Fiction Punch Writing Competition

fiction punch writing competition

The Winning Story - A Cuckoo in the Nest by Alex Corrin ©

In a safari park deep in the Cotswold countryside dwell certain creatures seen by all the paying customers who pass through the gates, and others visible only to some of the other residents of the park. Thus it was that one spring evening Winifred and Moses, the ostriches, were entertaining some neighbours, Arthur and Coralie Dragon, to a little light supper. It is also not well known that while the animals put on a show of eating those things that the guidebooks indicate as their staple diet, in their time off they might well enjoy, say, a lightly grilled steak and a lemon tart. The steak may be obtained from some unfortunate fatality among the park’s occupants, or more possibly from an after hours delivery from Waitrose, ordered by one of the more dextrous primates from one of the new communications devices stolen from an unsuspecting visitor, and paid for by a credit card obtained in the same way. I urge all readers to check their statements carefully.

On this evening, it being spring, both the ladies retired to a place of privacy to lay a very large egg each. They chatted as they did so and left the eggs together in a corner while making themselves comfortable and returning to Moses and Arthur, who had taken advantage of their absence to crack open a bottle of Bull’s Blood found in a stash behind the keepers’ hut. Eventually the evening came to an end so Coralie collected her egg and the dragons made their way back a little unsteadily to their den, well out of sight of humans.

Eventually the time came for little cracks to appear in the eggs and chirping noses come from within. But alas! The egg so carefully tended by Winifred became hot and burst open one afternoon to reveal a tiny but perfectly formed baby dragon, complete with flicking tail and distinctly non-ostrich like flames emerging from his nostrils. The paying public emitted gasps of surprise and summoned photographers from the Daily Mail at the appearance of this astonishing throwback to prehistoric times. Winifred tried her best to nurture the infant, but suffered from a great deal of singeing as he snored away under her tail feathers.

Meanwhile, in the secret part of the park, another pair of parents scratched their heads in some perplexment as their new offspring, a rather scruffy leggy beast with big protruding eyes, refused to breathe fire and take maidens hostage. And whilst the respective parents realised how this distressing situation had arisen, the little dragon, who had been named Ember, was so well-known by now that a swap back had become impossible.

So if you ever visit a quiet part of the park where humans rarely venture, and see a tall shadowy beast out of the corner of your eye, you may have seen the rare cuckoo in the dragon’s nest, still living with her adoptive parents and still trying to breathe fire.