Some People Call Me The Space Cowboy

Some People Call Me The Space Cowboy

Some Call Me The Gangsta Of Love

"Its strange." Cola said to Gorden as she wrapped her arm around his waist. "I've never met someone who didn't believe me when I told them that I slept at home last night."

"I've never had anyone spend three hours questioning me about a murder before." Gorden whispered, hoping that it would all go away. "How many times do I have to tell them what I did last night?"

Gorden and Cola were walking around the outside of the warren - the shortest route from the inquiry office to Cola's burrow.

"At least it looks like a clear night." Cola said looking up at the sky. The last few wisps of cloud were disappearing in the gentle wind and the blue of the sky was beginning to darken into twilight.

"I never knew talking could wear you out so much." Gorden said.

"I hope you're not *too* tired." Cola said enticingly, "I wasn't thinking of going to sleep straight away." Gorden smiled a happy, contented smile. He may be the prime suspect in the gruesome murder of the head buck, but Cola was beside him and... Well let's just say he wasn't feeling that tired either.

They nodded to Phump, who was taking up guard duty at the east warren entrance and then padded silently along the winding burridor to Cola's hole.

"Glass of wine?" Cola said as they closed the door firmly behind them.

---*---

We won't intrude on them for a while, we can let them have their moment of happiness. Tell you what, we'll sit outside and watch night fall for the next hour or so. It's a beautiful sight, a deep burgundy sunset and then a clear sky with a million stars to point at and name the constellations.

The rabbit don't see the same constellations that we do. Our constellations are named after the creatures and deities and demigods from hundreds of generations of man.

So we see Orion the Hunter and the rabbits see "The Rabbit With No Name", we see the Great Bear, Big Dipper and Little Dipper and they see "The Farmer With His Shotgun"

Oh, that's long enough. We'll rejoin the lovers as Gorden is just snoring his first snore but Cola is still wide awake and fair glowing to herself.

---*---

She stared at the ceiling for a long time, examining the cracks and shape of it and exulting in the complex shapes in the plasterwork.

She took a deep breath and then wriggled out from underneath Gorden's arm and slid off the bed.

She put Gorden's arm carefully on the bed. He wriggled a little and pulled Cola's pillow to himself and cuddled it in his sleep. She smiled at the sight. She felt so good that, after tonight, everything will make her smile.

She lovingly tucked the duvet in so that Gorden would not fall out in her absence and she tiptoed towards the door. She looked back at Gorden and slowly and quietly turned the handle and slipped out of the door.

She left the door ajar - Why make it tricky for her return? She thought to herself as she padded off towards the burrow entrance.

Unseen, a small, dark, shape split from the corridor behind her and passed silently through the open door into her rooms, behind it trailed a rope, or maybe a tail, it's difficult to tell in this light.

Cola padded quietly off.

"Hullo, Miss." Phump said, metaphorically tugging his forelock, as she reached the entrance.

"Hello, " She said in return, "I'm just off to the Drops, won't be a minute." He nodded as she disappeared into the night.

---*---

Gorden rolled over and squeaked; in his dreams a thousand snakes are wrapping themselves around his wrists and ankles.

---*---

Cola padded back to the entrance.

"Beautiful night." She said to Phump.

"Oooh, lovely, ma'am." He replied, "I really like it when it's this clear. I sit and just count the stars or see how many of the constellations I can name."

Cola sat down beside him. Gorden could wait a while. She wished that he'd been awake and could have come outside with her to see it, It was such a clear sky.

Phump pointed at the sky and, like us, began naming constellations.

---*---

Gorden was just dreaming about eating an apple, taking big, big bites from a hard-skinned Granny Smith.

A slap to the face pulled him from his slumbers.

He was groggy and couldn't seem to shake his dream off, eating apples whilst being entwined in snakes. The dreams seemed so real.

Another slap to the face.

"You are so *fucking* special," A voice said. Were the snakes talking to him?

SLAP!

"Look at me when I talk to you!"

A thousand thoughts raced through his mind. The rank outsider of these memes chased to the fore and the voice's owner came to him in a photo finish with the thought that whatever it was in his mouth, it wasn't really apple flavoured.

---*---

"And there's the Carrot Crop" Phump was still naming constellations, "And there's the Cheeky Gerbil."

"Poor David," Cola sighed, thinking of Gorden's best friend. His loss had shocked Gorden and he hadn't really recovered from it.

"Poor David?" Phump said, "Why 'poor'?" Cola was about to explain *why* when Phump said one small sentence that chilled her to the bone. "He didn't look 'poor' today, a bit thinner than when you left on the quest, but basically fine."

Cola choked on her tongue. "We lost David over a week ago. He's dead."

"Nahh," Phump said, "Nahh, he looked pretty fine for a dead gerbil to me, and that wasn't half an hour ago."

---*---

"You're so fucking special." David said to Gorden, the words dripping so much malice you'd need more than a tissue to mop it up.

"David, but you're dead!" Gorden would have said, if he could. However the stone that was lodged in his mouth meant that it came out as "Dadid dud door ded!" Gorden tried to push the stone out, but a belt appeared to be wrapped around his head and the stone.

Gorden realised that they were probably not snakes bound around his wrists and ankles, although he hadn't yet counted this out as a possibility. The world suddenly seemed a lot more complicated than it had only an hour ago.

"You're so fucking special, Gorden." David said. The gerbil was squatting on his chest and Gorden couldn't really see what he was up to.

"All I am is the little creepy friend of the Great Gorden.

"Oh, they all think you're special, don't they? Well, Bertram didn't think you were special, but he didn't think much of me either. You should have heard him begging to live when I wrapped that whip around his neck. But he had to die, You see that don't you? He had to. He took our livelihoods away.

"And that Hedgehog. He'd have claimed his staff back. If I hadn't sorted him out." His voice changed, and his eyes unfocussed as he looked at a viewpoint a million miles away. "He made such a stupid, squeal as he died. I had to laugh. I did."

Things didn't seem clear to Gorden, had David killed Bertram or the Hedgehog because they had hurt Gorden or because they had hurt David?

"I though I was special, you see. I though we were a team. I thought we were special. But it became clear to me - you thought *you* were the special one. And so did they. The swans told you that you were special. Nora even agreed.

"I think the Head Buck was the final straw. We'd taken this long trek, we'd endured hardships and kidnapping and brainwashing and you returned with only a broken carrot.

"And he still THOUGHT YOU WERE SPECIAL!"

David twitched all over and covered his eyes with his hands. His head shaking. Gorden could hear his breathing was ragged and raw.

"I'm just the creep, the weirdo. Gorden's little friend. The one people 'put up with'.

"I want to have control, Gorden. I want a perfect body, like yours. I want a perfect soul, like yours. I will.." He stopped. His breaths came in small packets now, like tuppences of breath where most people breathed pounds. Gorden's eyes were wide, he'd never realised that his friend felt like this. Never.

---*---

"David's alive?" Cola said, wide-eyed and amazed.

"Either that or he had a twin brother called David."

"He's an only-child." Cola said reflexively. This seemed a strange thing to say about a gerbil. Didn't they normally have large families? But David had said that he didn't have any family.

Not alive family, anyway. He'd always qualified it.

"When did you see him?" Two and Two were adding themselves up in the back of her mind and she didn't like the number they were coming up with.

"Well, it was about half an hour ago. We swapped pleasantries then he went into the warren. He was carrying a reel of rope. He said it was for Gorden."

Cola stood up with a start. 'Four' was the least of it.

"Get help, now!" She said to Phump and rushed back into the warren.

---*---

"It was tricky getting this carrot back, you know." David said, holding the broken golden carrot up so that Gorden could see it. "But the guard was easily fooled." His voice had seemed so calm for a minute then it screeched. "DIDN'T YOU TELL ANYONE I WAS LOST?"

Gorden's eye's watered. He hadn't. It hurt so much to talk about it he'd not even told Mable when she interviewed him. Only the Head Buck knew.

Gorden wanted to say so much to David. He'd run over and over again what he'd say to his friend when he returned, dripping wet of course, from his watery grave. Even if he hadn't have had the stone in his mouth Gorden didn't think he had the words anymore.

"No," David said quietly, in control again, "You didn't tell anyone. Your little friend wasn't worth talking about."

Gorden wanted to cry out that, of course, David was not dead, but the words couldn't get past the obstruction in his mouth. He just made more "dadadidid" noises.

"Is Gorden lost for words?" David asked. "Does Gorden want to apologise to his friend? Does Gorden want to say 'I'm sorry' to his sidekick?" Suddenly David's nose was an eighth of an inch from Gorden's "WELL I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!" He screamed.

Gorden started hoping that someone would hear the raised voices and come and investigate. Then he realised that no one had come to investigate the noises of his and Cola's passion earlier so what chance did he stand now?

Gorden suddenly panicked. Where was Cola? Had David 'made her pay' already? David could see emotions running through Gorden's face but couldn't interpret them.

"Scared now?" He whispered, "Worried that I might torture you all night?" He patted Gorden on the head. "Don't worry. I'll be nice and quick, just for you. My friend."

Gorden felt a cold, sharp point rest on his lower chin.

The carrot, golden and broken, of this Gorden was sure, pricked his skin. He gulped and tried to speak. Tried to stop David from this act. Tried to save himself.

Some antisocial coney in the neighbouring burrow decided that he'd heard enough for the night and turned his stereo up. That young couple! At it again!

Music began to permeate through the walls. David began to sing along. Gorden took a while to recognise it, then he realised it was the play-out to Hey Jude.

"Na na na. Na-na-na-na." David hummed as he readied himself.

---*---

Cola came skidding to a halt outside her door. Her next door neighbour was playing Beatles rather louder than she'd have wanted. She grabbed at the handle and it turned. It didn't open. The door was wedged shut.

A noise came from inside her burrow and, next door, Hey Jude went up in volume to counteract the scream.

Cola shoulder-barged the door. It wobbled, but whatever it was that was holding it - held.

---*---

"Is that the cavalry?" David said pleasantly, "Pity really we're having so much fun." He leaned back and aimed a kick towards the carrot that had already pricked Gorden's lower mouth.

---*---

Cola barged the door, it held. A strangely muffled scream came from inside.

She stepped back again and raced one last time at the door. Her shoulder hit the door. The wood splintered and the door pulled off its hinges and she fell into the room, tripping over the detritus and landing flat on her face.

She looked up and took the scene in.

Gorden was tied spread-eagled on the bed, some sort of gag was stopping him speaking. David was sat on top of Gorden his leg raised backwards as if to kick a football. David looked at her and smiled, blinking as if to catch her attention.

The gerbil's foot swung forwards and hit something golden. Cola recollected what had happened to the Head Buck and she took a sharp intake of breath as the carrot was kicked deep into Gorden's skull.

Cola growled. Her eyes pulled wide open and she looked first left and then right. She lunged for the corner of the room and pulled Gorden's staff out from the umbrella stand. Holding it like a rounders bat she jumped towards the bed and swung it back.

Let's follow the end of the staff in slow motion as it swings round from behind Cola's head in a near-entire circle. The metal-shod end connects with David's head, which is, curiously, smiling. The end of the staff pushes David's head towards the wall beside the bed. The gerbil's head connects with the hardened soil and is pushed into the wall, the staff follows and continues, crushing the small skull as if it was a polystyrene cup full of blood.

Try it if you want. The polystyrene cup full of blood, that is, not the Gerbil - you get locked up for that. Hit it with a pole as long as you are high and as thick as your wrist, the ends of which are shod in iron. Blood will fly everywhere, the cup will be mashed beyond use and you'll spend the rest of the day clearing up splattered blood.

Cola swept the dead gerbil out of the way and looked down at Gorden.

David had driven the carrot deep into the head of her beloved Gorden, throwing the stone gag free. She'd never called him Beloved before now, not even earlier in bed. But he was her beloved, and always would be,

There was no spark of life in her beloved's eyes. No wiggle in his ears. No furrowed brow. No wriggling whiskers.

She bent down and kissed him, his lips were still warm, if not as perfectly shaped as they had been earlier, her arms wrapped around him and she squeezed him and laid her head on his chest.

Standing up she untied his bonds and laid him in a peaceful pose. Behind her she heard movement.

"Cola? Gorden?" Came Phump's enquiring tones.

"Come in, Phump." She said. She was tired, so tired.

She turned round to face the messenger rabbit and the help he'd brought. She suddenly felt the weight of the world pushing down on her. She tightened her grip on the staff and pulled herself up straight. "You're too late. I was too late. We were all too late."

She walked out, past the gathering crowd, she'd have collapsed but she walked with her staff. Her staff.

---*---

An ageing rabbit rocked back and forwards in her rocking chair, some knitting half finished in her lap.

A small rabbit, barely older than a baby rushed into the room and jumped on her lap, narrowly missing an unfortunate accident with the knitting needles.

The little rabbit bounced up and down on the lap of the older rabbit.

"Tell me again! Tell me again about Gorden! Please Granny Cola, Please!"

She smiled.

"He was the best of us. He was." Her eyes misted over.

---*---

The camera jumps back to see her silhouetted in front of an open fire. Jumps back again to see the warren, the shape of the tunnels forming a shape a little like a rabbit in a rocking chair (if you squint).

Jumping out again there is a forest, surrounded by a network of roads. Again, if you look carefully, you can see the roads follow the shape of a rabbit in a rocking chair.

Jumping out again there is just the British Isles.

Funny thing, now you look at it in this light, it looks a little like a rabbit in a rocking chair.

The camera jumps back again, there are no more islands around, there is no globe, just the British Isles surrounded by a hundred miles of empty sea, perched on top of an enormous upside-down mountain in the blackness of space. This is one of a long trail of mountains, each with an island or two surrounded by water, falling off into space.

---*---

---*---