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The wooden pallet that Sam took his hammer to was eight foot by eight foot. Plonked as it had been on his own ten by ten front lawn, it might as well have been a dragon.
He had no idea how it had got there. None of the neighbors claimed to know either. Last night, his little patch of grass had glowed like a green and verdant oasis in the middle of the grey city sprawl. Now, an ugly, varnished shade of brown, it squatted.
Flat and solid looking, the pallet sprawled across Sam’s land, issuing a silent challenge. It had been dumped upside down, so its underbelly lay exposed to the cloudy sky. Thick supportive beams had been nailed around the outside, meeting at the corners of the main, flat platform. A thicker beam the width of an oak tree had been crucified across the center, from north to south.
However the pallet had landed there, whoever had put it there, Sam had to get rid of it. On the phone, the council had made it perfectly clear who they felt was responsible for the pallet’s removal. Not them.
At fifty, Sam had never done a day’s hard physical labour in his life. Straining to lever the edge of the pallet, he felt the muscles tense under the wiry, ginger hairs on his arms. The pallet rose higher and higher. Just as the first beads of sweat slicked Sam’s forehead, it teetered upright and stood unsupported on its side.
Breathing hard, Sam stepped back to study the effect the pallet had already had on his garden. The grass it had lain on had been flattened. The crushed blades had missed the early morning dew and looked pale next to the greener grass around the outskirts of the garden. Sam shook his head in dismay, but felt grateful the pallet had not landed nearer the house, on top of the reds, blues and purples of the flowerbed.
Standing eight feet high now, the pallet loomed over Sam, intimidating him. If the weather had been better, he would have been standing in its shadow. He felt dwarfed by it. Insignificant. He imagined it sneering at him, challenging him to do battle.
He waited until he’d recovered his breath before he stooped to pick up the hammer. He’d found it in a box in the cupboard under the stairs along with all the other tools his wife had somewhat hopefully given him over the years. It was hard, dull and heavy, with a rubber grip. The claw end looked evil, like a medieval mace. The flat, never used, bludgeon end could crush an enemy knight’s helmet and head, but would it be enough to defeat the pallet? Hefting the hammer threateningly in both hands, Sam advanced to find out.
And realised his mistake. If he just rushed forward like this, wildly swinging his hammer, the pallet would take the first blow and fall back on the grass, feigning death. Sam swiped sweat from his head and pulled at the front of his clinging shirt. Pleased he’d avoided his foe’s trap, he set the hammer down on his grassy kingdom. Gasping air into his burning lungs, he wrestled the pallet to the end of the garden until it leaned against the low, pebble-dashed wall that separated his land from the queen’s public thorough way.
Leaning now, sloping from the wall to the ground, the pallet looked diminished. Sam picked his hammer up and swung without warning, smashing the steely, flat surface against the pallet’s grinning maw. The pallet groaned and creaked. Sam swung again without waiting to study the effects of his first blow. The hammer, surely directed by no other than God Himself, thudded into the same spot. Splinters exploded from the pallet’s surface, forcing Sam to duck lest he be struck and injured.
He swung again, his hardened muscles wielding the hammer as though it weighed no heavier than a toy. The pallet bounced off the top of the wall, hanging agonised in the air for a moment before landing at the same slanting angle between the wall and the ground. Sam grinned and struck again and again, until a huge rent appeared across the middle of the pallet’s surface from east to west.
Chivalrously retreating to allow the pallet time to regain its senses, Sam lowered his hammer to show that for the moment, he would do it no harm.
To his rear his wife swung the living room window open. “How are you doing, dear?”
Afraid his opponent would treacherously attack when his back was turned, Sam did not look at the maiden. “Fine.”
“Do you want a cup of tea?”
Eying the pallet, Sam said, “Maybe later.”
“You’re doing very well,” she said, and closed the window again.
Sam nodded once to show the pallet he was ready and leapt to the attack, smiting the beam at the pallet’s eastern side with such mighty blows that within moments it broke and hung crookedly from the pallet’s main body.
Yield, Sam urged it silently, for dismembered so, how could it continue the fight?
The pallet remained silent. Determined not to give it another chance, lest it should ever invade his kingdom again, Sam swung his hammer in a sequence of great, overhand blows and sweeping side-smashes that reduced the pallet to a series of shattered pieces lying scattered across the battlefield.
Victorious, Sam laid down his weapon and wiped his brow with a trembling hand. Long, vicious looking splinters lay strewn all about him. Picking his way gingerly through the pallet’s remains, Sam ordered the portcullis raised and stumbled into the safety of his castle. His muscles were trembling and he could feel his heart thudding and burning in his chest. He would tidy up later.
Kicking his shoes off, he slid his feet into his slippers and called out, “I could do with that cup of tea now.”
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FEATURE STORY 
