You Knew Full Well I was a Snake, Chapter Two

Entering the shopping-centre café Flashsatsumas ordered five portions of death-by-chocolate, then sat down with his friends to take stock. Somehow throughout it all he’d kept hold of the card on which his item had come, now dampened by rain and bereft of both its plastic bubbles and what had been in them. Besides illustrations, all that was there now were the two monochromatic panels where these had been, the smaller one roughly rectangular and its outline that of a little toy van.

The larger, a far more sinister and decidedly serpentine silhouette.

“Guys, I’m out of my league,” Flashsatsumas owned freely. “There weren’t any of these in the shop at the camp. The whole reason we went into town today was to find ones that won’t have come from the creatures in charge. It even transforms, like the ones in my comic. Why did it turn against us?”

“Got to be because it was bad to start with,” Pat concluded grimly. “That’s all I can think. Looks like the baddies stay bad even after you work your magic on them.”

“Baddies?” repeated Flashsatsumas, lost.

“Er, yeah!” flung back Maureen, wondering what planet Flashsatsumas was from and little guessing the correct answer. “Boys’ toys have always got goodies and baddies, to have wars with and that. So we’d better hope someone got a goody, or it’ll be the worse for your mate Jen!”

This was devastating news for Flashsatsumas. It seemed that even with Pat and Maureen along for guidance, and Mini-Flash Juniper using her Special Program powers in tandem with his to enact the plan of which he’d been so proud, two Mini-Flashes might still be undone. Anyone who called the Earth a primitive place ought to have tried what Flashsatsumas had, and immersed themselves in its dizzyingly intricate customs and laws. Now Juniper was out there alone, with no idea who she was and the monster he’d brought to birth snapping at her school skirt. It was a pity there wasn’t time for regrets or self-reproach, because Flashsatsumas could have gone a long way on his.

“Pat, what can you bring to the table?” he commenced keenly, already eyeing the boxed item his friend had bought, though that one looked disconsolate.

“No good, mate,” Pat groaned. “It’s a baddie. If we’d only known…!”

“Maureen?” Flashsatsumas pressed on.

The girl produced an assortment of miniature figurines, each a different cartoon cat which walked on two legs and wore sunglasses or personal stereos and the like.

“I’m sure they’re goodies, Maureen, but they don’t look like they’d have the power to go up against what I bought!” Flashsatsumas ruled.

“Next time I’ll spend me holiday money on summat more useful, in case this happens again,” she assured him.

A terrible moment ensued in which the situation seemed hopeless. Then Pat said:

“What did our Jen get?”

For Mini-Flash Juniper’s shopping-bag was indeed still there with the others. Three pairs of hands flew to it. Inside was a single action figure of some kind, mounted on a card via more plastic packaging, and the eyes that scanned both sides of the former did so with the desperation engendered by matters of life and death.

“Goody,” Maureen reported, all in a rush.

Flashsatsumas didn’t even wait for his five pieces of cake. He rotated his wrist-apertures to maximum, while Pat tore open the package.

A girl was sitting alongside Jenny in the tunnel.

It couldn’t by any means have been called a sudden appearance, even though she definitely hadn’t been there when Jenny arrived. Curiously enough, that was the main reason Jenny liked her at once. There was an indefinable feeling she usually hit it off with girls possessed of such properties, and even that this one might remind her of friends, albeit none of the trio from whom she’d recently been parted.

This newcomer was younger than Jenny, fattish, freckled, and wearing a tutu. Jenny smiled at her and asked her what her name was.

“Miss Ugly,” came back the demure reply.

“Oh, now who’s been calling you that?” began Jenny sympathetically.

“No, it’s my name,” the girl corrected her. “What’s after you will find you in no time if you stay here.”

“What’s after me?” Jenny repeated. “You mean the people in the van?”

The girl merely gave her an ominous look, as to say she’d heard her fine the first time.

Tutus weren’t the most practical of garments for leading the way on all fours, so Jenny didn’t say anything as she followed in the same manner her unprepossessing Ozma. In fact the former doubted whether her own hemline could be counted on to keep her modest as she wound her way through the labyrinth, but a schoolgirl’s anxiety didn’t transmute to mortal dread until Jenny heard the noise behind her heels.

A rattly, slithery sort of noise.

As of something sinuous and swift, making short work of the intervening bends.

Mad panic gripped Jenny and she yearned for a free hand to thrust behind, but both were needed, even though it seemed the worst of it that any voracious predator bearing down upon her would be able to see those. Miss Ugly’s meanwhile had picked up the pace, and what Jenny had taken for a ghostly grey gusset was shading to faded pink as the drear light of day drew near. Frantically Jenny slapped her palms for it, past caring about the knees of her stockings, bent only on preserving what they covered, and struck by a strange conviction she spent more time fleeing and running and being pursued by mysterious menaces than was typical at her age.

Miss Ugly cleared the tunnelmouth and Jenny straight after. She’d just been starting to dry, so the windswept torrents were a breathtaking blast. Honestly, it was nice weather for –

Then Jenny blinked.

Where Miss Ugly had been the last time she looked was now a gigantic duckling.

It stood a little taller than Miss Ugly, due to the neck, and if this meant it was still shorter than Jenny it was nevertheless a bigger duckling than she’d ever engaged to see. Jenny marvelled at the soft yellow down which coated it from tail-stump to head, but more so the broadsword it clutched at the end of one stubby vestigial wing. This weapon from handle to hilt to tip appeared to be hewn from ivory, and it glowed an ethereal green amid the dim tempestuous park. Bravely the bearer of this blade planted itself at the pipes, webbed feet pointing towards each other.

“Run,” was its quacking command. “I’ll hold it off as long as I can. Don’t look back!”

Who could have said what a girl from a distant galaxy, boasting unprecedented powers, might have done? Jenny as far as she knew had asked for nothing more of today than a break from the classroom and the sports field, to enjoy fish and chips and a bit of shopping with friends. So she did as she was told, and ran. The park entrance was on the other side of the swings, where two flights of steps on either side of a slide led up a grassy hillock to street-level. Having gained this altitude Jenny glimpsed the van, parked as she’d envisaged, but with the whole hollow oblong of its chassis detached from the wheel-base and lying askew beside the latter on the wet ground. Whatever travelled inside that shell had evidently burst out in one go and slipped hungrily down the incline for its prey.

Jenny couldn’t bear to think of that, or the strange someone who even now was risking all to buy her a chance at escape. Lowering her head she hurtled off again.

END OF CHAPTER TWO