Short story | 2 June 2007

In Competition no. 2496 you were invited to submit a short story whose final line is ‘Sir, when I heard of him last he was running about town shooting cats.’

The challenge was to make this extract — from a passage in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson about the Doctor’s beloved cat Hodge — follow on convincingly from the rest of the story rather than appearing to be tacked awkwardly on to the end. The standard was disappointing; a lot of entries stormed along promisingly only to falter badly at the final hurdle. Liz Childs played a blinder, though, and is a worthy recipient of the bonus fiver. I’m reliably informed that her story is packed with in-jokes for physicists. The other prizewinners, printed below, get £30 each.

‘Quantum mechanics? Bah!’ said Einstein. ‘I can’t believe God shoots craps, Erwin.’ ‘Courage, Albert,’ I consoled him. ‘I shall conduct a thought experiment that ridicules this fatuous theory.’

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Rod Liddle

Sack the judges

‘O fickle fortune. I’m now celebrated as the champion of what I scorned. Old ladies cudgel me with their brollies, crying, “Wretched man! Your vile Gedankenexperiment has traumatised my Tiddles.” Everywhere I see grinning cats winking into and out of existence. We were wrong, Albert, God does indeed …Hahahahaha.’

***
‘Did you give Schrödinger his medication, nurse?’
‘I both did and didn’t, doctor — I wasn’t observed.’
‘Well, observe — he’s gone. Off to play God, no doubt.’
‘I know where he is,’ said visiting physicist, Werner Heisenberg. ‘In principle. Although I can’t be certain.’
‘Then collapse the wave function of our tenterhooks, and tell.’
‘Sir, when I heard of him last he was running about town shooting cats.’
Liz Childs

‘Do you suppose,’ the doctor asked, glancing furtively round the restaurant, ‘that Fabrikov is really being pursued by the Kremlin?’
‘He’s convinced they have devised some devilish means to dispose of him,’ I said.
‘My