We followed the corridor for nearly twenty minutes. Neither of us spoke until we saw light up ahead, and even then i just said, "light," and sprinted past Bocco.
I hadn’t seen daylight, for days, and was eager to feel the touch of the sun. I reached the cave entrance and laughed as sunlight and a gentle breeze hit my face.
“Hold it right there fly boy,” a female voice said and I felt myself been pushed up against the cave wall.
“Hey,” I called out in protest, “What the...”
“Shut up,” she said in a perfectly calm and confident manner. I was face first against the cave wall so couldn’t see my attacker, but I could feel her patting me down.
“Leave him,” I heard Bocco’s voice.
I craned my neck and saw him ambling down the corridor at his usual slow pace.
“Kira!” said an excited male voice.
The woman patting me down left me alone so I turned to see what was happening.
There were four people, all human, stood looking at Bocco. I hadn’t seen them before because I rushed past the cavern where they had been. There was also what looked like a space ship parked in the cavern.
I knew I was gaping but I couldn’t help it. I had thought, no, never mind what I’d thought. What I saw next totally blue me away.
Bocco removed his head!
I felt like I was going to faint.
Bocco used both his hands to twist his head, and then lifted it clear of his neck. I could see air between them.
A bear with pockets is one thing, but a bear with a detachable head?
Bocco placed his head on the ground close to his feet.
I looked at the four humans to see if any of them thought this was the least bit odd, but they were all just watched and smiling happily. One of them even turned away to stir the contents of a pan that had been set over a small gas burner.
Next Bocco reached up and fumbled with his neck. It looked like he was trying to remove something within. I could feel the contents of my stomach heaving.
The head at Bocco’s feet was still moving, the minute movements a bear makes when he’s standing still. The rest of the bear found what it was looking for and unzipped itself. A seam appeared, that stretched from his neck to groin.
I could feel my head spinning and put out a hand to steady myself against the cave wall.
There must have been a seam on the back as well, because Bocco fell apart and the two halves landed on the floor with a thud.
Standing where Bocco had stood a moment before, was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.
As we walked through the darkness small candle flames appeared in cave entrances, illuminating worried looking leprechauns.
Unable to remain silent any longer I asked Bocco, “Where are we going?”
“Up,” was all he said and I got a sense he wouldn’t say anything else.
We walked and walked, turned through caves and along caverns and naturally formed corridors, Bocco led the way, never once hesitating to pick a direction.
Suddenly I heard a loud noise that could only be one thing, and felt a shiver run down my spine.
A whoopee cushion!
Bocco and I stopped. The sound was followed by a series of horrified gasps coming from every possible direction, and then a manic chorus of high-pitched giggles.
“What’s happening Bocco?” I asked, as more whoopee cushions went off in a horrific symphony.
“Regression!” he rumbled.
“Why?” I asked.
“Darkness,” he answered and resumed his ambling pace forwards.
“But I thought they were enlightened,” I said, and hurried to catch up with the bear, frightened that at any moment an army of custard pie wielding leprechauns might appear in the darkness to ambush us. “I thought Captain Zee Zee top saved them.”
“Zipper Zoos,” Bocco corrected me. “Enlightenment; hard in darkness.”
All around us there was a cacophony of insane giggles, farting noises, the splat of custard pies being thrown, and a thousand other ridiculous sounds. The further we went the more we heard.
Along one corridor I slipped on a banana skin and landed heavily to the sound of giggling and retreating footsteps running away into the darkness.
Further along the same corridor a female leprechaun ran up to us screeching for help, “They’re after me! Help!” she wailed.
She ran past Bocco to me.
It was getting a little bit lighter in the caves now, or maybe my night vision was kicking in, and I saw Bocco look at her once and keep walking.
“It’s okay,” I said, “Who’s after you?”
“Them!” She pointed frantically in the direction we were walking.
I looked but could only see Bocco ambling slowly up the slope of the corridor, as I turned back to face her, what little I could see disappeared. Something struck me in the face and the female leprechaun giggled and ran away.
I wiped the custard from my face and swore.
“You could have told me!” I complained to Bocco when I caught up to him.
The cave walls had stopped glowing, we were in complete and utter darkness.
Eventually Bocco spoke, “Zain?”
There was no answer.
“Zain?” he repeated.
“What’s going on?” I asked, but nobody answered me.
In the darkness I felt something tickle my ear and jumped in surprise. I flailed my arms in the direction of the tickle, thinking it was Ziggy creeping up on me, and trying to keep the creepy little freak away from me.
Something grabbed one of my hands, and pulled me off balance, so it couldn’t have been Ziggy. I yelled out in surprise, but something covered my mouth cutting the sound off.
“What was that?” demanded one of the homeland security officers.
Bocco whispered next to my ear, “Shush.” I felt his whiskers tickle my ear again.
I thought for a moment then decided to trust the giant talking bear.
“I tripped on something,” I called into the darkness to explain my outburst.
“It didn’t sound like you tripped,” came the reply.
I laughed nervously, “Well, you know us aliens, or rather you don’t, know us that is...” I told you I speak nonsense when I’m nervous, anyway to stop me from giving the game away Bocco put his hand back over my mouth.
“Yeah, right,” came the uncertain reply from the darkness.
Bocco led me through the darkness, I wasn’t sure where we were going or why, but as I said I had decided to trust him. Miraculously we didn’t walk into anything and made it outside our little cave.
Close to the entrance I could see the blue light of three mobile phones glowing in the darkness, the power failure had stopped the excited chatter momentarily, but as we left it was starting up again.
Bocco led me a short distance away before speaking again.
“Zain,” he said as though that explained something.
“Zain?” I asked, and then before he answered me, “What happened to Zain?”
“With Ziggy.”
“With Ziggy?” I asked and realised I had a tendency to repeat people back to themselves when I was confused. It also occurred to me this would be annoying to them, but a useful device for me to reach my daily word count.
“Yes,” said Bocco.
And, “Yes,” I repeated back to him, “Do you think Ziggy kidnapped him?” I was an only child, but knew sibling rivalry could be a bitch.
Bocco didn’t answer.
Keeping a firm grip on my wrist he led me through the darkness.
I wanted to ask him questions, like where were we going, and why? Why had we left the house and all those homeland security officers? And lastly, and most importantly, how come three Japanese exchange students could get mobile phone coverage in Zugar-Zipperat? Were the teleco’s now offering off-world coverage in a bid for market dominance?
I knew Bocco wouldn’t tell me, so I followed along quietly hoping he wouldn’t walk me into a cave wall by mistake.
Zain made our small home the centre of operations. He explained it was the place Ziggy would most likely try to hit us.
The small cave was overrun with Zugar-Zipperat homeland security officers, I expected them to be very serious and have severe down to business personalities, but for the most part they just sat around and played cards and eating the Zugar-Zipperat equivalent of hot dogs and donnuts One or two of them did look very busy, but I got the impression they were shooting for promotion. One of them, a petite female with big green eyes and a neatly trimmed beard fluttered her eyelashes at Zain every time she walked passed him.
The hours passed slowly, the passage of time marked only by the differing brightness of the cave walls, when I asked Zain about the walls he suddenly became suspicious and asked me why I wanted to know.
“Just passing the time,” I replied.
Sounding sceptical he answered, “They are powered by the fire crystals.”
“Fire crystals?” the name sounded familiar to me, “Oh, Bocco thought I was here for them when you locked me up with him.”
“We have to be careful,” Zain looked around the room and continued, “The fire crystals are our most precious resource. Without them we’d be plunged into perpetual darkness.”
“How do they work?” I asked.
“You’re asking an awful lot of questions,” complained Zain. He plucked at his lapel and I noticed the edges of the left lapel were frayed.
“Do you have somewhere else you need to be?” I asked, puzzled by Zain's attitude.
He muttered something about aliens, but said, “The fire crystals are kept in a secure chamber. They capture the sun’s light through an opening in the cave roof, and magnify it, then send it deep into the heart of Zugar-Zipperat, from where it is absorbed and dispersed as light through the rock.”
“Dispersed through rock?” I wasn’t convinced. “Hang on,” I said just thinking of another question, “If you’re cave dwellers, why do you need light, shouldn’t you have developed sharper eye sight? Like Gollum?”
“Gollum?” Zain asked.
“A movie star,” I dismissed the question.
Zain snorted. “We weren’t always cave dwellers,” he snapped and stalked away.
The hours continued to tick slowly by. As 5 O’clock got closer the tension in the room became palpable, homeland security officers began mimicking their boss, pacing worried tracks back and forth across the cave.
Bocco announced when the moment was actually upon us, “Now!”
Nothing happened for long seconds.
Everybody froze, and stood staring at each other, I noticed Zain edging towards the cave entrance, and then, the lights went out.
Shocked and stunned I watched as Ziggy giggled his way out through the entrance. There was a maniacal quality about Ziggy Zorinski that was terrifying. He wasn’t physically intimidating, it had more to do with the wrongness of him.
Bocco entered the living a moment later and asked, “Ziggy?”
I nodded.
Bocco ambled over to the middle of the living room space and picked up a sheet of paper that I hadn’t noticed.
Taking a deep breath I looked around the room. The exchange students were still talking excitedly on their mobile phones, though I think the explosion, small as it was, had interrupted their chatter for a second or two. They saw me looking over at them now and all smiled and waved.
Bocco held the sheet of paper out to me. I looked at it but couldn’t understand the scrawls on the page. I shrugged so Bocco read it to me;
Tomorrow at 5 O’clock, prepare!
Zain entered through the front door and demanded, “What happened?”
I told him, and he paced around the room angrily.
”This is so like him,” Zain fumed, “when we were children he would play his silly pranks on everybody and blame me.”
Something occurred to me so I asked, “How did he get past the guards on the entrance?”
Bocco looked up with interest.
Zain shifted uncomfortably. He wiped some dust from his shoulder and said, “I’m not sure, maybe they were asleep.”
“Asleep?” Bocco rumbled.
I slapped my forehead realising how silly my question had been, “They probably thought he was you.”
“Yes, of course,” said Zain still rubbing dust from the lapel of his shirt. Zain’s natural authority returned to his voice as he continued, “Okay, we’ve got until 5 tomorrow to figure out what he’s up to. I’ll pull extra troops in for this, we’ll need to be prepared for it, whatever it is. For now, get some rest and I’ll see you in the morning.” Zain strode purposefully from the room.
“Odd,” said Bocco in his usual understated manner, I was about to ask him what he meant when he asked, “Bed?”
I waved hello to the Japanese exchange students who had set up their sleeping bags in a corner and were all talking excitedly on their mobile phones, to each other I think, but I wasn't sure.
My mind's wandering inevitably followed the familiar path of why, how, and huh? I didn't come up with an answers, though I think I finally understood how all those abductees feel. Even if they weren't kidnapped by aliens, they obviously believed they were, but nobody else did. The only reason I have always known things like this don’t happen is because I'd never heard of a credible person saying it happened to them. Did that make me incredible - or is it un-credible? – or insane? I wasn't sure, and as they always say crazy people don't know they're crazy, I knew I would probably never know.
Strangely this circular thinking gave me some peace, if this was a delusion, there was nothing I could do about it, so I might as well behave like everything was, not normal, but, real.
I must have nodded off sitting against the cave wall, because suddenly there was a figure looming over me. I couldn't make out who it was, the cave walls get dimmer at night, though it was clearly a leprechaun. I had slid down against the wall as I dozed and was practically lying on the floor.
"Ah, there you are," I heard a familiar voice.
"Zain?" I asked.
"Yes, of course who else would it be?"
I didn't answer.
"We've examined some of those boxes you sent over, they are clearly from Ziggy, but we haven't been able to learn anything from them yet, so you'll have to keep this up for a bit longer."
"Okay," I said and rubbed my tired eyes.
"Here, have one of these," Zain handed my a cylindrical object, I took it wondering what it was when he struck a match and lit a cigar of his own. As he sucked to get the cigar burning evenly, his face was illuminated by the small flame and I saw a familiar twinkle in his eyes. The resemblance to Ziggy was uncanny.
I was about to say something when he exhaled a large cloud of smoke and struck another match and held it out to me.
I got my cigar going and we smoked quietly for a moment. I was enjoying the taste and settling into the quiet undisturbed moment when there was an almighty boom.
It scared me half to death. I didn't know what was happening, my heart beat hard and fast in my chest. It had felt like the noise had happened right in my face. With my hands shaking I held up my cigar and saw it looked like one of those exploding cigars you see in old bugs bunny cartoons, with separate strands forming the spokes of a wheel.
The smoke cleared and I saw Zain standing in the entrance to the cave, he giggled insanely then said in a voice that made my skin cold, "Help me."
My name is Jimmy Sparrow. I'm writing an on going Blog Novel about my extraordinary adventures. The first entry is HERE. If you want to read about this blog or the author, try HERE. Or if you're a return visitor and want to find a chapter try visiting the Contents Page
