You, Me, We Are All Mistakes

12. THE BORROWER

CHAPTER 12
THE BORROWER

Shedding emotional tears releases useful oxytocin and endorphin, often referred to as the happy hormones. A few minutes earlier and a trillion miles away from the Peak District, the captive's cell presented as a dark perfect cube, dimly lit from warm yellow pinpoints of light embedded in each of its eight corners.

"Why I am I here?" raged the captive into the shadowy void before him.

He was all cried out and a chill ran across his shoulders and neck as once more a beaked face appeared to meet him eye-to-eye.  The face was shaded behind a semi-translucent glass wall, and menacing light-play gave this captor the semblance of a hugely contorted and ageing bantam chicken. The chicken's captive squeezed his eyes together for a few seconds and reopened them. He calmed his breathing. His head felt warm, as if a heat was resonating from the high-backed chair supporting his neck. A trickle of sweat ran down his spine and soaked into his lumberjack shirt.

The creature in front of him appeared very old and real and not the joke horror of Halloween fancy-dress. The eyes moved perfectly in its creased chicken-like skull and the domed tongue occasionally glimpsed within its mustard-yellow beak was no artifice. Yet a rational mind would tell anyone it could not be a real chicken because it was over five feet tall.

And it talked.

"I am just planning to borrow you."

"Burrow me! Well, you can just f..."

"I have not abducted you. I am simply borrowing you."

"Burrowing me?" challenged the captive.

"No, I said borrowing you."

"Well, it sounds like you are saying..."

"One second," spoke the chicken-thing, and ran a talon of its hand-sized claw down the side of its neck to a half-way point and then depressed and twisted a half-turn deep into its scaly feathers. There was the faintest of clicks and its eyes grimaced.

"Burrow... borrow, borrow. Is that better?" it asked.

The captive stared incredulous through the thin light at the apparition separated by thick glass. To gain inner strength he recalled his father's memory. Straining to sit upright, his hands turned to fists as they pulled against the wrist restraints. A silence lingered.

"I need you for a little while. We all need you," said the creature. "And then you'll forget about it."

The captive's lobes were both hurting, and he was dehydrating from the heat resonating through his headrest. The restraints chafed his wrist, and each foot swelled inside its boot. His father's long-coat was missing and he strained to see where this may be lain.

Kicking his boot heels against the floor, he tried to turn and look behind, but the smooth high back of his chair obstructed any real view. This had well and truly turned into the biggest mistake of his life.

He heard the faint sound of a door hissing open and sensed something very large leaving the room. A thin shaft of light briefly lit the chamber's deep grey interior. His cell stood in its dead-centre. The external door closed to leave only the pinpoint corner lights of this crystal cube and the bantam head slowly reappeared behind the glass.

Once more it spoke.

"I need you to answer some questions."

The captive held a blank stare, without responding.

"Your planet," it began, "has circled its star over four point five billion times. Do you know when you evolved?"

"What!"