.  The forklift lowered the box to the ground and two of Oswald’s team opened the front and then stood back with the group, weapons raised.  A dirty, lean man, stubbly but otherwise seeming in good shape, emerged from the box.  For a minute they could see from his eyes that he considered charging the guards for a weapon but as they cocked their rifles he thought better of it.
  “You’ve got thirty minutes head-start!” Oswald said to the man.  “I suggest you use it!”
  At that the man was gone, darting into the deep Amazonian forests and disappearing like a ghost.
  “There is your prey, gentlemen.  In thirty minutes he will be your deadliest enemy.  Any questions?” Oswald asked.  One man raised his hand.  “Yes?”
  “Can I go for a wee, Colonel?” said the billionaire.  Oswald’s men shook their heads.
  “Billionaires!” spat Oswald under his breath.

  Light streamed through the canopy of leaves and strained through the trees, the animals in the tree added a symphony of sound that was exotic in the movies but an unwanted distraction when hunting a deadly enemy.  The hunting party was armed, had water, food was travelling through the undergrowth by Jeep.  Their advantage was substantial.  Oswald watched the trees looking for any sense of movement.  The forest was a deceptive beast and beneath its shades and undergrowth were unseen dangers, but in this heat the biggest danger was panic.  Running at full speed through this uneven landscape took energy and that sapped the body of liquid and strength.  To some degree adrenalin compensated but nowhere near enough and after half an hour most people would be close to exhaustion in this weather.  
  “That’s the thing about the half-hour start,” Oswald told his clients.  “This isn’t for our prey’s advantage ...It’s actually for ours!”
  Oswald sat in the front jeep, the Cartwright semi-automatic rifle slung, care-free on his lap, his hand pressing the beauty firmly against his leg.  He wasn’t worried about the target and although some might see his laid-back stance in the front vehicle as being foolhardy he  knew exactly what he was doing.  Oswald’s jeep moved ever forward making light-work of the ground beneath, Oswald wondered just how long it would take before they found...
  BANG, BANG, PSHHH!
 “CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER!” the guns spat out from behind him as his jeep came to a stop.
  “CEASE FIRE!  CEASE FIRE!” Oswald shouted as he left his jeep.  The two front tyres were flat, a row of hidden spikes had pierced the protective sheath and drained them of air.  It was clever, it was VERY clever.  Oswald’s second in command, Jerry Spratchett came over, all the while staring out at the trees that seemed to stand in silent conspiracy against the hunters.
  “What happened, Boss?” Jerry asked.
  “Tyres spiked,” said Oswald, deep in thought.
  “Bad luck?” asked Jerry, fearing the more likely answer.
  “Sabotage,” Oswald replied, grimly.
  “Damn!” said Jerry as he scanned the defiant trees, the birdsong and animal calls feeling more like mocking laughter now.  “How long will it take to change the...”
  PFFT!
  “URGH!” said Jerry holding his neck.  Oswald looked around.  Jerry removed his hand and in his palm was a blow dart.  Jerry looked in fear as he felt at his throat.  The side of his neck was red and swelling up more every second.  Jerry fell to the floor a hoarse fading rasping sound coming from him as he sat back against the jeep.
  “Jerry?  JERRY!” said Oswald as his friend closed his eyes and slid to the floor.
  “Well he wasn’t very useful was he?” asked one of the more arrogant billionaires.  No sooner had the words left his lips than a whoosh through the air was replaced by a stifled gurgle as the billionaire looked down to see an arrow sticking out of his throat.  Oswald got up, grabbed his rifle and turned in the direction of the arrow traversed from.  A shadow moved across the trees and Oswald opened fire, more bullets quickly being spat from other rifles behind him before Oswald raised his hand to get his fellow hunters to cease fire.  Leaving the jeeps behind and their fellow dead hunters they marched forward, in only a matter of minutes they found the mysterious vagabond’s perch and saw the tiniest sliver of blood against the tree trunk.
  “If you can bleed then we can kill you, you son of a bitch!” said Oswald as he gripped the rifle, tight, all pretence at calm gone.  Behind him he could hear the five remaining billionaires chatting and whimpering in fear as their party of eleven hunters had been all too quickly whittled down to nine.
  “Now listen up.  Fear will get you dead so I don’t want any more of this lily-livered nonsense or I will shoot you myself!  Now due to this unforeseen turn of events I have decided to increase the stakes to four million for whoever makes the winning shot!  Clive and Steve, you’re at the rear, myself and Reece here will be at the front with yourselves well protected in the middle.  Now, let’s move out!
  They all headed forward into the forest, all a little bit slower now, as the distance and time got drawn out to breaking point.  For ten minutes all that could be heard was the crunching of foliage under boot and the heavy, nervous breathing of the wealthy patrons, until a SWISH and a WHOOSH broke the silence as Reece found himself hauled thirty foot into the air in a trap, then suffering the indignity of an arrow to the chest turning him into what looked like a leaky, human shaped fruit-juice dispenser.  Oswald and his team got off several shots but hit nothing.  
  It was to be the tragic pattern of the rest of the day.
  One-by-one they fell and one-by-one Oswald got increasingly frazzled by their enemy’s apparent ease of finding them wanting both tactically and physically.  Oswald’s men and the billionaires found their numbers diminishing and their odds quickly reducing, eventually only one billionaire was left standing with the usually unflappable Oswald at his back.
  “As long as there are two of us there’s a chance,” said Oswald.  “Just remember...” 
  “Just remember what, Colonel?” asked the billionaire as his eyes darted all over the trees, every movement sending him sick with worry and fear.  “Colonel?”
  The billionaire turned slowly, there, a spear in his gut keeping him upright was the man the Billionaire viewed as his best hope of survival.  The dead eyes told the man all he needed to know about his chances of escape.  Tears began to stream down his face and as he did so he began to unload the automatic into the dense woodland, the remaining bullets in his gun being chewed up by thick bark to be buried alive in the wood forever as the trees would slowly seal themselves around the metal fragments.  As his gun clicked empty the billionaire let it drop and started to half-run, half-tumble over the ground, his forty pounds of extra weight from living the good life, feeling anything but good now as it slowed his movements to a virtual crawl.  Eventually he fell into the dirt and, reaching for a branch, grabbed something softer, somehow less woody and more cotton-covered fleshy.  The billionaire looked up and there, in front of him, was the prey, the unarmed man they wanted to hunt down with rifles, the man whose head they wanted to turn into a private wall ornament, standing before him with a spear in hand.  The businessman clutched at his chest as his heart creaked to the point of fearful exhaustion and somewhere inside a ventricle burst, spewing its precious cargo exactly where it did not want to go.
  “Please,” he begged as his face went from plush to pale as the blood emptied inside his body and drained from his veins.  “Please...” he managed to beg one more time till his heart stopped beating and his froze, forever in fear.  The victim who had so easily turned the tables on those hunting him let the spear fall to the ground as he wallowed in his triumph.
  “Jesus!  What a bunch of arseholes!” he said.
  “I know.  It’s amazing how stupid they are,” interjected Oswald before raising his walky-talky.  “Jerry, you there?  Over.”
  “Loud and clear, boss.  You want us to pick you up?  Over,” Jerry replied. 
  “Yeah do.  Usual point.  How’s your neck?  Over,” Oswald asked.
  “The usual.  A smear of peanut and the outside enflames like crazy, other than that as good as new.  Over,” said Jerry followed by a small smattering of static.  Oswald and Patrice looked down at the latest billionaire to fall foul of their ruse far away from prying eyes deep within the Amazon rainforest.
  “Do you think they’ll ever catch on?” Patrice asked.  Oswald looked at the fear-frozen face of the former baby-food magnate in front of him.
  “No.  Stupidity knows no boundaries.  Thankfully the wealthy, separated from reality, are probably more susceptible than most,” Oswald replied as he let his mind wander to what he would spend his share of the money on this time.  “Come on.  Let’s get rd of the corpses.” he said as they disposed of the evidence and already started to look forward to the next hunt six months from now.

FIN

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/tasosk/tasosk0706/tasosk070600001/980387-man-surviving-in-the-jungle-survival-concept.jpg

  

  

A new short story for all my loyal readers, enjoy.

THE SPLIT

Rolling like he was strapped to a waterwheel . . . That's how Terry Padlook's stomach felt.  He sat at his desk in agony as his insides growled like a dying animal.  Terry didn't know what caused the discomfort; maybe it was the four day old meat on his sandwich, maybe it was the mould within his bread, or the germs from his flask that he never cleaned out or the off milk on his cereal that morning.  Who knew?  What he did know was that he had to go to the toilet . . . Again.  

  Terry ran to the toilet avoiding eye contact with anybody so that there was no potential risk of being stopped for conversation.  He dived into the gaudy white, red and orange decored toilets (a colour scheme specifically designed to make people want to leave as soon as possible,) and hurried himself into the cubicle, dropping his trousers like it was his wedding night.  The slodgey sounds echoed around the toilet were uncomfortable and embarrassing and he was glad the cubicles next to him were unoccupied.  After several loud and painful bursts (partly due to the previous night's madras) terry crouched to pull his pants up when he noticed something staring back at him, something announcing its presence in a most awkward way.  It was a stain.  A long brown stain along the seam of his shorts, looking right back at him.  Bastard!  He hadn't done anything like that since primary school.  He wondered briefly if it was a sign of prostate cancer before deciding to whip off his shorts and go commando till lunchtime, at least, when he could get some replacement boxers (you can take the man out of the eighties . . .)  

  After Terry removed his shorts he decided to remain seated for a short while. With him having an earthquake stomach today he knew he'd better stay and wait for any aftershocks.  Satisfied that there were going to be no more surprises he pulled his pants up and left the solace of the cubicle.  He made the short journey to the sink, shoved the offending shorts deep into the bin, far out of right of any of his colleagues, and began to wash his hands (he couldn't understand the mentality of those who didn't) when a roar came from his stomach that sounded like he'd swallowed Godzilla and he was trying to fight his way out.  Terry ran back into the cubicle and yanked his pants down while planting his arse on the seat.

  “FRRRRRUURRRRRPPP!”

  Terry felt a wave of slurry leave and was delighted he managed to make the booth in time.  He wiped and waited and waited again for any further tremors and then made a move to leave.  It was then that he noticed what the source of the noise was, and it wasn’t his arse.  In his hurry to get his pants down and his legs open he’d caused his trousers to split at the crotch.  The gap was huge across with three tenuous threads holding firm across the five inch tear, the orange floor beneath making the strands look like the eye of Sauron and feeling just as evil, too.  Now he was sat on the toilet with a massive gap between his trousers, his boxers in the bin with a huge stain down them.  He was caught in a perfect diarrhoea trap!

  He just sat there a few moments and considered what he should do first . . . Flush!  He shuffled sideways lowered the lid and pressed the button, scouring the bowl of its fowl contents.  The poo gone his only problem now was him and his pants. He sat back down on the toilet and stared ...The gap was enormous.  There was simply no way he could return to his desk without having his balls dangling between his legs which was not a good look for him.  

  “Okay, Terry, keep calm, keep calm, just think . . . How are you going to get out of this,” Terry thought as the evil eye of Sauron stared back at him.  As he saw it he could pull his pants really high, go back into the office, grab his coat, go to the lift, tie his jacket inconspicuously around his waist, go to Mark's and Spencer’s to get some new underwear ...Or ...Wait here and hope no-one noticed he'd gone till the end of the day.  The latter had a shameless appeal but fortune favoured the brave.  He yanked his trousers up as far as they would go, tucked his testes down the left leg and hoped for the best.  He left the booth and headed out, just as he did the door opened and in walked another bloke from his floor. Terry felt his stomach churn again, this time in fear rather than indigestion.

The bloke didn't even look at terry and instead headed for the urinals, he was safe.  Until he felt one of his balls tumble over the gap.  Terry had made it to the door but when he looked down there was this single gonad looking back at him saying “Remember me?” Terry had no choice and hurried back into the cubicle.  

  The gap in his pants could not be held shut by merely walking with his thighs together, it was way too vast for that and he would probably wind up getting arrested and sacked for indecent exposure if he risked it and headed for his coat.  When at first he was thinking of options it seemed like a challenge, now the options were falling faster than senior bankers bonuses.  He had to come up with another exit strategy.  Of course, his phone!  He could ring personnel claim to have had to go home sick, wait till everyone had headed home themselves then sneak back to section get his coat and head home at the end of the day when there was virtually nobody there.  True he would have to suffer the indignity of losing a day's say to illness but it would be worth it.  

  Terry punched the number of personnel after the guy taking a whizz had exited the toilets.  He waited and waited and then there it was; that stupid engaged tone.  He pressed redial ...Same again ...And again.  The worst thing about that was that the woman on personnel who recorded pick leave probably wasn't even registering sickness.  The dumb-head was probably busy talking to her boyfriend over on estates, silly cow!  Terry decided to do the next best thing and call his supervisor instead. He rang the number.  

  “You’re speaking to Jack Hallow, how can I help?” the voice replied.  Sweet.  Just a few more seconds and he’d be free to suffer an agonising but non-humiliating wait in the cubicles all day.

  “Hello, it’s Terry here,” said Terry, putting on his best pretending-to-be-ill voice.  

  “Oh.  You all right, Terry?  Where are you?” asked Jack, fake concern echoing through the supervisor’s voice.  Just as Terry was about to reply the door went again.

  “Er, I’ve had to head home.  I’m not feeling well at all.”

  “Oh right,” said Jack.  Terry, of course, was supposed to report to his supervisor and consult with personnel if he felt unwell.  They both knew that but Terry was just hoping he’d let it slide till the return-to-work meeting.  “Okay, but you do realise you’re supposed to report any illness while you’re still in the building you know?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.  Sorry about that,” Terry replied.

  “Where are you?” said Jack.

  “Just driving home,” replied Terry.  “A-COUGH! COUGH! COUGH!”

  For a moment there was silence down the phone.

  “Terry?” came a voice from over the booth.

  “Oh no!” thought Terry.

  “Terry?” repeated Jack.  “Who was that?”

  “Er, I’ll call you back,” replied Terry.  As he tried to hang up he he heard the door in the next booth open and close.  He looked up and eight little fingers appeared over the lip and then the face of one Terry’s colleagues, Randy Weiss, a snide, conniving individual, possibly the only person on the planet who suited the term portly reptile.  The top half of his podgy face appeared at the edge and looked down, curiosity etched into the eyes and eyebrows.

  “Terry, what are you up to?” asked Randy, his eyes flicking from Terry’s face to the crotch of his trousers and the massive gap now staring back up at both of them.  “Oh dear!” he laughed before disappearing and leaving the toilets.

  “Bollocks!” spat Terry!  His smooth escape strategy was suddenly becoming rougher than a fisherman’s arse.  Terry put his head in his hands.  The day had betrayed him more than anyone could be betrayed; his stomach, his shorts, his trousers and now the universe itself seemed to be conspiring against him.  The toilet door opened again.

  “Terry?” it was Jack.  Clearly Randy had informed him that Terry hadn’t left the building.  He wondered what he was telling all the other members of his team.  “What’s happened?”

  “Well,” began Terry.  This was the part he wasn’t looking to.  Explaining the embarrassing nature of his predicament.  “I had a bit of an, er, accident, and I had to ditch my underwear.  Then I had another accident and although I made it back to the toilet in time I split my trousers at the crotch.”

  “Can the hole be held together with safety pins?” asked Jack.  Terry looked down.  So convinced was Terry that the split had become an eye that he expected it to blink.

  “No it would need about twenty of them and I don’t think I could walk properly with that much metal between my legs.”

  “Is it really that bad?” asked Jack.  Unlike Randy he seemed to have a sense of decorum and wasn’t about to peer over the top of the booth uninvited.

 “Yeah, it’s that bad,” Terry responded.

  “The nearest Top-Shop here is about ten minutes walk.  If you want I could take your wallet and get some more underwear and trousers for you,” said Jack.

  “Would you?” asked Terry.

  “Well yeah.  We can’t just leave you all day in here,” said Jack, seeming genuinely to care now.

  “Please,” said Terry.

  “Okay, stay put.  I’ll be about twenty minutes,” replied Jack before heading out.  All Terry could do now was wait.  He looked at his phone and clicked onto one of the games on there.  He’d never felt more alone in all of his previous thirty-two years on the planet.  He pushed and pulled at the screen to move the balls into the targets and kept flicking from that to the clock to see how long it had been since Jack had left to get some replacement clothes.  Eventually the loneliness got too much and Terry moved over to Facebook and Twitter to see what was happening there.  He opened up his Facebook page and the details were so horrifying he nearly lost control of his sphincter again.

  There on the page were dozens of messages about his ...Accident, with all of his colleagues chipping in with jokes and puns about his predicament.  “Oh dear, what can the matter be, Terry Padlook’s trapped in the lavatory!” began one message, followed by “LOL.  I nearly had an accident myself laughing at that.”  Someone had out on twitter “What have strawberries, banana’s and Terry Padlook all have in common?  They all make great splits!” and that was just one of the clean ones.  Everyone in the office was making fun of him, mocking his terrible plight.  It was then as he sat nervously waiting for new clothes to arrive that he realised something ...He couldn’t go back to his desk today.

  Everyone knew what had happened and what was going on and he couldn’t return to that environment knowing people were laughing at him behind his back (And in all fairness to his face too!) the toilet door then opened.

  “Terry?” said Jack.  Terry wondered where Jack thought he might go bearing in mind his current predicament but he didn’t mention that.

  “I’m here,” replied Terry, meekly.

  “Oh right.  Listen I got your trousers and some new underwear, I wasn’t sure of your size so I got you the best matches I could with that in mind,” began Terry while removing the clothing from the bag and inspecting it like a salesman.  “Catch!”

  The clothing fell into his booth into Terry’s lap.  Jack had clearly decided to be generous in sizes and with the help of his old belt he was able to wear them in relative comfort.  After he got them on and felt comfortable he sat back down on the toilet lid, his arms wrapped around his body and his knees up against his chest.

  “Do they fit?” asked Jack, noticing the sudden quiet.

  “Yeah,” replied Terry, sullenly.

  “So are you coming back out then?” Jack asked, wondering why the door hadn’t opened yet.

  “No,” Terry replied.  “I can’t.”

  “I thought you said the pants fit,” Jack asks.

  “They do, but I can’t come out,” said Terry.  “They all know.  Everybody knows what has happened.  I can’t go out and face all that embarrassment for the rest of the day.  I just can’t!”

  “Well, what are you going to do then?” Jack asked.  “Just stay in there for the rest of the day?”

  For a moment the only answer that greeted Jack was silence.

  “Yes,” replied Terry.  

  Jack shook his head in annoyance.  He wanted to kick the door in and drag his wussy colleague out of there.

  “You do realise you might get sacked for this?” asked Jack.  “At the least there will be major professional consequences!”

  Again he was greeted with silence before the reply came back.

  “Yes,” Terry replied.

  “Fine then!” said Jack before leaving the toilets.  Terry sat there and thought.  In fact for the rest of the day that’s all he did;  occasionally out of curiosity he would browse back to Facebook or Twitter on his phone and see yet more disparaging comments and jokes at his expense.  Every time he did he realised that the exile from work was going to last even longer than just today.  In fact he didn’t know if he could come in tomorrow, or the day after  that.  As time passed more internet traffic came in about his plight with even overseas contributors ripping into him.  Eventually he saw a remark that was supposedly from Chris Rock which he thought was a low blow.  Eventually time passed the point were some people on the early shifts that day had left.  Terry waited some more and eventually heard the late shift leave.  He finally felt comfortable leaving his self-imposed prison and went back to his desk to collect his jacket.  Jack was sat there waiting for him.

  “Management were not happy with you,” said Jack, menacingly.  “The only reason they didn’t come in there and drag you out was that when it was discussed someone said “You’re taking the piss,” and they all started to laugh!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Terry.

  “You’re sorry!” Jack retorted.  “Well that makes things easier for me, doesn’t it?  That shows I can control my staff and am fit to be a manager!  This affects me too, you know?  You haven’t  just affected things for you, you’ve affected them for me!  We’ll talk about this when you get in tomorrow!”

  Jack grabbed his coat and left.  Terry did the same shortly after.

  The next morning Terry rang in sick.  He couldn’t face work due to stress ...The day after was the same, and the day after that, and the day after that.  By the end of the week he was given an ultimatum to get in or get fired, instead he sent in a sick note.  The law was on Terry’s side and while the Doctor kept signing him off due to stress their wasn’t much anyone could do.  His work hated him but Terry’s stress wasn’t going anywhere.  Twitter and Facebook gained even more comments with even Youtube showing spoofs of his tragic plight.  His lowest point came when it was mentioned as a joke on the satirical news show “Mock the Week”.  But eventually he couldn’t sign off any more and his work had to let him go...

TWO YEARS LATER

  “...And it is due to the Benefit’s Agency’s blinding refusal to accept that Mister Padlook’s stress was real and therefore that Incapacity Benefit was due to him, that caused him to lose his house, have to sell his car and was almost certainly a factor in the end of his marriage.  This is the reason the damages awarded to Mister Padlook are so high.  I therefore award Mister Padlook the full nine thousand, eight hundred and two pounds incapacity benefit for two years, plus a further ...”

  The judge paused.  This was his X-Factor moment.  The journalists in the public gallery all leaned forward, the barristers for both parties, the jury even the court recorder seemed to lean nearer to hear what the damages would be.

  “...Two-hundred and fifty thousand pounds!” said the judge.  Terry welled up at the verdict.  Since that date with destiny’s diarrhoea, Terry’s life had been going down the proverbial toilet.  When he’d lost everything he had started legal proceedings, not for the money, but to restore his pride and dignity and finally ...finally, he had that back.

  On leaving court the media, who before now had made his life equally miserable, were now clamouring for some words from the very man they mocked.  Terry’s barrister started to field questions but, feeling as inflated as the goodyear blimp by the scale of his victory, Terry decided to chip in.  

  “I’ll handle this, Roger,” said Terry, arrogantly.  “Any questions?”

  The journalists jostled like it was the first day at the Harrods sale.  Terry pointed at the BBC reporter.

  “How do you feel?”

  “A nice easy one,” thought Terry before answering.

  “Well it feels like I’ve lost a huge weight...” began Terry.  It was then he heard it ...A snigger coming from the back.  That wasn’t meant to happen.  He had his dignity back.  Someone else sounded like they were stiffling a chuckle too.  He had to keep calm and just make sure that the next few words were chosen wisely.  “I’m just ...I’m just very relieved!”

  It was then that the laughing started and once it started it could not stop.  Even Terry’s barrister was laughing.

  “Ah well, back to square one!” thought Terry.

The end.

Don’t forget my first novel “FREE AT LAST: A NOVEL” by Zoe Lambert and Mike Lambert is still available to buy on Amazon: kindle

http://images.clipartof.com/small/1047157-Royalty-Free-RF-Clip-Art-Illustration-Of-A-Cartoon-Man-With-Ripping-Pants.jpg