The Peeler
“What does he do?”
“He peels them.”
“Ah gawd.”
“He comes in the night and peels them like a banana. Strips them like paint.”
“Aw gawd, aw gawd dammit! They never had a chance.”
“They never know what hit them. One minute staring into space being all beautiful and shit, the next ssshhhrrrrrrk! Peeled.”
“How?”
“Some say he has a knife sharper than the keenest of razors, others that he uses acid.”
“Acid?”
“Burns away the outer layers, to ease the gouging.”
“How do they know it’s a man?”
“Good question, maybe it’s a woman.”
“What kind of woman would do such a thing?”
“Sick isn’t it.”
“But how does he, I mean she, how do they get up there? This poor girl must be four storeys up.”
“Ladder.”
“A ladder?”
“A member of the public disturbed him at the crime scene one night. He was about his devil work, he had a ladder, he escaped.”
“Fiendish.”
“The criminal mind is incomprehensible to the common man. You or I can know nothing of what dark machinations bubble and seep through the mind of The Peeler, the one the Dollybirds call,Jack The Stripper. ”
“For the love of God can’t someone do something?”
“That’s our job, pass the paste would you.”
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This weeks slight piece of Flickr Fiction was brought to you using this photo from Flickr user Tangent. Other participants this week are Elimare, Tadmack, Aquafortis, Chris and Littlegoat. Click on the links to read their versions.
September 17th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
I like it. Nice twist, love the idea of two billboard poster men (what ARE they called anyway) being horrified by someone who goes around tearing up their work.
September 17th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Er Bill Posters I think. Hence the signs ‘Bill Posters will be prosecuted’ and the classic graffiti (graffito?) ‘Free Bill Posters!’ and ‘Bill Posters is innocent’
September 18th, 2006 at 10:33 am
‘Jack the Stripper’. Tee hee.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
I was about 20 before I figured out what all those “POST NO BILLS” signs on walls and doors around the town actually meant.
I just thought it was a strategy for escaping debt. Somewhere there was an obscure law that somebody had discovered; put the words “POST NO BILLS” above your letterbox and hey, all your money troubles are over!
“Aw no,” mutters the postman, thumbing through a blood-red flickbook of bills from BT and the electricity people to pick out that one postcard from your sister in Tenerife. He can’t put the bills through your letterbox — that’s a hanging offence — but at the same time, also by law, he can’t take them back to the sorting office. And god knows he can’t just throw them away. And so his load grows with each passing month.
The world was a more magical place before I was 20.
September 19th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Do you know how many postmen died of exhaustion before they put that in the training manual.
September 20th, 2006 at 12:06 am
Exactly eight.
Shaun O’Riordan
Bazil “Bazzer” Kenny
Norman Williams
Robert Hussey
Lord Wolfgang Herbrudginegger (took up postmanation as a part-time hobby, it led to his eventually downfall, sad story)
Martin McMorris
Postman Pat
Jim
September 20th, 2006 at 12:09 am
Jesus, what a jarring typo! It will be my eventually downfall.