Krazy Kow Saves the World - Well, Almost

by Jeremy Strong

  This last bit of the action had been watched in almost silent horror by everyone except Kooky Savage, who was still struggling to rescue herself from the mud and a million ping-pong balls. Every time she attempted to raise herself a leg or an arm would suddenly slip from beneath her and she’d be flat on her front, or back, or side, or bottom.

  And then Dwight Trellis started laughing. He stood there like a happy giant, chuckling at everything around him. He was in stitches. He bent double, and his laughter rang out across the training ground.

  Kooky Savage at last managed to get to her feet. She was plastered with mud, and she promptly made matters worse by trying to brush the worst away

  ‘WHERE IS THE HEAD TEACHER?’ she screeched. ‘My lawyer is going to hear about this! Fetch me the head teacher at once!’

  Kooky began to stride back to the school. Cat and I hurried after her, with Cat trailing behind, trying to free herself from the remains of the KK’s back half.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be like that,’I tried to say.

  ‘I have never been so insulted!’

  ‘Things got a bit out of hand,’ I mumbled.

  ‘A BIT OUT OF HAND! THEY WERE OFF THIS PLANET!’ screamed the actress. ‘And as for you,’ she squawked, turning on Cat. ‘You fired that thing at me deliberately!’

  ‘My hair got in my eyes,’ said Cat, with a completely straight face. (Her hair doesn’t even reach her eyebrows, let alone her eyes.)

  By this time we had reached the school buildings and Kooky made straight for Mrs Drew’s office, her high heels making a machine-gun racket on the wooden floor. Cat and I trailed miserably behind.

  Kooky didn’t bother to knock. She burst through the door, still shouting, and instantly fell silent. Sitting behind her desk, tied to her chair, was Mrs Drew. Strapped to Mrs Drew’s head was a packet with red writing on it in big felt tip pen. It said:

  BoM!

  Sitting on the floor next to Mrs Drew was the school secretary, also tied up. And lounging on a chair watching them, with his feet up on the desk, a big grin on his face and chewing a pencil like a cigar, was Kingston.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked cheerfully.

  13½ Time to Tidy Up Loose Ends

  There was an awful lot of shouting (from Kooky Savage) and even more rushing about (from Cat and me as we untied Mrs Drew and the secretary) and some more shouting (from Kooky again) and then Mrs Drew asked for an explanation.

  So I told her everything. Her face began to take on that expression that warns you that things are about to turn into a ton of bricks and fall on you, but halfway through all this Dwight Trellis, the front half of a pantomime cow and a bedraggled crowd of bloodstained onlookers arrived from the filming.

  ‘It was fantastic, Mrs Drew,’ enthused the United winger. ‘The best thing I have seen for ages. I know it all went wrong but at least they tried, and I want to tell you something. When I was at school we were never allowed to even think about doing something as ambitious as this filming idea of yours. I reckon you’re running a top team here, with top kids, judging by what I’ve seen today. You should all be proud of yourselves.’

  Beside him, Kooky was desperately trying to draw breath. She was so shocked at what she was hearing she could not even bring herself to speak at first. But she eventually found her tongue, and then she began. She went on and on, her voice getting louder and louder and higher and higher, until she was squeaking away like some demented rat, listing one complaint after another.

  Dwight waited until the film star had finished and then told her that she was completely missing the point.

  ‘Everything you’ve complained about has been about you,’ he said. ‘It’s all YOU, isn’t it? That’s all you think about. We’ve come here to judge a competition which is about saving this planet from people like you, people who only think about themselves. You are the most wretchedly thoughtless person I have ever met. Every one of these children here is worth a hundred of you! Even him!’ (Here Dwight pointed at Kingston and gave him a huge wink.)

  Kooky stared at the footballer, gobsmacked. ‘You don’t like me, do you?’

  ‘You’re dead right there,’ agreed Dwight. ‘And I don’t suppose anyone else does either.’

  Kooky slumped into a chair and burst into tears. Great, gulping sobs filled the head’s office. The rest of us quietly slipped out and closed the door on her. Only Rebecca stayed behind. (Remember her? She now seemed like someone from a distant dream, way back in my past.) Rebecca stayed with Kooky crouching at the film star’s feet and patting her knees.

  ‘I think you’re wonderful,’ Rebecca crooned. ‘I’m going to be just like you.’

  I’ll cut out most of what happened after that, but as you can probably imagine, there was a lot of sorting out to do. Mrs Drew came up trumps. She said she understood what I was trying to do and that although she could not say that what Kingston had done was the right thing, she applauded his enthusiasm. (And that’s a lot more than I would have done if he’d tied me up and strapped a pretend bomb to my head. I would have killed him!)

  Of course, it was the end of all the filming and the project. We never did get it finished and we never won the competition. But I discovered all sorts of things, such as:

  1. Sometimes you meet people who you don’t expect to be nice, but they are, like Dwight Trellis.

  2. And sometimes people can look nice, but they aren’t (No names!)

  3. And then there are other people, Cat for example, who doesn’t look like anything much (except perhaps a small, half asleep, slightly scruffy moggy) but are really nice inside, and the totally weird thing is that when you realize how nice someone is inside, they begin to look beautiful on the outside after all.

  A couple of days after the film disaster I got a package through the post. The label on the outside said it was from Awesome Film Productions, Hollywood. Was it the contract? I could hardly bring myself to open it, but I did. I pulled out a thick sheaf of paper and recognized it at once. It was my film script. They were returning it. The letter they included simply said that they didn’t want it and it finished with:

  We wish you success in the future, but please don’t bother to send us anything more until you’re grown up.

  When I read that last sentence in their letter I felt as if all along I’d been playing in a pink football kit. It’s made me think a lot about Big Bro. I want to tell him I know how he feels about failing. Do you think I’m strong enough? Shall I tell him? Hmmm, maybe.

  Of course Awesome Productions are probably the most stupid people in the whole world. Can’t they see how good Krazy Kow is? I don’t know how long I sat there reading their letter, over and over again, but it was the last straw. There didn’t seem much point in going on.

  Still, you’re probably wondering how KK is going to escape from Gobb-Yobb Badmash and Nuclear Reactor Chicken, so read on!

  The End. Krazy Kow’s Last Battle

  The Final Scene

  Krazy Kow stares in horror at Nuclear Reactor Chicken. ‘How did you know my secret?’ she asks in a horrified whisper.

  ‘I’m afwaid Bwomley Spottiswood is not as loyal as he appears to be,’ smiles Gobb-Yobb. A little bwibewy – it didn’t take much, and your secwet was ours.’

  ‘But if you explode that chicken it will not only destroy me, but it will kill us all. You will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the whole planet.’

  [Horrified gasp from crowd: ‘Oh!’]

  ‘I know,’ said Gobb-Yobb.

  ‘It will kill you too,’ Krazy Kow points out.

  ‘I know,’ says Gobb-Yobb. That shows you just how evil I can be. Short-sighted, but evil.’

  Secretary Snirch presses himself forward. ‘Excuse me. I didn’t know.’

  Too late now,’ Gobb-Yobb cries. ‘Say your pwayers, Kwazy Kow,’

  Krazy Kow turns to the huddled onlookers. ‘Listen up, everyone,’ she moos. ‘This is what I tell you: I am the Big…’

  And they all died
.

  Oh dear.

  What a pity.

  The End

  So there you are. That was the end of Krazy Kow. She was a good idea while she lasted, but it’s time to move on to better things. You see, I’ve had this amazingly brilliant idea for a film! It’s going to be fantastic – a million times better than Krazy Kow. Cat and I are working on it together. (Cat says we can use her dad’s camera.)

  It’s all about a terrifying race of supermodels who come from another planet (called Kookyville) and the world can only be saved by a superhero called Dangergoat and his sidekick Atomic Elephant. I’m going to call it:

  INVASION OF THE MONSTERMODELS

  It’s going to make me famous. People will recognize me in the street and they’ll say: ‘Wow! There goes Jamie Frink, the film director and multimillionaire. I can’t believe I’ve met Jamie Frink. Can I have your autograph?’

  And I’ll say: ‘Sure, have three. And if you ask nicely I’m sure my friend Cat here will give you hers too. And we don’t mind doing them on diddly bits of scrumpled paper, either.’

  I haven’t given up at all.

  I am going to be a great film director.

  Just you wait and see.