A small girl stepped shyly from behind the tree trunk. Joe thought she looked like a girl who had fallen into a hedge and decided she liked it so much she had brought it along with her. Instead of hair she had a sprinkling of tiny leaves. Her skin was papery and she had thin, short branches that looked like arms.
“Hello, hooman,” she said in a giddy voice, staring at Joe with curiosity. “You’re very squishy-looking.”
“Why don’t we go inside and have a cup of tea?” said Fuzzby before Joe could reply. “And some chips, of course.”
“Yes, please, Mr Bixington,” said Mrs Trumptious with another dramatic sigh. “I’ve a family of robins nesting in my canopy and it’s giving me quite a headache. Mud tea would be perfect.” There was a twitter of birdsong from her upper branches. “And a few worms,” she added.
With some difficulty and several showers of leaves, Mrs Trumptious crammed herself into the diner, turning it into a temporary garden.
“Thank goodness it’s not autumn,” grumbled Barry, “or we’d be clearing up for days.”
“Why don’t you and Twig go and make a milkshake for yourselves while Mrs Trumptious and I have a chat?” said Fuzzby to Joe. “We’ve some important things to discuss.”
Joe wasn’t sure he was happy about being lumbered with this strange plant-girl, but he took Twig into the kitchen.
“Do you really work here?” asked Twig dizzily. “That’s amazing! I bet you know lots about making food.”
“I suppose so,” said Joe, though really it was Fuzzby who did all the work.
Twig looked about the kitchen at all the different pots and pans, and the shelves filled with strange ingredients. “If I worked here I’d be eating all the time,” she said.
“All these delicious things! Beetle-wing ice cream, chewy worm spaghetti, stinky coughy pudding, curly dog dumplings!” She ran over to a large vat in the corner and peered in. “Cold frog custard! My favourite. It must all make you so hungry!”
“Not… exactly,” said Joe as the custard oozed out a bubble with a wet PARP! sound. “I usually stick to hooman, er… human food.”
“I like ice cream,” said Joe. “Especially the type with bits of marshmallow or chocolate cookies in it.”
Twig looked blank. “Marsh mellow?” she said, puzzled. “Is that a type of swamp creature?”
Joe realised that this conversation was going nowhere. “But I do like chips,” he said.
“Everyone likes chips!” said Twig, brightening up. “There’s nowhere else that does them as well as Fuzzby.”
Joe felt very proud at this. Twig was obviously impressed that he worked in such an important place.
“They don’t even make chips as good as his anywhere in Monsterworld,” she added.
Monsterworld? So that was what was on the other side of the wall, thought Joe.
“What’s Monsterworld like?” he asked eagerly.
“Haven’t you been?” said Twig. “I’ve been to Hoomanworld loads of times. You hoomans all look the same. Squishy and miserable. And none of the trees can talk. Everyone looks different in Monsterworld, and the trees are much more friendly.”
Joe listened with excitement. He really wanted to visit Monsterworld, but it seemed as if Fuzzby wasn’t keen on him going. He hadn’t even told Joe about it! But why? It didn’t sound like there was anything to be afraid of, according to Twig.
“I’d love to do some cooking,” Twig said suddenly. She was waving a spoon around, pretending to stir an imaginary pot of soup. “Do you think I could?”
Joe wasn’t sure. Twig looked like the kind of person who could set fire to herself at the bottom of the sea. “Maybe we could do something simple,” he said.
On the kitchen counter a tray of gobfruit and rat hair cupcakes was cooling. Fuzzby had taken them out of the oven earlier in the day.
“Why don’t we put some icing on the cakes?” said Joe. “That’s a good start. Then we… erm… you… can eat them afterwards.”
“Yes!” said Twig. “Let’s look for things to decorate them!”
They hunted through Fuzzby’s collection of ingredients. Joe found some fly teeth, some crystallised eyeballs and a jar of fruity burpsweets.
They dolloped green, gloopy icing on the cakes and sprinkled the tops with the teeth, eyes and sweets.
Twig found a pot filled with glittery powder. “It will make them all sparkly,” she said excitedly. She shook the pot over the cakes, dusting them with plenty of glitter.
“I’ll make a milkshake now,” said Joe.
But before he could do anything, the cakes started to move about in front of their eyes, slowly shuffling around the tray. One after the other, they grew little stalks. The stalks quickly turned into little legs. The cakes began to get up off the tray and walk around, twitching and stomping unsteadily on their little feet.
“They’re alive!” marvelled Joe. “What was that glitter stuff?” He took the pot from Twig and saw a label on its side. zombie powder, it said. “You’ve turned the cakes into zombies!” Joe gasped.
The little zombie cakes lurched towards them, staring with their crystallised eyeballs and gnashing their fly teeth – except for one cake that had five eyeballs pointing in different directions and walked round in a circle.
“Oh dear,” said Twig. “I don’t think I can eat anything that has a face.”
The cakes squeaked in their little zombie voices: “BRAAIINNSS!”
“I think they might want to eat us,” said Joe, grabbing a broom for defence. “Or at least our brains. If they bite us we’ll turn into zombies too!”
“BRAAIINNSS!” squeaked the zombie cakes.
“Can’t we do something?” said Twig anxiously. “Get Fuzzby!”
“He’ll never let me back in the kitchen again if he sees this!” said Joe.
The zombie-cakes had jumped down from the counter and were slowly advancing towards them, chanting “BRAAIINNSS!” all the time.
“I heard you the first time!” said Joe.
He swept them into a corner, but the zombie cakes were undeterred. They trudged menacingly towards the two children, icing dripping from their misshapen faces like pus and leaving a trail across the floor. Joe again attempted to push them back with the broom, but a couple of the zombie cakes clung on to the end of it. He tried to shake them off, but they held on tightly and started crawling up the broom handle.
“What shall we do?” asked Twig in a panic.
Joe had read somewhere that the only way to destroy a zombie is to cut off its head, but as these zombies were all head and no body, that might be difficult. He grabbed a large knife and sliced through the nearest zombie, chopping it into bits. Little cake body parts lay lifeless on the floor, surrounded by crumbs.
“Ooh,” said Twig. “You’ve cut it into bite-sized portions! How clever!”
But the bits of cake twitched and grew legs of their own, making even tinier zombies.
“BRAAIINSSS!” came their little high-pitched squeaks.
“They’re bite-sized, but they’re going to be doing the biting!” cried Joe.
He scanned the shelves around him. Maybe Fuzzby had anti-zombie powder he could use. There was a jar labelled gungefruit marmalade. Marmalade was sticky… He grabbed the jar.
“This is no time for a sandwich!” said Twig.
Joe started pouring the marmalade out of the jar, the odd-shaped chunks of festering fruit hitting the floor with a SPLUT!
“It’s sticky!” he explained. “It might trap them and give us some time to escape!”
But the march of the zombie cakes was relentless. Their little feet kicked the fruit out of the way and they waded through the sugary marmalade with crumbly determination.
“BRAIINNS!”
Joe looked around the kitchen in desperation. There was the great big vat of frog custard, all cold and runny. He had an idea. I wonder if zombies can swim, he thought.
Meanwhile, Twig had climbed on to one of the lower shelves as the
zombie cakes crowded beneath her.
“BRAIINNSS?” they squeaked at her hopefully.
“Look out!” Joe called to Twig. “I’m going to unleash the custard!”
He gave the vat a push, tipping it over on to the floor and spilling out the sickly yellow goo. It bubbled as it rolled in all directions, releasing spurts of amphibian-smelling gas. It slopped through the kitchen, sending a cold wave of frog-flavoured horror in all directions. Joe jumped on to the counter out of its reach, but the cupcakes weren’t so lucky. The little zombies were swept to their doom, engulfed by the surge of custard and dragged down into its depths. The cries of “BRAAIINNSS!” sank with them beneath the surface until only harmless, soggy cupcakes were left.
“The custard must have washed the zombie powder off them,” said Joe. “They’re back to normal now.”
“I don’t think I’m hungry any more,” said Twig.
Just then, Fuzzby and Barry poked their heads round the kitchen door.
“What are you two up to?” said Fuzzby, surveying the mess. “Cake, fruit and custard, if I’m not mistaken.”
“And not a trifling amount!” said Barry. “Get it? I should be on TV.”
“Who’s this little fellow?” said Fuzzby, ignoring the cat. The big green monster carefully picked up a wriggling cupcake. It was the zombie that could only walk round in circles – and it had survived because it had been left behind!
“BRAAIINNSS!” it squeaked at Fuzzby.
“Well, well. A zombie cupcake,” said Fuzzby with a look at Joe. “You don’t see many of those.”
“We had a bit of an accident…” began Joe.
“Never mind,” said Fuzzby, who was in a good mood about something. “We’ll keep him as a pet and feed him scrambled pterodactyl eggs. Zombies can’t tell the difference between scrambled eggs and brains, if I remember correctly. What shall we call him?”
Joe thought for a moment. “We’ll call him Cuthbert,” he decided. “Cuthbert the zombie cake. What do you think of that, Cuthbert?”
The zombie looked at them with his five crystallised eyeballs.
Fuzzby had been in a very cheerful mood ever since Mrs Trumptious had come to the diner for a cup of mud tea and a chat. Joe had been worried that he would be in trouble after the zombie-cupcake incident, but Fuzzby didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest. Even Barry couldn’t annoy Fuzzby, and he tried really hard.
One busy afternoon at the diner, Fuzzby asked Joe to write the list of specials for him. It was more unusual than normal.
What a lot of strange words, thought Joe. It almost sounded edible.
Barry, Twig and the regulars studied the list with interest.
“He’s gone all fancy,” said Barry with a snort. “What’s wrong with good old-fashioned Slime Surprise Pie, I’d like to know? It has to be Tarte au whatsit. I knew this would happen when Monsterchef came round.”
“What’s Monsterchef?” asked Joe.
“A competition to find the best monster cook,” said Doreen the old sea monster excitedly, sending a ripple of seawater across the diner.
The Guzzelins cheered Lemmy as he surfed from one side of the floor to the other on a slice of toast.
“Monsterchef is shown on Monster TV. Haven’t you seen it? Mrs Trumptious is one of the judges.” Twig beamed with pride.
“That’s why she was here,” said Barry. “The old stick… er, I mean, Mrs Trumptious was letting Fuzzby know he’s in the final! That’s why he’s been as happy as a chuckle-monster since. It’s sick-making.”
“He shouldn’t be too happy,” warned Bradwell, with a click of his knitting needles. “He’ll need all the help he can get. The other entrants will be among the best cooks in the whole of the monster culinary community.”
“Fuzzby’s bound to win!” said Doreen, prodding Bradwell with a tentacle. “He never makes mistakes. Not like last time, when Boris Swampot put too much dragon chilli powder in his egg and stinkbean casserole. Poor Mr Jubbins ate one spoonful and farted himself inside out.”
“Not a pretty sight,” commented Barry. “And messy to sort out afterwards.”
Mr Jubbins, who was never one for words, just wobbled forlornly at the memory.
“Are you coming to watch the competition?” Twig asked Joe. “It’s this afternoon!”
At that moment Fuzzby stepped out from the kitchen.
“No, he isn’t!” said Fuzzby firmly. “It’s not a place for hoomans to go. Sorry, Joe – you’re safer here.”
“But I know all about monsters now,” protested Joe. “I’m not scared of them.”
“That’s because the monsters that come to the diner are the right sort of monsters,” explained Fuzzby, receiving a murmur of approval from the regulars. “On the other side of the Gate –” he waved his claw towards the alley where the hole in the wall always appeared – “are bigger, nastier monsters than any you get here. The kind that creep into your nightmares and chew your arm off, dunk it in ketchup and have it on toast. With beans. If you’re lucky.”
Joe was downcast. Even Barry the cat was a bit sorry for him.
“Never mind,” he said with a sympathetic purr. “At least you’ll get the rest of the afternoon off, as the diner will be shut. And I’ll get a rest from looking at your miserable, squishy, hooman face.”
Sure enough, all the monsters gradually left so they could go and watch the competition, and Fuzzby put up a sign on the door that said;
Joe sadly mopped the seawater from the floor.
Fuzzby smiled kindly. “Sorry, Joe,” he said, “but it’s for the best. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll be back later. Then I’ll make you a nice big plate of chips. How about that?”
Joe sighed. “OK,” he said. “Good luck, Fuzzby.”
The monster grinned as he lumbered out of the door.
Joe went to put the mop into the cupboard.
Suddenly, a black tentacle stretched out from inside it and grabbed his arm, pulling him in. Joe found himself eyeball-to-several-eyeballs with Barry and Twig.
“What are you doing here?” said Joe.
“We’ve thought of a plan!” they whispered. “To take you to Monsterchef!”
Joe was impressed. Barry wasn’t so bad after all.
“Great!” he whispered back. “But why are we whispering in a cupboard? There’s no one else here.”
“BRAAIINNSS,” said Cuthbert the zombie cake from his cage, where he was munching on some scrambled eggs
“Apart from Cuthbert,” Joe added.
They tumbled out of the cupboard in a heap.
“What’s your plan?” said Joe excitedly, picking himself up off the floor. “I can’t wait to see what Monsterworld is like.”
“It’s a really clever plan,” giggled Twig, slightly cross-eyed at the thought.
“Of course it is – it’s my idea,” said Barry proudly. “This is it: we’re going to disguise you!”
“OK…” said Joe uncertainly. “What as?”
“A monster!” Barry and Twig said together.
It wasn’t actually a bad idea, thought Joe, surprised. As far as he could see, a lot of the monsters who visited the diner were basically a jumble of arms, heads, teeth and tentacles stuck randomly on to a body. It couldn’t be that difficult to disguise himself as another monster, could it?
“Brilliant! Barry, climb on to my shoulders,” he said. “You’re going to be my new head.”
With a lot of complaining and a kick from Twig, Barry did as he was told. “I didn’t mean I was part of the disguise!” he said.
Then, with Twig’s help, Joe buttoned up his coat over his head to hide his face and Barry stuck a tentacle through each of the sleeves. With Barry’s head and arms, and Joe’s legs sticking out from the body of the coat, they had the makings of a convincing, if slightly wobbly, Joe/Barry monster.
“There’s a good view from up here,” said Barry as he wandered about the diner, testing out his new legs.
“I wish I could say
the same,” muttered Joe from inside the coat. He could only just see out through the buttonholes, which meant that Joe/Barry kept bumping into things.
“No one will ever guess,” said Twig with enthusiasm.
Joe walked into the door accidentally, sending Barry tumbling to the floor.
“Unless your head falls off, of course,” she added brightly.
But there was no more time for Joe to practise being a monster because the Monsterchef competition would be starting soon.
In the alley, Twig knocked three times on the wall. Immediately, the bricks moved aside and the three of them stepped through the hole into the darkness. Joe couldn’t see anything, so Twig pulled him along by his sleeve.
After a short while, Joe could tell they were in daylight again. He peeped out of the coat. This must be Monsterworld, he thought, looking around in wonder.
They were in a street filled with strange-shaped buildings that must have been built for strange-shaped people. They had tall, wide doors with handles meant for claws, not fingers. Some of the strange creatures walking around looked a bit like the customers of the diner, but there were other kinds too, all going about their business. A one-eyed pig-monster walked along the street beside them, pushing a buggy carrying a sleeping baby version of itself. A giant fur-covered monster with antlers growing out of its head cycled past on a wobbly bike. A purple blob with five legs and three heads on the end of giraffe-like necks trotted past pulling a dog-monster on a lead. “Afternoon,” it said pleasantly. Joe’s disguise seemed to be working.
The three of them stopped in front of a large building. Outside there was a queue of excited monsters.
“It’s the TV studio where they make Monsterchef,” whispered Twig. “Fuzzby must be inside already.”
Monster and Chips (Colour Version) (Monster and Chips, Book 1) Page 3