Fing
Page 6
B O I N K !
…and…
C H O M P !
…devoured Little FING in one gulp.
“Mmm. That didn’t quite go to plan,” remarked Mother.
Perhaps the scene wasn’t as heart-warming as I had hoped. Apologies.
Myrtle darling?” began Mother.
“WOT?” replied the girl, still glued to the television.
“It’s Little FING. There’s no nice way to put this… It’s been, well…”
“WOT?”
“…eaten.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” wailed Myrtle.
“We should have got her a pet-bereavement counsellor,” hissed Father.
“My poor, poor angel,” said Mother. “You must be very sad.”
“YEAH!” exclaimed Myrtle. “Sad I missed it!”
“Excuse me?”
“I WANT AN INSTANT REPLAY!”
“A what?”
“DUH! Get Big FING to sick it up, and then gobble it down again.”
Tears welled in Mother’s eyes, and she put her handkerchief over her mouth. She had never heard anything so stomach-churningly disgusting.
“No!” she said firmly. “We certainly can’t do that.”
“Then shut your cake hole! Let me finish my CARTOON.”
“Of course, my angel. I am so sorry for disturbing you!”
“SHUT UP!”
Mrs Meek then turned back to Mr Meek. She noticed something was very wrong.
“Father?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Where is FING?”
The man looked around the living room. The creature was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh no. I don’t know!”
There it was!
Smashing through the door to the kitchen.
“It must still be hungry,” said Father.
The pair raced into the kitchen. They watched in horror as FING destroyed everything in sight in its quest for food.
Plates smashed on the floor. CLATTER!
Pots and pans were sent flying.
Glasses shattered.
CHINKING!
Using one of its ends, FING opened the fridge door.
CLICK!
Once inside, it hoovered up everything.
“Make it stop!” screamed Mother. “I was saving that chocolate mousse for Myrtle’s tea.”
TOO LATE!
It was gone in half a second.
Father went to grab FING as it bounced out of the fridge, but it bashed straight into him, knocking him to the ground.
“No!” screamed Mother. She jumped on top of FING, sitting on it.
“I don’t believe it. I am sitting on FING!” she exclaimed.
The creature looked up menacingly before rolling every which way to try to escape.
Still Mother pushed down with her bottom.
“TAKE THAT!”
All of a sudden, FING stopped completely still.
“Oh no!
I’ve killedit!”
exclaimed Mother.
All was silent, until the creature closed its one eye in concentration, and let out a deafening sound.
The sound was followed by an almighty dropping being dropped.
It was so almighty that it was actually larger than FING itself.
Picking himself up from the floor, Father admired the dropping. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” replied Mother, “but at least we know now which end is which. Poor Little FING must be in there somewhere.”
“Well, I am afraid to say that there’s not much hope for it now, Mother,” said Father, joining his wife as she peered at the dropping.
“No.”
“No, indeed.”
A smell so wretched that it began peeling the paint off the walls filled the room.*
It was so vile that even FING’S eye watered. Poor Mrs Meek covered her mouth with her handkerchief. FING’S thing pongs.”
“Don’t you fret, Mother! I will dispose of it!” replied Father as he reached into the cupboard for the dustpan and brush. However, as soon as he brought them out, he realised they were laughably small for the task.
“Let me!” said Mother.
With that, she held her breath and pushed the dropping out of the kitchen and into the garden.
“There!” she said, brushing her hands together at a job well done.
“Well done, Mother.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Then the pair stared at FING, who was now devouring the Meeks’ family selection of breakfast cereals, boxes and all.
“What on earth are we going to do with it?” asked Father.
Mother thought for a moment. “Could you take it back?”
“Take it back?”
“To where you found it?”
“I nearly died getting it here!”
“Well, I worry what might happen to Myrtle if FING stays. If it did one of its droppings on her, she could be buried alive.”
The pair looked lost in thought for a moment. Only for a moment, though. They were too nice to entertain the notion any longer.
Then Father had an idea. “How about we lock it in the shed?”
“Myrtle?”
“No. FING.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course. I knew that. I think that is a splendid idea, Father.”
“Thank you kindly, Mother.”
growled FING. Its one eye narrowed. The creature didn’t like the idea one bit. So, as fast as it could, it bounced out of the kitchen into the hallway.
“Oh no!”
said Father.
“It’s on the move!”
As their daughter carried on happily watching CARTOONS in the living room, Mr and Mrs Meek chased FING all over the house.
It bounced up the stairs…
…knocking the pictures off the walls.
It bounded into the bedroom and bounced up and down on the bed.
B O I N K !
B O I N K !
B O I N K !
The bed broke in two. CRUNCH!
“PLEASE, FING, NO!” cried Mr and Mrs Meek. Try as they might, they just couldn’t stop it.
B O I N K ! B O I N K ! B O I N K !
Next, it bounded into the bathroom and bounced up and down on the loo.
B O I N K !
B O I N K !
B O I N K !
It shattered the bowl.
CRACK! CRUNCH! KERCHINK!
“NO!”
Loo water began splurging everywhere.
Mr and Mrs Meek were soaked to the skin.
“URGH!”
B O I N K ! B O I N K ! B O I N K !
It bounced into Myrtle’s room, smashing all her things to pieces.
BISH! BASH! BOSH!
Remote-controlled hedge. Smashed.
Nelson’s Column made out of sultanas. Broken.
solid-gold hamster wheel. Ruined.
Giant inflatable walnut. Burst.
Wombat juicer. Destroyed.*
FING, STOP!
WE BESEECH YOU!” shouted Mother.
Having nothing left to destroy on the top floor, FING bounced back down the stairs.
B O I N K ! B O I N K ! B O I N K !
Going at quite a speed, FING bashed into the living-room door…
THUNK!
…smashing it to pieces.
KERUNCH!
Then it bounced over Myrtle, who was spread out on the sofa…
…before coming to a halt as it smashed into the television screen.
The television exploded.
KABOOM!
“WAH!” screamed the girl. “NOW I CAN’T WATCH MY CARTOON!”
As her parents dashed into the living room, a singed FING plopped out of the television.
DUNK!
Electricity fizzled all over its fur.
“GET THAT FING OUT OF HERE!” ordered Myrtle. To add emphasis to her rage, the girl stamped her feet.
*
Wi
th the creature stunned, Mr and Mrs Meek seized their chance.
“NOW!” ordered Mother.
The pair pounced on it. They rolled FING into the garden. With all their might, they squished it through the shed door, and locked it.
Together they held hands and skipped back into the house. Little did they know what horror was in store for them during the night.
*
KABOOM!
The noise of the explosion woke up everyone in the street.
Mr and Mrs Meek lurched upright in their beds, as if waking from a nightmare.
“What was that, Mother?” asked Mr Meek.
“I don’t know, Father.”
“One of us had better go out and look.”
“Yes.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Of course, neither of them wanted to go out and look.
“So, it’s me again, is it?” asked Father.
“Yes! My hero!”
“Oh yes. I almost forgot. I am a hero now.”
The man gulped, slipped on his slippers, dressed himself in his dressing gown and tiptoed down the stairs. Then, slowly and silently, he opened the back door.
At Father’s feet was a shard of wood that looked strangely familiar. As he stepped across the grass, he noticed more and more shards.
“They look exactly like pieces of the shed.”
Soon, Mr Meek was standing exactly where the shed should be. Except there was no shed.
What’s more, there was no FING either.
*
All the bits and pieces Father kept in the shed were gone too. The plant pots, the watering can, the spade, the rake, even the lawnmower. At that moment, it finally dawned on the man what must have happened.
“CRIPES!”
“How is everything, Father?” called Mother from the window.
“Not too good, Mother.”
“Why is that?”
“I think FING devoured all my gardening equipment, and then became so big it burst out of the shed!”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“So where is FING now?”
“I don’t know.”
SLUNK!
Myrtle’s window slid open, and she hollered out into the garden, “WILL YOU SHUT YOUR CAKE HOLES? IT’S BEDTIME!”
“Sorry, my love heart,” called Father. “I feel rotten having to be the bearer of bad news…”
“WHAT NOW?”
“Well, erm, you see…”
“GET ON WITH IT!”
FING has escaped.”
“GOOD RIDDANCE!” shouted the girl. “I hate its guts! It broke all me stuff. I hope FING gets knocked down by a truck!”
S C R E E C H !
There was the sound of tyres skidding.
BOOM!
Then, overhead, Father spotted a truck soaring through the air.
Z O O M!
Before it crash-landed on to the roof of their house.
“I think it might be the other way round,” said Father.
Using all her might, Mother lugged Myrtle out of the house as it collapsed around them.
CRASH! BANG! WALLOP!
In no time, it was nothing more than a pile of bricks.
“Oops,” said Father.
“Oops indeed,” agreed Mother.
wailed Myrtle. “My stuff! It’s broken all my stuff!”
Amongst the rubble Mr Meek spied a jar.
“All is not lost, Myrtle,” he began. “You’ve still got the jar containing one of Albert Einstein’s burps.”
As he spoke, he unscrewed the lid and sniffed inside.*
“NOOOO!” she screamed, snatching the jar off him. “You have let the burp escape!”
“Ooh, sorry,” he said, and he tried but failed to scoop the invisible burp back into the jar.
Mrs Meek’s foot slipped on something.
“Oops!”
Mr Meek put his hand out to steady her.
Looking down, he spotted THE MONSTERPEDIA, trying to wriggle free.
“ACHOO!” The book sneezed at all the dust.
“Thank goodness THE MONSTERPEDIA is not lost! I can take that back to the library first thing tomorrow. Those fines are mounting! They are already up to .”
As he picked up the book, he noticed something was looming over them.
“LOOK!” cried Mother.
FING was now the size of a small moon.
it growled.
Then, like a deadly basketball, it bounced away along the road.
B O I N K ! B O I N K ! B O I N K !
It destroyed everything in its path.
Cars were crushed.
CRUNCH!
Lampposts were bent.
TWONG!
And trees were smashed into pieces.
WHAMP! WHOMP! WHUMP!
All the Meeks’ neighbours were waking up and opening their windows to see a huge furry ball bouncing along outside.
“HELP!” one cried.
“CALL THE POLICE!” shouted another.
“STOP THAT HUGE FURRY BALL!” hollered the newsagent Raj, who lived on their street. “AND BRING IT TO MY SHOP! I HAVE SOME SPECIAL OFFERS!”*
The blond-haired boy who lived down the road, Tom, ran out into the street to get a better look at this strange creature.
“Cool!” he said.
What wasn’t so cool was that FING was about to bounce down on top of him.
WHOOSH!
His golden retriever, Eden, ran into the road, and dragged the boy out of the way just in time.
WALLOP!
The Meek family clambered over the rubble that was their house, staring open-mouthed at the chaos and destruction.
“I think it best we don’t mention that FING is ours,” said Mr Meek.
“We have to do the right thing,” urged Mother. “For Myrtle. She really looks up to us.”
“No, I don’t,” snapped the girl.
“Well,” said Mother, “we can’t just let FING destroy the whole town, the whole country, the whole world! We have to go after it!”
“Oh no,” replied Mr Meek, before turning to what was left of the car. The windows were cracked, the bonnet crumpled and one of the doors was hanging off.
“I’m going back to bed!” announced Myrtle.
“You don’t have one any more,” replied Mother.
“OH… YES…”
Mr and Mrs Meek deposited their daughter on to the back seat of the car, and raced off into the night.
Father flicked on the windscreen wipers to wipe away some bricks, and the car sped off down the road in pursuit of FING.
BRUM!
RATTLE!
Debris hit the car as they followed in the creature’s wake.
A bicycle smashed through the windscreen.
“Ah! Fresh air!” remarked Mother, once again trying to put a positive spin on things.
“FASTER! FASTER! FASTER!” screamed Myrtle from the back seat. “MORE! MORE! MORE!”
“I am going nearly twenty miles per hour!” protested Father.
“I SAID FASTER!” she yelled. To add emphasis, she whacked him on the side of his head with her slipper.
THWACK!
“OW!”
“MORE! MORE! MORE!”
His foot stamped down on the accelerator, and the car dramatically sped up to twenty-five miles per hour.
It actually overtook FING.
“Goodness me, where is it?” said Mother, poking her head out of the window.
Father checked the rearview mirror. “It’s behind us!”
DOOF!
FING bounced down on the roof with such force that the little car fell to pieces completely.
CLANK! CLUNK! CLINK!
Soon the three Meeks were skidding along the road on their car seats.
WHIZZ!
Father was still holding on to the steering wheel, though now it wasn’t attached to anything.
“Mother, I think the car may need to go into the garage,” he remar
ked as one of the back wheels rolled past him.
TRUNDLE!
As if all this wasn’t humiliating enough for Father, Myrtle struck him on the other side of his head with her slipper.
THWACK!
“STOP THE CAR!” she ordered.
Mr Meek put his foot down to press the brake. It wasn’t there any more. Instead his foot hit the road.
“ARGH!”
Because of the friction, his slipper burned off and his poor foot began to glow like molten lava. At least it did slow him down, causing Myrtle to crash straight into the back of him.
WALLOP!
“OOF!”
They then smashed into the back of Mother.
BASH!
“OUCH!”
Soon the Meek family was lying in a crumpled heap on the road.
“That wasn’t too bad,” said Mother.
Myrtle, who was at the bottom of the pile, begged to differ.
“You are squashing me, you great fat oafs!”
Her parents rolled off her, and she looked up to the sky.
“Oh no!” she muttered, seeing FING’S eye
bulging with glee,
a second away from
crashing
down
upon
her.
Mr and Mrs Meek grabbed an arm each in a desperate attempt to pull their daughter to safety. Because they pulled in opposite directions, Myrtle went nowhere. Just as the creature was about to make impact and turn the girl into jelly, Myrtle kicked up her leg and booted FING as hard as she could.
“TAKE THAT, YOU BEAST!”
” it cried.
It was impossible to know which end her foot had struck. It might have been a boot in the mouth, or it might have been a boot in the bottom.*
Either way, it worked. FING flew up into the air…
…before landing back to earth a few paces away.