The elf and the bottle

The little elf was clearly unwell. He swayed from side to side as he walked. Several rabbits poked their noses out of their burrows as he passed, their curiosity aroused by the strong scent coming with him.

***

~ Twelve hours ago ~

Huge raindrops fell from the sky, as the little elf ran for cover. The leaf he was holding above his head barely helped; the raindrops were so heavy that they beat down on his head as if there was nothing covering it.

“Ouch!” “Ouch!” “Ouch!” the elf cried as each raindrop smacked him on the head, each blow dunking what felt like a pailful of water all over him.

Suddenly the elf skidded to a halt. He had just glimpsed something a little way off the path. He hurried over to the object he had seen.

“Yes!” he exclaimed.

Before him lay a bottle lying on its side, containing the remains of a brownish liquid. Without hesitating, the little elf climbed in through the bottle neck. This would be a temporary shelter from the rain.

Sitting in the bottle, the elf felt bored. He wondered when the rain would stop.

The elf knew that humans drank from these bottles. Cupping his hands, he brought some of the brownish liquid in the bottle to his mouth and took a sip. Even though he found it sweet, there was also a strange burning taste that he had never experienced before.

Despite the strange taste, the little elf liked the liquid and took little sips from time to time while waiting for the rain to cease.

After some time, his eyelids started getting heavy and he drifted off to sleep.

***

Yippee was just leaving her cottage when she saw her friend swaying strangely as he walked past her.

“Yo Ho Ho!” she cried. “Whatever happened to you?”

The elf called Yo Ho Ho turned towards the direction of her voice and stumbled. Yippee ran over to him and helped him up. He stank of a smell Yippee couldn’t recognise, and she wondered whether he hadn’t fallen into a ditch in the rain the previous night.

Yippee led her friend to another cottage and rang the bell. An elderly elf opened the door.

“O wise Tee Hee,” begged Yippee, “Please help Yo Ho Ho! He is ill and I don’t know what to do!”

“Do come in,” invited the wise elf. “Let’s see what we can do.”

The two elves lay Yo Ho Ho on a bed and Tee Hee examined him. After a while he looked up and smiled at Yippee.

“There is no need to worry,” he said kindly. “Yo Ho Ho will be fine. He only needs some rest and he will get better soon.”

“But what happened to him?” asked Yippee. “How could he have gotten so ill?”

The wise Tee Hee replied, “He must have drunk something that he found lying around in the forest. There are many strange things left behind by the humans who come here. From the scent of his breath, I believe that he drunk a liquid they call rum.”

It took the rest of the day for Yo Ho Ho to get better. It wasn’t until the next morning that he was able to recount to Yippee and Tee Hee how he had come to be, in human words, drunk.


The moral of the story is:
Do not drink strange liquids you find lying around!
And do not litter; think of the elves! Haha…

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Random phrase: Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum (thanks to Laavanya)

Author’s notes:

Even though “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” could easily be the title of the story, I chose to use another, so as not to give away the whole story immediately.

Elves being small, only a little rum is needed to give one a massive hangover. (that’s my hypothesis!)

Saved by the bath

The family was gathered around the dinner table. As the sound of metal cutlery scraping the plates clean echoed in the room, Mother fed the suckling five-month-old.

Father got up when he had emptied his plate.

“I am going to take my bath,” he announced. Rather unnecessarily – everyone knew that he was the first to take his bath after dinner each day.

The sixteen-year-old nudged his brother.

“Get it,” he whispered.

The thirteen-year-old looked across the table at his sisters. All of a sudden he jumped up and snatched the doll out of the five-year-old’s hands. He tossed it quickly to his brother.

The five-year-old let out an ear-splitting scream. The eight-year-old, who was playing with her just a few moments ago, leapt up and cried at her brothers.

“Give it back!”

The sixteen-year-old had already gotten to his feet. He held the doll high above his head, while the two girls scampered around him, trying to get him to drop their doll. Both he and his brother had huge grins plastered on their faces.

Mother looked up from feeding the baby.

“Stop that right now!” she commanded her sons. “Give them back their doll.”

The sixteen-year-old grinned sheepishly at his mother.

“Sure,” he said, and flung the doll over the girls’ heads – to the general direction of the fireplace.

Screams immediately filled the air as both the eight-year-old and the five-year-old scrambled to catch their doll. The two boys clutched their sides in laughter.

The doll landed right beside the fireplace. The girls ran to it and took turns to hug it tightly, while the thirteen-year-old looked at his brother in admiration. The sixteen-year-old wore a contented look – he was a good shot and he knew it.

Mother sighed. She had to put up with this almost every night.

When Father had taken his bath, he took the baby in his arms while Mother took her turn in the bath. Next the siblings took their baths in turn, starting with the eldest.

After the five-year-old had come out of the bathroom, Mother went in again to bathe the baby.

The brothers were reluctant to get into mischief with their father in the room. They discussed their plans for the next day, while their sisters continued playing with their doll.

Suddenly the front door was pushed open. In the doorway stood two masked men. One carried a large knife.

Before any of the family members could react, the man carrying the knife had grabbed the five-year-old. (As luck would have it, the girls were sitting the closest to the door.) She screamed, stopping only when the knife was pressed to her throat.

The second man ordered the rest of the family to gather in a corner. As they were passing by the corridor that led to the bathroom, Mother appeared, carrying the baby in her arms. She was worried by the commotion and had come to investigate.

The sixteen-year-old decided to seize his chance. His youngest sibling was holding his bath toy, a wooden ship. Snatching the toy, the teenager ripped off its mast and hurled it straight at the man holding his sister, like a tiny spear.

The jagged end of the broken mast hit the intruder right in the eye. He howled in pain and dropped everything to grab his eye with both hands. His partner was so stunned by the unexpected occurrence that he was momentarily paralyzed.

The sixteen-year-old wasted no time in kicking the fallen knife out of the enemy’s reach and carrying his five-year-old sister to safety, while his father leapt onto the second man. The thirteen-year-old, not to be left out, picked up the poker from the fireplace and hit the injured man’s head.

During this time, Mother went out to call the neighbours for help. By the time she returned with two men from the neighbouring houses, both intruders were unconscious, as a result of being conked on the head with a fire poker.

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Random phrase: Eat dirt, evil villain! (thanks to Elvin)

Finders keepers

There was this boy who was in my summer camp one year. I cannot recall his name; we called him “Baldy”, for obvious reasons. He wore a wig, but it fell off on one of the first days of camp, and from that day onwards, all the boys knew of his affliction and teased him mercilessly.

As young boys we didn’t care about the how or the why. He was different, and that was all it took for us to gang up on him. Looking back, we were rather cruel towards him, as boys are wont to be.

We invented a game. I do not know who exactly started it, but it was one of the more popular boys. The rest of us joined in without hesitation.

The game was played every day without fail. One boy, the previous day’s “keeper”, would hide Baldy’s wig somewhere on the campsite. All the other boys would search for it. It wasn’t that much different from a normal game of hide-and-seek, to begin with. What differed was the twist of the game after the wig was found.

The boy who found the wig would have full power over Baldy for the rest of the day. A simple threat to flush his wig down the toilet would have Baldy begging on his knees and willing to follow any command.

Wigs were expensive, and the poor boy could well imagine the wrath of his mother were he to inform her that he had lost or ruined his. He was therefore at the mercy of whoever happened to be holding his wig.

The “finder” of the wig would be Baldy’s “keeper” for the rest of the day, or to put it more bluntly, Baldy was as good as his slave.

The next day, he would hide the wig again, and the game would continue.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A stirring nearby roused me from my thoughts. I looked at my son, lying on the hospital bed. Sessions of chemotherapy had left him weak, and his hair, once so thick and beautiful, had almost all fallen out.

I silently vowed that I would never allow him to experience the emotional torture that we had put Baldy through. No, he will never be a pawn in such a cruel game as “finders keepers”.

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Random phrase: Finders keepers (thanks to William)