When you leave the Menace at home with General Auntie

Chapter one: Exit Mum and Dad, enter Auntie Pru

This story begins at 51 Gasworks Road, Beanotown, in the year 2015. A brunette woman had just knocked on the door of the house, and it was opened by Sandra Menace, 33 years old. Her bobbed ginger hair was tidy, but several strands had fallen in front of her ear. Her brown-green eyes, blinked a few times, and relief settled across them when they rested on her visitor. She smoothed down her pink dress, and tried to smile, displaying white and fairly even teeth.

"Pru, right on time," she grinned wearily. From inside the house came loud cries and wails, and a man's voice above it. "Are you sure that you can handle the boy?" Sandra asked her older sister doubtfully. "He takes the family name on board a bit too literally. He's like his father, you know."

"Yes, I am perfectly aware of what your husband used to be," Pru said in her loud, military-style voice. Pru, short for Prudence, was several years older than Sandra, and she was much more heavily built, almost twice her slimmer sister's size, and a full head taller than her. She was wearing army-style khakis, and Sandra privately considered her to be more suited to army drilling or lion taming rather than babysitting. "Dennis the Menace, Beanotown's troublemaker. Well, believe me, if the son is anything like the father he will have met his match in me."

"Yes, but Pru, little Denny's only 5," said Sandra, as she led her in. "Be gentle with him, won't you? He may be a menace, but only a very little one."

"Little or not, a menace is a menace. Don't you worry, I'll handle the little terror," said Pru in the sort of tone used when talking about handling vicious dogs, rather than cheeky 5 year olds, and Sandra was starting to regret calling Pru to watch her son, but it was too late to change her mind now, and she led her sister to the living room.

The living room was an absolute mess. The cushions of the sofa, including the huge ones used for sitting on, were strewn all over the room. The table was lying on the floor, one of its legs broken. The vase was upside down, all the flowers squished, and toys were spread all over the room. In the middle of this stood Sandra's husband, Den Menace. Den, short for Dennis, was 35, but his whole appearance proclaimed him to be someone much younger. He had a shock of black hair that stuck up in spikes, unconquered by hairbrushes, and chocolate brown eyes, which were large and round, something that threw his years away, as did his round face. Even his button nose seemed to be young with its roundness. The clothes he wore were young too; black jogging bottoms that were a bit large for him, bright red trainers with an undone shoelace, a red t-shirt with a cartoon on it, and a red hoodie that wasn't the same brand as his trousers, let alone being a pair. The hoodie had the words 'Coca cola' on the upper right side of the front, and a massive picture of a coke bottle on the back, which just added to the sense that Den still hadn't truly grown up. His head had been bent, but he raised it when Pru and Sandra walked in.

"Oh, would you look at that?" he said. "Auntie Pru's here. Hello there, Pru." He smiled at her, but he looked a tad nervous. He looked down at his leg. "Say hello to your auntie, son," he said to his leg.

Correction: he said to the person BEHIND his leg. Hiding behind his leg, his little fingers fastened to the trouser, was the 5 year old son of Den and Sandra. Dennis Menace, jr.

"If the son is anything like the father" Pru had said, and it was clear that not only was he 'anything like' his father, he WAS like his father, so much that he was literally his father's photocopy. His hair was just as black, and just as wild and untamed as his fathers, spiking up from his head in all directions, with some tufts also falling over his forehead. His eyes were just as dark is his father's, and just as round if not rounder, and the roundness was matched by the roundness of his face and button nose, just like his fathers. However unlike his father, who was smiling politely at Pru, Dennis was scowling at her fiercely, his eyebrows pulled low over his eyes, scowling so fiercely it was comical, as his chubby little fingers clung to his father's trousers tightly, almost as if he was afraid that someone would tear him away. In one of  those hands he was holding a tiny catapult, and there was a peashooter sticking out of the pocket of his black rompers. Even at the age of five, he was clearly a prankster, a trouble maker, just like his father.