The Green Boar - Part Four

The Story so far: Leanne has successfully made her delivery, though she still doesn't know of what, but now finds herself at the wrong end of a shotgun, wielded by an angry, and rather unusual, bear...

The bear was definitely blue. And possibly, she considered, based on no particularly weighty supposition, probably male. In the brightly lamp lit hallway she could clearly see the individual hairs on his snout, though in shadow they appeared almost black at the base; probably some sort of dark undercoat. They grew out in royal blue, shiny and iridescent, each one the same colour as the dragonflies that careered around the river in summer, continuing in their ancient manner to dash about in pursuit of food and love, irrespective of humankind.

Like Le'Roy, and she naturally put them together within the category of magical beasts, this bear had vestiges of human expression about his face. Under his furry blue round bear ears that, backlit by the wall sconce, created two mini halos where the hairs attenuated, were noticeable eyebrows, which she was sure that bears, real ones, ones in the wild that is, didn't have. They framed his angry black eyes like twin wrinkles in a thick carpet. And his snout wasn't the snout of a stuffed toy teddy bear, but that of a traditional bear, long, pointed and much more dangerous, much more able to rip her to shreds. She wondered why he bothered with the gun.

At first she couldn't be certain that it was the bear that spoke. The voice was reedy, a sibilant whisper, perceptibly refined, completely at odds with the vision before her:
"Are you an optimist?" She thought someone else had spoken, and dragged her eyes away from the gun to look round the hall, but they were alone.

She remembered that Le'Roy's voice had been unexpected too. She wanted him to wake and help her, but he was still lying in mask form in the basket, eyes closed, to all intents and purposes as unreachable as if he were not there at all. She shook the basket, but he remained mute; she was abandoned.

The voice said again. "Are you an optimist?"
The only option was to reply, she said: "Er."
He said, and this time she could clearly see his jaw moving, delicately forming each syllable unmistakably, "An optimist, I said."
"An optimist?"
"We only want optimists here, young lady."
Leanne, peered closer at the gun, this time noticing the latch was still in place, though the bear's thumb claw was positioned on top, ready to cock it. This gave her confidence, though barely a second's leeway, should he decide to fire. That he had not done so yet was hugely in her favour. She realised that she spoke the truth when she said: "Then I am an optimist."

The bear lowered the gun, then, as suddenly as the wind changes direction in a gusty corner, he raised it again, shouldered it and bore down on her with it, as if in a rage,  "Are you sure? No lawyers required here."

She shrank back against the red carpet,"Yes, yes!" She cried, sure to the centre of her thumping heart that this would be the end, that she would die here, in this unknown, probably magical house, and nobody from her world would ever know.

"You promise? We don't need any more shyster ambulance chasers."
He pulled back the safety catch, and rested the business end of the shotgun on her forehead. "Do you walk on the sunny side of the street?"

"What? Yes! I've got nothing to do with the law." In a most unoptimistic manner, she had begun to quiver with terror, her nails dug into the carpet behind her, and she felt her t-shirt, still soaked with sweat from the ride, press clammily into her back as she bent as far as she could away from him. He simply followed her evasive movements with the gun until the back of her head was pressed into the floor and she could go no further. "I'm an optimist. I'm an optimist!" She cried. Tears slanted down her cheeks. 

"Then why are you crying? If you are an optimist, then surely you don't think I'll actually shoot you?" His reedy voice was calm. Great, she thought, not only a blue bear with a gun, but a sociopathic blue bear with a gun, bent on mental torture before shooting my brains out and eating my still warm remains. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets, unable to look at the gun but still wanting to, "I'm scared." Her voice emerged as a timorous and embarrassing squeak. She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to look any more, and still wanting to look too, waiting for the inevitable sound of his finger on the trigger and inevitable oblivion.

"Oh!" The gun was removed from her forehead, and she heard the sound of the latch being clipped shut. She peeked out and saw the bear. He had turned away and was carefully leaning the gun against the banister, barrell facing down. Before she could even think about moving, he spun back towards her, surprisingly light on his hairy blue and very bandy legs. He bent down towards her, but instead of making any more threatening moves, he offering a clawed paw to assist her back to sitting, or standing, or whatever position wasn't cowering ungracefully.

He blinked at her anxiously, "I didn't want to scare you. I'm so very sorry." His cultured voice was very solicitous now, "Please let me assist you."

"Don't touch me!" She scrambled up out of his reach, noticing, as she did so, that her bike, which should have fallen onto its side when she let go of it, had curiously remained standing with no other obvious means of support.

Loud snoring sounds were now emanating from the basket. Le'Roy, it seemed, she thought furiously, had slept soundly and uselessly through the whole thing. So much for protecting her. Obviously, that promise only applied during their travel. Now she'd stupidly done whatever it was he'd required of her, and he'd abandoned her to the whiles of this psychotic friend of his. There was so much he'd not told her. In fact, she was amazed that she'd done what she had with so little information to go on. She should have forced the issue with the package much further.

Well, it was all up to her now. She was responsible for her own safety, and her only thought was to get away. "Keep away from me!" She held up her palms towards him, warding him off, at the same time edging towards the door, which only now she noticed, had no internal handle. Still, it had opened outwards, so sensibly it would just push open, if it were indeed a sensible door. She doubted it.

The palm thing seemed to be working, the bear barely moved a muscle, it was as if he had decided to do without breathing. She pushed at the door with her other hand. Nothing happened. Typical, and to be honest, she said to herself, not entirely unexpected. Another way out must be found.

She could, of course, have asked the bear, who was now standing out of reach of his weapon, and quietly, quite unlike his former aggressive self. But she didn't feel like it, so she didn't do it. She'd had enough of magical animal beings. And there were other ways out of the room they were currently in. The stairs led to who knows where, certainly to where there would be windows with a better view, but probably not to possible freedom and her own reality. There was a single door behind the bear, but that was obviously out. Behind her there were internal doors, shadowy ones; she'd no more than glimpsed that way; but she thought they would be the best first place to try. Palm still warding off the bear, she walked backwards to the nearest of the doors.

"I'm sorry, lady, that's the closet." The bear said, apologetically. She grasped the handle and opened the door anyway. It was a cupboard. It contained an ironing board, a mop, and a yellow bucket. She picked up the mop. It was no match for a shotgun, but it was the best she'd seen so far. She slammed shut the door and jumped round to face the bear, holding the mop in what she hoped was a good defensive position.

She expected that the bear would have taken advantage of the moment her back was turned to press home with the gun, but he hadn't. Instead, he remained where he had been, on the other side of the mysteriously suspended bike, wringing his paws, his expression, from his high and rounded eyebrows now echoing the line of his furry ears, most regretful.

"I'm so sorry," Said the bear, "I didn't mean to scare you. Le'Roy said I shouldn't scare you. I'm so sorry." His reedy voice entered the upper register, and the sentence ended on a squeak.

It didn't really make sense, but now, with the bike and the mop between them, she felt that things might just now be made to turn in the direction she wanted them to.

Firstly, there would be some questions, unless escape presented itself beforehand...











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