People's Choice Award: Samson and Delilah

By Gail Brooks

EXCERPT:

     Hearing the commotion I rushed to answer the door. Nobody was there. Costumed as a seven-foot ghost with flickering red eyes, I had an elaborately wired headdress - a polystyrene mannequin's head and shoulders painted black - the base of which sat on the top of my head and was lashed to my shoulders. Embedded into the mannequin's face were a pair of red lightbulbs that could be operated by a switch in my pocket. A dark shroud, suspended from the top of the rig, reached to the ground and dragged behind me like a train. I had cut a little slit in the shroud through which I could, with some difficulty, peep. Like Russ, I had a visibility problem. Also like Russ, my arms were trapped inside my costume. Underneath the outfit I had on only a pair of shorts, and was barefoot.

     When I realised that Samson and Delilah had waylaid someone, I hoisted my shroud, picked up my cricket bat from the umbrella stand, and headed off down the drive. Because of my bloody costume, I could hardly see a thing, but my ears told me that all Hell had broken loose. It was a sort of aural bedlam. Both Russ and Nell had regained their feet but both turkeys were still in full attack mode. The noise was incredible. Russ was cursing loudly and fluently in at least two languages. His tape recorder had come on and a tinny Rhumba was blaring from T-Rex's belly. Samson and Delilah were gobbling madly between pecks and Nell was still shrieking. By this time a couple of other carloads of guests had arrived. Seeing what was happening to Russ and Nell, they prudently waited in their cars until things settled down a little - well, actually, they waited until things settled down a lot!

     Coming up unseen, as I did, I had time to take aim. Carefully hoisting my shroud to free my right arm, I got a death-grip on the bat and gave Samson a full straight-arm rising stroke right in the parson's nose. It lifted him, in a cloud of feathers, at least two feet off the ground. Giving a single agonised squawk he hit the ground running. Galloping unsteadily, he quickly disappeared into the oleanders. Delilah ignored both his departure and my arrival. She was still occupied with Nell's one remaining greave. Nell, her aluminium skirt rattling and clanking, was still pushing ineffectively at the irate turkey hen with her little shield with Delilah systematically demolished her shin guard. And, incidentally, her shin. Delilah had drawn quite a lot of blood and Nell was close to hysteria.

     Russ, still nearly blind, and having no idea what was going on, made a break for the door. Unfortunately - almost invisible against the night in my black shroud - I was between him and it. Trying to attend to Nell, I never even saw him coming, and he simply bowled me over. I fell forward into Nell. Already leaning against the wall, she managed to remain upright. I caromed off her, spun around, tripped over something and sat down - hard. Almost immediately I realised that it wasn't all over yet. There was something alive between my legs. Something violently active that gobbled and squawked. I had fallen backward on top of Delilah, and she was under me - or rather between my spread legs - and held to the ground by the back of my shroud.

     "Got the bitch," I thought. "I don't have to see to do this. I can do it by feel!" Almost without thinking, I wrapped my arms around Delilah at ground level, gathered up as much cloth as I could, and tightened my grip. I had her, all right. Now I had to figure what to do with her. She wasn't going any place, but neither was I. With thirty pounds of frantic turkey half trapped in my costume and half against the ground, there was no way I could get up without letting her go. And there was certainly no way I was letting her go. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the switch had got joggled and my red eyes had begun to flash.