Cornered and caught

By Fleur Lind

I have always been one for a quiet life, I don’t get into the glitz and glamour or the night or bright lights of Hollywood. You can keep all that. My friends are on adverts on TV but that’s not my vibe at all. I am the odd one who just wants to hide away somewhere, but let me tell you that is not easy when you are as famous as I am. I’m a household name. Most people have heard of me, and I blame that on very effective marketing. Before the flashy adverts happened, we just bumbled along with others of our kind, anonymous and inconspicuous. But not anymore!

The lengths I will go to hide, are becoming extreme. I must sharpen up my smarts, think on the run, and move faster. I am dark brown, and that is not being racist, it’s a fact… so I am usually easily missed in a darkened room. But not today!

I had two of them on my case today. They were very pleasant and helpful, as they always are, but the fact remained; they were going to do their utmost to find me and throw me out. Why can’t they just leave me be?

Then they had a guessing game…what was it that was stuck in the corner at the back against the wall beside the fridge? I wasn’t stuck at all; I had wedged myself in on purpose. I really thought I was home free because the vacuum cleaner had too wide a head and the sucky thing couldn’t get close enough to obliterate me. That, just quietly, is one of my biggest fears. Being sucked up by a Dyson and catapulted at dangerously high-speed into the barrel. I would whizz around, joining the other debris, putting superman to shame and make a hell of a racket as my hard outer casing clanged and crashed again the plastic. Can you imagine a worse fate?

Back to my perilous state in the corner… their arms were not long enough to reach me, but I still held my breath. Would they give up and move on?

No. Of course not. Who doesn’t like the thrill of the chase? If you are the chaser it’s fun, but fan is far removed if you are the hunted.

And then, their quick thinking was my undoing. Out came the broom stick. I for one, am not partial to a broomstick going anywhere near me; the bristles at the other end are bad enough! The round-ended wooden pole prodded me, wiggled, and giggled me out of my corner, as they continued guessing what I could be, and slowly I was bought out into the light of the kitchen.

There I was, exposed! So embarrassing!

The game was over, and my time was up. The writing was on the wall in humiliatingly large letters. One of them declared, “Oh! Look at that! It’s a Malteser!’

The other was surprised, “It must have rolled out of the packet and under the fridge!”

“Well, it’s going in the bin now, that doesn’t look like a mouthful of deliciousness at all.”

And that was that. I was discarded most unceremoniously into the bin on the other side of the fridge.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is something to being in front of the glitzy lights of Hollywood. I could have been a secret agent, rolling along a counter with the breeze from the desk fan pushing me along as the counter staff secretly share me around. That wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose. I’ll definitely apply for casting roles. Maybe in my next life? I wonder what I will be…a KitKat or a liquorice all sort?