by M. D. Whalen
“Yeah. We hid in the tree and farted down on him!”
Peter snorted a little laugh. “Yeah, he was so shocked that he peed all over the lettuce, and then his mother picked it for their salad!”
“Wait a minute,” Willy said. “That gives me an idea.”
Although the clowns had earplugs, he lowered his voice to a tiny whisper and told Peter the plan.
A pimply-faced clown slouched over and said, “Tim fer derrer diss.”
“Huh?” Peter said.
The pimply clown removed his gas mask and earplugs and said, “Time for a double dose. Booby wants them bombs fully charged by midnight. Open wide.”
Willy ate one snot ball, which seemed to have a slight taste of cinnamon. Not bad, he thought. He swallowed the next one quickly, then said, “Um, actually, I gotta go to the bathroom.”
“What are you talking about? What’cha think this is?” The pimply clown pointed to their potties.
“He means we gotta take a whiz,” Peter said.
The clown chef stomped over and said in a French accent, “Ooh la la! Zat is eempossible. Zis food is special formula to produce gas only!”
Willy made a big show of twisting in his seat. “Yeah, well, what about all that grape soda they gave us? You don’t want us to pollute the bomb mixture, do you?”
The clown chef growled. “Why you not say so before we just feed you?” He nodded to the other clowns. “Make it à la speedy. We have exactement two minutes and forty seconds before le gas starts forming.”
The pimply clown led them upstairs to the nearest bathroom.
“One at a time,” he said.
“You realize we only have one minute twenty seconds left,” Willy said.
“Whatever,” the clown said. “Go together. But no monkey business!”
The boys went inside and shut the door, then gave each other a high five. They didn’t really have to pee.
Just as they’d hoped, there was a small window high above the toilet, which they were sure they could fit through, if only they could reach.
Peter stood on the seat, then Willy climbed onto his shoulders.
“If you fart now, I'll kill you,” Peter said.
But Willy wasn’t listening. The window was just out of reach. “Lift me up!”
Pounding rattled the door.
“Finish up, already!” the pimply clown shouted.
“Come on, come on,” Peter said. “My arms are getting tired.”
Willy stretched his fingers over the window ledge. With one big pull, he hoisted himself up and opened the window. He held down a hand for Peter.
The door shook on its frame. Their clown guard was trying to kick it down. “Come out, you brats!” he shouted.
Willy helped Peter up the windowsill just in time. Not only was the door coming off its hinges, but Willy’s guts felt like a balloon ready to burst.
“One...two...three...rip!!” Peter said.
They blasted the bathroom full of a double-thick, eye-watering, poisonous fart, just as the door came crashing in.
“EEEEWWWWW!!!” said the pimply clown, right before he passed out.
Willy and Peter leapt to the ground and ran for their lives.
“Maybe we can find those camels,” Peter shouted.
Trouble was, they had no idea which way to go. Ahead was open desert. Behind were jagged mountains.
“We need to head south, I think,” Peter said. He pointed at the sun. “It rises in the west, right? Or east? We never decided.”
Loud buzzing and whirring drowned out their voices. Something overhead blocked the light: big and round with long spinning blades, and the letters UN painted on the side.
“It’s a United Nations helicopter!” Peter shouted. “They must be searching for the secret headquarters of the Wize Krakkers who attacked all those world monuments!”
“We’re saved!” Willy shed tears, but of happiness.
The boys hopped up and down, waving their arms, to get the pilot’s attention.
The helicopter’s deafening roar disguised the other rumbling that was happening right then, inside Willy’s and Peter’s bellies. Too late, Willy realized that their double dose of snotty fart food was just kicking in with part two.
Jets of gas blasted from their butts, mixing with the vomit-inducing stink still spewing from the bathroom window above, and twisted upward into the sky.
The gray-green tornado of atomic-strength flatulence engulfed the UN helicopter, which started to lose control.
“I can’t look,” Willy said.
“Me neither,” said Peter.
They didn’t have to. The next thing they heard was the shriek of a huge object falling from the sky, then a ringing crash of metal on solid rock.
Willy peeked. Something was still up there.
A parachute, with a man dangling below.
CHAPTER 12
Phew-nited Nations
“We’re really sorry,” Peter told the pilot, who was currently handcuffed to a potty near Willy and Peter back inside the fart bomb lab. Now three bombs were being loaded with gas. The pilot had a cross-eyed grin. The toxic fart cloud must have fried his brain.
“No apologies, dudes,” he said. “The food here’s great. Reminds me of something I used to eat as a kid. I just can’t put my finger on it...”
Willy was about to tell him that he probably had put his finger on it—and in it—when the pilot’s eyes bulged and his body went stiff. His earth-shattering fart rattled the walls.
“Whoa, that felt gooood,” the pilot said. “This is fun.”
Then all three of them farted together.
It sounded like herds of elephants dancing with chainsaws. The pilot sang along: “Woop doop doowap diddly dop.”
The door swung open and in marched Booby the Clown.
“It appears that you boys did me a great service in your fruitless escape attempt. I should be grateful, shouldn’t I? I should be lenient. Well, we don’t always do what we should do, do we?” Booby squeezed a flower on his chest and laughed, squirting pink lemonade in Willy’s and Peter’s faces.
Then he squirted the pilot. “As for our new guest, I hope you enjoy eating snot and farting all day. Hoo hee ha ha walla walla wing ding!”
“Pretty much describes my weekends,” the pilot said.
“Silence! I’ll have you know that at this very moment the United Nations is in special session, waiting to hear my demands.”
A cuckoo clock watch whistled on his wrist. “Ah! Show time, gentlemen!”
Booby strode to a control panel and switched on the monitor. It filled with a live picture of a huge meeting hall. People from every country of the world waited in anticipation. It was the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Booby moved in front of a camera and puffed out his chest like he was already king of the world.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Presidents and Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens, I am Booby the Clown. I present myself today as the new ruler of Planet Earth...or I will be, when you hand over the keys to your countries to me.”
Protesting voices filled the United Nations General Assembly hall. Booby silenced them with his crazy multi-colored grin.
“Oh, but why should you surrender power to me, you ask? I shall explain! At this very moment I am preparing the most powerful weapons of ass destruction ever created. Each bomb packs the punch of 45 billion farts.
“All the pine-scented air freshener on the planet won’t make that go away. No, sir! Your cities will smell like poo for the next thousand years! Hoo hee ha ha walla walla wing ding!”
The British Prime Minister stood up with a defiant tilt to her chin. “What are your requirements?”
Willy could have sworn that for just one second, the Prime Minister squinted and her bottom shifted a teeny bit to the side. She was letting out a silent stinker...right into the face of the Emperor of Japan.
“My demands are as follows.” Booby raised a gloved finger to the camera.
Someone called out, “What about cucumbers?”
“Absolutely no cucumbers!” Booby declared.
He held up a second finger. “All fart jokes will be outlawed. They will be deleted from every joke book in every language. Fart gags will be spliced out of movies and cartoons. No more farting e-cards. No more viral videos of baby farts! Punishment will be ten years of hard prison labor while wearing girls' panties on your head!”
“That’s madness!” Willy whispered.
Booby raised a third finger. “Farting in public, farting in schools or in churches, in pools or playgrounds or work or play—especially if those farts are silent—will result in prison for life! Yes, I’m talking about you, Madam Prime Minister, and you, Mister President of Peru. I saw you cut one.”
The President of Peru blushed bright red.
“Number four,” said Booby. “Imitating farts—including underarm farts or the use of whoopee cushions—is also illegal.”
A woman near the front rose to her feet, let out a silent fart, and said, “What about wee wee jokes?”
Booby nodded with a little grin.
“I’m glad you asked, Madam German Prime Minister. After careful consideration, wee wee jokes are okay.”
A few people applauded.
Booby raised a fist to the camera. “My ultimate condition, which is not negotiable, is that I am declared...”
Booby clamped his lips shut. Everyone in the UN held their breath. You could have heard a mouse fart.
Booby broke the silence: “...President of Our Planet in Eternity!”
The Canadian Prime Minister raised his hand. “Hey, man, that abbreviation spells POOPIE, eh?”
Pandemonium broke out. A towering woman from an African country rose from her seat and called for silence.
“What if we refuse? What if we believe that all people deserve the freedom to fart? And the liberty to laugh at farts?”
“Fine. You want to laugh at butt gas?” Booby said. “Monday morning—yes, tomorrow!—you’ll have the biggest laugh of your life! You will watch three cities suffocate in spectacular cream-of-mushroom clouds of smoldering stink...beginning with Beantown!”
Booby clicked off the screen.
Willy and Peter gasped. Beantown! The headquarters of the Roadapple Corporation, maker of the Death Breeze 3000!
“That’s so evil! And on our sister’s birthday!” Willy shouted, trying to wipe his tear-soaked cheeks on his shoulders.
Booby dabbed a crusty handkerchief on Willy’s face. “Cheer up, little man. Millions will get a whiff of your power-packed poots before they perish. You’ll go down in history.”
Then his face turned to pure evil. “Now, get to work! Fart-two-three-four! Fart-two-three-four!”
Booby marched out of the room and shut the door.
“Whoa. That dude is cool,” said the pilot.
“Got any other plans?” Peter said under his breath. “Your last one didn’t work out too well.”
“Shut up,” Willy said.
The clown chef stuffed them with more snot balls.
They tooted.
They fweeted.
They honked.
They blorked.
Willy heard a teeny-tiny sound from the pilot’s seat—not a fart, but familiar.
Peter hissed to Willy, “Did you hear what I heard?”
Willy had.
It was the bleep of an incoming text message.
CHAPTER 13
The Butt Scratcher
Peter whispered through his teeth, so no clowns could overhear: “You have a phone?”
“Yup,” the pilot said, way too loud. “How else my momma gonna reach me? Got it right here in my—”
“Shh!” Peter said.
“Why, you wanna call your—”
“Fart-two-three-four! Fart-two-three-four!” Peter shouted, drowning out the dizzy-brained pilot.
His brain wasn’t the only dizzy one. Willy’s spun like a pinwheel. The pilot has a phone!
Peter read his mind. “Even if we could free our hands and get hold of it, those clowns’ll grab it before we can say a word.”
“I have a better idea,” Willy said.
“Yeah, right. Your last one was so great.”
“Shut up,” Willy said.
A shadow fell over Willy. The pimply clown was back. “Whadda you gabbing about? Don’t waste gas out your lips.” He shoved snot balls in everyone’s mouths.
Willy held his snot ball on his tongue. He had to admit he was getting bored with eating boogers, flavored or otherwise. But this one had a new purpose. He let snot dribble over his lips, and stretch down in a line way past his chin.
“Ooh, yummy!” the pilot said.
“Shh,” Willy hissed out the side of his mouth. He twisted and squirmed, aiming the gooey string of slime into his shirt pocket. Don’t break, he thought. Please don’t break.
When he was sure it was all the way in, he started to suck.
This is quite definitely gross, he thought. Just imagining what he looked like, slurping up a yellow lumpy rope of mucus, made him want to retch. But he had to look down. And what he saw cheered him.
The card that Booby had given him back in the bouncy castle room rose from his pocket, attached to the snotty string like a hooked fish. It had a picture of a clown-headed dragon, and words which Willy memorized before sucking the card all the way into his mouth. And just in time!
“Hey, you dribbled all over your shirt,” the pimply clown said. “Tsk! Now I gotta get more.”
“What was that about?” Peter asked.
“You’ll see.”
With their voices covered by a new round of loud farting, Willy asked the pilot, “Is that, um, device your personal one or for work?”
“All work and no gas makes Jack a dull—” Pfoooit!
“Shh!” Willy said. If only this dumb pilot would get his brains unscrambled! Willy spotted a bulge in his pocket where the phone must be. What if the clowns noticed too? He had to think!
The clown chef left the laboratory to get ingredients. Perfect! They only had to get rid of the other two.
“Hey, clownies!” Willy called out. “All this farting is great and all, but my butt itches bad! One of you come over here and scratch my heinie?”
“Shut it!” the pimply clown roared.
“I mean it!” Willy said. “I’m itching so bad I might let gas escape and poison us all!”
“Me too,” the pilot said. “I could use a good butt scratch.”
“Me three,” Peter said.
The grumbling clown stomped over. “I’m just doing one of you.” He reached inside Willy’s pants and scratched the side of his leg.
“Higher,” Willy said. “Left. No, up. Mm, that’s it, right beside the hole. Ahhh!”
The clown looked disgusted. “You better not—”
But Willy did. He let out a greasy wet flapper-slapper he’d been saving up.
“EEEEWWWWWW!” The clown pulled his hand out and ran to the door. “I gotta go wash this in disinfectant!”
That left one clown, too busy at the master control panel to pay attention. No time to lose!
“Pilot man, do you have voice control on your phone?” Willy said.
The pilot replied with a bazooka-strength fart. His head rolled back, his tongue hung out. The man was useless!
Willy and Peter tried the names of all possible voice assistants, including some that didn’t exist. “Natasha! Hermione! Zanzibar!”
“Zanzibar?” Peter said.
The pilot stirred. “Oh, what a fart that was. Ooh! Aah! Oh, HoneyPie!”
The faintest, tiniest mouse burp of a bleep came from the phone.
“Yes!” Willy said. “HoneyPie, send a message...”
CHAPTER 14
Celebration
Booby the Clown burst into the room, leading a parade of clowns blowing slide whi
stles and kazoos.
“Victory is mine!”
Booby raised his phone overhead and clicked a button.
A text message filled the largest monitor:
We unconditionally accept all your demands. You are now President of Our Planet in Eternity.
“Sure it’s real?” a blue-haired clown said.
“Of course,” Booby replied. “We traced the message to a United Nations registered phone!”
The other clowns cheered. “Long live POOPIE! We love POOPIE!”
“Not sure what you’re talking about, but let’s have a POOPIE party!” said the pilot.
Booby crouched down and patted Willy’s and Peter’s heads. “I couldn’t call myself POOPIE without the help of your putrid powers,” he said. “I hereby appoint you as ministers in my new government.”
Willy put on his biggest fake happy smile, like when Aunt Bertha came to visit.
“I’m honored, Your POOPIEness. If you’ll unlock us, my brother and I want to make you a big POOPIE celebration cake.”
“Excellent idea,” Booby said.
Willy’s wrists itched after being clamped for so long. Peter pulled him aside. “What are you up to?”
“Any camel food left?”
Peter patted his pocket. A big grin spread from ear to ear. “I hate to say this, but my whiny crybaby little brother might just be a genius.”
Circus music filled the air. Balloons flew everywhere. The walls were covered with signs saying, “We love POOPIE!”
While the others sang and danced, Willy and Peter worked in the kitchen. Then they decorated the cake with cherries that looked like clown noses, and carried it to the party.
Every clown on Wize Krakker Island was there. Some juggled eggs, while others did somersaults and handstands and put on magic shows.
Booby the Clown climbed onto the center table and called for quiet.
“My fellow Wize Krakkers! The great day that we all dreamed about has finally arrived. For centuries, clowns have entertained kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, making them laugh and easing their worries. And what did we get in return? No respect! If you call someone a clown, it’s meant as an insult. Well, my funny friends, the clowns’ revenge has come!”