"You can imagine my shock as I saw two Black Hawk helicopters landing in the Ikea overflow car park followed by a horde of heavily armed black clad and masked figures making a beeline for the main entrance. I was thinking terrorist attack." So said shocked and dismayed Ikea customer, Paxton Quigley.
"My wife and I had been in the store for close over four hours, inching our way through the book cases, the sofas, the dining room displays, the lighting, the soft furnishings, kitchenware, bedroom section, bathrooms, children's furniture and toys, bed linen...aargh! I was exhausted, at the end of my tether and looking forward to getting into the racks and racks of flat packs where I could finally make my purchases and get myself some lingonberry jam, whatever that is, although we still had to negotiate the potted plants and shitty artwork.
"In frustration and disgust I decided to send my family a message explaining our whereabouts. So I took a selfie of the two of us holding my notepad with the scrawled message 'HELP! BEING HELD HOSTAGE IN IKEA' and sent it to them by WhatsApp before going into the restaurant for some Swedish meatballs. It was from there that we saw the choppers, as I think the parlance has it, coming in.
"Staff and customers were forced to their knees, my wife and I included, before an officer covered in gold braid and festooned with medals came up to us saying 'Mr and Mrs Quigley, I am Vice Admiral McDonald Budweiser and on behalf of the US Navy I am pleased to tell you that you are safe now that we are here to rescue you from these commie assholes. Come with me and we'll fly you outta this hell hole.
"As we ran towards a Black Hawk in a state of confusion, the vice admiral told us he had received a message from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean explaining our predicament and he had immediately scrambled his UK based extraction team to rescue us.
"It was only then that it dawned on us that our joke family WhatsApp message had included our nephew who is in the US navy. He had overreacted to it by informing his superior officers and they had passed on his concerns to the vice admiral who is always spoiling for a fight.
"When we spoke to our nephew later that evening he told us 'we take these things seriously in the navy'. Never again, I say, never again and I blocked his phone."
Based loosely on true events, as told to The Spoof staff reporter.
