Unreal!

by Paul Jennings

  Then Gerda yelled out, ‘I kissed Marcus! Arrgghh …’ She rushed over to the tap and started washing her mouth out. All the girls started wiping their mouths as if they had eaten something nasty. Then everybody started laughing. The boys laughed, and the girls laughed. They rolled around the floor holding their sides. Tears rolled out of their eyes. Everybody laughed, except Marcus.

  He knew that they were laughing at him. And he didn’t think that it was funny.

  7

  After all the kissing at school everyone called Marcus ‘Lucky Lips’. Nobody liked Marcus any better than before and the girls still stayed away from him. Everyone talked about the kissing session for a while; then they forgot about it and talked about other things. But Marcus didn’t forget about it. He felt like a fool. Everyone had laughed at him. He was worse off now than he had been before.

  He thought about taking the lipstick back to Ma Scritchet and telling her what he thought about it, but he was too scared. There was something creepy about that old lady and he didn’t really want to see her again.

  Marcus didn’t use the lipstick again for about a month. None of the girls would go out with him and he wasn’t going to risk wearing it just anywhere. Not after what happened at school that day. But he always carried the lipstick with him, just in case.

  The last time he used it was at the Royal Melbourne Show. The whole class at school went there on an excursion. They had to collect material for an assignment. Marcus and Fay Billings and two other boys walked around together. The others didn’t really want Marcus with them; they thought he was a show off. But they let him tag along. They didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

  The favourite spots at the show were the sideshows. There were knock-em-downs and rides on the Mad Mouse. There was a fat lady and a mirror maze. There was a ghost train and dozens of other rides. One of the side shows had a sign up saying ‘BIG BEN THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD’.

  They all milled around looking at the tent. It was close to one of the animal pavilions. There was a great hall full of pigs nearby. ‘Let’s go and look at the pigs,’ said Fay.

  ‘No,’ answered Marcus. ‘Who wants to look at filthy pigs. Let’s go and see Big Ben. He fights people. Anyone who can beat him wins one thousand dollars and gets to kiss the Queen Of The Show.’

  ‘That would be just the thing for Lucky Lips,’ said Fay. They all laughed, except Marcus. He went red in the face.

  ‘I could get a kiss from the Queen Of The Show,’ he said. They all laughed again. ‘All right,’ said Marcus. ‘Just watch me.’ He paid his dollar and went inside Big Ben’s tent. The others all followed him; they wanted to see what was going to happen.

  Inside the tent was a boxing ring. Big Ben was standing inside it waiting for someone to fight him and try to win the thousand dollars and a kiss from the Queen Of The Show. She sat on a high chair behind the ring. Marcus looked at her. She was beautiful; he wouldn’t mind a kiss from her. Then he looked at Big Ben. He was the biggest man Marcus had ever seen. He had huge muscles and was covered in tattoos. And he looked mean – very mean.

  Marcus ducked around the ring to where the Queen Of The Show sat. He quickly put on some of the invisible lipstick, and at once the beauty queen jumped off her chair and kissed Marcus. Everyone laughed except Big Ben. He roared in fury. ‘Trying to steal a kiss without a fight, are you?’ he yelled. ‘I’ll teach you a lesson, my boy.’

  Marcus tried to run away but he was not quick enough. Big Ben grabbed him and lifted Marcus high into the air. Then he walked outside the tent and across to the pig pavilion. Marcus wriggled and yelled, but it was no good; he couldn’t get away. Big Ben carried Marcus over to one of the pig pens and threw him inside.

  Marcus crashed to the floor of the pen. He felt dizzy. The world seemed to be spinning around. He tried to stand up, but he couldn’t. The floor was covered in foul-smelling muck. In the corner Marcus could see the biggest pig that he had ever seen. It was eating rotten vegetables and slops from a trough. It was dribbling and slobbering as it ate. Its teeth were green. It turned around and looked at Marcus. It was a sow.

  Marcus suddenly remembered something that Ma Scritchet had said about the lipstick. She had said: ‘It will work on any female.’ Marcus started to scream. ‘Get me out. Get me out.’

  But it was too late. The sow came over for her kiss.

  Cow-Dung Custard

  A lot of kids have nicknames. Like Mouse, or Bluey, or Freckles. Those sort of nicknames are okay. My nickname was the Cow Dung Kid. Can you imagine that? The Cow Dung Kid. What a name to get stuck with.

  It was all my father’s fault. Him and his vegetable garden.

  Don’t get me wrong, though. Dad was a good bloke. A real good bloke. He brought me up all on his own. I didn’t have a mother so he can take all the credit for the way I turned out.

  Dad loved to grow vegetables. His vegetable garden was his pride and joy. Every year he went into a competition. He always won lots of prizes for the best vegetables. He won prizes for the biggest pumpkins and the juiciest tomatoes. He grew the biggest and best vegies in the whole town. He once grew a pumpkin that was so big it took four men to lift it. His peas were as big as golf balls and his beans were as long as your arm. No kidding.

  The whole yard was filled up with vegetables. He had long rows of them. Every row had a little sign at the end. On each sign was the name of the vegetable that was growing. And the batch number. This batch number told which type of manure he had used.

  Batch twenty-four meant three shovels of cow dung and one shovel of horse droppings. Batch fourteen was two shovels of horse droppings, one shovel of sheep droppings and three shovels of pig droppings.

  Dad had every type of manure that you could think of. He had duck and goose. He had kangaroo and wombat. He had bat and emu. He even had snake droppings.

  And guess who had to help him collect it. You are not wrong. It was me.

  2

  Every weekend I had to go and collect cow dung. Every weekend without fail. We lived right in the middle of the town. I had to get a wheelbarrow and walk out to the country. Then I had to fill it up with cow dung. And it had to be fresh. ‘Nice and sloppy,’ Dad would say. ‘Make sure that it’s nice and sloppy.’

  Then I had to walk back through the town, with a wheelbarrow full of sloppy cow dung. I wasn’t on my own, though. Oh no. I had company. About five thousand flies came with me. They were like a black cloud following me along the street.

  Everyone could see me. It felt like the whole town was watching me and my flies.

  I got my nickname of the Cow Dung Kid on one of these trips. It was on Christmas Day. Dad’s boss at work grew vegetables too. But they were never as good as Dad’s. He didn’t have a son to go and get manure. So Dad had a bright idea. He decided to give the boss a surprise. A Christmas present. He wanted me to go and get manure for his boss. ‘Just tip it out and leave it for him to find,’ said Dad. ‘He will be tickled pink. I might even get a rise out of this.’

  ‘But Dad,’ I pleaded. ‘Not on Christmas Day. Everyone will be looking. I can’t do it. I just can’t.’

  He gave me one of his sorrowful looks. He shook his head and said, ‘After all I’ve done for you, Greg. And you won’t even help me out with one little thing.’ I gave in and went. I didn’t want to spend all Christmas feeling guilty.

  I set out at the crack of dawn. I didn’t even open my presents. I wanted to get it over and done with before people were out of bed.

  But it was no use. All the kids in town were up early. They followed me and my cow dung along the street. They were all on new bikes and scooters that they had got for Christmas.

  They thought it was a great joke. ‘Look what Santa brought Greg,’ shouted some bright spark. Everyone laughed. As I went along, more and more kids started following me. After a while there were about fifty of them.

  Someone else yelled out, ‘King of the Flies. Greg is King of the Flies.’

  ‘The Cow Dung Kid,’ s
aid another voice. Another laugh went up. They all started yelling it out. ‘Cow Dung Kid, Cow Dung Kid.’ It was embarrassing, I can tell you that.

  I ran faster and faster. Some of the cow dung fell out. But I didn’t care. I just kept running. At last I reached the boss’s house. I tipped out the cow dung on his doorstep. Right against the door. That way he would get a surprise when he opened the door. And Dad would get all the glory.

  Anyway, that’s how I got the name of the Cow Dung Kid. And after all that trouble Dad’s boss wasn’t even grateful. He said something about cow dung all over his carpet. There is just no understanding some people. He didn’t even say thanks.

  3

  Flies, flies, flies. They hung around our house all day and all night. It was the smell of the manure. The smell attracted them. There were flies everywhere; they came down the chimney and under the doors. People had no trouble finding our house. If anyone asked where we lived they were always told the same thing. ‘Just stop at the house with the flies.’

  The neighbours didn’t like the flies. They were always going crook. So Dad gave them vegetables to keep them quiet. He gave them giant carrots and potatoes. They liked them so much that they only complained about the really bad days. This usually happened when Dad made a very smelly batch, like batch seventy-two.

  Dad kept each batch of manure in a large rubbish bin. He had at least two hundred of them in the back yard. The worse they smelt, the more flies hung around them. The ones with the really bad smell were kept down near the back fence, away from the house. Mr Farley lived in the house at the back. He didn’t like us much – he never spoke to us. He was a pretty crabby bloke. I could never figure out why.

  The trouble all started with batch seventy-two. It was the strongest batch that Dad had ever made. It had bat droppings, rabbit droppings and wombat droppings. There was also a bit of lizard and potaroo. But the main ingredient was cow dung.

  Dad also threw in some rotten pumpkins. They were bright yellow. He added water and stirred the mix up. It all went smooth and yellow. ‘It’s like custard,’ I said. ‘Cow dung custard.’

  It was a smelly batch, very smelly. It was the worst one that Dad had made. ‘Good,’ said Dad, ‘The more it smells, the better it works. I’ll grow some great potatoes with this batch.’ He took out a pen and wrote Cow Dung Custard on the side of the bin. The flies were already starting to gather so I decided to go inside out of the way. The smell was bad and it was getting worse.

  I could smell batch seventy-two as I went to bed, even though it was at the bottom of the yard. I knew there was going to be trouble with the neighbours over this. Batch seventy-two looked like custard. But it sure didn’t smell like it.

  4

  The next morning I woke early. I knew that something was wrong. I could hardly breathe and I felt sick. It was the smell of the Cow Dung Custard. It was the most terrible smell I had ever come across. It was so bad that you could almost see it. Every breath was painful.

  I put a handkerchief over my mouth and rushed to the window. All the neighbours were up. They were outside our house. Nobody could sleep. They were all dressed in their pyjamas, and they were all holding handkerchiefs over their noses. Some of them were making groaning noises. They were trying to shout. Some people were waving their fists at the house. They were all mad at us.

  I went and woke Dad up. He has a poor sense of smell. He was the only person in the street who was still asleep. He looked out of the window. ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Amazing. Look at that. There is not one fly to be seen.’ He didn’t even notice the people – he was looking for flies. I couldn’t believe it. But what he said was true. There were no flies hanging around. They were all dead. The ground was covered in dead flies. They were like a black carpet all over the lawn.

  The smell was so bad that it had killed all the flies. ‘You had better do something,’ I told him. ‘That stuff might be dangerous. And everyone is mad at us. The neighbours are all angry.’ He looked out of the window. Everyone was running away. The smell was so awful that they couldn’t stand it.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Dad. ‘You stay here. I will go and see what I can do.’ He walked down to the bottom of the yard. I could hear the bodies of the dead flies crunching under his feet. I was glad he had told me to stay inside. I think I would have fainted if I had gone any closer to that smell. It was lucky for Dad that he couldn’t smell very well.

  I watched him out of the window. He drove our old truck into the back yard. He tried to lift the cow dung custard onto it, but it was too heavy. He had to tip it out into a lot of buckets. Then he lifted them up onto the truck. After he had put all the buckets onto the truck he came back to the house. He had yellow stuff all over his dressing gown. ‘Don’t come in,’ I shouted. ‘Please don’t come in.’

  He yelled at me through the window, ‘I’m going down to the sea with it. I can’t think of anywhere else to put it. You stay here, Greg.’ He needn’t have worried. There was no way I was going anywhere near that Cow Dung Custard.

  Then I noticed something terrible. Dad’s hair had fallen out. He was completely bald. He did not have one hair left on his head – even his eyebrows had fallen out. That Cow Dung Custard was strong. Too strong.

  Dad jumped into the truck and drove out the front gate. I watched him drive down the road. There wasn’t a person in sight. They were all inside with their heads under their pillows. As he went by the dogs in the street ran off yelping with their tails between their legs.

  5

  Dad tipped the Cow Dung Custard over a cliff and into the sea. For the next two weeks there were dead fish floating around everywhere. The town we lived in is called Lakes Entrance. It is a fishing town. All the fishermen were cross with Dad, for killing the fish.

  The people in the street were mad at him too. The smell hung around for weeks. Dad took a lot of vegetables around to them, trying to make it up. Mr Jackson lived next door. He told Dad to go away, ‘I don’t want your vegetables,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want your manure, or your smells. Why don’t you go and live out on a farm? Then you can be as smelly as you want.’

  He had a point. I was getting sick of it too. The kids at school called me the Cow Dung Kid. Everyone knew us and where we lived. All the houses in the street had ‘For Sale’ notices in the front yard. No one wanted to live near us, and I didn’t blame them.

  ‘Listen, Dad,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and live somewhere else – on a farm. Then I won’t have to go and get manure. You will have all you want. And there won’t be any neighbours to complain.’

  Dad looked sad. He nodded his bald head. ‘I would like to move to a farm, Greg. But we can’t afford it. Farms cost a lot of money, and we’re broke. We will have to stay here. But I will do one thing for you – I’ll get rid of the smell. I’ll find a way to stop the manure smelling. It will be called Batch One Hundred. Batch One Hundred will have no smell. And it’s the only one I will use.’

  I went off shaking my head. Poor old Dad. He meant well. But I knew he couldn’t do it. How could anyone make up a batch of manure that didn’t smell?

  Dad tried everything he could think of to make Batch One Hundred. He put in flowers. He put in soap. He put in perfume. But he just couldn’t stop the manure smelling.

  Our house was as smelly as ever. Even the school bus wouldn’t come down our street any more. One good thing did happen – Dad’s hair started growing back. It was as thick and black as it had always been.

  Then one day he did it. He made Batch One Hundred. You couldn’t smell a thing. It wasn’t like the Cow Dung Custard – you didn’t even know it was there. I was rapt. I thought our problems were over.

  But I was wrong. Batch One Hundred had other problems. It was the worst one ever.

  6

  People couldn’t smell Batch One Hundred, but the flies could. Flies can smell better than people can. It’s something like a dog whistle. Dogs can hear them and people can’t. Well, flies could smell Batch One Hundred when people
couldn’t.

  The flies came in their thousands. In their millions. The air was thick with them. The sound of their buzzing was terrible to hear. They crawled all over your face, and into your nose and ears. They were so thick that you couldn’t see the sun. After a while it started to grow dark, and it was only lunch time.

  Dad and I were in the back yard. After a while we couldn’t see the house, or the back fence. The flies were too thick. I had never seen anything like it before. There were so many flies in the air that I couldn’t find Dad. ‘Greg,’ he shouted. ‘Go back to the house. Quickly. This is dangerous.’ I couldn’t see where he was. I couldn’t see where anything was.

  I looked down at the ground. There were so many flies in the air that I couldn’t see my feet. I had to squint to stop them getting into my eyes. I started to walk slowly to where I thought the house was. I bumped into something large. It was the truck. I could tell what it was by the feel of it. I was going the wrong way. I turned around and tried a different direction. Then I heard Dad’s voice. I could just make it out over the buzzing of the flies. ‘Greg, Greg, this way,’ he called. I followed the sound of his voice. I walked very slowly to make sure I didn’t bump into anything. At last I reached Dad. I couldn’t see him but I could feel him. He was standing on the door step.

  ‘Get ready,’ he shouted. ‘I’m going to open the door. When I say “go”, rush in as quick as you can. I’ll slam the door after us.’

  ‘Go,’ he yelled. We both fell into the room. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard the door shut with a bang. ‘Put on the light,’ said Dad.

  I switched on the light. The room was full of flies, but it wasn’t as bad as outside. At least we could see. I looked at the window. It was black. Millions of flies were crawling all over it. ‘Quick,’ said Dad. ‘Block up all the cracks under the doors. I’ll cover up the chimney. We’ve got to stop them coming in.’