Quick update, because I am now addicted to writing this :P

I'm not sure about it at all, so please tell me what you think in the form of more lovely reviews. The ones I have recieved already have been lovely and I have you all to thank...

Oh, and I am drifting quite far from the plot offered by the Boosh, because I wanted this to be quite realistic and less of a fantasy world...as a result, Vince doesn't live in the forest with Brian Ferry. He has normal parents :P

A shame, I know...

Chapter 2

The Saturday morning light scattered in through the broken blinds in Vince's bedroom. He was laid on his bed, a book about snakes open in front of him. After the incident the day before, he had felt an urge to read about them and had spend the previous night with his nose in the book. Vince knew that everyone was oblivious to his reading habits. They shrugged him off as a moody teenager and assumed he was texting his friends or listening to music when he was shut up in his room. He liked it that way. He could still keep up his image, but still submerge himself in some private nerdyness. His excuse was that he was grounded. Vince was grounded for "cheeky comments", the name of a crime that he was most often punished for...he had said something towards his aunt. He hated her, and she was forcing her presence upon him in the form of a family visit. He figured he was justified in making a "cheeky comment".

"Vince!" A shrill voice shrieked from somewhere downstairs. Vince cringed, his mother always used that cutting tone of voice when she had something equally sharp to say. He heard her thumping up the stairs and hurriedly shoved his book under the covers of his bed before she flung his bedroom door open. "Vince!" She yelled again, as if Vince had a hope in hell of ignoring her at that close proximity, but of course, she wanted him to reply with a quirkily obedient "yes mother?".

Vince did not obey. He leant over to his bedside table and grabbed his phone, pretending that he had just received an urgent text message.

"Vince!" His mother barked a final time. "Would you like to try looking at people when they talk to you?" He gave a sigh and rolled over on his bed, so that he could face her and give her his favourite despairing look. "Are you going to do anything today but laze around and give me those positively sickening looks, Vince?" God, he hated her sometimes. Why did she feel the need to add his name on the end of every sentence? Did she think his attention span was that short? He didn't say anything, just continued the aforementioned sickening look and clicked the buttons on his mobile phone.

His mother made a disgusted noise somewhere between a sigh and a cough. "Sometimes I wonder what I am doing wrong with you Vince...you have your own room, I let you stay out with your friends, I give you enough money and treats!" His mother had put on her horrible whiney and desperate voice. In his head, Vince called it her soap-opera voice because it was the same tone that the actors always used at what was meant to be the moving part of the programme...when they were begging their husband not to leave them or their child not to die. Vince always thought he could see right through that tone like glass. He could tell she never meant it, but carried on non the less, "...but what do I get in return? This teenager attitude and cold looks all day, like I've done you some great injustice!"

This speech might have had an effect on Vince, if he hadn't already heard it every day since he turned sixteen. Now it just irritated him. It made him sick. He wondered, if his mother spouted her deepest feelings so regularly, how was he meant to tell when she was actually upset? One day he would insult her deeply and never realise it, because being deeply offended was becoming such a cliché.

"What do you want me to do?" Asked Vince, finally speaking. He couldn't stand his mother's self-pitying soliloquy for another moment.

His mother paused, stunned by an actual utterance from her son. But she did, in fact, have a task at the front of her mind the whole time.

"Walk the dog..." she muttered.

"Fine." Why couldn't she just ask instead of guilt-tripping me into do it? I'm starting to become de-sensitized! Vince smiled to himself, once his mother had closed the door.

- - -

Vince sat on a park bench. The cold had spread up his legs and through his jeans, making them both painfully numb. Benny, the family dog, was somewhere over the other side of the park. Doing what, Vince didn't care to find out. He just sat and silently prayed that none of his friends were about...or friends of his friends. He didn't want them to see him, sinking to the level of walking a practically brain-dead Labrador. Vince stamped his Converse-d feet, trying to force warm blood towards them, but it felt like whacking pieces of dead wood on the ground. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wished he was somewhere else.

"Hey, Mowgli," A voice from somewhere behind him said. Vince jumped and spun round to see who had called him that weird name. It took him a moment to remember the name of the zoo keeper stood behind him. Had it been Harry?

"Um...hi..." started Vince, a little uneasily, he hadn't wanted to run into the guy who had seemed so interested in something he would rather keep private.

"It's Howard, we met yesterday," confirmed Howard, who sensed the uneasiness in the boy's voice. He had been dying to talk to Vince again, but had assumed he would never see him again, as he knew he wouldn't come running back to the zoo and consequently had been very happy to see the solitary figure sat on the bench.

"If you called that meeting," smiled Vince from one corner of his mouth, "...what did you just call me?"

Howard sat himself down on the bench, just pleased not to immediately be told to piss off, which was what he had expected. "I said Mowgli, you know, the boy from The Jungle Book." He hummed a tune that vaguely resembled Bear Necessities.

"Oh, yeah," Vince laughed. He had been called many names before, but Mowgli was a new one. At least it was better than "that boy", which was what he was usually called by the members of his family. "I'd like to think I was a bit trendier than Mowgli...I'm like the Camden version of Mowgli..."

Howard laughed, then decided to get to the point. To talk to Vince about what he had come here to talk about. "I came over to talk to you about yesterday..."

Vince felt his stomach churn. He didn't like to think about it. Anything that set him apart from other people was immediately buried beneath his bed, like that book about snakes.

"Well, I don't want to talk about it!" Vince snapped, hit attitude changing as quickly as flicking a switch. He immediately regretted the harshness in his tone but swallowed his manners along with his confidence.

"Why not?" Quizzed Howard, with a confused tone. He knew if he had a talent like that, he would want everyone to know about it. "It was amazing! It is amazing, if you can do what I think you can do...I'd kill to be able to communicate with animals like that!"

"Well, you can have it!" Vince stood up from the bench and called his dog, trying to keep his voice as normal and his tone as broad as he could. Trying to show he was nothing but ordinary. But Howard couldn't let him just run off again. He could see Vince's future. Laid out cleanly in front of him just like a road map.

He grabbed Vince's arm. "No! Please...don't just leave..." He didn't want to beg, but seeing a talent wasted like that was like having to watch someone burn a possession you had always wanted. Howard had always longed to impress the people that had always been oblivious to his efforts. Vince could impress people, but he was just ignoring his ability. Pretending it wasn't there. Howard couldn't let someone do that. "Please, come for a drink with me and some people from the zoo? They'd love to meet you."

Vince spun round, glaring at Howard in a way that reminded him of an animal staring you out. "Why should I?" He practically spat, Howard's fascination was touching a very raw nerve.

"Because..." Howard searched to find a reason that the teenager would understand and agree with, "because...you'll regret it if you don't..."

Vince gave a bark of laughter. "Will I?"

"Well, we're meeting at the King's Head tonight at eight...come or don't come. Do whatever you want." Howard shrugged his shoulders in surrender. "I can't force you..."

Vince decided to be stubborn, and stalked away from Howard, pulling his dog behind him.

Still, on the walk home, the prospect of meeting these people was tempting. He was curious. He had to admit. Would they love him, admire him and idolise him because of his talent? Vince wanted to be part of a group...it was true...but he also had another yearning, to be the best out of that group. The one everyone looked at as the one to copy, the one they all wanted to be like. Out of the whole band, he longed to be the front man.

He bit his lip and he reached his front door. Curiosity, biting away at him like a hunger.

Curiosity killed the cat, he thought to himself as he stepped inside his house. But I bet he had a bloody good time...