Crane Fly Crash

by Ali Sparkes

  “Yes, that’s it!” said Josh. “You are dreaming.” This was good, he thought. Jenny really couldn’t find out about the S.W.I.T.C.H. spray. Far better if she thought she was dreaming. “Yep—it’s all a big weird dream,” went on Josh. “Do your fishcakes wear roller skates? Mine do. Eeep.”

  Jenny was staring at him as if he’d gone crazy.

  “It’s OK—you’re in a dream … remember?” said Josh. “Being able to fly … four extra legs … fishcakes on roller skates … eeep?” Nothing ever made much sense for very long in his dreams.

  But Jenny wasn’t paying attention. She had turned away from him. She was dragging her flimsy self across the bed toward the pillow end. She walked a bit and then rose up and flapped about. Then she slumped back down for a while and then walked a little way again. It was kind of random, thought Josh. He realized, though, that he was doing the same thing. “Where are you going, Jenny?” he called after her.

  “To explore my dream!” she called back. “I’m going there!” and she raised one of her forelegs and waved it toward a huge white edifice bathed in glowing golden light. “I’ve got to go there!” And now she took off and flew straight toward the glow.

  “Whoa—hang on—wait!” called Josh, taking off, too, to keep up with her. He felt very wobbly in the air. This was nothing like being a housefly or a grasshopper. Those creatures had felt like well-oiled hi-tech machines. They swooped through the air and moved around like military aircraft. Being a crane fly was a lot more haphazard. The legs were—well—just stupid! They didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves. They wouldn’t tuck up neatly under his body. They didn’t work very well when he let them just drop either. They swayed about and messed up his aerodynamics.

  Jenny, though, was managing to fly in spite of her legs. She was now zooming straight toward the big golden glow. As he followed his sister, Josh felt the air around him getting warm. There was something he needed to warn Jenny about—something dangerous … but oh! The light! The light!

  “Isn’t it loveleeeeeee?” called back Jenny. “OW!” She suddenly jerked backward as if she’d been struck. After a confused spiral in the air, she went toward the light again. “OW!”

  “Oooooooh, the pretty light!” sighed Josh, zooming toward it. “OW!” Something hot smacked him hard in the face. Dazed, he flopped onto a flat white surface, next to a huge pink spiky thing. But he didn’t stay there long. “Oooooooh, the pretty light!” Once again, he was up, flying. “OW!”

  “Isn’t it loveleeeeeee?” sang Jenny, flapping up above him. “OW!”

  Oooh—loveleeee! OW! Oooh—pretty—OW! It was like a strange song and dance act. He and Jenny just kept doing it. Even though they didn’t know why and even though it hurt, in a bashy-burny way …

  They were too mesmerized by the wonderful light to even notice when one of Jenny’s legs fell off.

  Danny had only seconds to stand gaping at his transformed brother and sister. Then Mom called out “Danny! Josh!” She began to thud slowly upstairs. The nozzle of the vacuum made sucky, thwacky noises against each of the steps as she worked her way up.

  He jumped. Uh-oh! This could be a problem.

  “Danny! Josh!” shouted Mom, a bit louder. “I want you to go and clean your room. Get the stuff off the carpet so I can vacuum!”

  Danny gulped. He looked at the crane flies skittering about on Jenny’s bed. He shuddered, even though he knew they were his brother and sister. He had to stand here and wait until they got back safely to human form. He couldn’t answer Mom and be told to go and clean his room.

  Mom had reached the landing now, lugging the vacuum up with her by the sound of it. She switched the vacuum cleaner off and sighed. Then she called for her sons again. And then she called for Jenny. Nobody answered. Danny stood frozen on Jenny’s bedroom carpet, his heart racing. What should he do?

  Mom huffed loudly outside Jenny’s door and muttered to herself. “Where have they all gone? Typical, when there’s work to be done.”

  Then she opened Jenny’s door.

  She looked around the room, shook her head, and sighed again. Danny stood rigid against the wall behind the door. He tried not to breathe. He’d be in big trouble if Mom found out he was hiding and not answering her. But worse, there was no way she’d let him stay in Jenny’s room, guarding a couple of crane flies.

  Mom’s fingers curled around the edge of the door. She huffed again. And then—mercifully—the door was pulled closed.

  Danny sprang toward the bed. He couldn’t see the crane flies now. But a buzzy clicking noise told him they were flying against something. Ah! There they were, flapping around the lamp on Jenny’s white-painted bedside table.

  “Ooh, that’s got to hurt,” winced Danny. He watched them ping against the hot bulb and do backflips away from it. They rebounded off the inside of the cone-shaped lampshade. “Josh!” he hissed, aware that Mom was still up on the landing. “Don’t be an idiot. Stop head-butting the light!”

  But they kept doing it. Again and again, even though it was clearly hurting them. Danny was about to reach out and switch the lamp off when he saw something shocking on the bedside table, next to Jenny’s pink hairbrush. He hoped it was a funny shaped hair—but it was too dark. Jenny’s hairs were blonde. This was dark colored and looked very much like …

  “A leg!” gasped Danny. “One of them’s lost a leg!”

  “Stop! Jenny! Stop!” puffed Josh, lying in a bedraggled heap on her bedside table. “Look! You’ve lost a leg!”

  He knew it wasn’t his leg, as he’d just done a quick check and he still had all six. Jenny, though, had only five. One of her back legs was missing. And here it was, lying next to the big pink spiky thing that Josh had figured out was Jenny’s hairbrush. He might not ever have noticed the leg if he hadn’t got so exhausted. It was only because he couldn’t fly at the light now that he had stopped. And resting had given him a moment to realize that he and his sister had gone nuts, just like the moth she’d tried to kill earlier. They had all thought the light was the moon and were instinctively trying to fly toward it to safety. But in fact, it was the bulb in the bedside lamp. Josh’s head and feet were very sore with all the burns from smacking against the white-hot glass.

  Jenny suddenly slapped down next to him, groaning. “What?” she said. “What did you say?”

  “Look—I don’t want you to get upset,” began Josh.

  “About what? Hurry up—I’ve got to fly to the light!” She was pulling herself up again already. “The lovely light!”

  “STOP!” yelled Josh. “Can’t you see that’s your bedside lamp? You’re just banging yourself against a white-hot bit of glass!”

  “What?” said Jenny, again. She had flopped down beside him once more.

  “And look—you’ve lost a leg,” said Josh. He waved one of his own legs at the poor specimen lying by the hairbrush.

  “Ooh,” said Jenny, checking her limbs and noting the stump at the back. “I thought something stung a bit.” She peered at the useless limb.

  “Ah well,” said Josh. “You’ve got some more.”

  But he gulped. Would he switch back and discover Jenny had lost an arm or a leg for good. Why did crane flies have to be so flimsy?

  At this moment, Danny was reaching toward the bedside lamp. He was carefully avoiding the collapsed crane flies below it, trying to switch off the tormenting, dangerous light before any more legs fell off. Before he’d reached the switch, the bedroom door, which Mom hadn’t completely shut, was suddenly knocked open. In trotted Piddle.

  Piddle, a small terrier dog (called Piddle because of an unattractive habit he had when he got overexcited) was very pleased to see Danny. He was bored and wanted to play. He yapped and jumped up on Jenny’s bed, even though he wasn’t allowed to.

  “Piddle! Get out!” hissed Danny. He couldn’t shout. Mom was in the bathroom now and might hear him. But Piddle could see that Danny was playing with something. He was pointing his hand at the bedside table.
What was going on?

  “OUT!” hissed Danny, as loudly as he dared. Piddle heard him. But what he decided Danny was actually saying was “LOOK! LOOK! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS!”

  “It’s not good, is it?” said Jenny, booting her detached leg about with one of her attached ones. “I should be bleeding to death.”

  “Nah—you’re all right,” gulped Josh. He tried hard not to think of switching back to Stumpsville. “Crane flies lose legs like you lose a fingernail. It’s a survival thing. If they get caught by a predator, they can just shake a leg off and escape.”

  “Ugh,” said Jenny. She examined the stump where her leg had been. It wasn’t oozing anything at all. She looked up at the light and sighed longingly.

  “NO-OO!” warned Josh. “Don’t fly to the light! You know it doesn’t make sense!”

  “But…” sighed Jenny. Then she snapped her head around to Josh and said, “Hang on—predator? You said predator! Are there predators in my dream? I hate dreams like that. I’m going to have to wake myself up if there’s a predator after me.”

  “We should be OK,” said Josh. “We’re in your bedroom. I don’t think there are any big predators there except you. And you’re not around.”

  Jenny nodded and then froze. Her big bulbous eyes seemed to get even bigger and more bulbous. A very loud gusty noise suddenly burst into their ears. Jenny stared in horror at something behind Josh. Josh spun around, his legs flapping, and stared too. A huge shadowy figure loomed high into the air. That was probably Danny, Josh told himself. What was far more terrifying was the smaller but still pretty enormous creature. It was suddenly springing up and down in front of the bedside table.

  A blast of warm air, which smelled of rotten old meat, suddenly sent Josh and Jenny flying back toward the big yellow base of the lamp. Jenny screamed. Fair enough, thought Josh, and joined her. “AAARGH!” they agreed, as a pair of jaws the size of a tractor snapped shut inches away from them. Another blast of nasty warm, meaty air blew at them.

  “OH NO!” shrieked Josh. “It’s PIDDLE!” He stared at Jenny in horror. “Piddle EATS creepy-crawlies!”

  With his front legs, Josh grabbed hold of Jenny by the wings. He dragged her around to the back of the lampshade. They huddled together on a large plastic tray filled with blue glitter. “Ooh,” said Jenny. “I wondered where my eye shadow had gone…”

  “Jenny!” squawked Josh. “Don’t you think there are more important things to worry about right now? We’re about to be eaten by a giant Piddle!” He cringed back into the corner as a hairy white paw with thick yellow claws suddenly whacked across the table top to their left with a scrunch. It scratched four grooves in the paint. A terrible shrill sound ripped through the air, like a train crashing very fast over and over again. Piddle was yapping. The looming shadow that must be Danny was swooping down on top of Piddle. Would he manage to stop the energetic terrier in time?

  “We won’t be eaten by Piddle,” said Jenny, quite calmly, even though she was shaking as much as Josh.

  “What? How do you know that?” gasped Josh. He dragged them both farther backward as a smelly pink tongue suddenly shot around the edge of the lamp.

  “Because it’s my dream,” said Jenny, shrugging with all five of her legs. “And in my dreams, whenever I’m being chased by a monster, it never actually gets me. I always wake up just before that happens.”

  “B-but… ” Josh couldn’t think of an answer to this. Telling Jenny this was all real probably wouldn’t help much.

  “Of course you might get eaten,” went on Jenny, with a cheerful chuckle. “You quite often do get eaten or squashed or thrown off a cliff or something, in my dreams. Although Danny is usually the first one to bite the dust. But not me. Nope. In fact, I’ve had enough of this dream now.” Jenny struggled to stand up straight again. “I’m just going around to face the monster and then I’ll wake up.”

  “JENNY! NO!” yelled Josh, horrified, trying to grab her. “YOU CAN’T! PIDDLE WILL EAT YOU!”

  “No, he won’t—you’ll see,” said Jenny. She fluttered up above him. Then she scooted around to the front of the lamp again.

  “Eww!” she said, as she noticed her discarded leg being licked up by a tongue the size of the kitchen table. The leg disappeared as a shaggy white mouth snapped shut.

  “Come on then!” yelled Jenny, bobbing up and down in front of the most terrifying sight she had ever seen (but just not believing it). “Have another one!”

  And she yanked off another leg and threw it in Piddle’s face. “FETCH!” she shouted.

  Josh scuttled around the lamp and hid behind the hairbrush. “JENNY!” he wailed. “STOP IT! You’re going to get EATEN!”

  The snappy, yappy jaws were back, wide open. The tongue was quivering up and down between sharp, yellowy canine teeth. Jenny watched her second leg sail in and the jaws snap shut. Now she had only four legs left. She stood, laughing and bobbing up and down, in the face of doom. She looked a bit like a foldout camping table.

  “You want another piece of me?” she yelled. “See if I care!”

  She looked around and was trying to decide which leg to pull off next. Josh made a run for it. He grabbed her around her spindly middle and began to drag her away. “STOP pulling your legs off!” he gasped as she flapped around, angrily. His wings went into overdrive. He managed to drag her up into the air before she could turn herself into a tripod.

  “This is my dream!” snapped Jenny, struggling hard. “And I’ll pull as many legs off as I want! Get out of my dream! You’re always coming in and messing with my stuff. I’m telling Mom! Get—”

  “—OFF!” yelped Danny and grabbed Piddle by the collar. He yanked the dog away from the bedside table. He couldn’t see any insect life there at all. He stared, horrified, into the terrier’s mouth. Piddle was panting excitedly, his tail wagging. His tongue was lolloping about between his sharp teeth. And on the tongue were a couple of legs. Crane fly legs. “Oh no,” whimpered Danny. “Josh! Jenny! Noo!”

  Then a movement caught his eye. He saw a bundle of legs and wings floundering up the wall toward the window. Two crane flies! There were still two! The leg count didn’t look great for one of them, but they were still alive!

  Danny bundled Piddle out of the room. He shut the door fast. He lay back against it, his heart thumping in his chest. He’d had such a scare. He’d really thought his dog had just eaten half his family. As he watched Josh and Jenny fluttering along the windowsill, he started to calm down again. He would just sit here, nice and calm, until they popped back up as humans again. That’s all. Nothing else.

  “Josh? Danny? Jenny? Are you in there?” called Mom from down in the bathroom. Oh no! She must have heard him shut the door after he’d chucked Piddle out. If she came in now, he would never be able to stay and protect Josh and Jenny. Especially if they started that idiotic lightbulb-butting thing again.

  Danny looked around him in a panic as Mom switched off the vacuum. She stepped out onto the landing. She was heading back to look in Jenny’s room again. This time she was suspicious, so she was sure to look behind the door.

  She would haul him out, tell him off, and send him to his room. And then anything might happen to Jenny and Josh! Danny gulped as he heard Mom walk across the landing toward Jenny’s door. Maybe he should just tell her everything and hope she would believe him and … “Oh come on!” he said to himself. Then he grabbed the S.W.I.T.C.H. spray. He dove down behind the bed and squirted a yellow blast of it at his head.

  Danny had only just enough time to shove the spray bottle under Jenny’s bed before it shot up to the size of a telephone booth. The walls and ceiling of Jenny’s room rushed away from him, stretching out to the size of a football stadium.

  He knew, of course, that nothing had gotten bigger at all. It was just he—along with Josh and Jenny—who’d gotten suddenly a lot smaller. Danny stood up carefully, trying to sort out his weird eyes. It was that funny multi-lens thing again. A bit like looking through one of those
glass things that gave you tons of the same view in many tiny hexagons. After a few seconds, though, he got used to it. His vision seemed quite normal. He tested out his legs. At least this time—for once—he had known what he was going to turn into before he got sprayed. He tried out his wings. He soon found himself rising up beside the vast football field-sized bed, in a rather wobbly way.

  It was nowhere near as good as being a housefly or a grasshopper. Now, those things knew how to move! Still, it would have to do.

  There was a sudden breeze. Danny whirled around to see the door opening and the humongous silhouette of what must be his mom. He’d only just sprayed himself in time! Over on the windowsill, which now looked like a very wide flat runway on the edge of a cliff, Danny could see Josh and Jenny. They were clinging to the windowpane and bobbing up and down in that nervous crane fly way.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, casually, landing behind them. He glanced back into the room but couldn’t see Mom now. Maybe she’d gone back out onto the landing

  “Danny! What are you doing here?” asked Jenny. “It’s bad enough having one annoying little brother in my dream, let alone two! I don’t get any peace, even while I’m asleep!”

  “Hey!” protested Josh, flickering his funny fingery mouthparts. “I just saved your life!”

  “No, you didn’t!” argued Jenny. “You just had to interfere! I was going to wake up, if you hadn’t come along. But now I’m still in this stupid dream, thanks to you. And now it looks like—” she glared at Danny “—it’s just gotten a lot stupider!”