I FLING MYSELF AT THE BRIEFCASE. SOME OF THE OTHER PASSENGERS SCREAM. I SNATCH THE BRIEFCASE OFF THE SEAT. AS I SWING IT TOWARDS THE WINDOW THE CATCH BREAKS BECAUSE OF A MANUFACTURING FAULT AND EVERYTHING TUMBLES OUT ONTO THE FLOOR. BOOKS, TEA BAGS, PENS, TISSUES, PHOTOS, FRUIT, BITS OF PAPER, COUGH LOLLIES.
NO BOMB.
I STARE AT THE STUFF ON THE FLOOR TO MAKE DOUBLE SURE THERE ISN’T A BOMB. THEN I START GRABBING THE THINGS AND PUTTING THEM BACK INTO THE BRIEFCASE. I PICK UP A PHOTO. THE MAN’S IN IT AND A WOMAN AND A GIRL AND A BOY ALL IN FOREIGN CLOTHES. THEN I PICK UP A PIECE OF OLD NEWSPAPER WRAPPED IN CLEAR PLASTIC. I READ THE HEADLINE – REFUGEE BOAT SINKS, 353 DROWN, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
MAN Please, let me.
I LOOK UP. THE MAN IS BACK. HE’S STANDING THERE HOLDING THREE ICE-CREAMS CAREFULLY IN A BUNCH LIKE THEY’RE REALLY PRECIOUS.
MAN One you, one your mother.
FOR A MOMENT I’M NOT SURE WHAT TO DO. I STAND UP. I TAKE TWO OF THE ICE-CREAMS.
ME Um, thank you.
I SIT DOWN NEXT TO MUM AND GIVE HER AN ICECREAM. SHE GIVES IT BACK TO ME AND STANDS UP AND GOES OVER TO THE MAN.
MUM That’s very kind. You shouldn’t have. Thank you.
MUM HELPS THE MAN PUT THE THINGS BACK INTO HIS BRIEFCASE. SHE SEES THE PHOTO AND THE PIECE OF NEWSPAPER. I CAN SEE SHE WANTS TO SAY SOMETHING TO THE MAN BUT SHE CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING. SHE TOUCHES HIS ARM. HE LOWERS HIS EYES.
MUM SITS BACK DOWN. SO DOES THE MAN. I GIVE MUM HER ICE-CREAM.
THE TRAIN’S GOING FAST NOW. I EAT MY ICE-CREAM. I THINK ABOUT THE THINGS IN THE MAN’S BRIEFCASE. SPECIALLY THE PICTURES OF HIS FAMILY.
I FEEL SAD.
I LOOK AT MUM. SHE LOOKS SAD TOO. SHE’S NOT EATING HER ICE-CREAM.
MUM You have it love.
I EAT HER ICE-CREAM.
WHEN I’VE FINISHED I LOOK OVER AT THE MAN. HE’S NOT EATING HIS ICE-CREAM EITHER. IT’S MELTING. LITTLE TRICKLES ARE RUNNING ONTO HIS HAND. HE DOESN’T NOTICE BECAUSE HIS EYES ARE CLOSED. LITTLE TRICKLES ARE RUNNING DOWN HIS FACE. NOT ICE-CREAM.
HE OPENS HIS EYES. HE HOLDS HIS ICE-CREAM OUT TO ME.
MAN You have please.
I DON’T REALLY FEEL LIKE ANOTHER ONE BUT I TAKE IT AND EAT IT BECAUSE SOMEBODY HAS TO DISPOSE OF IT.
THE MAN CLOSES HIS EYES AGAIN AND HUGS HIS BRIEFCASE TO HIS CHEST. I TRY TO THINK WHAT I CAN GIVE HIM IN RETURN FOR THREE ICE-CREAMS.
ME I spy with my little eye something beginning with B.
THE MAN OPENS HIS EYES. HE LOOKS AT ME AND THINKS FOR A BIT.
MAN Bomb.
SOME OF THE OTHER PASSENGERS LOOK ALARMED AGAIN. THE MAN POINTS OUT THE TRAIN WINDOW. WE’RE STOPPED AT A STATION. I SEE WHAT HE’S POINTING AT.
ME You mean that old car parked over there with rusty doors?
MAN Yes.
ME No.
THE MAN THINKS AGAIN.
MAN Briefcase.
ME Yes.
ME AND THE MAN PLAY I-SPY TILL HE GETS OFF AT PENRITH. HE’S VERY GOOD AT IT, BUT ONLY WITH WORDS STARTING WITH A, B AND C. ME AND MUM WAVE TO HIM ON THE PLATFORM. THEN TO MY SURPRISE MUM STARTS PLAYING I-SPY WITH ME.
MUM I spy with my little eye something beginning with LM.
I LOOK AROUND THE CARRIAGE. I POINT TO A BLOKE UP THE OTHER END WHO’S YELLING INTO HIS PHONE.
ME Loud mobile?
MUM POINTS TO HERSELF.
MUM Lucky mum.
SHE GIVES ME A HUG. WE PLAY I-SPY FOR THE REST OF THE TRIP. I’M GLAD I FORGOT MY MP3.
THE END
Germ Meets Worm
‘You need a holiday,’ said Aristotle. ‘No I don’t,’ said Blob.
Blob was sweeping so fast, Aristotle felt dizzy just watching his brother’s broom.
‘Yes you do,’ said Aristotle. ‘I can spot the signs.’
Blob was the tiredest-looking germ in the whole nostril. His body was flat and fatigue-wrinkled. His ectoplasm was grey. OK, some of the grey was dirt, but most of it was exhaustion.
‘I haven’t got time for a holiday,’ grumbled Blob. He pointed to the vast space around them. ‘I’ve got to sweep out this nostril, wash the nose hairs, clean out the mucus ducts, the smell equipment needs servicing, and if you don’t pull your tendril out and get on with that dusting, I’ll have to do that too.’
Aristotle sighed.
Or he would have done if nose germs could blow out air in an exasperated way. As they can’t, he just stuck out his bottom in an exasperated way.
‘Give yourself a break, Blob,’ said Aristotle. ‘You don’t have to do all the housework yourself.’
He pointed to the thousands of other nose germs in the nostril who were busily sweeping and dusting and washing and cleaning and whistling happily.
‘Pah,’ said Blob. ‘They don’t do it properly. There’s only one germ around here who knows how to keep a human nostril clean and tidy, and that’s mmpff…’
Blob wasn’t able to finish because of the feather duster Aristotle stuffed into his speech duct.
‘Listen to me,’ said Aristotle. ‘We’ve been slaving in this nostril most of our working lives. Four and a half hours at least. And we’ve never taken holidays. That means we’re owed nearly twenty minutes off.’
Aristotle took the broom away from Blob, who didn’t protest because he was busy pulling the feather duster out of his speech duct. And busy realising it was actually made from dust-mite armpit hair. And busy feeling sick.
‘So,’ said Aristotle, leaning Blob’s broom against a pimple. ‘Where shall we go for our holiday?’
Down in the stomach, Wilton the tummy worm was having a holiday he didn’t need, or want, or like.
It was called his life.
‘Please,’ he begged the bacteria and enzymes and other stomach microbes hard at work all around him. ‘I want to work too. I want to do something useful. I want a job.’
‘Give it a rest, you jiffing harpic,’ said a microbe foreman up to his waist in melting ice-cream. ‘We’ve been through this a million times. You’re a worm. We don’t employ worms.’ He yelled across the stomach cavity. ‘Hey, can we get some digestive juices over here?’
‘I’ll get them,’ said Wilton. ‘Let me get them.’
‘Stay where you are,’ said the foreman. ‘The squirties’ll do it. It’s their job.’
‘But I want to help,’ said Wilton.
‘Surf and ajax,’ said the foreman. ‘Get it through your thick ectoplasm, you great fat lump. You’re a worm. You don’t have to work. You’re a parasite. Enjoy it.’
Wilton curled up miserably.
He couldn’t enjoy feeling bored and useless. All around him the vast tummy was gurgling with happy industry. Millions of lucky microbes leading enjoyable and satisfying lives doing interesting and important work.
Sorting the veggies from the meat.
Making neat piles of fingernail fragments.
Rounding up globules of fat and sending them off to the bloodstream where they belonged.
Wilton felt a familiar tickle in his mid-section.
‘Half your luck,’ said a cheery voice. ‘Wish I had a life of leisure. I’d swap places with you any day.’
Wilton tried to stay calm. He reminded himself he was very lucky to have a best friend living inside him, even if that best friend was sometimes a bit insensitive about jobs and tickling.
Algy’s tiny microbe head appeared from inside one of Wilton’s waste ducts.
‘It’s non-stop housework in here,’ said Algy happily. ‘Tidying your inside bits, cleaning your walls and floors, keeping all your vital organs neat. Then I turn my back and you’ve messed them all up again.’
Wilton looked enviously at his tiny friend.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘And I’m very grateful. But you don’t have to do all the housework yourself. I could do some.’
‘Don’t be a dope,’ said Algy gently. ‘How are you going to sweep out your own insides? You haven’t got any tendrils. How are you going to hold the broom?’
> Wilton knew Algy was right.
‘That’s the real reason those tummy workers won’t employ me,’ said Wilton. ‘If I had tendrils, I bet they’d give me a job.’
Algy shook his head.
‘They won’t employ you,’ he said, ‘because you’re about a hundred times bigger than them and you won’t fit in the tea room.’
Wilton sighed.
Or he would have done if tummy worms could exhale oxygen-related gases in a sad way. As they can’t, he just let his bottom sag.
‘Come on,’ said Algy. ‘Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. There must be a job somewhere for an oversized worm. We’ve just got to find it.’
Up in the nostril, the travel agent went amazed-shaped.
‘A twenty-minute holiday?’ he said to Aristotle and Blob. ‘You are two lucky nose germs. The longest I’ve ever been away for is three minutes. And two minutes of that was the flights.’
‘We’ve never had a holiday before,’ said Aristotle. ‘We’d like to go somewhere exotic and restful.’
‘I’ve got just the thing,’ said the travel agent. ‘How about twenty luxurious minutes lazing by a pool?’
‘Sounds good,’ said Aristotle. ‘Where are we travelling to?’
‘Just over there,’ said the travel agent, pointing. ‘That pool of snot.’
Aristotle saw how many other holidaying germs were already splashing around in it.
He also saw what Blob was doing. Pulling cleaning gear out of his travel bag.
‘Disgraceful,’ said Blob. ‘Look how cloudy that shallow end is. Filter must be clogged. I’ll need to get at that with my scrubbing brush.’
‘Have you got anywhere else?’ said Aristotle hastily to the travel agent. ‘Somewhere a bit more exotic and far away?’
‘I certainly have,’ said the travel agent. ‘How does a luxury golfing holiday sound? Eighteen hole course, all natural skin-pores, and it’s way over the other side of the nostril.’
‘Pah,’ grumbled Blob. ‘I’ve heard about the disgraceful state of the other side of the nostril. If we’re going over there I’ll have to take my broom.’
‘Even more exotic,’ said Aristotle to the travel agent. ‘And even further away.’
The travel agent had a think.
‘Aromatherapy retreat?’ he said. ‘Nose-hair hang-gliding? Mucus safari?’
‘Somewhere,’ said Aristotle, ‘not in the nostril.’
The travel agent went alarmed-shaped.
‘Oi,’ yelled the angry digestion foreman. ‘Harpic. Put that jiffing gravy down right now.’
Wilton winced and the drop of gravy he’d been trying to balance on his tail rolled off with a plop.
All around the stomach, thousands of bacteria glared at Wilton with that expression tummy workers get when they think you’re trying to steal their job.
Algy peered nervously over Wilton’s shoulder.
‘Accept it, Wriggles,’ he said. ‘There just isn’t a place for you in the digestion industry. Come on, let’s go for a paddle in the spleen.’
Wilton didn’t want to. All he did these days was paddle in the spleen. He was sick of it.
‘There must be something useful I can do,’ he said. ‘I can’t swim, so that rules out the blood industry. And I haven’t got a sense of rhythm, so I’d be hopeless in the heart industry.’
Algy hated seeing his friend so unhappy.
‘You’re big and strong,’ he said to Wilton. ‘Maybe in the spleen they’ll let you put out the deckchairs and beach umbrellas.’
Wilton wasn’t listening.
He had just noticed something very unusual. Two strange microbes were speeding down the stomach wall in a rental saliva bubble.
Wilton stiffened in alarm.
‘Nose germs,’ he said. ‘Look, you can tell, they’ve got noses. And one of them’s armed.’
‘It’s not a weapon,’ said Algy quietly. ‘It’s a broom.’
‘The other one’s got a camera,’ said Wilton.
‘Tourists,’ said Algy.
‘They could be the advance party for an invasion force,’ said Wilton. ‘That’s what happened when the bottom germs invaded.’
Wilton looked anxiously around the stomach. The tummy workers were all working busily. Some of them were giving the nose germs a glance, but that was all.
‘They’re leaving it to me to stop the invaders,’ said Wilton.
‘Are you sure?’ said Algy.
‘You said it yourself,’ replied Wilton. ‘I’m big and strong. I was made for this sort of work. Fighting to the death with violent invaders.’
‘I didn’t say that last bit,’ squeaked Algy, hastily retreating into one of Wilton’s waste ducts.
‘Hold tight,’ said Wilton.
‘Try not to be too violent,’ pleaded Algy. ‘I’ve just tidied all your internal organs.’
‘I’ll be as violent as I have to,’ said Wilton, wriggling towards the nose germs. ‘To get the job done.’
Aristotle parked the saliva bubble and peered nervously through the windscreen.
He was beginning to see why the travel agent hadn’t wanted to book this trip for them. Why they’d had to tickle him until he’d given in.
The tummy was huge and crowded and noisy and dirty and not in the slightest bit exotic.
‘I think we might have made a mistake,’ said Aristotle to Blob.
‘No we haven’t,’ said Blob. ‘This is definitely the tummy. See, there’s the back of the belly button.’
‘I mean it doesn’t seem like a very good place for a relaxing holiday,’ said Aristotle. ‘Look at the rough way those tummy germs are flinging that food around.’
‘Disgraceful,’ said Blob. ‘This place needs a complete sweep out from top to bottom.’
He grabbed his broom and started to get out of the bubble.
‘Wait,’ said Aristotle, grabbing him. ‘Stay here. I don’t like the look of the locals.’
‘They’re only tummy germs,’ said Blob. ‘They’re just microbes like us, only messier.’
‘I don’t mean the tummy germs,’ said Aristotle.
With a trembling tendril he pointed at the huge worm wriggling towards them and looming over them in a very determined and possibly violent way.
‘Arghhh,’ squeaked Blob. ‘This wasn’t in the brochure.’
Then everything went brown.
It was the biggest lump of chocolate Wilton and Algy had ever seen.
‘Wow,’ said Algy, peeping out from inside Wilton. ‘A lump of chocolate bigger than a worm. Now I’ve seen everything.’
Wilton tried to stay calm.
The giant brown lump had dropped from the throat tube at the top of the tummy and landed on the saliva bubble with a splat, completely burying the two nose germs.
‘That,’ said Algy, ‘was a really silly place to park.’
Wilton tried to see if the nose germs were all right. Suddenly he was feeling a bit confused about his new job. It seemed a bit unfair to be fighting two nose germs to the death when they were buried in chocolate.
‘Come on,’ he said to Algy. ‘We’d better get them out.’
Wilton started burrowing into the mound of soggy chocolate, his whole body rippling with the effort.
Algy helped.
‘Faster,’ said Wilton. ‘They’re buried alive.’
‘I’m only a small microbe,’ said Algy. ‘I’m eating as fast as I can.’
‘Oi,’ yelled an angry voice. ‘You two jiffing drainos leave that chocolate alone. Pine-o-clean, how many times do I have to tell you?’
Wilton pulled his head out of the chocolate and glared down at the foreman.
‘This isn’t work,’ he said. ‘It’s a rescue.’
The foreman didn’t looked convinced. Wilton drew himself up to his full length. The foreman, noting that Wilton was about a hundred times bigger than him, backed off.
‘I’m watching you, ajax,’ he muttered to Wilton. ‘I don’t mind you mucking aro
und with tourists, but if I catch you doing any food processing, I’ll be down on you like a tonne of marshmallows.’
That’s when Algy had the idea.
He stopped eating the chocolate and stared at Wilton. He even forgot there was more chocolate to eat – that’s how amazing the idea was.
‘I can’t get over how clean and tidy this place is,’ said Blob, gazing around inside Wilton. ‘I couldn’t make this place cleaner and tidier if I tried. Though I probably will try a bit later.’
He took another sip of his chocolate cocktail and relaxed in his deckchair.
Algy glowed with pride.
Aristotle glowed too, with relief. He settled back on a wonderfully comfortable sofa made from the softest skin cells he’d ever sat on.
At last, he and Blob were having a real break.
What a nice tummy worm and tummy microbe, thought Aristotle. More like holiday resort hosts than vicious killers.
‘This is such a great spot for a holiday,’ he said gratefully to Algy. ‘It’s so quiet and peaceful in here. And you’ve done wonders with the décor.’
Algy glowed even more.
‘I couldn’t go wrong,’ he said modestly. ‘Wilton’s so roomy and his internal organs were made for the place.’
Wilton listened contentedly to the chatter inside him.
What nice nose germs, he thought. More like polite houseguests than violent invaders.
‘Everyone OK in there?’ he called. ‘Algy, let them play table tennis if they want to. I don’t mind, I like the tickly feeling.’
It was the happiest twenty minutes of Aristotle and Blob’s whole lives, and they felt like it would never end.
But like all gloriously long holidays, it finally did.
While Algy went off to organise a rental stomach-gas bubble for their return journey to the nose, Aristotle and Blob climbed up onto Wilton’s shoulder to thank him. And to let him know they hadn’t had anything from the mini-bar.
‘We had a wonderful stay,’ said Aristotle.