The Prowler

    “And you say it happened again last night.”
    “Yes Number Two.”
    “The girl, she wasn’t.........harmed?”
    “No Number Two. She saw a figure at her window.”
    “Could she describe the figure?”
    “She said she couldn’t be sure it was man.”
    “A woman?”
    “She.......”
    “Yes.”
    “Well sir she said it was a figure, not a man or woman, but a white figure, almost translucent.”

    “Translucent?”
    “The girl said it had no facial features!”
    “What?”
    “Where the eyes and mouth should have been was membrane!”

    It was in the woods now running along a path. It had been seen, and it knew it had been seen. Now they would come to hunt it down. But what harm had it done to any living thing? No harm, no harm at all, it’s only crime, curiosity.

    “Number Two isn’t going to like this!”
    “It wasn’t our fault, just the natural progression of evolution.”
    “Tell that to Number Two!”
    “Perhaps we could retrieve it.”
    “And how exactly do we do that?”
    “It can’t have gone far.”
    “It’s already gone too far, too far outside this laboratory!”

    “We shouldn’t have kept it hidden.”
    “What else could we have done, once it showed signs of change.”
    “But really is it natural to have taken on the shape of a man?”

    “What!”
    “It has metamorphosized!”
    “How did it do that?”
    “We don’t know sir. It can now take on any form of its choosing, at the current time it’s in the form of a man.”
    “But easy to spot, it being white membrane.”
    “Yes sir.”

    Out on top of the cliffs sat the white mebranic form of a figure, it sat there looking up at the night sky, the moon and the stars, concentrating intently. But where it should have eyes there was smooth membrane, so could it see, or could it comprehend by some other means? Suddenly there came a rustling in the undergrowth. From a bush a rabbit slowly immerged. The rabbit sensed danger, it was quick to move, but the white figure was quicker and on the rabbit, smothering it, suffocating it to death.

    “Supervisor.”
    “Yes what is it?”
    “There’s something white running from the cliffs across the sand” an observer reported.
    “White you say, put up camera twenty-one.”
    On the wall screen was the great empty white expanse of sand, it was getting dark, but there running at speed across the sand was the white shape of a rabbit!
    “It can’t be!” ejaculated the Supervisor in astonishment.
    “If it gets across the estuary and into the countryside on the far side we’ll never catch it!” exclaimed 21 the Supervisor’s assistant.
    “Activate the beam, hellfire.”
    “Suddenly the pair of steel doors to the Control room opened and Number 2 immerged onto the steel gantry.
    “What is it, what’s going on here?”
    “It’s the prowler, it’s making for the far side of the estuary” the Supervisor informed him.
    “Where, where is it?” Number 2 asked peering at the large wall screen.

    “There sir, it’s taken the form of a rabbit.”
    “A rabbit.......how did it manage to do that?”
    “I don’t know sir, but if it gets away.”
    “Well carry on then.”
    “Beam on sir” reported the operator “Strength setting hellfire.”
    “Very well, fire.”

    The white rabbit was oblivious to what was taking place in the domed chamber of the Control Room. Oblivious to the top of the flagpole opening and a steel rod emerge, the rod which tilted and swivelled, then....... A team set off across the sand in a Mini-Moke, its siren blaring out, I say a team, it was more like two men with a shovel and bucket. But they were not out to build sandcastles. There wasn’t much left of what had escaped the laboratory, what there was, was a white splat of white membrane, which was scooped up with the shovel and dumped in the bucket!
    “This looks like the end of the Prowler. What do we do now Two-four three?”
    “We analyse, Two-four-nine, analyse this membrane, discover what went wrong, and start again!”

Be seeing you