Cocky EXTRA!
By:
May 20, 2010
What happens to Cocky between Fits? Where does he go? A number of readers have contacted us, apparently unable to endure the customary two-week wait to see how things play out. Such was their anxiety, indeed, that we have taken the rare step of commissioning a special ‘bonus’ scene from Cocky author James Parker, to keep (as it were) the wolf from the door.
In the latest installment of The Ballad of Cocky the Fox, Cocky went to the Yard on the advice of Weasel Paul to acknowledge the new order in the Borough. At the end of the episode, we left Cocky on his way back to his domicile — the hutch he shares with the albino rabbit Champion — in a dangerous mood, boiling with humiliation from his dressing-down by Borough boss Billy Five Wives.
NOW READ ON…
Rolling grimly up the garden at the night’s end, I hear murmurings from the hutch. The door is open; there’s the smudge of paleness that is Champion, almost phosphorescent at this hour, and next to him the narrow form of the weasel. Are they talking about me? What else could they be talking about? Their voices in quiet communion, domed by the approaching dawn: the thin, confidential voice of Weasel Paul, the louder unmusical voice of the Champ. Outrageous, after the night I’ve had. Intolerable to me is this gentleness, this early-morning mutuality. I must destroy it!
‘Worst consigliere EVER!!’ I screech, loud enough to bring answering woofs and cackles from the surrounding gardens.
‘What happened?’ Paul’s shape rises in the dim hutch.
‘You and your analyses! Useless! They made a wanker out of me over there!’
‘Kebab?’ suggests Champion. (Greedy rabbit: he can smell it.)
‘Wait,’ says Paul. ‘Wait. I know what happened. Your cousin had a go at you and you lost your temper. You blew it.’
‘Call yourself a weasel? I’d get better advice from a fucking hamster!’
Two warning jolts of red from his eyes, like brake-lights. ‘Watch it, Cocky… We’re friends, but —’
‘I should have asked Champion what to do!’
The Weez’s head is weaving and dipping, his upper lip peeling back. ‘You don’t want to get on my mental side, fox.’ He clicks his teeth. ‘My dental side, know what I mean?’
‘Oh, give me some of that, then, go on,’ Kneading the ground with my forepaws. ‘Let me taste it. How bored I am with this chitty-chatter! For weeks you’ve been chitty-chattering at me. And you’re a crap dancer.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He’s bobbing about like Prince Nas now, all fluffed up with fury. ‘Oh yeah? Then fucking COME ON!!!!’
He flies at me, at full stretch, his fanatical and unbelievably vehement little face coming at me from between the white V-sign of Champion’s ears. And then for a time I seem to be not so much ‘fighting’ as ‘catastrophically involved in a vortex of weasel-ness.’ Bites from everywhere, insults from everywhere, ‘Die, you foxy bastard!’ in both ears although he’s not trying to kill me, is he? I hope he isn’t. More than one of him in this attack, surely — some weaselly fission has occurred and there are several Pauls whizzing round and round, unfooting me, beating me. Vainly I swipe at them, connecting randomly, clumsified by their speed. ‘Okay! Okay!’ I shout. So it ends: Cocky on his back, bemused and smarting and trussed in invisible wires.
Sparrows prattle around us. The air cools. Weasel Paul over his shoulder, limping off, shoots me a look congested with hurt. Oh dear!
‘Oi,’ I say. ‘Come back.’
But he doesn’t.
Each installment of THE BALLAD OF COCKY THE FOX was complemented by an issue of THE SNIFFER, a COCKY THE FOX newsletter written and edited by Patrick Cates. Originally sent only to subscribers, they are now all freely available here.
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