By Saphire Favell 

 

Someone broke into my house

 

I missed a SCAB deadline.

And now I’ve been punished.

In the worst possible way ever.

 

Update notes of the year.

 

I don’t know what it is, but there is nothing more painful than that pesky, yet useful, doc. I just have this aversion to it. And I’m going to blame it on my crooked cat.

 

I kid you not when I say I was just at home minding my own business the other day when I stepped on something, rather knobbly and hard. FYI it was like 5 to midnight and, according to the ancient Majahwhicki people, that is the most sacred hour of the day. In fact this is the precise hour they would sacrifice anyone who was late with their tax return.

 

Back to the story. So, here I am.. on my way to the kitchen to rehydrate my raisin looking body with a glass of water sourced from the rarest mountain goat of Xiaonghawa when my foot accidentally curls around the unexpected object. My wings automatically spread. My hands reach out beside me. I claw at the flaking painted walls, desperately seeking the switch to turn on Thomas Edison’s greatest accomplishment.

 

BAM. Lights on, honeypie.

 

And there she is. A miniature face staring at me between my two toes*.

 

She looks at me. Her mouth agape. Eyes wide, and beady looking. Definitely not trustworthy. Staring, blankly, into my fucking soul.

 

My lips recoil back. I bear my teeth. A juicy bit of dribble drips down and splashes onto her face. She makes choking sounds. Damn it. My ball of spit is probably the equivalent of doing the ice bucket challenge on this miniature freak.

 

I lift up my toes whilst performing a sort of 360 backflip so that at the precise moment my toes lift from her muscular silhouette my thumb replaces the pressure.

 

‘Don’t think you can run away from me, you filthy imposter’, I say in a thick Mandarin accent.

 

I realise she’s still spluttering and choking over my nighttime phlegm. At this precise moment I realise she’s probably never going to get a diving paddy. Shame, I guess.

 

Shaking off that thought with none other than a shake of my head, I spring into action. Autopilot. I sort of pump at her little stomach (aware that even my thumb is bigger than her minute criminal body) hoping I’m replicating the Heimlich maneuver that I once saw performed at a Lebanese restaurant on a dwarf who choked on some Fattoush.

 

But I wasn’t. Instead it was more of a Chop Suey. My force = too much.

 

At this moment, I make a mental note to send a letter to my mum acknowledging my rank in the family. She did always call me a bull in a china shop.

 

I’m back in the room. Her eyes popped from her sockets and her guts flew out of her gurgling mouth like one of those novelty snakes in a tin that weird uncles carry around to entice kids.

 

Somehow the soles of her feet have also blasted off from my hard thumbing. She sort of looks like a rocket.

 

It’s at this moment that my cat lunges over my head, grabbing its splodged victim between its teeth and carries her off through the catflap into the darkness of the night.

 

The clock strikes midnight. 

 

*I do have more toes but they are not relevant to this story.

 

 

 

The copy scores 79.3 in the Flesch Reading Ease test