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Formula 86 Delayed Action

Mouse-Maker

"Children are rrree-volting!" screamed The Grand High Witch. "Vee vill vipe them all avay! Vee vill scrrrub them off the face of the earth! Vee vill flush them down the drain!"

"Yes, yes!" chanted the audience. "Wipe them away! Scrub them off the earth! Flush them down the drain!"

"Children are foul and filthy!" thundered The Grand High Witch.

"They are! They are!" chorused the English witches. "They are foul and filthy!"

"Children are dirty and stinky!" screamed The Grand High Witch.

"Dirty and stinky!" cried the audience, getting more and more worked up.

"Children are smelling of dogs' drrroppings!" screeched The Grand High Witch.

"Pooooooo!" cried the audience. "Pooooooo! Pooooooo! Pooooooo!"

"They are vurse than dogs' drrroppings!" screeched The Grand High Witch. "Dogs' drrroppings is smelling like violets and prrrimroses compared vith children!"

"Violets and primroses!" chanted the audience. They were clapping and cheering almost every word spoken from the platform. The speaker seemed to have them completely under her spell.

"To talk about children is making me sick!" screamed The Grand High Witch. "I am feeling sick even thinking about them! Fetch me a basin!"

The Grand High Witch paused and glared at the mass of eager faces in the audience. They waited, wanting more.

"So now!" barked The Grand High Witch. "So now I am having a plan! I am having a giganticus plan for getting rrrid of every single child in the whole of Inkland!"

The witches gasped. They gaped. They turned and gave each other ghoulish grins of excitement.

"Yes!" thundered The Grand High Witch. "Vee shall svish them and svollop them and vee shall make to disappear every single smelly little brrrat in Inkland in vun strrroke!"

"Whoopee!" cried the witches, clapping their hands. "You are brilliant, O Your Grandness! You are fantabulous!"

"Shut up and listen!" snapped The Grand High Witch. "Listen very carefully and let us not be having any muck-ups!"

The audience leaned forward, eager to learn how this magic was going to be performed.

"Each and every vun of you", thundered The Grand High Witch, "is to go back to your home towns immediately and rrree-sign from your jobs. Rrree-sign! Give notice! Rrree-tire!"

"We will!" they cried. "We will resign from our jobs!"

"And after you have rrree-signed from your jobs," The Grand High Witch went on, "each and every vuri of you vill be going out and you vill be buying... " She paused.

"What will we be buying?" they cried. "Tell us, O Brilliant One, what is it we shall be buying?"

"Sveet-shops!" shouted The Grand High Witch.

"Sweet-shops!" they cried. "We are going to buy sweet-shops! What a frumptious wheeze!"

"Each of you vill be buying for herself a sveetshop. You vill be buying the very best and most rrree-spectable sweet-shops in Inkland."

"We will! We will!" they answered. Their dreadful voices were like a chorus of dentists' drills all grinding away together.

"I am vonting no tuppenny-ha'penny crrrummy little tobacco-selling-newspaper-sweet-shops!" shouted The Grand High Witch. "I am vonting you to get only the very best shops filled up high with piles and piles of luscious sweets and tasty chocs!"

"The best!" they cried. "We shall buy the best sweet-shops in town!"

"You will be having no trouble in getting vot you wont," shouted The Grand High Witch, "because you will be offering four times as much as a shop is vurth and nobody is rrree-fusing an offer like that! Money is not a prrroblem to us witches as you know very well. I have brrrought with me six trrrunks stuffed full of Inklish banknotes, all new and crrrisp. And all of them," she added with a fiendish leer, "all of them homemade."

The witches in the audience grinned, appreciating this joke.

At that point, one foolish witch got so excited at the possibilities presented by owning a sweetshop that she leapt to her feet and shouted, "The children will come flocking to my shop and I will feed them poisoned sweets and poisoned chocs and wipe them all out like weasels!"

The room became suddenly silent. I saw the tiny body of The Grand High Witch stiffen and then go rigid with rage. "Who spoke? " she shrieked. "It vos you! You over there!"

The culprit sat down fast and covered her face with her clawed hands.

"You blithering bumpkin!" screeched The Grand High Witch. "You brrrainless bogvumper! Are you not rrree-alising that if you are going rrround poisoning little children you vill be caught in five minutes flat? Never in my life am I hearing such a boshvolloping suggestion coming from a vitch!"

The entire audience cowered and shook. I'm quite sure they all thought, as I did, that the terrible white-hot sparks were about to start flying again.

Curiously enough, they didn't.

'If such a tomfiddling idea is all you can be coming up vith," thundered The Grand High Witch, "then it is no vunder Inkland is still svorming vith rrrotten little children!"

There was another silence. The Grand High Witch glared at the witches in the audience. "Do you not know", she shouted at them, "that vee witches are vurrrking only with magic?"

"We know, Your Grandness!" they all answered.

"Of course we know!"

The Grand High Witch grated her bony gloved hands against each other and cried out, "So each of you is owning a magnificent sweet-shop! The next move is that each of you will be announcing in the window of your shop that on a certain day you will be having a Great Gala Opening with frree sweets and chocs to every child!"

"That will bring them in, the greedy little brutes!" cried the audience. "They'll be fighting to get through the doors!"

"Next," continued The Grand High Witch, "you will prepare yourselves for this Great Gala Opening by filling every choc and every sweet in your shop with my very latest and grrreatest magic formula! This is known as FORMULA 86 DELAYED ACTION MOUSE-MAKER!"

"Delayed Action Mouse-Maker!" they chanted. "She's done it again! Her Grandness has concocted yet another of her wondrous magic child-killers! How do we make it, O Brilliant One?"

"Exercise patience," answered The Grand High Witch. "First, I am explaining to you how my Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker is vurrrking. Listen carefully."

"We are listening!" cried the audience who were now jumping up and down in their chairs with excitement.

"Delayed Action Mouse-Maker is a green liqvid," explained The Grand High Witch, "and vun droplet in each choc or sveet vill be qvite enough. So here is vot happens:

"Child eats choc vich has in it Delayed Action Mouse-Maker liqvid...

"Child goes home feeling fine...

"Child goes to bed, still feeling fine...

"Child vakes up in the morning still okay...

"Child goes to school still feeling fine...

"Formula, you understand, is delayed action, and is not vurrrking yet."

"We understand, O Brainy One!" cried the audience. "But when does it start working?"

"It is starting to vurrrk at exactly nine o'clock, vhen the child is arriving at school!" shouted The Grand High Witch triumphantly. "Child arrives at school. Delayed Action Mouse-Maker immediately starts to vurrrk. Child starts to shrrrink. Child is starting to grow fur. Child is starting to grow tail. All is happening in prrreecisely tventy-six seconds. After tventy-six seconds, child is not a child any longer. It is a mouse!"

"A mouse!" cried the witches. "What a frumptious thought!"

"Classrooms vill all be svorrrming vith mice!" shouted The Grand High Witch. "Chaos and pandemonium vill be rrreigning in every school in Inkland! Teachers vill be hopping up and down! Vimmen teachers vill be standing on desks and holding up skirts and yelling, 'Help, help, help!' "

"They will! They will!" cried the audience.

"And vot", shouted The Grand High Witch, "is happening next in every school?"

"Tell us!" they cried. "Tell us, O Brainy One!"

The Grand High Witch stretched her stringy neck forward and grinned at the audience, showing two rows of pointed teeth, slightly blue. She raised her voice louder than ever and shouted, "Mouse-trrraps is coming out!"

"Mouse-traps!" cried the witches.

"And cheese!" shouted The Grand High Witch "Teachers is all rrrushing and rrrunning out and getting mouse-trrraps and baiting them vith cheese and putting them down all over school! Mice is nibbling cheese! Mouse-trrraps is going off! All over school, mouse-trrraps is going snappety-snap and mouse-heads is rrrolling across the floors like marbles! All over Inkland, in everrry school in Inkland, noise of snapping mouse-trrraps vill be heard!"

At this point, the disgusting old Grand High Witch began to do a sort of witch's dance up and down the platform, stamping her feet and clapping her hands. The entire audience joined in the clapping and the foot-stamping. They were making such a tremendous racket that I thought surely Mr Stringer would hear it and come banging at the door. But he didn't. Then, above all the noise, I heard the voice of The Grand High Witch screaming out some sort of an awful gloating song,

"Down vith children! Do them in!

Boil their bones and fry their skin!

Bish them, sqvish them, bash them, mash them!

Brrreak them, shake them, slash them, smash them!

Offer chocs vith magic powder!

Say 'Eat up!' then say it louder.

Crrram them full of sticky eats,

Send them home still guzzling sveets.

And in the morning little fools

Go marching off to separate schools.

A girl feels sick and goes all pale.

She yells, 'Hey look! I've grrrown a tail!'

A boy who's standing next to her

Screams, 'Help! I think I'm grrrowing fur!'

Another shouts, Wee look like frrreaks!

There's viskers growing on our cheeks!'

A boy who vos extremely tall

Cries out, 'Vot's wrong? I'm grrrowing small!'

Four tiny legs begin to sprrrout

From everybody rrround about.

And all at vunce, all in a trrrice,

There are no children! Only mice!

In every school is mice galore

All rerunning rrround the school-rrroom floor!

And all the poor demented teachers

Is yelling, 'Hey, who are these crrreatures?'

They stand upon the desks and shout,

'Get out, you filthy mice! Get out!

Vill someone fetch some mouse-trrraps, please!

And don't forrrget to bring the cheese!'

Now mouse-trrraps come and every trrrap

Goes snippy-snip and snappy-snap.

The mouse-trrraps have a powerful spring,

The springs go crack and snap and ping!

Is lovely noise for us to hear!

Is music to a vitch's ear!

Dead mice is every place arrround,

Piled two feet deep upon the grrround,

Vith teachers searching left and aright,

But not a single child in sight!

The teachers cry, 'Vot's going on?

Oh vhere have all the children gone?

Is half-past nine and as a rrrule

They're never late as this for school!'

Poor teachers don't know vot to do.

Some sit and rrread, and just a few

Amuse themselves throughout the day

By sveeping all the mice avay.

AND ALL US VITCHES SHOUT HOORAY!"

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