There is some corner of a field which is forever England
Deep in darkest Somerset, a yellow-eyed headmaster peered through his tobacco-stained windows and noticed that, for the first time in three hundred and eleventy years, it wasn't raining. His brow furrowed atop his wrinkled head as he picked up the phone, dialed an extension, and breathed a single word into the receiver. A word which would change history, alter destinies, and cause more death than he could ever have imagined.

"Aerobics."

Plans were put in motion. A matter of hours later the entire school, all one thousand pupils, teachers, assistants, administrative staff and the creepy old goblin who ran the tuck-shop gathered on the largest playing field and stood facing two scaffolding towers topped with an enormous PA system. A crude stage sat between them, assembled from wooden planks, gym mats and old benches. Some of us nervously joked that we were about to witness a public execution. Hah! Today was not to be the end of just one victim. Instead of a hooded hangman there, stood on the stage, was Miss O'Leary, school Head of PE.

Miss O'Leary was, naturally, a raging lesbian with a red-cheeked love of physical excercise that made a Hitler Youth leader look like, well, a typical B3tan. Looking back, she resembled God's first, rejected attempt at creating Ellen MacArthur (who was fresh from completing the first solo circumnavigation of her mum's womb at the time.)

With a nod from proto-Ellen, Mr Armstrong (the music teacher) handed her a microphone and pulled a huge lever. Giant speaker stacks sizzled and hummed and her voice, electrically enhanced, roared at us:

"Just copy me!"

Kylie began singing The Locomotion. Miss O'Leary begain doing star jumps and slowly the rest of us began jumping too. There we were, over a thousand of us, bouncing away in an ungainly parody of communist state mass public excercise. It beat double maths, anyway.

The occasional laugh and shreik came to our ears over the deafening chart pop. Strangely the laughs grew louder and more frequent, despite the excercise. I could see ranks breaking as I looked around me. Something wasn't right, I could feel it, but what could I do? I could see no escape, nor any obvious sign of danger. My sense of unease grew.

Then, with a mighty, wet SMACK, the first worm hit me in the face. Lured to the surface by the rhythmic pounding of two thousand pairs of feet, earthworms covered the ground. The mud and grass was barely visible, we were star jumping (this is the only move I know) on top of a writhing carpet of slimy, brown worms. Pandora's box had opened. Hell's gates were breached, and battle was joined.

Raising my head as if recovering from shell shock I looked up to a sky filled with countless flying annelids. There was no laughter anymore, only terrified, disgusted female screams. Children running for shelter, diving behind other children, crying, shouting, desperately flinging squirming invertebrates to cover their retreat, scrabbling in the mud for more ammunition; it was Guernica with living bullets.

I saw heroism that day, true, but it's the horror that haunts my sleep now.
( Scrumper, Tue 24 Nov 2009, 16:02, 4 replies)

This is
Awesome. Have a click.
(uk_viper stopped lurking on, Tue 24 Nov 2009, 16:08, closed)

Cheers
It was cathartic. B3ta therapy.
( Scrumper, Tue 24 Nov 2009, 16:11, closed)

Enjoyed this
thanks
(Keyman, Tue 24 Nov 2009, 16:15, closed)

the horror
the horror
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Tue 24 Nov 2009, 16:17, closed)