THE LITTLE BOOK OF BIZARRE BEDTIME STORIES

THE STRANGE DREAM

Today the sea was unusually calm, but far off in the distance I could see that there was a big storm brewing, large dark clouds with flashing lightning, and worst of all it was heading our way!

I am the Captain of a grand pirate ship named ‘Valencia’ and we had been sailing on the Indian Ocean for four months without any sightings of land. My crew, strangely, were all monkeys and they could only speak Spanish, whereas I only spoke monkey, but for some reason we all seemed to understand each other perfectly. We had been trying to find an island where we could stock up on supplies of bananas, peanut butter and water for the crew. Their favourite food was peanut butter and banana sandwiches and they had not eaten anything for many days - they were getting angry and restless, and the coming storm did not help the situation either. It looked like there was going to be a mutiny and I was getting more worried by the minute, I feared we were also lost!       

I watched as the storm rolled in closer and closer, there was still no sign of land and the sea had become rough, with large waves beginning to form and also the wind had picked up and was battering the ship. I was about to call the crew together for an emergency meeting when it started to rain, but bizarrely it was not ordinary rain and indeed no ordinary storm, for out of the sky fell not rain, but spaghetti! Yes, spaghetti was falling onto the deck of the ship. The starving monkeys ran around grabbing armfuls of it, at the same time stuffing huge amounts into their hungry mouths. This proved to be a disaster because monkeys should not eat spaghetti. The effect was bad, as one by one the monkeys quickly became ill and soon died!

Fortunately the spaghetti rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, but now I was left with another big problem, there was no crew, no food and very little water left! But then I had a clever idea. I gathered up as much of the remaining spaghetti as I could and placed it all in a barrel, then, and I know this seems rather gruesome, but I was desperate, I cooked all of the dead monkeys! I was going to make a monkey Bolognese. So nowat least the food problem was solved but I still had to try and sail the ship single-handed in my quest for water and land.

It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. I just tied off the wheel so the ship was sailing in a straight line and I hoped that I would make land eventually before the Bolognese and what little water I had eventually ran out. I sat back and relaxed, pleased with my handling of this bizarre situation. Unfortunately this was a big mistake as I soon drifted off to sleep. I do not know for how long I slept.   

I was awoken by a sudden jolt and a long scraping sound. Irealised that the ship had stopped moving. I got up and looked out from the bow of the ship, to my surprise I saw land beneath it. The ship had apparently run aground on a small island.

Feeling relieved at finally reaching some land I immediately went to investigate, which unknown to me, turned out to be yet another mistake. I spent a few hours walking along the shoreline exploring and looking for any signs of life. But I found nothing. I did however have the strange and unsettling feeling that I was not alone here.

I had stopped to rest for a short while and once again dozed off. When I awoke I decided to head back to the ship to see if there was any way to re-launch her. To my utter surprise the ship was already back out to sea and anchored just off shore. How could this be?

I soon found out. While I was off exploring the island, the island inhabitants, a tribe of Pygmy Mermaids, had managed to drag my ship back out to sea, stole all of my Bolognese and then came back to capture me. As I ran to the spot where the ship had run aground a large net was thrown over me, trapping me and as I fell I was knocked unconscious.

When I came around I found myself tied to a large rock down on the seashore, surrounded by Pygmy Mermaids. The leader of the Mermaids called for quiet and then she spoke to me.