By Frampton Jones

Those of you who remember what happened last time giant slugs appeared from cracks in the island, will have been waiting for the birds to come.  Even so, I don’t think anyone was expecting Craig Bean to fall from the sky. To clarify, Craig Bean is not a large bird capable of eating giant slugs, he simply turned up with them. He may be one of our most unlikely arrivals and perhaps the person whose time with us has been briefest.

Having fallen from the sky, Craig Bean made some very peculiar utterances, and then departed this life. The great minds of the island have been chewing over his words for some days now, and have come to no agreement.

“They are coming,” he said. “It will be terrible.” He pointed at the sky, which was then full of hungry, giant birds, so the most obvious conclusion is that he meant them. Except that we’ve not had a great deal of trouble with birds eating people in the past.

Perhaps by ‘they’ he meant whatever came along last time to eat the birds, leading to a rain of blood across the island. We never did find out what that was all about – which may be as well. There can be mercy in ignorance.

Diligent islanders went through the gentleman’s pockets, thus establishing his name, and his involvement with a Martian Expeditionary Force. After some debate, we think this may be some kind of theatrical performance, or some kind of society for people who like air balloons – hence the fall from the sky. There are a few islanders convinced that this means our newly arrived and deceased islander either came from Mars, fell from Mars or was alluding to something coming here from Mars – all of which is patently ridiculous.

The unseasonably warm weather that bought us the giant slugs means that for a change, almost none of us has a cold and we’re all looking less pallid than usual! I haven’t felt so well in ages and it is hard to imagine that anything else falling out of our skies will be any more terrible than the horrors we are already perfectly accustomed to.

You can find out about the last time the birds came in this post – https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/the-horrors-continue/

And join the Hopeless Maine kickstarter for adventures in death and stretch goals here – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/countrostov/tales-of-hopeless-maine