Lick'd

by Susan Berran

  This exciting series is about a boy just like you! What makes Sam just a little bit different sometimes, is that he escapes his mum and baby sister on the sort of escapades you have only dreamt of! Don’t you wish you could escape too at times? Well, when you join Sam on his amazing adventures, you’ll be there right alongside him. What are you waiting for? Join Sam on the adventure of a lifetime! Just make sure that you’re as brave and daring as he is, before you turn the first page …

  Lick’d

  Published by JoJo Publishing

  ‘Yarra’s Edge’

  2203/80 Lorimer Street

  Docklands VIC 3008

  Australia

  Email: jo-media@bigpond.net.au

  or visit www.jojopublishing.com

  © 2011 JoJo Publishing

  This edition published 2012

  Text Copyright © Susan Berran 2011

  Illustrations Copyright © Susan Berran 2011

  www.susanberran.com

  No part of this printed or video publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  Berran, Susan, 1962-

  Lick’d / author and illustrator Susan Berran.

  ISBN: 978-0-9872959-3-4 (ePub.)

  Berran, Susan, 1962-. Freaky ; 3

  For primary school age.

  A823.4

  Designer: Adam Laszczuk - Madacin Creative

  Editor: Susan Cutsforth

  My Dad sent home a letter when he was away

  with the Army for a short while … I was 9.

  Above is a copy of part of that letter.

  Yep, it was very muddy there and shows where

  I got my cartoon skills from … haha.

  He also gave me the gift of writing.

  My Dad has written a lot of wonderful stories

  that I treasure along with that letter.

  Dad passed away while I was working on this book.

  forever in my heart …

  this ones for you Dad.

  I love you.

  For believing in my books and encouraging me to keep writing. With their support, more kids are reading every day. Their guidance in ‘getting the books out there’ has been absolutely invaluable.

  For all your support and kindness in making me feel welcome and for your help in promoting my books. They wouldn’t be on the shelf without you.

  I consider myself very lucky to have come across such a wonderful team of people. For all of your generosity and sincerity …

  Mel’s best friend and constant companion since she was a puppy. Her Japanese Spitz is a white hair explosion on legs.

  Thanks for letting me make fun of you Fluff Butt.

  I love you;

  ohh crappp!!!

  Fluff Butt just pooped right in the middle of the lounge room rug. And not just some teeny-tiny hardly noticeable little minor accident that Mum probably wouldn’t notice once I’d lightly dabbed it up with a tissue or two … oohh no!! This was the mother load … a week’s worth of tinned food! Chunky Beef Tongue with Spinach, Chicken Liver with Brussels Sprouts, Lamb’s Brain in Gravy … and all mooshed together, dissolving and rotting for at least a week in the gastric juices of the dog’s stomach. Then all deposited at once in a huge greeny-browny, yellowish, humongous dump!! And as the steam rose from the fresh warm pile of disgusting poop, it began to flow like lava in every possible direction. It was like some weird school science experiment on slime. Soaking into every fibre of wool along the way as it swam across the rug on the floor, spreading faster than a maggot to dead meat!

  I could hide it … I could toss out the rug . . . I could blame Smelly Melly; I could …

  “ Sam!! ” Mum screamed.

  I was dead!

  “Why didn’t you let the dog out?!!”

  “But I … ”

  “Don’t use excuses young man!!”

  “But it’s … ”

  “You know your sister’s too small!”

  “But she … ”

  “Don’t blame the dog!”

  “But you … ”

  “Don’t take that tone with me!!”

  “But what … ”

  “Right, that’s it! Clean it up right now and go straight to your room!!”

  “Yes Mum … ”

  For the next fifteen minutes I hunched over the rug with a bucket of hot water and vinegar, trying not to vomit from the smell. As I tried to scrape up the offending pile, it kept slooshing about in every direction. It was like trying to catch jelly with soapy hands. And as I kept cleaning and scrubbing and squeezing out the cloth into the bucket of warm, murky liquid … one thought filled my mind … I really, really wish I could have found the gloves.

  Every now and again I glanced across to the door … Fluff Butt was sitting there, staring at me. She didn’t move, didn’t blink, she just sat there and I could swear she was grinning. I was almost certain she’d done it on purpose!

  Ever since that explosion of white fluff disguised as a dog came home, I knew there was something weird, something not quite right, something evil about her. I tried to tell Mum but she just reckons I’ve got sour grapes because we didn’t get the pet that I wanted. Well, derrr!! Brilliant Mum.

  I wanted a real pet; you know, a fat diamond python, a tarantula, scorpions, or at least something that was a bit more interesting, but nooo!! We have to have a pet that, “The whole family can enjoy.” Sure Mum. So that’s how we ended up with a prissy girly dog, small, yappy and really hairy. And gee it just happened to be the exact same pet that Miss ‘I’m so special’ Yelly Melly wanted … gee how lucky is that! Oh yeah sure, Smelly Melly gets to have the pet of her choice ‘accidentally’ but not me. It had been like that with everything, ever since Jelly Belly Melly was born. First we had to move to this ‘crap shack’ way out in the sticks to be closer to family and closer to nature. Yeah … we were closer to nature all right; the loo was in the backyard! It was supposed to be a “Quaint little cottage in the country,” as Mum put it. What a joke! I reckon Agnath probably means something like ‘goat’s bottom’ in Bulravian. The pub probably pays the locals to sit at the bar to hold it up; otherwise it’d just topple over for sure. The general store is actually a holiday resort for bats and termites. The whole place is only being held together by cobwebs and spit.

  Oh yeah … and the school. There are thirty-something kids and just about all of them live even further out in the sticks on these dirt patches they call farms. Less than half a dozen kids actually live anywhere close around here and it’s pretty hard to tell them apart from the sheep and cows anyway. Booga Boris is the size of a cow’s butt that needs a really good milking. Toffee Thomas has the brains of a sheep; absolutely useless and his nose is stuck so far up in the air that the flies use his nostrils as an airport! And Crabby Abbey really needs shearing; she has this really thick tangled mop of hair down to her backside and over her face like a sheepdog.

  Mum reckons the locals have been here so many generations that they’re all probably cousins anyway and that’s why they’re a bit ‘s l o w e r’ than me. But I know what she really means by ‘s l o w’ …

  … she means dumb, pillock, unintelligent, stupid, anserine, not all there, dimwit, nerf, lunkhead, dense, thick, dolt, dopey, blockhead, muttonhead, fool, goose, bonehead, puddenhead, numbat, dumbass, simpleton, nitwit, half-wit, doofas, dunce, dunderhead, numskull, yokel, clod, bonehead, knucklehead …

  The sixth grade boys all stick together. We call them ‘The Seven Dimwits’. There’s Toffee, Wheezy, Booga the twins Dufas and DOR
KY, and worst of all, Itchy. And I reckon the teachers were sent out here for punishment. Miss Croonarc doesn’t look much older than us and she’s straight out of Teachers’ College. She must have failed her course really badly to get stuck way out here.

  We’re getting a new principal too. Crabby reckons Mr Penniless is ‘resting’ in a ‘special’ hospital because me and Jared caused him to have a nervous breakdown … awesome!!

  I reckon I would have died of boredom if Jared hadn’t turned up when he did. Luckily he came from the city like me, so we became best mates pretty much straight away. While the other kids were out shovelling horse poop to clean the stables, we were out shovelling horse poop for AMMUNITION in our booby traps. If there was a competition for pooper-shooters, we’d be the champions of the universe. We made this totally awesome and wicked pooper-shooter that flung dung over twenty metres. It had to be our most magnificent and incredible invention yet. We lifted up Jared’s bike and hooked up the chain to a spring. The spring was attached to another chain and that chain was attached to a catapult. And of course the catapult was loaded with the freshest and smelliest AMMUNITION that we could make. We like to make our very own special ammunition so that the smell and colour really sticks to the target. It’s our very own secret recipe;

  … a mixture of different manure types, heaps of really soft old raspberries … a few rotten duck eggs and three secret ingredients, so if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you. Then they’re all stewed together with the two-week-old jocks and socks from the local footy team. The footy coach reckons, “Some mongrel dog nicked their smellies when the guys were in the showers!” Then it’s all mooshed together with a half-chewed dog’s bone. Finally we drain it all off and then roll the dung balls gently in our hands to make the perfect cannon balls of awesome poop AMMUNITION.

  Once we had enough, we set up the bike behind some bushes opposite the general store and waited for our first victim. We’d been watching and taking notes for weeks. So we knew exactly when and what each kid was doing at the shop on the weekends. It wasn’t long before Toffee came wandering by to pick up some milk, yep, right on time. Closer … closer … five more steps … Jared started to peddle, the wheel wound the spring, the spring tightened the chain, the chain pulled the catapult tighter and tighter. . . three … two … one …

  “Fire!”

  I pulled the trigger pin to release the chain, the catapult flew forward, the dung was flung … flying high through the air … splatttt!! Right on target! It was beautiful. The ball gave maximum splatter on impact. Bits of digested hay clung to Toffee’s hair and face as globs of manure started to slowly slime their way down his neck and under his clothing.

  wow, I didn’t know a guy could scream so girly. But he did, over and over as he turned for home, running and screaming and spitting out dung all at the same time. We rolled about on the ground, laughing our heads off until our stomachs cramped. This was the greatest invention ever! But the best was yet to come. Crabby Abbey, yep, this would be totally awesome. She was always dobbing us in for anything, even if she knew it wasn’t us! It was payback time.

  I reloaded the catapult with the squishiest, smelliest, largest dung ball that we had … she was coming. At the end of the road we could see her. yukk! She was singing ‘Mary had a little lamb’ and skipping and … errr gross!! … She was wearing a dress with giant orange flowers all over it and big dangly frills around the bottom. We were blinded by her grossness and quickly put on our ‘coodee’ protection helmets. But even that couldn’t keep out her glass-shattering shrieking.

  Jared stood up on the pedals getting ready to go … he waited for my signal … “Mary had a little lamb,”

  … closer …

  “little lamb,”

  … closer …

  “little lamb,”

  “Go!” Jared started to peddle …

  “Mary had a little lamb,”

  … faster and faster …

  “Its fleece was white as …

  “Fire!!”

  At that very moment, everything seemed to change into slow motion … it was as if time itself had almost paused.

  The faded golden bell above the shop door rang once as it opened … d i n g …

  … Crabby stopped dead in the middle of a twirl, one step from the target point … out of the store strode a tall solid-looking lady, and as her foot landed on the target, so did our dung. It hit her right on the neck, instantly splattering up into her nostrils, spiking her hair straight up like some weird crazy echidna with greeny-yellowy bits of dung-covered hay dangling off it. Grassy globs dripped off her as others bits slithered down under her clothes like slugs on an oily slippery dip. Smaller globs of the stuff slid through the thick forest of hair on her legs and down into her shoes.

  Crabby was still standing mid-twirl on tippy toes with her arms pointing straight out and a stupider look on her face than usual. We could see the veins in the stranger’s neck starting to throb. Muscles started to bulge under her clothing like some weird ‘Hulk' thing was about to happen. She turned and stared with her eyes on fire, straight through the bushes … at us!!!

  We dropped everything and ran. We kept on running until we got back to our secret hideout at Jared’s place where we collapsed onto the floor and began to roll about in humongous fits of laughter. It’d be years before we forgot the look on that face, it was priceless. We laughed sooo long and sooo hard that our guts ached for ages. What a ripper!

  And the best thing was … she was a tourist! Some poor shmow that just happened to be passing through. She wouldn’t be recommending Agnath to any of her friends, that’s for sure.

  Later that afternoon when I got home, Mum had one of those strange, ‘You think you’re really clever’ looks on her face. “ Sam! ”

  “Yeah Mum?”

  “Mrs Duckson, the new school principal just called. She’d like Jared and his mum and you and I, to go up and meet her tomorrow to discuss something. Apparently you met her this morning …

  … at the store!! ”

  Aaaaaahhhhhhh!!!

  Being grounded until, “The next solar eclipse” or “The sun burns out” wasn’t exactly fair. At least Jared had brothers, five of them. I just had one extremely annoying, painful; poopy-drawers baby sister, Smelly Melly. And that’s where my life had started sliding down the toilet.

  “Help your sister get dressed Sam …” “Play dollies with your sister Sam …” “Wipe your sister’s snotty nose Sam …” Yeah, I loved having a snotty nose, useless little sister who just wants to have a tea party with Dolly, Rabby and of course me every five minutes … not!! It just wasn’t fair! I’d been bugging Mum for a pet since we got to this tragic town. I just wanted something with venom or at least some sort of deadly ability. But of course I should have known …

  ‘What if Precious Wecious Itty Bitty Little Melly accidentally touches it?’

  ‘What if it goes and accidentally bites Princess Perfect Melly Welly Bitty Boo?’ Well deerrr!!!

  Did Mum really think I wanted something dangerous just for fun??

  Then one day, right out in the middle of nowhere, this little pet shop opens up. It was like one of those tiny five-hundred-year-old houses that the cavemen probably made. It’s barely standing up and me and Jared have only ever seen cows standing around in it. Every time the wind blows, it loses another piece of roof and a few more planks off the walls. It’s sitting on the side of the road halfway between Agnath and the next town. Why would anyone want a pet shop, or any shop, way out there? But the very next day after it opened, Jelly Melly put the tears into full action and Mum came home with this totally woozy girly dog for her. Not only is this thing white fairy floss on legs, but every time it poops, some gets stuck to the hair around its butt and I have to wipe it clean! How does she do it?

  I’ve been whinging forever but Yelly Melly drops a tear and Mum runs off to the shop. At least Smelly Melly got the dog’s name right, Fluff Butt. She looks like a massive hair explosion on legs af
ter eating a fire-cracker. And the stupid thing was supposed to be house-trained, not trained to do it in the house! So why does it seem to be Smelly Melly’s dog but every time it goes out to poop, it’s the family dog and I have to wipe its poohy butt when it comes back in?! And the stupid dog seems to enjoy it!

  It’s just not fair!!

  But I know it’s up to something. I just don’t know what … yet! Whenever Mum’s around it’s a real goody-goody. It walks into the house and practically sticks its butt in my face to be wiped. But as soon as Mum’s not looking, the dumb thing runs around the house scraping her butt all over the floor. And I could swear she’s smiling when she does it.

  Naturally it’s always my fault. So I have to clean up after it whenever it does ‘have a little accident’. It’s weird; I could almost swear the mutt plans it that way. The other day she came in and stuck her butt up for me to wipe. Just then Mum walked out of the room and straight away Fluff Butt leapt away from me and ran straight over to the centre of the lounge room. Then she dragged her butt right across it!

  “Sam, why didn’t you wipe her butt properly?!!”

  “But I did, she …”

  “That’s not chocolate on the floor!”

  “I know, but …”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times!”

  “I was, but she … ”

  “Then do it properly next time!!”

  “But when I … ”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes Mum.”

  As if Crabby Abbey wasn’t bad enough.

  Now I had Jelly Melly’s dog getting me into trouble as well.

  For the first time ever, I actually wanted to go to school. At least there, me and Jared could plan out our next projects. We didn’t have to worry about annoying siblings or mental pets. The only problem was that we had the old principal, Mr Penniless, trained. He never came near us; he didn’t want to know what we were up to. But the new principal, Mrs Duckson, looks like the ‘THE TERMINATOR’ in women’s clothing. And she seemed to be forever trying to sneak up behind us to see what we’re working on. We had to be sure that our secret plans stayed that way, SECRET! Not blabbed to our mums before we even got the chance to build them.