In the front garden

The winding metallic shutters sprung open with elasticated force, clanging loudly against the roof of the lorry, exposing the top half of it’s storage space to the outside world. The clanging sound worked like a gunshot, with birds as the bullets, sending them scattering outwards from the overhead trees. Majestic mammals of the sky disbanding in pure natural rejection to the unwelcome noise. The winged wonders all squawked at the top of their lungs until their noise faded. Whether their squawking carried on after the distance numbed it, I don’t know, because quite frankly the birds are not important, so let's just shush about the birds.

The lorry driver yanked his key out of the ignition, got out & slammed his driver's door shut before walking alongside the length of the vehicle. His work boots scraped ostentatiously against the gravelly tarmac, despite there being no one present to hear how annoyingly loud he was able to walk. Within his hand, he held a pen that he repeatedly clicked. The inky tip pierced the air, hungering to sign something, but instead popped up and down like a whack-a-mole in an arcade. If pen tips could think, I think this pen tip would be fairly happy that it got to have fun bobbing up & down when it wasn’t getting it’s face mushed against paper for a living.

His scraping boots paused as he reached the back of the lorry. The driver pressed the clickable button of his pen against a weakly glowing orange switch on the back edge of the vehicle. A “Beep. Beep. Beeping...” Noise started and never seemed to stop. With each beep the volume of the sound doubled. The driver seemed undisturbed by the increasingly irritating noise, so he simply stood there, brain dead and staring into nothingness while the ramp folded down like a castle’s portcullis, minus the mote.

As soon as the end of the ramp crunched into contact with the ground, the driver ascended up into the dark abyss in the back. He re-emerged holding a box wrapped in brown paper, a small box, which looked fairly average, a box shaped box, if you will. He walked down the ramp like a billionaire exiting his private jet and approached the front gate for the front garden. The front garden sat in front of a house which sat in front of a back garden, and this back garden… well it sat in front of the rest of the world. If you went in front of that would you be in front of it or behind it? The narrator will now make his best efforts to shut up.

THE END.

No false alarm, we didn’t mean to have the narrator shut up completely. Otherwise the story would not be able to continue.

“Please continue writing” the narrator pleaded as he got to his knees.

“I will” responded the author who is the exact same person.

The driver entered through the gate and looked up at the rather splendid picturesque cottage in complete disinterest. He spat a glob of phlegm which landed on the face of a garden gnome statue which was nestled nicely on a nearby flower bed. The gooey substance drooped down it’s contours extending down the tip of it’s beard. Now, this gnome statue could’ve chosen to spring to life and terrify the driver and yell at him for spitting phlegm at him, but the truth is gnome statues can’t actually come to life. I lied, sorry I don’t make the rules, I just work here. (I do make the rules just kidding). But gnomes aren’t the main subject here, there are more important matters at hand, such as the box.

The driver walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. A few moments later someone opened the door, they took the box off the driver, before even signing for the package, how cheeky.

“Not so hasty Nathaniel!” said the driver.

“How do you know my name?” said Nathaniel.

“It’s on the box.” uttered the driver in matter-of-fact type of tone.

“Oh yeah ha ha” said Nathaniel.

The driver was absolutely chuffed at figuring out that the guy's name was the same as it was on the box. Intelligence, what funny old concept when you put it to use, he thought to himself. He really should have gotten into Oxford. He’d definitely be curing cancer right now if he had.

The driver passed his pen to Nathaniel to sign for the package but Nathaniel held up two stump ended arms, he didn’t have hands, he was an amputee. “Can you just sign it for me?” asked Nathaniel.

“That would defeat the point of it being your signature sir.” The driver’s response was an absolute baller of witty intelligence. As soon as the 58 year old driver went home tonight he was applying for Oxford, there is no way they could deny him.

“Okay just pass it here” Nathaniel opened his mouth to grab the pen with his mouth. Nathaniel signed his signature with a couple of head swooshes. Nathaniel opened his mouth, dropping the pen back into the driver’s hands.

“Have a nice day.” said the driver as he walked back to his lorry, wiping the pen against his trousers. The driver did the whole routine of the story in reverse. Except for the phlegm part. No one can suck up a piece of phlegm from several metres away. Unless they have a hoover of course.

After sorting the ramp, and walking back to the front of the lorry, getting in and just as he was about to slip the key into the ignition, something occurred to him...

‘How come Nathaniel managed to open the door and take the box off me if he had no hands?’ The driver thought to himself.

“I guess we’ll never know.” Said a perplexing voice that seemed to read his mind.

“Who’s there?” said the driver.

“Come outside and face me like a man” said the mysterious voice that seemed to trail from outside the window. He opened the door. There was no one there. ‘I must be going insane,’ he thought.

“No you're not insane come along, come along.” said the voice, seeming to read his thoughts again. The driver did a full circuit around the vehicle and went through the front gate back towards the house. He spat a disrespectful glob of phlegm again which landed on the garden soil this time, missing it’s perfect landing spot from earlier. The driver chewed his pen nervously before realising Nathaniel had it in his mouth earlier, he spat the pen out and left it so he could hastily make his way back towards the gate. Just as he laid his hands on the elaborate floral structure of the garden gate, the pen struck him on the back of the neck. The driver turned around just as a snotty gnome landed on his head. The phlegm worked as an ideal binding agent gluing the gnome to his nose and oozed into the his eyelids, blinding him as he struggled against the sentient gnome that attacked him.

“Whoa!” screamed the driver as the sticky little bearded beast batted his head with the pen.

THE END… and this time I mean it.