Paul Jennings' Trickiest Stories

by Paul Jennings

  It wasn’t my fault. I had been out to dinner. I went to a Chinese restaurant. I had a big meal. I took three hours to eat it. There was no time for homework.

  I decided to use the feather on Mr Kerr. I started at once. I wrote his name after breakfast, lunch and dinner. I just used snacks to keep my own strength up.

  Mr Kerr was not as easy as Mead. He stopped eating when he found he was getting fat. This made it difficult for me. I had to eat more and more.

  I ate at every chance I got. I ate in bed, I ate on the way to school, I ate at school and I ate on the way home.

  I had huge meals. My parents didn’t care any more. I wasn’t fat so they let me eat what I liked. My plate was always heaped up. After each meal I wrote Mr Kerr’s name with the feather.

  At last the spell began to work. Mr Kerr started to get plump. It was getting to him. He was worried. His face became red and he walked around shaking his head. He didn’t know why he was getting fat.

  Mr Kerr had a little sports car, a red MG. Every day he drove to school in this car. He loved it. He was always looking at it and polishing it.

  The girls thought his car was terrific. They thought Mr Kerr was terrific too, just because he was good looking. But I fixed all that. I fixed it for good.

  I used the feather all day every day. Mr Kerr became so fat that he couldn’t fit into his car. It was too small for such a fat man. He sold the MG and bought a bike. It was funny to see him riding to school on a bicycle. A great fat man on a tiny bicycle. He could hardly stay on it. He thought the exercise would help him to lose weight. Fat chance!

  4

  A year went by. My body was in good shape. I had a good figure. I had large muscles and a thin waist. I was very healthy, and good looking.

  I was fifteen years old. I started to notice girls. One girl in particular. Her name was Sue. She was very pretty.

  I decided to ask her out. I asked her to go out to dinner with me. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you are too vain. You’re always talking about your body. Looks aren’t everything. You should care about whether a person is nice. Not whether they are good looking.’

  What a nerve turning me down like that! I went red in the face. It was embarrassing. I decided to teach her a lesson. I decided to use the spell on Sue.

  ‘Looks aren’t everything,’ she had said. We would see about that.

  It was the school holidays. I went home and ate. I ate all day, and most of the night. Then I used the feather. I did this all day for two weeks. I just ate and wrote her name with the feather. I was mad with her, really angry.

  When I got back to school I saw that Sue was no different. She still had a good figure. I found out she was doing exercises. She ran to school. She jogged in the mornings. She did push-ups, and sit-ups. She went to classes where they do exercises to music. It’s called aerobics. She was fighting the weight, fighting me.

  I wasn’t going to let her win. I ate more and more. I ate until midnight every night. I used the feather all the time.

  In the end Sue started to grow chubby. She couldn’t exercise while she was at school. But I kept eating. And writing her name with the feather. She grew as fat as Mr Kerr and Mead. She was my biggest victory.

  The funny thing was that everyone still liked her. She was still popular, even though she was fat. I couldn’t understand it.

  The truth is I still liked Sue myself. She was always smiling. I was crazy, but I decided to give her another chance. I decided that I would tell her how to lose weight. Then she would be grateful. She would want to go out with me.

  I went up to her in the school canteen. ‘Sue,’ I said. ‘I can help you to lose weight.’

  She looked interested. ‘How?’ she asked.

  Then I made a big mistake. I told her all about the feather. She listened until I had finished. Then she said, ‘That’s silly. I don’t believe it. And even if it were true it would be mean. It would be the meanest thing in the world. And you would be the meanest person in the world.’

  ‘But I can help you’, I told her. ‘If I stop using the feather you can be thin again.’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she said. ‘It’s a bad joke. Go away and leave me alone.’ She turned around and walked off. She had her nose in the air. What a snob!

  I decided never to tell anyone else about the feather. No one would like me. I would be unpopular.

  Later that day I saw Sue talking to Mr Kerr. I could tell that they were talking about me. She was tapping her head with a finger, like you do when someone is mad, or stupid. She thought I was crazy. I started to feel scared. I didn’t want to get caught using the feather. I had made three people fat. They could make a lot of trouble for me.

  At lunch time I noticed Mr Kerr watching me. He was watching me eat my lunch. I knew what he was thinking. He was wondering how I could eat eight pies for lunch and still stay thin. I didn’t use the feather. I didn’t want to get caught.

  I was feeling a bit low. Depressed. To cheer myself up I went out for dinner. I went to the Chinese restaurant again. Chinese food was my favourite. I sat down and ordered my meal. This is what I had: Chinese soup, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, prawns in batter, fish with bamboo shoots, and pork with vegetables. For dessert I had two plates of ice-cream and ten banana fritters.

  I looked up and saw Mr Kerr sitting in the corner, watching me.

  All he had for dinner was a plate of soup.

  I decided that I would have to be careful. I kept the feather hidden. I only wrote with it where no one could see me. In my bedroom with the door closed. Or in the lavatory of a cafe.

  For the next three years I kept my secret. I kept Mr Kerr and Sue fat. I wrote Mr Kerr’s name on Monday, Sue’s on Tuesday. This left me five more days for other people.

  I used the feather every day for three years. I used it on all sorts of people. I even used it on a dog. The old lady over the road had a dog. It was a real pest, always barking and yapping. It was a Corgi, named Charlie.

  I used the feather on the Corgi for two weeks. It got so fat that it couldn’t walk. It just sat there panting on the door-step. Then it died. The vet said that the Corgi died from a strained heart. He said its heart just couldn’t keep such a fat body alive. The old lady bought another dog. It didn’t yap so I let it live.

  I will only tell you about one or two more of my victims. There were too many for me to remember them all.

  One was Mr Peppi. He owned an ice-cream shop. I asked him for a Saturday job. I thought I could get some extra food without paying for it.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You have bad manners. You would scare away the customers. And you eat too much. Everybody knows how much you eat. I would go broke.’

  He did go broke. I sent him broke. I made him into the fattest ice-cream man in the country. His wife said he was eating the ice-cream. She thought that was why he was fat. They had a big fight. Then she left him and went to live somewhere else.

  Mr Peppi was heartbroken. He didn’t open the shop. He just sat there looking out of the window.

  The feather was good to me. It was useful. I could punish anyone who was bad to me, any enemy at all.

  I even used the feather to help the country. I liked cricket. I often went to watch Test matches. I wanted our country to win the Test series. So I made the opposition’s captain fat. It took two months to do it. But at last he was so fat that he couldn’t bat or bowl. He was their best player, but was dropped from the team. So we won the series, thanks to me.

  5

  For four years I ate and then wrote a name with the feather. But yesterday things started to go wrong. It was my eighteenth birthday.

  My parents gave me a big party. Lots of food and drink. I ate as much as usual. Then I went upstairs. I wanted to write a name with the feather. I was feeling bloated.

  Just for fun I wrote the name of the Prime Minister. Nothing happened. I still felt full. A bit ill actually. I wrote another name – still nothing.

  I didn’t worry too much. I l
et out my belt two notches. Then I went back to the party. It was no good, I felt sick. I went back upstairs to my room.

  I went over to the mirror and looked at myself. I was getting a pot belly. My stomach was sticking out, hanging over my belt. My legs looked fatter and so did my arms. Even my face looked chubby.

  I started to get nervous. Maybe the spell didn’t work any more. I would have to go on a diet. A big diet. It would be hard. For four years I had been eating enough to feed an elephant. It would be hard to stop.

  I went to the hiding place and took out the Book of Spells. I decided to read it carefully. Maybe I had done something wrong.

  There were a lot of spells. Hundreds. I read them all. Some I had not read before. At last I came to the back page. Something was written in small letters. It was difficult to read, but I kept going.

  What I read made me frightened. Terrified. The last page told how long each spell lasted. The fat-people spell lasted four years. Then after four years the person who used the feather would get ALL the fat back from ALL the people. Four years of fat. I was going to get it all back!

  I crawled over to the mat. I started to do push-ups. Then I ran up and down the stairs. Tried to run up and down the stairs, that is. I could hardly move. I was in a panic. I didn’t want to get fat again. Not after all I had been through.

  It was no use. I was getting fatter all the time. I was swelling up like a balloon. My hands looked like rubber gloves that had been blown up. My belt burst. All the buttons popped off my shirt. My jeans split down the seams.

  I felt very tired and ill. I lay down on the bed. I was getting bigger by the minute. My legs were expanding. My skin was tight. I felt as if I was going to burst. I could see myself getting larger as I looked.

  My shoes burst open. So did my socks. My toes sprang out like fat bananas. I was twice as big as before. Double the size. I kept growing bigger and bigger. Nothing could stop it.

  All my clothes split off. I was like a naked, fat pig. The legs on the bed broke. The bed fell to the floor with a bang. I thought I would stop growing soon but I didn’t.

  I grew as big as a cow. Then an elephant. I couldn’t move. I just lay on my back on the floor. ‘Help, help!’ I screamed.

  My parents ran up the stairs. They couldn’t get in the door. I took up the whole room.

  My head was like a pea on a pumpkin. It was squashed up against the roof. My left leg crashed out of one of the windows. It filled up the whole window frame. I could see a face in the other window. It was yours, doctor. You can’t get in, but at least you have been able to get a tape recorder and record my story.

  It is hard to breathe. There isn’t much air left. The whole room is taken up by my bloated body.

  I am the fattest man in the country. In the world. In the universe!

  Well that is my story. That is how I got like this. I can hear men taking the roof off. Other men have gone to get a crane to lift me out.

  It’s no use, is it doctor?

  I know it’s no use. I can’t last long. My heart won’t stand the strain. I’m going to die. Soon.

  I hope everything I have said is on the tape recorder. It’s important that you get my story. I want the whole world to know what happened. At least I will be famous.

  My chest hurts. I have a bad pain. I’m going. I’m dying. These will be my last words:

  ‘BURP – BURRRP!’

  A Watery Grave

  ‘It’s just sitting there,’ I shout. ‘All alone. The only one.’ A little tear rolls down my nose.

  Dad and Gramps feel sorry for me. I can tell.

  ‘What did you say it’s called?’ says Dad.

  ‘An axolotl,’ I say. ‘It’s a fish but it looks like a lizard. And it’s got legs.’

  ‘Just sitting there?’ says Gramps.

  ‘Yes. On the bottom of the tank. Not moving. Just looking. It’s got no friends. It’s got no family. All alone in a big tank of water. Just staring.’

  ‘Staring?’ says Dad.

  ‘Yes. That’s the saddest bit,’ I say. ‘It’s staring at its own reflection. It thinks there’s another one. But there’s not. It’s lonely.’ Another tear squeezes out of my eye. I feel so sorry for that axolotl.

  Dad stands up without a word and goes out of the room. He comes back holding an old exercise book. He puts it in my hand.

  ‘What’s this?’ I say.

  ‘My diary. From when I was a kid.’ He opens it up and points to some scribbled writing. ‘Read this,’ he says.

  I open the diary and start to read.

  1

  I couldn’t believe what Dad had done. Dead fish in our fish shop are fair enough. But not live ones.

  ‘It’s murder,’ said my mate Pepper.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Murder.’

  We both stared at the poor old crayfish slowly walking on the bottom of the tank.

  ‘The customers will just point at it and say, “I want that one.” Then Dad will fish it out and cook it.’

  ‘I read about it in a book,’ said Pepper. ‘The cook drops them in boiling water. They scream, you know. They scream when the cook drops them in.’

  We both stood there staring through the window of Dad’s fish and chip shop. The crayfish slowly crawled along the bottom of the fish tank. It didn’t know what was going to happen to it.

  But we did.

  ‘I can’t believe that Dad would do this,’ I said. ‘I just can’t believe it. Not murder.’ It was the saddest thing ever.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ said Pepper.

  I thought for a bit. Then I grinned and stared into the tank. I spoke to the crayfish. Even though it couldn’t hear me. ‘Crayfish,’ I said. ‘You are going on a trip. You are going home.’

  2

  ‘The sea,’ yelled Pepper. ‘We can’t take it to the sea. That’s a hundred kilometres away.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘How are we going to get there?’

  ‘I’ve got a plan,’ I told him. ‘The crayfish has to go back to the sea. That’s where all the others are. It has to go back to its family and friends.’

  Pepper thought for a second or two. Then he whacked me on the back. ‘We’ll do it,’ he shouted. ‘Put it there, mate.’ We shook hands and laughed like crazy.

  That night at two o’clock we crept into the shop with a bucket of water. Everything was quiet. Dad and Mum were upstairs – asleep.

  The shop was gloomy in the middle of the night. The dead fish in the window stared at us with unmoving eyes.

  I shivered and it wasn’t cold. All those dead fish eyes seemed to be staring, staring, staring. What if there were human eyes? Cold, mean, murderous. Waiting to pounce.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ I said in a trembling voice. ‘Let’s do it tomorrow.’

  Pepper looked at me. ‘If we don’t do it now,’ he whispered, ‘we never will.’

  ‘Something’s moving,’ I said. ‘I’m sure something moved.’

  ‘There’s only one thing moving around here,’ said Pepper. ‘And that’s it.’

  The crayfish slowly crawled around in its tank. Poor old thing.

  ‘Okay Pepper,’ I said. ‘Grab it.’

  ‘You grab it,’ he said. ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘What if it bites me?’

  ‘Crayfish don’t have claws,’ said Pepper. ‘So how can they bite?’

  In the end I put on some rubber gloves and lifted the crayfish out of the tank. I put it into a bucket of water and stared down.

  ‘It’s walking a bit slower,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Pepper. ‘We have to hurry.’

  I grabbed the bucket and carried it towards the door. Boy was it heavy. Water sure does weigh a lot.

  Pepper undid the lock. What a din. It opened with a loud ‘clack’.

  I looked upstairs to where Dad and Mum were sleeping. Not a sound. We crept out into the dark street.

  Boy it’s creepy in a country town at night.

  Trees rustled in the b
reeze. Every shadow looked as if it was owned by a murderer waiting to jump out and grab two small boys. I walked in the middle of the street just to make sure that no one could leap out and get me.

  ‘Are you scared?’ whispered Pepper.

  ‘Nah,’ I said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  What a pair of liars. We were terrified.

  We walked more and more slowly. The shadows grew blacker and blacker as we approached Jeremiah’s corner. I could see it up ahead. A black alley. The very place where old Jeremiah had died shouting curses at the moon.

  He had sworn to come back and haunt the town.

  We both stopped and stood still. Silence. Terrible, horrible silence.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Pepper.

  I stared at the alley. So scared I couldn’t move my throat.

  Pepper started to walk forward. I could tell that he was thinking about the ghost of Old Jeremiah too.

  ‘Arhooo.’ A long wail pierced the night.

  We ran. Oh, how we ran. Hanging on to that bucket. Fleeing, running for our lives.

  And after us came the horrible sound of…

  ‘Old Jeremiah’s… dog,’ said Pepper. ‘It was only his dog.’

  We both laughed. Little nervous laughs.

  I looked around. We were out in the dark countryside. ‘I’m never going near that alley again,’ I said. ‘Never’.

  With shaking knees we set off on our journey. How I wished I was home in my nice warm bed.

  We walked in the middle of the road. Trees hung over us like rows of ghostly giants with outstretched hands.

  I put the bucket down. ‘Your turn,’ I said.

  ‘Already?’ said Pepper. ‘That wasn’t a hundred steps.’

  ‘It was so,’ I said.

  Pepper sighed and picked up the bucket. ‘One,’ I said as he stepped forward with the bucket. We counted every step out as we walked forward. It made us feel a bit braver. Two voices in the night. Counting out our way to the sea.

  After eighty-three steps Pepper plonked the bucket down and flopped down onto the road, puffing. ‘I can’t do any more,’ he said. ‘My arm’s got pins and needles.’