It was as Colonel Kasprin was eating his breakfast - Eggs Royale - that he first heard the splintering thud of someone crashing down the stairs, hastily followed by the rapid knocks of footsteps hurtling down not far behind. He lowered his paper just in time to see a man, prone, having a bag shoved over the top of his head by another man with an owl’s head, assisted by a third man with a vulture’s head. The bagged man, who he thought might be one of Aspin’s interns, let out a muffled scream as the two bird-headed men attempted to lift him, thrashing. Speak of the devil, the esteemed Doctor Aspin came thundering down the stairs a moment later, brandishing some sort of bright yellow device, that looked like a child’s approximation of a laser gun. He set about making threats to the bird-headed men, waving the yellow ray gun around in their faces, until a hand the size of a large dog, evidently free of any arm or torso, came racing down the stairs towards him, which freed the good Doctor of any heroic notions. A crash, somewhere behind all of this, caused Colonel Kasprin to tilt his head to see the cause. An eyeball the size of a football, attached to a long, tendril-like optic nerve, had broken through the lodge window and was glaring about.
Colonel Kasprin folded his newspaper. ‘Oh for Pete’s sake,’ he said, leaving his paper and his Eggs Royale, and walking past the bound man, his bird-headed captors and Doctor Aspin, who was wrestling with the giant hand. ‘What have I said about leaving the sodding gates open?’ the Colonel threw over his shoulder as he made his way up the stairs and across the hall, to Lab 13.
Paddy Dobson
6th December 2020