Seasons Greetings

It was very dark as I rode home the other night for the start of my Christmas break. I was going a route that I don't usually travel along, along where the canal path joins the river path in Bath, due to it being the hang-out of flailing drunks and school children desperate to stab something.

There's a bit that goes very thin, called the Cataract, and only one Person Walking/Jogging/on a Bicycle can pass at a time and due to my innate politeness I always stop my Top-of-the-Range Bicycle-from-the-future for other people to come through first. 

One thing I do expect is a "thank you".

I know that your not meant to expect thanks for your acts of kindness, and you'll only be disappointed blah, blah, effin' blah, but if I don't hear those two words, or something amounting to it, I start to lose my world-reknowned cool.

Well on this occasion, I saw another Person on a Bicycle approaching the Cataract and I stopped to allow their passage. The rider had no lights on their bicycle, and they were in dark clothes, and they had no helmet, and their bushy mad hair stuck out in all directions.

"Merry Christmas!" I merrily chortled in my merry way.

"You Bastard," said the approaching bike-riding darkness.

A red mist suddenly descended from the sky and wrapped itself around me and I started to shiver with it's intensity. As the unfriendly dark rider drew near to go past me, I could smell his fetid, drunken breath, see his terrible flame filled eyes, and I could feel the demons within him. I knew what I had to do.

Flinging out an arm, I caught him across the neck. He made an odd gagging noise and then toppled to one side, over into the scrub on the waters edge.

"I said, 'Merry Christmas'" just incase he hadn't heard me.

He was struggling for breath and didn't seem that keen on answering me. I got off my amazing bike, put the composite alloy stand down, and walked over to where he was lying, entangled in his bike and the undergrowth, a shaking, open hand raised towards me.

"Here, let me help you up." I said.

I reached down and pulled his bike out from under him. It was an inferior, old make, that was probably stolen or something, it didn't even have a motor. I threw it as hard as I could across the river. It hit the other bank, bounced around for a bit then splashed down and sunk out of view into the black water.

"Looks like your walking, buddy," I quipped.

Then I turned my head downward to look at his pathetic, frightened body far below me. He slowly reached into his dirty, oily coat and pulled out something, something small, furry, and full of the furious furry fires of fetid hell; a squirrel.

I stumbled away backward, reeling in horror, fear and despair. He placed the squirrel on the ground and pulled another from his coat, an then another, and another. Before long, he had pulled some thirty or more hideous, rodent nut-botherers from a hidden cavity in his abdomen.

Wow, I look AMAZING. Pee-oww! Bang! Splat!

The squirrels formed themselves into one enormous super squirrel and shot towards me, arms flailing like a flail. I neatly side stepped them and then pushed off from the ground and shot into the air, only to crash down again directly as a gnarled giant clawed claw grabbed me. I lashed out with my other foot and sent the massive mutant howling into the river water, where it thrashed around screaming the many tiny squirrel screams that come out of a mutant ginormo super squirrel as it drowns.

Glad that that was over I got back on my bike and headed home for the Christmas break, safe in the knowledge that I had struck a deadly blow against those who think "manners" are just a cockney gangster's territory.