Hungry Horace (Inspiration Point : Shopping)

“Don’t try and deny it. You old bag!”, said the store detective, slamming Miss Bramble's old tartan shopping bag down on the store managers desk, “I saw you with my own eyes, taking food off of the shelves and putting it into your shopping bag then trying to walk out of the shop without paying”.

“Oh, well. I do deny it”, said the old lady defiantly, smiling in a self-assured way that unsettled the detective, “I’m afraid you’ve got it all completely wrong”.

“So”, asked the manager, looking somewhat, in his three-piece suit and gold rimmed glasses with his graying hair and receding hair line, like a stern but overworked and overwrought headmaster, “are you saying that, if we were to tip your shopping bag upside down, right now, that no stolen food would come tumbling out?”.

The old woman nodded, steely eyed and with a big grin on her face, “Oh yes. I’m quite sure of that”.

“Right”, said the store manager, opening the old shopping bag and reaching inside.

Suddenly a scream was heard from the managers office that was so loud and full of horror and agony that it made all of the shoppers and staff who heard it jump about an inch out of their skin with fright.

“Is everything alright?!”, asked Vanessa, the assistant manager, running into the office, “Only, I heard a scream”.

The manager didn’t reply. He just mumbled; a mad, confused look in his eyes as he examined the bloody stump of his left hand which had just been bitten off by the zipper like jaws of the shopping bag like and ravenous creature on his desk.

“You see, Sir”, said old Miss Bramble, stepping over the body of the store detective who had just fainted, “As I told you. I wasn’t putting food into my shopping bag. I was feeding my hungry wee alien friend, Horace. Horace fell out of the sky when I was only a wee bairn and I’ve taken care of him ever since and, as you can see, he doesn’t appreciate having some strange mans hand shoved down his throat”.

Suddenly, the bag creature started to cough up a gold wristwatch and then Vanessa saw its long, slimy pink tongue licking blood from its mouth. Then Vanessa fainted.

“Come along Horace”, said Miss Bramble, picking up the strange alien creature by its handle-like appendages and carrying it out of the manager’s office, stepping over Vanessa’s body on her way, before saying to her tartan pet, “That’s the last time we’ll be coming in here, I promise you that. The way they treat people in this store is just disgraceful”.