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Itâs not often that the entire universe explodes into smithereens and splatters cows and gizzards and bananas and ears all over the galaxy ⦠and it wasnât happening today either.
Zeke was bored. Heâd been sitting in the car for a dillion years waiting for his mother to find her glasses.
Sheâd put them down inside the house somewhere and she was searching high and low â but if you canât see a thing when youâre not wearing your glasses, how are you ever going to find them?
So Zeke was waiting for his mother to drive him to school, but at this rate sheâd be driving him to university.
Zeke had absolutely nothing to do.
His mother had said, âDonât get out of the carâ, so he was sitting there with nothing to do.
Slowly he wound the window down, and then he wound it up.
Then he wound it down again, paused, and wound it up once more.
He pretended to get his hand stuck in the window, then he picked his nose and ate the snot.
Then he pretended the car was a spaceship and he was flying to his very own powerful planet where the only things anyone did all day long were watch television, drink Coke and not clean their teeth.
Then he got bored again, so he did a little fart, and then he imagined that all the air had gone from the car and he was dying of suffocation (this actually wasnât very hard), and then he stopped, and burped the alphabet.
Then he breathed out deeply, rolled his eyes and checked under the car seats for jewelled boxes of hidden treasure, and thatâs where he found his favourite thing in the world.
Thatâs where he found his yoyo.
Zeke sat and held his yoyo for a while.
And then he got bored.
Then he wound the window down again, leaned outside the car and played with the yoyo.
He spun the yoyo as far as he could and it came back faster than a speeding bullet and donked him on the head.
Then he fell out of the car. And landed in a pot-hole.
Zeke sat dazed in the pot-hole for a while but then he got worried about his mum finding him so he imagined that he was Superman (or some other superhero who didnât actually wear blue pantyhose with undies over the outside) and used every rippling muscle in his awesome body to climb out of the treacherous chasm.
When heâd finished, he got dizzy again, crawled off the road and sat down on the footpath.
He just sat, sat, sat ⦠and then of course he got bored again.
And thatâs when he spied his sister, Eppie.
Eppie was in the front seat of the car staring at him. Sheâd actually been sitting in the car the whole time but Zeke never paid her much attention because he didnât think she was very important. In fact Zeke and his friends believed that all girls were unimportant and useless for just about everything. But there was one thing that Eppie was the best in the world for ⦠and that was being teased. (Ah yes âteasingâ: an ancient and excellent form of entertainment for brothers and sisters of all ages.)
âHey, Eppie, want to catch my yoyo?â Zeke yelled.
âMum said we have to wait in the car,â bossed Eppie. âAnd if we get out of the car and start being naughty she said sheâll be so absolutely furious that even the ants in our pants will run away.â
âIâll give you a million dollars if you come and play with me,â Zeke persisted.
âDonât be dumb, Zeke,â said Eppie.
âAll right, Iâll give you ten million dollarsâ
âOh, okay,â said Eppie.
So Eppie started to climb out her window, and she was nearly through when her foot slipped on the door handle, and she fell straight out of the window and landed head first on the road, in that very same pot-hole, with just her legs and her feet poking out.
Zeke thought Eppie looked the best heâd ever seen her until moments later a truck carrying a house ran right over the top of her and squished Eppie to the size of
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