MicroHorror

They’d been trapped in the elevator of a London department store for the past five minutes–trying not to make eye contact with each other–when it happened. Worst-case scenario. One of them farted. In an ideal world the Muzak would have been droning away in the background and the air conditioner running–but not today. Both were out of action, along with the rest of the lift.

“I say, old boy, you could have waited.”

“How do you know it was me?”

“Because I heard you let rip. I can smell it. And I saw your bloody cassock flapping in the breeze.”

“As the good Lord says, let he who is without blame cast the first stone.”

“Why, you priggish little snit. If you weren’t a man of the cloth I’d give you a good, sound thrashing. I boxed for my school and my regiment, don’t you know.”

The priest took a long, slow, deep breath. “Before I took up parishional work,” he said, pausing only to crack his knuckles, “I was a chaplain in the army. I know all too well what your class are like. But, as it happens, I also boxed for my regiment.”

If the lift’s CCTV had been working, it could have told us who struck the first blow. As it was, its two occupants were far too busy brawling to notice that the lift had started moving again–and was now descending very, very fast.

And so it was that the priest’s first task upon meeting his maker was to explain why his final moments had been devoted to beating the living daylights out an elderly gentleman. And that gentleman, a churchwarden at his local place of worship, had to explain why he’d been trying to throttle a priest at the very moment the lift was dashed to pieces at the bottom of the shaft.

Fortunately for both of them, their maker–a stout, laughing, shaven-headed Oriental-looking man in robes, with a pot-bellied stomach–had a sense of humor and promptly reincarnated both of them as kangaroos.