‘Ain’t he gorgeous?’ gasped Billy Bunter.
The Fat Owl of the Remove beamed.
His little round eyes fairy sparkled behind his big round spectacles. Happy satisfaction irradiated his fat visage.
It was early evening at Greyfriars School and Bunter was in study no. 2 drooling over the picture he held in his chubby hands of his Remove chum, Harry Wharton.
What was a 14-year-old chap to do when he was so devotedly, overwhelmingly, head-over-heels in love?
Bunter squeaked. He was a fat schoolboy beloved by readers all over the English-speaking world (excluding for copyright reasons, the United States) and he had been aged fourteen years old for three decades and counting and would never be allowed to mature.
He tucked into a cream cake and mused silently, why couldn’t the hack writer who had created him and sustained his miserable life all these years have a heart. What was a normal red-blooded English boy, bursting with hormones, expected to do? No wonder he stuffed his face with so much food; it was to compensate for the total absence of sex in his life. The writer wouldn’t even allow him to self-pleasure (even though Bunter had no doubt his real-life fans were at it every day).
Bunter studied the photograph with dewy eyes. The clear-faced, cheery smile of the fittest-boy in Greyfriars beamed back at him. Bunter kissed the picture tenderly then sobbed uncontrollably.
A lesser writer would then have Harry Wharton and Bob Cherry snogging together in the next-door study.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 