The fish opened its bleary eyes, fired out a mouthful of water and surveyed the scene with a world weary air.
“”God!” she said in a voice, redolent of Scarlett O’Hara1… “Well I do declare… morning has broken.”
“As per bloody usual” said the alligator, snapping its jaws together with a resounding click.
Then in the voice of Hilda Ogden2, Jayne said… “Jesus why does my tongue always taste like bird doodah after I’ve slept. It tastes like the bottom of a pool that’s been lying stagnant for 5 years, scummed over with the droppings of a shoal of dead piranhas.”
It dawned on the tuna that the alligator, who was named Montgomery after his mother’s birth place, had started clicking its jaw whenever it was approaching a meal time, which being an alligator was at Any Given Moment.
“That is so annoying…” Jayne said to no one in particular, but meaning Monty to hear.
“Why?” he said, and it’s interesting to note that when it comes to bleary eyes, an alligator holds cricket’s Ashes, baseball’s World Series and soccer’s World Cup. Believe me, yellow holes in the snow, don’t come near it, brother.
After saying “The sad thing is, it’s Pavlovian”, Jayne did a flip, and bounced off the boulder she’d been resting on. Monty’s face was mask-like in its immobility. He was like a limp rag before he’d broken his fast.
“Listen babe, there’s only one dog round here and he ain’t got 258 teeth, so cut the philosophising. Bad move getting out of that tree before I’ve had my grits too.” he leered at her.
“Hey big fella, you wouldn’t hurt little old me would you, when there’s a bigger catch on view?”.
Jayne knew Monty was just a big old softy really, sort of a babe magnet in his way. He honestly wouldn’t harm a scale on her body. She pointed to the canoe slowly moseying down the edge of the brown sluggish river they lived their life on, where a man rhythmically flexed an oar into the swell, first below the boat’s left side then to the right. Monty grinned insanely. In terms of breakfast, it was a lightbulb moment.
He disappeared and Jayne thought she saw a flash of Dolce and Gabbana as he swirled under the canoe. But suddenly as the jaws reared up wildly, the hunter lifted his oar and slammed it into Monty’s jaws and down his throat.
“No dice mister” cried the hunter. A crimson spurt of blood shot out of Jayne’s beloved’s jaws.
“Oh my good God” Jayne cried then “Oh well, at least I’ll be able to sleep safely tonight”.
© adewils april 2016
- Katie Scarlett O’Hara is the protagonist of Margaret Mitchell‘s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the 1939 film of the same name, where she is portrayed by Vivien Leigh. She is a Southern belle. ↩︎
- Hilda Ogden is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, one of the best-known of all the regular characters in the serial,[1] whose name became synonymous with a classic hard-working Northern working-class woman. She was played by Jean Alexander from 1964 to 1987. [Wikipedia] ↩︎
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