A Dog's Breakfast
Authors: Annie Graves
A DOG'S BREAKFAST
Other books in the Nightmare Club series
Help! My Brother's a Zombie!
Guinea Pig Killer
Mirrored
THE NIGHTMARE CLUB
A DOG'S BREAKFAST
By
ANNIE GRAVES
A DOG'S BREAKFAST
Published 2011
by Little Island
128 Lower Baggot Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
Copyright © Little Island 2011
Illustrations copyright © Glenn McElhinney
except house on front cover by Jacktoon
ISBN 978-1-908195-16-6
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Book design by Someday
Printed in Poland by Drukarnia Skleniarz
Little Island received financial assistance from
The Arts Council (An Chomhairle EalaÃon), Dublin, Ireland.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Hugh Shalby Nameless,
a kitten with attitude
A
nnie Graves is twelve years old, and she has no intention of ever growing up. She is, conveniently, an orphan, and lives at an undisclosed address in the Glasnevin area of Dublin with her pet toad, Much Misunderstood, and a small black kitten, Hugh Shalby Nameless. You needn't think she goes to school â pah! â or has anything as dull as brothers and sisters or hobbies, but let's just say she keeps a large cauldron on the stove.
This is not her first book. She has written four, so far, none of which is her first.
Publisher's note: We did try to take a picture of Annie, but her face just kept fading away. We have sent our camera for investigation, but suspect the worst.
THANK YOU !
I have to give a big thanks to Katherine Farmar, because if I don't she'll send a fire-breathing demonic alien after me!
A
nnie here, from Glasnevin. I'm the author. That's a posh word for writer, in case you don't know. I'm not posh, but I do like posh words.
As well as being the author, I am the hostess. Which means it's my house where we have the Hallowe'en sleepover every year. A gang of us all get together, girls in the big four-poster bed, boys in sleeping bags on the floor, and we scare each other to BITS. No costumes, no torches, no special effects.
Just really scary stories.
I have this great scary story. Being an author and all, I'm good at stories. For years now, I've been trying to tell it. It's about these witches with purple skin and webbed feet and melty eyes. They fly all over the world on Hallowe'en looking for small children to kidnap and roast slowly over a fire.
But every year they all say that I'm the host, so I have to let the others tell their stories first. (Who made up that rule? I bet it was an adult.)
But at least I get to write them all down. Because I'm the best at that part. I am the Absolute Pinnacle, the Bee's Knees, the Dog's Waistcoat, the Cat's Whatever â¦
OK, right, the story.
This is one that Nicola told. As a special treat, she said. Nicola's Treat is a really stupid name for a story, though. So I am calling it A Dog's Breakfast.
It could also be called a shaggy dog story.
T
here used to be a boy in our class named Glen. I sat next to him. Not by choice.
He disappeared, Glen. The only one who knew what had happened to him was a dog. A dog I am rather fond of, as it happens.
I never liked Glen. The rest of the O'Gearys were OK, but he sucked the fun out of everything.
Actually, I hated him. He had a high, screechy voice like a burglar alarm. I hated that burglar-alarm voice.
And I hated his lies and his complaints. He never opened his mouth except to complain or to lie.
When he walked to school, he complained there was too much traffic.
When the teacher asked for his homework, he lied about why he hadn't done it.
When anyone in school asked for a loan of a pencil, he complained about having to give up one of his spares.
My mother told me that he used to lie to his mum too. (Not a good idea. They talk to each other, mums.)
When his mother went to say good night to him, when he was tucked up in bed, she would ask if he'd brushed his teeth, and he'd lie and say that he had. She knew he hadn't, but if she said so, he complained about the taste of the toothpaste.
He kept a special packet of mints under his pillow so he could breathe minty breath in her face.
She found them after he disappeared.
One day our class went on a field trip to the woods to learn about the trees and flowers and birds and animals that lived there.
Glen thought this was silly and pointless and a pain in the neck. He said so, too.
Loudly
.
He was loud on the bus and loud when we got to the woods.
But nobody listened, because nobody ever listened when Glen complained. We were all so used to it, we just shut out the sound of his screechy voice.
That made him cross, though, and he dragged his feet while the rest of us went on ahead, hiking through the woods.
Our teacher had put us into pairs on the bus. That way, everyone in the class had someone to look out for them in case they got lost in the woods.
And wouldn't you know it, Glen was
my
partner.
That meant I was supposed to look out for him. But I didn't.
I feel a little bit bad about that now, but if I'd hung back with him, he'd only have complained about it later.
It must have taken him a while to realise he was way behind. He was probably too busy complaining to himself that the whole idea of a woodland walk was stupid.
Anyway, he wandered off the path. When you're in a wood you don't know, it's very easy to get lost if you don't pay attention. Glen wasn't good at paying attention because he was always too busy muttering to himself.
I can just imagine him now, looking around, seeing nobody and snorting. (He loved to snort.)
âTypical!' he would say, out loud. (When he wasn't muttering to himself, he was screeching, and in a wood on his own, I'd say he screeched away good-oh.) âNow I have to find my way back to the others. And
of course
there are no signs.'
That must have been when he heard the voice: âI can help you with that.'
That would have made him jump, all right! The voice had come from nowhere, you see, or nowhere obvious, if you get my drift. And it definitely didn't sound like anyone Glen knew.
It wasn't anyone in his class, or any of the teachers.
That might have been a bit scary for him, I suppose. And he didn't like being afraid, Glen.
He'd have to turn the afraid feeling into something he liked better.
âDon't do that! Don't sneak up on me like that!' he said.
