Claim: Press Gang (Kenny Phillips) - #39 Chaos Theory, Table 5
Title: Cruelty to Dumb Beasts
Author: lost_spook
Claim: Kenny Phillips
Prompt: #39 Chaos theory
Fandom: Press Gang
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 963
Summary: Kenny ends up on the school trip with Colin, and the body count keeps rising…
Notes/Warnings: No spoilers. Pre-series. Cruelty to animals. (Taken from a throwaway line of Colin’s in S5, that has nothing to do with Kenny, but after all, Kenny never seemed to like Colin much…)
***
Colin: One minute, it’s all nice and normal and then suddenly everything’s dead! It’s like that school zoo trip all over again…” (Windfall, S5).
*
Lynda had gone down with the flu, and, for Kenny, on the first year school field trip to the zoo, that meant one thing: he had no partner, and any minute now, Miss Middleton was going to find him and…
“Kenny,” said the teacher, bustling over. “No Lynda? Then you’ll have to go with Colin Mathews.”
He couldn’t argue, but even Kenny drew the line somewhere, and that somewhere was definitely Colin Mathews.
*
“What do they think we are, little kids?” Colin said, hanging around at his side. “I mean, the zoo! I ask you, Kevin -.”
“Kenny.”
“Don’t be silly, Kevin, it’s Colin. I don’t know - teachers, these days, eh?”
“It’s for the art project. And biology.”
Colin appeared to think about that for a while. Eventually, he said, “What d’you reckon one of the girls’d pay to have a pet penguin?”
*
Kenny eventually pushed aside his drawing of a sleeping koala, as it was never going to get any better, and realised that it was ages since he’d seen Colin.
*
There were alarms going off in the reptile house, and broken glass lying about, so he’d probably gone that way, but it wasn’t until Kenny reached the park with the llamas that he heard someone hissing his name from behind a tree.
*
Kenny moved cautiously round the bushes to see Colin standing there. He looked as if he had been crying, but that wasn’t the first thing Kenny noticed. That would be the whopping snake on the ground beside him, with a large bulge in it that Kenny didn’t want to think about.
“Kevin,” said Colin with an hysterical edge to his voice. “Do you think this snake is dead?”
Kenny was reduced to staring. Finally, he managed: “What did you do?”
Colin sulked. “It wasn’t my fault. All I wanted was a penguin. Only - I think it’s dead, too.”
“Uh, yeah. How did it get there?”
Colin surveyed his handiwork. “Well, penguins - they’re crazy. People think they’re cute, but they fight back, even when you get them a really great fish -.”
“A really great fish from where? Colin, you didn’t -?”
“Hey, it’s amazing what people leave lying around. Fish, keys, stuff -.”
“Giant snakes?”
“I had to take the mad penguin somewhere. Turned out there was a snake hiding in there, too. What are the odds?”
“In the reptile house, in a zoo?” said Kenny. “Um… Colin…?”
Colin sniffed. “So I hopped it into the next room - and someone’d put spiders in there, and I hate spiders -.”
“Spiders?” said Kenny, his mouth falling open.
Colin sighed. “Yeah. I’m going to write to the papers - poisonous spiders hanging about in a place you take little kids. It’s not exactly safe, is it? The one that climbed up my jacket - it killed that hyena.”
Kenny continued to gape. He was losing track of the body count. “Colin?”
“So I got it,” said Colin, sagging to the ground. “With a rock. Squashed it. I mean, what else could I do? I didn’t want to end up lying on the ground, all stiff and twitching -. And then I went back to see if maybe the penguin was alive, or someone could stuff it -.”
Kenny fought for words again. “That penguin is definitely dead, Colin! It’s inside a snake!”
“You never know,” said Colin. “I think maybe the snake’s allergic to penguins, because it hasn’t moved since - I had to drag it all the way here.”
“Maybe it’s in a sort of happy shock? It can’t be every day someone feeds it a penguin. And - you did what?”
“Well, I couldn’t leave it there, could I? I had to smash the glass to get out and there were all these alarms going off.”
“Okay, how many things did you kill?”
Colin scowled. “I didn’t do it on purpose! It’s like this horrible nightmare, Kevin.”
It was at that point that a zoo-keeper arrived.
Colin ran.
Kenny, as ever, stayed to explain.
*
It turned out there was no way of explaining why you were standing beside a snake stuffed with penguin that had been stolen from the reptile house, especially when several people had reported a dark-haired boy taking it away.
The zoo-keeper yelled and threatened to make him pay for things, using the words rare, valuable, and endangered a lot.
When Miss Middleton arrived, she turned a funny white colour and then screamed at him, before resorting to a scary, calm voice, but neither of them listened when he said he’d only found the snake like that.
“Let me take this from here,” said a voice, and Kenny looked up with a sinking heart to see Mr Sullivan.
*
“Kenny Phillips,” said Mr Sullivan, surveying him. “I know you’re used to trailing around after Hurricane Lynda, but I’d have thought even you’d have drawn the line at aiding and abetting Colin Mathews in his diabolical schemes.”
Kenny breathed again. “I didn’t, sir.”
“I’ll believe you,” he said. “However, I feel a detention coming on - you didn’t stop him, did you? After I’ve found Colin, and fed him to the lions. I suppose it’s too much to hope he’s spared me the trouble?”
“I don’t know. He went that way, sir.”
*
Telling Lynda later was the only good thing - she didn’t think it could be true, so she argued about all the reasons she wasn’t swallowing a story that stupid, which seemed to cheer her up.
At least, until she came back to school and found that Colin was paying compensation in instalments, Norbridge High had been banned from the zoo - and that, impossibly, Kenny was right, and she was wrong.
On the whole, Kenny decided he should keep away from Colin Mathews in future.
***
Author: lost_spook
Claim: Kenny Phillips
Prompt: #39 Chaos theory
Fandom: Press Gang
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 963
Summary: Kenny ends up on the school trip with Colin, and the body count keeps rising…
Notes/Warnings: No spoilers. Pre-series. Cruelty to animals. (Taken from a throwaway line of Colin’s in S5, that has nothing to do with Kenny, but after all, Kenny never seemed to like Colin much…)
***
Colin: One minute, it’s all nice and normal and then suddenly everything’s dead! It’s like that school zoo trip all over again…” (Windfall, S5).
*
Lynda had gone down with the flu, and, for Kenny, on the first year school field trip to the zoo, that meant one thing: he had no partner, and any minute now, Miss Middleton was going to find him and…
“Kenny,” said the teacher, bustling over. “No Lynda? Then you’ll have to go with Colin Mathews.”
He couldn’t argue, but even Kenny drew the line somewhere, and that somewhere was definitely Colin Mathews.
*
“What do they think we are, little kids?” Colin said, hanging around at his side. “I mean, the zoo! I ask you, Kevin -.”
“Kenny.”
“Don’t be silly, Kevin, it’s Colin. I don’t know - teachers, these days, eh?”
“It’s for the art project. And biology.”
Colin appeared to think about that for a while. Eventually, he said, “What d’you reckon one of the girls’d pay to have a pet penguin?”
*
Kenny eventually pushed aside his drawing of a sleeping koala, as it was never going to get any better, and realised that it was ages since he’d seen Colin.
*
There were alarms going off in the reptile house, and broken glass lying about, so he’d probably gone that way, but it wasn’t until Kenny reached the park with the llamas that he heard someone hissing his name from behind a tree.
*
Kenny moved cautiously round the bushes to see Colin standing there. He looked as if he had been crying, but that wasn’t the first thing Kenny noticed. That would be the whopping snake on the ground beside him, with a large bulge in it that Kenny didn’t want to think about.
“Kevin,” said Colin with an hysterical edge to his voice. “Do you think this snake is dead?”
Kenny was reduced to staring. Finally, he managed: “What did you do?”
Colin sulked. “It wasn’t my fault. All I wanted was a penguin. Only - I think it’s dead, too.”
“Uh, yeah. How did it get there?”
Colin surveyed his handiwork. “Well, penguins - they’re crazy. People think they’re cute, but they fight back, even when you get them a really great fish -.”
“A really great fish from where? Colin, you didn’t -?”
“Hey, it’s amazing what people leave lying around. Fish, keys, stuff -.”
“Giant snakes?”
“I had to take the mad penguin somewhere. Turned out there was a snake hiding in there, too. What are the odds?”
“In the reptile house, in a zoo?” said Kenny. “Um… Colin…?”
Colin sniffed. “So I hopped it into the next room - and someone’d put spiders in there, and I hate spiders -.”
“Spiders?” said Kenny, his mouth falling open.
Colin sighed. “Yeah. I’m going to write to the papers - poisonous spiders hanging about in a place you take little kids. It’s not exactly safe, is it? The one that climbed up my jacket - it killed that hyena.”
Kenny continued to gape. He was losing track of the body count. “Colin?”
“So I got it,” said Colin, sagging to the ground. “With a rock. Squashed it. I mean, what else could I do? I didn’t want to end up lying on the ground, all stiff and twitching -. And then I went back to see if maybe the penguin was alive, or someone could stuff it -.”
Kenny fought for words again. “That penguin is definitely dead, Colin! It’s inside a snake!”
“You never know,” said Colin. “I think maybe the snake’s allergic to penguins, because it hasn’t moved since - I had to drag it all the way here.”
“Maybe it’s in a sort of happy shock? It can’t be every day someone feeds it a penguin. And - you did what?”
“Well, I couldn’t leave it there, could I? I had to smash the glass to get out and there were all these alarms going off.”
“Okay, how many things did you kill?”
Colin scowled. “I didn’t do it on purpose! It’s like this horrible nightmare, Kevin.”
It was at that point that a zoo-keeper arrived.
Colin ran.
Kenny, as ever, stayed to explain.
*
It turned out there was no way of explaining why you were standing beside a snake stuffed with penguin that had been stolen from the reptile house, especially when several people had reported a dark-haired boy taking it away.
The zoo-keeper yelled and threatened to make him pay for things, using the words rare, valuable, and endangered a lot.
When Miss Middleton arrived, she turned a funny white colour and then screamed at him, before resorting to a scary, calm voice, but neither of them listened when he said he’d only found the snake like that.
“Let me take this from here,” said a voice, and Kenny looked up with a sinking heart to see Mr Sullivan.
*
“Kenny Phillips,” said Mr Sullivan, surveying him. “I know you’re used to trailing around after Hurricane Lynda, but I’d have thought even you’d have drawn the line at aiding and abetting Colin Mathews in his diabolical schemes.”
Kenny breathed again. “I didn’t, sir.”
“I’ll believe you,” he said. “However, I feel a detention coming on - you didn’t stop him, did you? After I’ve found Colin, and fed him to the lions. I suppose it’s too much to hope he’s spared me the trouble?”
“I don’t know. He went that way, sir.”
*
Telling Lynda later was the only good thing - she didn’t think it could be true, so she argued about all the reasons she wasn’t swallowing a story that stupid, which seemed to cheer her up.
At least, until she came back to school and found that Colin was paying compensation in instalments, Norbridge High had been banned from the zoo - and that, impossibly, Kenny was right, and she was wrong.
On the whole, Kenny decided he should keep away from Colin Mathews in future.
***