Number 138, The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the Room

For illustration

by

Stephen Saunders 

© 2013.

The Elephant in the Room.

Last Tuesday morning Johnnie awoke and opened his left eye. The other one was not available as it was pressed into his pillow by the weight of his head. It was still dark in his bedroom, but the luminous hands of the clock by his bed said five past seven as they usually did on a school day.  On Saturdays and Sundays they said ten to eight, as a rule.

Johnnie rolled over half a turn, closed his left eye, and tried the other one.  Something wasn’t quite right.  He took what he thought would be a deep breath, but for some unaccountable reason there didn’t seem to be as much oxygen in the room as usual.  What air there was tasted a bit stale too.  It made him cough.

He had recently given up his bunk beds for a new grown up kind of bed, so he no longer banged his head when he sat up, and there was generally somewhat more room around him than before. But this morning it felt like he had a lot less space.  It was still dark, very dark. 

He felt claustrophobic.

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There was a funny smell too.  Sometimes Rufus slept on the floor by Johnnie’s bed, and he often…. well nearly always, smelled.  Rufus is a dog, and dogs do smell.

But it wasn’t a Rufus smell:  Johnnie whispered “Rufus?”, and quickly determined that Rufus wasn’t there.

He looked towards the window.  Normally he’d be able to make out a bit of grey from the moon or from the first light of dawn behind the curtains, but not this morning. He couldn’t see anything.

The clock now said it was seven minutes past seven, and he noticed the minute hand flick to the right.  Eight minutes past.  He decided to get up.

It was when he got out of bed that he discovered that there wasn’t anything like as much room to move around in his bedroom as there should be either. As soon as he stood up, he bumped against something quite big that took up most of the room where he normally walked about.  The light switch was over by the door, but the way was blocked.  Johnnie decided to go round the other way, past his chest of drawers and around by the window.  When he got to the window, he pulled the curtains open to let in a bit of light.  It was still quite gloomy outside, but it made a  bit of difference, and he could see that there was indeed something very large in the way, occupying pretty much the entire room from floor to ceiling and almost wall to wall. It looked a lot like an elephant.

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Johnnie knew what elephants looked like, and that even though they take up all the space in a small room, they do have a gap underneath them. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled between the massive legs towards the door, then slipped out onto the landing.  He was still in his pyjamas.

Outside his room the claustrophobia he had been feeling disappeared and he stood up and stretched.  He turned on the landing light, and saw his bedroom door closing.  It was being pushed, squeezed shut by the large thing occupying his room.  He thought he saw a section of elephant trunk in the narrowing gap between the door and its frame as it closed.  But he wasn’t completely sure.

“You’re not dressed”, said his mother, as he sat down at the table for breakfast. 

“I know”, Johnnie replied, “There wasn’t enough room”.

“What do you mean, not enough room?”

“Well, there’s something taking up all the space in my bedroom.  I couldn’t open the drawers, and I couldn’t get to the light switch. I had to crawl out onto the landing in the dark”.

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“Well, when you’ve finished your toast you can go up and get dressed or we’ll be late for school.”

“Mum?”

“Yes”

“I think there might be an elephant in my room”.

“Of course there is dear, but just squeeze in and get dressed please, quick as you can”. 

She hadn’t noticed that the kitchen ceiling was bending downwards a little bit.  She was looking at Rufus rushing around in the garden barking at the rabbit holes along the back fence where presumably he’d just seen some action.  He looked like a happy dog.

Johnnie finished his toast and went back upstairs.  He pushed open the door and reached for the light switch.  There in the room, taking up very nearly all of it, was an elephant.

Johnnie’s mum had said, “Of course there is”.  She obviously knew about it, so it must be OK.

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He turned sideways and slipped past it onto the bed where there was a little bit more room to manoeuvre, and round to the other side of the room behind the elephant’s tail.  When he got to the chest of drawers he pulled out his pants and socks and school shirt through the narrow gap which was all he could get before the drawer bumped against the elephant’s bum. He found his trousers draped over the back of the chair and got back onto the bed.  There was just enough room to get dressed there. 

“Don’t be long now Johnnie!” his mum called from the bottom of the stairs.

Just then, as he got off the bed, Johnnie stepped in something soft and squidgy. He was still in his socks.

The elephant just stood there in the way, being an elephant.  There wasn’t a lot more it could do, as there was so little room left for doing things.  (Obviously there was one thing it had been able to do, but it had finished doing that).

Johnnie took his dirty sock off and found another clean one.  He took the other one downstairs to give to his mum for the washing machine.

“Eugh, what’s that?” his mum demanded.

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“I stepped in some of the elephant’s poo”, said Johnnie.

“So I see”, his mum replied, wrinkling up her nose, and a trifle puzzled.

And they set off in the car for school.  Rufus didn’t join them, he had spotted a squirrel.

“Mum?”

“Yes Darling”.

“You will give it something to eat and drink today, won’t you?  There’s nothing in my room an elephant can eat, and I can’t see how it can get out to find something for itself”.

“Sure I will, OK, don’t worry”.

Later on, when he was in double history, Johnnie’s mum took the Hoover upstairs. 

She did the landing and the big bedroom where she and Johnnie’s dad slept, then went to do Johnnie’s room.  She hesitated outside the door, and then thought, “Don’t be so silly, Elephant my foot!”  And in she went. 

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There was no elephant of course and so she got on with the Hoovering.  But there on the floor, over near the chest of drawers, she found the pile of poo.  Johnnie’s mum was used to finding odd things in his room, and she didn’t completely put it past him to have dreamt up something like this.  Perhaps it was horse poo that he’d collected from the road outside and brought upstairs when she wasn’t looking.  But really, leaving it on the carpet was a prank too far.  Surely Johnnie wouldn’t do that.  But there it was.   She went downstairs and got a carrier bag and scooped it up with a dustpan.  It smelled pretty awful, but no worse than you’d expect horse poo to smell.  But then there was a bit of a damp mark left on the carpet, so she went to the bathroom to get the floor sponge and some cleaning stuff from the little cabinet underneath the basin.

She went to open the bathroom door, but it was stuck.  Well, not stuck like locked, but it just wouldn’t push open.

“Strange”, she muttered, talking to herself, “what’s holding up the door?”

There was a slight movement as she tried again, and it opened about three inches, then three more.  Johnnie’s mum tried to peer inside through the little gap, and there, quite plainly was something very large, grey, and slightly hairy in places, more bristly than hairy, and moving a little bit, but not much. It looked to all intents and purposes like there was an elephant in the bathroom!

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Johnnie’s mummy gasped, putting her hand to her mouth, which she quickly took away as she realised she had just been clearing up poo and her hand might not be all that perfectly clean.

She ran downstairs and called Johnnie’s dad on his mobile.  He had only just arrived at work.

“Come home now. Whatever you’re doing doesn’t matter, come home now!”

Johnnie’s dad was very worried immediately. “Why, what has happened? Are you alright?”

“I’m ok, no-one’s hurt, but it is an emergency.  I can’t tell you what it is, but come home as quick as you can, hurry, hurry!”

Johnnie’s mum knew she couldn’t say what the trouble was, as he wouldn’t believe her.  Well, he wouldn’t would he?

She went into the kitchen.  The ceiling was no longer bending, but then she hadn’t noticed it when it had been, when the elephant was in Johnnie’s room. 

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If she had gone into the dining room, she might have noticed that it was sagging in the middle there, as the bathroom was immediately above it.  She was in a dither, so to calm down she made herself a cup of coffee, and while it was gurgling through the espresso machine she dashed across the road to her friend Bridget’s house.

“Quick, can you come over?” she gasped.  Bridget could see that all was not well.

“Why, whatever is the matter?” Bridget wanted to know.

“Just come please, I might be going mad, but if you see for yourself I’ll know if I am or not”.

Bridget’s curiosity was aroused. She was dying to know what was happening over the road, and needed no further encouragement.

Together they rushed back across the road and she followed Johnnie’s mum up the stairs and along the landing to the bathroom.  They stopped outside, one behind the other.

“What is it?” demanded Bridget, imagining a big spider, or maybe a bird trapped by the window or something like that.

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“Hold on”, said Johnnie’s mum, and gingerly pushed open the door.

Nothing… there was nothing there. There was the bath and the basin with the cupboard for sponges and things underneath, and the airing cupboard and the laundry basket and the little medicine cabinet on the wall, all there where they should be, and no dangerous creatures.  There wasn’t even a spider in the bath.  But most of all there was no elephant.  Johnnie’s mum even looked behind the door, which was silly really.

“Ah, oh dear, I’m sorry Bridget”, Johnnie’s mum apologised, very embarrassed.  I am sure it was here, and it couldn’t have got out, the door’s not wide enough”.

“What couldn’t have got out?”

“Well, that’s the thing, I, er, I don’t really know”.  Johnnie’s mum realised she could hardly say it was an elephant.

But just then they heard a big bump. The sound was coming from the spare room, which no-one had used for ages, not since Granny and Grandad had been to stay at Christmas.

“Did you hear that?” They both said, simultaneously.

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Now Bridget was feeling nervous.  “Maybe we’d better go downstairs and call the police”.

“Hold on a sec, let me have a look first”, Johnnie’s mum said, and moved towards the door.

“What if he’s armed and dangerous?” Bridget whispered.

“No, no, it’s nothing like that, it’s not a person”.

“Well, what is it then?” demanded Bridget. “It was a big bump, so it must be something big, I’m scared aren’t you?”

“Well, yes and no”, replied Johnnie’s mum.  And she opened the door to the spare room, slowly and carefully. 

There, looking quite lovely was an Indian elephant, curling its trunk and appearing to smile. It even had some traces of Indian ceremonial painting on its face, they way they do.

“Blimey!” exclaimed Bridget, and almost fainted.

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At this point, strangely perhaps, Johnnie’s mum felt a lot better.  She wasn’t mad after all, Johnnie hadn’t been telling tales, or pulling pranks with piles of horse poo, and the mystery was solved.  Well, not entirely, since there was no explanation for how it had got there, or why, and more weirdly, how it got from one room to another, since it couldn’t fit through any of the doors.

“What should we do?” Bridget asked.

Johnnie’s mum remembered what Johnnie had said on the way to school.

“We ought to give it something to eat oughtn’t we?”

“That wasn’t quite what I was thinking, but OK”, said Bridget, and they scuttled off downstairs to find some bread and bananas and things like that.  They felt better having something to busy themselves doing, putting a plan into action, so to speak.

Meanwhile Johnnie’s dad was driving home as fast as he could.

When the two friends, Bridget and Johnnie’s mum, went back upstairs there was no sign of the elephant anywhere.  They checked all the rooms.  They even checked them twice, as if they might have missed the elephant the first time!

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Now they were both wondering if they were seeing things, or going mad.

They were standing at the top of the stairs, clutching a packet of hamburger buns and a bunch of bananas when Johnnie’s dad came rushing in through the front door.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” exclaimed Bridget as she sank down on the top stair, quite pale and perplexed.  Johnnie’s mum, meanwhile was pulling herself together. 

“Come on, it can’t have gone far”, she said. 

“What can’t?” demanded her husband, who had no idea what he was doing back at home, and what the emergency was all about.

“Either we’re both seeing things, and Johnnie too, or there’s an elephant somewhere in the house”.  She said it so authoritatively that Johnnie’s dad felt completely unable to reply.  He just stood there in stunned silence.  He was thinking of saying “What?” but he couldn’t even manage that.

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Then they all heard a crash.  The noise came from the kitchen, as if a drawer full of cutlery had fallen on the floor.  In fact that’s exactly what it was. Johnnie’s dad got in front of the two women in a manly way to protect them, and opened the door.  There was the elephant, investigating the drawers and cupboards, pulling them open with its trunk. There was no real damage, just knives and forks all over the floor, and the elephant in the middle. It appeared to be quite happy.

“Jeepers!” Johnnie’s dad blurted out, “What on earth, quick, get back you two, um, give me those buns…” He didn’t know what to do any more than they did.  He was making it up as he went along!

He opened the packet and threw the buns on the floor and shut the door. 

“We need to call someone”, said Bridget, “The police perhaps”.

“Fire brigade”, suggested Johnnie’s mum, and picked up the phone that was on the hall table.  She dialled 999 and it was answered immediately.

“Which emergency service do you require?” the voice on the other end asked.

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“I don’t know, we’ve got an elephant in our house!”

 “Is anyone injured?”

“No, we just need someone to come and take it away”.

“Is the elephant injured?”

“No, it’s fine, actually it’s rather nice!  But it’s huge, and it’s in the house, and we need to do something”.

“OK, don’t worry, someone’s on the way”.

Fortunately for Johnnie’s mum the receptionist at 999 was new, but not stupid. She hadn’t got the experience to query a report as far-fetched as having an elephant in the house, and took it at face value.  Better err on the side of the caller she thought. And good thing too.

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About nine minutes later a fire engine raced up to the house, followed by two police cars two minutes after that, and then a small crowd gathered to see what was going on.  Rufus barked his head off from the moment the sirens could be heard approaching, until long after Johnnie’s dad had shut him in the car.  He was beside himself with excitement with all the activity, and he hadn’t even seen the elephant.  He may well have caught a sniff though.

“OK, stand back please”, instructed the Fireman who appeared to be in charge.  “Where is this animal?”

“In the kitchen”.

But of course it wasn’t.  The knives and forks were still scattered on the floor, and there were a few breadcrumbs too, but other than that you would never have known that an elephant had ever been there.

“Is this a wind-up?” the fireman enquired, in a stern but not too accusatorial manner. “I can’t see how an elephant could get through either of the doors unless it was a new born one, are we talking about a baby here?”

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“No”, said Johnnie’s dad, “it was pretty huge”.

“In here”, called a policeman, who had taken it upon himself to conduct a search of the property.  He was in the dining room, and there for all to see was the beautiful, smiling, happy elephant.  It had found a bowl of fruit and was helping itself.

Now it was the turn of the chief policeman to express his surprise. “Bloomin’ heck!” He spluttered, “I don’t believe it!”

But he had to.

“Is there a fair or circus in town?” someone asked.

“No there isn’t”, replied a newspaper journalist wearing a big badge saying ‘PRESS’, who had pushed in.  “It’s the wrong time of year for fairs, is winter”.

“What we need is a truck”, said Bridget.

“And somewhere to take it”, suggested Johnnie’s mum.

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“We’ll worry about that later, call Mr Wheatley and tell him to bring his cattle truck round pronto, he must be the nearest with a big lorry”, ordered the chief policeman who had regained his composure and was keen to reassert his authority. 

And somebody called Mr Wheatley.

Everyone wanted to see the elephant but the police wouldn’t allow them in, so queues formed to peer through the windows.  A van pulled up with a camera crew and they started interviewing everyone, once they’d had a chance to film the elephant through the front window. 

The best pictures they got, which everyone in the whole country saw later that evening on TV, was of the elephant when it was loaded onto the lorry.  Rufus could be heard going completely nuts in the background on the soundtrack, and the reporter struggling to make herself understood at all.

But that was after hours and hours had gone by.  Johnnie had come home from school by this time. His first job on getting home was always to feed Rufus, but I’m afraid he got overlooked last Tuesday and didn’t get his dinner until very late.

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The trouble, everyone realised, was there was no way of getting the elephant out of the dining room.  There were double doors to the living room, but even they were too narrow, and too low.  Everyone was asking how it got in the house in the first place, and no-one had any idea at all.  Normally there is someone with a theory, but everyone just scratched their heads, and had no suggestions to make whatsoever.

But somehow they had to get it out.  Eventually, Johnnie’s dad agreed that a builder would have to come and take down a big section of the front wall.  He wondered if his insurance covered things like this.

“Wait a minute”, said Johnnie.  “It started off in my room, then it’s been in every room upstairs, and now it’s been in the kitchen and the dining room as well, and no-one had to knock any walls down for that.”

“That’s true”, said the chief policeman, whose bald head was now starting to get sore with the amount of scratching it had had.

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“Of course”, said his mum, “Johnnie’s right, when we are not looking it sometimes moves to another room all by itself.  But we’ve not left it alone since this morning, and it’s still in the dining room”. 

The chief fireman and the chief policeman took a bit of convincing, but they really had no option but to give it a try, or demolish half the house; “Everyone out, and shut the door”, commanded the fireman eventually. 

“And turn and look the other way as well”, shouted Johnnie, and amazingly everyone did what they were told.  Not for very long though, as they were all too excited and impatient to behave that well.

Johnnie was the nearest to the door and was the one who opened it, once they felt they had all stood around looking foolish for long enough.  Sure enough, the elephant was gone.  And it wasn’t in the living room either.

“In there!” yelled a little girl, pointing to the big ‘up-and-over’ garage door which was bulging out. 

“There, I told you”, said Johnnie, feeling quite pleased with himself.

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“OK, stand well back please!” the fireman ordered, with as much authority as he could muster, and pulled hard on the garage door handle.  It opened to reveal the elephant sitting down surrounded by bicycles and canoes and garden chairs and all the other odds and ends that cluttered up the garage. 

Mr Wheatley, who had arrived some time earlier, backed the truck up the driveway and lowered the big ramp which formed the back door of the truck. 

Johnnie’s mum took the bunch of bananas that were still on the stairs since the morning, and held one out to the elephant. 

“Here…” She almost said kitty kitty! She didn’t know what the familiar term for an elephant was, “Here… nice banana!” 

Up it got, and walked out towards her.  She felt completely safe and unafraid.  Indeed, she was enjoying herself now, like the ringmaster in a surreal circus. The News cameras were all on her, and most of the crowd had their mobile phones out taking pictures. The elephant took the banana in its trunk and ate it whole, then reached out for another one. 

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“Not so fast”, Johnnie’s mum said, and holding the banana just out of reach led the elephant to the truck for the next one, and inside for a third.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Bridget said, feeling tears of something or other welling up inside, and then she hugged Johnnie, as she became a bit emotional about it all.

Johnnie’s mum emerged from the truck and everyone cheered, Bridget especially.  Mr Wheatley closed the door and made it secure.  Then he set off for Marwell Zoo, which had offered a temporary home to the elephant while its owners were being traced, whoever they might be.  It was quite a long way, but the newspaper journalists, and the TV crew, and several car loads of local people followed it, including Johnnie and his mum and dad (and Rufus).   Johnnie was wishing that the adventure would never end.

On the way, no-one paid any attention to several big posters that had been put up on various telegraph poles and on bus shelters and hoardings advertising The Great Monty Carlo, World Famous Magician & Illusionist. Get your tickets now. His show was in town.

When they opened the truck at Marwell, it was empty!

The End

Or is it?

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© Stephen Saunders