In The Trench

In the Trench
By Jason Fernando

Chapter One

It was deep in no-man’s land that two unfortunate sods sat, with sullen faces, on a pile of spilt New Brunswick potatoes.

“They were fine potatoes”, said the leftmost man, whose leftmost derrière sat upon the leftmost edge of the potato pile, “Quite fine…”

“Two months!” said the man, with renewed fervour, “Two months sitting in a blasted trench and the first thing you do, upon finding a pile of deliciously nutritious potatoes, it to panic and charge headfirst at it with a bayonet – mashing them pre-maturely in a violent display of recklessness. And not just any potatoes, mind you, but fine, hand-picked, potatoes from the forbidden North! From New Brunswick, THE place for potatoes! I mean, surely, what more could a man want?”

The man to whom he was referring – whose name was the direct by-product of a fit of temporary insanity – was a man by the name of “Possum”.

“Possum, you say?!” Said a middle aged male inhabiting a red bathrobe; rudely materializing in mid-sentence before proceeding to abscond.

“Yes”, said the left-most man (who will hereby be referred to as “The Mole”), addressing himself coyly to the remnant-cloud of a recently dispersed gentlemen,

“Possum”.

And so, I said, “let them be named”, and they were named.
“Let there be coffee,” I said, and there was coffee.

Coffee.

It was in this obscure and tantalizing environment that the Mole and the Possum had been residing for the past two months. You see, it is an ironic truth that the Possum was in fact a mole. Now what I mean by that is this: the character that we have now seen referred to as Possum was in fact a rather cunning agent of a fifth-column organization – a “mole”, a spy, a cunning creature.

The Possum, to whom I have been subtly alluding to these past few segments, could now be seen fondling the face-whiskers in a manner loosely reminiscent of the mating call commonly heard ferociously bellowed from the throaty depths of a Guatemalan simian of the “howling” variety whilst inhabiting the narrow threshold that lies between having been and having not been interrupted no sooner than 3.89 seconds in to a period of deep mourning.

He sat sparingly – if such a thing is possible – by utilizing only half of his lower regions in the sitting process; Agog and in mid horripilation at the thought of his blissful salad days.

Chapter Two

“Crumbs!” said a Box of Crumbs in a fit of youthful abundance, “Blimey!”
These dangerously unexpected remarks from the Honorable Box of Crumbs were so blatantly un-called for that Mole, who in his current condition was in a state of near-panic after the discovery of a distinct fug now sweeping the nation, was so unsuspecting of the non-interrogatory interjection that he fell flat on his back and uttered this phrase:

“Kew Gardens,” he said, “That’s where I’ll be going now. Toodle-oo.”

And so he toodle-ood. And what a toodle-ooing it was. The Mole vanished so violently into parts unknown that he left an aura of deliciously chilled gazpacho in his wake, pleasing first and foremost the Honorable Box of Crumbs before dispatching the unwanted fug that had previously leapt, dived, and generally bothered the very souls of all living things. Smiling a boxy smile, he toyed with the idea of making himself a smoothie with his new hand-powered smoothie making device - a concept which, like many other elements of this story, has been given no introduction and is not likely to offer you much, if not any, closure – before wailing joyously and proclaiming that today was indeed a “very silly day - one built for ludicrous story telling of a Possum predetermined to be a dead-end character -” “-How fitting it all is!” He proclaimed, “That such an opus be written on a Tuesday; the most momentous of days – and one most fit for a box of crumpets to reduce himself to a state of mere Crumbhood. Oh, the glory!”

That too, though – as convenient and illogical a conclusion though it may seem – was, like all other things in this most epic of illusions, a proud expression of complete and utter nonsense.

Goodnight.