This piece of alternative truth was written for the weekly photo prompt Unicorn Challenge from Jenne Gray and CE Ayr. Join in the fun with up to 250 words of your own.

Inspired by an article about a former Acting Prime Minister. What a performance. Trigger warning: You might want to skip the bit about a woman waking up to find a mouse chewing on her eyeball.

Mouse plague army should be sent to scratch the faces of animal activists’ children, says Australia’s acting PM – Turbo Celebrity

‘Grandpa, what’s that sculpture in your back garden?’

In answering, Grandpa carefully avoided having to pronounce his grandson’s given name, #tafarian.

‘Oh, that’s a piece I bought many years ago from an artist called Leonardo de Capuccino. He was considered the Rodin of rodents. It commemorates the Great Giant Mouse Plague of 1946.’

‘But how did they get so big, Grandpa?’

‘Science gone wrong, my boy. Spectacularly. They used to be tiny furry creatures that could eat their way through anything. And they did. In plague proportions they brought Australian agriculture to its knees. So scientists invented a poison that killed them by the truckload and they were thought to be extinct. But a few survived and the poison mutated them into giants. Again they bred up in plague proportions until it appeared they would destroy the entire continent.’

Wide-eyed, the boy said ‘What happened then, Grandpa?’

‘Well, the Americans lent us a few H-bombs in exchange for our mortal souls for perpetuity. We nuked the pesky big creatures. The former Garden of Eden that was the inland became a barren desert and the Army bulldozed all the dead ones together to make Ayers Rock.’

‘Oh, Grandpa, Uluru existed for a long time before that!’

‘Boy, your AI humanoid teachers will say anything to cover up our sordid past. I bet they haven’t even told you that Tasmania used to be connected to the mainland and we had to dig a bloody great ditch to keep the Devils out.’

This piece was written in response to this photo on the Unicorn Challenge.

The selling agent, dressed in garish clothing and with a considerable belly hanging over his tightly cinched belt, took a jaundiced look at me before saying ‘I’ve given up my golf game for this so you better not be just another mooring rope kicker.’

‘No, no, not at all’ I protested. ‘I’m a genuine collector and I’ve been enthralled since I saw it on SeaBay.’

The agent began his pitch. ‘This craft is a meticulous reproduction of Black Bart’s Royal Fortune.’

I interrupted him with ‘Which one?’

‘What do you mean, which one? This is unique.’

‘Sorry, I’m not suggesting it’s not a unique copy. It’s just that Black Bart had several ships, all named Royal Fortune. So which one is this a copy of?’

The agent, reassured that I was indeed a genuine collector, said ‘I’ll look into that for you, sir. But as I said, it is a unique copy of … what it was copied from. I apologise for my scepticism earlier. It’s just that we get so many smart alecs wasting our time. You know the sort of thing. “How many miles to the galleon?” “Is it aaaaarghed to handle?”

I indicated my sympathy and said ‘That’s OK. I only have one other question. Do the masts fold down?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I ….’

‘It’s just that if the masts don’t fold down, I won’t be able to get it into the bottle.’

The agent’s face went from red to puce and I took off.

This piece was written for The Unicorn Challenge 250 word max. weekly photo prompt from the Gray/Ayr empire.

It had taken seven years for him to complete his glass-domed memoir with the sunset diorama in the background. From his wheelchair, every evening and most days would be spent working with tiny tools and a high-powered magnifying glass, to re-create the boat haven near where he was born and lived as a boy.

The marina and every boat were true to that time. The final touch was the fading sun nestled above the palms and the stick forest of masts, symbolising both his early hopes for the future and the meandering journeys in his life as he waited for its end.

His father took him fishing there when he was a boy. Catches were rare but, along with the wisdom imparted by his father as they surveyed the scene before them, they were worth the wait. One evening he said to his father, ‘Dad, what are those boats made from?’ His father sat silently for a while, as he often did, and then said ‘Bullshit, mostly.’

Sensing his son’s puzzlement, he went on. ‘Most of the people who own these boats made their money from selling dreams and illusions and things no-one really needs. And people bought them. And that’s where the money came from to build the boats.’

So the boy grew up not wanting to own a boat if that was the price but he always wanted to remember where and how that happened and encase it for posterity.

This piece is my response to the photo challenge that is the latest in Jenne and CE’s excellent adventure, and where no unicorns are harmed during production.

Don’t judge. You’d be depressed too if you had to sit here and listen to the same old shite every day from idiots dragged here by their better half and determined to make them pay by mocking all they don’t see.

Singing Gloria Gaynor off key, ‘First, I was afraid, I was petrified’.

‘Wonder if he’s got a wooden heart. Har, har, har.’

‘Make a great fireplace feature. Har, har, har.’

‘Wooden it be luvverly. Har, har, har.’

If only the Gods of Art would grant me special powers of metamorphosis, to be re-born as an avenging angel, travelling the world and meting out justice to the pea-brained philistines who have spread like a plague across the cosmos, aided and abetted by the WWW (World Wide Wankers).

Let me be able to paraphrase the words of Ezekiel and Samuel (updated for modern inclusiveness), ‘The path of the righteous man and woman is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men and women. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, for you have attempted to poison and destroy my brothers and sisters.’

And let me be able to leave them in my place in the gallery, listening to ‘I think this must have been the inspiration for Norwegian Wood, if you get my drift.’

Let them serve their time doing har, har, hard labour.