Unreal Collection!

by Paul Jennings

  ‘Last night,’ he said slowly, ‘someone broke into the science room and stole our beetle.’ His eyes roved over the heads of all the kids. He stopped when he reached me. He stared into my eyes. But I just stared back. He couldn’t prove a thing. He was just an old bore.

  But his next words weren’t boring. Not at all. ‘The School Council,’ he said, ‘is offering a reward of two hundred dollars for information which leads to the arrest of the thief. Or two hundred dollars for another specimen. Nigel Osborn’s beetle was found in the National Park. Any beetle hunters should search there.’

  Old Kempy looked at Osborn. ‘You needn’t worry, Nigel,’ he said. ‘We have photos. The new species will still be named after you.’

  Rats. The little wimp was still going to be famous.

  I walked home slowly. An idea started to form in my head. What if I kept the beetle for a few weeks? Then I would pretend I found another one in the National Park. No one would know the difference. And I would be famous. They might even name it after me. Necrophorus Mud.

  I raced home and grabbed the jar. The ants were gone. Eaten alive.

  I tipped the beetle onto the table and picked it up. Its little legs waved helplessly at the ceiling. This was the beetle that was making Osborn famous. I didn’t like that beetle. I gave it a squeeze.

  And it bit me.

  4

  I yelled and dropped the beetle on the floor. I was mad. ‘You rotten little . . .’ I said. I lifted up a boot to squash the stupid thing. Then I remembered the two-hundred-dollar reward. I scooped the beetle up and put it back in the jar.

  I jumped into bed but couldn’t sleep. My finger throbbed where the beetle had bitten me. I had a nightmare. I dreamed that I was the pane of glass in the science room window. And that someone with a towel around their fist punched a hole right through me.

  I screamed and sat up in bed. It was morning.

  My hand throbbed like crazy. I held it up in front of my face. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

  A cold wave of fear grabbed my guts. My legs trembled. My heart missed a beat.

  I could see right into my finger. From the middle knuckle right down to the tip of my nail was clear. Transparent.

  The bones. The tendons. The nerves and blood vessels. I could see them all. It was as if the flesh of my fingertip had changed into clear plastic.

  I rubbed my eyes with my other hand. I shook my head. This was a nightmare. ‘Let it be a dream,’ I moaned. I rushed to the sink and splashed my face with cold water. Then I looked again.

  It was still there.

  I was a freak with a see-through finger. I felt faint. The room seemed to wobble around me.

  No one in the world had a see-through finger. Kids would laugh. Sneer. Joke about me. People are like that. Pick on anyone who is different.

  I couldn’t tell a soul. Not my old man. Not my old lady. And especially not Simmons. I couldn’t trust him an inch. He would turn on me for sure.

  Breakfast was hard to eat with gloves on but I managed it. Then I headed off for school. I stumbled along the road hardly knowing where I was going. I was so upset that I didn’t even feel like stirring Jug Ears Jensen. And I hardly noticed the sheila with the pimples. I didn’t even have the heart to give a bit of stick to the kid in the parka.

  It was just my luck to have Old Kempy for first period.

  ‘I know you’re into fashion, Mud,’ he said. ‘But you might as well face it. You can’t use a keyboard with gloves on. Take them off.’

  I can tell you my knees started to knock. I couldn’t let anyone see my creepy finger. ‘Chilblains,’ I said. ‘I have to wear gloves.’

  Old Kempy gave a snort and turned away. I stuck two gloved fingers up behind his back.

  5

  As soon as the bell rang I bolted into the toilets and shut myself in one of the cubicles. I peeled the glove off my left hand. Perfectly normal. The flesh was pink and firm. Then, with fumbling fingers I ripped off the other glove.

  I nearly fainted.

  My whole hand was as clear as glass. I could see the tendons pulling. The blood flowing. The bones moving at the joints. Horrible, horrible, horrible. The beetle disease was spreading.

  With shaking fingers I ripped at my shirt buttons. I couldn’t bear to look. Hideous. Revolting. Disgusting.

  I could see my breakfast slowly squirming inside my stomach. My lungs, like two pink bags, filled and emptied as I watched. I stared in horror at my diaphragm pumping up and down. Arteries twisted and coiled. Fluids flowed and sucked. My kidneys slowly swayed like two giant beans.

  My guts revealed their terrible secrets. I could see the lot. Bare bones. Flesh. And gushing blood.

  I strangled a cry. I felt sick. I rushed to the bowl and heaved. I saw my stomach bloat and shrink. The contents rushed up a transparent tube into my throat and out into the loo.

  This was a nightmare.

  How much of me was see-through? I inspected every inch of my body. Everything was normal down below. My legs were okay. And my left arm. So far only my stomach, chest and right arm were infected. Blood vessels ran everywhere like fine tree roots.

  I wanted to check my back but I couldn’t. Simmons and I had smashed the toilet mirrors a couple of weeks ago.

  The bell for the next class sounded. I was late but it didn’t matter. We had Hancock for English – a new teacher just out of college. He was scared of me. He wouldn’t say a thing when I walked in late.

  I covered up my lungs, liver, kidneys and bones and headed off for class. So far my secret was safe. Nothing was showing.

  All the kids were talking and mucking around. No one was listening to poor old Hancock. He couldn’t control the class. One or two kids looked up as I walked in.

  Silence spread through the room. Mouths dropped open. Eyeballs bulged. Everyone was staring at me. As if I was a freak.

  Jack Mugavin jumped to his feet and let out an enormous scream. Hancock fainted. The class erupted. Running. Rat-scared. Yelling. Scrambling. Scratching. They ripped at the folding doors at the back of the room. Falling over each other. Crushing. Crashing. Anything to get away from me.

  What is it? What had they seen? Everything was covered. I checked myself again: hands, feet, ankles, legs, hip, chest, face.

  Face?

  I rushed to the window and stared at my reflection. A grinning skull stared back. A terrible throbbing spectre. It was tracked with red and purple veins. My jellied nose was lined with wet bristles. A liquid tongue swallowed behind glassy cheeks. My eyeballs glared back at me. They floated inside two black hollows.

  That’s when I fainted.

  6

  When I awoke I remembered my dream. Thank goodness it was all over. I grinned with relief and held my hand in front of my face.

  I could see straight through it.

  I shouted in rage and flopped back on the bed. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. I ripped away the crisp white sheets. I was dressed in a hospital gown. I pulled it up and examined myself. I was transparent down to the tip of my toes. I was a horrible, see-through, sideshow freak.

  I rushed over to the window. A silent crowd had assembled outside. Two police cars were parked by the kerb. Television cameras were pointed my way. The mob stared up at the hospital, trying to catch a glimpse of the unspeakable ghoul inside. Me.

  They wanted to dissect me. Discuss me. Display me. I despised them all. Wackers. Wimps. The world was full of them.

  The mob would pay hundreds for a photo. Thousands for a story. Maybe millions for an interview. They made me sick.

  I knew their type.

  I pulled back the curtains and stretched my bare body for all to see. Inside and out. Blood and bone. Gut and gristle. I showed them the lot.

  A low moan swept through the crowd. People screamed. Cameras flashed and whirred. Clicking. Clacking. Staring. Shouting.

  They leered and laughed. Mocking monsters. Ordinary people.

  A doctor hurried into the room carrying a tray.
He grabbed me and tried to push me back into bed. But I was too strong for him. I shoved a veined hand into his face and pushed him off. I could feel my fingers inside his mouth. He choked and gurgled as he fell. He scrambled to his feet and fled.

  I pulled on my clothes and with shirt flapping swept down the corridor. Nurses, doctors and police grabbed at me weakly. But they had no stomach for it. Like children touching a dead animal they trembled as I passed.

  The crowd at the kerb fell back in horror. I raised my arms to the heavens and roared. They turned and ran, dropping cameras and shopping bags. Littering the road with their fear.

  I set off down the empty streets. Loping for home. Looking for a lair.

  It wasn’t far to go. I kicked the front door open and saw my old lady standing there. She tried to scream but nothing came out. She turned and ran for her life. She hadn’t even recognised her own son.

  I growled to myself. I pushed food into a knapsack. Meat. Bread. Clothes. Boots. A knife.

  And the beetle – still in its jar.

  I charged out into the backyard and scrambled over the fence.

  Then I headed for the mountains.

  7

  Up I went. Up, up, up into the forest. No one followed. Not at first.

  The sun baked the track to powder. The bush waited. Buzzing. Shimmering. Slumbering in the summer heat.

  I was heading for the furthest hills. The deepest bush. A place where no one could see my shame. I decided to live in the forest forever.

  No one was going to gawk at me. I hated people who were different. And now I was one of a kind.

  When my food ran out I would hunt. There was plenty to eat. Wallabies, possums, snakes. Even lyrebirds.

  After five or six hours of trudging through the forest I started to get a strange feeling. Almost as if I was being followed.

  Every now and then a stick would break. Once I thought I heard a sort of a howl.

  I crawled underneath a fern and waited.

  Soon the noises grew louder. I was being followed. I grabbed my knife and hunched down ready to spring.

  Scatter. Jump. Lollop. Dribble. Would you believe it was a dog? A rotten half-grown puppy scampered into view.

  ‘Buzz off,’ I yelled. ‘Scram. Beat it.’ The stupid dog jumped around my feet. I kicked out at it but missed. It thought I was playing.

  The last thing I wanted was a dog. Yapping and giving me away. I threw a stone at it and missed. The dog yelped off into the bush.

  But it didn’t give up. It just followed a long way back. In the end I gave up. I could teach it to hunt and kill. It might be useful.

  ‘Come here, Hopeless,’ I said.

  The stupid thing came and licked my arm. Its tongue flowed along my clear liquid skin. It didn’t seem to mind that I was transparent. Dogs don’t care if their owners are ugly. Inside or out.

  The night fell but I dared not light a fire. I huddled in a blanket inside a hollow tree. Hopeless tried to get in to warm himself but I kicked him out. The mutt probably had fleas.

  I found a couple of ants in the wood.

  Food.

  But not for me. I opened the jar and dropped the ants inside. Then I watched the beetle stuff its dinner into its mouth.

  I looked at the beetle with hatred. It had caused all this trouble. I was going to make it pay. ‘One day,’ I said. ‘One day, little beetle, I am going to eat you.’

  For three weeks I tramped through the forest. Deeper and deeper. There were no tracks. No signs of human life. Just me and Hopeless. We ate possums and rats and berries. At nights we shivered in caves and under logs.

  There were leeches, march flies. Cold. Heat. Dust. Mud. On and on I went. The ugly boy and the stupid dog.

  Sometimes I would hear a helicopter. Dogs barking. A faint whistle on the air. But in the end we left them far behind. We were safe. Deep in the deepest forest.

  I found a cave. Warm, dry and empty. It looked down onto a clear rushing river. There would be fish for sure.

  Hopeless liked the cave too. The stupid mutt ran around sniffing and wagging its tail.

  It was the first laugh I’d had for ages. Oh, how I laughed. I cackled till the tears ran down my face. To see that dog wag its tail. Its long clear tail. With the bones showing through the skin. And veins weaving their way in and out.

  Hopeless had the see-through disease. What a joke. It was catching.

  In the morning most of the dog was see-through. The only bit to stay normal was its head. It had a hairy dog’s head but the rest of it was bones, and lungs and kidneys and blood vessels. Just like me. I held up a bit of dead possum. ‘Beg,’ I said. ‘Beg.’

  It did too. It sat up and begged. But I didn’t give it the possum. There wasn’t enough to share around.

  8

  We stayed in that cave for ten years. The three of us. Me, Hopeless and the beetle. I was like Robinson Crusoe. I set up the cave with home-made furniture. In the end it was quite comfortable.

  Every day I fed that beetle. Two ants a day. I kept him alive for ten years – can you believe it? And every day I told the beetle the same thing. ‘When I am twenty-four,’ I told it, ‘I am going to eat you. To celebrate ten years in the bush.’

  Not once did I think of going back to civilisation. I wasn’t going to be a joke. Looked at. Inspected.

  And once they found out the disease was catching no one would come near me anyway. They would lock me up. Put me in quarantine. Examine me like a specimen. I could never go back.

  I was fourteen when I went into that forest.

  And I was twenty-four when I left it.

  See, it happened like this. On my twenty-fourth birthday I decided to have a little party. A special meal just for me. Something I had been looking forward to for many years.

  I grabbed the beetle jar and made a speech. ‘Beetle,’ I said. ‘I am an outcast. An ugly see-through monster. I have lived here with you and Hopeless for ten years. In all that time I have not seen a human face. I haven’t heard a spoken word. I want to go home but I can’t. Now I pass sentence on you. I sentence you to be eaten alive. Come to Daddy, beetle.’

  The beetle waved its legs. It almost seemed to know what was going to happen. I tipped it out of the jar and put it inside my mouth. I held up my mirror and watched it roaming about in there. I could see it through my clear, clear cheeks. It sniffed and snuffed. It searched around trying to find a way out. It had a look down the hole at the back but didn’t like what it saw. It backed out.

  Then it bit me on the tongue.

  I screamed and spat the beetle out onto the floor of the cave. I stamped on it with my boot and squashed it into pulp. Then I rinsed my mouth out with water from the creek. I spat and coughed.

  The pain was terrible. My tongue started to swell. I held the mirror up to my face. I stuck out my tongue to get a good look because I couldn’t see it properly through my cheeks.

  I couldn’t see it properly through my cheeks?

  I couldn’t see it at all through my cheeks.

  A pinkish blush was spreading over my face. Eyelids. Lips. A nose. My skin was returning to normal. I couldn’t see my spine. My skull was covered by normal hair and flesh. My chin sprouted a dark beard.

  I just sat there and watched as the normal colour slowly spread over my body. Skin, lovely skin. It moved down my neck. Over my chest. Down my legs.

  By the next day I was a regular human being. Not a kidney or lung to be seen. One bite of the beetle had made me see-through. And another had cured me.

  I could go home. I looked like everyone else again.

  Hopeless came and licked me on the face. I pushed him away with a scream.

  The dog was still clear. I could see a bit of bush rat passing through his stomach.

  He was still see-through. What if he reinfected me? Turned me back into a creepy horror? He had just licked my face. I might catch the disease back from Hopeless.

  I sat down and thought about it. There was no way I was going to go hom
e unless I was completely cured. I decided to stay for another month. Just to be on the safe side.

  Every night I slept with Hopeless. I breathed his breath. I even shared his fleas. But nothing happened. I stayed normal. And Hopeless stayed see-through.

  You couldn’t get the disease twice. It was like measles or mumps. You couldn’t catch it again.

  Maybe if the beetle bit you again you would get it. But the beetle was dead. There was no way I would ever be a freak again.

  I packed up my things and headed for home.

  9

  This was going to be great. I would be famous. The return of the see-through man. And his dog.

  I would be normal. But not Hopeless. He was still a walking bunch of bones and innards. I could put him on show. Charge hundreds of dollars for a look. People would come from everywhere to see the dog with the see-through stomach. I would be a millionaire in no time. Hopeless was a valuable dog.

  It was a tough trip back through the deep undergrowth and rugged mountains.

  But finally the day came.

  Hopeless and I stood on the edge of a clearing and stared at a building.

  It was a little rural school – the type with one teacher and about fifteen kids. It was a perfect place for me to reappear. They would have a phone. They could ring the papers. And the TV.

  The man from the mountains could go home in style.

  Still, I was worried. I mustn’t frighten them. Hopeless was a scary sight. The teacher and kids would never have seen a dog with its guts showing before. I decided to tie Hopeless up. I didn’t want anything to happen to him.

  But I was too late. Hopeless bounded off across the grass towards the school.

  ‘Come back, you dumb dog,’ I yelled. ‘Come back or I’ll put the boot into you.’

  Hopeless didn’t take a bit of notice. He charged across the grass and into the school building.

  I waited for the screams of horror. Waited for the students to flee out of the building and run down the road. Waited for the yelling and the fainting.