Bang Goes The Drum

He didn't like Tigers.

Well, that wasn't entirely true.

Tigers were okay... at a distance.

The ones with broad grins that appeared on Cereal Boxes were brilliant.

Even better if they were thumbing the air.

Mike would have been delighted to be confronted by one of those Tigers.

He may have even shook its hand and shared a few words.

Unfortunately the Tiger in front of him didn't speak English.

And Mike didn't speak Tigerish.

Uh oh.

The over-sized feline was staring, mocking Mike's praying gestures.

If only Russell's Teapot could come crashing down to Earth onto the Tiger's head.

Or if only Xenu, Ruler of the Galactic Federation, would decide to land at that exact spot, on top of the Tiger.

Anything really, Mike's mind was very open at the moment.

In a few minutes it would be completely open, literally.

The Tiger made a grumbling noise.

It shuffled it's position slightly to the right of the now cowering Mike.

'Please, look, just shoo ok, leave me alone I'm not worth eating!' he said, hoping that the Tiger might decide that it did actually know English and that it wasn't quite as hungry as it's grumbling stomach suggested.

The Tiger pounced.

And Mike awoke.

Except he wasn't awake in the sense that the attack had been a dream.

That would have been a bit of a cliché by the writer.

Instead he was in a white-washed room surrounded by beeping equipment.

His visioned slowly cleared up, as what happens in film and television where a patient has just awoken from a coma.

After a few generic moments he recognised that he was inside a spaceship.

Ah, had you there.

He was sure it was a spaceship because there was a creature that looked like the offspring of a Tiger and one hideously deformed Antelope.

Somewhere in its contorted visage were several sharp teeth.

Mike tried to scream, he really did.

In fact he actually tried harder than he ever had done in his entire life to do anything.

It was like taking a dump when you didn't really need one.

He tried again anyway.

The alien didn't seem to care.

Mike realised he couldn't move his head.

He was stuck to a very uncomfortable bed.

Maybe it was a hospital after all, and the disturbing thing looking at him was a vision, or even a burns victim.

But the author was in too deep now, he couldn't do something as cruel as make it all a nightmarish hallucination.

Surely he wasn't that cruel.

Mike tried to scream again.

This time birdsong came out.

No, not birdsong, birds.

Birds flew out of his open mouth and smashed into the alien.

The creature tried to flap at the assortment of now extinct species but to no avail.

For Mike, it was like throwing up.

Mike was used to throwing up, so he just let the birds keep coming.

A Dodo exploded out of his gullet and began pecking at the alien's nether regions.

The alien shrank backwards with a wail, and then disintegrated.

And Mike woke up in another room, this time it was blue.

Then it changed to a red.

After this Mike looked the Author right in the eye.

'Seriously, just end it now I'm sick of being put into these ridiculous situations!'

So the Author, with all the mercy of an evil tyrant, made Mike explode inwards.

From then on Mike lived as a small blackhole.