St Declans N.S.

Triplet Troubles ….. a story by Francis Walsh

Once upon a time there were triplets who went by the names of Mick, Nick and Rick Parker. Rick was a troublemaker, who never did well in school. What was more, you could see it just by looking at him. His head was completely shaved, apart from a thin strip down the middle, which was dyed bright green. As well as that, he had a metallic silver lip stud embedded into his face just above his chin. The others were nothing like him in looks. They both had jet black hair that fell down to their necks. They also had a towering height of 6ft 4in, which was more than could be said for their 6ft brother. On a sunny July day, we find them buying sweets at a petrol forecourt.

“Hey Nick, I bet you five euro I can stuff seventy litres of petrol into that Toyota over there” boasted Rick, chomping on a liquorice lace.

The car Rick had pointed to was an old one, ten years at least. It also had a shattered windscreen and a dented door, and to top it all it was a diesel car, but this didn’t bother Nick.

“You’re on” he said confidently, as he paid for his bag of Sherbet Fizzbombs.

As Rick stepped onto the pavement, he noticed two middle aged men coming up the road, smoking cigarettes.

“ Hmmm” he thought. “ That might make it a little more interesting…” Rick unhooked the nozzle of the pump and set to work.

“ Twenty litres and counting!” Rick yelled excitedly, almost crushing the fiver he was holding in his left hand.

At this stage, Mick noticed what his brothers were doing. Knowing that the Toyota did not belong to them, he realized that they were up to no good. Then he noticed something else-the petrol was beginning to spew out of the car, unobserved by the other two. Then, noticing the two smokers and putting two and two together, he tried to scramble out the door and promptly fell over on a patch of wet floor. At this point the shopkeeper noticed what was going on and in his haste to jump over the counter he tripped over Mick and landed messily on the wet floor.

Meanwhile, the men with cigarettes had come to a halt. One of them saw something on the ground that looked like gold and in his curiosity he bent to pick it up, dropping the lit cigarette to the ground. This motion caused the cigarette to roll towards the expanding pool of petrol, and just as Mick made it to the door……… KABOOM!!!!

Rick rolled over and woke up. He found himself lying on a sofa in an incredibly fancy room. It had floor to ceiling paintings on the walls that looked as though they were by someone famous, perhaps even Van Gough or Da Vinci. There were two water fountains in the very centre of the room, both emitting water gracefully down their solid stone bodies.

“Look who’s awake” a voice said from behind him.

Rick turned around to see his two brothers grinning down at him. He stood up drearily.

“ Where the heck are we?” Rick asked, subconsciously scratching the only bit of hair he had.

“We’re as confused as you are, and that’s saying something” Mick replied.

Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by a swishing noise at the back of the room. All eyes darted to the source of the noise. A small dark- haired man emerged from the automatic door.

“Can we help you?” Nick asked confusedly. “You can’t help me” he replied, “but perhaps I can help you.” “You may remember that the last time you were awake, you made a childish and, if I may say so, stupid bet on the capacity of a car’s fuel tank”

At this point Mick opened his mouth to say he hadn’t been involved, but the man ploughed on regardless.

“You risked the lives of not only yourselves, but three other innocent people, who, unlike you three, never woke up to tell the tale.” A pause followed. Then Mick broke the silence.

“Please sir” he said in his best wheedling tone, “where are we now?” The man sighed.

“Waterford Regional Hospital” he said matter-of-factly.

There was another moment of silence. Then it was broken again, this time by Nick.

“Look boss, I don’t know who you think you’re fooling, but this isn’t the Waterford Regional we remember”.

“It was done up while you were asleep” the man said mysteriously.

At this, all three boys gaped.

“ Well ye must have fairly fast builders” scoffed Rick.

“Actually, no” the man continued in that same mysterious voice.

“Well then, how long have we been asleep?” queried Mick.

“ It must have been quite a while if you had time to do up the place like this” he said.

“It was quite a while” the man sighed. “One hundred years, three months, two weeks and four days to be exact!”

All of the three reacted differently to this. Mick fainted, Nick staggered around as if he was drunk, and Rick asked

“ This wouldn’t happen to be some kind of stupid April Fool’s prank, would it, buster?”

“ I’m afraid not” the man answered sadly.

“ Welcome to April 1^st 2106!!!!!!

The End