Slugs Rule OK

"No worry of that, Jill. The hot water would have seen to that."

"It is just that I remember what my mother used to say. She hated killing anything, spiders, beetles, ants - even wasps. She used to say they are all entitled to live on earth just as much as we are - and it is not up to us to murder them. She said if I killed a spider for instance, all his friends would seek revenge."

"Shouldn't worry about it," Philip eased. "Just an old wives tale."

"But it is not just the spider is it. I've killed so many slugs I have lost count. But I get so cross with them. Their constant vandalism devouring my cabbages. I am at my wits end now. I am getting up at night. It is the best time to get them. I go down to the garden armed with my bright torch and the secateurs. It's terrible I know, dear but it's the only way I know that kills them instantly."

"Ugh!" gasped Philip. If he had doubts about moving in with Jill he certainly had them now. Imagining having to put up with that every night.

"So you see, dear. You must move in this week. Before I go absolutely bonkers. I know only you will calm me and find a real solution to finally be rid of those slugs."

Now was the time Philip decided, to use his planned excuse to get out of seeing her that week. Well, it would have been awkward anyway because the truth was his brother, Tom was coming down to stay for a few days, He needed time with him. It had been years since they last met.

He told Jill the news and it was if a bomb had exploded. He had never, never heard her use bad language. Thinking she was incapable of it. He soon discovered she wasn't.

Now everything came out. All that loving, all that caring she had give to him - and now, what did she get in return when she most needed his care and help?

It was time for Philip to leave but that was not easy, She threatened him with everything, even telling the police that he attempted to rape her and the like, that he had been constantly pestering her. She would tell all to the police if he chose never to see her again. Now he discovered her crazy side and it was as if he had to stay with her, just for one night at least. Anything to take her mind off those confounded slugs and release her tension, thinking she may well carry out her threats if he didn't.

But during the night she had a dream. Philip awoke with a start hearing her going on about her proverbial slugs, that they were in her bed now, that she felt one on her thigh. He felt her touch him, what was it all about, was it that acute, that she wanted him to turn away those imaginary slugs?

But he'd settle for that, yes he would, this was another aspect of Jill, a very severe and bullish side that he unwittingly enjoyed. He would show her how best to forget the blasted slugs! She was shouting now, that the slug was growing into a monster.

Philip was ready to cool her ardour, to take her mind off that bloody slug.

But then she grabbed the secateurs from her bedside locker drawer, took her imaginary slug by the head with thumb and forefinger and quickly snipped it in half.

A huge yell bellowed out from Philip then a groaning.

"I'll teach 'em!" yelled Jill still half asleep, half awake, "daring to invade my bed."

She made for the garden oblivious of Philip's agony.

Just two days later the milkman called the police because Jill's milk had not been taken in.

A policewoman found her laying near the rockery in a pool of blood, surrounded by lacerated slugs, her secateurs still clutched in her hand. She looked closer at the body with horror. A stream of blood had dried from a large wound upon her forehead. She was quite dead. The officer surmised she had fallen, probably slipped on a slug or two and cracked her head on a rockery stone as she fell. She added to her colleague afterwards that she had never ever seen so many slugs, it was like the poor woman had been attacked by an army of them! Like they were seeking some sort of retribution, like one would expect to see in a a horror movie.

Then, inside the cottage, she discovered poor Philip's body in a pool of blood beside the bed, he too was quite, quite dead with an expression of utter horror on his face.

It was not the fall but asphyxia that killed Jill. At the post mortem a large slug was pulled from her throat.

Death By Misadventure was the coroner's verdict. On both counts.

Slugs rule, Okay?