The sun smiled down upon the Crooked World, but the pig farmer felt as if it were laughing at him. He was hot, even in his light khaki jacket and cap, and sweat made his skin prickle. But he wouldn't let the discomfort distract him.
He crept through the cornfield, clutching his blunderbuss and keeping his head low. The stalks whipped at his face and his bare legs, and he pushed them aside with a grimace.
The enemy was only a few yards ahead of him now. He couldn't see it yet, but he knew where it was. It had foolishly stuck its head into view, a few minutes earlier, over the ripe, yellow ears of corn. He was stealthily approaching its last known position.
The enemy. It had become an obsession. But what else could he do, when it threatened his livelihood? The insolent creature had attacked his crops, causing untold damage. It had made him its target and had pestered him for months. No, for years. No, for as long as the pig farmer could remember. He had tried, untold times, to capture or shoot it, to put a halt to its mischief. But the creature was too wily and it always outsmarted him. He had begun to feel that he couldn't rest, couldn't enjoy life, couldn't do anything, until he had dealt with it, until he was rid of the enemy for good.
Sometimes, he wondered what he would do then. When it was gone.
But the pig farmer didn't let such bleak thoughts worry him. He had a purpose and he was close, so close, to achieving it.
He was almost upon the enemy. He could hear it pecking away, taking what was his again. He brought up the blunderbuss and squinted along its sights as he took the last few steps towards it and the final cornstalks between them parted.
At the first sight of its distinctive purple plumage, he fired.
The recoil blew him backwards. He landed on his fat hindquarters, but he was too excited to worry about the indignity. Purple feathers fluttered around him, and he sneezed as one of them tickled his round nose. He scrambled back up and brushed the stalks aside again, to inspect his victim.
A spindly, twisted figure stood before him, a few feathers clinging pitifully to its charred frame. With a cry of 'Yaa-hoo!' the pig farmer threw himself into the air and sang: 'I shot the Whatchamacallit, I shot the Whatchamacallit!' Then he ran up to the frazzled creature and reached out to touch it, to ensure that this was all real, that it wasn't a dream.
This would teach it, he thought. It wouldn't dare to come back after this.
But, even as he brushed against it, the Whatchamacallit collapsed. The pig farmer wailed in fright, thinking that perhaps he'd done something terrible - hurt the enemy far worse than he had ever intended - but the fright mutated into anger as he realised the truth.
Lying before him now was a familiar shape: his own lovingly constructed scarecrow, with its battered old overcoat, to which somebody - or something - had glued purple feathers haphazardly. Its leering pumpkin head had rolled off its shoulders, and its empty eyes mocked him. Hanging around the scarecrow's neck, by a string, was a white cardboard sign, which had been inscribed with thick black marker pen. It read: 'Boo!'
The pig farmer threw his blunderbuss to the ground and jumped up and down on top of it, waving his front prehensile trotters in fury.
The enemy chose that moment to stick its orange beak through the cornstalks beside him. It cocked its head, regarded him with an inquisitive smile and blinked twice. The pig farmer performed an angry double take, eyes bugging out of their sockets, and scrabbled to retrieve his weapon. The Whatchamacallit turned and bolted through the field in a flurry of purple, leaving the momentary imprint of itself upon the air.
The farmer, his pink face darkening, charged after it.
He had been right about the sun. It threw back its big yellow head, and its mouth split into a huge, open grin as it vibrated with mirth.
It was very definitely laughing at him.
****
By the time the pig farmer had stumbled out of the cornfield and into the adjoining desert, the Whatchamacallit had disappeared again. But it would be back. It would return to taunt him, as it always did. And the farmer would be ready for it, as he always was.
It was the work of just seconds to dig a deep pit and to cover it over with sand-coloured tarpaulin. Then the farmer took a bull's-eye lantern, unscrewed its clear bulb and replaced it with a pink one. He buried the lantern in a mound of sand, carefully angling it so that its beam of light shone upon the glass of an upright mirror, which he produced from his pocket and placed at one end of the pit. It was a funhouse mirror, of course.
His plan was simple. Nobody knew what the Whatchamacallit was: it defied any sort of classification, and was certainly unique. But, when it spotted its reflection - compressed by the distorting glass and washed in the lantern's light so as to make it resemble a slender, pink-hued copy of itself - it would doubtless mistake it for a hitherto-undiscovered female of its species. It would rush towards it, made careless by desire, and fall into the pit trap.
Chortling at his own fiendishness, the pig farmer hid behind a convenient giant rock, to watch. Seconds later, the Whatchamacallit loped into view on its long, springy legs.
It spotted its reflection, gaped for a moment and then ran towards the mirror, as the farmer had intended. But as the creature bounded eagerly across the tarpaulin, it failed to disturb it. The farmer rubbed his disbelieving eyes, and his jaw dropped open in astonishment.
When the Whatchamacallit's pink reflection stepped out of the mirror and the two bird-creatures began to smooch with their beaks, little hearts popping into existence around their heads, the pig farmer went beyond astonishment and into crimson-faced fury. He leapt out of hiding, discharging his blunderbuss three times and blowing himself further backwards with each detonation. The Whatchamacallit and its impossible mate fled, their splayed feet falling in unison, and the pig farmer raced after them.
He was halfway across the sand-coloured tarpaulin before he realised what he had done.
He cornered the Whatchamacallit, at last, at the top of a deep canyon. He stalked towards it, his blunderbuss raised, keeping it firmly in his sights. With the cliff edge behind it, it had nowhere to run, and its knees produced a most gratifying chattering sound as they knocked together. The creature twisted its long neck around; from somewhere behind its back it plucked a sign, which read: 'D-D-Don't Shoot!' But the farmer had no desire to show it mercy. It had taken him many minutes to climb out of his sand pit: he was all hot and bothered, and just plain cross at his goddarn cheating foe. His trotter tightened on the trigger.
And then the air was split by a sound like none he had ever heard before.
The air shimmered blue before his eyes, as something slowly took on solid form. He realised that this was the source of the terrible groaning, and he wondered just how the Whatchamacallit had managed to pull off this latest trick.
By the time he had regained his composure and thought to return his attention to the enemy, it was too late. An oblong, blue cabinet had appeared between them. 'Police Public Call Box' read the sign above its doors, in unusually neat lettering, and the pig farmer wondered if the Sheriff himself had intervened in their dispute.
He dismissed the question, as the Whatchamacallit poked its head around the nearest corner of the box and blew a cheeky raspberry in his direction.
The farmer pursued it, round and round the obstruction, round and round - and even, at one point, craftily turning back on himself and running in the opposite direction - but he only tired himself out, unable to clap eyes on the Whatchamacallit again. At least, not until a splayed foot reached down from the top of the blue box and knocked his cap from his bald, pink head. He jerked his gun up, but the enemy had already vanished again.
He whirled around at the sound of movement, and leapt back in shock at the sight of two human beings behind him.
The first man was a tall, gangly figure, with a thin face and a pointed nose, and untidy brown hair. He saw the pig farmer, and his grey eyes widened. 'Doctor...?'
His companion stepped forward, easing the first man aside to get a better look. He had inquisitive eyes and an innocent expression, and he wore a green velvet frock coat and a loosely-tied cravat, which made him look like a cross between a dashing romantic hero and a vagabond in mismatched clothing.
The pig farmer didn't trust either of the new arrivals. At first he thought they must be strangers. But they couldn't be, as he was positive that he knew all the strangers on the Crooked World already. These people were stranger still.
The second man grinned, his expressive eyebrows riding up his forehead. He stepped forward and extended a hand of friendship.
And the frightened pig fired his blunderbuss, at point-blank range, and pumped a cloud of buckshot into the man's chest and stomach.
