Tarred and Feathered

© 1996 Steven Conoboy (UK)

Have you ever had a best friend? Someone you could confide in, someone you could trust with your darkest, dirtiest secrets about the girl who lives a few doors away? A friend with whom you could get pissed and have a good laugh with, a friend who, dispite their failings, you'd always defend?

Well, was that best friend a chicken? No? I'm not all that surprised to be honest, because it isn't something you hear of very often. It is indeed out of the ordinary, but to the star of this story it wouldn't seem so.

Silver Fortune is his name, and on the occasion when this whole sorry state of affairs began he was walking through the dazzlingly blue-tinted village of Maudlin.

Alongside him was Chance Seldom, and as they strolled out of the small boundary of the village into the aquamarine-leafed forest of Ocean Trees, they were discussing just how boring life was becoming. "I blame tourism," grumbled Silver, he of the polar white hair and skin which very nearly matches.

"You've got a good point there," agreed Chance whilst picking his nose and simultaneously toe-punting a twig viciously, imagining it to be the head of someone you shall meet later on. "They come here, and prattle on about how bloody wonderful the place is, you know, with these stupid bloody trees of ours and all those apports appearing everywhere, then they start jabbering on about all the other places they've been to, and in comparison, Maudlin seems, quite simply, crap."

"Mm hm," nodded Silver. "There's absolutely nothing to do around here. Sure, it most be a novelty for those who don't live here to see bright blue trees and to see weird things appearing out of nowhere every so often, but even that isn't very exciting after you've seen it happen countless numbers of times. I hate it here. It's just trees and exploding rabbits. What's so good about that?"

You may be thinking all this sounds very intriguing, and to someone who isn't used to it, no doubt it is. I should tell you that these 'apports' to which our two friends refer are actually the side effects of a demon's curse which had been placed upon the village several centuries before. It was a right old mess was that little episode.

All blood and violence, it was. It all concerned a wee feud between the village and the local demon, neither being overly friendly toward the other. In the end the demon just cursed the village and had done with it.

As in the best tradition, this all powerful, life-crushing curse went a bit wrong, and about the worst of it's effects was that bunny rabbits appear occasionally in Maudlin and blow up seconds later. Why? For the fun of it, of course.

 

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