Carol

What a lovely castle, thought Carol, all turrety with lovely crenellations. She swam down to have a bit of a closer look but on the way caught sight of a beautiful open clam shell nestling in the gravel. The way it shimmered pinkly in the aquatic light floating down from above was so beautiful. Darting across to have a closer look she noticed a beautiful pink fish darting towards her. How pretty the fish was! She waved and the beautiful pink fish waved back. It clearly didn’t mind being a clichéd reflection in the side of the tank and was happy just to mirror Carol’s movements. Feeling cheerful, Carol was going to ask the beautiful pink fish its name but just then she noticed a castle. What a lovely castle, thought Carol, all turrety with lovely crenellations. She had a fleeting moment of existential guilt at perpetuating the myth that fish have a 3 second memory but that was soon swept away by the guilt of knowing that she’d only had existential guilt because it sounded posher than normal guilt. She particularly liked the gilt edges on the crenellations of the castle turrets – and it was a lovely castle…

She was shaken out of this downward spiral of cliché, preconception and guilt by the nerve-jangling sound of the fire alarm going off. Peering out of her tank past the people running for the large double doors, she saw that a large pink bat flew had flown in and shot straight into the fire alarm, breaking the glass and setting it off.

Taking off her pink sunglasses in surprise, Carol realized that it was in fact a black bat and she watched as it fluttered onto the windowsill. What on earth was it doing now – it appeared to be contorting its face into the strangest of expressions as it stuck its head under its wing and peered around the room. With dawning comprehension she realized that it was actually trying to cast sly glances around the room whilst not being entirely sure what a sly glance was. Perhaps it was something to do with being blind she reasoned.

Boring quickly of the chiropteran visitor, Carol wondered where Dr Stone had got to – it wasn’t like him to be this late to morning surgery and the lack of patients screaming in pain and fear was beginning to unnerve her. Although their screaming as they had run from the fire alarm had almost made up for it.

meet Henry

 

Henry the bat

Henry cast a sly glance around the room. This was before he remembered that, being a bat, he was in fact blind. He decided to ignore this minor hindrance. He was the main character in a story which would be mostly read by people. He was clearly going to be personified in their minds. So surely, reasoned Henry, he could borrow the eyesight of his human models?

Hoping that this sounded intelligent enough to convince the average reader, Henry cast a sly glance around the room.

This is what he saw:

      One small aquarium by the big double doors;
      Several institutional looking chairs;
      A desk with hundreds of official looking bits of paper behind it;
      Some tattered posters demonstrating the potentially horrific results of not brushing twice daily.

Henry knew all about these dangers. His orthodontist, Dr. Stone, had made sure of that. Dr. Stone was, incidentally, the reason that Henry was here. Much as he despised the man for ruining his smile and stealing his voice, he couldn’t just ignore what he knew. Dr. Stone was in mortal danger. And Henry was his only chance…