Thought I’d forgotten about this, hadn’t you? Or even worse, YOU’VE forgotten about it. Well, I haven’t. So we can all relax and stop giving each other accusatory stares. I know you doubted me, but I’m willing to forgive you. Just don’t do it again, monkey.

For everyone who might be new, these are the chronicles (absolutely, entirely, 57 percent fictional) of my time as an intern at a television news station. Part 1 and Part 2 are right…well, back at those links there. Click them. DO IT, MONKEY!!

Also I just realised that every introduction for the Chronicles so far has included a Star Wars reference. It was, believe it or not, completely unintentional. But now I have to keep going with it or you grabby bastards will suspect I’m making this up as I go along, and not just writing random shit and stringing it together under the auspices of a common theme. Cause…um…I’m NOT. At ALL.

Heh.

Oh go read the damn story.

* * * *

Time…

…passes.

I had settled into a routine at the station. Arrive in the mornings, convince security I wasn’t a threat by rolling over and showing my belly, walking into the office, making a cup of coffee and sitting. And sitting. And sitting.

I had arrived at a good time for an intern, in one way. Because it was the summer break, many of the reporters who would normally be on assignment were on holidays, meaning I got to go out on stories and be given much more responsibility than I normally would have. There was one example where I went to the sunshine coast to cover the aftermath of a house fire. I interviewed all the people in the street, the police and firies, and wrote the story up when I got back. It was then taken away and given to another reporter, who basically wrote the same thing I did, but because they were getting paid they have to justify it somehow.

So it was that I lept to my feet when Chief of Staff Theo Tallywhacker came striding over, strewing desks and limbs as he went.

“Davidson!” he belllowed. It took me a full thirty, uncomfortable seconds to realise he was speaking to me.

“Um, that’s ‘Stuart’, chief,” i said in a small voice.

“Nonsense. You’re whoever I’ve forged the insurance forms to say you are, cretin. Don’t talk back to me or I’ll have your skin. I need a new pair of slippers. Now, if I get you out of this office, will you stop pestering me for five minutes? Some of us have drugs to take.” He was, by now, rolling up his left sleeve, and had removed his belt for use as a torniquet. I decided getting out of the office would not only be desirable, but healthy.

“Yes, Chief. Nothing could be better.”

“Good. Well, it turns out some bright spark dropped a litter of puppies in a bin in Gympie. They all survived, mores the pity.”

“You’re unhappy they lived?” I asked.

“Well, I’d be happy if some of them lived. If some die, it’d be a real tearjerker. Even better, only one of them makes it. Then you’ve got Porthos.” I struggled to think why a puppy would have one of the Three Musketeers, until I remembered who I was talking to.

“You mean pathos, chief. Poignancy?” I suggested. I was savagely backhanded across the face.

“Correct me again, you smartarsed little bastard, and I’l give you to Marjorie in Sales. She goes through two men a month, and you are very far from a man, boy.” He paused, his great catterpillar brows travelling the desert of his forhead for a meeting in the centre. “What was I talking about?”

“Musketeers?” I ventured.

“No, puppies. Yeah. I want a tearjerker. Kill all but one when you get up there. But for god’s sake, don’t let someone see you. We had all those problems with Carl when he had to kill that asian…ahaha. Almost spilt it again. Anyway, we can’t spare a crew all day, so we’re sending you in the chopper. Get out to the helipad in five minutes.

I was speechless. The television chopper? I was going to fly to a story in the chopper? Oh my God! This was great! This was fantastic! This was…

* * *

I woke up to the sound of rotors. Well, that and the sensation of being roughly prodded in the ribs with a size 12 workman’s boot.

The boot was attached to a leg, which was attached to a small, wiry man, who was gripping the joystick in front of him the way some men masturbate.

I didn’t take this in at first, because I was lying on the floor of the cockpit of a helicopter, in a position that placed my head directly over a large glass panel in the floor, allowing me an unhindered view of the long, loooong drop to the ground below. I saw a sea of green, with black lines criss-crossing it. It was when I realised the lines were highways that my sense of perspective kicked in, and I found myself screaming.

I don’t have a head for heights. Never have. I don’t know why. I have fond memories of visiting my grandparents at their apartment on the Gold Coast, Granddad picking me up and playing the game where he dangled me over the balcony, laughing manaically until I threw up. We would time it, and then try and beat that time.

My screaming, however, didn’t seem to register with the other occupants of the cabin. I realised this was because the sound of the rotors was drowning everything out, even my panicked, girlish yells. The pilot (I assumed he was the pilot because he was holding the joystick- I hoped he was the pilot) gestured to a set of headphones resting on a hook on the console in front of me. I pushed myself into the seat, strapped myself in, and put the headphones on. They had a little microphone too, so we could talk to eack other. I tried to say something, but all I could hear was the rotors. The pilot pressed a button on the console.

“You want to say something?” he asked. I nodded. “Just press that big red button on the dash in front of you. Yeah, that one,” he said as I pointed to the button. I pushed it in.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!” I screamed, causing reverb to echo through the headphones like a sonic scrotal shot. The pilot clutched his own ears, letting go of the joystick to do so. The copter began to lean alarmingly to the left, and I found myself thrown against the wall, breaking contact with the switch. The pilot, freed from aural bombardment, grabbed the stick and hoisted us back on course. He glared at me.

“What the Christing Hell are you trying to pull here, arsecamel??” he snarled. ”If you pulled that kind of shit back in Nam, we’d have killed you on the spot,”.

“Sorry,” I said. “It was an automatic reaction.”

“So, um, this is the news chopper, right?”

The pilot looked at me like I’d crawled out of something he was eating. “Yes,” he said eventually, “It is.”

Ah. Right. That was a relief. The way the week had been going, I wasn’t entirely sure if I could put it past Tallywhacker not to sell me to some Nicuraguan drug cartel for the amusement of their leader. I would have to dance for them, and after the betting and prizegiving was done, I would have to give a private show to the head honcho. Maybe he’d be gentle, but

“Hey!” I heard the pilot say in my ear for what I realised was the fourth time. “We’re nearly there.”

I noticed the ground seemed a lot closer than before. I copuld see cars moving on the roads, and trees moving in the breeze. The pilot reached over and flipped a switch. The strains of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkeries started up in my headphones. 

I noticed we were making for a small public oval. “What’s the music for?” I asked.

The pilot pointed down- “I always play this when I land at shit-eating hickville towns like this. Scares the hell out of em.”

I was about to ask “who?” but the pilot pointed towards the oval. Several shabbily dressed young men were stumbling out of the undergrowth near the oval and running down the street. They looked like a group of chimpanzees running away from a lion. One even turned to defiantly screech at the strange metal bird, jumping up and down and waving his hands before running off as well. I noticed a few had dropped empty bottles.

The chopper touched down softly, and without incident. As I got out, it occured to me I had no idea how I had gotten in. The pilot cleared this up for me.

“Yeah, the drugs can make you forget things sometimes. I shot you with this,” he said, pulling out an enormous handgun with an open breach. He pulled a dart with the biggest needle I have ever seen out of the chopper as well, and fitted it in the breach, before sealing it with a metallic click-hiss. ”You came running down to the landing pad yelling some nonsense about success and how you were a real man now. I shot you to shut you up. That and to stop you hyperventilating.”

He pointed the gun at me. “And if you do anything to make me want to, I’ll do it again before we go back. ‘Making me want to’ includes being forced to look at you for more than 30 seconds more, by the way. I’d start running.”

I did.

Luckily, the cameraman had organised a taxi, and by some ridiculous coincidence, it was waiting for us by the side of the road. We were off to the site!

* * *

I stood in the stifling heat, grumbling, as the driver, whose nametag informed me was called “Trainee”, checked the refedex for the third time.

“Honestly, it’s just around here somewhere,” he said. “I take my rubbish there myself sometimes.” He flipped through the book futilely once more. I noticed it was for the Gold Coast region.

I started walking.

Fortunately, it turned out the tip where the puppies had been dumped was just up the road. I noticed this when I saw the large sign saying “Tip”. I went back and told the driver. He seemed a little put out, and insisted on checking the map again. I insisted it was just up the road. He pointed to a map which showed the Burleigh Heads coastline, and insisted that it couldn’t be, as he couldn’t see the coast. I quietly told him that Gympie was landlocked. He seemed to consider this, and said “but where do I go for a swim?”

That was too existential for me, so I motioned for the cameraman, and we made our way up to the tip. The family who had found the puppies were already there, a mum, a dad, and three darling little children. That was my impression from a hundred metres away, and I hadn’t brought my glasses with me. As I approached, I amended my first assessment to “a woman, a man, probably in a defacto relationship, and three children who might be related to them” and finally to “probably a woman, possibly a man, and three genetic experiments”.

And the puppies. Oh the puppies. Four beautiful little golden retriever puppies, all washed and clean and beautiful and making small “meep” noises.

“AH FOUNDEM OVER THERE!” said the mother, small flecks of spittle erupting from her mouth as she pointed to one of the bins. The father was rocking back and forth slightly, while one of the children was trying to eat my leg.

The other two appeared to be having what I desperately hoped wasn’t simulated sex. They looked about 6.

I shook the legbiter off and went to look at the bin. It was filthy. Imagine being dumped in here, I thought. Trapped, nowhere to go, a slow and agonising death your only future. I looked at the family. The father was still rocking back and forth, but sitting down now. The mother had broken the two fornicators up and was yelling at them that they were probably related, so they should wait until they were 16. I turned and picked up on of the puppies. It looked up at me with big brown eyes and stuck out its tongue. And I knew how to make this story great. I knew what I had to do.

I took the puppy’s head in my hand.

* * *

“All but one dead, you say?” said Tallywhacker, back in the newsroom. “I thought they all survived?”

“No sir, “I replied. “Turns out heat, starvation and absolutely not broken necks got most of them. Only one made it, and he’s living with the family now. We’ve got it all on camera.”

“Wonderful, wonderful! That’s the ticket. Well, file it and we’ll have someone write up the story. You of course, won’t be touching it with a ten foot pole. It’s far too good a story to let you ejaculate all over it.”

He glared at me. “Why are you wearing that backpack?”

He pointed to my backpack that I was wearing. “Um,” I replied, “because its my backpack?”

“I know it’s yours, dildo-pants! I mean why are you wearing it now?”

“Well, the day’s over Chief. I’m going home.”

He considered this. “Hmm. Well, I can’t think of a reason right now to make you stay, but if I do you’ll be staying tomorrow. And I take my weekly bath tomorrow,” he added, suddenly grinning.

He turned on his heel and stormed off. From my backpack came a small “meep” noise.

Luckily, the sound of Tallywhacker loudly farting covered it.