Reversed Pied Piper

An upper class and snobbish suburb hire a pest exterminator but treat him badly and don't pay him. This backfires and the town's problems come back...worse than before.

[Chapter 1] �" snobs, brats and rats

Cranberry was a town populated by snobs.  Very few Citizens of Cranberry weren’t classist and anyone that wasn’t were ostracised by the community to the point where they’d move away.  People of Cranberry were a deadly combination of arrogant and pig ignorant.  Worse bit was they would have big families of undisciplined brats.  The parents worked hard on their children to pass off toxic behaviour and arrogance to their children and if the kids were caught doing anything illegal, it was always someone else’s fault.

 

Funny thing about Cranberry was the town got a plague of rats so bad all the locals were talking about it with each other.  The common conclusion was cats, though everyone in town hated animals it was the best they could think of.  The townsfolk viewed animals as 'filthy'.

The people were too snobbish to get cats from the RSPCA (which was on the border north of Cranberry) so brought cats from pet stores from outside the town to their East called Queens, nobody goes to Queens unless they want to discreetly buy drugs and get mugged by street kids.

 

The people of Cranberry went to Queens and brought Cats as pets but didn't look after them, all their Cats went missing and so now they've got a problem with feral cats.  That was it, first the Rat plague and now the problem with feral Cats.  The people of Cranberry were outraged and had a town meeting but were lost for solutions.  Someone sitting up the back of the crowded nineteenth century hall broke the silence.

"Call the Pied Piper!"

Heads turned to the bald man, the entire room had the look of disgust on their face as one fat old lady with her glasses halfway down the ridge of nose, literally looking down upon the short, bald man.

"Whaaaaaaaaat!?'

Despite her formal attire the old women had a thick Bogan accent

"That's a fairy story dickhead!"

A younger voice yelled out from the front row.

He bald man stood up revealing a cheap grey suit, pink shirt and black tie.  There were a few disappointed groans in the room.  The badly dressed bald man raised his voice and let his agitation at the Town’s ignorance be shown.

"Pied Piper Pest Exterminator.  He's in Coryville and could at least help us to get rid of the problem."

The looks on people’s face changed, the younger ones whipped out their mobile’s and Googled the name. By the end of the town meeting, they all agreed and so the council sitting on the stage, by their long rectangular table of documents officiated the solution and the declared the town meeting at an end.  The next day the Cranberry Council found the contact details and called the Pied Piper.

[Chapter 2] �" pied piper pest exterminator

Peter Pied Piper stood on the Bear rug that was laid out on the fancy-stained wooden floor in the mayor’s office.  Peter stared at the Bear’s head, face and cold dead eyes, He cringed.

‘I know I’m a pest exterminator, but I think this rug is in poor taste.  Hang on a minute, aren’t ear’s endangered?’

Peter thought to himself as he counted the times, he actually saved animals and

re-homed them rather than killing them.  Peter broke his stare and looked up at the Donald Trump look-alike Mayor sitting at his Presidential looking desk with computer, ready to interview Peter and his wheely bag of tools in tow.

The mayor looked up from his computer, turned in his wheely chair and asked.

"Word gets around about your work and makes you sound like a Warlock!

What's that all about?"

Peter smiled and responded.

"Wizard….”

The mayor looked annoyed and quizzical at Peter.  He wasn’t used to being corrected.

“Excuse me?”

“Warlock is an old Scot’s Gaelic word meaning ‘one who rides with the Devil’ so Wizard is a more positive term implying a person’s good work…”

The Mayor waved a dismissive hand, cutting Peter off.

“Yes well, I didn’t call you in for a history lesson.  Tell me about your work.”

Peter felt the mayor had a rude demeanour but would break character and be friendly.

“Aye, well you see I'm a professional exterminator, but I love animals.  My thing is I relocate pest where they won't be pest."

One of the council members spoke up.  Peter jumped a bit as he didn’t notice anyone else was in the room.

‘Just like the smoking man on the X Files who sits in the back of the office…’

The councilman in the blue suit sitting at the side of the office spoke up.

"How do you do that?"

Peter got excited and started to take something out of his gym bag.

"I enchant the pests and lure them away with these..."

He pulled out bag pipes.

"Would you like to hear?"

The Mayor and the Councilman gave a unison response.

"NO!"

He sadly packed them away.

"Whatever.  We’ve already filled you in on the details of the situation.  You're hired now get out of here and get to work"

 

With that awkward interview over, Peter Pied Piper walked the edge of town playing his bagpipes.  For a while nothing happened, so Peter would stop, wait and listen.  He could hear lots of squeaking and meowing.

All the rats and feral cats followed him.  He lured them to his van where he played a recording of his music through speaker and drove an hour outside town to his property.  There they followed him and happily stayed.  He did this every day for a week as agreed in his contract and by Friday there wasn’t a Cat or Rat left to be lured.

 

Peter Pied Piper returned to the mayor’s office expecting to get paid and paid well, for a big job in an upper-class town.  But his pay check was not to be.  Instead of being transferred the money and given an invoice by the secretary he was called into the mayor’s big fancy office.

"Get out if here, this town's not paying you a cent.  Your methods are a joke, and you're nuts, piss off!"

This was all so abrupt.  It became obvious the mayor ‘hired’ Peter but had no intention of paying him.  Peter asked if there had been any reports of pests in the town which he knew the answer was ‘no’ but that didn’t make a difference.  Peter insisted on getting paid what he was owed and end up begging.

"But I got rid if your problem."

The mayor didn't have a reason not to pay, he was greedy like the rest of the people.  He just yelled.

"Just....f**k off!"

And threw his stapler at poor Peter.

The Pied Piper hunched over and hanged his head low.

‘I could really have used that money.’

He thought as he walked away, and the mayor leaned into his chair muttering to himself.

"Not paying that dumbshit."

 

That night Peter Pied Piper was tossing and turning in his sleep.  He couldn’t stop thinking about that Friday afternoon in the mayor’s office until by the crack of dawn he had an idea and that idea turned into a plan.  Peter drove around Cranberry that day playing a slightly different tune but what was he taking away from Cranberry this time?  The children and teenagers!

 

It didn’t take long for the mayor with an office full of angry parents who figured out what had happened.  They were demanding to call the piper and threaten him to bring their kids back.  So, the Mayor rang Peter Pied Piper and put him on speaker so the rest of the angry parents can hear the conversation.  But just as they were angry, so was Peter and he just threw their anger back at them.

"You're not in a position to threaten me."

He said in a mild Scottish accent.  Peter continued to explain that he should be paid but the mayor just yelled over him until Peter cut him off.

"No!  You listen to me! You don't realise what I'm capable of…."

But the Mayor was stubborn and arrogant.

"I don't care!!  Bring back our kids or else..."

Over the phone, the mayors round chubby face went bright red, revealing the how artificial his blonde toupee looked.  Before he could finish his threats Peter Pied Piper hanged up.

[Chapter 3] �" peter pied piper child abductor

A day later the people of Cranberry could hear bagpipes coming from the highway leading out of town.  Sure enough Peter Pied Piper returned, driving down the neat highway that was lined with poplar trees, with a parade of the townsfolks kids following his pest exterminator van.

"Hooray!"

The people cheered as he drove into the nearby, classy suburbs with the adults watering their neatly kept front yards.  Mothers and fathers came running out of the typical two stories white bricked Victorian style houses, cheering until they saw what else he brought along with the kids...an army of street kids, rats and feral cats.  The Van stopped in the middle of the suburbs, Peter Pied Piper got out of the van as the parents that chased after him stopped to see what was going on and wondering.

“Why are our kids just standing there?”

He pulled out bagpipes from the passenger seat of the van and blew a tune.  That’s when his whole parade snapped out of their trance and dispersed, running wild upon the classy suburbs.  The brats simply went home to their parents but verbally abused them and had temper tantrums in their homes, the rats went loose freaking people out the cats followed the rats making things worse and the street kids ran riot.

 

Peter Pied Piper handed his property and animals over to a become a petting Zoo and remained well looked after.  As for Peter, he moved away and left the country.  The Council of Cranberry could never get hold of him again but that was partly because they were too busy dealing with a feral cat problem, rat infestation, teenage delinquency and street kids on riot.

THE END

Author's Note

I've taken a vague memory of a childhood fairy tale and put it into a modern setting with a twist. The idea behind this story is 'what if there was a Peter Pied Piper but he did the opposite?