My Life and Other Weaponised Muffins

by Tristan Bancks

  I look down at the blank page of my notebook. If I do eat it, what extraordinary story will I tell with that toenie between my teeth? Will I get a whole book out of it? And will it be the last book I ever write? What if, once the toenies are gone, that’s it – my creative tank is dry forever?

  The thought scares me, but I know I have to be brave. That’s what Pop would have wanted. I raise it to my mouth. I feel it between my teeth. I feel the magic and wonder of Pop’s stories wash over me.

  I pick up my pen and, just like that, I begin to write. Slowly at first, but then a story starts to trickle in, something about a muffin attack.

  I dedicate the following story to the one and only Cliff Weekly – hot-dog eating champion, world’s angriest grandpa, nursing home escape artist and grower of the gnarliest, most delicious toenails in the southern hemisphere.

  Pop, you’re a legend.

  When you’re done reading this book, maybe you could write a story of your own. I’m not telling you to eat anyone’s toenails. That would be sick and wrong, and it’s probably done all sorts of harm to my guts, but you can find your own story inspiration. For you, it might be eating the sleep from your dog’s eye. Or the wax from your cat’s ear. Or, I know this sounds weird, but you could even try not eating human or animal bits at all. Gnaw on the end of a lucky pen, perhaps? Whatever you do, good luck. May the toenies be with you.

  (Seriously, don’t eat dog sleep or cat wax. You may start barking or meowing.)

  We’re doing ‘Reverse Halloween’ again this year. It’s a tradition where Mum spends the day baking muffins and cookies, then we go around and give them to the neighbours rather than asking for lollies. No tricks. No treats.

  Mum says, ‘Kindness and compassion for others are the most important qualities in a human being.’ But I say, ‘Lollies are the most important nutrient in the food pyramid.’ It’s only a matter of time before the scientists work it out.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  We wait. I grind my teeth.

  ‘Stop scrinching your teeth,’ Mum snips.

  The door swings open and Harriet, the old lady from number 42, answers. ‘Hell-ooo!’

  ‘Happy Reverse Halloween!’ Mum shouts. ‘Can I interest you in a muffin or a cookie?’

  ‘Well, what a surprise! Don’t mind if I do,’ Harriet says, wiping her hands on a paint-spattered apron. She’s new to the neighbourhood and seems to spend most of her time painting the dozens of creepy ceramic gnomes dotted around her garden.

  Harriet pushes open the security door as Mum peels back the red-and-white polka dot tea towel covering her basket. The muffins look soft and golden, pocked with white chocolate chunks and plump red berries. The cookies are so chocolatey that even my nostrils are salivating. My mother is not widely known for being a brilliant chef, but these are the best looking things she’s ever made. I’m allowed to have one of each when we get home if I’m not too ‘grinchy’ while we’re Reverse Halloween-ing.

  ‘They’re sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free and vegan.’

  I hang my head. Why does she have to ruin everything? I specifically told her not to mention this to anyone. She might as well just say right up front, ‘They taste like pencil shavings! Run for your life!’

  ‘Oh, how lovely,’ Harriet croons. She chooses a muffin and says, ‘I think I might have some sweets in here for this young man.’

  ‘Thanks!’ I say quickly.

  ‘No thanks!’ Mum cuts in. ‘We like to give on Halloween rather than receive – don’t we, Tom?’

  That’s Christmas! my mind screams. Although, deep down, I probably prefer to receive at Christmas, too. (That’s strictly off the record.)

  ‘Tom?’ Mum says again.

  ‘Yes, Mum. We like to give,’ I say through gritted teeth.

  ‘Oh,’ Harriet says. ‘Well … can I at least give you a piece of fruit, love?’

  I glunch at Mum through my eyebrows. (‘Glunch’ is an old Scottish word that Nan uses, which means ‘an angry glare’. I kind of like it. Glunch.)

  ‘That would be lovely, Harriet. Say thank you, Tom.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom,’ I say glunchily.

  She toddles off into the house.

  ‘Worst. Halloween. Ever,’ I whisper to Mum.

  Harriet returns moments later holding an orange.

  An orange.

  She hands it to me.

  ‘Ooo, what a lovely orange,’ Mum says.

  It’s slightly mouldy on one side, and the skin is thin and brownish. A couple of fruit flies orbit around its cratered surface.

  ‘Grown from my own tree. Make sure you share it with your mum,’ Harriet says. ‘Happy Halloween!’ She pulls her screen door closed and waves us off with a smile.

  We walk up the path past all the demonic garden gnomes, who laugh and snicker about my festy orange. A bunch of high-school kids run past us towards Harriet’s front door, wielding plastic knives and chainsaws. They are dressed as ghosts and ninja pumpkins and zombie dogs.

  Out on the footpath, a stream of kids walk up and down the street, smiling through the fake blood dripping out of their faces, carrying bags full of delicious, sugary morsels filled with genetically modified high-fructose corn syrup and luscious preservatives.

  I can’t take it anymore. I drop the stinking orange into Mum’s basket and turn for home. ‘I’m not doing this.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asks. ‘When you’re an adult you’ll realise –’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not an adult!’ I interrupt. ‘I’m a kid. Of course you love mouldy oranges. You’re, like, 80 years old.’

  ‘Forty,’ she corrects.

  I keep walking.

  Mum follows. ‘Suit yourself. No muffin or cookie for you.’

  I keep walking, but I know I have no choice but to turn around. Even if they are everything-free, Mum may never cook something that looks this good again. I stop. I turn. I can’t believe what I see. Mum is standing at our next-door neighbour’s gate, opening the latch. The gate has a small gold sign with black lettering that reads, ‘No Visitors, Please’. It’s the neighbour who I told her we will not be giving a muffin to under any circumstances.

  ‘No. Way,’ I warn. ‘We are not giving Mr Skroop a muffin!’ I whisper fiercely. Deputy Principal Skroop is not my biggest fan. By which I mean he would like to have my heart in a jar on his desk. Mister Fatterkins, Skroop’s enormous orange cat, sits in the front window, hissing at me. The cat’s saliva runs down the window pane.

  ‘This is an opportunity for us to build a bridge with Mr Skroop, to repair your relationship.’

  Mum’s been reading books by the Dalai Lama again. She says her religion is ‘kindness’. But my religion is lollies.

  She walks up the white painted path towards his house. The grass in the front yard is like a golf course putting green, dotted with thorny pink and white rosebushes.

  ‘Mum! No!’ I whisper.

  I should be running away, but she must be stopped. You’re not supposed to feed wild animals. She’s gone mad. Maybe she overheated her brain in the kitchen when she was baking the muffins. I told her to turn the exhaust fan on. No one knocks on Skroop’s door on Halloween … or any other night of the year. He’s probably in there eating the last kid who did. I want to run for my life, but I need that muffin and cookie.

  I run up the path and grab her arm as she’s about to knock on the door. ‘Mum, don’t do it.’

  ‘Let go, Tom,’ she says.

  ‘Please. He’s crazy. He’s a monster. He’s –’

  Suddenly I am staring up into the soulless, charcoal eyes of Mr Skroop. He opened the door just as I said the words, ‘He’s a monster.’

  Skroop is a very tall, very skinny man. He is wearing his maroon cardigan, shredded at the shoulder from the razor-sharp claws of Mr Fatterkins, who is perched there on his shoulder now, like a second head. His face is so thin and pale, if I didn’t know him I’d think he was wearing a Scream mask.

  ‘What do you want?’ he sna
ps.

  Mum looks a bit frightened now.

  ‘H-h-happy Reverse Halloween!’ she says. ‘We were wondering if you’d like a muffin? Or perhaps a cookie?’

  She seems like a little girl, looking up into the big black holes of Skroop’s nostrils.

  ‘I despise Halloween,’ he says. ‘American rrr-rubbish.’ He rolls the ‘r’ for extra evilness.

  ‘But this is Reverse Halloween,’ Mum says. ‘It’s the opposite, where we give rather than receive.’

  ‘Isn’t that Christmas?’ Skroop asks.

  For a moment, Skroop and I speak the same language.

  He looks from Mum to the basket, suspicious.

  ‘Well, let me see them!’ he says. ‘I don’t have all day. It’s almost Mr Fatterkins’ dinnertime.’

  Mum pulls back the polka dot tea towel and looks up again, hopeful, like she really cares what Skroop thinks of her cooking.

  He scowls. Mr Fatterkins glares at the basket like he’s ready to pounce.

  ‘The muffins are wh-white chocolate and raspberry,’ she says. ‘And the cookies are chocolate chip. With extra chips.’

  He looks from the basket to me. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with the baking process, did you, Weekly?’

  ‘No, Mr Skroop.’

  He reaches down towards the basket. He selects a cookie. It’s the one that I’d had my eye on, the filthy scoundrel. The chocolate-chippiest one. He turns it upside down and inspects it, then looks at the top again. He runs his index finger along the surface, sniffs it, then his pointy little tongue shoots out and he licks the cookie. It’s one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen.

  He looks at Mum, then at me, disgusted. He raises the cookie and pops it into the mouth of Mr Fatterkins, who devours it in two bites, like a dog would snaffle a biscuit.

  Without another word, Skroop slams the door right in our faces.

  Bang!

  Mum looks at me, her mouth open in shock. ‘I can’t believe that,’ she says.

  ‘That’s Skroop for you,’ I say.

  ‘He is the rudest man I have ever met.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I say. I’m glad that Mum has finally seen the light. I tug on her arm, hoping we can head back home now, maybe even cancel the Reverse Halloween tradition altogether.

  But Mum won’t budge. She clenches her fist and stares into her basket. ‘I spent hours baking these things. I took the afternoon off work to walk around the neighbourhood and reach out to my fellow humans, and he has the hide to –’

  ‘Mum, shhhhh. Let’s just go.’

  Then she does the unthinkable. She pounds on Skroop’s door.

  ‘No, Mum, don’t. Please, I’m too young to die.’

  ‘I’m going to give him a piece of my mind,’ she says.

  ‘Evil doesn’t listen to reason. It’s not worth it.’ I try to pull her away from the door. ‘Remember when he rubbed Lewis’s head on mine and gave me nits? Remember when I kicked my football over the fence and he chopped it up and posted it into the letterbox? Remember when he ate my scab?’

  She’s not listening to anything I say. She’s on the warpath. Bang-bang-bang. She peers through the window beside the door. ‘I know you’re in there, Walton!’ she calls. ‘How dare you feed my cooking to that hideous cat!’

  ‘He loves the cat,’ I say. ‘Maybe it was a compliment. Remember what the Dalai Lama says: kindness and compassion for others are the most important qualities in a human being. Poor old Mr Skroop’s probably just having a bad day.’

  Her shoulders slump. I’m so relieved. I really need that muffin now to settle my nerves.

  But then the door swings open again. Skroop and Fatterkins loom over us. There are cookie crumbs on Skroop’s shoulder. I’m hoping Mum doesn’t notice.

  ‘Get off my property immediately or I shall call the police.’

  And I know he will. He’s called the cops on me before. He’s so sensitive. I did accidentally burn down his fence that one time, but still …

  ‘I want an apology,’ Mum demands.

  ‘Walton Skroop does not apologise, especially to the mother of one of the greatest nitwits ever to attend Kings Bay Public School.’

  ‘Did you just call my son a nitwit?’

  Uh-oh.

  ‘Did you?’ she demands.

  Skroop retreats a step. ‘As you refuse to remove yourself from my land, I have no other choice.’ He picks up the receiver of an old-fashioned phone sitting on the hall stand and starts to dial. Mum goes to snatch it from him and Mr Fatterkins shoots out a long ginger paw, scratching her across the hand.

  ‘OWWW!’ Mum shrieks.

  She’s bleeding. It looks like a fake Halloween scar, only there’s real blood dripping onto Skroop’s stoop.

  ‘Yes, hello, I’d like to report an intruder,’ Skroop says.

  ‘An intruder?’ Mum squawks. She takes a single muffin and hurls it at him. It smacks him in the nose, leaving a red raspberry smudge, glances off and knocks the phone from his hand.

  He’s shocked. ‘Hello? Hello?’ a small voice says from the phone receiver that’s now doing the backspin in Skroop’s front hallway.

  ‘Mum, take it easy,’ I say, but she grabs a cookie from the basket and hurls it at Fatterkins. The cat screeches and leaps from Skroop’s shoulder before the choc-chip missile makes contact.

  Mum reaches for another cookie and throws it like a ninja star at Skroop. The cookie hits him on the forehead. He squeals and clutches his brow.

  ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ says the voice on the phone.

  Skroop snatches it up, still holding his forehead. He slams the door shut with a bang and yells into the phone, ‘Yes. I have just been attacked by a woman with a basket of baked goods. Biscuits and cakes and the like. It was terrifying. They were slightly burnt, possibly gluten-free and very, very hard. I think I have a concussion.’

  ‘They were not hard!’ Mum shouts and throws another muffin at the door. Thunk. It leaves a large dent. ‘Oh … Okay, they were slightly firm!’

  ‘Mum, it’s time to go,’ I say. I take her by the arm and lead her down the stairs, along the white painted path and out of the disturbing land of Skrooptopia.

  I sit her down at the dining table. She’s shaking and muttering things to herself. I pry the basket from her hand and rest it on the kitchen bench. I flick on the jug to make a cup of tea and drag a chair across to the pantry. I reach into the top and pull down a packet of ginger nut biscuits – her favourite.

  I make the tea and put it beside the biscuits.

  ‘You really got worked up back there,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She mops at her tears with a snotty, balled-up tissue.

  ‘It’s okay. You stood up to Skroop in a way I never would have. You’re kind of my hero right now.’

  She forces a smile.

  I take a bite out of a cookie. It’s sweet, moist and delicious, despite being sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free and vegan. It tastes even sweeter when I think of Skroop copping one in the face. Maybe I was wrong about Reverse Halloween all along.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, sipping her tea, her hand still shaking.

  ‘Can we do Reverse Halloween again next year?

  Jack stayed over at my place last night. We had an epic round of ‘What Would You Rather Do?’ till about 9.00, when Mum said, ‘Lights out. Night, boys.’ We kept playing till 9.30, when she said, ‘Time to go to sleep. See you in the morning.’ So we whispered till 10.30, when Mum poked her head in on her way to bed and said, ‘Are you still awake? Go to sleep now, Tom Weekly, or there’ll be consequences. By the way, this room smells like farts. Good night.’

  We couldn’t help ourselves. It was so fun. We kept playing till 11.42, when Jack laughed raucously and Mum stormed in wearing her dressing-gown and a slathering of weird cream on her face, her hair all wild, screaming like the Abominable Snowman. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. Jack reckons it gave him nightmares and he�
�s never sleeping over again. Anyway, here are some of the devilish dilemmas we devised.

  Would you rather …

  Drink a tablespoon of bright yellow pus or eat 13 fresh scabs?

  Be buried alive in marshmallows or Smarties?

  Eat a whole jar of Vegemite or a stick of butter?

  Eat cheesy Vegemite sausages wrapped in marshmallow or peanut butter sausages wrapped in bacon?

  Find the tip of someone’s finger in your cheeseburger or a rat’s tail in your fries?

  Be turned into a frog for a year or a cane toad for a week?

  Get hit by lightning or never use technology again?

  Get a needle though the eye or have your bum set on fire?

  Ride rodeo-style on the back of a great white shark or an angry rhino?

  Wake up and you’re the only person left on earth, or die and everyone else survives?

  Spend the night alone in a haunted house or run through a mall full of zombies?

  Travel into the future or into the past? (And you can’t come back.)

  Get hit by a speeding bus or sat on by an elephant?

  Get trapped under ice or be buried alive?

  Tightrope walk over a swimming pool of vomit or bungee jump over a volcano?

  Put a thumbtack under your toenail and kick a concrete wall or have paper cuts all over your body and jump into a pool of lemon juice?

  I. Am. A genius. An absolute genius. It’s Friday morning, 10.12 am. I should be in school. But I’m not.

  ‘Didn’t the Friday morning maths test start 42 minutes ago?’ you may ask.

  And you would be correct. But I am unable to take part in this morning’s maths test because I, Tom Weekly, am in my favourite place in the world: Nan’s red velvet couch, feet up, with a colourful crocheted blanket over my legs and a nice, warm remote control in my hand.