Fish Spoon Phone
Kio said Fish. John D said Spoon. Alex was on the phone. Hence, the following.
The ground shook as the great, flapping, pufferfish bounced down the street towards me. It was one of the weird deep-sea varieties – all teeth and spikes – and didn’t appear to be particularly pleased to be bouncing down a suburban street in the middle of the afternoon.
The fish was of a peculiar size – approximately the same dimensions as one of those little eastern european cars you see discarded at the side of the motorway, shortly before you pass angry-looking men with leather coats and beards.
Every time the fish hit the ground, it made a peculiar whooping-gasp sound, syncopated by the rasping of its pointy bits against the concrete. Its eyes were wild and staring.Â
It was difficult to run away. Unless you’ve witnessed first hand the sudden onrush of unavoidable personal injury caused by the appearance of oceanic life where no oceanic life belongs, you really can’t understand the hypnotic power of such an event.
So I stood, and it bounced. A small dog ran out in front of it and yapped energetically. An orifice opened which I would dearly love to believe was the fish’s mouth, and the dog vanished. The sea-creature emitted a singularly fishy belch and continued down the street towards me.
Still unable to run, I rummaged in my pocket for some implement I could use in my defence. I pulled out a yoyo. A nice orange one, with stripy string and a flashing light in the middle. I contemplated the yoyo and the fish contemplated me.
It boinged up in the air in what was likely to be the final bounce before oblivion, when I was suddenly pushed from the side. A young man wearing a leather jacket and a string of onions had attached himself to my arm and was propelling me out of the fish’s path with considerably more gusto than was strictly necessary. As it passed, one of the fish’s razor sharp spines slashed across my yoyo, reducing it to a yo.
“What are you doing, you fool?” the young man shouted in my astonished face. “You can’t just stand still in front of a rampaging puffer fish and expect it to go around you!”
“I can stand wherever I like, Sir, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” I said angrily. I reached into my pocket and produced a small stainless steel teaspoon. I gestured at the young man with it. “I have a spoon!”
The young man, in turn, reached into his own pocket and produced a telephone. “I shall call the coastguard,” he said, “and report the puffer fish to them. Once I have done this, I shall call the police and inform them of your implied assault with cheap cutlery.”
“Damn you, sir!” I cried. “Why couldn’t you just leave me alone? I was perfectly happy, there in the path of the puffer fish. You’ve ruined everything!”
The young man was evidently shocked by my outburst and wasted no time in telling me exactly that. “But it would have killed you,” he cried!
“Never,” I said coldly. “In all my life, I’ve never heard of anyone being killed in the street by a puffer fish. Why the very idea is ridiculous.”
March 25, 2009 at 9:26 am
What did your writing group think of it?
Oh, and Kio said ‘spoon’ and I said ‘fish’ – which left me wondering if my automatic response to that sort of thing is always either ‘fish’ or a kind of fish, and if I should be worried about that.