Ten Sorry Tales by Mick Jackson

Author:Mick Jackson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780571317196
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 2014-11-13T23:00:00+00:00

Alien abduction

Sitting at a desk all day can be very demanding. Pretending to look as if you’re paying attention can be an almost impossible strain. The children of 4B were hot and tired and beginning to grow restless. And there were still twenty minutes to go before the bell was due to ring.

Theodore Gutch was watching the clock on the wall behind Mister Morgan – was watching the second hand slowly sweep around the clock’s circumference until it finally found its way back up to the twelve.

‘Twenty more of those,’ thought Theodore, ‘and I’ll be a free man. Free to do whatever I please.’

Theodore looked around the room for something else to occupy him. He considered trying to hold his breath whilst counting the drawing pins on all four walls – a little trick he’d very nearly pulled off a couple of days earlier and may well have had another crack at it, had he not been distracted by a flash of light through the window to his left. Now, there is every chance that the flash of light was caused by someone on the other side of town opening a window. As that distant window shifted on its hinges it could have momentarily caught the sun. To be fair, even Theodore Gutch knew this to be the most likely explanation. But the previous week he’d read a book about an army of Martians landing in a small town in America and wreaking all sorts of havoc. And with nothing better to do with the remaining minutes of this particular Wednesday, it wasn’t long before it occurred to him that the flash of light could just as easily have been the after-burners of some alien spacecraft as it landed in the playground in Lowerfold Park.

The threat of an alien invasion was certainly a lot more interesting than whatever Mister Morgan had to offer. Sometimes even Mister Morgan didn’t seem especially interested in what he had to say. Theodore glanced around the room. Across the aisle, Robert Pinner was staring at the palm of his right hand, trying to work out from the lines which crossed it how long a life he had left to live.

Theodore plucked a piece of paper from one of his notebooks, picked up a pencil and scrawled a few words on it. ‘A spaceship full of marshuns’, he wrote (Theodore was not the best of spellers), ‘has just landed in Lowerfold Park.’

Robert Pinner’s ruminations were rudely interrupted when a paper plane landed on the desk right in front of him. It made him jump and he looked round to find Theodore Gutch staring back at him, as if his eyes were about to pop right out of his head.

Theodore nodded at the plane. ‘Open it up,’ he hissed.

Robert ducked his head down behind the boy sitting in front of him (a boy named Howie Barker who had plenty of body to hide behind) and carefully unfolded the piece of paper. He read the message, frowned and looked back at Theodore, who was now nodding his head most gravely.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.