The Losing of Mr Brooks

Mr Brooks wondered exactly what was in his sleeping tablets.

The elf paused, waiting for Mr Brooks to respond, while the Dust Pixies littered the silence with sneezes. But the unfortunate Mr Brooks was quite beyond any response, so he lay there with his mouth open like a codfish.
Disappointed, the Elf continued.

'Very well then. The situation stands thus. These Dust Pixies, over whom I have the misfortune to have Guardianship, are the proud inhabitants of your garden shed.'

'I beg your pardon!' rasped Mr Brooks, having finally regained his voice. 'I don't have any pixies in my garden shed.'

'Ah. But I'm afraid you do, Mr Brooks.'

One of the pixies alighted herself on Mr Brook's stomach, and flashed him a wicked grin.

'Sorry we tripped you this morning,' she said in a very unapologetic tone. 'Defending our habitat, y'know. We're an endangered species, us Dust -'

'But it's my garden!' protested Mr Brooks.

'Well it's our garden shed!' retorted the pixie with a scowl. 'Always has been. Always will be.' Behind her, the rest of the pixie cheered in agreement. 'And if you don't agree to leave us alone, Brein will turn you into a big fat spider, and - A choo!' The little Dust pixie let off a sneeze of such force that it propelled her backwards a good inch.

'Bless you,' murmured Mr Brooks.

'Thank you,' replied the pixie.

'What we are trying so say is that you must agree to three conditions. One, never clean your shed. Two, make sure that nobody else does, either. Three, tell nobody what has just happened. If you refuse, I will have to take some ' the Elf paused from dramatic effect and arched one eyebrow suggestively,' drastic measures.'

'You're a hallucination! You can't take any drastic measures!'

The pixies tittered.

'Wrong. I have power of metamorphosing something into something else. And you will not like being a spider. Now, do you agree to our conditions?'

Mr Brooks did not have a vast life experience. But if there was one principle left for him to cling onto in this crazy world, it was the importance of being clean.

Mr Brooks looked Brein straight in his green, piercing eye.

'No.'
_

Mrs Brooks leaves the hospital in a rush of gulped down tears. Lost?! Her husband, lost?! She honks her horn and yells at the driver in front of her, and is picked up by a policeman for speeding. By the time she arrives home, she is visibly shaken, her normally neat auburn hair frizzing in sympathy.

Now you must understand that Mrs Brooks is not a woman used to being frazzled or shaken.  So she reacts to this new emotion in the only way she knows. She cleans.

She begins with the kitchen, works her way around the lounge room, the bedroom, the bathroom, the guestroom, the laundry. It is twilight by the time she finishes the house, and she is exhausted. Then, she notices the garden shed. Oh, that shed. Her lip curls upwards in what can only be described as a snarl, and races down to the garden shed, with her broom tucked under her arm.

Inside, as her keen eye scans the dark, musty shed, looking for the first place to start, she notices a movement out of the corner of her eye. A scuttling movement. The movement of a spider scuttling out from the shadows and into her full view.

Mrs Brooks screams. And with a reaction so swift that even if she knew the true form of the spider in front of her, she could scarcely stop herself, she stomps right down on the disgusting little insect with a heeled boot.

The unfortunate Mr Brooks is never seen again.