by Tara Basi
“We’ve a world exclusive Mr McFont, for tomorrow’s Times!” Bobby shouted through the letter box. Mr McFont made rude suggestions about what we should go and do for disturbing him at this hour. We persisted until her answered.
“An exclusive, you say,” said Mr McFont as he suddenly swung the door open. He was wearing a funny flat-topped tall hat with a tassel, a dressing gown made out of a very thick rug and enormous slippers in the shape of hippos.
“Wiki-Alien-Diet allegedly killed by the powers-that-be in a massive hut bomb, possibly in retaliation for his subversive poetry and underground anti-bullying campaign. Authorities blame swamp gas. The mystery deepens.” Bobby read from a muddy sheet of paper he’d pulled from his jacket.
“Allegedly, possibly, is good. A fact would be useful, apart from that awful poetry. I could have killed Wiki for that.”
“It was brilliant poetry,” just leapt from my mouth, before Bobby could say anything. But he didn’t say anything, he just ushered McFont out into the street and pointed back in the direction of the swamp bog. The huge red glow still filled the night sky.
“And I have pictures,” Bobby said fishing his camera out of his pocket.
The next day, if anything, the horrible clouds had sunk even lower, almost touching the church roof. You knew they were itching to smash us with rain and strike us with lightning if we stood too near anything tall and pointy. Hopefully, Bobby wasn’t one of those things.
The playground was abuzz with the news in the Vanity Times of the WAD’s assassination. It wasn’t long before the Power 3 had us surrounded.
“What happened to your eyebrows,” Madge asked, with the faintest hint of concern.
“Shaving practice,” I replied nonchalantly.
“Tell anyone about last night and you’re fish paste, get it?” Tony hissed at Bobby.
“Sure, absolutely, I definitely get it,” Bobby replied with a subtle touch of defiance that worried me. I didn’t want to see my friend turned into fish paste. It was obviously too subtle for Tony, who wandered off after a doubting Madge and a happier George.
“Have we finished revolting?” I asked Bobby, increasingly puzzled by the twists and turns of his plan.
“Just started. Next break we’re off to see Mr Singh,” Bobby announced and rushed off into school. Less than a minute after the break bell sounded we were standing in Mr Singh’s Post Office, Sweets and Chips Emporium, desperately trying to catch our breaths.
“It’s an outstanding merchandising opportunity Mr Singh, exclusive worldwide rights to all WAD revolutionary material, tee-shirts and novelties.”
“The big bang WAD? The mad rubbish poet WAD? Him?” Mr Singh pointed at me and laughed.
“Not Terry. I mean the legendary revolutionary that everyone wants to read about. Remember all those Vanity Times sales last month and today, didn’t the paper just fly off the shelves?” Bobby explained, hurting my feelings a little bit. After all, it was my fantastic poetry that had started the whole WAD legend.
“Not Terry?” Mr Singh asked a little more seriously.
“No, not Terry, we’re talking about the myth martyr that is WAD.”
“What sell, what profit?” Mr Singh said in his about-to-negotiate-seriously tone.
“The details are all in this envelope. We’ll take a 12.5% commission, after you’ve recovered your costs of course,” Bobby suggested as he handed Mr Singh a slim brown envelope.
“10%, max offer, if sales £20plus,” Mr Singh countered and then folded his arms defiantly across his puffed up chest, preparing himself for a good 20 minutes of arduous haggling.
“Done,” Bobby snapped then grabbed my arm and headed for the door.
“What, too quick, you cheated Mr Singh,” Mr Singh shouted after us as we raced out of the shop.
“You probably could’ve got 11.25%, of whatever it is,” I suggested to Bobby as we walked back to school, surprised that he’d given up so quickly.
“This is not about money, it’s a serious revolution. Now, to awaken the masses.”
“Wake who up, how?”
“Print off hundreds of these, stuff every letter box and fly-post every blank space you can find. Best done at night so no one sees you,” Bobby ordered, as he pulled a memory stick from his satchel and handed it to me.
“I’ll be up all night, again,” I whined, thinking about my lovely warm bed. We hadn’t seen much of each other this week.
“We’ll need a new WAD poem, a small one, about bullying. You’ll be a revolutionary poet and a subversive midnight postman Terry. Anyway, tomorrow’s Saturday, you can sleep late. Except… we have to be in the town square by 9am,” Bobby explained, suddenly twisting good sleeping news into bad little-sleep news.
Bobby’s poster template only had space for a six line poem, but it still took me hours to come up with something about aliens and bullying. Aliens didn’t really do bullying, they either ate you or they didn’t. Printing hundreds of pages on my budget- one-page-in-a-while printer took another four hours. Luckily I had plenty of the cheap boot-leg purple ink cartridges that Mr Singh sold. I’d asked for black, but he said the colour came from cockroach innards and only came in purple, which was fair enough. It was about 2am when I finally set out into heavy rain and a freezing wind, laden down with a bulging rucksack of posters, to mass-mail every letterbox and fly-post every wall, tree, lamppost and windscreen I could find in town. Stuffing the letterboxes went quite quickly, but stuffing the poster into a protective plastic cover and then fixing it to something in the howling wind took ages.
Next morning the evil Mickey Mouse alarm clock screamed at me. Get up, it shouted. Get lost, I replied. My eyes didn’t want to open at all. Turning over, I tried to bury myself deep inside the mattress, hidden away under my lovely warm duvet. Sleep, lovely sleep, dribble sleep, funny dreams sleep, unconscious no-thoughts sleep, any kind of sleep was all that mattered. Except, there was the revolution and my promise to Bobby. Today I needed to have a talk with Bobby about planning. Major events in any future plans would only happen between 9am and 9pm, a proper time for schemes and scams. Even awake and out of bed my eyes remained firmly closed, glued shut by natural sleep gum. Mum found me asleep in the sink with a toothbrush firmly wedged in my mouth, and led me to the kitchen, sat me down and placed a magic hot mug of tea in one hand and lovely smelling buttered toast in the other.
“Sleepy head, it’s a big day, thought you’d be more interested,” Mum murmured from some faraway place, and I remembered it was a very big day.
Outside the evil black clouds of the last few days had been replaced by a higher ceiling of dark grey clouds. Ambivalent clouds that might rain or might not. They might part and let the sun through, or they might darken up and hail bomb the whole island.
I found Bobby by the big bronze cod studying one of the twelve copies of the posters I’d glued to the metal fish during the night:
A WAD memorial event against Bullying - Town Square 10am.
With Mr Singh’s Famous Food Stall and Anti-Bully Music Mix
Bullied welcome, come and unite.
Bullies welcome, come and Repent, especially the Powers that be.
Under the information was my latest poem and the offer that meant everyone would come:
It’s Alien to Bully - by the WAD
Aliens tried to bully Ripley.
Body Snatchers tried to bully everybody.
Martian Tripods did a lot of general bullying.
Daleks had bullying tendencies.
Terminators were programmed to bully.
People just said no and lots got squished.
But we always win in the end.
Commemorative tee-shirts and anti-Bullying kits, exclusively by Mr Singh, a registered non-charity for-profit organisation.
“Eloquent poem Terry, very moving, well done. Let’s see how Mr Singh is getting on,” said Bobby.
I was really chuffed, it was the first kind thing Bobby had ever said about my poetry, though it w
as probably the only one he’d ever read. Unusually for this time of the morning, Mr Singh’s shop was closed, though we could see a lot of scurrying around through the blinds. Bobby ignored the sign and tapped on the door. Mr Singh separated the slats and stared out with a harassed expression. When he saw it was us he quickly opened the door, pulled us in and slammed it shut again. Dimple, Mr Singh’s niece, suddenly flung open the back door, rushed into the shop, grabbed something from a shelf and disappeared again, leaving behind a wave of lovely Mr Singh barbeque smells.
“People better turn up, or you two buying lots of food,” Mr Singh panted.
“Done all we can Mr Singh, just have to wait and see. Now, where’s the
tee-shirts and the anti-bully devices?” Bobby asked anxiously.
“Here, printing in special purple ink cost fortune. Device top quality dual use deterrent, gypsy said,” a grumpy Mr Singh explained, holding up a white tee-shirt with a purple message.
R.I.P. WAD ANTI-BULLY HERO
THE FARCE BE WITH YOU
JUST SAY NO, WHISTLE AND DUCK
CHAI-AROMA-CHINO (CAC) OFFERS FOR TEE-SHIRT WEARERS
“Its ‘force’ not ‘farce’ and where did ‘and duck’ come from?” Bobby angrily asked, staring with disbelief at the tee-shirt.
“You wrote, ‘just say no, whistle and defy’, what’s that, no sense, so I fix, no cost. Force, farce what difference, rubbish words anyway,” Mr Singh answered, quite unable to understand what Bobby was upset about. I kinda agreed with Mr Singh; though I thought the message was really deep and meaningless at the same time. Perfect for confusing bullies. By the time they’d worked it out you’d be gone.
“Who said anything about mentioning Chai-Aroma-Chino,” a grumpy Bobby added.
“Sponsorship, good business,” Mr Singh answered, looking a little puzzled as to why Bobby was still upset.
“The device?” Bobby asked, finally resigned to the tee-shirt design.
Mr Singh reached into his apron pocket and dangled a silver whistle hanging from a day-glo yellow plastic cord in front of us. The tee-shirt now made a little more sense. I grabbed the whistle and gave it a little blow. Nothing. I tried again, blowing harder. Nothing, then suddenly barking and howls erupted all around us.
“It’s a bloody dog whistle,” Bobby shouted immediately going from resigned to grumpy again.
“Dual use, stupid boy,” Mr Singh answered calmly and snatched the whistle from my hand. He turned it over and pushed a little slider from a stick dog picture to a stick elephant and handed it back. I tried again and nearly knocked myself out from the force of the terrible noise. Bobby and Mr Singh clutched at their ears, abruptly turned away and bent over to escape the excruciating noise.
“Dumbo mating call, gypsy said, also unblocks drains,” Mr Singh explained when our hearing returned.
“It’s perfect, tee-shirts will have to do,” Bobby said and grabbed the tee-shirt Mr Singh was holding and pulled it over his head.
“Hey, that’s £3.45p,” Mr Singh shouted in surprise.
“Advertising, Terry will need one as well and a whistle each,” Bobby added, still struggling to get the tee-shirt to sit comfortably over his winter sweater.
“Any damage, you pay,” Mr Singh responded suspiciously, quite unused to the concept of freebies.
Proudly sporting our WAD tee-shirts we helped Mr Singh set up his stall and Bhangra sound system. The stall consisted of a table piled high with anti-bully kits and a giant gas powered barbeque manned by Mrs Mummy-ji. A few feet away we’d set up the sound system decks, and four speakers as big as phone boxes were placed at each corner of the square. In the square’s centre was an improvised dance floor that Dimple was carefully checking, stopping occasionally to bang in a sticky up nail or squish a trespassing snail and kick its crushed carcass in to the grass. Mr Singh was firmly in control of the double decker DJ system and just before 10am the whole square was flooded with the authentic sound of super loud Punjabi Bhangra disco folk music.
“Why do you have all this stuff?” I screamed at Mr Singh over the Bhangra, pointing at the sound deck.
“Weddings, people like nice traditional disco, dignified, not crazy modern rubbish,” Mr Singh bellowed back, but I could only just hear him.
By 10:15am the only people in the square were me, Bobby, a glowering Mr DJ Singh. There was Mrs Mummy-ji who was staring daggers at Bobby in-between aggressively fanning the barbeque, and Dimple contentedly practicing her Bhangra super-fast dance steps. At least it had cleared up and the sun was out.
“Psst,” suddenly came very loudly from behind the bronze cod. I only just heard it so it must have been very loud indeed to overcome the Bhangra. It was a very nervous looking Tiny Tim.
“Are you the only ones?” Tiny Tim asked in a loud Bhangra-conquering whisper.
“Huge crowds have turned up; they’re all in Mr Singh’s shop buying pop, or taking a toilet/dance break behind the hedge,” Bobby quickly replied before I could tell Tiny the truth.
“Oh, OK,” Tiny Tim shouted. He disappeared behind the cod for a few seconds before re-emerging cautiously with about fifteen of our playground companions.
By midday the square was full of kids and parents, all wearing WAD tee-shirts. Even Tony’s brothers turned up bringing lovely food, a huge trifle and a massive banana cake. As the afternoon wore on everyone seemed to be having a great time, especially after we persuaded Mr Singh that one speaker and a quarter volume was loud enough. Some just sat around eating tikka and chatting about the mysterious WAD. Lots of the kids were running wild tormenting the local dogs with their whistles, after the whistle’s Dumbo emergency option was banned for causing a number of people to start bleeding from the ears. Right in the centre of the square, on a makeshift dance floor of pallets covered in boards, Dimple was leading a large Bhangra dance class of mainly sweaty adults hopping furiously to the savage jack-hammer tempo.
“Are the masses awake now? I asked Bobby.
“Most definitely, no going back now but the real test comes with the reaction of the Powers, we shouldn’t have to wait long,” Bobby answered with a smile.
The Power 3 eventually turned up late in the afternoon as the sun started to set. Nearly everyone else had gone. Tony’s brothers, Gary and Mitch, me and Bobby were all helping Mr Singh clear up, when the three of them strolled into the square.
“Where you been bro, you missed a great party in a good cause, that WAD was alright, if a bit whacko,” Garry called out to Tony.
“You can all give us a hand now you’re here, get the litter,” Mitch suggested, as he indicated the black bin liners near the cod statue.
“Some tikka left, only feet, but still good stuff, quarter price to you,” Mr Singh cheerfully added.
Madge and George immediately dropped their sour expressions, grabbed a bin liner and helped themselves to tikka feet. Tony stayed rooted to the spot, arms folded, expressionless. He stared at me and Bobby for a while and then, when he couldn’t get Madge or George to stop picking up litter, left. As the street lights came on I casually shuffled over to Madge to see if she needed any help.
“Do you think I’m a bully Terry?” were the first shocking words out of Madge’s pretty mouth as I took her bin bag and held it open for her.
“Well… ahm…. maybe… sometimes… you can be a bit… firm. But you’re really nice with it. You never beat up anybody really bad, not like Tony,” I answered while staring at my feet and bracing myself for a big thump.
“So… I am,” Madge answered sadly, her lovely muscular shoulders all slouched down as she listlessly stabbed at the litter on the grass.
“Here, have a tee-shirt, and whistle, you can be whatever you want,” I gently suggested, handing her an anti-bully pack I’d grabbed from the stall.
“WAD’s alright… and the Masterminders. Best scam yet, Terry. Nice poems as well. Give me that, I guess it’s just the Power 2 now,” Madge whispered. She took the pack and squeezed my hand, real tight. I would have
fainted there and then if George hadn’t butted in.
“One Power, my dad says all that stolen dinner money is killing me. He’s put me on a diet. And I don’t want WAD haunting me, I definitely repent,” George added. He sighed as he handed Madge his uneaten Tikka feet.
Madge pulled on her tee-shirt and we found one for George as well. Later, sitting in the shop, we drank CAC late into the evening with Tony’s great brothers, Mr Singh, Dimple and Mrs Mummy-ji, taking turns to toast the WAD. The very best moment in my whole life ever came when Mr Singh finally shut-up shop and we all headed off home. Madge kissed me on the cheek as we left. Before I could say anything, even ask for seconds, Madge was gone. Bobby had to hold me up or I would have collapsed into a little puddle of ecstasy.
“That just leaves Tony,” Bobby growled angrily, rather spoiling my moment of post-sex bliss.
I spent Sunday sleeping. When Monday morning came I was rested but scared to go to school, just in case I’d dreamt the whole thing. Did Madge really kiss me and was Tony really the last of the bullies?
For the Small Island, this close to Christmas, an unusually fantastic morning greeted me as I stepped out of the house. A lovely blue-black sky, ice cold but clear, was splashed with pointy white stars which were just beginning to fade in the coming dawn. We would see the sun today.
It wasn’t all a dream. Madge ran up to me and said hello as soon as I stepped foot in the playground, then she smiled shyly and ran off to join a group of girls huddled together and giggling. At that moment I had a feeling that getting another kiss was going to be complicated. Bobby would know what to do. He was over by the church wall talking to - George? As I approached the pair of them I heard the end of the conversation.
“So it’s reducing salt, avoiding trans-fatty acids and getting the right alkaline balance as well as watching your calories. I’ll take another blood sample tomorrow. Keep up the good work,” Bobby explained to an entranced George while holding up a small plastic tub of red stuff to the light and staring at it intently. Looking very satisfied with his consultation, George wandered off munching on a carrot and hopping vigorously from one leg to the other, running on the spot and then taking deep lunges to slowly move forward.