Jane heaved herself onto the battlement. The whole breaking into the castle thing originated from a conversation they’d had on a school trip years ago. They were on the way back home and Hans had just blurted out his dream to live in either of a castle, a windmill, or a fake volcano. Almost as impulsively she’d bet him that she’d break into it. She had no idea why, or how you could live in a fake volcano for that matter, but she was glad Hans had given her that phone call a week ago.
For too long now she’d spent her days in melancholy. What else would you do if your one true love gave his life trying to save you from a psychopathic terrorist cell that demanded equal rights for plants? She’d waited in hope that one day he’d walk through the door and everything would be okay. He didn’t and all the time she’d sealed herself into isolation.
That was the first time she’d had her visions. They were premonitions of the future, of what was to happen, or more correctly the exact opposite of what was going to happen. She’d had such a lovely dream about them enjoying their trek through the Amazon basin, instead it had turned out to be a living nightmare where her life it all went wrong.
But now she was here. The ascent up the wall hadn’t taken long at all, the weathered rock made great handholds. It felt good to be back out actually doing something for a change, she thought as she secured the rope around the crenellations. She was sick of having to listen to those silly moaning daytime shows every day. At least the worst show of them all, Killjoy, wasn’t on any more, you were supposed to get emotional about the problems the guests brought, but you found yourself getting more and more wound up by his irritating behavior. Even so, the loss of that program hadn’t made it much better.
Jane began abseiling down the inside of the wall, deep into the darkness. Nearly there, she thought as she glimpsed what looked like the courtyard beneath her, but at that moment she saw what looked like a person stop directly below her. She tried to slow her descent, but it was no use, she just couldn’t bring herself to a halt quick enough.
Ted looked up, and was startled to find the figure of Jane looming above him, motionless, frozen in the air. He wasn’t sure which scared him more, the woman hanging in mid-air above him or Mervin walking towards him and ordering him to grab the woman by the legs.
Either way, Mervin’s voice was authoritive enough to get him to do exactly what he said. Between them they lowered her down to the ground. Mervin stood back, pointed his wand and shouted, “Tarantula!”
“Do you know how long I waited to fulfill that bet? And now you two goons come along and ruin it, and just when I was beginning to feel better about myself!” she screamed storming off to find Hans.
“Well don’t say thank you or anything,” mumbled Mervin under his breath. He stood in the middle of the floor, grumbling for a while longer, but this was more to disguise the fact that he’d completely forgotten what he was actually doing out here. Not that this is an atypical behavior for people but when you are reaching Mervin’s age people starting talking about senility, and decide to send you to care homes. The mere thought of spending all day listening to those oh so captivating war tales that old folk seem to enjoy boring people to death with made him shudder. Perhaps, thought Mervin, they told them simply because they wanted a nap, and felt guilty about doing that whilst other people were around, so they tried to get them to fall asleep too!
All these thoughts were completely off the point anyway, when he remembered what he was meant to be doing.
“Yeh’re Ted, aren’t yeh?” he inquired.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Hans wanted everyone to gather in the kitchen, it appears he’s got a surprise of some sort cooked up for yeh.”
Mervin saw Ted wander off, and pitied him. From what he’d heard Chloe talk about this it was probably something that would all end in tears, definitely one to miss. A card game involving spoons, it just sounded wrong!
