Little Miracles

Puns and Timings

 Slowly, hardly daring to believe that she was still alive, Sarah opened her eyes. She would have been temporarily blinded by the tortuously bright lights of the IKEA display area, if it wern't for the fact that something was blocking the light. That something was the masked face of  the henchman.

 The henchman's dark eyes bulged at Sarah over his black sun glasses. Despite herself Sarah gave a small shriek of surprise upon suddenly seeing her enemy at such proximity. However, Sarah's eyes were soon drawn upwards as the staple gun, pointing at her forehead, made its self known with a small metallic click.

 "Before I kill you," whispered the henchman with breath that smelt like warfare between garlick and hastily chewed mints, "Was there actually a bird?"

  Sarah frowned for a moment, then whispered, "Yes, it was a blue tit with the words "You're a..." written across its wings." Sarah enjoyed the look of confusion on the henchman's face and was eagerly anticipating the irritated response. As it stood, it did look like she was going to be fatally shot in the head but she would take her little victories where she could.

 After a minute the henchman was still wearing a puzzled and slightly glazed expression, so to help him along Sarah was just saying, "And behind the blue tit there was also a cockerel with..." when a panicked shriek from the other side of the room cut off the rest of the insult. Much to Sarah's short sighted disappointment, the henchman stood up from his kneeling position and turned around to face the cause of the sudden noise.

 By tilting her painfully aching neck, Sarah could just see past the henchman towering before her. She looked past him to see the other henchman screaming and apprently dancing a comical jig.

 The henchman was clawing at his face with both his hands while his feet kicked sporadically beneath him like someone straining to stand upright on a floor full of marbles. Sarah felt a warm, fuzzy, sensation, which if visually described would have had a pinkish hue, as she saw that Pax was getting shakily to his feet. A small part of her brain told her that the feeling she was experiencing was happiness but she told the small part of it not to be silly and convinced the rest of her that it was just a new wave of mild hatred and grudging respect. 

 "Oh god! He COUGHED in my face! COUGHED!" screamed the hecnhman as he tottered to and fro, cluthing his face, in front of Pax, "Think of the GERMS!"

In Pax's blurred vision he saw four henchmen jumping about in synchronization as they screeched, "The GERMS you could get from a Beaver! on my BARE FACE! I'M GOING TO DIE OF INFECTION!" Pax's oxygen deprived brain was only active enough to consider how much his head was aching and how much the shriek of the four henchmen were contributing to it.

 Pax looked up again and the four henchmen had become two slightly hazy henchmen jumping and screeching in synchronization, "I'M GOING TO BE SICK! OH GOD! THE GERMS! THE GERMS!"

Pax blinked again and the two henchmen had become one and three fifths of hazy henchmen. Pax took a deep breath and thought, accurate enough. Then he swung his right fist forward in the general direction of the henchman's face and felt a satisfyingly fleshy connection.

 The henchman hit the floor with a crack and lay twitching on the tiles while still weakly moaning, "He coughed beaver germs into my bare face... the germs... I'm going to die of beaver germs." The beaver, hearing its name mentioned, scuttled out from beneath a sofa under which it had been hidden and promptly planted its self on the henchman's squirming face. The beaver subsequently had a lot of fun, though the same could not be said for the henchman.

 Pax stumbled but looked up from the body of the groaning henchman and beaver to face the second henchman who stood before him. The second henchman, though shocked, was slowly raising his staple gun and aiming at Pax. As surprise gradually transformed to anger, two furious eyes glared at Pax through the the sunglasses. "You'll pay for that," hissed the henchman, voice thick with emotion as he slowly put pressure on his weapon.

 Pax stared back at his enemy, calm and collected, his eyes, cloudy and unconscious only minutes before, were now sharp and malevolently piercing. Pax slowly smiled a mocking lopsided smile and ,though it took all his willpower to stop his tired and abused legs from shaking, stood firm. "Give up already" whispered Pax with menacing serenity, "It's over."

 "Die," cried the henchman.

 There followed a large moment, which in reality was at maximum only about a second long, but in cinematic and dramatic terms spanned millenia. It was a moment during which some previously forgotten character should have dived in from the side to protect the apparently doomed protagonist. It was a moment in which an unlikely friend or an event, predictable in hindsight but entirely unexpected at the time, should have occurred to save the main character. It was a moment that was set up and ready to be in slow motion. Most crucially, it was a moment which Sarah completely missed.

 Pax stared at the henchman before him who had unexpectedly failed to be knocked out by an unexpected ally. "Well that's awkward" muttered Pax and would have said more had the Henchman not shot him.

 Pax fell to the floor accompanied by the henchman's cruel laughter. There was a dull thud as his prone body hit the tiled floor and lay curled and motionless. A dark red stain appeared around the wound, spreading with creeping speed like a fatal cancer over Pax's body. As the henchman glared at the bleeding boy on the floor, making a move towards the body as if to kick it, Sarah struck him across the head with a light stand.

 As the light stand, complete with a light bulb letting out joyfully innocent rays of bright white light, hit the back of the henchman's head, the light bulb fractured and flew apart with a light tinkling noise like minute bells in quiet harmony. Adding to this sound was the deep, despairing groan of the henchman, who fell to the floor emitting the sigh of a beached whale. The second Henchman's unconscious body joined his friend's and his enemy's on the cold floor of the IKEA furniture display section.

 Sarah swung the broken light stand over her shoulder, a satisfied smile on her face, and exclaimed, "Lights out"

 It was only after a few seconds, when the exclamations of admiration failed to materialise that Sarah noticed Pax's immobile body on the floor. "Oh God!" she exclaimed, and ran skidding over the floor to Pax's side. "You okay Pax?" she questioned in a worried whisper, gently shaking his shoulder as she did.

 The curled body twitched, shuddered, then in a horrific movement comparable to the transformation of a werewolf, Pax untangled himself and screamed. The shout echoed up and down the display section, a booming high pitched frequency of agony and in-articulation. There was a moments silence as Pax took a deep shaky breath. Sarah opened her mouth to speak but her timid words of sympathy were overwhelmed by an avalanche of obscenities that flew out between Pax's gritted teeth and clenched jaws. The swear words and curses bounced merrily down the same path as the scream that had gone before it. The stream of abuse trickled and stopped, congealed like the dark stain of blood around Pax's right leg, after a matter of minutes.

 Glad that her  long hair had hung over her ringing ears, giving them shelter from some of the shouting, Sarah coughed and repeated her question with a little less concern, "Are you okay pax?"

 "Of course I'm not okay!" He screamed, then after a wounded glare at Sarah continued his accusatory charge, "You took your time to come to the rescue didn't you!"

 "I was thinking of something cool and witty to say" admitted Sarah sheepishly, "It was between the lamp stand with the lights out remark, or hitting the henchman with a part of a bed and saying its bedtime for you." When Pax's irritated expression didn't change, she added a whispered, "Sorry."

 "Sorry?" repeated Pax incredulously as if it were the most offensive thing he'd ever heard, "I got shot! In the leg! I got shot in the leg! Do you want me to describe exactly how painful it is to be shot by a gun! You airheaded vacuous cow!"

 "Shot by a gun?" said Sarah, "Please describe the sensation in bullet points."

"I'm lying here caked in my own blood and you're making terrible puns!" screeched Pax.

"Bloody hell" Sighed Sarah, a small subconscious smile brightening her face.

"It's really not funny. Believe me, you don't feel like laughing when you know there's an open wound in your leg that needs to be sowed up!" hissed Pax.

"My puns are brilliant!" chuckled Sarah, "Later on you'll remember them and be in stitches."