The following is a nanotale that was shortlisted earlier this year (2007) for inclusion in the Nanotales compilation organized by Ziv Navoth. I/it wasn't popular enough on bebo to make it to publication in a real book. Nevermind. I enjoyed writing it and will occasionally post some more such tales here...
WHAT A POSSIBLY DELUSIONAL HEADMASTER SAID TO HIS MUM IN THE CAR...
“… Gigantic! It must’ve been caught in a radiation storm in the Arizona desert after a US Army experiment went haywire. What it was doing in Brookfields’ netball court-cum-car park during break time, I don’t know.
So this monster was rampaging and Mr Miles was going spare – it’s not the usual kind of pest he has to deal with! A 50ft high spider that’s shooting industrial-strength silken threads out of its bottom and wrapping the school buildings with cobwebs dripping with highly corrosive digestive enzymes? Not especially easy to squash, I can tell you! Still, the Science Department managed to rustle up a pretty effective Neutralization Cocktail using fertilizer and some of Mrs Jenkins’ lunchtime leftovers!
So anyway, this chemical cocktail had to be delivered to the oversized arachnid in question. But we had no means of delivery. I mean, you can’t just expose a delicately balanced and synthesized concoction like that to the elements willy-nilly! We’d already lost 5 staff and 10 pupils to this beast: any kind of physical contact with it seemed to have the effect of transforming the contactee into a radioactive, pretty irate, 50ft version of their former self. You might think that 15 50ft giants would come in handy in trying to deal with a 50ft spider. But you would be wrong. Mr Wilbur tried to wrench off one of the hideous thing’s legs. But further contact only made him grow bigger than he already was!
Dr Melwani calculated there would be about a 6.5% chance that anyone having the Neutralization Cocktail in their bloodstream would suffer any side-effects. He’d made some rather big assumptions about spider DNA that might, if they were wrong, bump up that figure closer to the 83ish% mark. But we kept that particular tidbit to ourselves. A decision had to be made; and quickish. Paulina in the office had been trying to ring the emergency services, but it seemed that all local resources were being diverted towards dealing with the French invasion.
So we commandeered Mrs Feenan’s stash of needles (she’s diabetic.) Then, we picked five of the smallest and quickest children we could. An elite squad of munchkins. Mrs Hooper felt that Bradford in Reception would make a good candidate because he’s fearless around creepy-crawlies. He has snakes and lizards and tarantulas for pets, albeit normal-sized ones. And she had a pretty good idea that little Tarana would make an excellent decoy to lure the beast away from chomping on various parts of the school buildings and into the extremely boggy marshlands at the bottom of the playing fields where, with any luck, it would sink under its own weight and become trapped while the munchkin S.W.A.T. team dealt it a decisive blow. Tarana, apparently, is known for being able to summon up quite awe-inspiring quantities of hysteria on tap. The hope was that she would thereby make herself a target for the spider’s ire. (And, possibly, venom.) A couple of sprightly volunteers from Form 1 and Martyn Josephus from Form 2 were also selected. Martyn didn’t really have any say in the matter. He’s quite well-known in school for suffering from siallorhea – he salivates excessively. Incessantly. And, to be frank, disgustingly. A lovely young chap. But his affliction was what would, ultimately, prove to be the most effective weapon we had against the spider.
The plan worked a treat. Almost. The creature was most certainly riled by Tarana’s brain-throbbing screams and took a break from grazing on the art block to pursue the little foghorn in a visible rage. The mutant was, indeed, led like a drunk to a bar into the waiting trap. It did, indeed, sink into Blueberry Bog, completely submerging its gargantuan legs. And the four trappers – who all had the Neutralization Cocktail swimming gaily in their veins by now – followed their instructions to the letter and began spitting on the thing’s twelve, mad eyes.
Martyn knew his moment of glory had come. He knew he had the power to save us all. The power, in those overstrained salivary glands of his, to teach this monstrosity a thing or two. So he let loose with a thick, mucosal, springy string of saliva aimed at the eyes. He just let his glands do their thing and, within a few minutes, he had produced enough gloop to completely blind the spider. I suppose the Neutralization Cocktail was being absorbed through the eyes and passed directly to the thing’s brain and central nervous system. For a second or two, there, I almost began to feel some pity for this abomination. It was trying, quite unsuccessfully with its legs fully submerged, to thrash its enormous head and body around. But because it wasn’t able to have even this small comfort, we could see that massive spasms were wracking it from the inside. Terrible judders; implosions, maybe. A horrible torture to witness.
Well, we all celebrated, but none of us realized until it was too late that the spider had actually reacted to the cocktail by shrinking to a size invisible to the naked eye. The last time we managed to detect it was when Mr Miles started dancing a jig and howling with laughter, claiming it had run up his trouser leg and was tickling him in funny places! What a day! We still have the slight problem of what to do with the giant staff and pupils. (Personally, I think they’d come in handy trying to fight this pesky French invasion. But, as you know, child-soldiers would be far too controversial, no matter how big and able to look after themselves they were. And the teachers involved are all conscientious objectors… or Guardian readers. Or both.)
(By the way; you must get the car cleaned, Mother. I’ve noticed four cobwebs in this corner alone! One of them’s got a massive, mutilated fly on it!) Still, we’ve coped with worse before – remember last term’s demonically possessed Ofsted inspectors? Now that was what I’d consider a real nightmare…!”