Barry the Monst
Photo of an orange-red folded out sofa bed in the middle of the woods.
On this sofa bed, a Monst was made. Not via procreation, you understand, but made nonetheless. His principal constituents are: assorted Meccano and Lego pieces, three indeterminable bones, two pieces of Scalextric track, several pieces of the board game Operation, one Rice Crispy treat, and a very powerful spell. The Monst’s name is Barry and, when he’s not out roaming Lypeat and Clowes wood, he lives under this same bed.
Barry the Monst was made by a six year old boy called Nigel, but neither Barry nor Nigel know that. By the time Nigel’s prodigious spell had finished working, Nigel had long since gone home to bed. The over-early moral of this story then, is to take care with the wishes that you make.
Coming into the world alone like that, means that poor old Barry has a gaping void where his maker should be. So, he wanders the local connected woods in search of friends. Sadly, being a rather unusual, and frankly monstrous sight, the woodland creatures were disinclined to friendship with our poor, lonely, limping Monst.
One day, Barry heard about a Monsts’ Ball in nearby Radfall. He was excited as he thought perhaps he would find his family there. However, once he arrived, he discovered that they weren’t real Monsts after all, but rather a bunch of humans dressed up for a Halloween party. After being chased away by one over-curious Jack Russell, three Nan’s, and a particularly unpleasant Dachshund, Barry limped back to Lypeat Wood and sobbed for several months under this here sofa bed, his origin point.
One day, a squirrel decided to have a rest from her scampering and eat some beech nuts in comfort on the sofa bed. In between her cracking and nibbling, she noticed the sobbing from beneath the bed. Gingerly she went to the end of the mattress and poked her head underneath. ‘Hello?’, Cheryl the Squirrel enquired. Barry the Monst carried on sobbing.
Undeterred, and with nerves of steel honed from years of bin and back garden banditry, Cheryl crawled along the underside of the mattress, deep into the darkness under the sofa. Whereupon, huddled in the top left corner, she encountered poor old Barry with a lot of snot on his face and a very wet front.
If Cheryl had been a different type of squirrel, she’d have likely hotfooted it back out from under the bed in fear and/or disgust. But Cheryl was no ordinary squirrel and was famous in those parts for courageously crossing the A299 from her homeland in Convict’s Wood. So she offered Barry her last remaining beech nut, and with that kind gesture, Barry’s first, real life friendship was borne.
Despite this initial act of affection, it took Cheryl robbing half a baguette from a nearby food waste bin to coax Barry out from under the bed. As they sat there sharing the bounty, Barry poured his wee little Operation heart out to our brave and kind Cheryl. And the more she heard about his sorry tales of wandering and rejection, the more Cheryl knew that she had to act.
One day, when a renewed and refreshed Barry the Monst was out in the far western reaches of Clowes Wood, Cheryl had one of the busiest days of her life. Up and down the connected woods of Lypeat, Clowes, Thornden, and West Blean she scampered, jumping tree to tree, through gorse and heather, until she had secured the cooperation and conciliation of each and every clan, faction, and coterie of the entire connected woodlands.
For the next few weeks, Cheryl, exhausted from all that scampering and convincing, sat high up in a tree watching Barry optimistically scour the woods looking for his relatives. Cheryl brought her little paws to her chest and tapped her squirrelly digits together in sweet anticipation. Barry the Monst was in for one momentous surprise!
On the day of the autumnal equinox, the magic was ready to happen and Cheryl spent most of the day grooming her tail, and ensuring Barry looked his monstrous best. She affixed the most wonderful array of organic debris to his Monst body with an artful smearing of mud, and adorned his Monst head with a crown woven out of bracken. She was sure he looked his Monst finest!
‘Come, Barry’, she said. ‘Let’s go for an evening stroll out into the clearing and enjoy the ending of the day.’ Barry happily gave his assent.
As the long shadows of evening came, the first of the guests arrived at the clearing: the bison from West Blean Wood. They had done just as Cheryl asked and rolled in mud and dung, and stuck twigs and dead leaves to themselves. They looked like enormous and terribly scary monstrosities! One, Cheryl was pleased to see, had even managed to get a mangled fence about its neck.
As the bison came near, they started roaring and bellowing and making an awful kind of noise, and that was just the signal the rest of the woodland creatures needed. Out came badgers and foxes, magpies and falcons, stag beetles and millipedes, and all the other creatures of the connected woods. All of them, to a one, disguised in the most monstrous of outfits.
The birds flew like one of their wings didn’t work, the millipedes walked on their right legs only, the foxes dragged their rear legs behind them, and the badgers kept doing commando rolls as if they couldn’t manage to stay upright. The whole of the woodland community had done their very best to dress up and behave as a terribly scary Monst, so that Barry could finally have his very own kin.
Barry couldn’t believe his little Monst eyes: finally after years and years of looking, his family had returned to the woods! He tried to spin around and around in glee but tripped and fell over into a muddy puddle. The woodland creatures applauded with delight and then a very dirty frog climbed out of the puddle and sat on Barry’s chest. It stuck its tongue out, drooled on Barry’s face, and then croaked: SURPRISE!!!
At that command, the woodland creatures all shook off the mud and debris the best they could, and straightened out their limbs and wings. Suddenly, the truth dawned on our dear Monst Barry: these were no real Monsts but they were his kin! Our Cheryl then read a fourteen page proclamation wherein all the creatures of the connected woodlands had formally adopted Barry as one of them. They said that the reason no one had recognised Barry as kin before, was because he was a little bit of each of them. All it took was one brave but kind scampering little bin bandit to help them see the light.
Naturally, the woodland creatures partied for the rest of the night under the light of a silvery moon. Puddles and streams were jumped in. Mud and dung were rolled in. And everyone had a mighty fine but dirty time. In the days and weeks and months and years which followed, every time Barry came out from under his sofa bed to go for a limp, everyone he passed would greet him warmly with a ‘welcome, sibling’. In return, Barry’s joyful little Operation heart went ‘BUZZ’.