by Susan Berran
Finally, the last people to enter the hall, the town mayor and his wife, were escorted to their VIP seats at the very center of the front row.
Gradually the lights faded away, blanketing the room in complete darkness and this was quickly followed by the loud “shushing” from people all over the hall. Suddenly, a bright white spotlight split the darkness in two like a bolt of lightning and directed everyone’s attention to center stage. The last scattered coughs and throat clearing from around the audience spat out as phones clicked off and finally everyone fell silent.
Behind the red, faded stage curtain students were sweating like pigs slowly roasting on a spit. BO Brett stood below the stage at the very front of the audience and immediately raised his arms high above his head to prepare the band for the opening piece. The entire front three rows instantly went puke-green and a heap of them started making puffy, throw-up cheeks.
But then, just as we were about to step out onto the stage, there was Kevin and he started poking me—again. I knew he wouldn’t be able to leave me alone! Miss Nada screeched out “Kevin!” in a high-pitched whisper and gave him the evil eye. Every kid on the stage spun around and looked straight at him. He was so embarrassed. Excellent!
The curtain began to open. The flowing red curtain parted up the center and swept across the stage. The music began and BO Brett waved his arms about, swishing them back and forth across the air, sending the stench of a thousand sweaty camel butts wafting through the auditorium. And as the lame play unfolded there were the usual burps, farts, coughing, and crying babies in the audience.
You could almost hear everyone yawning with boredom and elbowing each other to try and stay awake. The boredom was occasionally broken by the sound of heavy footsteps clumsily racing along the dark aisles, towards the main entrance, as people couldn’t hold their stomach contents down any longer and needed to vomit because of BO’s stench. I’m pretty sure they puked all over the front doorstep before tiptoeing slowly back to their seat with a handkerchief mooshed over their face to try and keep out BO’s deadly odor.
By the time the curtain was raised for the second act, most of the band was ready to dash for the door and puke, so the teacher taped BO’s arms down by his sides. He had to conduct the rest of the play holding the baton between his teeth.
The play was a total dork-fest! But there I was right in front of everyone, in the lead!
Forty minutes later, the spotlight finally softened, fading away for the last time. The curtain closed, signaling the end of the show, and was followed by an eerie silence. I think most people were either asleep or passed out! But after the awkward silence, suddenly the audience woke up and erupted with enormous applause like a herd of stampeding, tap-dancing elephants. Mothers were weeping with pride at seeing their kids prancing around. Dads whistled loudly to pretend they liked it as well, but really they were just celebrating that it was over so they could finally go home!
Behind the curtain everyone quickly took up positions, ready to step forward, take a bow, and receive the air kisses from the parents. In the darkness, I sneakily began to do a few stretches. The lights came back on and once again the curtain swung open. The students all joined hands to form a long line and stepped out to take their final bow. Naturally, because I was in the lead, I was right at the very front, center stage, beside Miss Nada. Everything was going according to plan.
As the applause died down, Miss Nada took the microphone and began to thank everyone for coming, blah blah blah. And of course she thanked the teachers for all the stuff that no one really cares about, rant rant rant, and praised the performers, particularly Kevin in the lead role because he was sooo sick with the flu . . .
Hey, I was in the lead! This was it! Show time! Lights were on, cameras were rolling, and every pair of eyes in the hall was staring in my direction. As I summoned up every tiny bit of strength I had, everything seemed to fall into slow motion. It was now or never! Extra Ginormous Book of Incredibly Awesome Unbelievable World Records, I was on my way!
I squiggled about, wriggling, twisting, squiggling, then suddenly . . .
aahhh . . . aahhh . . . aahhh . . . aahhh . . . choooooo
“Bungeeeeeee!”
I flew out of Kevin’s nostril totally naked! Racing like a slimy, green booger-bullet with a rocket up its butt. The second the cold air hit me, I ran even faster!
I flew off the stage, over the band, and straight towards the front row of the audience like a gross, green javelin. I kept stretching further and further. I was straining with everything that I possibly could to run as far as possible without breaking away from my hairy, dark nostril home.
Within seconds I was only centimeters from splatting right between the mayor’s eyes. His eyes bulged like ping-pong balls and went cross-eyed staring at me as I came closer and closer. I was barely millimeters away from his thick, bushy monobrow when, Twang! I was sent flying backwards like a slime covered yoyo. Back towards home, back to where I’d come from, back towards Kevin’s wide open nostril.
Yesssssss!
I was sure I had gone way further than any other booger had ever gone before me!
I could feel Kevin’s face burning red with embarrassment as gravity took over. I fell downwards, bouncing about uncontrollably before being left to hang only millimeters from the filthy stage floor, dangling from the nostril that I’d been living in all my life.
As Kevin’s face tightened in shame, the pressure inside his head came close to a massive brain explosion, I could feel the pressure of the pus building up inside the humongous zit at the end of my nose home. It was going to blow!
Suddenly ppthttt ppthttt ppthtt. Ppthttt ppthttt pthttt.
Minuscule droplets of thick, yellow pus burst into the air from the huge festering volcano. The pimple erupted, spewing its contents across the stage and all over Miss Nada and the audience. Wow, pus fireworks for my achievement!
Everyone in the front row turned an even weirder shade of green as the droplets of pus fell from the air like some sort of yellowy-green shower. Woo hooo! Eyes were popping, jaws were dropping, and girls were throwing up—actually pretty much everyone was throwing up. It was awesome!
The new “Incredibly Awesome and Unbelievable World Record” for “LONGEST SINGLE STRAND OF Booger—NOSTRIL STILL ATTACHED” was all mine!
And somehow I knew that it was going to be a very, very long time before another booger could beat that!
This is the tinsy-winsy, itty-bitty story of the average-sized Sir Reginald Bernard Pusbucket XVIII. Wait, hang-on, it’s actually the average-sized story of the tinsy-winsy, itty-bitty Sir Reginald Bernard Pusbucket XVIII—aka the zit!
Once upon a time, not very long ago, there lived a family of tinsy-winsy, itty-bitty, pus-filled zits living deep under the dark, damp, hairy forest of Left Armpit, on the sacred land of The Great Ranga. The Great Ranga was the name for one extremely obese, hairy, super old and exceedingly large, but very happy, orange Orangutan who inhabited the city zoo.
Living in the city zoo was absolute luxury for The Great Ranga. It meant that at least six times a day, three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, he was fed a very large wheelbarrow full of all his favorite foods.
And because he didn’t need to run away from predators, climb trees to forage for food, wander through the forest searching for shelter, or basically do any sort of strenuous activity at all, he just lazed about day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, getting bigger and bigger and bigger!
It wasn’t long before The Great Ranga’s hairy skin was so loose and so flabby that every fold of skin sat on top of another fold of skin that had yet another fold of hairy skin beneath it. These layers of skin made it look as if he was wearing a bright orange fur coat about twenty-four sizes too big for him.
The Great Ranga’s huge bulbous face seemed completely squashed between his ballooning cheeks that were held up by five double chins sitting on top of his gigantic belly. His arms and legs hung off h
im like fishing poles; looking as if they were twice as long as they were supposed to be. When he lifted his arms the skin unfurled and flew out like the massive sail of a yacht being released into the wind. But there was absolutely no chance of him blowing away—not with that gigantic butt acting as an anchor.
Poor old Ranga looked like a giant, hairy, orange potato the size of a double-decker bus created by some crazy scientist. With his bright orange, long, wiry hair carpeting his body he looked like a very deranged monkey.
His rolls of fat made him the perfect hotel for thousands of families of sweat-loving, pus-filled zits. His left armpit was the Buckingham Palace of The Great Ranga’s body.
Sir Reginald Bernard Pusbucket XVIII was taller and thinner than his brothers and sisters. He was also the eldest and yellowest in his family. He had thirty-nine brothers and nineteen sisters to annoy him. The Pusbucket family had been born and raised under Left Armpit for more than one thousand, nine hundred, and thirty-six generations of zits . . . which is about thirty-five Orangutan years.
Sir Reginald had always known that being the eldest son meant that someday he’d have first pick of where to live and raise his own family. He could see why his great great great great great great great great great great great great grandparents had chosen to live under Left Armpit—it was heaven. For twenty-four hours a day the whole of Left Armpit was blanketed in complete darkness—blacker than the ear of an elephant stuck in a box, in a cave, five miles underground. And the smell was awesome—a wonderfully toxic, putrid smell that got grosser every second due to the total lack of air. It smelled like a putrid mix of moldy cheese, sardines, and rotten meat wrapped up in sweaty socks.
Oh, and the food under Left Armpit was absolutely out of this world! The whole Pusbucket family loved soaking in the moist, warm, salty sweat of The Great Ranga—sucking up the delicious, liquid body fat. It was the perfect place to put on weight and grow pus. Yep, life didn’t get any better than this for a zit!
Although . . . there was one small, teeny, tiny downside. Every now and again The Great Ranga would stretch his arm up. It was only for a minute or two, but it was just enough to let in a slither of sunshine. These moments were dreaded. They never knew how long the sun would be heating them up, drying them out, and giving them fresh air . . . eeeeeeewwww! But it was a small price to pay for such a luxurious home.
Yep, life was good. But with another seven brothers and sisters expected to pop-up any day now, Reginald Bernard Pusbucket XVIII was ready to move to his own little patch of paradise and start raising little Pusbuckets of his own. It was getting pretty crowded in Left Armpit so he considered moving away from the rest of his family; maybe even as far away as Inside Right Elbow.
To get there, it was a few days travel around Back of Neck and down the treacherous steep descent of Right Bicep mountain but it was still largely unpopulated—although there was was much more of a chance of sunshine there and nobody wanted that!
Of course, there were other far more dangerous areas of The Great Ranga, like Butt Basement. It was a great place to visit for a holiday with a wonderful stench from the massive butt-gas explosions and the best place for food and luxury resorts. But living in Butt Basement was risky. It was constantly being scratched and picked by The Great Ranga—and others. He was always digging those monstrous sausage fingers with razor sharp nails on and around his butt, and if one of those fingernails came anywhere near you, sploosh, the zit’s head would be ripped clean off in one swipe.
You see monkeys are all totally and utterly disgusting! If you sit back and watch them they all sit around in pairs, on the ground, in the trees, or anywhere else they want to, and spend hour after hour picking each other’s fleas and scratching their own butts! Two minutes later, you see them picking their nose and scratching their butt! What’s even worse is that they use the same fingers and whatever is on the end of those fingers goes straight into their mouth.
So it can get very dangerous for a zit living in Butt Basement. When the shadow of a finger falls across Ranga’s butt, a siren sounds and the zits only have a few seconds to get below. If they aren’t able to suck down under the skin they’re in deep trouble. Entire families have been wiped out. The attack can last a few seconds or a number of long, painful hours as he scrapes those fingernails across his tough, leathery butt skin, along the deep dark Crack Canyon and across Buttock Cheeks. Like a destructive tornado, The Great Ranga’s razor-sharp fingernails catch and rip heads off, exploding brains high into the air. What a horrible way to go!
For some time, Sir Reginald had been dating a zit on Left Buttock Cheek in Butt Basement, named Daisy May Posterior. Every chance he got, Sir Reginald would slither off beneath The Great Ranga’s skin, over and under fat-fold after fat-fold, under his blubbery belly, around his bulging waist, down and around to Left Buttock Cheek and his girlfriend, Daisy May.
Now, Daisy had fifty-two brothers and forty-nine sisters, making a lot of Posteriors. Luckily, The Great Ranga’s butt cheeks were so wide that there was still plenty of room for more Posteriors down there.
But unlike the Pusbuckets of Left Armpit, the Posteriors hadn’t lived in their home very long—only a few hundred generations. Their family had originally come from under Right Armpit and were one of only a few families that had escaped the “Great Infection Injection.”
All zits have heard the terrifying tale of the disaster that claimed so many families. The story has been passed down from generation to generation in the hope that it will never happen again. But even more chilling was the legend of “The Golden Tunnel.” The strange story that told the tale of some zits that had escaped the Great Infection Injection of 1939 and found the long lost “cave of eternal fat.” But they were never heard of or seen again.
The legend goes that somewhere, far, far away on The Great Ranga’s body, there’s some humongous crater that leads into a deep, dark cave. The myth goes on to say that the cave is so deep that it goes all the way to the center of The Great Ranga and although no zit has ever proved it, it’s said that the tunnel actually goes all the way through and out to the other side to another almost identical cave and crater. But best of all, these caves are meant to be absolutely, totally overflowing with pure gold! Pure, oily fat gold. It’s believed that by sucking up the waxy gold, a zit can live forever!
But Sir Reginald didn’t see how there could be any place on The Great Ranga better than Left Armpit and Daisy May agreed. She couldn’t wait to leave Left Buttock Cheek! Sure, she loved sucking up the massive gas leaks and butt eruptions, but she’d felt those massive sharp nails scrape right by her so many times, and lost a lot of friends and family as they were scraped and squeezed beneath The Great Ranga’s fingernails—then watched in horror as they were sucked out of there. Gone in one slurp.
But Daisy’s parents didn’t want to have their whole family slither back up to live under Right Armpit again. At least not for a few more hundred generations anyway. You see, living under Right Armpit was once the place to live. A thriving, sweat-filled, stench-ridden, wonderfully hairy place. Zits had lived under Right Armpit since just after the birth of The Great Ranga. It was pretty much the birthplace of all our forefathers. Generation after generation lived and thrived in the sweetest, sweatiest place, free from sunlight. It was the place that famous zits like Captain Pimpernel, Joan of Acne, Leonardo Da-Zitzi, and Christopher Colonpus ventured out from to find new sweaty, smelly lands to raise future zit generations.
These explorers returned having founded incredible places like the Grand Canyon (which later changed its name to Crack Canyon), Nostril Hollows, Belly Button Burrow, Waist-Band Bend, The Great Spinal Highway, and the eight Toe-jam Valleys of Left and Right Foot.
But as well as these successful explorers, there were also many brave zits that went in search of new sweaty swamps and hairy forests that just completely disappeared and were never seen or heard from ever again.
It was on one of Christopher Colonpus’ expeditions around Neck Fat that h
e found the diary of Captain Pimpernel beside a single, thin, dried-out, yellow chip of pus. The faded, tattered diary spoke of some wonderful paradise he’d named The Golden Tunnel.
It told of a massive crater that wound its way down to a cave which then led to a long winding tunnel. Apparently, it became narrower the deeper they went, eventually leading to the center of The Great Ranga. The diary told of the tunnel being lined with thick, goopy gold that would keep a zit’s pus yellow, slimy, and young!
The diary said that Captain Pimpernel had wanted to return and lead others to The Golden Tunnel but his team had refused to go. Now with Captain Pimpernel gone, and the pages too faded for any further detail, or any sort of map, The Golden Tunnel faded into history forever.
Of course, the legend grew with each generation. Some zits thought that the diary held the ramblings of a drying out, shrivelling zit half out of his mind and the team had just slowly dried up and withered away. While others believed that the party may still be there, alive and well.
Many others have tried to find the mysterious cave leading to The Golden Tunnel over the generations and, sadly, many haven’t come back. Those that do make it back home again are usually crazy and almost completely dried-up from trying to cross Cheek Plains and Gut Desert.
Everyone knows that it’s crazy to even try slithering under The Great Ranga’s cheek. It’s bathed in sunlight all day, everyday and even at night it’s still dry and pretty clean. And even if you’re lucky enough to come across a drop or two of sweat, there’s no way that there’s enough to make it all the way across! But every now and again you still hear of some twit zit that has to be saved because they’ve gone and tried to be a hero, exploring and searching for The Golden Tunnel. Seriously!
Anyway, so Right Armpit had been the perfect place to live and where almost every zit is believed to have originated from. But none of that mattered when The Great Ranga’s massive infection hit. It was barely noticed at first. A little bit of extra saltiness in his body fat, a tiny bit more fungus around each hair follicle, and just a little smellier than usual—yummy.