Forks by Owen Townend

            Linda needed help getting the guy out the back of her Landrover.

            "Grab the head," she told me, "I've got the feet."

            The Guy Fawkes effigy was still wrapped up in an old bed sheet except for the black papier-mâché hat. It fell off and I caught a glimpse inside the sheet. I turned back to Linda.

            "I thought you were joking!"

            Linda ran the local chippy. It was a small place in an especially dull corner of the village. The most excitement that had happened recently was the massive order of wooden forks that had come through in early October.

            Linda set the delivery men straight about the mistake immediately but they didn't want to hear about it. The paperwork said that she would either receive the whole delivery or the lot would just be taken back. She gritted her teeth and signed on the dotted line.

            "I swear," she told everyone that day, "I'll find some use for these bloody things."

            And she did. This year Guy Fawkes was entirely composed of those forks. Linda had glued them all together into a large, thin, hunched body.

            "Why?"

            Linda shrugged. "Thought it would be different."

             "It is," I replied, helping her sit him up on the float. "Still, couldn't you have used the forks as, you know...forks?"

            Linda plucked one of them from the effigy's shoulder. She held it between thumb and forefinger and applied a small amount of pressure. The fork splintered in two.

            "Flimsy as anything."
            I frowned. "Couldn't you have got the money back instead?"

            She shook her head. "Company went bust about a week after that delivery."
            "Bloody typical."

            "Yeah," Linda said, sitting the black hat atop the lined face of the guy, "Still, even the flimsiest wood burns."
            Now there was profundity. Nevertheless the crooked painted eyes of this strange wooden effigy remained more than a little unsettling.

            "So then," Linda said, "Shall we tell them we're ready?"

            Everyone else in the village took to the idea of a literal Guy Forks right away. It appeared that I was the only one who had had any doubts and even then, as the effigy was flung onto the roaring bonfire, they just as quickly went up in smoke.

            Linda and I leaned back in our deckchairs. There was a sudden bursting sound and a flash of violet brightened the rising flames.

            "Another thing about those forks," she told me, "Some of them had a weird lacquer."

            I thought about responding but then that would have meant taking my eyes off the bonfire. After the violet, its glow seemed to have intensified.

            I heard a new snap and hiss: Linda had pulled out two cans of Dandelion and Burdock, one of which she passed to me.

            "It'll do," she muttered.

            Somewhere within the heart of the bonfire, the tines of Guy Forks were cracking and crackling.