Free Horror High 2 by Paul Stafford Page A

Dandyline?’
    â€˜Because Jason-Jock is practising with the Werewolves XI team for the Interghouls Cricket Cup, sir. They’ve never won it, sir, they’re desperate, practising twenty-seven hours a day, nine days a week. And while we’re on the subject of sport, sir, I’ll be absent tomorrow practising head bowling. Sir.’
    â€˜Head bowling? What the devil is head bowling?’
    â€˜It’s tenpin bowling using one’s own head, sir.’ Dandyline gaped so enthusiastically hishorse-teeth fanned out like a bunch of freshly peeled bananas. ‘I’m in the regional finals.’
    â€˜What sort of excuse is that?’ Grimsweather snorted. ‘What sort of sport is that? Head bowling! Do you take me for a complete fool, Dandyline?’
    â€˜A complete fool, sir? No, sir – sort of half-finished.’
    â€˜Guillotine, Dandyline. Lunchtime. You know the place.’
    â€˜No, sir! Please, sir! Each chop shaves a slice off my neck and I’m too young to shave, sir. Please, sir, my neck’s out of slices, I’ve no neck left – I look like a bullfrog, sir.’
    Grimsweather nearly smiled, for the first time ever. ‘You should be grateful, Dandyline – that’s a vast improvement.’

 

The trouble started (as it often does in low-carb, fossil-fuelled stories like this) with a bug-house bet between inebriated school principals, a skeleton crushed into powder and blended into some tripped-out hippy health shake (and understandably irate about it), and a naive, adolescent werewolf who believed the solutions to his insurmountable personal problems lay in a book.
    Solutions in a book? Bah. No wonder the dude had problems …
    Anyway, the trouble really started when Jason-Jock Werewolf took stinky advice from a brain-dead, head case bystander, listened to it and then actually acted on it. The advice was offered by one of those cheapo, project-kit Frankensteins you see loitering around public places trying to look like someone who has a clue, and JJ was fooled. Should’ve changed his name to Jason-Jock Jackass.
    Listen. Don’t ever take advice. Wrong-headed people the world over will try to give you guidance when things get ropey, pretending they’ve been in that exact situation, navigated their way safely through it and learnt grand and prudent lessons, but their advice is always dangerously defective.
    Unless the words of wisdom have come from some officially registered and internationally recognised source of deep wisdom – such as myself – ignore them. That’s my advice.
    For example, Jason-Jock Werewolf wasmisguidedly advised that the key to overcoming his many nefarious problems, dilemmas and general weirdnesses was to get actively involved in a team sport, such as cricket.
    Yet the insurmountable problems haunting Jason-Jock only intensified as the red six-stitcher cricket ball now whizzed past his bat and crashed through his stumps.
    â€˜Howzat?!’
    JJ groaned as he gazed back at the stumps. They had been in a pleasing and precisely upright arrangement – three stumps supporting two bails, all tickety-boo and how-do-you-do – just seconds ago. Now they’d spun out all over the place like a madman’s chopsticks, middle stump flat on its back, bails a metre away in the dirt.
    â€˜You’re out,’ shouted the coach. ‘Again. For a duck … again. Quack, quack, quack. Back to the pavilion – next batsman.’
    Jason-Jock shook his head in deep despair. So far today he’d been out ninetimes for a total score of zero, nine ducks in a row, enough to open a duck farm and sell the eggs for a living. He was the team captain and its best batsman, so you can imagine what the worst ones scored – do the maths, it’ll hurt your brain.
    The other young werewolves crouching in cricket whites on the pavilion benches bowed their heads, muttering darkly while picking at stray