The Misses Foo & Cockerill

Miss Cockerill's New Scheme

Lumpkin the toad croaked unhappily. It leapt from the rock Miss Cockerill had put in the tub and splooshed into the sludge and the bottom of the bath. Lumpkin slurshed and sletched until it was almost completely buried in the sludge–only its eyes stuck out above it. They were strange, uneven eyes–one wide and staring, the other small and squinty.

The toad was unhappy for many reasons, but especially unhappy that Miss Cockerill had cleaned Miss Foo's old, evil bathsludge out and replaced it with new, clean sludge.

Lumpkin's evil squinty eye twitched.

The whole next week a dirt-colored fog hung over Balagan Street. It thickened approaching the end, until it finally led directly to its source: Foo Manor.

The windows of the Manor were thrown open, spewing dust and grime, dirt and muck, filth and sludge.

Miss Cockerill was cleaning.

But that wasn't all she was doing.

Miss Cockerill bounced down the sidewalk, silver platter in hand. She flounced through her favorite dress shop, she peeked into the hardware store, and she popped into the library.

And everywhere the townsfolk stopped what they were doing and stared.

Her first victim was Officer Steve, who had just finished making sure everyone at the diner was on the reservation list. When he saw Miss Cockerill bouncing towards him he tried to hide behind his ticket book.

"Hey!" Miss Cockerill called and waved a hand menacingly over the top of her pointy head.

"Oh, no!" Officer Steve moaned. "This is it, I'm done for." He stood on the sidewalk shaking, petrified by terror.

Miss Cockerill thrust the silver platter at him. Office Steve was too terrified to look and see what could be on it–torture devices, monkey brains–any number of awful things.

"Take one," Miss Cockerill demanded. But Officer Steve only trembled. "I said take one!"

Very slowly and cautiously Officer Steve opened his eyes. Oh, it was too terrible! She was right there next to him, big vacant eyes staring, with the terrible polka-dotted sash. It was just like in his nightmares! And what was that on the platter? No it couldn't be, it was too terrible, it was...apple-cranberry muffins.

"Take one!" Miss Cockerill repeated. Officer Steve timidly reached out and took a muffin. Miss Cockerill beamed like child who had done something right. "Try it!"

It must be poisoned, he thought. But he had no choice; he brought the muffin to his mouth and nibbled at it, closed his eyes, and waited for death to come.

But it did not. Instead something happened which Officer Steve did not expect; the muffin tasted good. He tried another bite. Yes, it was quite tasty!

Miss Cockerill smiled innocently. Then she stood and bobbed off down the street, and Officer Steve watched stupefied as she handed out apple-cranberry muffins to everyone who passed.

#

The whispers flew faster than ever.

"Cleaning!" Ed said. "Do you believe it? Actually cleaning! I saw all the filth flowing away with my own eyes."

No one believed him, of course, until Miss Wendy said, "Yea, and the other day I checked out a cookbook from the library!"

The entire town gasped.

"I didn't know that she knew what a library was for!"

"I didn't know she could cook."

"I didn't know she could read!"