Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Mary Poppins, her two charges and Dick Van Dyke get into a sky gondola when suddenly: Werewolves of London.

(Translation: stop prompting me with the bloody London pics, Al 😉 )

“Did you get a look at him? When he got on?”

The conductor gave a slow nod and stared up the laundry line of gondolas, each car a pinata of frantic passengers bouncing on in the wind. Except for the one, of course.

“Well then? Tell me. What did you see?” Constable Plod shifted impatiently as the conductor tried to gather his thoughts over the shout of approaching sirens.

What had he seen? More than he ever wanted to see.

“They were just ordinary folks I guess. Woman and two kids.”

“But the man.”

“Ordinary fellow. When he got on, that is. But then he—” The conductor clenched his jaw, remembering. Just a man, in a simple flat cap, with a smudge of soot on his face, until—

He shuddered.

What the fellow had turned in to was neither man nor beast. A creature so terrifying it had yet to be wrought by pen or film. And what happened next—before the CCTV went black–before the nanny and her charges vanished behind a film of blood and gore was too horrible to put into words.

“Are you ready to bring it down?” the constable asked.

The conductor swallowed. He would never be ready. He reached for the lever and pulled.

—

I daresay my limited American vocabulary for things British may be spent. But just in case you don’t want to risk more clumsy tales like this from across the pond, I demand one round-trip ticket to Heathrow.

This has been an edition of the Sunday Photo Fiction Prompt, hosted by Alistair Forbes. To read more or to submit your own, click the blue froggy button: