It’s a little story about  kidnap; not a bad one, inspired by a chat I had on Twitter today, we discussed sausages and throwing stars

We wanted to steal a Cruise Ship, a big white garish one with a twisted smile painted on the bough, like I saw in the Icelandic fjord years ago. The cruise liner companies were going bust by the bucket load, even the one the government commissioned, which didn’t actually have any ships, to bring medical supplies over from Europe earlier on before the pandemic really twisted the screw on mother earth, fuck Brexit indeed, that was the icing on a very bleak cow shit cake as far as I could make out.

But in the harbour, in the meconium coloured mud, next to the grounded fishing vessels and speed boats with barnacles on the hulls and algae on the perishing fenders, at least the weather had been hot.

“If this is global warming then I don’t see what all the fuss is about”

At the end of the scorched concrete jetty was a Ship, maybe 70 metres long, dirty cream and a peeling black hull with 2 decks and a place to drive the thing on top. A red funnel sat rather satisfactoraly in the centre, giving it an air of a boat which meant business, a proper boat, a boat we could steal.

The party at the Prime minister’s seaside residence had gone without incident with smart black BMWs dropping folk off around 8pm and taking them away in dribs and drabs as the evening drew to a close. We watched carefully as we tucked into our pork pies, spicy beef sausages and leek and blue cheese tarts washed down with some fruity tasting IPA, grapefruit, citrus and pineapple; a firm favourite. The van was soundproofed in the back and filthy piss and puke stained mattresses picked up from the student district. Practically every house had one or two out side, since the universities could no longer open. The Virus had really gone to town in this town, in our town, and the politicians lapped it up, toasting each other’s good fortune with British sparkling wine in the garden over looking the sea, the harbour to the West, the sun set behind the cruise ship.

The four we desired were still there oozing superiority wallowing like bastards in plastic rattan furniture under the pergola smoking cheroots, and guffawing like walruses planning their next tax heist on the public. 3 politicians and one psycho; Pob, The camp manager from Hi-Di-Hi, the Shambolic one and Gollum. This would be easy; we were slightly less drunk than them and we knew what we were going to do. 8 of us easily overpowered the startled group. Surprise and sweaty entitlement led to shouting before we stunned them with ether, we had access to a science lab, and with the dearth of students to kill the growing population of fruit flies, there was ether galore.

Rumbling from under the floor was the first thing Pob felt when he woke up, then an uncomfortable feeling in his trousers, he’d shat himself, which happens, with ether, we’ed tried it out in preparation before. The four of them were shackled to radiators and piping stretching around the lower part of the wall. It was hot and dark, a filthy glow emanating from a massive boiler, presumably attached somehow to the smart red funnel. The looks on their faces as they came to the realisation of their predicament. Gollum groaned and picked at a fingernail from his ring finger, it fell off easily as we had loosened it with the torture kit put together courtesy of a raid on my mate’s Dad’s shed. He’d made us all a bunch of throwing stars way back so we took them too, it wasn’t stealing really.

We sat on the deck on genuine rattan chairs we’ed found in one of many store rooms, looking out over the ocean, heading south towards the sun, as the 4 men downstairs cried and groaned, wallowing in their own self pity and their own filth.

“Right, who’s next?” she said throwing a star into the water.