#fiction

The little girl…

stomped into the room.

‘Get up,’ she said, not very nicely.

‘What?’ the small boy looked up at her with bleary eyes.

‘Get up, I said, or…’ she looked around his room quickly. ‘I will whack you with a tennis racquet.’

‘You will not!’ He shot out of the bed like he’d done something in it.

‘Yes, I will. Where are your brothers?’

‘They’re not here,’ he cried, scrambling for the bin, where he’d hidden her papers. ‘Damnit!’

‘Yes they are. I can hear them.’ She stomped her foot imperiously.

Giggling came from behind the curtains. Perhaps, if the boys had been older, it would have been masculine giggling. As it was, they were still very young and didn’t know how to hide properly. Two sets of feet, in very unattractive shoes, poked out from beneath the hideously orange hanging cloth.

The little girl didn’t say anything to warn them. She picked up the racquet the boy had hidden under the bed and advanced towards the window.

‘Run away!’ the boy called from the bin he had accidentally-on-purpose fallen into. ‘How the hell did this get so big,’ he muttered to himself.

The two brothers peeked out. ‘Oh no,’ cried the one with the blue eyes. ‘She’s gonna get me by Jumminy. I must run slowly in a wriggling line of not very far so I can’t be caught.’ He began to tiptoe, very unquietly, and very vaguely, and hideously slowly in the general direction of something that was not her.

‘Arrrrrgh,’ cried the one with the green eyes. ‘I am friendly, I am friendly!’ He deposited himself on the floor and began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘You are NOT HELPING MOIIIIII,’ said the first boy. His eyes were very large and brown, and rather pretty in their own stupid way. ‘Not fair,’ he muttered. ‘I was trying to be cute.’

‘It does not suit you AT ALL,’ cried the little girl and swung the racquet at him as hard as she could. It hit him on his rather horribly shaped backside, for we must remember he was currently upside down in a bin.

‘You better watch out,’ cried the little girl. ‘For when I grow up, I am gonna get my future husband to come along and clean you up like something or other that I can’t think of right now.’

‘Well then! Well then!,’ the little boy cried from under the sheets of paper he’d finally found. ‘When I get a wife that… when I get a wife, and I WILL, I’ll set her onto you and you’ll be SORRY.’

‘Not gonna happen,’ said the little girl furiously. ‘And I’ll tell ya why. It’s because me and your future wife, whoever she may be, are gonna be best mates, and that’s that. So THERE.’

Someone’s mother dashed into the room as quickly as she was able, with her bad back and gimpy leg, and one eye missing. ‘What the hell is going on,’ she cried.

Her husband walked in slowly after her and surveyed the room. He began to grin.

‘What are you laughing at,’ cried the little boy with the big brown eyes as he backed out of the fallen over bin.

‘I see now,’ said the father. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said to his wife, who was trying to grab one of the screeching boys.

‘Don’t worry about it? Look at them!’

‘They’re fine. The only problem I can see here,’ and the father grinned quite widely. ‘Is the fact there aren’t enough girls in this room. But, that’s okay. They’re playing together quite nicely, don’t you think?’

‘They are?’ The mother looked again. The screeching and whacking and begging for mercy all seemed quite… civilised, if the playing of children could seem that way, especially if it were three boys and only one girl.

‘Yep, it’s fine,’ said the father. ‘They’re all friendly, you see. Kids these days just don’t know how to do it right, that’s all.’

‘What year is it here then?’ the mother asked.

‘Most likely the seventies, or something. Maybe the eighties. Doesn’t really matter,’ said the father. ‘They’ll be alright. See, she’s making him feel better now.’

They looked at the little girl, who was currently trying to drag one of the little boys out of the bedroom door by his ankles.

‘See?’ said the dad. ‘They’re friends.’

The End.

Is it Good?

‘Here.’ This tiny creature is stalking through a jungle. He sees the tall branches and waving leaves on one side, and notices the huge tumbling vines on the other side. They do not look safe to him.

Ahead are silly umbrellas. They have pointy-looking hats and seem to be the perfect spot to stop under if it’s raining. They look safe.

A vegie patch with “not very pleasant” additions

The huge waving “trees” have been planted on purpose, as has the tumbling vine. To be fair, the beautiful plant beside him has been planted as well, but that has been put there to be looked at and not touched.

‘And what are these very large soft pebble-like things for,’ thinks the tiny creature to himself. ‘They don’t smell “bad” exactly, but they don’t smell particularly good either.’ He pokes at one with his tiny stick and it crumbles apart. Immediately the sand beneath it looks “happier”, if sand could look happy.

‘Interesting,’ thinks the tiny creature. ‘But, I am getting wet and I would like to take shelter. Perhaps I should get one of those umbrella looking things.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ says a voice from inside him, and it makes him jump.

‘What?’ he squeaks. ‘Why?’

‘Those umbrella looking things, as you call them, are not very pleasant at all. They should not be there, and they should not be touched.’ And a large hand reaches down and removes the umbrellas from the soil, although we really can’t call it soil. Not yet, anyway.

‘I’ve eaten umbrellas before,’ thinks the small creature. ‘They were just fine to eat. Why can’t I take shelter under these ones?’

‘They are not what you think they are,’ says the inner voice, and despite him knowing the voice is there, the small creature jumps again.

‘They don’t look well,’ he mutters under his breath. ‘They have no juiciness to them. They are thin and frail. I do not think I will get any kind of safety from trying to shelter myself under these umbrellas.’ And, the closer he looks at them, the more he is afraid. These umbrellas are decidedly not healthy and, although it is strange they have appeared in the garden (here we raise an eyebrow at those crumbling pebble-like things) they are not to be eaten. Not at all.

‘I am getting very wet from this rain though,’ thinks the tiny creature to himself. ‘Where will I take shelter?’

‘Look at the big leaves where the vines are tumbling,’ says the inner voice.

‘They don’t look safe?’

‘They are very safe. Eventually they will give us beautiful big gourds called “Honeydew”.’

‘They will?’

‘Yes indeed. But, you will have to wait until they are ready. You can’t eat them now, and you can’t eat the leaves.’

‘Why can’t I,’ the tiny creature demands, and he begins to jump up and down with frustration.

‘Because, if you eat them now, what will you take cover under when it rains again?’

It sounds to the tiny creature that this inner voice is smiling at him. He begins to grin. He can’t help it. This inner voice is making him giggle and he knows it is right.

‘Fine then,’ he says, and kicks at one of the pebbles. It crumbles apart and sinks into the soil. ‘What is this stuff?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ The voice sounds even more amused.

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ The tiny creature jumps on another pebble and it disintegrates. ‘They are funny looking pebbles, and I think I like them. What are they?’ He decides to roll in one. The smell is not that bad, but it’s not that good either.

The voice he has been listening to is really starting to laugh now. It is so overwhelming to him he starts laughing as well, and he doesn’t know why. He likes this voice, but he is not going to ask it again what these weird looking pebble things are. He wonders if it tastes better than it smells. Maybe he should try it?

‘I wouldn’t do that either,’ the voice advises. ‘It’s not really a “thing”. Not with that type of stuff anyway.’

‘Well.’ The little creature shrugs. ‘You never told me what it was, so I’m gonna do what I like in it.’

‘Oki-dokey then,’ the voice says. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

The voice begins to fade and the tiny creature starts to wonder. The voice had not told him the stuff was bad, but it had not told him it was good either. The creature starts to think of how it is helping the soil, and how things are growing because it is there. There is only one thing that might achieve this, that he knows of, and he jumps up as quickly as he can, and starts to brush it off.

‘What is it?’ he calls to the slowly departing voice. ‘What type is it? Will it hurt me?’

‘It won’t hurt you.’ The voice slowly returns. ‘It’s really very mild. That’s why you need so much of it.’

‘Okay. So, what is it again? Just so I’m sure.’

‘Sheep shit,’ says the voice and the little creature finds this so funny, that he has kicked it, and rolled in it, and thrown it around, that he begins to laugh out loud.

‘And, what am I,’ he asks, although it is already dawning on him that he is rather important, in the scheme of things. He wouldn’t usually go after poo like this, he would normally go after something a little more ‘greasy’.

‘A dung beetle,’ says the voice. ‘You are a dung beetle. And, no you could not eat my plants.’