by Susan Berran
But the end of the track was coming up fast. Of course, we knew there was no need to waste time with bales of hay or piles of dirt, because that’s where the surfboard was supposed to glide to a nice gentle stop, so that Jared could just step off into the dust …
… that was clearly NOT going to happen! Jared was surfing that board like a pro, but when he ran out of track there was nothing but blue sky.
Jared flew off the end of the rail at the speed of light … times two. It was like watching a HORROR movie. You know what’s going to happen, you know that you’re about to see something so gross, so icky and bloody that you should turn away and not watch … BUT you just can’t take your eyes off it.
Jared launched into the stratosphere like a space shuttle into orbit, leaving a glowing red trail of smoke behind him. And there was no nice, soft water landing to come down to. NOPE! When he came down some time later, it was like watching an elephant leap out of a plane and land on a biscuit …
SPLATT!! It wasn’t pretty.
Mum reckons that Jared’s medical bills added up to the cost of a small island, but fortunately the council had to pay for them because they’d left the rail laying around where kids could get a hold of it. The LOCALS were happy though, the safety rails finally got put up - IN THREE DAYS FLAT!
I’m still not sure why they call it safety rail; I didn’t think it was very safe. When Jared finally came back to school he was still wearing a full facial bandage and splints on both arms. So Mrs Duckson gave the whole school this great long-winded lecture about how you should be listening to the muscle in your skull called a brain … and not to the little voice in your ear called an ‘IDIOT’.
Me and Jared remembered the old ghost stories and we knew that it was a great opportunity to FREAK out the guys at school. So we told them how it had actually all been going really well, until a sudden gust of wind came up from nowhere sending a chill right through the both of us, then we were frozen to the spot when suddenly from out of nowhere we heard this BOOMING voice yell out … “GO BACK!” In an instant the entire length of rail was blanketed in a thick cover of solid cold ICE! It just appeared from nowhere, right in the middle of a stinking hot day!
The girls all started to SCREAM and looked like they were about to faint! The guys all totally FREAKED out. They were running around like plucked peacocks, yelling something about the ‘ICE GHOST’ trying to kill again and how they’d never go anywhere near that hill … EVER!
We totally sucked them all in.
And we just about cacked ourselves laughing, it was sooooo hilarious.
Yep it was great to finally be back on the coast, in a hotel near the surf … even if it was only for a short holiday! I tossed back my head and flared my nostrils as wide as humanly possible and like some huge industrial vacuum cleaner, I tried to suck up every wonderful particle of salty, sea smell around me that I possibly could. It was sooo AWESOME, I could smell the salt floating on the sea breeze … the beach … the trees … the cow dung!?
Oh no! … NOT HERE TOO!
It wasn’t possible! It couldn’t be! BUT HOW? Was the smell of dung in Agnath so strong that the disgusting odour had burned into my nostrils forever and ever? Or, had it been with us the entire trip and I just hadn’t noticed? In the plane? In the bus? Had the strong smell of vomit been masking the stench of cow dung all the way from Agnath to the coast?
It wafted through every room of our hotel unit, I could smell it all over the place! We’d flown halfway across the country to where the edge of the nation meets the ocean … and I could definitely smell cow, sheep, or GOAT manure … they all smelt the same to me … DEADLY, rotten and GROSS!
Then it HIT Me. Smelly Melly ‘my-butt-reeks-like-a-toxic-waste-dump’ prissy-pants! IT HAD TO BE HER! Her butt was always giving off the stench of something totally mouldy and disgusting. Maybe I’d just gotten my smells all mixed up.
You know what really amazes me? Smell a carrot, smell some peas, or even corn. Smell an apple, or a pear. That’s all she eats. So why is it that they either have no smell at all, or a nice sweet smell … and Miss Smelly Melly ‘I-can-overflow-twenty-three-nappies-a-day’ can turn these fruits and vegetable into something that should be sent to the outer reaches of space in a solid lead container?
You’ve never smelt anything in your life as bad as one of Smelly Melly’s loaded nappies! Everything goes in one end smelling pretty much ok but comes out the other end DEADLY … so what’s in her gut? Obviously it has to be her very own sewage farm! Or maybe that’s where some ALIENS have set up their home base
and they’re in there developing some DEADLY SMELL MACHINE to invade Earth with. Once they’ve perfected their lethal ODOUR BOMBS, they’ll shove one into every baby around the world. When the babies start ‘LOADING’ their nappies with the stench balls, people will become weaker and weaker from the smell. Then, while everyone is busy chucking their guts up, the ALIENS can leap out of hiding and take over the world!
IT COULD HAPPEN!
Anyway, Mum checked Smelly Melly and for the first time EVER, her butt was actually clean! And now even Mum had to admit that she could definitely smell the local Agnath poop as well. She was soon sniffing all around the unit like some sort of hungry dung-detector hound.
“Lift up your foot … and the other!” she was demanding as she continued to search for the elusive stench. Jared and I were immediately drawn into the stink search as well. We checked the bottom of every single shoe and every other item of footwear that we’d brought with us. Meanwhile Mum was getting more and more frustrated as the search continued and we still hadn’t found anything. And while Miss ‘I’m-so-innocent’ Jelly Belly Melly waddled around, dragging along her favourite bunny and enjoying her new surroundings, Mum was getting even more frantic in the search, as the stench was becoming worse and WORSE. She was hastily overturning our suitcases and backpacks … now going through absolutely everything that we’d bought with us. “It has to be the unit!” she finally declared. Great, now we were watching Mum fling open wardrobe and cupboard doors like a crazy woman, stacking drawers on the floor to check the cavities behind them, searching bins, sniffing drains and tapping walls. But still we found nothing. And all me and Jared wanted to do was get to the beach … SOMETIME TODAY!
Suddenly Mum stormed out the door, yelling “Watch your little sister!” This was not the time to ask questions, JUST TO DO IT. Five minutes later Mum was back, with the manager of the hotel stumbling along as he tried to keep up, right behind her. We then watched closely, trying desperately not to laugh as they both stuck their head into sinks, the bath and the dunny, poking around drain holes and running their noses along the carpet in various corners of all the rooms.
After they’d both sniffed around hard enough to get carpet BURNED noses, we were suddenly being told to pick up our bags and follow the manager off to another room, directly up above this one. Mum was being totally embarrassing, as she loudly declared (obviously so that the manager would hear), that she knew smells and a family of Rats must have died somewhere in the walls to produce such a totally disgusting stench.
We all shuffled up to another unit and after a quick ‘sniff around’, the manager and Mum were both satisfied that the new unit had a very fresh, clean smell.
While Mum stood at the door and continued to rant and rave on about Rat diseases in the manager’s face, me and Jared did a quick ‘reccie’ of the unit ourselves. Ok … there was a tiny lounge room straight inside the front door, with a teeny weeny TV in one corner of the room and a teensy weensy kitchen in the other corner. A mini bedroom off to one side of the lounge room, that only just fitted a double bed and a tiny chest of drawers in it, and an even smaller bedroom with two single beds that barely had room to walk between them. Oh and beside the kitchen was a small cupboard . . . no hang on, I was wrong, it wasn’t a cupboard … it was the world’s smallest bathroom.
Mum said a lot of people have small bathrooms so I shouldn’t complain, but this was so small that
I reckon I was going to have to stand in the toilet to take a shower and stand in the shower to go to the toilet!
Me and Jared called first dibs on the ‘BIG’ bedroom … which of course Mum immediately overturned and claimed for herself. WOW . . . calling dibs just doesn’t mean anything to parents. FINE! As long as Miss ‘I-sook-and-whinge-all-night’ Smelly Melly was in with Mum, me and Jared could survive without it!
“Melly will be sleeping in with you two” Mum called out. WHAT?
NOOOOOO!!!
That was the absotively, posalutely last straw. I needed to object with EVERY SUCKY weapon that I could possibly think of.
“But Jared will keep her awake all night with his snoring. And if she doesn’t get enough sleep then she’ll walk around only half awake. And if she’s only half awake then she’l smack into everything. And if she smacks into everything she’ll be brain damaged for the rest of her life! ” I said, trying to sound convincing, like a really loving and caring big brother.
“Your sister’s a very heavy sleeper” Mum came back with in a flash.
DAMN!
“But Jared still has his flu reeeally bad … only at night. And if Melly gets his bug it could infect her whole entire wittle, tiny fragile body. And if it infects her whole entire wittle, tiny fragile body she could die! ”
“Melly had all of her flu shots right before we left.”
BUGGER!
“But Jared’s a really, reeeally, reeeeeally, deep sleepwalker. And if he’s sleepwalking when he’s dreaming about trampolining, which he dreams of a lot, he might think that he’s on the trampoline back home and start jumping all over Melly Boo. And if he starts jumping al over her, then he might trample her. And if he tramples her then he might smoosh her wittle, tiny, precious body into the carpet until it’s al gooey and mashed. And if he tramples her wittle, tiny, precious, body into the carpet until it’s all gooey and mashed, she could be ‘mashed Melly Moo forever! ”
“She’ll be quite safe in the cot.”
BUGGER!
“But what about if Jared …
“Fine! Mel can sleep in my room!”
“Yahoo! Oops, I mean . . . ok sure Mum, whatever you really think is best.”
Ok, so where were we …? Oh yeah …
We took off into our room and shut the door behind us. It only took us about five seconds flat and we’d found our swimmers, chucked them on and we were ready to hit the beach.
But of course sometimes, life just likes to tease you.
We re-entered the lounge room and there was Mum, down on her hands and knees with her head shoved all the way into the cupboard under the sink, sniffing away heavily … again! … sniff snifF … sniff snifF …
“The smell must have made its way up through the inside of the walls and in through the air vents. We’re going to have to move again!” Mum announced angrily. “This is the worst hotel ever! Wait until I get back home and report them to … blah… blah… blah… and we’ll see who’s … rant … rant … rave … rave … ! I’ve never smelt anything as bad as … ramble … ramble … This has to be the absolute worst… yap… yap … yap … He won’t be allowed to manage a dog kennel when I’m finished with him … blah … blah . . . blah …” Mum went on and on … and on … and on … and on … and ON … and ON … and ON. I went to the loo so I couldn’t hear her for a while and ten minutes later, when I thought it’d be safe to come out… and on… and on… and on. . . and on… and ON … when suddenly Mum stopped. I stared at her pair of legs, laying flat on the floor, face down, sticking out from under my bed. Was she ok? Was she breathing? Was she DEAD!?
“And if he thinks we’re ever coming back here again then he’s … waffle … waffle … waffle!” … and on … and ON.
So while Mum continued sniffing the carpet like some deranged, WILD, FEROCIOUS snorting PIG snuffling through its sloppy lunch trough, me and Jared decided to earn some ‘suck-up’ points by feeding Jelly Belly Melly. We headed into Mum’s room to get her when …
“Ahhh Mum … I think you should definitely come and see this,” I called out to her very seriously.
Sitting on the floor of Mum’s room was litlle Mis ‘I’m-not-so-perfect-now’ Smelly Melly. She was cuddling her favourite soft toy.
A rabbit that was almost the same size as her, that she took absolutely everywhere with her. But in its back was a zipper. It was actually hollow inside with a bag to keep her pyjamas in. But that’s not what was in there this time.
There sat Melly, in the middle of Mum’s bed with a huge grin right across her face, looking like she’d been painted, or rolled in sloppy, gooey mud. She was completely covered head to toe with the thick, goopy stuff … only it wasn’t mud.
EeEwwwWww!
Yep . . . you guessed it! Little Miss Princess-Perfect, prissy-pants looked like a brown-green snowman, totally wrapped in a disgusting coat, made of a mixture of sweat, drool, sheep poop-pellets and cow-pat poop. She was DRENCHED in the stuff! And it wasn’t just on her either. Nope, she’d managed to splash it about, all over the place, while we’d been sniffing the walls and cupboards in the other rooms, because ‘stinky britches’ had already wandered through them, she’d slathered Mum’s bed, bag, clothes and the rest of the room with the pasty drool and dung mixture. But worst of all … she was sitting up, on the middle of Mum’s bed, proud as punch, holding up a nice BIG piece of the poop pat, like some huge delicious chocolate biscuit … sucking away on it very happily. Of course as she sucked she dribbled, LOTS. So there she sat with a nice big murky brown ring around her lips and a waterfall of ‘dung drool’ running down from the corner of her mouth and dripping onto the bed, all around her.
It seemed that Miss Melly had somehow managed to shove a heap of dry dung into her ‘RABBIT’, but amongst the foul smell of the sweaty tourists we hadn’t noticed it. Of course once she added her own bucket of drool and sweat to the mix … BOING … the whole lot of it expanded, ten times over, like a sponge soaking up water.
she looked at Jared, he looked at Melly, she looked at me, I looked at Mum … and by then we were so dizzy that I thought we were all going to HURL.
Mum was scrubbing the carpet, while me and Jared cleaned bags and other stuff. We flushed miles of big, soggy chunks of paper towel down the toilet for the next hour and a half. Mum was sooooo sickly sweet to the manager for the next couple of days after that. Of course me and Jared were under strict instructions to never, ever, EVER mention this again.
So we never ever di … oh oh!
Anyhow, we’d wasted most our first day and after all that cleaning up you’d think that even Mum would be hanging to get to the beach to cool off. Instead, she decided that we couldn’t go anywhere until all of the unpacking was done as well.
Which made absolutely no sense at all.
Why is it that whenever we’re going away somewhere, our parents make us go to all the trouble of packing our cases all neat and tidy with everything folded perfectly … the undies have to be in one corner, trousers on the bottom, tops laid over them, shoes to one side in a separate bag and toiletries in another, and then when we get to where we’re staying, everything has to be taken out of the bag and put away in exactly the right place … FOR A HOLIDAY!? Are they NUTS?
Yep, they make us go and unpack the whole lot for the couple of days that we’re staying there. And naturally Mum just has to have it all just like it is at home. Undies and socks in their very own drawer, the top one of course, everyone knows that. T-shirts have to go into the centre one and pants go into the bottom drawer. Jackets have to be hung up in the wardrobe and your shoes, all laid out across the bottom of it in nice neat rows. And the way that Mum carries on, it’s obviously against the law to not arrange your shoes in pairs; you could end up going to PRISON for YEARS!
It’s like some sort of weird, universal law that mums must be taught the very first day they have kids.
Yeah, I can see it all now at the hospital… “It’s a boy! Here’s your baby and here’s his
wardrobe layout.”
The secret to being able to get dressed, passed down since cave-mums taught their kids which rock to put which furs under.
Are mums all around the world scared stiff that the day undies mix in with shirts the sun will eXPLODe? That if our socks touch our pants, they’ll turn to radio-active dust? That the world will come to a HORRIBLE END if your jacket isn’t hung up? Do they really think that if our clothes aren’t put away in the right place that we’ll shove a pair of undies on our head, socks on our hands and a shirt on our butt?
But then … I turned around just as Jared was putting on his swimmers, over his undies.
I’m telling you, when they said, ‘Flip open your head for some brains,’ Jared thought they said, “Kiss the dead rats in the rain.” And he probably DID.
The idea of holidays is supposed to be to get away from all the boring stuff you have to do at home, like packing clothes away properly.
Especially because when the holiday is over, you have to fold it all up again for the trip home; I don’t get it! Why does anyone waste their time unpacking and repacking when it’s way easier to find your jocks and socks, trousers and tops, all in the one spot … ? THE SUITCASE. But noooo … Mum reckons we’re not going to live like cavemen.
FINE, we’ll unpack then! We headed back into our room and I began to loudly SLAM one of the drawers a few times. Then I slid the wardrobe door back hard against the wall and rattled a few coathangers, but while I was SLAMMING and BANGING drawers and doors, Jared was actually unpacking … SUCK-UP!
