Jeremy Strong                          

Beware Killer Tomatoes

But then the next day Miss Crispin comes round - she's the hospital teacher - and I was looking at the book she gave me about The Romans and there was a picture of a mangonel. (I think that's how you spell it.) You might be surprised to learn that you know what a mangonel is. You may not know that a mangonel is called a mangonel (I certainly didn't - until I saw that book), but you do know what it is. It's that giant spoony-catapulty-thingy that the Romans used to fling great big boulders at the enemy.
  There you are, you DO know what it is! I can hear you at this very moment going: Yeah, of course, the giant spoony-catapulty-thingy!
  So I saw this picture in the book about The Romans, and I thought, that's it, that is how we paint the ceiling. We use a mangonel - a miniature one, using hospital spoons. And for paint, we will use . . . hospital food. Am I brilliant? Yes!
  I told Liam and he said: 'That's just what I was thinking.'
  'Of course you were,' I grunted.
  The next day we tried it out, when the staff weren't looking. Acne-Man had brought us some horrible stodge for lunch. (Acne-Man is one of the male nurses. His real name is Ashley, but I call him Acne-Man. You'd think the hospital wouldn't allow someone with a face so full of pimples to work with the walking wounded, but they do.)
  Anyhow, I filled my spoon with mashed potato mixed with green peas. I put the spoon on my tray with the handle poking out over the edge. It made a perfect, miniature mangospoon. I brought down my hand pretty sharpish - whump!
  PEEYOWW! SPLATT! That peesy-potato went whizzing through the air! Brilliant! You should have seen it.
  Unfortunately it went nowhere near the ceiling. It hit the opposite wall, just above Princess La-La. It looked as if someone had suffered a spectacular sneeze. Then Liam took a turn and his dollop of macaroni cheese created a fantastic galaxy effect on the ceiling. It looked good, but sadly it didn't stay up there for long. A few minutes later the biggest lump came unstuck just as Acne-Man passed underneath. Acne-Man keeps his head shaved so he got the full effect of a macaroni galaxy landing on his bonce from a considerable height.
  Hilarious! Acne-Man felt his head, looked at the splattered macaroni on his hand and almost jumped out of his skin because he thought the macaroni was bits of his brain. (Might have been an improvement!) Then he saw the splodge on the ceiling. There was a long pause as he tried to figure it out. He swung round and stared accusingly at Liam.
  'What?' went Liam, but it was obvious he was involved because he couldn't stop laughing.
  So that was an end to our brave attempt to redecorate the ward. At least it helped pass the time. As you can see, we have to make our own amusements in here. After that everything went back to normal - or to put it another way, boring. Tedious and - scary. Trouble is, there's nothing to do in here except think and when I think my head immediately fills with tomatoes and a pair of feet. I am in deep, deep trouble and I've got to get out of here.
  I should be allowed up pretty soon. I get physiotherapy for a while, to get the leg working properly and after that I should be able to go home. I hope so. Every day when the doc comes and does his rounds I wait for him to tell me I can get up, but he hasn't, not yet, but it must be soon, it must be, it's got to be. Got to. Because if it isn't soon I am going to be in big trouble and I mean BIG trouble, with THEM, the police. They must know it was me that did it - that business with the tomatoes and the body. He wasn't moving, not a flicker. He couldn't. Not beneath all those tomatoes, because they weren't just ordinary tomatoes. They were tinned.

Beware! Killer Tomatoes © Jeremy Strong, 2007. Published by Puffin Books.