Slime

One good thing about getting around on wheels is that you can glide silently and undetected.

As long as you don’t bump into the furniture.

DONK!

Or run over a cat.

“MIAOW!”

Ned rolled past his sister’s bedroom and headed into the living room. Now, thought Ned, where would be good hiding places?

It turned out… everywhere!

There were jars, jars and more jars of yucktastic* stuff hidden all over the room.

Under the sofa

Behind the curtains

On top of the bookshelf

In the sideboard

Under the cushions

Behind the plant pot

Inside the lampshade

Under the coffee table

The same was true of the kitchen. And the hallway.

Rolling past the boiler cupboard, Ned heard gurgling.

GURGLE! FURGLE! DURGLE!

On opening the door, he could see jars and jars with gunk oozing out of them. The heat from the boiler must have made the gunk expand. It was a wonder that one of the jars hadn’t exploded.

Once again, all the jars were labelled, each full of something more puzzling than the last.

What was all this stuff?

And, more importantly, what was she planning to do with it all?

The boy approached his mother and father’s room. He peeked through the gap in the door. Their bed was empty. It was the early hours of the morning and the pair were already at work. No doubt Dad was heading out to sea and Mum was setting up her market stall. A quick search by Ned of the back of their wardrobe revealed jars, jars and more jars.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he muttered to himself.

Then the boy rolled back into the hall, making his way towards his dreaded sister’s bedroom.

TRUNDLE! TRUNDLE! TRUNDLE!

Ned was sure somewhere in there would be the answer. He put his ear up against her door.

“ZZZ! ZZZ! ZZZ!”

Jemima was fast asleep, snoring like a steam train.

The sign on her bedroom door read…

Now was Ned’s chance. The boy took a deep breath. Then, as quietly as he could, he opened the door…

CLICK!

…and gently rolled himself inside.

TRUNDLE!

The boy hadn’t been allowed in his sister’s bedroom for years. No wonder she kept everyone out. Her room was full to bursting with jars and jars and more jars of gunk! There must have been thousands upon thousands of jars in there. All the way from the floor to the ceiling. No wonder Jemima had resorted to hiding the jars all over the house. There was no more room in her room! It was a miracle she could even get in or out!

As Ned watched his sister sleep, noting that she wore her STEEL-CAPPED boots in bed, he scanned her bedroom for clues. There must be an answer somewhere to what she planned to do with all these jars of gunk.

In a corner of the room were Jemima’s school exercise books. Ned knew that his sister never did a scrap of work at school, so was surprised to see how well thumbed the books looked. Upon opening them, Ned discovered that they weren’t full of schoolwork at all. Oh no.

They were full of plans for the diabolical trick she was about to play on him…

* Don’t delay. Buy your Walliamsictionary today.

Ned’s eyes widened at the horror. The unspeakable horror.

The words and pictures in her books told the story in gruesome detail.

So this was what his wicked sister was planning!

There were lists, calendars, graphs, diagrams and even a flick book of how it would all play out.

It was called:

And it was the boy’s birthday… TOMORROW!

Once a year on his birthday, Ned had a bath.*

In the family cottage there was only enough hot water for one bathful a day. Of course, Jemima always bagsied every drop of hot water for herself. No wonder her parents reeked of fish.

The only exception to this rule was on her little brother’s birthday. On that special day, Jemima would be forced by her parents to relent and let little STINKY Ned have his yearly soak.

So the plan was that tomorrow Jemima would fill the bath with all the gunk. Every last drop from every single jar would be emptied until the bath was full to the brim. Then she would squirt bubbles on top of the gunk, so Ned wouldn’t see the horror that was lurking underneath.

The Bath of Doom.

There was even a cut-away diagram in her exercise book showing the hidden layer of gunk.

Jemima knew her little brother would suspect nothing. This was his birthday treat, after all! Ned would think it was a lovely bath full of warm water and lower himself into it. THEN…

“EURGH!” he would scream as he was covered from head to toe in gunk.

Ned dropped Jemima’s book in shock.

THONK!

The girl stirred.

Ned held his breath.

Then she turned over and went straight back to sleep.

“ZZZ! ZZZZ! ZZZZZ!”

Taking great care, the boy rolled himself back out of Jemima’s bedroom. He had to reverse his wheelchair, as with the mountains of jars there wasn’t room to turn round.

TRUNDLE! TRUNDLE! TRUNDLE!

Then… DISASTER!

CLUNK! CLINK! CLANK!

The footrest on his wheelchair just clipped one of the jars on the floor. There must have been fifty jars stacked on top of it.

Ned reached out, but he was too late. The skyscraper of jars began toppling over.

TIPPLE! TOPPLE! TUPPLE!

The jar at the top was heading straight for Jemima!

As it fell through the air, it was as if time sped up and slowed down all at once.

SNATCH!

Ned caught the jar just as it was a milli-milli-millimetre from THUNKING his sister on the head. As much as he may have wanted to see his sister thunked on the head with a jar of Grumblenosh (whatever that was), sadly now was not the time.

It would spoil his surprise!

Because just at that moment an idea came to him.

D I N G !

An idea so simple it was brilliant. Simply brilliant and brilliantly simple. BRIMPLE.*

Ned would turn the tables on Jemima!

The girl had a bath every single morning (apart from Ned’s birthday, keep up). So Ned would do to her EXACTLY what his sister was going to do to him. She would suffer the Bath of Doom herself!

Ned silently collected up all the jars of gunk in the house, and brought them to the bathroom.

Once safely inside, Ned locked the door.

CLICK!

He didn’t want Jemima bursting in on him before her Bath of Doom was ready.

“Ha! Ha!” chuckled the boy to himself.

Outside it was still dark, but dawn was breaking and the birds were bursting into song.

“TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!”

One by one, he opened the jars of gunk, and poured them into the bath.

There was… BROWN gunk, yellow gunk, THICK gunk, black gunk, THIN gunk, bubbly gunk, purple gunk, fizzy gunk, hot gunk and cold gunk.

Every kind of gunk you could imagine.

Gallons and gallons of gunk.

Eventually the bath was full.

After what seemed like hours of fetching, carrying and unscrewing, the boy was exhausted. Catching his breath, Ned didn’t notice what was happening right behind him.

GURGLE!

Whatever was in that bath was

coming to life…!

* I know that doesn’t sound like many baths in one year. One. I, myself, like to wash at least twice a year. Unless I am already clean and there is no need. Sometimes I lick myself clean like a cat.

* Consult your Walliamsictionary for a detailed definition.

As all the different types of gunk swirled together, waves formed in the bath.

SWISH!

The waves swept up, up, up…

SWASH!

…and they swept down, down, down.

S W U S H !

Ned turned round. It was a horrifying sight. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

The bath was now a raging storm of gunk.

SWISH! SWASH! SWOOSH!

It splashed all over the bathroom, coating everything in gunk.

SPLISH! SPLASH! SPLOSH!

The sink, the toilet, even Ned – all were GUNKED!

Then, just as soon as the gunk had coated everything, it peeled itself off and whooshed back together.

WOOMPH!

Then the gunk began to take shape.

At first it became a giant egg. Like the kind of egg a dinosaur might have laid. The egg bounced up and down…

BOING! BOING! BOING!

…before smashing itself against the bathroom wall.

CRACK!

The outer layer cracked like a shell as the gunk inside oozed out.

The oozing gunk then began to grow upwards and upwards, becoming a mountain.

WHOOSH!

No, it was a volcano!

An erupting volcano!

It didn’t shoot lava up into the sky, but, rather, gunk!

KABOOM! SPLURT!

It spurted itself all over the bathroom ceiling before oozing back down to the floor to become an elephant.

“HOO!” it hooted.

Then it became a shark!

“CHOMP!”

No, a bird!

F L A P ! F L A P !

This gunk monster was swimming and flying all at once.

SWISH! FLAP! SWISH! FLAP!

The boy gazed open-mouthed in awe.

This was the greatest show on Earth!

And it was all for him!

Next the gunk monster exploded into thousands of pieces as it became fireworks.

“Oh no!” exclaimed the boy. “What on earth

have I done?”

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