Floods 9 Read online

  Nobody can get a simple cold or a dose of the flu any more. People get struck down with Goldfish-flu or the terrible vegetarian illness called Toflu. If you catch Vegetarian Toflu, you become terminally smug and everyone near you is at risk of dying of boredom. One sneeze these days and everyone expects tens of thousands of people to drop dead from a new and much-deadlier-than-the-last-outbreak-which-was-actually-fairly-harmless virus. If you cough while you’re bending down to tie your shoelace and get run over by a car, the newspapers are guaranteed to scream, ‘Pandemic Claims Another Victim!!!!’

  Schools closed, in case the new mystery disease was catching. Shops and streets were deserted. All the goldfish were flushed down toilets because some idiot said the outbreak was being transferred by them.

  ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ said a leading doctor. ‘The outbreak manifests itself in bright red weals and goldfish are orange, which is nearly red.’

  ‘Maybe it’s being spread by mailboxes,’ said a professor of rubbish from some learned institution. ‘They’re red.’

  So everyone panicked for no sensible reason at all and stopped posting letters.

  ‘Oops,’ said Betty.

  She felt rather guilty so at the Summer School meeting that evening, she admitted what had happened. Instead of getting into trouble, most of the other students and staff thought it was hilarious and went out and committed an enormous amount of highway robbery by disguising themselves as health officials with fake Red Plague Scanners and telling all the distressed mothers that they had located the germs and would have to remove the source immediately in order to irradiate it and kill the germs before they spread.

  Amazingly, the source was always inside handbags, particularly in the wallet area.

  ‘Humans are so pathetic,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Why, I have had the bubonic plague for the past twenty-three years and it’s never done me any harm.’

  ‘It’s not like this is causing any real harm, either,’ said the Matron. ‘I remember a similar outbreak in Scotland many years ago when everyone’s arms turned tartan.’

  ‘My favourite one was in 1987,’ said the Cook. ‘The one in Belgium when everyone’s legs turned back to front. If I remember rightly that was caused by one of the Floods too.’

  ‘Do you mean that I’m not the only one who has magic go wrong?’ said Betty.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the Matron. ‘Your family’s famous for it. Happens in all top wizard families. And after all, your father is King of our beloved Transylvania Waters. You don’t get much topper than that. The Belgian leg affair happened when your Great-Aunt Florinse tried to turn a ginger kitten into a tabby.’

  ‘No one ever told me that,’ said Betty. ‘It would have been reassuring to know I inherited Clumsy Magic.’

  ‘But coming back to our current problem,’ said the Headmaster, ‘we need to discuss the situation. And by discuss, I mean, of course, work out all the ways we can profit from it.’

  Matron nodded. ‘My previous experiences of bright red marks on various parts of the body is that they will probably start to fade in about five days and vanish completely in ten,’ she said.

  ‘So we’ve got about a week,’ said the Headmaster.

  Some students were already doing very nicely out of the situation. As racing had been cancelled in case the new Red Plague was catching for horses, the twins and Merlinmary were out on the streets selling Special Anti-Red-Plague Facemasks for twenty-five dollars each, which by a skilful bit of time travel they had made the day before in Taiwan for five cents a dozen. They added dog and cat masks to their range, which Satanella modelled for passersby, and their sales almost doubled.21 Soya-Vegetarian-Recycled-Toilet-Paper Masks and Kosher Masks increased their sales too.

  Once again the twins were top of the money-making list, even after they had given Betty and Ffiona ten per cent commission because they had made all the bottoms go red in the first place. Ffiona and Betty with their commission and the confiscated wallets were a very close second.

  * * *

  17 TRUE STORY: A little while ago a man was arrested for speeding in Germany. He claimed his identical brother had been driving the car and because the police could not prove beyond any doubt which twin had been driving, he got away with it!

  18 See the back of this book for some of the more popular and fashionable items on sale there.

  19 You know how it always says in books, ‘Don’t try this at home’? Well, this is different. I think you SHOULD try this at home. I think the world would be a better place if lots and lots of you drew black masks on your faces. See the back of the book for instructions.

  20 Read some of the earlier Floods books for examples.

  21 There are a huge number of dogs and cats in New York with very devoted owners.

  The Stock Exchange was almost deserted. It wasn’t actually closed, but instead of the hundreds of people who went there every day, only a couple of dozen were there. Betty’s Red Plague had only affected people in New York, so all the other stock markets around the world were still working away as normal, though everywhere was on edge in case the plague spread. This made all the stock brokers and bankers very, very cautious. Naturally, Winchflat and Aubergine Wealth were there and made a fortune. All they had to do was buy almost anything, start a simple rumour or two to make the price rocket and sell it few hours later to make millions. With so few people around, there was no one available to check if the rumours were true or not, and with such an air of panic everywhere people tended to believe every single one of them.

  ‘At least all the babies will stop getting fat,’ Winchflat laughed.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Aubergine as he stuffed wads of share documents into his pockets.

  ‘Well, today has been like stealing candy from a baby,’ Winchflat explained.

  ‘You know what we should do?’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘We need to corner something, not something people usually try to corner like gold or silver, but something much simpler that everyone uses and needs every day.’

  ‘You mean, like tea or coffee?’ said Winchflat.

  ‘Sort of, but something much more basic and something no one would expect it to happen to.’

  To ‘corner’ the market in something means trying to own as much of it as possible. If you can own all of it, so much the better. For example, supposing potatoes usually cost twenty cents each and you wanted one. You would go to the shop, hand over twenty cents and get your potato.

  Now, supposing you went to the shop and there were no potatoes because someone had bought every single one of them. By now, of course, you are really desperate for a potato, so you go to the person who owns them all and say, ‘Can I have a potato?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ says the potato baron. ‘How many do you want?’

  ‘Two, please,’ you say, handing over forty cents.

  ‘What’s that?’ says the potato king.

  ‘Forty cents, for the two potatoes,’ you say.

  ‘Very funny,’ says the potato god. ‘They cost five dollars each.’

  ‘But . . .’

  That is ‘cornering’ the market.

  Winchflat and Aubergine Wealth sat and thought. Potatoes were not a good choice. People could just eat rice or pasta.

  ‘There’s no food at all that would work, really,’ said Aubergine Wealth.

  ‘Chocolate might,’ said Winchflat. ‘People would go frantic if they couldn’t get a chocolate hit.’

  ‘True, but they might go more than frantic. They might get uncontrollably angry and start rioting,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘Also, not everyone is addicted to chocolate.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. We need something very basic that everyone needs, like toilet paper or underwear.’

  ‘Or both.’

  ‘I wasn’t serious,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘I didn’t actually mean toilet paper or underwear.’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Winchflat. ‘They are perfect. Everyone uses them. Well, a
part from a few strange hippies and rock stars, and we can live without them.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right. Which one shall we do first?’

  ‘Toilet paper,’ said Winchflat.

  One of the weaknesses of trying to own all of something is that lots of people will already have some. Normally not in large quantities, but often enough to see them through any shortage. Every supermarket in the world has shelves full of toilet paper, so most people wouldn’t even notice there was a shortage for quite a while.

  One of the strengths of trying to own all of something is doing it if you are a wizard with awesome powers. The basement of Quicklime College’s Summer School had been fitted out as a laboratory containing everything a brilliant and enterprising young wizard like Winchflat might need to build absolutely anything he wanted to, no matter how amazing it might be. Winchflat’s wife, the disgustingly beautiful Maldegard Ankle, had not come to Summer School. She had far too much to do back in Transylvania Waters.22 She was, however, in permanent 24/7 contact with her adoring husband as they were both wearing Winchflat’s Permanent-24/7-Contact-Socks.

  The first thing Winchflat needed was a very large space to put all the toilet rolls he collected with the machine. Luckily Maldegard knew of the perfect spot because one of the too many things she had to do that can be mentioned here was making the first ever really detailed map of Transylvania Waters.23

  ‘I have discovered the Caves of Huge Darkness,’ she told Winchflat.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I always thought they were made up, like fairy-story stuff.’

  ‘Well, my darling,’ Maldegard replied, ‘the whole of Transylvania Waters is such a wonderful and magical place that it’s all kind of fairy-story stuff, isn’t it?24

  The Caves of Huge Darkness were originally created by the first wizards to live in Transylvania Waters when they fled there to escape persecution from the Knights Intolerant,25 who were determined to rid the world of every single wizard and witch by the most painful methods possible. The caves were to be the final place to hide if they were ever invaded. However, the Knights Intolerant never managed to reach Transylvania Waters and so the caves were gradually forgotten.

  Winchflat had never quite believed the caves existed, but just to make sure he had built a Big-Hollow-Places-Detector, which told him there was a space beneath Transylvania Waters. It told him it was hollow and it told him it was incredibly big, but didn’t tell him where the way in was. Finding the entrance was one of the things near the top of his Must-Do-List, which was stored in his Must-Do-List-Storage-Device, which was like a notebook only different in highly technical and exciting ways that mere humans could never understand. Now his wonderful wife had found it and he looked forward to getting home again so they could both explore it together before they let anyone else know about it.

  After all, he thought, you never know when a big hollow place might come in handy.

  ‘I know a secret place that will be perfect to hide all the toilet rolls,’ he told Aubergine Wealth, though he didn’t tell him where it was. ‘When we go on to stage two and corner the undies, there will be room for those too.’

  Winchflat went to the basement laboratory and designed a massive Toilet-Roll-Magnet-With-Kitchen-Roll-And-Tissue-Attachments-Machine.

  Although he desperately wanted to know where Winchflat was going to hide everything, Aubergine Wealth knew better than to try to force Winchflat to tell him. Although Aubergine was a wizard himself, and there were few his equal when it came to making huge amounts of money, he knew that Winchflat had awesome magical powers he could never compete with. He was, after all, one of the Floods, descended from Merlin, the greatest wizard of all time.

  I’ll wait, he thought. The boy will give it away sooner or later.

  Yeah, as if, thought Winchflat, who was wearing his invisible Thought Reader. For some reason he wasn’t sure of, instinct told him to tell absolutely no one about the vast cave complex, not even his own family.26

  While Winchflat was sorting out his machine, Aubergine Wealth went over to the Stock Exchange and began buying shares in every single paper manufacturing company. Within two hours he was in control of the entire world’s production. Each company then received an email telling them stop production immediately.

  ‘Are we ready?’ said Winchflat as he powered up the Toilet-Roll-Magnet-With-Kitchen-Roll-And-Tissue-Attachments-Machine.

  He had warned everyone at Summer School to wear safety helmets as there was no way of predicting all the routes the millions upon millions of toilet rolls from all over the world would take on their way to Winchflat’s secret storage facility.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Ffiona. ‘I’ve got a question.’

  ‘I’ll just start the machine first,’ said Winchflat.

  ‘No, no!’ said Ffiona. ‘This is a very important question you need to answer before you start the machine.’

  ‘OK, what is it?’

  ‘As I understand it,’ Ffiona said, ‘your machine is going to transport all the toilet paper in the world to a secret location. Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Winchflat.

  ‘Every single sheet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that will include used toilet paper and paper that is actually being used right at this moment?’ said Ffiona.

  ‘Yuk!’ said almost everyone.27

  ‘Ahh,’ said Winchflat. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. Clever girl.’

  There was a delay of about an hour while Winchflat built a filter that excluded toilet paper that wasn’t the same pastel colour all over (apart from any pretty patterns that might be printed on it).

  ‘There we go,’ he said. ‘I’ve added a No-Poo-Attachment. So I think we’re good to go unless anyone else can think of something else I need to do.’

  ‘I can,’ said Betty. ‘I know wiping your bottom with a newspaper is awful, but won’t people just do that, or tear pages out of notebooks?’

  ‘Another good point,’ said Winchflat.

  There was a delay of another hour while Winchflat built a Ruff’nit Machine. It was programmed to cut in about thirty seconds after the main machine started and make all the remaining paper in the world Very Itchy.

  ‘You know,’ said the Headmaster, ‘the business possibilities are endless. I mean, you could make the remaining paper give anyone who used it a rash that could only be cured with a special ointment from a company that we own most of the shares in.’

  In the end, it was decided that was probably going a bit far so it was agreed the Ruff’nit Machine would just give anyone who used it a red bottom like Betty’s spell had done. It would scare the living daylights out of everyone, but not actually do them any harm.

  ‘You know what might be fun?’ said Merlinmary. ‘If you made all the bank notes as soft as velvet. Don’t you just love the idea of everyone wiping their bottoms with money?’

  ‘It’s a bit mean, isn’t it?’ said Betty.

  ‘It is,’ said Merlinmary, ‘but also hilarious.’

  ‘But that’s sacrilege!’ said Aubergine Wealth, who adored money.

  ‘Right,’ said Winchflat, ‘I think this time we are good to go unless anyone else can think of something else I need to do.’

  No one could. So they all put their crash helmets on and Winchflat pressed the Big Brown Button on the front of his machine. At first, it seemed as if nothing was happening, but then toilet rolls began to appear as if out of thin air. It was incredible, but the soft rolls of paper were actually moving through solid walls before flying off down the streets and out to sea.

  Roll after roll appeared, mixed up with loose sheets of paper and packets of tissues. There were so many of them it looked like a snow storm as they flew out of shops and offices and bathrooms and people’s hands all over the world. It also cleared all the finished paper out of the factories that Aubergine Wealth had bought the shares in. Small clouds of paper merged into bigger clouds, some of them over a mile wide. Tracking stations around the world picked up the ti
ssue clouds and followed them out into the middle of every ocean. And then, they all suddenly vanished.

  Winchflat knew they would be picked up by radar and there was no way he wanted anyone to know where they were going. So, once the paper clouds had grown as large as they were going to, he pressed Button B and they dematerialised into individual atoms too small to follow and continued their journey. Once they reached the Caves of Huge Darkness, all the atoms joined up again and the toilet rolls, tissues and other soft papers collected in piles over the cave floor, where an ancient relic from the age of dinosaurs – the Complaining Woodlouse,28 a sort of blind beetle the size of a shoe – began to eat them.

  From the inside of millions of bathrooms everywhere came horrified and disgusted screams from people who had been too close to using their handful of toilet paper to stop.29 The noise was deafening. Apart from the screams, there were hundreds of thousands of people calling out for their mums, thousands of voices screaming every swear word known to man in every language known to man and woman.30

  The chaos that occurred that day was endless. People about to blow their noses suddenly sneezed into their own hands or, worse still, someone else’s hands. Spilled tea, coffee, blood and red wine just soaked into pale clean carpets, clothes and furniture. Governments around the world accused each other of a terrible plot. No one knew how it had happened, but the Russians blamed the Chinese. The Chinese blamed the Japanese. The Japanese blamed the Indians. The Indians blamed the British and the Americans blamed everyone.

  Only Tristan da Cunha didn’t blame anyone because none of their toilet paper had disappeared. Winchflat had a soft spot for Tristan da Cunha and had added a special filter that excluded them. Naturally Transylvania Waters itself and the Transylvania Waters Summer School’s supply of soft, gently scented tissue remained untouched too. But everywhere else, from royal palaces to humble cottages, was totally one hundred per cent soft-paperless.