Read Online Dial M for Monkey by Adam Maxwell - Free Book Online Page A

of adrenaline making me confident and euphoric.
     ‘Any comments, apologies?’
    He just gawks at me, a glazed look coming over his idiotic face. It’s at that moment the music drops for the bridge and Mr No. 49 lunges towards me knocking the gun clean out of my hands, behind me onto the landing. I dive after it but he’s just as quick off the mark and we crumple to the floor in a flailing scrum.
    The gun is knocked through the banister and begins bouncing down the stairs. Mr No. 49 is off me like a shot, galloping down the stairs after it, but I’m not going to let him win. Not now, not after all he’s put me through. I vault over the banister and tackle him just as he’s about to grab the gun.
    This time I’m quickest off the mark and spring onto the pistol, momentum carrying me back towards the kitchen. But Mr No. 49 is not to be beaten so easily and careers after me, knocking me and the gun into the pile of rubbish.
    We both scrabble in the trash for the gun.
    We both come out at the same time but to my dismay it’s Mr No. 49 that has the gun, I’ve somehow grabbed a carrot.
    I don’t hesitate and swing the carrot straight for his head making contact with a satisfying slapping noise. The carrot has obviously been in the bin for so long that it’s no longer the traditional texture and instead has the consistency of a rubber truncheon.
    He comes back quickly so I sprint back upstairs towards the thumping bass of Suspicious Minds . He’s in hot pursuit and as he bowls into the room he knocks us both off our feet.
    I react quickly, rolling to straddle him and slapping him with the carrot. He thinks he has the upper hand as he cocks the pistol and points it at my chest.
    But I know what will happen and just keeping beating away with my orange, foot long weapon of mass destruction. He pulls the trigger.
    Nothing happens.
    I hit him again and he’s bleeding, the carrot doing more damage than I thought possible.
    He pulls the trigger again. Nothing. Again. Again. Again.
    I don’t quite know what to do next. I stop hitting him. He seems as deflated as me and I get up, backing away, my back is pressed against the window.
    Then, as if electrocuted into action he lunges up at me, hurling his whole weight through the air. But he misjudges, and hits the window, shattering it before dropping out of sight. I spin around and look down just in time to catch the look on his face as he falls through his conservatory, demolishing it into the darkness beneath.

The Cock Ain't Gonna Like That
    I t was only when the removals van arrived we realised we had sold our house to a truckload of chickens. Note – not a shedload. There were far more than that. There was no indication of where they had come from, there was no lower chain involved in the sale of our house and the driver of their van was not forthcoming with the info.
    It wasn’t so much the conversation that was odd, their diction was perfect, the enunciation without an equal, it was more that there were over two hundred of them and they all spoke simultaneously.
    ‘Are you leaving the curtains?’ they chorused.
    I wasn’t so I skirted around the subject which wasn’t easy when looking straight down the beak of that many of them.
    ‘And the kitchen appliances,’ they squalked as one. ‘The solicitor said that you would be leaving the white goods.’
    Some of the chickens on the left hand side of the van had started to become restless, flapping their useless wings causing one or two of them to rise into the air slightly. They didn’t miss a beat though, carefully keeping exactly in time with their sisters.
    I nodded confirmation as my chest tightened, the feathers in the air drifting carelessly into my lungs clogging my scillia and causing a high pitched whining sound every time I inhaled.
    ‘Can we come in?’
    They weren’t the sorts of chickens who needed an answer and hit me like a poultry tidal wave. I staggered backwards, desperately fighting the urge to slap