“A potato gun that fires whole potatoes?” announced Edmond, pulling the trigger.
BANG!
The potato went straight through the window.
SHATTER!
Edmund gave Edmond a whack round the back of his head.
THWACK!
“OUCH!”
“A balloon we blew up with our wretched bottom gas?” continued Edmund, letting out some of the putrid air.
SPLURT!
“POO!” exclaimed Ned.
It really did STINK!
“Our brand-new Snakes and Ladders set, now with real LIVE snakes?”
The pair opened up the box. To his horror, Ned could see hundreds of snakes slithering inside!
“SSSSSSSSSSSS!”
The boy slammed the box shut.
“No!” snapped Ned. “There is something else I want. Something even more revolting than all those toys you suggested.”
The twins looked at each other and grimaced as if to say, “MORE revolting?”
“Pray tell, child,” hissed Edmond. “Here at our ENVY’S EMPORIUM we do pride ourselves on selling the most revolting toys in the world.”
“I know,” agreed Ned. “All the children on the island know. But there is a toy that is guaranteed to appal even you!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” the pair sniggered.
“We are such an appalling pair I very much doubt anything could appal us!” exclaimed Edmund.
“Well, let’s just see. Edmond and Edmund Envy…” began the boy.
“I thought we were both called Edmond,” said Edmund.
“SHUT UP!” hissed Edmond.
“Edmond and Edmund Envy, of ENVY’S EMPORIUM, I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of…” Ned took a deep breath and shouted,
* Walliamsictionary. BOOM!
Nothing happened.
The Envy twins looked all around their emporium before returning their beady-eyed gaze to the boy.
“Why are you SHOUTING, BOY?” demanded Edmond.
“We are STANDING RIGHT HERE!” added Edmund.
A feeling of panic washed over Ned. As Slime was all the way up on the roof, it must not have heard.
There was only one thing for it.
SHOUT LOUDER!
“I SAID, ‘I WANT TO INTRODUCE YOU BOTH TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF… SLIME!’”
repeated Ned.
Still nothing.
Things were not going to plan.
“SLIME!” the boy shouted again.
Nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
The Envy twins shared a look.
“Why, oh why, do you keep shouting ‘SLIME’?” asked Edmond.
“Because, if you say it loud enough it will magically appear.”
“Oh!”
“Oh!”
“Oh indeed,” agreed Ned. “Let’s all try together. On three! One, two, three…”
But before they could shout ‘SLIME’, SLIME appeared! It was gushing down the chimney and began flowing through the fireplace all over ENVY’S EMPORIUM!
“I am sorry I’m late! Slime” called out. “I was on the loo!”
Ned looked puzzled. He had no idea Slime had to go to the loo. What would it pass? More slime? There wasn’t time to think about that, as all at once the shop was awash with slime.
FURJURGLE!
“NOOOO!” shouted the pair, and this time it was Ned’s turn to do the chuckling.
“HA! HA! HA!”
The two men were up to their knees in the stuff. Slime whisked the boy up and placed him on the counter.
“OUT!” bellowed Edmond at the slime.
“SHOO!” bawled Edmund.
“BEGONE!” they both screamed, but still the slime was rising in the shop.
BUJURGLE-MURGLE!
“Now, Slime,” began Ned.
“Yes, Ned,” replied Slime as it was now coming up to their necks.
“I want you to trans-slime into a dozen little children!”
“WHAT?” exclaimed the Envys.
“Just a dozen, you say…?” asked Slime mischievously.
“Make it a nice round hundred!” replied the boy.
“NOOOOOO!” cried the pair.
But there was nothing they could do.
In a moment, Slime began breaking up into a hundred blobs. These blobs took the shape of children. Soon there was an army of giant jelly babies!
“CHILDREN!” screamed Edmond. “CHILDREN! CHILDREN EVERYWHERE!”
“Now, kids,” called out Ned, “help yourself to any toy in the shop!”
“NOOOOO!” cried Edmund.
But there was no stopping them.
The children of every size, shape and colour began taking the toys off the shelves, until ENVY’S EMPORIUM was completely bare.
The Envy twins tried to stop the children by snatching toys back. But then another giant jelly baby would come up behind them and give them a good old whack round the head with a toy!
BOOF!
“OWEEEE!”
The biggest of the giant jelly babies ran to the counter, and Ned pushed himself on to his shoulders.
SQUELCH!
“TIME TO GO!” ordered Ned.
All the other giant jelly babies charged out behind him, all proudly holding their toys.
Word must have spread around the island that something was going on at ENVY’S EMPORIUM. The frizzy-haired girl was back, and this time she’d brought her friends. There were children from all over Mulch waiting outside the shop. The giant jelly babies handed the children a toy each.
“Thank you, Ned!”
“You are the best!”
“This is brilliant!”
“Serves the twins right!”
“Wow! Cool!” shouted the children as they made off with the loot.
Inside the shop, Edmond and Edmund were broken men. They fell to their knees and howled in despair.
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!”
Ned slowly opened the door, before shouting through the gap:
The twins screamed.
From high in the sky, the island’s park rolled into view. Slime had trans-slimed into a pterodactyl, the flying reptile that had ruled the skies millions of years ago.
Ned was riding astride its back, with a smugtastic* grin on his face.
A pterodactyl darkening the sky must have been a terrifying sight for anyone below in the park. Not that there ever were people in Mulch park. That is because the park keeper forbade it.
Aunt Greta Greed had appointed the old soldier Captain Pride as the island’s park keeper. The man took such great pride in his kingdom, or “parkdom”,* that nobody was ever allowed inside.
KEEP OFF THE GRASS is a sign you might see in a park.
KEEP OFF THE PATH less so.
KEEP OFF THE PARK never.
There was no doubt that the park keeper kept the most perfect park, not just on the island, but in the whole world.
The grass was an exact shade of green. Not too brown, not too yellow. Just green. If a blade of grass became in any way discoloured, Captain Pride would dangle himself over the lawn with his special Pride’s Tackle. This was a piece of apparatus that Captain Pride himself, ex-member of the Queen’s Guard, had invented. It consisted of a winch, a harness and a series of ropes and pulleys. Pride’s Tackle allowed the captain to dangle over the grass without touching it.
Then he would take out his twenty-four-piece green felt-tip-pen set (with every shade of green imaginable, and no other colours).
Then, dangling just above the ground, the captain would colour in the discoloured blade of grass so it matched all the others perfectly. The park keeper was doing just that when he heard the flapping of prehistoric wings overhead.
FLAP! FLAP! FLAP!
Of all the things the park keeper expected to see that day, a flying reptile was not one of them.
In his army years, Captain Pride had witnessed many terrifying things while serving in the jungle. He had…
<
br /> …woken up to discover a python slowly digesting his right foot as he slept.
“ARGH!”
“SSSSSS!”
…been blasted in the bottom by a bazooka.
BOOM!
“MAMMA MIA!”
…tip-toed over stepping stones to cross a river only to discover they were actually snapping crocodiles.
SNAP!
SNAP!
SNAP!
…stumbled across a whoop of gorillas who were intent on playing kiss chase with him.
“MWAH! MWAH! MWAH!”
“YUCK! YUCK! YUCK!”
…been caught in a stampede of elephants…
STAMP! STOMP! STUMP!
…then marched around as flat as a pancake for weeks.
…looked in the mirror to shave his beard off, except on closer inspection it wasn’t a beard. Oh no. It was a great big hairy caterpillar squatting on his chin.
“NOOOOOOOO!”
…yanked on what he thought was a toilet chain only to find it was, in actual fact, the tail of a tiger.
“ROAR!”
…put on his underpants only to discover they were crawling with cockroaches.
MUNCH! MUNCH! MUNCH!
…come face to face with a hungry hippopotamus. The creature burped with such force it blew him clean over.
“BURP!”
THUD!
…and, most horrifying of all, opened the door of the wash tent, only to be greeted by the sight of the old major taking a bath!
But Captain Pride had never, ever seen a pterodactyl (which was understandable, as they had gone extinct millions of years before), let alone a pterodactyl made of slime with a boy riding on its back.
“WHAT THE BLAZES?” he bawled.
In shock, his twenty-four-piece green pen set tumbled to the ground.
SCATTER!
As he tried to snatch at his precious pens, he accidentally let go of the lever on his Pride’s Tackle.
YANK!
The rope spun through the apparatus.
ROLL!
The next thing he knew, the captain found himself hoisted high into the air by his ankles.
WHOOSH!
There he began swinging to and fro in a manner most unbecoming for a man of military bearing.
SWISH! SWOSH! SWISH! SWOSH!
His head thumped a tree.
His bottom slapped a rose bush.
RUSTLE!
Then, horror upon horror, the slime pterodactyl (or “slime-odactyl”*) set its mighty feet down on to the park’s lawn – its mighty claws digging into the grass!
“NOOOOOO!” cried Captain Pride, swinging himself as hard as he could to set himself free from his tackle.
WHOOSH!
This he did, although not without landing upside down in a hedge.
THUNK!
“OOF! Can’t you read the sign, you… dinosaur?” Captain Pride hollered as he brushed bits of hedge off his blazer and smoothed down his moustache.
“KEEP OFF THE GRASS!”
The pterodactyl trans-slimed back into being a blob. Ned slid off his friend on to the park bench, which had never, ever been graced with a bottom. After all, there was a huge sign that read:
“What the devil is that thing, boy?” demanded the captain.
“It’s my friend,” replied Ned.
“I’m Slime!” said Slime. It reached out a blobby hand for the captain to shake.
The man’s nose wrinkled in disgust.
From the bench, the boy looked down under his feet at the perfectly green grass.
“The grass is looking especially green today, Captain Pride!” he chirped.
“I said ‘OFF’! I brushed that grass only this morning!” protested the captain, waving a toothbrush from his breast pocket as proof.
“You have another sign that says, ‘Keep off the path’,” remarked Slime.
“YES!” replied the captain.
“Well, where, oh where, can we stand, then?” asked Slime.
“Absolutely anywhere you like. As long as it’s outside my park! Now begone!”
But the pair were in no mood to go.
The two friends shared a smile.
The naughtiness was about
to begin!
* Walliamsictionary has it, so please do not doubt its existence. What more proof could there ever be?
* I admit I did just make that word up. One to add to volume two of the mighty Walliamsictionary, which already runs to over a million pages.
* This has the Walliamsictionary seal of approval.
“My basketball rolled on to the grass that time, didn’t it, Pride?” announced Ned from the park bench.
“Captain Pride to you!” the man thundered.
“Didn’t it, Private Pride?” replied Ned, enjoying winding up the proud man.
“CAPTAIN! I remember it well,” said the park keeper. “All serious incidents are noted down in my book of park occurrences. Let me look…”
The man pulled a little red leatherbound notebook from his blazer pocket. Embossed on the cover were the words Book Of Park Occurrences.
“Let me see… January the first,” began Pride, leafing through the pages. “Not a happy new year as at oh seven hundred hours highly offensive sweet wrapper blows into park. Entire area is sealed off until culprit who dropped said sweet wrapper is found and fined!”
Ned looked at Slime, and Slime looked at Ned. Both rolled their eyes at each other.
“Fourteenth of February, oh nine hundred hours, a pigeon does his doo-dahs on the newly waxed park bench. Pigeons are brought into the park shed for questioning one by one until one of them squawks.”
Ned and Slime sighed at this silly little man.
“Oh yes! Here it is. March the third!” Captain Pride was becoming animated now. “Eleven hundred hours, a basketball is bounced over the wall from the nearby playing fields and lands on the grass. It bounces repeatedly (seven times, to be precise) before eventually coming to a stop. One blade of grass is killed, another is seriously injured. Basketball is dealt with in an instant with military precision. I puncture it with my litter-collecting spear.”
“That basketball was a Christmas present from my granny,” said the boy sorrowfully. “She sent it all the way from the Isle of Stench! It accidentally bounced over the wall. Why didn’t you just throw it back when I asked you?”
The captain’s moustache bristled. “I did throw it back!” he protested.
“Only after you’d burst it!” replied the boy.
“I still threw it back!” The captain’s left eye began to twitch. “Right, I want both of you out of my park. Now!”
Ned looked at Slime. “All in good time. First we need a little something for you to jot down in your Park Occurrences Book!”
“It is called the Book of Park Occurrences, not the Park Occurrences Book!” corrected the captain.
“Slime!” continued Ned. “I think we need to cause some mischief!”
“Goody! Goody!” agreed his friend.
“A thousand sweet wrappers, if you please!”
“WHAT THE BLAZES?” spluttered Captain Pride.
“NOW!” shouted the boy.
“HALT!” cried Pride. The little man could make a big noise, but it was too late. Slime trans-slimed into a thousand sweet wrappers of every colour imaginable. They floated through the air, dancing on the breeze. Captain Pride ran around in circles trying to grab them, to no avail.
“HA! HA! HA!” Ned laughed. “Now, let’s have a hundred basketballs!”
At once the sweet wrappers clung together to form balls that bounced up and down on the grass with glee.
“The grass! My precious grass! Keep off the grass!” yelled Pride. But there were just too many of them. He ran to fetch his litter spear and stabbed at them, but whenever he hit one it just soaked him in slime.
“Let’s not forget the pigeons!” shouted out one of the slime basketballs that had Slime’s face on it.
�
��Of course!” said Ned.
In an instant, every one of those hundred basketballs became a pigeon. Not just any pigeon. A pooping pigeon. A super-duper-wuper pooping pigeon!
“SQUAWK! SQUAWK! SQUAWK!”
SPLAT! SPLAT SPLAT!
As the birds looped and twirled through the air, they dropped their load of multicoloured slime poop (“sloop”*) everywhere.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
The lawn was splatted.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
The path was splatted.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
The shed was splatted.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
The bench was splatted.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
“HALT!” barked Pride. “I command you to HALT! In the name of Greta Greed!”
“One last military fly-past,” ordered Ned.
Slime knew what the boy meant, and immediately the birds gathered in formation as if they were an air-force stunt team. They turned high in the sky, before coming straight for Captain Pride.
“HALT!” he bellowed. “That’s an order!”
But they didn’t stop. They kept coming.
SOAR!
The old soldier began to run away, but he was no match for the slime pigeons. They swooped over his head, dropping their load right on top of him.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
Captain Pride was splatted.
“DIRTY BEASTS!” cried the man. His moustache, his blazer, his slacks, his highly polished boots – EVERY LAST PART OF HIM was covered in GOO.
“Oops!” remarked Ned. “You seem to have a tiny speck of something on you, Captain Prode!”
A red mist of fury descended upon the park keeper. “I’LL GET YOU, BOY!” he yelled as he charged at Ned with his litter spear. “CHARGE! AND IT’S NOT PRODE – IT’S PRIDE!”
Just in time, the slime pigeons swooped down to Ned and whisked him up from the park bench high into the air.
“Another day, Captain Prude!” he called out from above.
Slime: The new children’s book from No. 1 bestselling author David Walliams. Page 5