Stuart Millard
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Flash Fiction Month #1 – Bird
🕑 Added 2020-02-01 00:05:53 +0000 UTCAs we're approaching the 2nd anniversary here, I thought I'd do something special for the $5 tier, so for the whole of February, I'll be posting a tiny story every single day. As it's a leap year, that's 29 self-contained stories, for a total of roughly 8,000 words, mostly in the 250-300 word range. Here's the first one, which I've made public.
Whenever anyone spotted Harry Topp, they always asked the same thing.
“Where's Cocky?!”
That bloody puppet was the real star. Admittedly, without it, there'd have been no Rolls Royce (two, in fact – one silver, one black), no big houses, no Spanish villa. They'd had a good run – a great run – with Harry as exasperated handler to the wild peacock that spent the seventies and eighties savagely attacking the great and the good with its beak. Together, the pair had been true household names, but stars wane, and Cocky hadn't been out of his suitcase since before 911. Until today.
Harry often watched videos of their old routines on Youtube, but lately, the comments had changed. Ten years ago it was all “great comedy like it used to be!” and “bring him back on the telly,” but now, all anyone talked about was how his hand was in there, and you wouldn't get away with that these days. Of course, they were right. How many arses had he grabbed, over the course of a career? How many boobs? How many crotches had been pecked at by Cocky's beak?
One by one, he'd watched his old compatriots go down. 'Cancelled,' that's what the kids said. The DJ buddy brought to ruin by a string of complaints of inappropriate behaviour. The TV presenter who'd been edited off repeats because of unwanted kisses. An old mate who was doing three months in HM Kirkham for groping a researcher when he was reviewing pop videos with Pauline Quirke and 'Macho Man' Randy Savage on Going Live.
He'd not been sleeping. There was a knock at the door last week. It'd just been the postie with a parcel for number 14, but he'd shit himself.
“It was harmless... just for the comedy,” he said, no longer sure if he even believed it. “Don't look at me like that!” He could feel the bird's big, plastic eyes staring him down. With his free hand, he placated Cocky with a stroke of the head, before clicking play on another video. This was one of the classics, spinning the interviewer's swivel chair round and round, before the peacock turned its attention to the laughing celebrity cook, biting right into the flesh of her bum as the audience shrieked with approval.
“#TimesUp” read a comment. A tear rolled down his cheek, and then, Cocky pounced. The bird gripped Harry tightly round the throat, and as he had many times in the glory years, Harry fell to the floor, thrashing his legs, struggling to pry its foam beak from his windpipe, as his false arm flopped against the lino. This time however, there was no laughter; just the the futile grunts of an old man.
Cocky's grip held tight, until both of them were dead.
