Chapter 1
A fiery sun was setting in an amaranthine autumn sky as Doug trundled down from his second floor flat to the overgrowing communal garden. In his hand was a plastic box that had once contained low fat margarine. It now held scraps of pork and nuggets of potato from his ready meal Sunday dinner for one. He walked across the lawn towards the row of hedges and conifer trees and began to scatter his leftovers in a small arc.
They had smelled him coming as soon as he left the hallway of the flats and now with dinner being served, they could remain out of sight no longer. Within seconds mother, father and then two cubs appeared from the undergrowth and padded through the damp fallen leaves, hungrily pouncing on the lukewarm offering. The foxes had been residing in the garden of the Montpelier flats for about a year and had stayed because residents such as Doug, and Cynthia – the matriarchal live-in cleaner - provided them with a steady supply of food. The landlord Simon Black had tried to evict them but had been informed by pest control agencies that the RSPCA wouldn’t allow it as the garden had become their natural habitat. Doug liked them anyway and as they ate the remnants of his dinner he smiled in a way that made him look happy and a bit stupid, which is probably a fair, if not overly generous reflection.
Doug Morton’s eyes were rodent-like and branching from them he had deep crevices of crow’s feet that painted him older than his 35 years. He had a tight mouth, permanent stubble and slightly bulbous eyes, giving him a constant look of surprise. He was shorter than the average man, had narrow shoulders and was generally unimpressive in appearance. His neighbours saw him as a harmless but odd fixture of Montpelier Flats and this latter impression wasn’t helped by him telling all those he met that he’d he’d been asked to play for the Mexican national football team when he was 30, as he had an uncle from Acapulco. Apparently he had had to decline for political reasons and “it was complicated”. Bullshit aside he was not disliked and he always stopped to say hi to people as they passed him in the hallway or on the stairs, giving them his simple, friendly grin.
Most of the time Doug didn’t have a job, but he started every new day determined to do something about it. Often his day started in the evening though, after working hours, so he struggled to get much footing on any career ladder.
He enjoyed innocently cycling around the neighbourhood and the woods, which were located only five minutes behind the flats. This dense wooded strip was called Hardwood Ridge and Doug would ride there before dark when he woke up in time, and cycle through the trees looking for interesting animals. He imagined finding rare birds there, unheard of species of shrew and other exciting woodland critters. People in neighbouring flats would often see him riding up there as they were returning from work and assumed this was the extent of his adventures, but as with most nocturnal creatures there was more to Doug than this.
As his neighbours were climbing into bed Doug would quietly wheel his Raleigh Superb mountain bike down the path and out of the clanking iron gate of Montpelier Flats. He would then ride five minutes down Wood Hill until he reached a row of red brick terrace houses, adjacent to the main street. Around the back of this terrace was a grey concrete staircase that descended to a battered dark brown door.
Several hours after he fed his Sunday dinner to the Montpelier foxes, Doug made his way to this chipped, scratched dark brown door and knocked twice, paused. Knocked three times, paused. Then knocked twice more. A series of clunking locks could be heard being unfastened and squeaking bolts pulled back, and in ten seconds the door was opened by a pudgy girl with pink dreadlocks who Doug knew as Lucinda. Doug gave his big stupid smile; Lucinda raised the corners of her mouth momentarily and then rejoined a group that she had been sitting with.
The basement was about ten feet high and fifteen feet wide, but ran back an incredible distance. In fact it ran the entire length of the ten house terrace as the cellars of all the houses had been knocked through to form one narrow underground bunker. There were long tables running down the centre with an eclectic collection of mismatched chairs and sofas on either side, all occupied by hippies.
Hippies in this case doesn’t refer to 60s flower power types in flares and beads, but new-age, dreadlocked, bearded (not exclusively the men), hemp-clothed modern hippies – hippies without a cause, and there were around 40 of them hunkered down here.
These crusties may not have had a huge cause to fight for but this seemed to make them want to fight even harder and any cause seemed worthy to this group, as long as it went against the general consensus or anything the Tories said…or Labour, or the Liberals for that matter. They used this cavernous cellar as an HQ for fighting the man, and they would fight him in whatever form he appeared. They campaigned for change; they fought against change, and sometimes they would do both to make the fight even tougher. They called themselves the Anarchy Organisation, and this oxymoron was lost on most of them.
Like every contradictory anarchic group this one had a leader, and his name was Hector Frudd. Waist length dreadlocks drooped to his portly midriff and they were almost authority enough to justify his leadership. He did seem passionate though, about all the causes that he and his hippy army were fighting for and against, and he was an engaging orator. He had a talent for whipping them into a frenzy, which really did take talent as they generally just sat around smoking weed. The current project was codenamed Woodland Liberation and the members of the Anarchy Organisation were tasked with petitioning local residents to save the local forest (Hardwood Ridge in fact, Doug’s second home), whose trees were suffering from a rare but treatable disease called arborium corporitis. The council had agreed to employ expert botanists if enough locals paid an interest, otherwise all the infected trees would have to be levelled to stop the spread.
Doug had been a member of the group for a couple of years. He had been brought up as an earth child by a pseudo-Buddhist single mother and he paid a real interest in ecological causes. Of course Woodland Liberation struck a real chord with him and he was keener than ever to fight the good fight. These trees were his friends and he couldn’t see them suffer this tragic fate.
After several hours of strategising about how they could best inspire locals to sign their petition, an intoxicating combination of marijuana smoke and apathy took hold of the assembled crowd and together they drifted out of the basement. They passed back through the dark brown door, up the grey concrete stairs and back into a world of corporations, non-recyclable packaging and shampoo. Doug however, who rarely came up with stratagems and was more of a listener, had fallen asleep after four tokes of a fatty passed to him by a constipated looking man called Drex. He was slumped on a sofa covered in ragged rugs catching a few zeds when he awoke to a ringing phone.
“Hello”, Doug heard in Hector Frudd’s Queen’s English. Hector continued “Yes, everything going to plan. These hippies are a bunch of fucking retards” he scoffed.
Doug’s eyes rolled from left to right and then back as he tried to process the words.
“No, shouldn’t be a problem” Hector continued, “We’ll get the residents signatures and then in no time you’ll be able to send in the lumberjacks. Ha ha, yah okay bye.”
Doug wasn’t the smartest man in town. He wasn’t even the smartest man in his flat and he lived alone, but within a matter of mere minutes he realised that Hector Frudd was up to no good. That was the actual sentence that that went through his head: ‘Hector Frudd is up to no good’ and he laughed at the rhyme before remembering that it was a serious matter and that Hector was obviously duping the Anarchy Organisation and using them to help him destroy Hardwood Ridge.
It turned out that he was in cahoots with a construction company that had wanted to build on these woods for years. Property prices in the area had been steadily rising and the woods were at the top of a hill, so would be a prime location for large suburban builds. However, without the agreement of a large majority of local residents the forest could not be touched. It seemed that Woodland Liberation was not intended to free the trees from disease, but the woodland of its trees.
After Hector hung up Doug peeped over the edge of his foisty blanket at the smarmy bogus hippy and was amazed when Hector raised his arms, lifted off his cascading, matted dreadlocks and placed them on a desk, revealing a short back and sides cut beneath.
‘Well fuck me’ Doug thought very clearly for once, as Hector left the bunker with a smug grin above his pink sagging jowls.
Chapter 2
Doug woke at midday the next day, an early morning due to the worries swirling around his head. He wanted to tell the rest of the Organisation what he heard and saw, but he knew they would never believe him over golden boy Hector, especially since he’d told them all his dubious Mexican football tale. He put on his dressing gown and sat at the small glass circular table beside his single-glazed bay window to roll a cigarette. On lighting it he glanced outside and in that miraculous spark he had the best idea of his life. He simultaneously burnt his finger on his cigarette and gave out, quite frankly a very girly scream. But, the idea was established nonetheless and Doug realised he had work to do. He got dressed and ran out to see Cynthia.
He trotted outside and along the path that ran to Cynthia’s hallway, sidestepping three or four of her fuzzy, fat black cats. As he got to her door he found it ajar and was welcomed by the sight of her substantial septuagenarian arse wiggling from side to side inside her creased grey skirt. She was diligently sweeping the entrance hall of her flat to the rhythm of I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside, which was playing in the background and she let out a surprised whoop when Doug tapped her on her hunched back.
“Ooh bloody ‘ell Doug you scared me arf to death!” she cried, turning down the organ music on her record player.
“I’m ever so sorry” Doug replied, “But I need to talk to you, it’s very important.” He looked around the ramshackle little flat, full of collectible teapots, off-white doilies and a bizarre menagerie, then turned back and smiled at Cynthia who had now flopped onto her two-seater chintz sofa.
“Ooh ‘eck” she said in her deepest West Yorkshire, “What are you up to now?”
Doug left half an hour later, after telling Cynthia all about Woodland Liberation and his own plan to foil phony tree-hugger Hector Frudd and his construction crew cronies. She was in; she’d lived at Montpelier Flats for fifty years after all, and this was her local wood too on the brink of destruction. However, Doug needed more than one aged cleaner if he was going to save Hardwood Ridge. He planned to surreptitiously drum up support in the Anarchy Organisation, and as he prepared to head out he thought of himself as the hero in a political thriller, tasked with saving the world from an evil, corrupt villain. Then he had some marmite on toast and was ready to go.
So, that night as his neighbours were climbing into bed, Doug once again quietly wheeled his bike out of the gate and cycled down to the terrace of red brick houses. He descended the grey concrete stairs, gave the secret knock and was back in the HQ of the Anarchy Organisation. He soon found out from his eco-brethren that Woodland Liberation had been declared a success and that they had all the signatures needed to finally cure the poor local trees of arborium corporitis. Work was due to begin on Friday, in two days time, and Hector had assured everyone that there would be no more problems at Hardwood Ridge after that.
Doug knew he had to let some of the group know what was going on and get them to believe him, but how? He realised that he probably couldn’t convince anyone of the truth here, due to his poor communication skills and his reputation for bullshit, but maybe he could show them. If he could expose Hector Frudd here and now perhaps that would put an end to the whole thing. All he had to do was rip off Hector’s wig and everyone would see him for the imposter he was. With this thought bouncing around his skull Doug set off running at top speed towards Hector who was at the very far end of the hippy bunker. Out of the corner of his eye Hector saw Doug, more wide-eyed than usual and for once not grinning.
“I know and I’m going to show everybody!” Doug yelled like a paranoid streaker as he hurtled clumsily towards Hector. Too clumsily as it turned out as about six feet away from Hector, Doug’s right foot caught a table leg and he went face first onto the concrete floor, rolling to a stop at Hector’s feet with a bloody, grazed face.
“What the fuck? Are you attacking me? Get out!” Hector shouted at the folded figure beneath him.
Doug was laid on his back, looking up at Hector who was leaning over him with a face of blubber and disdain.
“Sorry I don’t understand” Doug lied. He did understand for once. Hector leant right over Doug to make it clear exactly what he meant and in a flash Doug stuck his stumpy arm up and grabbed a handful of greasy dreadlocks. He pulled and felt the hairpiece come away from Hector’s head and land on his face like a filthy Alien facehugger.
A huge gasp went up in the bunker as the hippy crowd saw their king de-crowned in front of them. Confusion and silence reigned in the musty basement and even the dust seemed to hang motionless in the air.
“Okay, I’m sorry.” Hector spoke solemnly. “I’ve lied to you all and I’m sorry.”
Doug grinned hugely and waited for Hector’s big confession.
“Yes I wear a wig and yes I have pretended that it’s my real hair, or at least I haven’t said it isn’t which I suppose amounts to the same thing. But I did it…because I had cancer.”
Another gasp went up but this time more hushed.
“But you’re not even bald underneath; you’ve got normal short hair!” Doug shouted, still gazing up from the cold concrete floor.
“That is true Doug yes. Let me explain. I contracted cancer 18 months ago, before I joined the Organisation and I underwent chemotherapy for it. I had four courses of this treatment and thank god the last one sent my tumour into remission.”
Doug looked around and saw the stunned crowd listening intently.
Hector continued, “Before my cancer I did have long dreadlocks just like many of you, and just like you I don’t feel like myself without them. That is why, when I lost my hair, I bought this hairpiece to give me back a piece of my very soul that I had been robbed of. Yes now I do have hair growing, thank god, but my dreadlocks are what makes me me. I hope you can understand that and one day, perhaps…” he paused for an inordinate amount of time, “…forgive me.”
“Oh come on you’re not gonna believe that are you?!” Doug shouted at the humbled hippies.
“God Doug haven’t you done enough?” said the sour-faced Lucinda, who was echoed by a few other deluded crusties. Doug felt crushed and looked around plaintively into their eyes but saw nothing but anger or disinterest. He crawled to his feet and looked Hector in the eye, who was more pleased with himself than ever.
“I’ll show you, Frudd” he said bitterly, then turned and left.
Chapter 3
A couple of hours later Doug was back in his flat, seething and smoking roll-ups. His place was spacious but he hadn’t made the most of it and the focus of the room was an electric fire at which one threadbare corduroy armchair was pointed. Dust, tobacco strands and dead flies sat on surfaces and the window was smeared and dirty behind the gaping, musty green curtains. Suddenly Doug’s buzzer gave two short, sharp rings which woke him from his introspective angst and he jumped up and pressed his nose against the smudged window, like a curious labrador. Downstairs he could see Drex and a couple of his other hippy pals, gesticulating rather urgently for him to let them in, which Doug duly did.
“Guys, what are you doing here?” Doug yelled as his comrades filed past him through his door. As well as Drex, Doug recognised a 23 year old beanpole who called himself Moonshadow and his girlfriend, Tracy. “Sit down” Doug said offering two cushions from his armchair for the three to perch on, on the floor. Drex took the lead and explained that he knew as soon as the wig came off that Hector wasn’t for real.
“The cancer story was clever” Drex said, “But if he was growing his hair back into dreads there’s no way it would form a perfect short back and sides. He’s clearly full of shit, and I always thought he was a bit of a smug cunt to be honest.”
“Thank-you!” Doug exclaimed. “And you guys believe me too?” he asked aiming his bulbous peepers at Moonshadow and Tracy, who nodded in the affirmative.
“So how did you find out that he’s a bullshitter?” Moonshadow asked as he rolled a cigarette so thin a prisoner of war would be ashamed. Doug regaled the trio with his tale of the evening in the bunker when he was woken by Hector’s incriminating phone call and the talk of Hardwood Ridge and the lumberjacks.
“Fuckin’ hell man” Drex half-whispered.
“Yeah” Moonshadow echoed.
“What?” Tracy blurted out loudly. It turned out that she had a wit to compete with Doug’s.
Moonshadow rolled his eyes, looked straight into hers and spoke slowly: “Hector is not a good guy Tracy. He wants to destroy the forest not save it. And those signatures we helped get were for chopping down the trees, not saving them!’
“Fuckin’ hell!” Tracy exclaimed.
“Yes” he replied.
“So what do we do Doug?” Drex asked as he, Moonshadow and Tracy peered up from the grubby rug at Doug, who felt almost messianic looking down at his new disciples.
Doug laid out his plan to his friends and told them he already had some help from Cynthia. They smoked roll ups, drank black tea (Doug had no milk) and agreed to meet back at his flat the next night with the necessary articles to carry out the plan. Doug went straight to bed as he planned an early morning the next day and he dreamed of every eventuality of his plan to save Hardwood Ridge.
Chapter 4
The next day arrived in a flash but Doug didn’t and slept in until 4pm. He bolted upright as he woke and immediately remembered what he had to do.
“Ooh dear fuck!” he cried, bounding out of bed.
He omitted (as he often did) a morning shower, scooted his bike down the two flights of stairs and flew down the road to the local Spar. He bought four carrier bags worth of produce, taking a large chunk out of his Jobseeker’s Allowance, and wobbled his way up the street, struggling to balance them and in the end having to push his bike home with one hand while carrying his shopping in the other. He got back to Montpelier Flats, threw his bike on the floor outside the building, ran up to his flat and slammed the door.
Around 9pm Doug reappeared and trotted down to Cynthia’s flat.
“Everything’s sorted” she told him, “Now do you want a sandwich?”
“No thanks I’m full” he replied, “But I’ll have a cuppa tea?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“Course love”, Cynthia said, hoisting herself off her sofa and into the kitchen. The two of them sat and drank tea and smoked Cynthia’s menthol superkings until 10pm when she said she was going to get a few hours sleep.
Doug went back up to his squalid lair and went through his plan over and over again. Was it brilliant? Was it ridiculous? He wasn’t sure anymore but this was the plan and it had to work. Phase one of his (and Cynthia’s) three phase plan was about to begin.
Chapter 5 - Phase One
A long ring signalled the arrival of Drex, Moonshadow and Tracy and Doug buzzed them in. They came upstairs, each carrying several plastic bags of food scraps which they dumped on the peeling pale blue linoleum in Doug’s hallway. Doug gave them his strange beaming grin as he held up his own bags of tepid cooked food. In the morning he had bought as many ready meals - and particularly roast dinner ready meals - as his giro would stretch to and he’d spent the day slaving over the microwave. He had picked at them during to keep his energy levels up for the mission ahead, and he thought the foxes might prefer the food like this as this is how he always fed them. He and his three friends shared a few words of camaraderie then headed out into the garden.
The foxes were out already as they usually were after dusk - bolder than in daylight hours – and Doug started scattering food, which immediately brought the auburn scavengers towards him. Cynthia looked on through her creased eyes and net curtains. Drex, Moonshadow and Tracy watched and followed Doug as he backed away from the foxes and out of the black iron gate of Montpelier Flats, continually dropping tasty titbits. The quartet of crusties waited outside the gate and watched the vixen step tentatively to where the gate hung open.
“It’s not coming” Tracy said, but then a young cub bounded past its mother and pounced on a chunk of chicken that Doug had dropped a couple of feet outside the gate. The vixen ran out and tried to nudge the cub back through the gate but it skipped around her and jumped on another scrap of food, devouring it. Soon another cub and the reynard were out on the pavement and within seconds they were following Doug and his companions up the street towards Hardwood Ridge.
Chapter 6 - Phase Two
Doug, Drex and Tracy returned from the woods half an hour later, leaving Moonshadow and a couple of bags of scrap food to keep the foxes there. They got back to Montpelier Flats and tapped on Cynthia’s front door. Tracy said she had to go but would be back soon. Doug and Drex looked at each other quizzically as she left but they had too much to do to worry about it.
Cynthia had brought around a pair of wheelbarrows from the maintenance room and they were sat in her hallway.
“You’re sure this is alright Cynthia?” Doug asked praying that she wouldn’t change her mind.
“Yeah go on, them woods mean a lot to me too Doug.”
“You’ll get them back you know” Doug answered. Cynthia smiled, knowing she probably wouldn’t. At this Doug and Drex started carefully loading Cynthia’s bird cages, reptile tanks and rabbit hutches into the wheelbarrows. Then it was back out into the cold, dark early morning.
Cynthia had so many pets that Doug and Drex had to make two journeys, carefully balancing cages and tanks on top of each other, occasionally dropping one and biting their lip. However, none of the animals were seriously hurt and the pair managed to get them all up to Hardwood Ridge. As they were arriving at the wood they heard a terrific pounding on the cobbles behind them getting louder and louder and they turned just in time to see a huge blurred figure fly past their faces, sending them diving to the ground. The figure stopped ahead of them and they could see in the early dawn light that it was a great white stallion, and Tracy was sat on top.
“What the fuck are you doing on a horse?!” Drex shouted.
“What the fuck are you doing with those rabbits?!” she retorted.
“Fair point” Doug said, “I suppose that does fit with the plan.”
The pale sun crept over the hill on which the woods sat and cast genuine daylight on this strange woodland scene. Doug and Drex were stood by an array of bird cages, rabbit hutches and snake and lizard tanks; Tracy had dismounted and was stroking a huge white horse (it turned out her family was quite well off and this was a birthday present from a couple of years back); and Moonshadow sat in the roots of an old oak tree, surrounded by four full-bellied foxes that were sleeping off their dinner of chicken, pork and Quorn (Drex’s offering, and even the foxes could tell the difference between real meat and the ersatz foodstuff.) The quartet watched the day come to life. Rays of sunlight beamed through the trees, glimmering off dewdrops which dripped from the golden leaves that were still resolutely clinging to the autumn branches. Doug had never seen Hardwood Ridge at this time of day and after his night of bizarre endeavours he felt like he must be in a dream. He looked around at the farrago of animals now inhabiting the immediate woodland and knew that everything was in place. Now he would simply have to wait and hope that everything went to plan.
Around an hour later a noise could be heard from the road. Doug and his friends froze. Voices were audible and then vague shapes appeared which turned into bodies and these bodies were streaming into the golden woods. ‘But we’re not ready for phase three yet!’ Doug thought, pleading with the figures to disappear, but they didn’t. Heavy footsteps tramped over the muddy, leaf-laden ground and soon a crowd of characters were stood around Doug, Drex, Moonshadow and Tracy. Doug squinted through the bright rays at the 30 or 40 faces and inhaled a deep sharp breath, and then exhaled emphatically in relief as he surveyed the hirsute gents and crusty chicks of the Anarchy Organisation.
“Alright Doug” Lucinda said, “Tracy sent us an email a while back saying you might not be bullshitting this time?”
Doug was of course affronted by the supposition that he was a bullshitter but even he realised this wasn’t the time, so simply uttered, “I’m not”.
It seemed that when Tracy had popped home to pick up her magnificent horse (named Hercules, by the way), she had also managed to send a group email around the Anarchy Organisation, and like the anarchic bastards they all were they regularly checked their emails and so made their way to Hardwood Ridge to see what was really going on. They all mumbled apologies to Doug and said they would do everything they could to protect the woodland that they had inadvertently doomed.
“I’m so glad you’re here guys” Doug gushed “But we should be alright as long as Cynthia turns up soon”.
At that another noise could be heard near the edge of the woods, but it wasn’t Cynthia’s Yorkshire squawk. Loud, busy engines thrummed and then came to a stop, then brawny, blokey voices bellowed as around 20 large, Neanderthal-like men climbed down from the cabs of wagons and vans. These were the men employed by Hector Frudd’s partners to put an end to Hardwood Ridge and all the beauty it contained. The lumberjacks had arrived.
Metallic clangs and bangs were heard for a few minutes and then, with chainsaws in hand, a herd of surly, dry-faced men in high visibility jackets were stood around Doug and his anxious platoon. They formed a wall of bright yellow polyester and oily menacing metal. The wall parted and a fat man in a suit, with a short back and sides appeared.
“Well this is fun isn’t it!” guffawed Hector Frudd with a pompous smile across his porky face. “Hello friends!”
The inevitable jeering and “You fat lying cunt!” came from The Anarchy Organisation, but of course this didn’t trouble Hector.
“You should really be thanking me. After all Woodland Liberation is the group’s first successful campaign. And I know about success kids. I am a success – evidently – and one day you’ll realise that there’s just no place for sentimentality; especially about something as silly as this dirty little forest...”
Hector was distracted from his boastful didactic by a flourish of pink and green that flew past his head and drew his eyes to a branch in the forest canopy directly above him. It was a Moroccan parakeet and it stared downward, but not alone. As Hector widened his gaze he spotted more and more brightly coloured birds: parrots, canaries, macaws and birds of paradise. This amazing outdoor aviary blew Hector’s expensively educated mind, and when the lumberjacks cottoned on to what was sitting above them many got – understandably - quite freaked out. A short bald tree feller with a tattoo on his forearm of Micky Mouse drinking a pint, was the first to look down as he felt something touch his foot.
“Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!”
“What the fuck a’you doin?” the man next to him quizzed, then he spotted a rather large snake slithering across his buddy’s shoe.
“Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!” he echoed, causing quite a fuss among the now thoroughly perplexed lumberjacks.
They started seeing movement everywhere in the woods as their eyes focused in on rabbits that hopped giddily about and guinea pigs that lethargically trundled among the undergrowth. Another chainsaw jockey stepped back from the scene and put his hand on what he thought was a branch, only to turn and find out that it was in fact a large chameleon, eyeing him quizzically with its bizarre, bulbous peepers. The ruckus had woken the sleeping family of foxes and they started springing around and running between the crusties and the lumberjacks, snarling from fear at the burly men with their big mechanical forest-enders . Many of the kaleidoscopic birds began shitting on the heads of the lumberjacks and Hector, causing them to whip their plastic helmets on for protection. One unfortunate hippy got a wet bird turd in the eye, but apart from that the attack seemed to be focused on the right people.
“That’s enough!” cried Hector, kicking a fox cub away from his ankles and wiping a greenish white smear from his cheek. Gentlemen start your machines; these shits aren’t going to save this pathetic wood.”
“I think you’ll find that you’re not allowed to do that” Doug chirped.
Hector looked at him and arched his left eye brow. “And what the FUCK would you know, you retarded little muppet?!”
Doug looked down at the ground for a moment, then back up and fixed Hector with a steady glare. “I know you’ve tricked us all into getting that petition signed so you can chop our woods down legally. But there is also a law saying that any natural area containing rare wildlife - like those foxes…” he said pointing at the furry feral family “…like those parrots…” he said pointing to the bright birds above Hector’s head, “…and I bet like those lizards, rabbits, guinea pigs and that big bloody horse – can not be touched. You may not have known that these woods had such a mental collection of animals, but now you do, know that you can’t touch them, or these trees that are their home.”
Doug was buzzing with adrenaline and excitement and for once he had sounded half eloquent.
“Well Doug…” Hector turned to the lumberjacks “Cut the fucking trees down or no pay.”
“Wait one bloody minute!”
Chapter 7 – Phase 3
Hector looked beyond the crescent of lumberjacks and saw Cynthia stood stoney-faced next to a short, beige, middle-aged man sporting NHS glasses and a thin moustache.
“This ‘ere is Reg Clangley, a fellow campanologist at my Methodist church.”
“Who are you, crone?!” Hector cried, his jelly jowels now red with rage.
“I’m Cynthia Sidebottom and I won’t stand for any of your cheek!” she replied, wagging her right index finger mercilessly as she stormed towards him, lumberjacks diving out of her way.
Then Reg spoke in a soft voice with an unusual timbre, sounding like he had a boiled egg stuck halfway down his throat. The entire gathering strained to hear.
“I work for the Environment Agency and Cynthia has kindly informed me that these woods are teeming with rare and beautiful wildlife…and I can see that she was telling the truth”, he said surveying the strange array of tropical birds, reptiles, rodents, mammals and hippies.
“These fucking hippies put these animals there, they obviously weren’t bred here you moron.”
Reg paused for a moment and then unleashed a furious verbal onslaught on the chubby hippy betrayer. “YOU SIR WILL GIVE ME THE RESPECT THAT I AM OWED AS A PROTECTOR OF THE ENVIRONMENT THAT YOU AND ALL THESE CREATURES HERE LIVE IN! THIS WOOD IS OF HUGE INTEREST TO MY OFFICE AND IF YOU MAKE ANY ATTEMPS TO DAMAGE EVEN ONE TREE IN HARDWOOD RIDGE, I WILL HAVE YOU LOCKED UP AND THEY’LL THROW AWAY THE KEY! And that goes for all you men too”, he said pointing at the lumberjacks
“But the demolition has to go through. Without the demolition I have no deal, don’t you understand business? I need that money!” Hector said plaintively to the man in beige, who shrugged and looked straight back at him.
“So fuck off fat boy!” Cynthia cried to the shock and delight of pretty much everyone.
As the lumberjacks started scurrying away, Hector realised he’d been beaten. And he’d been beaten by Doug, the thickest person he’d ever met. He was torn up by anger, frustration and embarrassment and he lost control. He picked up a log. As Doug had done in the Anarchy Organisation bunker, without a thought for the consequences, Hector launched himself towards Doug at full speed. He took the group by surprise and was almost within striking distance when he felt jaws clamp down on his fleshy inner thigh, then more on his chunky forearm which forced him to release the log and he collapsed to the floor. The foxes were on him and they had evidently developed a taste for pork thanks to Doug’s Spar ready meals. The hippies shoed the animals away, eventually, but not until they’d taken a few decent lumps out of Frudd.
The screaming and crying turned to groans as Hector was hauled off into the a lumberjack’s van, destined for the hospital. As he looked through the open doors and defiant trees he saw Doug raised aloft by his friends, who were cheering and celebrating the first real victory for the Anarchy Organisation.
Reg Clangley winked at Cynthia and left her and Scott to their victory. He strolled out of the beautiful woods to see the lumberjacks clearing off, but had just enough time to say one more thing to Hector, who lay bloodied in the back of a rusting Transit. “It seems to me that you’ve been thoroughly outfoxed son.” He smiled and slammed the van doors.
The End
