Now with 50% more useless text Circulation: 186,904,169 Issue: 196 | 24th day of Relaxing, Y7
Home | Archives Articles | Editorial | Short Stories | Comics | New Series | Continued Series
 

To Terrorize The Babysitter


by clumsy_moo

--------

Clumsy_moo, a twelve-year-old owner otherwise known as Lindsay, was standing in the hallway that led to the kitchen and branched off to other rooms. Wearing black sneakers, black cargo shorts and a Balthazar T-shirt, Lindsay was waiting for her pets to come home so she could give them the bad news. She looked intently at her watch.

      "And the chaos begins in five... four..." counted down the short, brown-haired, bespectacled girl, "three... two... one."

      The front door burst open and Lindsay's three pets ran into the house.

      "I PASSED THE MATH QUARTERLY!" whooped fireball2343265747 (Fireball), a yellow Shoyru wearing green sneakers, blue jeans shorts and a Tombola shirt, waving a packet in Lindsay's face. It had an A- on it, circled in red. "I GOT A NINETY-ONE!"

      "I MADE THE SOCCER TEAM!" screamed gundygrl1993 (Gail), Fireball's younger sister. The purple Grundo was clad in white cleats, blue jeans shorts and a Sproing T-shirt . "I MADE IT!"

      "YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY!" exclaimed the youngest sibling, a red Aisha named Yerralyn, dressed in pink sandals, a pink jeans skort and an I Love Fyora T-shirt.

      "Why are you celebrating, Yerra?" asked Lindsay, confused.

      "I'm not celebrating, I like this game!" replied the littlest sister. "YAY! YAY! YAY!"

      Lindsay smiled and winced at the same time. Smiling because her pets were happy, wincing because they were so loud.

      "EVERYBODY QUIET DOWN!" yelled Lindsay. Her three pets looked at her. "Thank you."

      The three siblings exchanged uneasy glances. Lindsay usually didn't yell like that unless she was stressed out.

      "Okay. First of all, congratulations, guys, I'm proud!" said Lindsay, pulling all three pets into a hug. "I've got a soccer player and an A student!"

      "And a really smart, funny and beautiful red Aisha," reminded Yerralyn.

      "Of course," said Lindsay, smiling. But she had a preoccupied look on her face. "Listen, I have to go somewhere in the Deep Catacombs ... a meeting about the Neoschool OTA, I think."

      "OTA?" asked Yerralyn blankly.

      "Owner-Teacher Association," explained Lindsay. "Anyway, I'm not sure what time I'll be home, so I called a babysitter for you three."

      "What?!" demanded Gail.

      "Mommy, that's not fair!" whined Yerralyn.

      "I can babysit the girls, Mom, you don't need to call a babysitter," offered Fireball. Lindsay gave him a stern look.

      "If I left you three alone together, the girls wouldn't be alive by the time I got home." Lindsay crossed her arms. "The sitter I called was recommended to me by your Uncle Ian. He said that when he got home, there was only a minimal amount of damage, inflicted by Brandy. I'd like the house to be halfway presentable when I get back, if possible?"

      "I d-d-don't want a s-s-sitter," sniffed Yerralyn. Her lower lip wobbled and she looked at the floor. "Why can't we c-c-come with you?"

      "Because I said so," replied Lindsay. "You have three hours before she comes, okay? In the meantime, try to get some homework done so you don't have to do it over the weekend."

      Grumbling and whining, the three siblings trudged off to the den to do their homework, while Lindsay sorted out the mail. They could hear her screaming about bills.

      "This bites!" complained Fireball, digging through his utility backpack for a pen, with his Poppit, Bounce, bouncing from shoulder to shoulder. "I hate sitters!"

      "I only vaguely remember the last one," said Gail, frowning and looking at her Wadjet, Isis. "I was younger than Yerra is now. What happened again?"

      "She blew up the kitchen and blamed you," replied the Shoyru, grinning triumphantly as he pulled a dark faerie pencil out of his backpack. "You got in so much trouble for supposedly playing with the stove."

      "Was I born yet?" asked Yerralyn curiously as she stroked her Mallard, Plucky. Both her older siblings shook their heads.

      "I think the best thing to do would be to make her never want to come back," said Gail mysteriously. "We should annoy the heck out of her until she practically throws money at Mom to let her leave."

      "Yeah! Yeah! That sounds fun!" exclaimed Yerralyn, bouncing up and down on the couch. Gail quickly hushed her.

      "Don't broadcast it, Yerra," she said quietly. "If Mom finds out abut us even discussing tormenting the babysitter, we're dead."

      Yerralyn dropped off the couch with a loud thump. "Sorry."

      "It's fine," replied Fireball. "So, Gail," he continued, "what's your plan of action?"

      "Well, first we finish our homework," said the Grundo, smiling. Fireball groaned.

Three hours later, at six o'clock in the evening...

      "She's coming any minute," said Gail dully. The three Neopets wore the same clothes they had come home in, but Lindsay had changed into a black dress and actually done her hair. It was in a French braid that only reached her shoulder blades, and she had applied a subtle coating of makeup.

      "If I ever put makeup on myself again," Lindsay had said to Yerra, who was curiously watching, after poking herself in the eye with the mascara for the ninth time, "slap me and then call a paramedic."

      A honk outside the Neohome sounded and Lindsay closed her eyes briefly. "Well, that's my ride," she said. "Can I trust you not to murder each other until the sitter gets here?"

      "Yes Mom," said the siblings.

      "Awesome. Be good, don't lie about your bedtime, and please don't blow up the kitchen again!"

      Gail bristled visibly and Lindsay threw up her hands.

      "Sorry, Gail. Good bye, good luck, good night." The human girl hugged her three pets and ran out of the house. Seconds later, she came back and grabbed her purse and coat, grumbling about being absent-minded, then left for real. Yerralyn, Gail and Fireball exchanged glances.

      "So what do we do until the sitter comes?" asked Fireball.

      "Everyone know what to do?" asked Gail in response. Her brother and sister nodded.

      "Good, cause I can hear her coming," said Yerralyn, one ear stalk twitching. The three troublemakers nodded and scattered as four knocks sounded on the door.

      "Cough, cough! Hello?" said Fireball in his sickliest, weakest, and most ancient voice.

      "Hi, is this clumsy_moo's residence?" asked a voice on the other end of the door.

      "Cough! Who? I've nev - HACK - n-never heard of a clumsy - sniff - moo," fake-choked Fireball.

      "Can't you tell that my grampy's sick?" snapped Yerralyn. "Who's clumsy_moo?"

      "I must have the wrong house, I'm very sorry," said the voice. "But it's strange, since the mailbox says 'clumsy_moo' on it, so I figured that this must be the house."

      The slight sarcasm in the voice let them know that they couldn't just send her away by pretending it was the wrong house. Reluctantly, Fireball dropped his act. "Come in," he said. The door opened to a tall cloud Mynci wearing a white strappy sandals, a white jeans skirt and a sky-blue halter top.

      "You're the first kids I've met that actually did that," she said. "My name's Raina_cloudyskyes, just call me Raina. Like it or not, I'm in charge tonight."

      "I'm Yerralyn," said Gail.

      "I'm Gail," said Yerralyn, catching on to the unplanned trick.

      "And I'm Plucky," said Fireball. "This is Isis," he said, indicating the Poppit bouncing from one of his shoulders to the other.

      "And this is Fireball," added Gail, pointing to her Wadjet.

      "And this is Bounce!" exclaimed Yerralyn, holding up her Mallard.

      "Cool," said Raina. "Okay, let's set some base rules here - you kids do what I say. And that's pretty much it."

      "Hey, Yerra," said Gail, "why don't we play Cheat with our lovely babysitter?"

      Raina was confused. "Aren't you Yerralyn?" asked the Mynci, looking quizzically at Gail.

      "No," said the Grundo, looking at Raina as if she were insane. "I'm Bounce."

      "But isn't that Bounce?" asked Raina, pointing at Plucky (the Mallard).

      "No, this is Isis," said Yerralyn.

      "But that's Isis!" yelled Raina, shoving a finger at Fireball's Poppit. She immediately realized what was going on. "Okay, real names. Now."

      Sighing, each pet introduced themself and their petpet properly. Gail shot her siblings an urgent glance. They needed to outsmart this babysitter! No way was she going to get the best of them.

      Fireball twitched his tail three times, making a slight tapping sound on the last twitch, and Gail sniffed once. That was the code. It was time to bring out the icebreaker.

      "I've gotta go to the bathroom," said Fireball. He walked rather than flew upstairs and, as planned, pretended to trip on Yerralyn's (much feared by all but Yerra herself) Poptart plushie. "YERRA!" he bellowed. "GET UP HERE AND STOP LEAVING YOUR CREEPY PLUSHIE LYING AROUND!"

      The little Aisha scurried upstairs. "Gail gave you the signal, Fire?"

      "Yeah, we're all set," replied Fireball. "Come on, I think Lindsay kept her science project in her closet..."

      "Soooooooo..." drawled Gail, breaking the awkward silence. "Would you like a Neocola, Raina?"

      "Sure," said Raina. Gail grinned.

      "Right this way," she said, and led the sitter into the kitchen, knowing that the fixed Neocola was in the fridge. As she pulled out a Neocola and a lime Achyfi, she hoped Fireball and Yerralyn had been able to locate Lindsay's science project from last quarter.

      They hadn't.

      "No way am I going in there," declared Fireball. He and Yerralyn stood in front of the Pit of Despair, a.k.a., Lindsay's closet. Her room was almost always neat, but her closet was another story.

      "Aww, come on, Fire," said Yerralyn, looking up at her brother. "Don't you want to scare Raina?"

      "Yeah, but I also want to live!" exclaimed Fireball. "Did you see how messy Mom's room was before she scoured the house? Her closet's bound to be ten times worse! I'll suffocate!"

      "Just open the door?" wheedled Yerralyn. Fireball crossed his arms, turned up his face and shook his head. "Fine, then I will."

      The little Aisha bravely pulled on the handle of Lindsay's closet, gently and cautiously at first, then harder. The door creaked open and all was calm, until she lost her balance and fell into the stacked-up junk.

      The precariously stacked items began to teeter and sway, until they crumbled, falling onto the two terrified siblings. They both wanted to scream "AVALANCHE!" but didn't want Raina checking up on them. Within minutes, the dust cleared and the only visible things were Fireball's horn and the very tips of Yerralyn's long ear stalks sticking up above the mess. Yerralyn burrowed out of the avalanche, closely followed by her brother.

      "Okay," said Fireball, shaking a pair of white jeans that Lindsay would never have worn off his head. "That could have gone better."

      "Yeah, but we're alive!" exclaimed Yerra. She waded through the sea of odds and ends, looking around for a box marked "Clay Day."

      "Yerra!" called Fireball. "I think I've got it." The Shoyru was taking a large plastic container filled to the top with brown goop out of a cardboard box. "I just hope we didn't take too long..."

      They hadn't.

      "So you babysat for my cousins?" asked Gail as she handed the Neocola to Raina and kept the Achyfi. "The Beck pets?"

      "Oh yeah, I remember those monsters," groaned Raina. She looked at Gail's drink. "Let's swap." She exchanged her Neocola for Gail's lime Achyfi and took a swig before Gail could react. The Grundo gingerly pushed it away from her. She didn't want the hot sauce-inhabited Neocola. "First, there was that green Shoyru. Creepy little reptile. Going on and on about how evil he is and how feeble we weak-minded Neopets are. Then, there's the blue Zafara. Thinks she's a princess and all that jazz. The Kougra was just this huge yellow blur. That kid is on a permanent sugar rush. And don't even get me started on that trouble-making Christmas Acara..."

      Gail grinned. Good ol' Brandy had probably caused major suffering.

      "I can't believe those weirdos are your cousins," said Raina. "Man, do I feel sorry for their owner. When he came back, half of the living room was in shambles."

      "That's only minor damage compared to what Brandy did when we were over there," said Gail. "She blew up the house."

      "What?!" demanded Raina. "How did she blow up the house?"

      "She accidently dropped a burning match into the dryer," said Gail, shrugging. "It was funny."

      Raina's eyes were bugging out. Gail was enjoying this. Any second now, Fireball and Yerralyn should come downstairs...

      Right on cue, Yerra's loud voice rang out, "I'M HUNGRY!"

      Raina jumped, not expecting a yell. "You scared me, brat!" she scolded. "What do you want?"

      "Uhh, dinner, silly," said Yerralyn, coming into the kitchen. Fireball wasn't with her.

      "I meant what did you want for dinner!" said Raina angrily.

      "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh," said Yerralyn, nodding. "I want strawberry shimmer cake, churros, a lemon jelly pop, fried shrimp, a super juicy berry-"

      "Okay, pizza it is," muttered Raina. "What kind of toppings do you brats like?"

      "Snow!" said Gail in an attempt to gross the Mynci out.

      "Anchovies!" lied Yerralyn.

      "And Fireball likes chocolate-covered dandelions!"

      Raina gagged. "Plain cheese pizza, got it." She scribbled out her order and Neomailed it to Pizzaroo. While she was doing that, Gail dumped the dangerously spicy Neocola into the sink. She was half-expecting the metal to start melting.

      "I'll go find Fire, Yerra, you keep Raina company," said Gail, edging out of the room. She ran into the bathroom, where Fireball was pouring Lindsay's third-quarter science project into the plugged-up sink.

      "This is gonna be great," snickered Fireball. "She's gonna freak out! She'll never babysit us again! Oh, by the way, next time we need something out of Lindsay's closet, I volunteer to be the one who doesn't go."

      "The stuff fell all over you two?" asked Gail knowingly.

      "On the nose," groaned Fireball. "It was scary. I saw my life flashing before my eyes."

      "Let me guess: it said 'EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT' over and over again?" asked Gail innocently. She grinned and ducked as Fireball took a swing at her.

      "Well, even with your wisecracks, brilliant plan, Gail," said Fireball proudly. "You're smarter than an average Grundo."

      "Well, thanks, Fire," said Gail happily. "Come on, let's go, I think the pizza's here."

      "We ordered pizza?"

      "Yeah."

      The two headed back downstairs and ate dinner, which took about an hour, as they kept asking for more pizza. Really, the siblings only wanted to lengthen Raina's confusion and discomfort. Yerralyn had her Mallard pecking at Raina's feet, then scurrying under her chair and out of sight when she bent down to see what was doing that. Of course, the siblings were acting as if they didn't know what was causing it. Fireball had also reluctantly given Yerralyn the idea of eating with her Poptart plushie on the table, effectively creeping everyone out, especially Raina.

      When the long-awaited moment came - the moment Raina announced she had to use the bathroom - Yerralyn almost burst out in a giggling fit. Fireball kicked her in time, and Raina didn't notice. Gail pointed out the bathroom and Raina went in.

      She didn't see the brown goop in the sink until she went to wash her paws.

      "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

      "I do believe Raina's found Mom's science project," said Gail. Yerra collapsed on the couch, laughing as hard as she could manage without passing out and squeezing her Poptart plushie. Fireball and Gail were laughing as well.

      "YOU LITTLE MONSTERS!" screamed Raina from the bathroom. "WHICH ONE OF YOU PUT DUNG IN THE SINK?!"

      "There is no dung in the sink!" called back Gail, trying not to laugh.

      "THERE IS A DISGUSTING BROWN GOO FILLING UP THE SINK! WHAT IN NEOPIA IS IT IF IT ISN'T DUNG?!"

      "Maybe science can answer that question?" quipped Fireball around laughter.

      "YOU INSANE LITTLE CREEPS WAIT UNTIL I GET MY PAWS ON YOU!"

      "I'm home!" called a cheerful voice from the front door. It was Lindsay.

      "MOM!" yelled all three pets happily, running over to Lindsay and hugging her.

      "How are you home so early?" asked Gail.

      "The principal was late," said Lindsay, trying not wince as Yerra's hug cut off the circulation to her legs. "By the time I left, she had canceled the meeting and rescheduled. Did you guys have fun?"

      "We had tons of fun, Mom," said Fireball. As if to prove his point, Raina tore out of the bathroom, screaming about sadistic little pre-Sloths.

      "I AM NEVER SITTING FOR YOU AGAIN!" she screeched at Lindsay, who looked shocked.

      "Here, let me pay you-"

      "I'M JUST GETTING OUT OF HERE! YOUR PETS ARE EVIL! AND I THOUGHT YOUR BROTHER'S PETS WERE FREAKY!"

      The Mynci grabbed her purse and streaked out of the house. Lindsay put her hands on her hips and looked at her Neopets.

      "Um, Fireball forgot to flush the toilet, and apparently, she's very touchy about dung," said Gail quickly.

      "Oh, is that all?" asked Lindsay. Her three pets didn't answer. "Okay, I'll take your word for it. Goodnight, guys. Get ready for bed."

      Lindsay and her pets went upstairs. As her pets were brushing their teeth, they heard Lindsay's voice.

      "Hey, why does my room look like a wreckage site?"

The End

Author's notes: Yes, my pets are troublemakers. Hooray4seals, the owner whose pets are mentioned in this story, is not really my brother. He's my cousin, but we're close enough to be siblings. My real brother's username is alexkewl90. Thanks for reading! Drop me a Neomail, I like feedback.

 
Search the Neopian Times




Great stories!


---------

The Son of Sahkmet: Part Two
She smiled a hidden and secret smile. She blended in perfectly with all of them, whose dark eyes were the only things visible from the shawls that covered their faces...

by twirlsncurls5

---------

Cinnamon Musician
A cheerful little voice echoed from behind the counter, "Could you give me a paw with the violin on the top shelf?"

by hmlanden

---------

Truths of Neopia
Everything you need to know about Neopia.

by corpustalker

---------

How I Saved Neopia From the Gleep: Part One
In the second floor bedroom of an average Neohome, an average Neopet slept soundly in her average bed, blissfully unaware that she was soon to be visited by two above average visitors...

by tambourine_chimp



Submit your stories, articles, and comics using the new submission form.