Turning Over A New Leaf: Episode 1 – ‘That’s When All My Troubles Began’

1 August, 2013

Thrown off the train because the guard said I didn’t have a valid ticket. I should have known that the Nookling Discount Rail Fares site online wasn’t legit!

Today can’t get any worse.

Wait? What? I never signed up to be mayor of anywhere!

Great – get me a ticket right back out of here. I’m close to having a major freak out from being thrown off the train into a town full of clothes wearing animals that speak like they breathe helium instead of oxygen, and have announced I’m now their mayor.

Nothing personal, but I’m bailing before Gef the Talking Mongoose shows up.

I’m sure you’re all very nice too (please don’t eat me) but it’s all those flowers, trees and the sea, you see. They’ll play havoc with my asthma, they will.

Health reasons – the never fails Get Out Of Jail Free card for all occasions.

Except this one. Rats.

Years of the James Bond franchise have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that being told by a complete stranger that another complete stranger has told them to expect you is Not Good.

This is Not Good.

If I’m mayor, am I not entitled to a sumptious mayorial residence with the job?

What? All I get is a plot of land, and you’re billing me for it?

Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?

I am underwhelmed by your generosity.

I take it the mailbox is so the Dalby Chamber of Commerce can start billing me for existing as soon as possible?

Where’s that Isabelle? Back at Town Hall? Listen fleabag, I’ve been here five minutes and the first people you take me to results in a shakedown. Isn’t being mayor meant to mean I get to shakedown everyone else? What sort of screwed up sort of politics do you people practice around this joint?

What’s this? My ticket out?

Uh oh, like Big Brother Is Watching You round here is it?

Best play along, in case the locals try using non-possession of the Town Pass Card on demand as an excuse to have you shot behind the Town Hall and this Isabelle gets to eat the carcasses as a perk of her job.

Someone acting this nicey-nice has got to be an evil psychopath on the QT.

Ceremony? Special events? I’m not liking the sound of this.

Now I think about it, how did they all know my name anyway when I came out of the train station earlier?

I’d better play along. One sign I know they have some sinister scheme going on here, and they may decide to have one of their special events right away…

I was right! They are Folk o’ the Woodsie who want me to plant this tree for their Trickster god. I’d better do what they want for their Woodsie Lord and hope part of this ceremony doesn’t involve my deadings.

Smile and wave, the longer they think that I think they’re on my side the better my chances of getting out of here alive.

Let me guess, the tree is a magical lodestone for how well the town is doing.

I don’t need to guess what happens to me if it doesn’t grown strong and lively: water, moss and blood, and I’ll be supplying the blood.

It wouldn’t surprise me if these whackjobs have manipulated me into driving the sapling unknowingly into the charred decaying corpse of the last mayor, shallow buried in this spot to fertilise that which replaced the old tree which failed and died.

Look so cool did I? Yeah, I get it, and I’ll look so hot inside a big Wicker Man if I mess up. All this ‘cool’ talk – must be some water based pagan cult around here. I’ve got your number, Cookie!

I could jump into the waterfall and swim for it out to sea and escape before they knew what was happening. But in that sea there’s creatures with more teeth than a double-glazing salesman, and I’m not going to avoid being toasted by this lot only to end up a shark’s version of a sushi snack.

Could always try bluffing my way out…