Sam The Vacuum and Derek The Dishonest Dustbin

This load of tripe stemmed from a conversation in the chatroom and the gauntlet was thrown down in front of me. I had to write a story about Sam the Vacuum, a character dreamt up by Sparkle Princess. I asked how on earth you could give a name to a lack of air, much less tell stories about it. I was reliably informed that Sam was a vacuum cleaner and, somehow, a brothel came into it, although I’m not sure how that happened – oh yes, I remember now! A simple misunderstanding. Right, here we go. D’you know, I have a really bad feeling about this, but my excuse is that the whole sorry situation was forced upon me.

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Sam sucked. Yes, he really did. He was a little vacuum cleaner, you see, and he worked in a brothel. One d… what? You don’t know what a brothel is? Well, go and ask Mummy or Daddy. That’ll give them some tough parenting practice. Right, where was I? Oh yes, I was just telling you about Sam. He was a very hard-working vacuum cleaner and his insides quickly filled up with all kinds of things that he picked up on his several daily outings: five pound notes, coins, condoms, pub… what? You don’t know what a five pound note is? Tchoh! One day, Sam was going up and down on the carpet in one of the house’s thirteen bedrooms and…… pardon? No, it probably isn’t an unusual… look, can you stop interrupting, please. Sam was in the capable hands of Betty the cleaning lady, and as she pushed Sam’s spout under the bed, a small round object shot into it and went bobbling all the way down the tube into Sam’s tummy, where it lay buried. Sam had seen it just before it disappeared – it was a small black cherry from the fruit bowl (there was one in every bedroom and it was not the first time fruit had been found strewn all over the floor). “Oh dear!” he thought, “another lost cherry.” Yes, it’s not that common; all right, be quiet at the back! At the same time as the cherry, a small circle of thin metal had been sucked up from under the bed and rattled into Sam’s tube. He knew it had been a wedding ring. He was quite concerned because, deep down, he was an upstanding little Vacuum with morals and knew about the reputation of Derek the Dishonest Dustbin, into whose large interior the contents of Sam’s tummy were tipped when his sack was full and aching to be emptied. Derek stood by the fence which separated the brothel from the house next door; he was an unscrupulous character and had often sold valuable items to the fence - well, who else? He already had large, ornate brass handles and a platinum lid. Now, when Betty took Sam to be emptied into Derek, Sam said to him, “Derek, you can’t have the wedding ring in this lot – I must retrieve it and get it to Madame so it can be returned to its rightful owner.” Derek said, “You must be joking. I could get some sports wheels for that, at least! And maybe an electric motor!” “You’re talking rubbish!” said Sam. “What else would you expect me to talk?” said Derek. But Sam was in a position to do something about the ring and he spat it out onto the ground in front of Betty, who quickly picked it up and put it in her pocket. As she walked back indoors, she was humming and smiling. “Drat!” thought Sam, “Betty’s got her hands on someone’s ring.” He had failed. But he had tried his best. And the moral of all of this? Never ever try and write a story about a vacuum cleaner in a brothel, even in the face of dire threats.