AN EARLY CHILDHOOD CHAPTER 27 PART 3: A VISIT FROM AN ARCH ENEMY?



AN EARLY CHILDHOOD CHAPTER 27 PART 3: A VISIT FROM AN ARCH ENEMY?

Continued from Part 2.
Dyll returned to the flat twenty minutes later, with a bag of quality luncheon meats and bread, a high intensity, Dental Hygiene Association approved drill, two packets of forty pairs of ski-masks (the goggle kind), a ukulele, a calculating machine, a sock full of sauer Polish chickengoose bubble wrap, and a rumour.

                “I heard Colonel Coote Decker just fled my apartment, boys! Something about a haunting! He’s coming back with the chief of the Paranormal Investigation Squad! The last thing I need is a visit from that PIS Head!” she said. “He claims a ghost bride attacked him in bed! What’s going on?” Her hands were on her hips in anger. Cousin Barney and I exchanged glances, shrugging. Then her dog appeared. The big beast looked perfectly normal, with the exception of the fact that he still had a bridal garter on one of his legs.


                “I told you to take off everything!” I shouted at the big beast, “Everything! When you were getting undressed again!”

                “Whump,” the dog replied, apologetically, shaking the garter loose from his thick tree trunk of a dog paw and flicking it into my hand. With his leg raised, an accidental, instinctive splash of urine hit the floor. “Whump,” he repeatered, apologetically, looking sheepdoggishly downwards in acute embarrassment.

                “We have to do something!” Dyll said, tossing a peppermint into her mouth. It rattled around against her teeth as she considered her next move. “You Irish boys need to leave here.”
                And so, moments later, Barney and I found ourselves out on the streets of Londing Town, in the cold nip of mid morning. There was a livery van approaching, with all the bells and whistles.

                “Oi!” Coote Decker roared, hanging from the modesty flap above the van’s rearview mirror. “Halt, you facking Payyyydeeees!”

                Barney was sprinting down the street and into an alleyway. I followed, the van tearing up the distance between us and it. Barney’s artificial leg trembled.

                “I feel water!” he said, his leg acting as a divining rod, and he swept aside a pile of rubbish to reveal a metal drainage jobbymajig. He pulled it open, and jumped into the sewer with a splishsplosh.

                “This is my hiding place!” he said. “You find a set of curtains or something to hide behind.”

                “You might be my elderly cousin, but I holler Uncle!” I hollered. “No way!” And in I jumped to join him.

Continued in the next instalment.

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