Whatever Happened To Annie Manning?

"Come with me if you want to live, pet", he had said. Annie had not gone with him. Her brain had worked swiftly and she had rationalised that if he wanted her to live then it was unlikely that he was going to shoot her, so she had simply picked him up by the ears of the pink rabbit onesie, and shaken him until he dropped the gun. She had then locked him in her attic with a plate of fish fingers and a large colouring book.

Annie Manning was now glaring at her computer screen. How could they do this to her?? How could they leave her to be taken by a small man with a large gun wearing a pink rabbit onesie, and never refer to her again?? Weren't they worried that she had been taken captive by a wee Geordie? Did nobody want to save her? Did nobody care? Had she made a bad impression by slapping flat footed up the tiled path? It was a disgrace, an outrage.

All the attention seemed to be on Iris Green, the brogue loving woman from across the road who liked to spy on everyone. Even Douglas had a thing for her, and Douglas was supposed to be Annie's husband. Annie was furious. After all, Annie was the blonde, busty, attention grabbing female around here, NOT robotic Iris, who was flat-chested, wore her hair in a prim little bun, and looked like a stereotypical school teacher from the 1940s.

Annie was jealous and she didn't care who knew it. First she frowned a bit, though her pretty eyebrows remained arched above her milky blue eyes due to botox, and did not aspire to making random items of knitwear, and then she pouted. Annie had a plan. A big plan that would change EVERYTHING. She also had a loaded gun.

Magical Mystery Tour.... [Chapter two-ish]

"Iris, what are you doing? Can you hear me?"

Douglas shook Iris's shoulder in an effort to wake her.

"What did you see? It's really important that you wake up now."

Iris lay on her bed, her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but she wasn't dead.

"Iris, FOR PITY'S SAKE WOMAN, what did you see? And when did you see it?"

Douglas thumped his fist against the wall and as he did so a framed print of Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory fell to the floor. Douglas bent to pick it up [if nothing else he was always tidy] and as he did so he noticed that stored under Iris's bed was an impressive array of shoeboxes.

'Wow', thought Douglas, 'this is an impressive array of shoeboxes, but Iris always wears battered old brogues, how peculiar.'

Douglas stopped thinking and pulled out one of the shoeboxes, he opened it, and gasped for dramatic effect. The shoebox did not contain leopard print mules, as suggested by the picture on the lid of the box, but three bulging scrapbooks and 10 used notebooks of the school variety.

He opened a notebook, this was exactly the information Douglas was looking for. He looked up fondly towards the slender, brogue wearing woman still laying unconscious, yet wide eyed on the bed, "I knew I could rely on you Iris, I'm so sorry I referred to you as a wretched curtain twitcher in a previous post, you were always such a meticulous record keeper, even when we were trapped together in that underwater cavern for days on end without food, water, a cuddly toy, a toaster, or your favourite Beatles album, you still found a way to keep meticulous records. What a woman."

Douglas began to read Iris's last entry, as he read his eyebrows began knitting together like two hairy caterpillars trying to make a sweater. When Douglas had finished reading he had three important questions:-

1) WHO IS THE SHORT MAN IN THE PINK RABBIT ONSIE WITH THE BIG GUN? [Clue: He isn't Mr Short]
2) WHO IS THIS RENNIE CHARACTER? AND WHY DID IRIS NEED HIS HELP?
3) WHERE IS ANNIE?
4) WOULD HE GET TO HARWICH IN TIME?
5) SHOULD HE PLAY IRIS'S FAVOURITE BEATLES TUNE?
6) WOULD IRIS'S FAVOURITE BEATLES TUNE WAKE HER FROM HER OPEN-EYED SLUMBER?

So many questions...but, as in every good epic, only three are important...

Chapter One - continued

07.18hrs.

Annie is dreaming of fur-lined slippers as she sidesteps a snail, and her slight shiver is caused by a distinct nip in the air, rather than the basilisk glare hurled at her from behind the net curtains.  Another half hour before getting up, she decides, shutting the door, but is suddenly wide awake as an intruder appears from the kitchen.  It is a small man with a large gun.

A good six inches shorter than Annie, he cuts a peculiar figure with his tubby physique, extraordinarily bushy eyebrows and horn-rimmed glasses in a style so far undiscovered by hipsters and Post Modern ironists.  He would perhaps resemble nothing so much as a garden gnome were it not for the pink rabbit onesie he is wearing.  When he speaks it is in an incongruous basso profundo, with a pleasant Geordie lilt.

"Come with me if you want to live, pet".