Squiggle Read online

  After a while she fell asleep.

  When she woke up, the TV was still on. Right away she thought of the potion and looked at the digital clock in a fright. It read 12:00! The house was silent. Her parents had gone to bed long ago. (They had not come to wish Lobelia a good night, because they were afraid she would throw something at them.)

  Now it was almost too late.

  She snatched up the little glass and held it close to her face to look at it. Could it really be that this little bit of sparkly, jumpy stuff would make her happy? Most people spend their entire lives trying to make themselves happier. They read difficult books about Self Improvement and do Yoga exercises, and after years and years of hooking their ankles over their ears they still aren’t satisfied with themselves. Lobelia was about to do something that thousands of people all over the world could only dream about. She was about to. . . .

  But she was a second too late. The clock turned over to 12:01, and. . . .

  BOOM!

  4

  The sound woke up the entire neighborhood. Birds looked out over the sides of their nests. A groundhog poked his head out of his burrow. (And you know how hard it is to wake them up.) Lobelia’s parents, only just down the hall and two rooms away, thought that they had been deafened. They jolted up and sat in bed with the covers clutched to their chins, looking wanly at each other in the pale moonlight.

  “Maybe,” Mr. Squagg said, “her TV fell on the floor.”

  “Maybe it’s broken,” Mrs. Squagg said, hopefully.

  “With a noise like that,” Mr. Squagg said, “it must be in a thousand pieces. Ha ha!” But right away he looked sad again. “We’ll have to buy her a new one.”

  He began to get out of bed, feeling around on the rug with his bare feet, trying to find his slippers. “You don’t suppose Video Twist is open all night?”

  He paused at the edge of the bed. The house was perfectly silent. Lobelia didn’t seem to be screeching for a new TV right away. “She must have slept right through it,” he said, getting back under the covers. “Amazing girl, really,” he said, turning over and going back to sleep.

  The next morning they walked into Lobelia’s room and found her stretched out on the bed with her head gone. It was missing! It was nowhere! Or rather, it was everywhere! They were astonished.

  “I suppose,” Mr. Squagg said thoughtfully, munching on a piece of toast and jam, “this is what you get from drinking too much soda pop.”

  “What a shame,” Mrs. Squagg said. “Killed by her own burping.” She stepped sadly across the cluttered floor to the window and opened it. She wanted to air out the smell of Lobelia’s last, titanic burp.

  Let me reassure you right now, in case you are worried, that it is absolutely, totally, completely impossible to burp your head off unless you have drunk more than five liters of soda in three minutes. If Lobelia’s parents had looked carefully, they would have seen only two bottles of Coconut Bacon Cheddar Cola, one of them half full, which meant, to the astute observer, that Lobelia could not possibly have burped her head off.

  No, her head had been blown off. And her soul, flying out of her head, had gotten lodged in a stuffed toy monkey lying on the floor. (I think I have mentioned it before.) Lobelia had had a very peculiar night.

  5

  After the explosion, for about an hour, the monkey lay on the floor in a daze. It couldn’t remember what had happened, where it was, or even what it was. It couldn’t remember its own name. When it sat up and looked around, the first thing it saw was a stuffed hippopotamus. The monkey scrambled backward in a fright, but the hippo only continued to stare out of beady black eyes.

  “Er, who are you?” the Lobelia monkey asked, but the hippo said nothing. It glowered with exactly the same expression.

  “Are you, er, alive?”

  It didn’t seem to be. The monkey wondered if it was in a giant taxidermist’s shop, “in which case,” it decided, “I’d better escape before I get stuffed, myself.”

  All around lay weird gigantic toys in boxes. A plastic soldier, hideously jointed, stood up at attention about seven feet tall. At least, it seemed seven feet tall. The monkey thought that she herself was four-six. (She remembered suddenly that she was a girl.)

  Behind her was a plastic doll’s mirror. When she peered into it she thought, “That’s what I am. I’m a monkey.” This didn’t quite seem right to her; but the reflection in the mirror was perfectly clear, so it must be true. She was black and fuzzy all over, with long gangly arms and legs, and a long tail, and white puffy whiskers that stuck out on either side of her face. Rather nice looking, she thought to herself, fluffing out her whiskers with her paw.

  She had a plastic earring with a laminated tag dangling from it. Holding the tag up to the mirror, she read, “Hi, my name is Squiggle! I’m a Colobus monkey and I come from Zaire!”

  For a few minutes Lobelia practiced in front of the mirror, bowing and saying, “Hello, my name is Squiggle Squagg. Can you tell me the way to Zaire?” You see, little bits of her memory were coming back.

  Somewhere above her a quiet, scratching, spitting sound finally attracted her attention. She looked up to see the edge of what looked like—this seemed ridiculous—a gigantic bed. It was covered with gigantic blankets, messy and unmade, and a gigantic pillow stuck out partly over the edge. The bed was so high that she couldn’t see anything on it except for the corner of a gigantic TV. The sight of such a large TV, twice as tall as she was, stirred a longing in her. She thought it would be lovely to sit in front of it. It would be like having your own movie theatre, only better because in a theatre you never get to sit right up in front of the movie screen. The TV seemed to be making the spitting noises.

  “I’m going to climb up there,” she thought, and grabbed hold of a fold of blanket. Monkeys are excellent climbers. Lobelia didn’t know this, but all the same, the little stuffed monkey was on the bed in a second and a half. In another second she tumbled back off again and lay on the floor, quivering and goggling at the ceiling.

  She had seen—Ugh! There was a corpse lying full length in the bed. A corpse without a head. The TV was broken; the screen was cracked and full of static.

  The person on the bed looked familiar. At least, its clothes did. Everything looked familiar, except that it all seemed much larger than in her memory. The monkey climbed slowly up the side of the bed again. She poked her head over the top and stared at the body. It was wearing blue pajamas with little red stars on it.

  Squiggle, or Lobelia, whichever you wish, felt as if she had once owned a pair of pajamas just like that.

  She climbed up the rest of the way and stood on her long wiry back legs, staring about the bed and room. Slowly it came to her where she was. She was in her own bedroom. The TV was hers. The enormous toys on the floor were her toys. And the headless body was . . . well, it was her own self. She was looking at herself.

  Maybe you think this upset her very much? At first she was too confused to be upset. She was alive, however, and that was encouraging. She sat down on the edge of the bed, put her furry head in her hands, and tried to think it all through. She remembered about the Lesser Spotted Pickfloo and his Magical Potion. Maybe, in a few minutes, something else magical would happen and set everything right.

  But nothing happened. She waited half an hour, and nothing changed. She was still inside the body of a monkey.

  Then she thought, “Do I really want to be inside that other—I mean, my old body?” She began to list reasons in her mind why it was not so bad being a monkey.

  First, she wouldn’t have to go to school anymore. Ha ha!

  Second, who cares what your body looks like if you’re sitting in bed watching TV?

  Third, it would be fun to see the reaction of her parents when they walked in the room and found out. She would yell at them, and throw things at them, and pretend it was all their fault, and
pretend to be upset about being a monkey, so that they would feel sorry for her and buy her lots of exciting new things. Like a new TV. And more food. And. . . .

  What did monkeys eat, anyway? Did they like Salami Surprise Deluxe Potato Chips? Even though Lobelia, as a little girl, had just stuffed herself a few hours earlier, the little monkey had never eaten anything in its entire existence and was beginning to feel hungry. She scurried over to the bag of chips lying on the bed. She had to climb over the body, but since it was her own body, she didn’t mind. She couldn’t help noticing how flabby and unhealthy it looked.

  She took out a pawful of chips and sniffed at them. They smelled the same as ever, but somehow they didn’t seem appetizing. She nibbled one and spat it out right away. No, monkeys definitely did not eat Salami Surprise Deluxe Potato Chips.

  She was also thirsty, and with a struggle managed to get off the top of a soda bottle that was as tall as she was. She tipped it, slowly, gently, toward her mouth and stuck her tongue into the open top. It was TERRIBLE. Monkeys didn’t drink Coconut Bacon Cheddar Cola.

  She was not very worried. She would simply wait for morning and her parents would get her some monkey food. In the meantime she would sit up in bed watching TV and using that big fat thing, the body, as a pillow to lie back on.

  She fiddled with the TV dials, but nothing happened. Static danced over the screen. The explosion must have broken the TV. She kicked the screen in a rage and then hopped about the bed holding onto her furry little foot.

  Since she couldn’t watch TV, she thought she might read about Colobus monkeys from Zaire and find out what sort of food they ate. Reading was never a regular pasttime of Lobelia’s. She hated books of any kind, especially schoolbooks, and used them mainly to throw at her parents. Being turned into a monkey seemed to have done her some good; she was willing to look at a book, anyway, if it would help her.

  Her bookshelf was full of children’s books that her parents and relatives had given her and that she had never bothered to read. She began to pull them off and look through them, one by one. Fortunately there was a standing lamp just beside the shelves, so she could climb up the pole and hang on with her tail and feet while rummaging through the books with her hands. She could find nothing on Colobus or any other kind of monkey except for a book about Curious George, and that didn’t have anything about monkey food, except for the time Curious George ate the puzzle piece.

  After a while she was exhausted from pulling gigantic books off the shelves, books as large as she was, and she curled up on the floor and went to sleep.

  When she woke up, the room was full of light pouring in through the window. Her parents had just come in—it was the sound of their footsteps that had woken her up. At first she was going to rush up and tell them everything, but then she thought it would be fun to hide where she was and spy on them. She imagined them screaming and fainting at the sight of the dead body, and then falling on their knees in thankfulness when they found out that their daughter wasn’t really dead but had only been turned into a monkey. She giggled and had to cover her mouth with a paw so that she wouldn’t make too much noise.

  She peered out around a shoetree. Her mother was just opening the window. Her father was—he was eating a piece of toast. Maybe they hadn’t seen the dead body yet? As soon as he looked at the bed, the toast would fall out of his hand and he would scream. Of course he would.

  It was about to happen. His eyes had moved to the bed. Then he took another bite of toast and said, “I think I’ll call the travel agent. Darling! All the places we wanted to go, and couldn’t because of you-know-who!”

  “Can you imagine?” her mother said. “Going on vacation with old Lobotomy screaming and throwing things and wanting to watch TV?”

  “We’re done with all that,” her father said. “We could be anywhere inside of a week. Anywhere in the world!”

  The monkey stared at them. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had never really stopped to think about her parents’ opinion of her, but had thought of them more like wind-up toys that went about doing what parents were supposed to do, namely, giving her whatever she wanted.

  She jumped out of hiding and scrambled across the floor shouting, “Mommy! Daddy! It’s me! I’m a monkey!” At least, she meant to shout it, but her voice came out as a fuzzy whisper. It sounded like an insect. She couldn’t get any volume out of her monkey throat; the polyester stuffing seemed to get in the way. Her mother screamed. Her father dropped his piece of toast.

  “Kill it, the horrible thing!” her mother shouted.

  “It’s a squirrel!” her father shouted. “A horrible squirrel that’s chewed our daughter’s head off!”

  “It’s a tarantula!” her mother shouted. “A voracious spider that’s pulled our darling Lobotomy’s head off!”

  “It’s a hairy frog!” her father shouted.

  “It’s a gigantic grasshopper!” her mother shouted.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s crawling up my leg!!” her father shouted, kicking out wildly and sending the monkey flying across the room and crashing into the far corner.

  Mr. and Mrs. Squagg began to throw things at it, picking up handy objects that were littered all over the floor, like sneakers and plastic toys and radios. Lobelia danced and bounced in the corner, trying to avoid the missiles, gibbering the entire time, but her parents could not hear her. A ceramic mug crashed into the wall just above her head. Then a metal bracelet hit her in the stomach. It was no use. She couldn’t get them to listen.

  Mr. Squagg grabbed hold of an enormous wooden dollhouse that weighed about eighty pounds and lifted it over his head. Tiny cups and plates and dolls’ dresses fell out on his hair. He rushed toward the corner, and if Lobelia had stayed there much longer she would have been an exceptionally flat monkey. Instead she leaped for the open window. In a moment she had climbed down the drainpipe and was scampering away as fast as she could on all fours.

  6

  It was still early in the morning. Nobody saw the little monkey galloping down the sidewalk except for the mailman, who thought it was a cat. After a few blocks Lobelia reached the entrance to a park where she ran inside, darted behind a hedge, and stopped to catch her breath. She put her furry little face in her paws and burst into tears. At least, that’s what she wanted to do, but monkeys don’t cry. No tears came out of her eyes, and that made her feel even worse. At that moment she was the most miserable little ball of monkey in the entire world.

  Up until now, Lobelia had always gotten everything she wanted just by screaming. If screaming didn’t work, then throwing something usually did the trick. Now, even though there was nobody to scream at, she threw a colossal temper tantrum anyway because that was all she could think of to do. It was her last resort. She rolled around in the dirt under the shrub and kicked and squalled in her new, tiny, whispery voice. She tried to shout as loud as she could, but it wouldn’t come out of her throat. She picked up clumps of dirt and pebbles in her paws and threw them all directions.

  Nothing happened. Nobody came to help her. The Bureau of Emergency Magic did not monitor the wishes of little synthetic monkeys.

  After a while she was too tired to kick anymore. She lay still, panting, a sorry sight, her fur ruffled and covered in dust. Dismal thoughts and pictures went through her mind.

  Everyone is faced with a similar moment sometime or other, when you realize that the next thing to do is up to you, and not up to somebody else. Either Lobelia could lie there under the bush, helpless, until it rained and she got soggy, or she could get up and do something. After a while, when a passing beetle tickled her toes and a pebble began to dig into her back, and the sun got into her eyes through a gap in the leaves, she sat up and began to brush off the dirt.

  She felt better right away.

  She gritted her little teeth in determination and said to herself, “My name is Squiggle. I am a monke
y. I’ll go to the zoo and find out what monkeys eat.”

  “I hope,” she thought, “that monkeys don’t eat awful things like bugs.”

  By this time lots of people were walking through the park along the gravel paths. It was a warm day and everyone had on shorts and T-shirts. Right in front of Squiggle’s hedge, two nice-looking women stopped to talk to each other. They weren’t talking about anything in particular; they were chatting about everyday nothings. They both had baby strollers, and while they talked the babies poked their heads up over the edges of the strollers and stared at each other.

  Squiggle was hardly even listening to them when suddenly one of the women said, “Baby loves the zoo. Especially the giraffes. Don’t you, Baby. Aren’t they your favorites?”

  Baby, who didn’t seem very enthusiastic about giraffes, said, “Ack.”

  “You see what I mean?” the lady said. “What a nice day for us to visit the zoo.”

  As soon as the lady looked away again, Squiggle leaped into the carriage and crouched down under the blanket beside the baby. The baby didn’t mind at all.

  “The question is,” Squiggle thought to herself, “are they going to the zoo, or coming back from it?” Since it was still very early in the morning, she thought that they must be on their way to it.

  After a moment the carriage began to move, bumping and crunching over the gravel, and Squiggle, or Lobelia, or Lobiggle, or Squealia, wondered very much where she was going and what would happen to her next.

  7

  You might wonder what her parents were doing all this time? They had called the police, of course, and the officer went upstairs to the bedroom to look at the body. The cleaning lady was already in the room with a long-handled mop, scrubbing Lobelia’s head off of the ceiling.

  “Ma’am, you’ll have to stop that,” the police officer said sternly. His name was Officer Poe. “Please leave the evidence exactly as it was. Now, what happened here?” He took out his pad.