Where the Birds Hide at Night

by Gareth Wiles

  ‘Get off me, leave me alone,’ she cried, struggling to get Mr Monkey away from her. Maybe she was a little puzzled by the puppet’s presence. It’s not everyday a puppet rescues you, after all.

  ‘I’m on your side,’ he argued as he shook the girl softly, ‘I’m a prisoner too!’

  ‘I don’t take sides,’ she shot back, ‘and how do I know you’re not a part of ARSEN?’ the girl shrieked.

  ‘What on earth is ARSEN?’ The puzzled puppet queried.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’ asked the girl. Mr Monkey thought about raising an eyebrow, but realised he didn’t have any. Instead, he protruded one of his purple button eyes again. ‘Untie me then.’

  ‘So, I’m on your side. What’s ARSEN?’ he asked again, as he untied the girl with his mouth.

  ‘This is who we’re fighting here – a gang of master criminals.’

  ‘So it’s not just The Clown and The Worm then! Who are you?’ he wondered. The girl stretched her arms and legs and rubbed the marks on her wrists that the ropes had made.

  ‘Who are you?’ the girl demanded.

  ‘I’m your only hope of survival… and possibly sexual fulfilment. Now, let’s get out of here,’ he yelled as the wind from the open hatch had made it difficult for them to hear each other.

  ‘Not through there!’ she screamed as he hot-wired the car and got it going. ‘Don’t tell me we’re going through there,’ trembled the girl pointing at the open hatch and the vast expanse of sky ahead.

  ‘It’s our only chance of escape.’

  ‘Was your only chance of escape,’ The Worm chuckled as he stood behind the car, holding a gun at the pair.

  ‘You picked up the unloaded gun, wormy boy,’ Mr Monkey laughed back at him.

  ‘What?’ The Worm murmured as he looked down the barrel of the gun. Mr Monkey thrashed the car into reverse and backed into the slithering cretin, sending him flying through the smashed double doors.

  ‘The gun is loaded!’ Mr Monkey roared with mirth, satisfied that he had fooled a leading international crook. He changed the gear into forward and proceeded to drive out of the cargo door at the rear of the plane, in mid-air.

  ‘We’re thirty thousand feet up, are you mad?’ the girl screeched.

  ‘The plane’s about to make an emergency landing, I expect we’re about a hundred feet at most.’ They both found themselves flying out of the back of the plane, screaming as it carried on cutting through the air behind them. The car soon landed on top of a speeding train. ‘Just in time to catch the train,’ he joked, as he grabbed hold of the girl and leapt out of the convertible onto the top of the train. Suddenly they went under a bridge, the girl seeing it first and pushing Mr Monkey over to avoid him being decapitated. She also ducked just in time, the bridge taking the car with it. ‘Stay here and don’t move,’ he ordered her as he jumped up.

  ‘You’re not ordering me about,’ she snarled stubbornly. Mr Monkey produced a large coil of rope from his briefcase and tied one end onto a hook on the roof of the train. Suddenly, he felt a pair of hands on his shoulders. Turning around calmly and slowly, he came face to face with a seven foot ape-like creature, in reality a very tough-looking gentleman. This man tossed Mr Monkey off the train like an unwanted toy and ran after the girl. She managed to lose him momentarily, but then tripped as one of her high heels snapped. Mr Monkey held onto the rope as he was hopelessly dragged through a forest of trees and bushes, at a speed of near one hundred miles an hour. The man revealed a knife and began to cut the rope that the poor puppet was so desperately clinging onto. The girl suddenly found herself and picked up the briefcase, slamming the man on the head. He went flying off the train and onto Mr Monkey. Clung he did, pulling the puppet’s threads apart with his vast weight as they both struggled with each other. The man lifted his head up just in time to find a large branch off a tree take it clean off. The headless body kept clinging on for about another ten seconds before it caught up with the fact there was no longer a head, then the grip loosened and it dropped away.

  The girl hauled Mr Monkey up to safety as he struggled to remain untangled from various twigs and forest shrubbery.

  Meanwhile, inside the train below, Ruby and Arthur were still busy eating snacks.

  ‘Sounds like a little disturbance upon the roof, dearest,’ Arthur exclaimed.

  ‘Oh here we go, what the hell is going to happen to us now?’ Ruby growled with indignation.

  Above them, Mr Monkey lay on top of the train. The girl could hardly keep her balance as they tore through the air.

  ‘Please be alright, I don’t want to be alone again,’ cried the girl as she peered at his flat polyester body. He wasn’t moving one iota. She turned away to see if anyone was coming. As she did so, the naughty puppet looked up at her. She turned around as he lay still once more. She bent over him and wondered what to do. His mouth was hanging open, so she pushed it together. It fell open again, his fluffy tongue popping out. There was nothing else for it, she gave him the kiss of life. Dear life was instantly restored as he beamed with joy!

  ‘I was gone for a minute,’ he feigned, springing up unhurt.

  ‘You, you rotter.’ She leapt up from him in disgrace at his toying with her emotions.

  ‘Come on! You’re quite the kisser, aren’t you?!’ he cooed. ‘Anyway, we have to get into the train. It’s not safe up here on the roof,’ he pointed out, grabbing hold of the rope again.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Stay here, lie down and hold on!’ Mr Monkey chuckled.

  ‘Your sense of humour is sickly,’ she replied in deadly seriousness.

  He bent over the train headfirst, peering into the window. Luckily Ruby and Arthur were too busy fighting over the last bag of crisps to notice the puppet dangling right against their window. Without a word of warning, he somersaulted down the side of the train and leapt underneath it. There was a hatch door in the floor of the train, which he forced open but attempted to keep quiet. As he poked his head into the train he found himself under a table, gazing up a woman’s skirt. A sneeze came out of the puppet, instantly sending the woman into a fit of terror. It was Ruby, and suddenly Arthur’s boot clacked Mr Monkey in the face and almost sent him tumbling onto the railway track below. The foot came again but this time he grabbed a hold of it. He soon found himself clinging on for dear life once again, this time relying on a foot and a boot. Arthur yelled out in agony as Mr Monkey twisted his ankle to try and get the upper hand. With quite a struggle, he anchored himself up using Arthur’s leg and finally found himself safely on the train. He got up from under the table and bounced off. Many passengers were gathered round. They couldn’t believe it. Arthur collapsed, clutching his leg.

  ‘You could have broken his leg!’ cried Ruby, chasing after Mr Monkey as she looked back at her husband.

  ‘He could have broken my nose… if it was a real nose,’ replied the puppet.

  ‘Is that that damn puppet?’ Arthur grunted, squinting ahead.

  Fighting Ruby back, Mr Monkey opened a hatch in the roof and collected the girl and his briefcase.

  ‘Your fare please, Sir,’ asked a ticket conductor behind the puppet. He turned around slowly and found himself face to face with the giant man he’d just fought on the roof. But that couldn’t be, surely? He was decapitated by a tree. Mr Monkey gulped as the man brandished a huge sack and grabbed hold of him, tossing him inside and tying a knot in the top.

  * * *

  Mr Monkey wakened, again on board a plane. It was the same plane as the one before. He was tied to the same chair in the same way. What the hell was going on? Extreme puzzlement was the order of the day. The door in which Dr. Bullings had made his entrance opened. Who walked through it but Nicola Williams. The puppet looked back, astonished. The Worm followed in behind her. Were Mr Monkey’s purple button eyes telling him lies? Was this really Williams? If so, what was she doing with The Worm?

  They stood at each other’s side and glared at Mr Monkey
with a mixture of mischievousness and stupidity on their faces.

  ‘Well you’ve completed your training exercise, Brendan,’ Williams shouted. Mr Monkey rolled his eyes.

  ‘My training exercise?’ questioned the puppet. ‘No, no, no, there’s something else afoot here… something altogether more sinister than a training exercise.’

  ‘Your mind is void,’ she came back at him. ‘You were sent on a certain training exercise to see if you could still perform well enough for us. Overall you failed the training.’

  ‘Tell me, Williams, have you joined ARSEN? Have you turned to the evil side of humanity?’

  ‘Oh Mr Monkey,’ The Worm laughed, ‘so, so foolish. Yes, my foe is once again in my power. How on earth do I do it? I am absolutely wonderful, amazing. I saw the chance to have you in my power yet again and I couldn’t resist. So I said why not. But nobody took a blind bit of notice. It’s an old saying that, isn’t it? You know, a blind bit of notice. The other rebels always ignored me but I rose above them and look at me now. Look where I am!’ he roared, but was interrupted by Mr Monkey:

  ‘Yes, you’re standing over there.’

  ‘Your time for dying has caught up on you sooner than you imagined, puppet. Other people always think they know best, but they don’t because I know best. I am the best. The best in the world. I will own the world. I will own everything in the world, including you,’ The Worm yelled, frantically waving his hands about in the air.

  ‘Ah yes, that old chestnut,’ Mr Monkey yawned. ‘I want to own the world rubbish! We all know that you’ll never be Napoleon.’

  ‘Indeed not. Unlike Napoleon, I’ll win.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it.’

  ‘You will not live to witness such an event… as much as I’d like to keep you alive long enough just to gloat. I might keep your purple button eyes as a trophy, mind… I’ll have them stitched onto my nightshirt.’

  ‘I doubt I will perish at your hands, not with someone like The Clown standing in your way. You’re second to him. He is the leader of your occult group, shall we say. Which ever way you look at it, you will lose in the end.’

  The Worm put his hands together and smirked at the bound puppet. ‘What if he wasn’t with us for much longer?’

  ‘Oh. Oh yes, I see it now. So you kill two people and suddenly every leader in the world abdicates and allows you to dictate their country. Yeah right. Get in the real world dim-wit,’ laughed Mr Monkey. ‘Are you too scared to let me roam around free, so you have to tie me up? Is that the idea? Oh I thought this was the end of a training session,’ Mr Monkey boasted as he waved his head from side to side.

  ‘No, this is just the end,’ The Worm announced, as he removed a gun from his pocket and pointed it at his rival. This startled Williams, but she took the initiative and suddenly karate-chopped the gun out of his hand. The whole wall surrounding the three opened up to reveal about fifty scantily-clad young women holding a machine gun each. The Worm looked back at Mr Monkey and smiled, marching out of the circle to leave the two surrounded.

  ‘Untie me you idiot,’ the puppet whispered to Williams in a violent tone, turning to protrude an eye at one of the women. She smiled back and cocked her machine gun at him.

  ‘I’m very sorry about all this,’ Williams whispered back as she quickly untied him.

  ‘What is going on?’ he demanded. ‘I am mildly confused!’

  ‘Well, to keep my own life after I was captured, I proceeded in aiding The Worm to get some information out of you. I had to walk in with him and pretend that you had only been on a training exercise,’ she explained, holding her head in shame.

  ‘And did he get what he wanted out of me?’

  ‘I doubt it. Probably just thought of a better way. You know, all these women. He has the weird idea you have a weakness for them.’

  ‘I have no weaknesses… except maybe my cotton seams,’ he stated firmly.

  ‘Yes, that’s why you’re tied up here after an unsuccessful escape.’

  Williams seemed rather pleased with her jocular statement, though Mr Monkey was not. His paws now free, he stood straight and surveyed the pretty faces around him. ‘Maybe I do have a weakness,’ he trilled.

  ‘I must be leaving you,’ The Worm’s voice called out from behind the wall of beauties. ‘I eagerly await your entrance at the lair. Everything has been organised for your arrival.’ With this, he slipped a parachute onto his back and opened the plane door. ‘Tally-ho,’ he called back, leaping out.

  ‘There’s something fishy about all this,’ Mr Monkey remarked, as Williams eyed one of the women up and down. She looked sternly back, pouting her lips.

  * * *

  ‘You left them to it on the plane? Can he escape?’ inquired The Clown, fuming with circus rage. His bushy red hair fell into tight curls either side of the baldness atop his pale white head. His giant shoes slammed around as he paced up and down.

  ‘Not unless he seduces fifty attractive women,’ The Worm replied.

  ‘You fool, he’ll be all over them,’ The Clown hooted. They were in the headquarters of their hide out. It was dark and murky… until The Worm turned on the lights. The room was huge and spacious, a gigantic conference table filling the majority of it. Despite the massive diameter of the table, only six chairs occupied its circumference. ‘How many beans make five?’ he pondered momentarily to himself as he counted the chairs.

  * * *

  ‘So this is what heaven looks like,’ chuckled Mr Monkey. He turned to Williams and whispered: ‘Where is the girl that was on the train with me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here. What do you say?’ He turned to face the girls. ‘Hey you,’ he called out to one of them, moving closer, ‘did you hear what she said about you?’ He pointed at another girl. ‘She said you had big hips… childbearing hips.’ One girl turned to face the other, and Mr Monkey jumped at her machine gun, yanking it from her. ‘Now, drop your weapons,’ he demanded.

  * * *

  ‘It takes us almost ten years to retrieve and rebuild our organisation, get Mr Monkey and have a chance of killing him and what do you do?’ The Clown fumed. ‘I’ll tell you what you do – you leave him with fifty single females on a plane. Why?!!!’

  ‘Don’t you dare yell at me!’ The Worm half-yelled, half-squirmed back, slipping here and there. ‘If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be alive anymore, and those women have had strict orders to assassinate the puppet and his crony.’ He waved his fist at The Clown.

  ‘We don’t want them dead you stupid idiot, and why does it take fifty to knock him down? Answer me that.’

  The Worm whipped a knife out, running at The Clown whilst shouting: ‘This is the same knife I killed my poor old mother with.’

  ‘She wasn’t your real mum,’ The Clown revealed, lifting up his chair and swinging it at The Worm’s hand.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that to stop me, you clown,’ The Worm proclaimed, ducking out of the way. He threw the knife at his opponent, who caught it in his teeth and spat it out.

  ‘Twenty five years in the circus, wormy boy. I’m unstoppable,’ The Clown laughed.

  The Worm turned around to grab hold of the chair legs, but The Clown kicked him in the backside. He fell to the floor as The Clown picked up another chair and smashed it over his back. He dropped in a heap as The Clown got out his party whistle and blew it down his ear.

  * * *

  Mr Monkey stood over the pilot in the cockpit, pressing a gun to his head.

  ‘Tell me where The Worm parachuted to.’

  ‘No,’ the pilot replied.

  ‘Where is he?’ Williams yelled, grabbing hold of his head and slamming it onto the controls.

  ‘Take it easy, you mad cow,’ he whimpered. Williams did it again, the pilot’s face now very much ruined. ‘Okay, okay. He went to his secret hide-out if you must know.’

  ‘And where’s that?’ Mr Monkey asked politely.

&nbs
p; ‘I don’t know,’ he cried, as Williams prepared to smash his face a third time. This time he was telling the truth. ‘Please, no. All I know is the co-ordinates where he parachuted out at.’

  ‘That’ll have to do, I guess,’ Williams sighed, letting go of his head. Mr Monkey turned to her, clearing his throat.

  ‘Gosh, Nicola,’ he gulped, ‘I wouldn’t like to upset you these days. There was a time when you wouldn’t have said boo to a goose.’

  ‘Yes, well the geese have flown, Brendan. Experience has taught me to toughen up, otherwise people just piss on you.’

  * * *

  ‘Here, put this on.’ Mr Monkey handed Williams a parachute.

  ‘No. I’m getting too old for this. I’d just hold you back,’ Williams replied, pushing it away.

  ‘Nonsense, you’re in your prime.’

  ‘No. I’ll stay on board, make sure the pilot doesn’t try to contact anyone.’

  ‘Okay, you’re excused,’ he chuckled as he opened the plane door, turning to salute her. ‘You’re quite a woman, Nicola,’ he yelled over the gushing wind. ‘You wouldn’t hold me back.’

  She held her hand out and reached for his paw, a flicker of passion fleetingly floating past. He jumped out, and she pulled the door shut.

  * * *

  ‘Beautiful tropical islands? How can this be the base for a group of bodging twits?’ Mr Monkey asked himself as he peered through his binoculars at the gorgeous unspoilt hideaway ahead. The landing area was a fair sized group of islands joined together by stone bridges. He was still in the air. Suddenly a helicopter appeared out of nowhere, and without a word of warning swooped down, slashing right through the puppet’s parachute. It caught up with his tumbling body, getting under him as if to try and mash him up with the blades. It didn’t work, for all of a sudden a gust of wind blew the flimsy puppet out of the way and he found himself clutching onto the bottom of the helicopter as it swooped from side to side.