Ten Nasty Little Toads Read online

  TEN NASTY LITTLE TOADS

  Steve Cole

  illustrated by

  Tim Archbold

  Start Reading

  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.readzephyr.com

  About Ten Nasty Little Toads

  Some of YOU really are nasty little toads.

  Could you be one? Find out in these horribly hilarious, spooky cautionary tales full of hairballs and havoc, tantrums and time-travel, gruesomeness, graveyards and slime!

  Are you another Cherry Oddfellow, part-girl, part mudslide? Could you bear to wear the ‘liar, liar pants on fire’ knickers, or outwit a deadly vampire cucumber?

  Beware, naughty children! As warty witch, Madame Rana, warns, there’s always a price to pay!

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Ten Nasty Little Toads

  GREETINGS!

  Dirty Little Toad!

  Disgusting Little Toad!

  TOAD JOKES

  Shouty Little Toads!

  Spoiled Little Toad!

  TOAD FACTS

  School hating Little Toad!

  Unhealthy Little Toads!

  SPELLS

  Nasty natured Little Toad!

  Lying Little Toad!

  WITCHES’ BREW

  Pop Goes the Little Toad!

  Square-eyed Little Toad!

  All Toads Together!

  ARE YOU A NASTY LITTLE TOAD…?

  Endpapers

  About the Authors

  About Zephyr

  Copyright

  GREETINGS!

  Big, fat, warty welcome wishes from me,

  Madame Rana!

  Why have you picked up this book?

  I can think of four possible reasons.

  1. You are a nasty little toad and want to look up your friends.

  2. You want to read some mind-boggling, brain-blowing, totally twisted toady tales that will make you laugh, gasp, groan, gulp and fall out of bed. (Even if you are not reading them in a bed – SPOOKY!)

  3. You were reaching for some other book but MYSTERIOUSLY picked up this one instead, because you are no match for my wondrously witchy powers!

  4. You sensed that there are in fact TWELVE horrid little toads in this book, rather than the ten that were promised on the front cover, and wanted to check for yourself. Well, clever-socks, the two extra toads are SIBLINGS, and so – according to the latest copy of Ye Olde Witch Booke of Toady Thinges by Mrs Slugsnail Toadiface, published in 1422 – siblings always count as half a toad each. Don’t blame me, blame her – silly old bat. However, if it helps to think of this book as Ten Nasty Little Toads and Two Odd Frogs, then I won’t stop you – fair enough?

  Anyway! Whatever your reason for being here, WELCOME! I hope you will enjoy the contents of this book. But, please, DO NOT attempt to imitate any of the toadish behaviour you will encounter. THERE COULD BE CONSEQUENCES …

  Toodle-toadle-loo!

  Dirty Little Toad!

  I’ve heard you on bath night. Yes, yes, I have. I’ve heard you moan and mumble and groan and grumble as you drag yourself upstairs. ‘WHY do I have to have a bath AGAIN?’

  You even complain about having to wash your face in the morning. I know, I’ve heard you then too. Those few extra seconds spent fooling with a flannel – how you begrudge them. And how many times have you always accidentally ‘forgotten’ to clean behind your ears, mmmm?

  I know how it is. You’re a busy person with things to do, and boring grown-ups keep burbling on about how you must brush your teeth at least twice a day (even though your baby teeth are meant to fall out anyway!) and you must wash your hands after going to the toilet (YAWN!) and after handling your pet (it’s not like Flopsy is even dirty!). Oh – and before meals (even though you’ll be using a knife and fork and your fingers won’t even TOUCH the food!) and make sure the water is warm, thank you very much, not freezing cold (like it makes a difference!) All that soapy, hot watery DO-THIS and DO-THAT.

  Doesn’t it seem endless?

  Well, that nagging might make you cross, but that’s because you haven’t met a child of your age who doesn’t wash her hands or face or behind her ears – or anywhere at all, for that matter. You haven’t met a girl who hasn’t had a bath or a shower in YEARS.

  But you’re going to meet her now. And a proper little toad she is too.

  May I introduce to you Cherry Oddfellow: part-girl, part-mudslide? She has not washed for three years, two months and twenty-seven days.

  ‘How can this be?’ you may ask. ‘How did she get away with that?’

  She got away with it through a mixture of stealth and extreme tantrums.

  Her mum and dad worked very hard and came home terribly tired each evening. They wanted nothing more than a quiet night – and if it was bath night, then all they got was a screaming nightmare.

  Cherry simply hated being clean, right from the start.

  As a small child, she would cling to the towel rail to avoid her bath, shrieking the house down.

  When her parents tried to give her showers instead, she would swing like Spider-Man from the showerhead and pull it off the wall.

  Even a trip to the swimming baths would end in disaster, as Cherry knew there was one sure way to escape a dip. I’m sure you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about …

  What a revolting little toad she was!

  The older she got, the worse the problem became.

  ‘Wash your face for school, Cherry,’ her mum would say.

  Cherry would immediately charge about like a ferret on fire, wrestling with every sink in the house before she was worn out enough for Mum to grab her with a sponge.

  ‘Did you wash your hands for supper?’ Cherry’s dad would ask.

  Cherry would immediately thump him with the nearest blunt instrument and throw heavy objects through the bathroom window before her mum got lucky with the hand sanitizer.

  ‘It’s just a phase she’s going through,’ Mr Oddfellow reckoned fondly, rubbing his jaw.

  The final straw that broke the (very mucky) camel’s back arrived, as I mentioned earlier, three years, two months and twenty-eight days ago: ‘Cherry,’ said Mrs Oddfellow one Friday afternoon, ‘we thought we might take a little holiday. A city break.’

  ‘Where?’ Cherry demanded.

  ‘Why, in the delightful county of Somerset,’ Mr Oddfellow said brightly.

  ‘Somerset?’ Cherry’s mud-brown eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Whereabouts in Somerset?’

  ‘Er, well … ’ Mr Oddfellow gulped. ‘We were thinking about the fine city of Bath.’

  ‘BAAAAATH?’ With a wailing war cry, Cherry ran outside and started biting the car tyres to cause multiple punctures. Her dad had to jet-wash her with the patio cleaner to make her stop. (Little did he know that this was to be the last dip in water she would have for years!)

  Screaming and spluttering, Cherry fled inside the house, swallowed the car keys and barricaded herself in her bedroom so no one could take her anywhere.

  This was the regrettable day Mr and Mrs Oddfellow had to face facts – they simply did not possess the patience, strength and stamina required to keep their growing daughter in the same room as a loofah long enough for any real cleaning to occur.

  And so, they took that dread decision to wash their hands of washing their daughter. They wrote a note to school explaining that Cherry was allergic to being clean: could she please be excused showers after PE? They also supplied the name of a firm that made cheap clothes pegs and advised all teachers to keep a window open in the classroom for the safety of Cherry’s fellow pupils.

  ‘It won’t be for long,’ said Mrs Oddfellow. ‘It’s just that silly, longer-than-expected phase she’s still going through.’

  Mr Oddfellow nodded. ‘When she really starts to pong, she’ll start bathing again. Just you wait.’

  Well, the Oddfellows did wait.

  But did Cherry change her mind? She did not.

  Refusing to wash or bathe or even rinse her hands, she gradually became more and more engrimed with mud and dirt. Her parents learned to ignore it, and stuffed earplugs up their noses to stop the stink.

  The closest Cherry ever came to a shower was when she was caught in the rain; then you could see the mud trickling down her face from her filthy red hair.

  Did I say red? Once it was that beautiful colour. But since she never washed it or brushed it, it became a thick thatch of dirt, dust and straw. Weeds began to grow in it. A crow mistook it for an empty nest and moved right in. Cherry didn’t shoo it away – she was glad of the company, since her friends no longer went near for fear of passing out from the pong.

  Her parents were appalled. ‘A crow!’ cried Mrs Oddfellow. ‘In her hair!’

  Mr Oddfellow sank a little further into his newspaper. ‘I’m sure they’re all the rage with young people these days.’

  The crow, naturally, preferred the outdoors life, so Cherry took to staying in the garden whatever the weather. Her shoes got very muddy. One day she found a worm living in her sock. (It would’ve preferred her shoe, but it didn’t want to be spotted by the crow.)

  ‘Ahhhh!’ she sighed as it curled around her muddy toes. ‘Lovely and squishy!’

  Keen not to disturb her new friends – especially after the crow had laid some eggs in her hair – Cherry decided it was high time she stopped changing her clothes. She wore the same things, day after day, week after week, month after month, an
d, of course, they became dirtier and dirtier. Her mum and dad begged her to change her mind (and her underwear) but she refused.

  Finally, Mrs Oddfellow lost the last shreds of her patience. ‘This nonsense has gone far enough, young lady,’ she cried. ‘If you don’t get changed out of those revolting garments and have a jolly good bath RIGHT NOW, I’m going to—’

  But the threat set to emerge from her throat died on her lips, for Cherry had not wasted her time outside. She had spent much of it training her crow to a very high standard. Now, on her command, the belligerent bird burst from Cherry’s dirty thatch and pecked Mrs Oddfellow on the head. With a shriek of dismay, the unfortunate woman fled trembling into the arms of her husband. Sadly, they weren’t very comforting arms because Mr Oddfellow had fainted and fallen to the floor, suffering as he did from an irrational fear of crows.

  Cherry chuckled. Now she knew she had total control over her parents – and how she crowed about it! When the chicks are old enough to fly, I’ll make them peck Mum and Dad too, she thought. And then I’ll train the worm to be an attack worm. Ha, ha, ha! (In the event, this particular training was stopped by the baby chicks who, while admiring the fighting spirit of the worm, admired his taste rather more.)

  As time went by, Cherry barely noticed the weeds growing out of her hair, or the moss that clung to her grotty clothes, or the grass sprouting from her filthy hands and legs. She thought she looked quite fabulous!

  ‘I’m the Green Queen!’ she declared proudly in the playground, while everyone ran from her powerful pong. ‘The First Lady of Filth! The Empress of Muddiness!’ She lay down in the sun on the playing fields and sighed happily. The bell went for afternoon school, but Cherry didn’t bother getting up … she supposed her boring old teachers would call her after a while.

  But they didn’t.

  With a thrill, Cherry realised that here, lying on the grass of the playing fields, she blended right in. No one could spot her!

  Of course, the fact that she was so stinky and unpleasant that no one wanted to spot her didn’t occur to Cherry. She just lay there and congratulated herself on her brilliant mucky disguise. She stayed there for the rest of the day, happily snoozing.

  Mr Oddfellow asked: ‘How was school today?’

  ‘School was GREAT,’ Cherry said. ‘I was very happy to be there.’

  Her father was pleased. He didn’t realise that school had been ‘great’ for Cherry because she had been lounging about in the field.

  Because she’d got away with one day off, Cherry decided to try for another.

  It worked.

  The teachers were actually quite relieved that Cherry wasn’t there; the Head had been about to insist that gas masks be worn in Cherry’s class at all times, and no one was eager for that. So when she didn’t show up, they didn’t ask why, they just thanked their lucky stars. You can’t blame them; with her revolting habits, Cherry had turned everyone against her. She spent the whole of the next day invisible to the naked eye, looking like nothing more than a lump of mud and turf that had learned how to breathe.

  By now, the crow and her family had flown away. Even they couldn’t bear the smell of Cherry Oddfellow a moment longer. Still, the bugs that squirmed and wriggled between her clothes and her skin didn’t mind the stink, and Cherry didn’t mind them either. She was quite happy, lying on the school fields in the sunshine doing nothing. While her classmates worked like good, well-behaved children, Cherry simply drifted off to sleep. The grass was quite long, and ever so comfortable.

  What Cherry didn’t know, as she slept, was that the playing fields were about to be mowed.

  She didn’t hear the sound of the groundskeeper starting up the big ride-on lawnmower.

  She didn’t hear the throaty growl of the engine, or the buzz of the mower blades as they spun hungrily into life.

  (Dear reader, do promise me you will NEVER get in the way of a lawnmower!)

  Didn’t hear the MWAAAAAAAAAW of the mower as it slowly rumbled towards her, slicing through the grass, getting closer …

  (Promise me!)

  Closer …

  (Cross your heart and hope never to be mown!)

  Closer and closer still came the mower …

  And then it went past her, missing her by a matter of centimetres. Phew!

  Unfortunately, the groundskeeper noticed he’d missed a bit and so put the mower into reverse.

  BUZZZZZZZZZZ! The lethal lawnmower blades chopped through Cherry’s hair, leaving her with a very strange haircut. Rudely awakened, she leaped up in terror and shrieked at the top of her lungs. The poor groundskeeper got such a shock he fell off his mower – which promptly went out of control.

  ‘EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!’ Cherry was chased by the runaway mower twice around the school field and then into the shower block.

  Luckily, a quick-thinking PE teacher saw what was happening and acted swiftly and bravely.

  He didn’t turn off the mower. He turned on the SHOWERS.

  WHOOOOOOOOSH! Powerful blasts of hot water hit Cherry from ten different nozzles. Exhausted from her run, she was too weak to crawl away. Water and steam engulfed her. Mud poured from her like lava from a volcano. Moss and grass that had stuck to her skin for years began to fall free …

  In fact, the drains and gutters were soon so thick with dirt that they became blocked. The water level began to rise …

  Meanwhile, the runaway mower had crashed into the wall of the shower block, its engine overheating. FWOMPH! Flames burst from the unfortunate machine.

  ‘Call the fire brigade!’ wailed the groundskeeper.

  Cherry, meanwhile, had managed to turn off the showers. She was still disgustingly dirty – years of muck won’t wash away just like that – and what filth she had left she was determined to keep. Dripping mud and slime, she stomped from the shower block and pulled open the outside door …

  Only to find she was directly in the path of a firefighter’s hose!

  SWOOOOOOOSH! The almighty blast soaked Cherry from head to foot like a freezing, high-powered waterfall. It swept her back into the hot-water-filled changing rooms and swilled her about like old toilet paper being flushed down the pan.

  Realising her mistake, and with the mower’s flames safely extinguished, the firefighter turned off her hose. The groundskeeper clapped politely.

  And the PE teacher peered through the steam and saw an odd sight come splashing uncertainly into view, wrapped in a wet towel.

  It was Cherry Oddfellow.

  She looked …

  Clean.

  She even smelled clean.

  ‘Cherry!’ cheered the PE teacher. ‘Finally, you’ve cleaned up your act!’

  Cherry wasn’t listening. She was too busy rolling in the nearest flowerbed, determined to get dirty again as quickly as possible.

  But, since then, staying filthy’s not been quite so easy for her.

  Because now, her parents know just what to do.

  The Fire Chief has given them special permission to call up twice a week on Cherry’s bath nights. Firefighters are very public-spirited, and can always use a bit of target practice for their hoses …

  However fast Cherry runs, they always hose her down in …

  The End

  Disgusting Little Toad!

  Jacques LaConk. Now there was a slimy little stinker.

  Oh, he was nice enough on the surface. He had been raised very well by an elderly aunty: he said please and thank you, he spoke when he was spoken to and stayed quiet when he wasn’t.

  ‘Such a nice young man,’ people said of him.

  But those people didn’t know what he was up to when they weren’t looking. And since his aunty was too frail to climb the stairs, once he was in his bedroom or the bathroom, he had no fear of being disturbed.