story

It’s Familiar

Pure Munchie-Superdam smiled. She didn’t grin. She just smiled.

She could have grinned, but that was likely because, despite all odds, she still had the majority of her teeth.

The Apache syndrome had tempted fate one too many times, she wrote, most thoughtfully. It seemed he wasn’t marking any crescent-shaped hooves in any lady’s armour today.

‘Bugger me dead,’ he said, quite loudly. ‘I knew it was you, old haggis.’

Yes indeed, she smiled, and perhaps did grin as well this time. For what he had spoken of was inherent of the bloodline, and it had once made many men laugh because it seemed to be an inherent thing in the Chewy fandom club that one’s parent, or parents, always seem to, without fail, go back to the root case, or cause.

There are two Fremantle Football clubs, but only one Dockers. There are the Sharks, and blue is more my colour, and there are the Bulldogs, the animal of which may have resembled an old staff sergeant due to that bloody square jaw that kept returning generation after generation. I don’t have lockjaw, but I do tend to make sure I have my story straight, and I do not, under any circumstances, let go of facts when it comes to my exact history… Horrible as it may be.

Perhaps, even slightly boring :)

‘I may have married into something, old mate, but let me be quite clear on why they kept referring to The Chapel when they talk about the Capewell Clan. One does not need to go too far back to see why it was changed.’ She smiled again.

‘Good lord, please don’t bring that up again,’ chuckled the extended Capewell Clan, none of whom knew what she actually referred to was a moment in time someone decided they’d be better off in cloaks than croms.

‘Let it be said, old luv, I never strayed too far from the truth,’ muttered the keeper of the gates.

‘Well, you know, when one’s great-great-great grandparent and a bit decided to go to Wiltshire, and realised his surname could mean a number of different things, least of all smelly bottoms, and the other great great great grandad said he thought it was a cheese, and yet another great great great grandparent said, ‘I can’t read that properly. Should I be kneeling down or losing weight? Or both?’, one tends to let things slide,’ said the aforementioned Munchie. ‘So, despite your lack of wisdomness, and apparent like of winsomeness, everything I recorded was actually true. Are you gonna give the bloody thing back now or not?’

He decided, at that very moment, it was lucky he had decided to look up his own shield.

‘Oh dear,’ he cursed. ‘It may have been a dagger after all, and that’s not good is it?’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Not one you’d want displayed on a coat of arms. Especially on red.’

Not much else needed to be said after that. For after all, even though things may have “looked cool” at the time, it is often revealed they are not. Not really.

You made a bloody mess of it, boyo. Perhaps you should clean it up.

Mostly fiction.

… Beth reached the next intersection without mishap, once again stopping to poke her head around the corner. The short hall she stood in seemed to be made of patients (inmates, she muttered in her head) rooms only. If the rooms were anything like her own, and she fancied they were, there would be sealed glass windows, and only one exit. If she stayed in the halls and continued to deviate to the right at each intersection, surely she would find a door to the outside soon. It seemed logical.

Well, it does to me, anyway, she thought. ‘I’ll be okay.’ She made her movements slow so as not to attract attention, remembering her days back in the field. In the field? Never mind, go with it, she thought to herself. Good plan, what’s next? Oh, I’m talking to myself again. Fan-bloody-tastic.

If she had been a tad more mobile, she’d have crouched out of eyeline, but she did not think she was quite up to that yet. Pushing the wayward thoughts from her mind, she concentrated on the mission.

Oh, the mission now is it? No wonder everyone thinks you’re a raving lunatic.

This would be the nurses station. A large white sign hung on the wall, EAST WING written in bold black letters. Underneath it sat a young man behind a wide desk. He had administered her medication earlier. She frowned. It might be difficult to manoeuvre past this jumped-up upstart. As she watched, she heard something buzzing softly. The nurse paused in his writing and picked up a nearby phone. Beth held her breath as he glanced at the screen in front of him.

‘Thankyou,’ he said into the receiver before placing it gently back onto a pile of files. He shuffled the papers in front of him and stacked them into another neat pile, then swivelled in his chair to open a drawer with gay abandon, flinging paper into the air everywhere and laughing, with equally gay abandon. Okay, perhaps the last part didn’t happen, but never mind.

Now was her chance.

Beth tiptoed, very sneakily indeed, across the open space in front of the desk (later, okay, I’ll fix it later). Keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the nurse, she snuck a brief glance at the corridor ahead. Four more steps, and she’d be out of there. Three. Two…

CLANG.

The bombastic metallic thunk of the metal bin toppling sideways onto the tiles, followed by a, not unpleasant, rolling rattle as the round lid fell off, froze her mid-sneak, one raised foot having just kicked the damn thing into the middle of the floor. She looked up in horror.

The nurse casually turned away from the open drawer and smiled pleasantly, if slightly toothily. ‘Would you like some help with that?’

‘Bugger.’