A Case of Chronic Insubordination- I

The ship with an uninspiring name that fails to concern us

On a stormy night, somewhere in the midst of a tempestuous whirlpool in the Curiously Salty Ocean, a mighty galleon struggled against an inescapable road to purgatory. (And purgatory it would be indeed, given the occupants were pirates.)

Whilst this rather unfortunate event unfolded, a little boy of about five, made his way below deck. Amidst the chaos of the fast sinking pirate ship, (which boasted an uninspiring name that fails to concern us) the determined little boy trudged down to the hen coops armed with a deep sense of morality and purpose. He had always contemplated vegetarianism when heard the horrific screeching of the dying fowl as these hateful pirates slaughtered the marvelous clucking wonders (Although he did unfailingly change his mind at the dinner table.) It seemed to him ever unjust that innocent poultry should be served with such a tragic death on the mere grounds of being chickens.  That, thereof, became gross discrimination of the lowest kind for our tender hearted lad.

‘This’ declared the mutinous little lad, ‘shall be my final act of virtue! I…….Barthelove Al Igor (popularly called Ali), shall forever be remembered as the just defender of the weak and clucky! I am the Messiah of the clucking coop! And I hereby proclaim now…..my dear chickens…..you are free from the face of death!!

“FLY!!!!” he yelled with much revolutionary gusto as he burst open the cage, “Fly away to heaven upon the lap of God and find peace my feathered friends!” Shining teardrops enveloped his eyes: a worthy manifestation of pain at the prospect of separation from his precious clucking coop.

"....there was one that was peculiarly cunning."

The chickens however, were not visibly moved. They stared at Ali with glassy, uncomprehending eyes and sent out a cluck or two. Ali looked back at them with sincere passion and gestured skyward. The chickens refused to budge, thereby instilling near hysteria upon our young friend.

Woe to them! They’re all going to die! Why won’t they understand that!

Now , as it happened, not all the chickens were as blissfully ignorant of their  doom. There was one who wasn’t as obstreperously clucky as the rest. If Ali had not descended to hysteria (almost) he might have noticed in sea of blank chicken faces, there was one that was peculiarly cunning. He was intelligence itself, behind the deceptive appearances of dim-witted poultry.

His name was Steal. Egg Steal.                      He was a spy of course. Maybe even a mercenary. The very elitist of combatants among the personal spies of Her Majesty, The Queen of the Land of Excruciatingly -Stubborn -Shopkeepers. His job: to make sure Her Majesty’s privateers did not cross the line.

A broody Egg Steal deemed it  time to abandon ship. The mission had been compromised. He could only hope to get out alive. He was of course under no obligation to secure the irate and irrational (by way of rum) pirates who manned the ship.

Unsurprisingly thus, he fidgeted about his feathers till a colossal pair of highly scientific, aero-dynamics based membranous metal wings unfolded. It is only to be expected of course that a high ranking intelligentsia such as him would have a few high-tech- gadgets up their feathers for quick getaways and suchlike.

Egg Steal thus, shot out of the cage (not without cursing the dim-witted, dense birds who had made his life miserable all these years! What with all the smelly droppings everywhere and the preposterous, insensible clucking!).

In the mean time the ‘insufferable boy’ Ali had grabbed hold of his pentadactyl limb (poor boy was amazed by the stately stature of the chivalrous chicken.)

Since Ali was not particularly bright, he hadn’t quite figured out that a chicken could not bear his weight. Elite lethal spy or not, it would essentially require defying gravity, which as it happened, was the one thing that Agent Steal was not capable of.

Thus, Barthelove Al Igor was successfully dropped…….overboard.

Our protagonist now found himself caught straight in the middle of the furious whirlpool that everybody was so eager to avoid. Ali however was quite amused at being hurled round and round incessantly at such alarming speed. So amused he managed to forget that he couldn’t breathe. As he neared the abyssal plain he happened to notice a perfectly still spherical bottle, glowing eerily emerald. We must now recall the infancy of our protagonist. He grew up with pirates. He had thus developed an instinctive propensity of gravitating towards shiny things.  Which of course caused the activation of certain instincts that went thus:

Shiny round object -->  like shiny round objects -->  WANT shiny round object……NOW!

So it was that Barthelove Al Igor reached for this curious artifact, even as he drew his last breath. 

*To be continued*