The Pirate Lion at the ‘Dog and Duck’.

Junior the Pirate Lion - Click for full portrait.

The illustration of Junior shown above was created by the talented Miss Laura Weller. It is currently on display in Junior’s private art gallery housed on board his pirate flagship, “the Jolly Plunderer.” For more information about Laura’s inspirational artwork please visit her blog here.

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Here is my entry for Cherie Reich’s 2nd Annual Flash Fiction Blogfest. Details of the event and how to enter can be found here.

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Lightning flashed for it was a dark and stormy night, the brief moment of desaturated illumination revealed a chaotic vista painted in agitated strokes of despair. Imagine if you will dear reader, the fall of Rome or the sacking of Carthage and if you have a particularly vivid imagination, you will have come some way to picturing the scene of shocking disarray that greeted me as I arrived at the Dog and Duck Inn.

Never before have I witnessed such a hive of scum and villainy. Double dealing muskrats consorted with back stabbing weasels. A gang of boisterous badgers threw terrapins at a fleeing water vole. Cat, dog and fox, lemur and shrew battled in the gutter. A piano burst from an upstairs window, striking a discordant note as it landed some seconds later on a passing beaver. The night air was alive with the sound of argumentative braying, drunken howling, rancorous laughter and odious nagging, all cheerfully punctuated by musket fire.

I was drawn to this most wretched abode, by the prospect of meeting a Lion with a history and so it was that I first spied him sat at the bar resplendent in an oversize tricorn hat, smacking his first mate about the head with a bottle.
‘Call me Ishmael!’ he cried and so I was greeted by Junior the Pirate Lion as he thrust a tankard of Wallop into my paw. My whiskers bristled as I downed the sickly liquid soon followed by two fingers of Nelsons blood and a Black Strap.
‘I’ve a tale to tell you boy!’ he growled and fell off his stool.

It was a fearsome tale the likes of which this Pumas ears have never heard. Unfortunately I passed out drunk during the telling and don’t remember any of it.

The End.


May 22, 2012

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