Neighbours by Colin Thompson Page B

he moved on to the next time zone. On the net Winchflat was a legend. He could hack into anything and had once made the whole of America bankrupt in a single night, just for the fun of it. He put all the money back the next day, but not before three hundred and four crooked accountants and bank managers had committed suicide – a bonus even he hadn’t imagined. He made all the poor people a bit richer and all the rich people quite a bit poorer. Of course it was all hushed up, but all the super-hackers knew Winchflat (or Naughty Trixie, as he was known on the net) had been there.

    The night Mrs Dent came into their back garden, Winchflat was standing by the window drinking a can of Super-High-Caffeine-Zap-A-Cola when he looked down and saw her stumbling abouton the lawn in the red high heels they had left there as bait. He immediately went and told the others.
    â€˜The hippo has landed.’
    â€˜Okay,’ said Nerlin, ‘but we still have to decide what to do with her.’
    â€˜Mummy’s hungry,’ said Mordonna.
    â€˜No, that’s boring,’ said Morbid. Silent nodded vigorously.
    â€˜We want something we can all enjoy,’ said Satanella. ‘Anyway, all that fat wouldn’t be good to eat, even for someone as dead as Granny.’
    â€˜Something artistic,’ Betty suggested. She wasthe creative one in the family. ‘Maybe we could turn her into a fruit tree, or a hot tub.’
    â€˜Can you imagine what the fruit would taste like?’ said Valla. ‘Yuck. Quite like the hot tub idea, though. I mean, she’s a great big tub already.’
    â€˜No, no, I’ve got it,’ said Nerlin. ‘What did the wretched woman do that annoyed us the most?’
    â€˜Breathe?’ said Winchflat.
    â€˜No, keep her TV blaring out all day and night . So let’s turn her into a super deluxe flat-screen plasma television.’
    â€˜Can we have surround sound with all the loudspeakers around the room?’
    â€˜Absolutely,’ said Nerlin.
    â€˜Can we do it?’ asked the twins.
    â€˜No, me, me!’ said Merlinmary.
    â€˜We’ll draw straws,’ Nerlin decided. ‘Everyone get a pencil and paper, and whoever draws the longest straw can do the magic.’
    (You might be wondering why Nerlin didn’t just do the magic himself. Well, I’m going to let you in on a very secret secret that no one who isn’t a wizard or witchknows. It will also explain why Nerlin took Merlinmary with him when he went to talk to Mr Dent, and why it was Merlinmary who turned Rambo into a poodle. Before I do, you must promise inside your head that you will never tell this secret to anyone else.
    If you look at all the stories about wizards from Merlin through to Harry Potter, you will see that not many of them get married and have children. You might think this is because most wizards are seriously ugly, but that’s not the case. Most witches actually think wizards look really cool and handsome. No, the reason is this: when a wizard is born he has magical powers, but if he has a child, that child takes some of his parent’s magical powers. And as the child grows so do his magical powers, but the bit his father gave him is not replaced. This means that Nerlin, who has had seven children, has lost a lot of his magic.
    It doesn’t matter how the children are made – in a laboratory, grown from a cutting or made like you and I were – the wizard always loses a bit of his power.
    Now the only thing that Nerlin can turn people into is a potted plant. He has even lost the power tomake them become frogs or toads.
    When people call him Merlin, which they do all the time, he explains that ‘N’ comes after ‘M’ and he came after Merlin so that was why he was called Nerlin. Sensible people look confused at this, and just nod. Stupid people look sarcastic and ask him why his sons aren’t called Oerlin, Perlin and Qerlin, then.