The Feral Peril Read Online Free PDF

big-time.’
    â€˜Big-time!’ howled Skull delightedly. ‘And the crowd went mental!’
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    It seems astonishing that the umpire would allow it, but Frankie J. made it through round sixteen thanks to his flapping bandage trick, and it became the most controversial wardrobe malfunction in Horror history. It made Janet Jackson look straight. The championship’s generous sponsors were outraged and threatened to pull out if Frankie J. wasn’t disqualified and forced to make some lame-o public apology.
    Forget that. Frankie J. flipped the sponsors the bird with extra plumage; the sponsors stormed off in a huff, and nobody missed them. Who really wants to be sponsored by Slime & Sons, Secondhand Suppository Sellers and SchoolSandwich Makers, whose business motto is, ‘We try to remember to wash our hands, but nobody’s perfect’ ?
    Frankie J. Mummy was unceremoniously beaten in the next round ’cause he was crap and, having been stomped out of the comp by Handy Bigfoot, he sulkily sloped off home. Nobody missed him either. Fact is, nobody missed anybody at Horror High for any reason, because they’re all undead, which tends to negate the finer, higher emotions.
    Or it did, until Selina Bones-Jones and Barnaby Hangdog’s gig was ruined. Things changed then. That incident ignited the finer, higher emotions of revenge, retaliation, reprisal and retribution. I know there’s loads more crackajack synonyms with which to flag their fully evil intentions, but somebody’s stolen my thesaurus.
    Suffice to say, they planned to break bad on Tony Bones-Jones, and first-rate writers don’t need a thesaurus to have bags of good words for ‘bad’ – badder,bad-o, e-Bad (online baddery), Bad-en Powell (a scout badge for being totally heaps bad), Sinbad (extra bad with a pinch of sin, traditionally practised by sailors but still illegal onshore).
    I know words. Don’t be telling me my job.
    Â 
    The rest of the competitors folded in due order. Handy Bigfoot was blown away by Jeremiah Jefferson, an American Civil War ghost blasted in half by cannon fire at Valley Forge, and Jefferson was in turn broken by Tony Bones-Jones.
    Come to Papa … and bring the pieces with you.
    Tony Bones-Jones, TBJ, or the Bonester as he was commonly known around Horror High, was the molten-hot favourite. The bookies burnt their tongues just talking about him, were giving him odds on, and the teachers bet their entire holiday pay.
    TBJ had scorched the courts all year, and everyone knew he was The Man withthe Plan on the handball court. He walked tall, dominating the scene. He savaged, mangled, hammered and hurt, without fear or favour. He gorged himself on all food groups – mummies, vampires, werewolves, wraiths, wights, grave trolls and fire demons – and his condiment of choice was blood. (When he couldn’t get blood he’d settle for sweet chilli sauce, though he only liked one obscure brand available nowhere except a tiny supermarket in Chinatown, so he had to trek right across town to buy it and …)
    What? Oh, right. Sorry.
    Confident? Yeah, Tony Bones-Jones was confident. He knew he’d win. He banked on winning, literally. The teachers promised him a cut of their winnings. He’d been training hard all year and could taste victory. Well, he could taste something. Might’ve been the remains of his peanut butter toast lodged somewhere back in his jawbone.
    And the spectators expected the Bonester to win, too. They expected victorylike they expected the Horror High canteen to serve lethal, inedible food. They expected it like they expected the school morgue to be full to overflowing by the end of every day. They expected it like they expected F’s on their exams and handwritten death threats from teachers on their assignments.
    What they didn’t expect was the identity of the Bonester’s opponent in the grand final clash. An unidentified maestro