Like a shirt caught in a branch, Larry hung limply in the twisted vines. It had been sev­eral min­utes, per­haps even an hour since he’d ejected from his plane and seen it explode in the dis­tance. The Munchkin Twins had cer­tainly pulled the wool over his eyes and left him sit­ting in the dark.

A rus­tle in the dis­tance shuf­fled; some­thing big was com­ing. Some­thing that he knew would be nei­ther friendly, nor full on rations. He was to be food to what­ever was approach­ing. Wig­gling slightly, he tried to free him­self but realised how much noise he was mak­ing. That would only get him eaten quicker and Larry did not want to be dinner.

Reach­ing down, he paused then yanked a knife from his pocket. Flip­ping it open, the blade shone in the light before turn­ing green with the blood of vines. Larry man­aged to loosen him­self a lit­tle, then a lot until finally he was free. Drop­ping to the mushy ground below, he squelched away from the oncom­ing train of noise and ducked behind an out­crop of rocks and roots.

The shuf­fle grew louder still. Larry looked for some­where else to hide, but this was it, this was the best avail­able. With his knife held high, he waited, and waited… and waited. What seemed like an eter­nity vaulted by until the rustling and bound­ing of some­thing heavy grew to painful a volume.

Feel­ing the sun van­ish from his face, Larry realised it was being blocked by what­ever was about to poke him silly. Duck­ing as some­thing swung, he launched his knife: bal­ance, slice, retract. This was his CQC – what he’d been trained to do, but it went awry.

The knife flew off into the dis­tance and Larry took a step back to bet­ter see his enemy. It was like noth­ing he expected in the marsh­land of vines and night­mare. The fifteen-foot tall teddy bear grum­bled through a knit­ted frown. Behind it, Larry could see pieces of fur and stuff­ing caught in the vines.

“What the…” A large paw swung down and Larry bounced to one side. Hit­ting a boul­der, he col­lapsed to the ground and sighed “Okay, note to self – not a friendly bear.” Climb­ing to his feet, he ran off towards where his knife van­ished. The bear hun­kered down and growled more, search­ing for him under the large, organic veins of the jungle.

Larry found his knife and leapt onto the large boul­der, then onto the bear’s back. Grab­bing it tightly, he slipped his knife into the thread­ing of the bears arm and started cut­ting it away. The arm fell off, and the bear looked con­fused. Larry swung to the other side and sliced at the thread­ing again, and again, the arm fell off.

The bear – now (h)armless – waved noth­ing about and felt itself caught awk­wardly in the veg­e­ta­tion. Larry, chuffed with him­self, took a seat across from the teddy bear and watched it run off scared. This was all good and well until a giant tin robot burst from the vines and started shout­ing ran­dom things like, “Potty!” and “Lunch time!” and “Dan­ger, Will Robinson!”

Larry stopped smil­ing, his knife would be of lit­tle use this time