Iris (or How To Fuel Panic By Mentioning The Word ‘Terror’) – Part Two

June 16th, 2009

Read on read on read on read on…

Two days passed without much to note, and so Iris arrived at a bustling town at the edge of the country. People were dashing to and fro hardly noticing each other. The market in the centre of the town was the hub for most of this chaos. Iris looked up to see a huge poster covering a wall which said brought a little spark to her huge eyes. It mentioned a circus that was in town for some festival the town was holding. Among the acts were three sword-spinning lions, five mafia penguins and a giant nose that danced whenever anyone played a tambourine. She immediately ran as fast as she could to the circus, which in fact was a gentle trot when compared to most people; her feet were very small after all. Glancing around the edge of the tent she saw rows and rows of people watching the circus. They clapped and cheered and rose to their feet whenever something amazing happened. It was the mafia penguins that got the more admiration; isn’t that always the case though?

          The nose had already finished by the time Iris had arrived so she waited until the show was over and snuck backstage. There, sat on a small stool with a moistened towel over its bridge, was the nose looking slight dishevelled. Iris approached with caution but could see there was no danger. Her immediate concern was in startling the poor thing and being sucked up into one of its gigantic nostrils never to return. The nose couldn’t see her but could smell something amiss, something new in the area and it gestured in Iris’ general direction. How she managed to explain her story to him we can only imagine. Why the nose gave up his life in show business is a lot easier. He was bored, depressed and in need of some excitement. Iris promised that they would be better off together, in a platonic sense, and so under cover of darkness they left the town and started to head east.

          Along the way there were many confusions. Sometimes Iris would sit on top of the nose to pretend that they were part of the same face, in the hope that it would allow the nose to see but unfortunately it didn’t work. The nose was called Nasel but he couldn’t tell Iris and Iris couldn’t ask let alone hear so she thought of him as ‘the nose’ and he thought of her as ‘thing that smells like makeup’. On those long days of walking in silence Nasel would walk in front and if he was about to stray from the path Iris would nudge him in the back to ensure their journey could continue. One time they were confronted by an angry group of squirrels who wanted to keep them both as pets and perhaps make a little money on the side. Iris fluttered her eyelashes under Nasel who in turn sneezed, blowing all the squirrels into a conveniently-placed deep hole. Try as they might the squirrels could not escape and so the two friends continued.

Entry Filed under: Bedtime stories,Ian,Quite nice