Giant Robotic Elephants and Flying Cabbages

A friend challenged me to write a short story involving these two things, here's the result!

I woke early one morning to the sound of enormous bangs coming from outside my bedroom window. I slid my legs out of bed first, put my bare feet on the chilly laminate flooring of my bedroom and sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes. The bangs continued rhythmically from outside of my window. Just what was going on out there? It isn’t rubbish collection day until tomorrow I thought to myself. The banging continued, like footsteps now and getting louder. Obviously it was approaching my window, whatever it was. I stood up and slowly shuffled my way to the bedroom window, hauling on my dressing gown as I did so. The curtains were drawn but the first rays of sunlight were beginning to stream through the cracks. I reached up; tentatively at first as the rhythmic banging continued its approach, but then a steely determination entered the pit of my stomach and I threw open the curtains, ready to see whatever had woken me so damn early! The sight that greeted me was one that nobody ever could have expected to see, ever.

There, in the middle of the street, marching in perfect unison was a herd of giant robotic elephants. Their trunks were like metal cased hoses and their feet huge sledgehammers leaving dents in the concrete wherever they stepped. Their bodies reflected the sunlight and the metal sheen was blinding. I shielded my eyes with my hand and continued to stare in disbelief. The elephants’ eyes glowed green and a beam of light shone out from them scanning the road in front of them. They may have been giant robotic elephants causing pot holes wherever they laid their feet but they were keeping clear of the cars lining the edges of the street with a precision that one could only describe as, well, robotic! At the head of the herd was a larger pachyderm than the rest and he was keeping the rest in line. From huge speakers stored within his large gently flapping ears echoed the sound of Colonel Hathi’s March from Disney’s the Jungle Book. All at once, as the herd reached the top of the street they halted, like some steely determined parade. The head of the herd raised his trunk up into the air accompanied by a screeching of metal joints and trumpeted with all his might. As he did so panels began to open up on the side of his body and all the other elephants as well. Looking down the herd I counted around 12 elephants in total. I also spied other flickering curtains and front doors open with people in various degrees of night wear standing on doorsteps with mouths gawping open like the maw of a black hole from outer space.

As the final panels opened up on the sides of the elephants objects began to emerge from the darkness within. I had to rub my eyes again, not from tiredness but from amazement. Slowly levitating from within the elephants came flying…flying…cabbages. Both red and white cabbages. I can’t say I appreciated the red as much as the white; I’m not a fan, pickled or otherwise, but they were definitely flying cabbages. They slowly lifted into the air, hovered in place, turned a little so that everyone could get a good look at them and then lifted off at speed into the stratosphere. I yawned, closed the curtains again and walked the short walk back to my bed, slipping off my dressing gown as I did so. Last time I eat cheese right before I sleep, I thought to myself, as I drifted off the rhythmic departure of the giant robotic elephants.