Accidents Will Happen

A small engineering factory, April the first, just after half past one in the morning. Three men are just sitting down, taking a half hour mid shift break. Two are old friends and have worked together for twenty years, the other in his first year of employment.

"Every time I've looked at you for the last couple of hours, you're either looking at the clock or your bloody phone, it's four and a half hours 'til clocking out time, you on a promise or something?"

"No, I reckon it'll be a couple of weeks before I get any if my revenge has worked." Colin answers with a grin.

"Oh yeah, it's all fools day, getting your own back for last year I suppose, come on, what have you done?"

"Nah, keeping it to myself for now, it should have happened an hour ago so I thought she would have been on the phone by now to chew my bollocks off.

"What did she do to you last year?" asks the teenager.

The two older men burst into laughter just as the canteen door opens. "Here Col, there's a couple of coppers outside, they're saying they have to talk to you and you're going to have to go with them," another man says, poking his head through the doorway.

"Fuckin' hell, she's got you strippers." Alan says still laughing.

"Don't think their strippers Col, not unless your missis thinks you're a secret shirt lifter, besides, they ain't in uniforms."

Colin is no longer laughing, feeling concerned he makes his way to the factory entrance, Alan begins relating the tale of last year's prank played on Colin by his wife.

"You know that VX800 he sold just after you started working here. Well he had it stripped and were just putting it back together. He'd done the gearbox and were just lifting one of the barrels on when Monica, bless her, walks in with a dry powder fire extinguisher and lets him have it. Stupid bloody thing to do but the silly bitch did it."

Getting a puzzled look from the young man, Alan continues. "If you've never seen one of them set off you're lucky. That shit goes every fucking where. He was sooo pissed off, it took him days to get his garage usable again and then he had to strip the engine down again. Fuck me I think he must have got more blowjobs in the month afterwards than he'd had for as long as they've been together." Alan sniggers, "once he managed to stop the powder getting inside his drawers, which must've been about a week after he got the engine back together."

Outside Colin, convinced that this is a prank, manages to negotiate with the two men that he follows them to the police station.

Although unconvinced they are real policemen, he rides to the station, his concern growing as he gets nearer to the destination.

He is taken through to an interview room almost immediately, as he is led through a number of corridors and hallways he is certain he catches a glimpse of his wife being shown through another doorway. His relief when they confirm it was her is apparent.

Eventually he finds himself in a small room with no windows, he is told to sit and he asks again what is happening, one of the men asks him why he did it. Thinking that his wifes prank has panicked his wife and she had called the police, he is now certain the prank has been misunderstood and starts to explain about his wife's prank with the dry powder extinguisher.

Once he is finished with his tale, he is asked whether a poisonous bomb is an appropriate response.

"Huh? What do you mean poisonous? It was only flour."

"But it wasn't flour, was it Mr Bull."

"Yeah it was, I got it out of the Tupperware™ container in the kitchen cupboard."

The two police officers mutter a conversation and one of them leaves the room.

Colin Bull and the other officer sit in silence until he returns, again they mutter a conversation and one of them queries, "Are you telling me you were unaware what type of flour you used?"

"Well no, it was some gluten free shit she bought to use a while back and I didn't think we ever used except once a couple of years ago, because her mother got the shits for a couple of days and convinced herself that she had developed a gluten allergy."

"Yes, but what kind of flour?"

"Haven't got a clue, she used it once for yorkies, they were horrible, as far as I know she's never used it since," he says, "shit twenty years ago nobody knew what gluten was unless they were a celiac now there's more people with so called gluten allergies than there are hay fever sufferers. I think it's all bollocks."

"It was peanut flour Mr Bull."

"Yeah, that's another one of these so called allergies that's become a fad, you know some schools have banned peanuts because some little shitbag might get a rash. Shit we never had any of that when I was a school, you two too no doubt. No, now you come to mention both of them together, that's it isn't it? People start thinking they have a peanut allergy so the peanut market suffers, so they retaliate and have a go at the flour market by pushing what was a very rare and real condition to get sales for imitation flour made from nuts. That or vice versa."

"That's all very well Mr Bull, but putting ridiculous conspiracy theories aside, why did you choose to use the peanut flour instead of regular flour?"

"Because it was there and was just taking up cupboard space, because as far as I'm concerned it was fucking useless."

"Do you know Mr Richard Small?"

"Dickie Small, yeah unfortunately, what's he got to do with this?"

"You say unfortunately, why is that?"

"Yeah, as if you haven't checked, well about fifteen years ago he was sniffing around my missis and he wouldn't leave her alone so I gave him a slap... or two."

"A slap or two, really Mr Bull, a broken collar bone and two broken ribs is hardly a slap or two."

"Look I really only hit him three or four times, I didn't know he would break so easily, but that was years ago."

"But you're not on good terms now."

"No," Colin says emphatically.

"Are you aware of his allergy to nuts?"

"Nooo," he says as realisation begins to dawn, "Are you telling me that bastard has been fucking my wife?"

"Are you saying you knew nothing of their relationship?"

"No I fucking didn't," he shouts angrily, "Is the cheating slag still here? Cos if she is, make sure she knows to get herself and her shit out of my house, or I'll be coming straight back here."

"Calm down Mr Bull, I will ask you again, were you aware of your wife's affair with Mr Small?"

"No I wasn't, if I was; you would have me down here for fucking murder, I'd have killed the cunt."

"Mr Bull, that is precisely why you are here."

"What? Are you saying the slimy cunts dead?"

"Yes Mr Bull and you are responsible."

"What? The flour? That killed him?"

"It would seem so Mr Bull."

"Hahahahah, hahahah, hahahah, tell me, was it painful, hahahaha?"

"Yes Mr Bull, his skin blistered, it would have felt like he was being burned alive, his skin, his lungs, in-fact anywhere his body came into contact with the flour."

"Hahaha, thank you, that's really cheered me up."

Talking over Colin's gleeful laughter one of the cops asks, "Mr Bull, do you not realise the seriousness of this?"

Nodding his understanding he continues laughing, "Hahaha, fuck me, that makes my day, it almost makes up for being married to a cheating slag, maybe I won't throw her arse out... Really? The cunts dead and he died an agonizing death, oh that's fucking brilliant."

So Mr Bull, for the record, you are telling us that you did plant a flour bomb, but your reasons were just an April fools prank on your wife and not to intentionally do harm to your wife's lover?"

"Yes, hahaha, that's it."

"In that case Mr Colin Bull I arrest you on the charge of manslaughter, you do not have to say anything but should you choose to do so anything you say can and will be taken down and maybe used against you in a court of law."

Epilogue

The case made the national news. At the inquest, Colin showed no sign of remorse and although chastised several times for laughing during Monica's deposition, especially her description of Richard Small's skin blistering and his screams of agony, a verdict of death by misadventure given and no charges brought..

Tired of daily presents of peanuts from her neighbours and co-workers Monica moved and changed jobs,

A thrash metal version of the children's song, "found a peanut" with slightly altered lyrics reached number two in the charts. Colin and Monica were divorced soon after.