Who: Much What: Bring me to life When: Saturday, far earlier in the day than is decent Where: Far closer to a pissy tree than is decent Warnings: Swearing, blood, dangerous waterfowl
Much opened just the one eye, to start with.
Waking up was generally safer, this way. It meant that whatever the day had in store for him first thing – whether it was a blinding hangover or the brutal sun coming in through shitty curtains – at least it only assaulted one eye at a time.
He’d never worked out how to do the same trick with his nose, though. The light wasn’t all that bad – the sun was gently filtering through the leaves of a beautiful tree, the bough swaying gently in the mild morning breeze. It was the smell that got him. Piss, shit, trash… What the flying hell had happened to the forest while he was asleep?
Still on his back, Much opened his other eye, his mind waking up more with every fetid inhale. Right – this was a twenty first century kind of stink, and this wasn’t Sherwood, this was somewhere in America. And how much had he had to drink last night? He squeezed his eyes shut to try and remember, and then something viciously attacked his left foot.
Much screamed, hoping like hell he wasn’t in earshot of any of the Merry Men even as he scrambled to sit up and come face to face with the beady black eyes of his attacker. Reacting instinctively, he punched the goose in the face. The goose let out a threatening honk, spread its terrifyingly large wings, and hissed at him. Much hissed back, but it was a hiss of a man grasping frantically to figure out the right way to deal with a very surprising situation.
He was even more surprised when two thin arms wrapped themselves around the goose from behind and lifted it into the air. He pushed himself back against the trunk of the tree (the piss smell was stronger, here) and looked up at the girl in her high necked dress, the long sleeves ending in lace, the exhausting amount of buttons, and wondered – maybe… not the twenty first century?
But the girl was tenderly stroking her goose and this felt like a more pressing question. “What’s with Hissy McViciouspants?” His voice was raspy, like it hadn’t been used for a long time. “Specially trained to attack innocent feet?”
“Goosey does what Goosey pleases, she never meet any feet she didn’t try to eat,” the girl said, still smiling at him.
Much looked down at his feet. He wasn’t wearing shoes and the cuffs of his pants were caked with dry mud. He had a sudden vivid memory of running very hard and very badly. And then he had a sudden vivid memory of what had happened to him when he stopped.
“Fuck fuck fucking Sheriff fuckedy fuck,” he said, scrambling to his feet, his hands giving himself a pat down. His shirt was in a worse state than his pants; a lot of blood had come out of his face toward the end, there. But both of his missing fingers had grown back, so, result? He used his new fingers to uncake the shirt where blood had plastered it to his chest.
By the time he looked up, the girl was walking away through the trees, humming something, as the goose watched him over her shoulder. Right... he thought, as his priorities tilted away from the goose and back toward bigger concerns: where was he, for starters, and how he was going to acquire three things: a shower, a strong drink, and revenge.