Unbearable!

by Paul Jennings

  I took a silver pen from my pocket. ‘Follow the tip of this pen with your eyes,’ I said.

  Splinter did as he was told. He had a big grin on his face. His eyes went from left to right like someone watching a tennis match. Suddenly the grin disappeared. Splinter’s eyes went glassy. He stared to the front. Splinter was as solid as a statue.

  Was he fooling? I didn’t really know. I couldn’t be sure. He was the sort of kid who was always playing jokes. ‘You are a chook,’ I said.

  Splinter jumped to his feet and started crowing like a rooster. He was very good. He sounded just like the real thing; not like someone trying to copy a rooster. The kids around all gasped. They were impressed.

  But I wasn’t sure about it. I had a feeling that Splinter was tricking me. I had to find out. ‘Splinter,’ I said. ‘When I count to three you will be your old self. You will not be a chook any more. But whenever you hear the word “no” you will be a chicken again for thirty seconds.’

  Splinter was just opening his mouth to start crowing again. I had to be quick. ‘One, two, three,’ I said. Splinter shook his head and blinked. He was back to normal.

  4

  The school bell rang and everyone made for the doors.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Splinter. He really didn’t seem to remember. I smiled to myself. I was a hypnotist. From now on nobody could give me any cheek. I would make them think they were worms. Or maggots. Life was looking good.

  But not for long.

  We went into the first class. Maths. With Mr Spiggot. He sure was a mean teacher. If you hadn’t done your homework you had to stand up and be yelled at. Or do a Saturday morning detention. Three girls were expelled because of him. Just for giving cheek.

  Mr Spiggot looked at me. ‘Have you done your homework, Robertson?’ he growled.

  I looked at my shoes. I was in big trouble. ‘No,’ I answered.

  ‘No?’ he yelled.

  At that very moment Splinter jumped to his feet as if someone had just switched him on. He walked around the class pecking at the floor like a chicken. ‘Puck, puck puck,’ he said. The class gasped. Some kids tried to smother a laugh. Splinter was in big trouble. You couldn’t fool around in front of Mr Spiggot and get away with it.

  Mr Spiggot started to go red in the face. I tried to figure out what was going on. And then I realised. Mr Spiggot and I had said ‘no’. We put Splinter into a trance. Just like I’d told him. Splinter really did think he was a chook.

  I can tell you one thing. It was the longest thirty seconds of my life. And there was nothing I could do except watch poor Splinter scratch around on the floor in front of the whole class.

  Suddenly Splinter stopped. The thirty seconds was up. He looked around with a silly expression. Everyone was laughing. Except Mr Spiggot. He looked straight at me. He knew Splinter was my mate.

  ‘Right,’ he said in a very quiet voice. ‘You two think you can get out of your homework by acting the fool.’ He walked over to his desk and picked up two sheets of paper. He gave us one each.

  I groaned. It was Maths homework. Twenty hard problems.

  Splinter didn’t know what was going on. ‘Why?’ he asked, ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘No?’ said Mr Spiggot. ‘What …’

  He didn’t finish the sentence. As soon as Mr Spiggot said the word ‘no’, Splinter went back to thinking he was a chicken. He hopped up onto the front desk and squatted down. He put his elbows out like wings and flapped them. Then he sort of bounced up and down. He thought he was a chook laying an egg. ‘Puck, puck, puck, puck,’ he went.

  Everyone packed up. The whole class was in fits. Mr Spiggot picked up two more sheets of sums. He held one out under Splinter’s nose. Splinter pecked at his hand with his teeth. Just like a broody hen. Peck, peck, peck. ‘Ouch,’ shouted Mr Spiggot. He shook his hand and jumped up and down.

  Splinter was still trying to lay an egg. Suddenly he stopped. The thirty seconds was up. He blinked. He stood up on the desk. Mr Spiggot was so furious that he couldn’t speak. He staggered back to the desk and grabbed a handful of problem sheets. He gave us another one each.

  ‘You two boys can leave my class,’ he choked. ‘And if those sums are not all finished, CORRECTLY, by tomorrow morning you will both be expelled from the school.’

  5

  It was no good trying to explain. He wouldn’t believe me. And he might say ‘no’ again at any minute. We walked sadly out of the room and into the yard. We made for the portable classroom. Rastus was still there – in a trance. I put him under my arm and we started walking home. It was raining and water dripped down our backs.

  ‘Listen,’ I said to Splinter. ‘I have to put you into a trance. To stop you going into your chicken act every time I say “no”.’

  I tried to stop myself saying the last word. ‘No.’ Too late. Splinter started to scratch around on the footpath. Clucking and pecking. A couple of snails were making their way across the footpath.

  Splinter was hungry.

  He took a snail between his teeth and hit it on the ground. Then he swallowed it in one gulp. He did the same to another and another. ‘Oh, no,’ I yelled. Splinter was eating live snails. He looked around for more.

  I had to do something. Quick. Before the thirty seconds were up. ‘When I count to three,’ I yelled. ‘You will be your old self again. You will not be a chook when anyone says “no”.’ Then I added something else, just to be on the safe side. ‘You will not remember anything about being a chook.’ I took a deep breath. ‘One, two, three.’

  It worked straight away. Better than I thought. Splinter blinked. And winked. He rubbed his eyes. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  I didn’t get a chance to answer him. Rastus flapped out of my arms and squawked crossly. He was his old self again. ‘Rastus came out of his trance when I counted to three,’ I shouted. ‘It was the numbers. He understands numbers.’

  Rastus looked up at me as if to agree. Then he pecked the ground three times.

  Poor old Splinter wasn’t interested in the chook. He waved the sheets of sums in my face. ‘We have to do all of these by tomorrow,’ he groaned. ‘Or we’re dead meat. My parents will murder me if I’m expelled from school.’

  ‘Come round to my place after tea,’ I said. ‘We’ll stay up all night and work on them.’

  Splinter walked home. He dragged his feet as he went. I knew how he was feeling. And it was all my fault.

  6

  Mum and Dad were going out that night and I had to mind the baby. ‘Mum,’ I said. ‘Splinter and I have to do homework. I can’t mind the baby.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Mum. ‘She’ll be asleep. You just want to play records. Homework? That’ll be the day.’ She went off laughing loudly to herself. I couldn’t tell her about the sums. Or being expelled if we didn’t finish them. It would be like throwing wood on a bushfire.

  The baby was asleep in her bassinet. She was only eighteen months old. But boy was she fat. She’d only just started to walk. She spent all day eating.

  ‘Here’s Splinter,’ said Mum. She showed him into the lounge room. ‘Make sure you don’t make too much noise.’ She kissed me goodbye even though Splinter was there. Talk about embarrassing.

  The baby snored away making sucking noises. We sat down at the table and tried to work out the answer to the first sum. It was something about water running into a bath at two litres a minute and out of the plug at half a litre a minute. You had to work out how long it would take to fill the bath.

  ‘Strike,’ said Splinter. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘Search me,’ I said. I looked at all the other sums. There were fifty altogether. Real hard ones.

  ‘We’ll never do it,’ said Splinter.

  My heart sank. I knew he was right. Tomorrow we would be expelled from school. We tried and tried for about an hour. But it was no good. We couldn’t even work out one answer.

  7

  Splinter suddenly threw the papers on the floor. ‘I’
m sick of this,’ he said. ‘We might as well do something else.’

  This is when Splinter had his brainwave. ‘I was watching this show once,’ he said. ‘About a hypnotist. He could take people back in time. To earlier lives.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  He stared at me. ‘Well, this bloke reckoned that everyone has lived before. Only you can’t remember it. When you die, you get born again as someone else. If you were really good you might end up being born as a king or something. If you were bad in a past life you might come back as a rat.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said.

  Splinter was always wanting an adventure. ‘Let’s give it a try,’ he said. ‘You hypnotise me and see if I can tell you about an earlier life.’

  I didn’t want to do it. We were in enough trouble already. But in the end Splinter talked me into it.

  ‘You are feeling sleepy,’ I told him. Straight away Splinter started to nod off. I was getting better and better at this hypnotism lurk. ‘You are going back,’ I went on. ‘Back to your earlier life. You are going back twenty years. It is the fifth of April at eight o’clock. Who are you?’

  There was a long silence. Splinter had his eyes closed. He didn’t say anything. He just sat there. It wasn’t working.

  Then something creepy happened. It made the hairs stand up on the top of my head. Splinter opened his mouth and spoke in a slow, deep voice. It wasn’t his voice. It was the speech of a man. ‘I am John Rivett,’ he said.

  It was amazing. I had taken him back in time. To an earlier life. I asked him what he did for a job.

  ‘Fireman,’ he said loudly.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’ He was answering my questions very seriously. I wanted to know more. This is when I made my big mistake. ‘What are you doing now?’ I asked. ‘At this very minute?’

  ‘Fire,’ Splinter shouted. ‘No time to talk. Must put out the fire.’ He sat bolt upright. His eyes were wild and staring. He ran over to the sink and filled up a jug of water. Then he threw it at the wall. It ran down Mum’s best wallpaper and onto the floor.

  ‘Stop,’ I yelled. But it was no good. Splinter was back in an earlier life. He thought the house was on fire. I grabbed him by the arm but he was too strong. He had the power of a grown man. He brushed me aside as if I was a baby and ran outside.

  To get the hosepipe.

  ‘When I count to three …’ I shouted. But it was useless. He wasn’t listening. He dragged the hose into the lounge and started squirting the walls. And the sofa. And the carpet. The room was soon swirling with water. I tried to grab him but he was just too strong for me.

  He kept shouting something about getting the baby out before the flames reached her. I grabbed the baby and ran into the back yard. Splinter had gone wild. He was wetting everything. He really thought the house was on fire. I had to stop him. But how? There was no one to help.

  Or was there?

  8

  I stared down at the baby. It was sucking its knuckles and dribbling as usual. ‘Baby,’ I said. ‘You are feeling sleepy. You are going back to another life. It is ten years ago on the third of November. Who are you? What is your name?’

  The baby did nothing for a minute or so. Then it sat straight up in its bassinet. It boomed at me with this enormous deep voice. ‘Lightning Larry,’ said the baby. ‘World Heavyweight Boxing Champion.’

  ‘Please help me,’ I said to the baby. ‘Stop that maniac Splinter from flooding out the house.’

  The baby jumped out of the bassinet and headed for the door. Splinter looked in amazement at the baby striding across the lawn. He didn’t want an infant to get into a house that he thought was burning down. He slammed the door. The baby let fly with an enormous kick and knocked the door off its hinges.

  I groaned. The house was being wrecked. The baby strode across the room to Splinter. Her nappy waggled as she walked. She drew back her arm, gave an enormous leap, and punched Splinter fair on the jaw. He dropped like a felled tree. Out to it.

  The baby picked Splinter up and held him above her head. She carried him out to me and dumped him on the grass. ‘How’s that?’ she boomed.

  It was scary listening to that enormous voice coming out of such a tiny mouth. The baby gave a wicked grin and held her hands up like a boxer in a ring. ‘Still the champ,’ she shouted.

  Splinter was starting to come round. He sat up and rubbed his jaw. ‘When I count to three,’ I said to both of them. ‘You will forget everything that happened.’

  And they did. The baby went back to being a baby and started to bawl. Splinter looked at the fractured door. ‘Gee,’ he said. ‘You’re in big trouble.’

  And I was. Mum and Dad were furious when they got home. They wouldn’t stop going on about it. You know the sort of thing. On and on and on. They wouldn’t believe that the baby kicked the door down. Wouldn’t even let me start to explain about hypnosis. ‘These lies just make it worse, lad,’ said Dad.

  Splinter was sent home in disgrace. I was sent to bed.

  9

  In the morning I woke up and hoped that it had all been a nightmare. But it hadn’t. The sheets of unanswered sums were still on the floor.

  When I got to school Splinter and I would be expelled. Dad and Mum would blow their tops. Life wasn’t worth living.

  I walked out of the door towards my doom. ‘Make sure you behave yourself at school,’ said Mum. I didn’t answer.

  I went out to check on Rastus. I stayed with him for so long that I made myself late for school.

  Maths was the first class as usual. Mr Spiggot was just getting started. I rushed in right at the last minute.

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Spiggot in a low voice. ‘Stand up, you two. Have you done your homework? Finished those sums?’

  ‘No,’ whispered Splinter.

  ‘Yes we have,’ I said. ‘We worked on them together.’

  ‘Okay, let’s see,’ said Mr Spiggot. He read out the first sum. The problem about the bath water. Then he looked at me for the answer.

  ‘Three minutes,’ I said. Mr Spiggot raised an eyebrow. I was right.

  Mr Spiggot read out the next sum. It was about how many kilometres a car could travel in two days at a certain speed. ‘Five hundred and two,’ I said.

  ‘Correct,’ said Mr Spiggot. He read out all the sums. And I answered every one correctly. We were saved. You should have seen the look on Splinter’s face.

  Well, that’s about all. We didn’t get expelled but I was grounded for a month by Mum for all the water damage.

  Looking back on it now, I would have to say that using hypnotism is not a good idea. I’m never doing it again. Never. It caused too much trouble.

  If you asked me what was the worst bit, I would say it was when Splinter ate the snails. That was terrible.

  And the best bit? Well, that was probably when I stopped to check on Rastus on the way to school that day. It was a great idea to send him back to an earlier life. It turned out that the silly chook had been a Maths teacher in a previous existence. I just read him the problems and he pecked out the answers. As easy as anything.

  But I’ll tell you what. Mr Spiggot’s a Maths teacher. He’d better watch out. I reckon he’ll probably be coming back as a flea next time around.

  Nails

  Lehman’s father sat still on his cane chair. Too still.

  A hot breeze ruffled his hair. He stared out of the window at the island. But he did not see. He did not move. He did not know that Lehman was alone.

  But the boy knew. He realised he was trapped. Their boat had sunk in the storm. And their radio had gone with it. There was not another soul for a thousand miles. Lehman was rich. The house was his now. The whole island belonged to him. The golden beach. The high hill. The palms. And the little pier where their boat had once bobbed and rocked.

  He had no more tears. He had cried them all. Every one. He wanted to rush over and hug his father back to life. He wanted to see that twisted g
rin again. ‘Dad, Dad,’ he called.

  But the dead man had no reply for his son.

  Lehman knew that he had to do something. He had to close his father’s eyes. That was the first thing. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. What if they wouldn’t move? What if they were brittle? Or cold? Or soggy?

  And then what? He couldn’t leave his father there. Sitting, stiff and silent in the terrible heat. He had to bury him. Where? How? He knew that no one would come. The blue sea was endless. Unbroken. Unfriendly to a boy on his own.

  Lehman started to scratch nervously. His nails were growing. More of them all the time.

  He decided to do nothing for a bit longer. He sat and sat and sat. And remembered how it was when they had come to the island. Just the two of them.

  2

  ‘Is that where we live?’ said Lehman.

  They both looked at the tumbledown hut on top of the hill. ‘We’ll fix it up in no time,’ said Dad. ‘It’ll soon be like it was in the old days. When I first came here. As good as new.’

  And after a while it was. It was home. Lehman became used to it. Even though he was lonely. Every morning he did his school work. Dad told him which books to read. And how to do his sums. Then he left Lehman alone with his studies. And disappeared along the beach.

  Dad searched the shore. But he never let Lehman go with him. He took his camera and his knapsack. And his shovel. He peered out into the endless sea. He dug in the golden sand. And every lunch time he returned with rocks and strange objects from the sea.

  ‘One day I’ll hit the jackpot,’ he said for the thousandth time. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll find one. Tomorrow will be the day. You’ll see.’ Then he grew sad. ‘There were plenty here once.’ He dumped his sack in the corner. It thumped heavily on the floor.

  ‘Let’s see what you’ve got,’ said Lehman.