What to do when bored...

You heard me, What To Do When Bored..?

Well, let's ask Sammy the Spoon. There's a man who knows what boredom is all about. He was borne into this world spitting and snarling, full of steam and hissing. Moulded in the image of his father, and his father's father before that, he was preordained a role in life from which he will never escape. His family were a serving family, only ever asked upon to perform simple tasks in the baking heat, and for little recompense. Sammy was a dreamer though, his thoughts in the sky, when everything around him was in the gutter.

Sammy didn't ask for much, he never expected to take pride of place for doing his job, well or not; he just wanted to be appreciated more often. Just once to be noticed, and kept near his master while he appreciated the efforts of his toil. A little ackowledgement of his efforts, and he'd be happy. It never came. Sammy worked every day in the boiling heat, and no sooner had he performed his role (expertly, by the way, for Sammy was a dedicated character), than he'd be cast aside. Again. Sammy lay on his back, rejected and discarded. Door closed to his cell, he started to reminisce about his youth, and about how that was just as shit as his adult life.

Sammy's mother was known as 'The Foundry'. Known so because she was smoking hot. She was a firey tempered matriarch, but she was still his mum. Sammy was sick of the running joke that she 'worked with a lot of slags'; he loved her and he missed her. He was still warm from being in her belly when they took him away, never to see her again. Young as he was, he never forgot her. She looked like an angel to Sammy, a hazy glow around her as he was marched away. An ethereal heat stroked his round face as he was led away, he was sure of it. The last tender strokes from his mama, telling him everything would be okay. Time may well muddy the memory, but he wanted to have that one link to his mother so much. If sentiment had overcome fact, then so be it. It was all he had of his mother. As he was led away, still soft and weak, a tear formed on his cheek.

Wet behind the ears, and with no savvy towards his captors, he was easy meat in what the bastard dictators called the 'Sorting Room'. On his way into this hellhole, he was branded by a hot plate, some kind of symbol and number forcibly stamped on the back of his neck. The pain nearly driving him unconscious, he was led to his numerically appropriated cage. Refusing to buckle and fold, he looked at his surroundings, and took in the Sorting Room.

A despicable place where they actually picked the better looking 'newborns', and gave them the better jobs, it was obvious to Sammy early on that he wasn't going to get one of the favoured jobs. The tear on his cheek from his mama had left a big welt, and it was clear that the bastard dictators (let's just call them the BD's from here, yah?) were looking for something he couldn't offer. Sammy and all of the other captives, upon hearing the door open, would jostle for position, trying to force their way to the front. Time and again Sammy was left behind, no matter how near the front he was. It was clear that the BD's would never pick him.

Or so he thought. After several weeks, it was obvious that the BD supplies were running thin, as every newbie had obvious physical flaws. Sammy befriended a strange looking fellow who had the longest neck, but crooked like a wizened tree branch. Sammy jestingly called him 'Corky' on his first day in the cell. Corky awkwardly flipped his gangly crooked neck around to see the fizzog of his adversary, but the first sight he locked on was the tear shaped welt on young Sammy's face. As imperfect as he. The two became great friends.

Sammy and Corky became the seasoned pro's of the Sorting Room. With a devillish sense of humour, they were able to cope with the systematic removal of everyone around them. Acquiesced to being last on the heap, Sammy and Corky used to laugh at all the pretty boys, the 'Silver Spoon' brigade, as they were dragged away. As each posh-polished one was led away, they'd bray "ooh, away to meet the Queen, are we?"; gallows humour to paper over the cracks of their own sorry predicament. And the predicament duly came to a head.

Sammy and Corky knew their time was up when the cage, their home for Lord knows how long, was barely a quarter full, and the BD's came in for their next quota. For maybe the first time since both had arrived, they were the healthiest looking pair in there. Forcing their way to the front of the cage through habitual anti-authoritarianism ("Yeah, come on then, take me, ya bastards!"), and never expecting to actually get picked, the fleeting few seconds it took to remove them from their home of so long was fillled with panic, hysteria and a lot of screaming. Despite the shock and panic of finally being removed from the cage, Sammy remembered praying to the Lord, and cursing Satan himself, Uri Geller.

The journey was horrible. Sammy and Corky were lucked to be boxed in together, but still their journey was mostly spent in absolute darkness. Impossible to gauge where they were going, it was a trip of fits and starts. Pitch black, and rumbling for ages, then a stop, and a crashing halt. Then the same again. And again. Then one day, daylight.

Light burst into their holding pen, and in the time it took them to adjust to their new surroundings, Sammy focused and saw a fine beard on Corky. He looked a lot older now, even though Sammy knew him to be the pup of the two. Light shining off of his beard, Sammy marvelled at the ginger, rusty colour of it. He hadn't seen such vibrancy in light since he was dragged away from him mother. Mother. The thoughts of his mother came crashing back, just as his new BD's carted Corky away. The same feeling of panic, that same ghostly orange glow captured in the sunshine, as Sammy knew he'd be left all alone again.

Which is where he is now, all alone. Locked in his cell, reminiscing. Remembering his shit life, his missing mama, and his missing friend. His only friend. Sammy has been working alone for some time now, and knows that his card is marked. The months of toil have left him looking knackered. Sammy's time will come soon. Nearly black from the filth of his job, and alone, he waits to be taken to that same place everyone else ended up. Hell, Heaven, who knows.





What, you still here? Fuck me, I know I'm bored, but you too? Or were you expecting more? It was a story about a tea-spoon. A spoon. That's what you do when you're bored, got any better ideas? God bless Sammy though, I'll never throw him away.