by Paul Gamble
* * *
10
STRANGE FOOD
Jack and Trudy both decided to head to their respective homes after leaving the Ministry. There didn’t seem to be much else they could achieve that day, and Jack was feeling quite tired from being attacked by plants and blowing things up.
Jack wandered into the kitchen at home. His dad looked up from where he had been preparing dinner. As always, as Jack’s father looked up, his mustache did so also. “Hello, Jack.”34
“Dad.” Jack nodded back.
Jack’s mother walked into the room. “You’re home later than usual. Where’ve you been?”
Jack thought about this for a minute and realized that for once honesty would be the best policy. “Well, I was helping out at school, then I was lost for a while—you know, just hanging around with Trudy. And then I pretty much came straight home.”
Jack plumped himself down at the kitchen table and his mother sat herself down in front of him. “You’re seeing an awful lot of this Trudy girl recently. Is there something that you want to tell us?”
Jack thought that the main thing he wanted to tell his parents was to mind their own business. But he was far too well brought up and polite to say such a thing. “There’s nothing to tell you, Mum. She’s just a friend!”
Jack’s mother smiled at him. “That’s fine. But you know if you wanted to invite Trudy over here at some stage we’d love to meet her.”
The thought of inviting Trudy over sent a cold shiver down Jack’s spine. His parents made enough fun of him without Trudy being there to join in as well. “We’ll see about that sometime … maybe … never.”
Jack’s father came over to the table and put a plate down in front of him. Jack knew something was up because his father’s mustache was looking amused. Jack looked down at the plate and realized what the cause of the frivolity was.
“Dad.”
“Yes, Jack.”
“I’m just looking at this plate.” Jack pointed in case his father was unaware of which particular plate he was referencing. “And there’s something about it I don’t like.”
“And what would that be?” asked Jack’s father. Jack’s father’s mustache was barely trying to conceal its smirk now.
“The food, Dad, the food. If you could call it food.”
Jack’s father frowned. His eyebrows turned downward, but his mustache was still turned upward, smiling. “What do you mean? This is very nutritious. It contains all the major food groups.”
Jack wasn’t sure what all the major food groups actually were. What he was sure of was that if they were all represented on the plate he would have starved to death years ago. “What food groups? The sausage food group isn’t represented. The potato waffle food group isn’t represented. The baked-beans food group isn’t represented.” Jack was looking sadly at a plate that was filled with what looked like two small burgers, but made out of a sort of greeny, yellowy mush instead of actual meat.
“Dad, what is this? Have you been cleaning out the drains again?”
Jack’s mother felt the need to join in the conversation at this stage. In order to give her words more force she held up and waved a printout of an e-mail. “This came from the school today. Apparently you had blood tests.”
“I know, and I hadn’t even studied.”
Jack’s mother ignored his joke. “Your school is worried about the increasing number of allergies amongst the children. According to your blood tests, you aren’t eating enough of the right foods. You don’t have enough vitamins, and you have particularly low levels of iron.”
“What?” Jack snapped, grabbing the e-mail and reading it for himself.
“And that’s why I cooked these veggie burgers tonight,” said Jack’s father. “They’re a new type—guaranteed not to cause allergies. Fortified with vitamins and iron in particular.”
“Yes,” his mother agreed. “And there was a story on the Internet about a young boy at your school having some kind of allergic reaction to peanuts or processed food. Therefore, we’re going to start eating healthy food from now on.”
Jack was only half paying attention to his parents. He was concentrating on the e-mail from the school that confirmed his iron levels were dangerously low. Which was strange, because Jack didn’t feel unhealthy. And even if he did, he imagined that eating vitamins and iron probably wouldn’t make him feel better anyway.
“Stop reading that and eat your dinner. It’ll be good for you.” Jack’s mother snatched the e-mail from him.
Jack reluctantly took a bite out of one of the veggie burgers. They didn’t taste quite as bad as he thought, although they did seem to have a slightly metallic tinge to them.
“Are they as delicious as they claim on the package?” asked Jack’s father, waving the box in front of him.
Jack looked up and was shocked to see the face of the straggly white-haired scientist, Mr. M, staring back at him from the box.
Mr. M’s Veggie Burgers—Now Fortified with Iron
Jack didn’t know what to say. It was bad enough that Mr. M had tried to kill him in the school. Now he was trying to poison him at home. Jack waited until his parents were looking in the opposite direction and slipped the remaining “burger” into his trouser pocket.
“I think I’m going to go to my room. I’ve got some homework to do and I’m going to get an early night after that.”
Jack’s mother was surprised. “We’ll have to feed you even more of this healthy food. Not only will it make you fitter, it makes you behave better as well.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF IRON
SWORD SWALLOWERS
Many people think that there’s a trick to sword swallowing. Of course, there isn’t—it’s done using a real iron sword. The sword is actually swallowed and inevitably causes horrific internal injuries.
However, iron in your diet is good for you, helping your blood, brain, and muscles. In fact, if you don’t have enough iron in your blood you may suffer from weakness, fatigue, and anemia.
Sword swallowers are continually swallowing iron and therefore are very healthy—with superpowered brains, blood, and muscles. It is this high level of fitness that means that even after lacerating their internal organs, they recover incredibly quickly.
So, it isn’t that sword swallowers don’t hurt themselves during the act—clearly, that would be impossible—it’s just that due to all the iron in their diets they get well really, really quickly.
* * *
11
WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD
TUESDAY
Jack was surprised when he woke up. He wasn’t surprised about waking up. He’d done that many times before; in fact, he had done it almost every day that he could remember. What surprised him was that it wasn’t his alarm clock that was waking him up. Rather it was the pain of walking across tiny stones that were sticking into his feet. That and the crunching sound that the gravel made as he walked across it. He tried to look around but found that he couldn’t move his head. He looked straight ahead and realized he was walking up the driveway of his house toward the road.
Jack tried to stop himself but it was as if something was pulling his arms and legs along. He fought back against this strange force and found himself slowing slightly, but he couldn’t stop the movement entirely. Jack was thankful to look up and see that their gates were locked—at least that would stop whatever was moving him from making him walk into the middle of the road.
The force that was moving him turned him and he found himself walking toward the hedge that ran around the edge of their property. Jack had a horrible feeling about what was going to happen. And he was especially annoyed because he was wearing his favorite Star Wars pajamas. Jack couldn’t resist the movement and he found himself pushing his way through the hedge, the branches and leaves scraping at his skin and tearing his pajamas until they were in shreds.
Jack felt relieved once he emerged from the
other side of the hedge. At least it couldn’t get any worse. Step by step, foot by foot, he edged his way into the center of the road. He struggled to move his head to look both ways as he had been taught in the road safety lessons at his primary school, but something was holding his neck still. Once in the center of the road, Jack stopped dead.
“This is odd,” said Jack, wondering if somehow someone had enchanted his pajamas35 to put him under a spell. With a great deal of effort Jack managed to rotate his neck slightly and look around. He kept expecting to see Mr. M, but the only odd thing he noticed were the electrical power lines above his head. There were hundreds of birds flying down out of the sky and landing on the cables.
“And now its getting odder.”
A few of the birds saw Jack and flew down out of the sky. He would have jumped out of the way or flapped his hands at them, but the strange force was still holding him frozen in place. A dozen more birds flapped down and began roosting on him.
In the distance, Jack heard a motor revving. He strained his eyes to see into the night. At the far end of his road sat a large silver car. Its motor revved again and it moved forward an inch. Jack gulped and waited since there was nothing else he could do. The car began moving, accelerating, barreling down the road toward Jack. It was still a distance off, but moving so quickly that he knew he had little time to get out of the way. He strained his muscles and found that with a great deal of effort he could move slightly, but not fast enough to escape the car’s path.
The car had covered half the distance and was getting faster. He had only seconds before it crashed into him, and that would be the end of that. As the car neared, Jack was shocked to realize that there was no one driving it. Both the front seats were empty. And yet it clearly knew exactly what it was doing.
Jack waited for his life to flash before his eyes. However, it stubbornly refused to do so. “Great,” Jack muttered to himself. “I’m going to die and the special effects aren’t even working.”
Jack was thinking as hard as he could, yet he couldn’t come up with an idea to save himself. This was one time The Speed clearly wouldn’t help. After all, he couldn’t move, so at best The Speed would just enable him to stay still, very quickly indeed. In fact, the only thing Jack could think of was something incredibly unoriginal. Still, in the absence of a better idea, it was worth a try.
“HEEELLLLLLPPPP!!!!” Jack screamed in a rather high-pitched voice with the car inches away.…
* * *
Jack looked down as the car passed under him. He could hear the flapping of wings. His soul had clearly left his body, and now he was an angel flying above it. As he looked down he thought that the car must have done a really good job of squishing him, because his body was nowhere to be seen.
And then he realized he had avoided being squished entirely. His high-pitched scream had panicked the birds, which had landed on his arms and shoulders. The birds had flapped their wings, trying to take off, but his Star Wars pajamas had been so badly torn by the hedge that the birds’ claws had become entangled in them. As they all flew upward at once, they had lifted Jack with them, saving his life by mere inches. He now hung, hovering, in the air as the birds strained to try and escape from the tangles of his pajama top.
The car screeched to a halt. Jack wondered how much longer the birds could keep him aloft. Maybe it was only a temporary reprieve, after all. Then he noticed from the corner of his eye a light going on in his house and his father leaning out of the window. Another light across the road went on, and the door of a house farther down the street opened. The silver car revved its engine twice and then drove off into the night.
The birds that were attached to Jack’s pajamas began tiring of flapping their wings and slowly lowered him to the ground. Jack suddenly found that he could move his arms again and used them to release the birds from his pajamas one by one. As he let the last one go, Jack’s father and mother walked out into the middle of the street.
“What are you doing out here?” his mother asked.
“Umm,” Jack stammered, “I think I might have been sleepwalking.”
“I heard a young girl scream and looked out the window…,” said Jack’s father.
Jack frowned but didn’t say anything.
“… but I couldn’t see anything other than a silver car.”
Jack considered saying that the reason his father might have missed him was because he had been flying in the air at the time. However, he rightly surmised that this may have led to other more difficult questions.
“Let’s get you to bed before the whole neighborhood gets up,” said Jack’s mother as she led him back inside.
Jack’s father put an arm on his shoulder. “We might need to throw out those pajamas; they’re beginning to look a bit ragged.”
Jack fixed his father with a stare. “Dad, we’re not throwing out these pajamas. Let me tell you something, they’re most definitely my favorites.”
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
SLEEPING
HIBERNATION
Many people have trouble sleeping, and so it must be annoying to them that other animals are not only capable of sleeping but can actually hibernate for three months at a time.
The animal most famous for hibernating is the bear, which, when it gets too cold outside, goes into a hibernation state, sleeping until the summer returns. It is interesting to note that biologists generally claim that the bear is extinct in Ireland. However, another school of thought claims that bears still do exist in Ireland; it’s just that it hasn’t been warm enough for them to get out of bed lately.
* * *
12
DAVID BULKS UP
Even though Jack was still tired the next morning, he was up before his alarm rang because he wanted to get to school and tell Trudy what had happened to him. He ran downstairs to find his father pouring out a bowl of Mr. M’s Marvelous Muesli.
“Umm, Dad, as delicious as that looks I was wondering if I could get a bacon sandwich instead. You know, on account of me being scared last night when I was sleepwalking.”
Jack’s father frowned. “This is health food, Jack; it’s good for you.”
“I know it’s good for me,” agreed Jack. “That’s why it tastes so awful.”
Jack’s mother walked into the kitchen and ruffled his hair. “He’s young; let him have a bacon sandwich.”
“Can I also have a bacon sandwich?” asked Jack’s father.
Jack’s mother smiled at her husband. “You aren’t young. So, no.”
“There’s something very unfair about all of this,” grumbled Jack’s father as he put a couple of rashers under the grill.36
* * *
Jack couldn’t help noticing something slightly strange when he sat down next to his friend David on the schoolbus. David was munching on yet another muesli snack that resembled a bar of sawdust. However, Jack was rather more distracted by the fact that David had to stop eating several times to brush the crumbs out of his beard. Jack was pretty certain that David hadn’t had a beard yesterday.
Jack strongly suspected that it was a false beard, not only because of the difference in color from David’s normal hair, but also because although occasionally some of their classmates went through growth spurts, there was generally a limit to how much facial hair one could grow overnight.
“Have you suddenly gone through some kind of growth spurt?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said David. “It’s a false beard. I’ve stuck it on with extra-strong spirit gum. It’s what actors use—means it doesn’t come off even if you sweat a lot under film studio lights.”
“That spirit gum must be sticky stuff,” observed Jack.
“You aren’t kidding,” agreed David as he held up his hands, which were covered in strands of black beard. “I probably should have been more careful when I was applying it.”
Jack felt that the conversation was rather dancing around the point that he was trying to get to, and s
o he asked a direct question. “Why have you stuck an enormous black beard to your face?”
David raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I told you yesterday—they’re holding auditions for extras in that fantasy film.”
“I’m still not entirely clear what the beard’s about,” observed Jack.
“Have you ever seen a fantasy film? Most of the cast have beards. I assume because they used all their metal making armor and swords and shields and then didn’t have enough left over for razors. I thought bringing along my own beard might give me an edge during the auditions.”
“When are the auditions?”
“First thing this morning. Will you and Trudy come along and support me? Apparently, they’re going to have lots of cool effects and things. There’s going to be an animatronic giant and a dragon as well.”
“Of course we’ll come!” Jack suspected there was more to these auditions than David realized.
David crunched some more on his sawdust bar.
“Are you actually enjoying eating that?” Jack asked.
Little bits of the dry and dusty bar fell out of the corners of David’s mouth as he munched. “Not so much, but at the end of school yesterday they were giving them out to everyone who signed up for the auditions. They said we’d only be selected if we ate healthily and kept our strength up so we all look like warriors.” David thrust the bar under Jack’s nose.
Jack poked the bar with an experimental finger—he knew there was something very wrong with it, he just wasn’t sure what. Bits of the snack crumbled into dust and fell to the ground.
David nodded. “That’s the problem with these kinds of snack bars. They tend to be dry and crunchy. Without toffee and nougat, they don’t have a great deal of structural integrity. Which means the carpet37 in the school is definitely becoming a lot more crunchy than it was previously.” David took another bite of the snack. “It doesn’t taste too bad.”