Bonez Read online

  My mother brought SPLINTERZ and TOE JAMMD, for my children. My son in particular was not in the slightest bit interested in reading and even doing the reader books given to us by the school was a difficult and unrewarding task. My 7yo son decided to pick up SPLINTERZ. I heard chuckling from the bedroom and my son wandered out book in hand saying “Mum, listen to this” and reading me an excerpt he found particularly funny. In one hour my son had read 34 pages of SPLINTERZ with more fluency, meaning and interest than he has shown in any school reader.

  In one hour Susan Berran has changed my son’s whole outlook on reading - he loves it now! I can’t thank her enough for writing witty and engaging stories that all children would enjoy reading.

  I’m sure a lot of my son’s enthusiasm comes from all the ‘risque’ words like poop and bull crap! He kept on chuckling and telling us how funny it was when Sam suggested they throw a battery in after the bulb and when it caught up,the bulb would glow and they could watch where it went.

  He loves the fact that there is more than one story going on in the book, something that seems to be lacking in many school readers.

  I adore reading, and was resigning myself to the fact that my son would never get the same joy from reading I do, until we found SPLINTERZ. Thank you very much.

  I’ve gone blank and can’t think of all the things I wanted to say in praise of these books and their author, so I guess this will have to do! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Charlie now comes home and says “I’m going to read” he no longer wants to play the Xbox or computer games or Wii he just wants to read SPLINTERZ

  He’ll be finished the book by the end of this week so Susan better write like crazy so she can publish more books for my son to read.

  Tonya Gladstone

  (extract of orig’ email)

  This exciting series is about a boy just like you! What makes Sam just a little bit different sometimes, is that he escapes his mum and baby sister on the sort of escapades you have only dreamt of! Don’t you wish you could escape too at times? Well, when you join Sam on his amazing adventures, you’ll be there right alongside him. What are you waiting for? Join Sam on the adventure of a lifetime! Just make sure that you’re as brave and daring as he is, before you turn the first page . . .

  Bonez

  Published by JoJo Publishing

  ‘Yarra’s Edge’

  2203/80 Lorimer Street

  Docklands VIC 3008

  Australia

  Email: [email protected] or

  visit www.jojopublishing.com

  © 2012 JoJo Publishing

  This edition published 2012

  Text Copyright © Susan Berran 2012

  Illustrations Copyright © Susan Berran 2012

  www.susanberran.com

  No part of this printed or video publication may be reproduced, stored in or intro-duced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  Berran, Susan, 1962-

  Bonez / author and illustrator Susan Berran.

  ISBN: 978-0-9874103-0-6 (ePub.)

  For primary school age.

  A823.4

  Designer: Adam Laszczuk - Madacin Creative

  Distributed by

  Port Campbell Press

  www.portcampbellpress.com.au

  Conversion by Winking Billy

  to

  ‘JoJo Publishing’

  . . . for their passion and dedication to publishing books that make a difference.

  . . . for making it possible for so many more kids around the world to enjoy reading.

  . . . and, personally, for my ‘big break’.

  . . . for making my books all look sooo awesome.

  . . . for done gettin’ me words right.

  An AWESOME team.

  It’s so DARK in here!

  Why is it always so dark?!

  You know . . . it’s right on midnight, there’s no moonlight and your head’s shoved face-first into the warm, sweaty armpit of the world’s hairiest Gorilla.

  Yeah, it’s that dark!

  “Don’t breathe or it’ll hear us” I whispered quickly.

  We couldn’t move, we were TERRIFIED . . . well Jared was, not me, I was as cool as a cucumber frozen in ice. I just pretended to be scared so that Jared wouldn’t feel so bad.

  My hands were sweating, like the butt of a baboon, wrapped in an unshorn sheep in the middle of summer, as I took a little mirror out, cautiously, from my Super Awesome Bulravian Utility Belt. As I poked it gingerly around the corner, (the mirror, NOT my butt) I saw a reflection, a split second reflection.

  TEETH!

  REALLY, REALLY, REALLY BIG teeth and from what I could see, as sharp as a doctor’s scalpel.

  How the hell did I get into this mess?!

  Yesterday I was at home in our tiny little crap shack in the ‘sticks’ where nothing exciting ever happens during the daytime . . . come to think of it, nothing ever happens in Agnath at night time either. I’ve seen possums throwing themselves in front of cars to become road kill because they’re sooo bored. REALLY!

  When we moved out here from the city I just thought it was Mum and Dad’s really dumb idea of a bad joke. I mean I knew we were moving out to the country but this was ridiculous. We’d been driving practically non-stop all day, the air conditioner wasn’t working either and it was the hottest day in summer in about a gazillion years.

  And spending the entire trip whinging, screaming and drooling dribble all over me, was my always annoying new baby sister; little Miss Smelly Melly Princess Poopy Pants . . . who of course had her usual case of diarrhoea.

  Yep, if there was a category in the Guinness Book of World Records for the ‘GROSSEST, SMELLIEST, PHLEGM-FILLED HUMAN BEING’, there would definitely be a picture of my sister . . . Miss Incrediblus Stinkus Poopus Buttocks Smelly Melly.

  But when we finally left the four-lane freeway behind, then the two-way bitumen for a thin, windy road and finally pulled off the dusty, swampy, pot-holed dirt track we suddenly slid to a halt, spraying a mist of dirt across the bonnet of the car. Dad leapt happily out his door and before the red cloud of dust engulfing him had cleared, he announced proudly . . .

  “We’re here!”

  I looked all about, in absolutely every possible boring direction. There were ROCKS, DEAD GRASS, HILLS and WAAAAAAY more dirt, but absolutely, positively, definitely NOTHING else.

  “Where?” I yelled completely dumbfounded. There was just nothing anywhere in sight . . . nothing!

  We were standing on the side of a ‘GOAT TRACK’ beside a termite-eaten wooden post that had been shoved down into a mound of red dirt. L o o s e l y hanging from it was an empty, weather-worn, rust-eaten old milk can that was attached by a length of frayed rope.

  “This is all ours” Dad said, proudly pointing along a rock covered dirt track that led its way up to something that looked like a very old, but very large DOG KENNEL.

  “And this is our new letterbox” Mum added excitedly, patting the tin can just once, which then snapped the rope and dropped straight into the dirt below . . . CRASH!

  Mum obviously doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘NEW’.

  It was absolutely, positively and most definitely the worst day of my entire, crappy life . . . so far.

  It felt like someone had just dropped a teensy weensy little mouse on top of me

  . . . a teensy, weensy, little mouse, tap dancing on top of a furry green tennis ball, . . . a furry green tennis ball, balancing on the nose of a ferret, sitting lazily on a red bowling ball . . . a ferret lazing on a red bowling ball, balancing v
ery delicately on the back of a turkey, performing ballet . . . a turkey performing ballet on top of a quiet game of chess between a fat donkey and a very overweight goat . . . and all on the back of an African elephant.

  In other words; I was crushed!!

  And of course, all of this was because of little Miss ‘I’m sooo allergic to everything in the whole universe’ Jelly Melly.

  Apparently we HAD to move all the way out here for the ‘clean air’, the ‘space’ and the ‘natural remedies that only the purest of nature can provide’ . . . or so Mum reckoned.

  WHAT A HUMONGOUS LOAD OF BULL!

  What about me!?

  I didn’t WANT any more space! I didn’t NEED any more ‘fresh’ air! And ‘Bombshel Butt’ was always rolling around without a nappy on and having little accidents everywhere. . . how much more ‘natural’ could she get!? Just because Mum had bought all these weird Hippie books on how to pick some dorky flowers and strange weeds and moosh them all together to make ‘herbal remedies’. What’s wrong with getting a tablet from the doctor and jamming it down her throat?! That’s what Mum does to ME!

  Anyway . . . how much ‘SPACE’ and ‘AIR’ does a baby need in a day? They can barely move, so what sort of space do they need to roll from side to side occasionally? Their lungs are about the size of a sponge and because they’re barely doing anything, then surely they don’t need to breathe too much either?!

  I tried explaining to Mum and Dad how I’d scientifically figured out that if we put little Miss Painful Puss into the fish tank with a lid on top to keep out the ‘DIRTY AIR’ . . . then that would be heaps of space and air for her.

  It wouldn’t have any fish in it of course . . . that would be CRUEL to the fish and they’d die from her smell for sure. So there was no need to move house; we could keep her on the coffee table.

  For some reason they both got really crabby with me . . . I don’t know why, I was just trying to help!

  Anyway, at least I had one good mate in Agnath. If Jared’s family hadn’t moved here a short time after us, I would have died from total boredom, or ‘AgnathIUM’ as me and Jared call it - DEATH BY Agnath! - because the only other kids around here are . . . hmmm . . . what’s another word for extremely boring and dull?

  Oh and I almost forgot. Of course there’s the town CRAZY person. Every town has one loopy, NUTSO FREAK-A-ZOID. Pick a movie, any movie. Where there’s a town, there’s some weird, CREEPY, loony old man, or wart-faced old woman that everyone thinks is a WITCH. Usually they’re living in some really old, crappy, wooden shack that seems to scream its agony as it creaks and groans in the wind, with filthy broken windows staring out like EVIL eyes at everyone who passes by and the whole house falling apart around them. They usually hide behind the twisted ROTTING door until some unsuspecting, innocent little kid comes along and if that kid dares to come anywhere within earshot of the old fruit loop’s precious little crumbling pile of rubbish called a house, THEY POUNCE! Suddenly, they strike like some giant ferocious, venomous snake . . . yep, completely and utterly loopy, round the twist, Whack-job, ‘not playing with the full-deck’ nut-job and all-round total SPAZ.

  So naturally Agnath had to have one of these weirdoes as well.

  Me and Jared have to ride past her crappy old ‘STABLE’ on the way to and from school every day. Actually, I guess we could go through the paddock just up from my place. I reckon that way is definitely shorter, but we pretty much just love annoying the absolute crap out of the ugly old ‘toad’.

  Anyway, we call the old loony’s place ‘THE STABLE’ because there’s an old nag living in it . . . HER! She has these BIG, thick, SQUARE, bright, yellow-rimmed glasses balancing right on the end of her very wide ‘butt-nose’.

  Anyway, her glasses kind of match her pale, yellowing, dry, wrinkled skin. Jared reckons she looks like a knobbly old stick that’s been wrapped really tightly in a couple of layers of that plastic that Mum wraps my sandwiches in . . . and then had all the air sucked out of it. But I reckon she looks more like a kangaroo carcass that’s been mooshed into the road by a heap of trucks and then left there for a couple of weeks. . . YEAH, practically bald, really flat and a pale, wrinkled skeleton.

  But rain hail or shine, every morning and afternoon without fail, she’d be out the front of her shack sitting on her pile of old broccoli boxes. And from the very first moment that she sees me and Jared riding along the road and coming towards her, she starts screaming at the top of her lungs in her world record, ear-drum-shattering pitch . . .

  “Get out of my town! You don’t belong here . . . you’re all tourists. My family built this town! This is my town . . . GET OUT OF MY TOWN!!” . . . rant rant, rave rave, blah blah blah.

  She even has her very own little weather pattern happening around her shack. As soon as she opens her mouth, she spits out these toxic, greeny-grey clouds as her breath begins to waft about and hover around her head . . . that’s when you know it’s about to ‘RAIN’.

  It always starts as a light sprinkle of her disgusting saliva that you can actually see glinting in the sunlight, like a mist of fine rain, and very quickly, the storm of spit droplets shooting from her mouth as she raves on and on become larger and larger. Suddenly it’s a full-on hail storm as great globs of her disgusting liquid PHLEGM fly towards us and hit the ground like machine-gun fire . . . ppttt ppttt ppttt . . . ppttt ppttt ppttt . . . sending up tiny mushroom clouds of red dust all about us.

  And the old goat is managing to send them further and further all the time.

  Just the other day Jared rode just slightly too close to her side of the road and . . . SPLASH . . . she scared the crap out of him when she sent a really good-sized saliva globule rocketing towards us and it splashed straight into Jared’s bike tyre. It only just missed his leg by a couple of millimetres . . .EEWWW!

  It’s the same thing every time she spots us or anyone else that happens to pass by her shack. Sometimes me and Jared just ride up and down past her ‘home’, back and forth, back and forth, just to see if we can get her to run out of spit. Then it gets really interesting . . . you can actually see her face starting to shrivel up more and more as she dries out . . . sort of like taking a dried out old sponge and then strangling and twisting and wringing it out with every bit of strength that you’ve got.

  Yeah, we reckon she’s definitely got a broomstick parked somewhere in there.

  Mum says she’s like old milk . . . sour, yellowing and getting thicker every day. No-one actually knows where she really came from or who she really is. Jared reckons she’s sort of like the dung beetles that we learnt about at school last week. Probably hiding underground for years and years with no-one knowing she was there. UNTIL one day she just popped up and started shoving her poop around, except that her dung comes from her mouth. Then when she’s pushed enough of her saliva-covered verbal poop around, she just disappears underground again.

  Apparently she just turned up out of nowhere one day. Sitting there on her broccoli boxes, ranting and raving at anyone and everyone that passed.

  What a completely loopy NUTSO FREAK!

  One day, me and Jared decided to hide across the road from the old ‘BAT SHACK’ and spied on the loony old hag for a while, but first we had to make sure that we both put on our ‘double strength, ultra dark, security glasses’ to protect our eyes from her totally disgusting grossness. We were pretty certain that if we looked her straight in the eyes our lips would turn inside-out, our nostrils hairs would burst into flames and our eyes would end up looking like a couple of extra juicy grapes after a pile of bricks has been dropped on them.

  Once we were totally protected, we took out our way cool, mini fold-out, Ultra Awesome Bulravian Secret Binoculars. We were going to watch her all day to find out if she’d trans-form back into some really gross, ugly ALIEN LIFE-FORM, which wouldn’t be much of a change really, because she was already a really ugly, gross . . . ‘SOMETHING’. It’s impossible to figure out just what ‘THING’ she might have evolved from bec
ause me and Jared have spotted about five different features from five different animals already. Yep. She’s got the nose of a bulldog, the butt of a hippo, the teeth of a wart-hog, the lips of a leech and the hair of a sloth. Actually I reckon she’s just a slobbering, sucking, slimy alien, but Mum reckons . . . “She’s just a poor old bat.”

  Yeah, a DING BAT!

  We were really hoping that we might catch her flying around on her broomstick or something equally interesting, but then we saw something through the binoculars that made us want to hurl chunks and take-off faster than puss leaving a freshly squeezed zit. The old bag had one of those HUGE scabby wart-like moles just below her nose. Actually she has HALF A DOZEN but this one was absolutely humongous and had four long, wiry hairs poking out of it. Three of them had grown so long that they were hanging all the way down past her top lip. They curved all the way into her mouth like thin grey straws and every time she began to flap her gums, ranting and raving, she was actually chewing on them. yukk!

  EEWWW! It was SOOO gross! Hilarious, but definitely gross.

  So whenever she wasn’t screeching at people passing by, which was never, two of the hairs hung around to bounce and dangle about, near her chin with a big globule of yellowish drooling saliva hanging onto them, but one of the gross hairs just stayed in her mouth . . . getting SUCKED ON! It was the fourth, smallest hair that was the funniest though. It was twisted like a miniature spring and dangled about near her top lip. So with every breath (or any other kind of wind) this gross, GREY, wiry thing bounced about and ever so lightly touched her skin. Brushing against her prune-like face as gentle as a feather, on the lip, on the cheek, anywhere it could reach with a spring. And she obviously thought it was a mozzy or a blowfly or something, because every couple of seconds she’d be flapping those wrinkled twigs wrapped in glad-wrap called fingers and swat-ting at it. She was constantly slapping herself on the cheek, whacking her ear, belting her nose and SMACKING herself all over that ugly, twisted face.