DAY DREAM ELECTRICAL FOOD

It was another glorious day in Magicland, Zibbin decided as he rushed around his bedroom in the clock tower, unable to decide which window to peer out of. The view through the west window looked so full of balloons and boats, but the south was alive with musicians crawling across the rooftops and playing their trombones down chimneys. And wasn't that a pie fight towards the east? How long since his last pie fight? A week?
Yet the north, with its open fields curving like cushions, dotted with swaying trees and sign posts...he found it so hard to make a choice that he spent another hour bouncing up and down on his bed, holding his hat on with one hand and his clown sized pants up with the other. Last time he had done this he had shot through the ceiling into the clockworks of the tower and gotten stuck in the cogs and springs for days. He had had to wait for the lazy clock-keeper to notice that it had been quarter past two for most of the week.

"Oh, boo-babs and snimpoles! I'll make a big leap and see which window the bed sends me out of. That's the best way to choose."

And he closed his eyes, span around and bounced on one foot until he lost his balance and flew through the air. It was only when he found himself dangling from the bakery lightning rod that he realised he had fallen northwards.

"I knew I would do that!" he cried, reaching for his red bowler had, which had landed in a crow's nest. One drain pipe fireman slide later he was dusting himself off and dancing to a bright tune in his head. Only it wasn't in his head really, not now. The music was flowing from the bakery.

"I bet my yellow teeth old baker Miles has just cooked some lovely piping hot pies. Piping hot pies always make that racket."

As if by magic the wobbly glass window of the bakery swung open and the music grew louder. Now Zibbin could hear what must have been the baker singing along with his piping hot pies. Zibbin dodged towards the window and sprang through in a blur of green jacket and blue and yellow trousers. The air was always hot and sweet in the bakery. Pink steam from something nice and fresh from the oven filled Zibbin's googly eyes. There was no sign of Miles the baker or his pal Joddy the horse.

"Now there's a splashgorgeous thing." Zibbin declared, tightening his white braces so that his trousers didn't fall down. If baker Miles and Joddy were out then that meant they had found something better to do than baking piping hot pies and doughnuts - doughnuts so crispy coated in sugar and so full to bursting with jam that biting into them was like biting into an egg.
Zibbin opened all the silvery black oven doors and all the wooden cupboards with dancing flowers painted on them. He even called up the stairs to the attic and down the stairs to the cellar. No sign at all. Yet the music?
Then, under a towel with a blue sailing boat stitched on to it, he found a single piping hot pie. It was still hot enough to be blowing steam through its pie crust.

"It's you making that musical racketty rack racket, pie!"

The pie changed its tune at that. Zibbin felt a little sad for the solitary pie, singing all alone. The tune was sad too, so maybe that had something to do with it.

"Where are all your pie friends, and where is the baker and Joddy?"

The pie, with some effort, began to sing in a hubbly-bubbly pie-filling popping voice.

"Don't you know today's when Uncle Creepus goes on holiday? Uncle Creepus, Uncle Creepus, Uncle..."

The pie went on, trying to form a song from the words, but it couldn't find a word to rhyme with Uncle Creepus. Zibbin took the pie in his hand and sniffed its golden brown crust, covered in fat cubes of sugar like gnome gems.

"Sing us a song about gnome gems, pie, " Zibbin begged, as he peered into the pie's little sugar droplet mouth, at the bubbling pinky red filling. The pie was too confused by now, what with having so much to think about. It decided to sing its original tune- the one he had been baked for in the first place. On hearing this, Zibbin used his green finger- as opposed to his yellow, blue, pink, purple or black finger - to lift the pie's lid. He could see all the filling now; cherries, strawberries, black berries, moonroot, riverseeds and jumbo clots.

"Wait a sunstroke minute! Zibbin exclaimed, "Uncle Creepus is going on holiday? This is news to I. Why, if he goes on holiday then who will look after the haunted castle? Who will paint the trees black by the golden swamp? Who will be in charge of chasing after the piglets in the clown chasm? This needs further investigation." And he dropped the pie's lid back on and asked the pie what it had meant about Uncle Creepus.
The pie had cooled, however, and had no steam left to make a single sound. It just sat there.

"Oh saggy-sops! You're no fun," Zibbin told the pie, before dropping it on the baking tray and rushing off outside. Intent on finding out the truth, Zibbin knocked on doors -but became so distracted by the sounds each door made when he struck it that he quickly forgot everything else. After an hour of creating the oddest tune he had ever heard he remembered why he was knocking in the first place. He decided to peer through windows if nobody was going to answer their doors. Some of them were wobbly, some green, some had lace instead of curtains. The insides of the houses were so interesting that he wasted another hour peering through windows. Curtains that danced at the slightest breeze, a man with a face so big he was stuck in his pantry, haunted furniture that rearranged itself in a fit of indecision. The list was endless. It took Zibbin a tremendous effort to get his quest straight again in his head.

"Uncle Creepus is going on holiday!"

Where was everybody? The only person he had found was the fat headed man stuck in his pantry, and Zibbin didn't fancy getting into a conversation with him. Then Zibbin spotted golden coins glinting between the cobblestones of North Street. It had been raining while he slept. He immediately began to fill his pockets with the fat golden coins. They were everywhere; in the gutters, in rain buckets, sticking out of flower pots and gardens. No two coins were alike. Some weren't even coins, they were buttons. But then buttons were even more collectible than coins. After a few minutes Zibbin's pockets were so full to bulging that he heared his braces straining like piano wire tuned too tightly. When they hit a high C he started to bale out, peering this way and that in case anyone was around to see his braces snap and his pants fall down. Soon he had only slightly bulging trousers and was ready to sit down on a rock shaped like a lion's head to think.

"I just know there was something I was all preoccupied over. Was it something to do with a pie fight I was invited to? Or was it Uncle Creepus up to something? Or maybe it was that weird house I saw growing through my super powered telescope?" He quickly gave up thinking when a wind-up man, carved to look like a policeman, sped by in the direction of the Northern Woods.

"If I chase you, then maybe the rush of blood to the head will get my brain fixed better for thinking." And he did just that, his bright orange sandals slapping and tripping and flapping on the cobblestones. The toy policeman had been wound up good and proper and Zibbin was soon panting and red eyed.

"What's...going...on?"

Zibbin collapsed by a horse trough with a small boat bobbing in the sparkly water. The sails of the boat caught Zibbin's breath and sent the tiny vessel in the corner of the trough, pink dots ran up and down the deck, struggling with ropes and giving orders.

"How can Uncle Creepus possibly go on holiday?" he pondered loudly, capsizing the boat completely with his words.

"Where would he go that's better than Magicland?" He picked himself up and looked around for the toy policeman. The only thing similar he could spot was the tall green statue of a man peering over a mossy garden wall. Red lights flashed where its eyes should be. Grey snails or mushrooms gave it hair of sorts.

"You look like Uncle Creepus, on bathday," Zibbin joked. Or was he joking? He couldn't decide. And now he wasn't even so sure it had ever been a thought he had had at all, or just a thing his mouth had said to fill the time.

"I...I..." and now he was too frightened to speak altogether, in case he didn't agree with anything his mouth might say. So he ran in the direction he had been travelling so far, and hoped he could catch up with whatever he had been chasing. Had it been a rabbit with a wheelbarrow full of carrots? A cat drawn chariot? A balloon with a glove tied to it? No, that had been his last birthday gift to Softy Sue, who no one had seen since she ran off after the silly balloon.

"I'm getting a stitch now!" Zibbin complained, clutching his forehead, "or a head-ache!"

As luck would have it he had slowed to a crawl beside Bell Street, with its many bell shops and bell wells and bell gardens. The last time Zibbin had been down Bell Street it had been snowing so hard that the flakes had hit all the bells and the tinkling had chased away a nest of mice who had been chewing people's shoe laces so their shoes flew off then they walked too fast. Come to think of it, it had been Uncle Creepus who had made it snow in the first place. Another thing about Bell Street that came to Zibbin's mind was that the underground steam train started there and it could take him to wherever he was going.

"But where is that little train?"

He dimly recollected having a pie fight on that very train, not a year ago. They had all lit candles to see in the dark otherwise the pies would have gone astray. But the candles had been splatherised by the pie custard and they had ended up rumbling through dark tunnels, pieing each other and not getting the benefit of seeing any pie splats. Not until they emerged, white lumpy ghosts, at the station.

"Not an efficient pie fight, you see," he told his reflection in a mirror flower. Still it could save his sandal leather, and give him time to think.

"Think about what?"

He didn't recollect right now. But it had something to do with many cold pies and drowning sailors. Oh, and a green statue. So he set about investigating Bell Street, which did have rather too many bells indeed. He looked through a cat flap, under a toy car, inside a flower pot. He even searched his pockets. But no train station. It was like he had dreamt the entire thing up. Which was likely as he spent just as much time dreaming as he did being awake.

"Did I dream that pie fight?" He asked himself. "Even the secret underground chambers that I saw through the train windows? The gnome streets and the gnome parties? How about the scary grotto with the lion pouring out tea for a woman in a veil? Surely not? I've seen her on Jumble Avenue, washing her china pots in the fountain." Every detail that sprang to mind now seemed unsure and probably just part of some dream he had had when he was ill with a stomach ache. He was so worried that the gnome cinema he had seen flashing by in the train tunnel wasn't real that he crawled up against a cottage door and wept like he had never wept before.
Then he laughed hard.

"The station is on Station Street, you duffoon!" he cried, scaring a red bird out of a white tree. Station Street was far down the other side of town, in the south. That was no use to him then.

"I need to get to the northern woods," he realised with all of his brain. He picked himself up again and brushed silvery bell dust off his pants.

"If only I had my flying belt, " he said. Then he realised that his flying belt was a dream he had definitely had when he was ill with a stomach ache.

"That was a horrible dream, indeed," he decided.

Many things happened on the rest of the journey to the northern woods. Zibbin tripped four separate times, each time smadging his nose against a post box. Then he found a nice yellow and blue hat with a golden rose sprouting from it and decided to swap it for his own hat. Then he had to run back to where he had dropped his old hat and unswap it for the new hat because the new hat had begun to smell of sprout gas. Then he climbed a lamp post and forget how to get down again. Then he woke up at the bottom of the lamp post with another smadged nose and a funny dream in his head that was all sparkly and black. The he sat on a rocking chair for an hour wondering if he should have helped those tiny sailors out of the horse trough. Then his pants fell down, twice, but nobody saw. Then finally, at long last, he was fighting his way through the northern woods, leaves and branches hurting his smadged nose.

"Why hadn't I taken the path?!" he asked himself. An owl hooted in response and Zibbin spent half an hour travelling in circles, each time passing the same owl that hooted and stared at him.

"You're no zimming help, owly pants, " he informed the bird, who should have been in bed anyway. Zibbin started to run after he had insulted the large bird, because he thought he heard it scuttling around in the leaves, looking for him.

"Get away from me, you birdy!" He cried as he fell from the overgrown trees into a clearing. Although it was called a clearing it was far from clear as it was packed tight with all the people who lived on the northern road. Except for Fatty Fathead, stuck in his pantry.

"Miles the baker, " Zibbin cried, "Joddy, Smokey Ben, Snorkings the Mayor, Skinny Barry the sweetshop keeper." And many more.

"Zibbin? What kept you?"

Zibbin darted this way and that to find the speaker. It hadn't been Joddy because Joddy had a sillier voice like a child pretending to sound like an old man. The voice hadn't been Snorkings the mayor either, because he never spoke to Zibbin at all, unless it was to ask the way to the tobacco shop on Sunflower Avenue. How many more times would he ask for directions before he remembers it for himself? Seven? Four?

"Zibbin, step forward."

The voice again. This was driving Zibbin crazy-haired. He could feel his trousers falling down he was that crazy-haired.

"Who keeps saying my name?" he demanded to know, tightening his braces.

The crowd of people began to mumble and move about. They parted down the middle, and on the other side of them sat the man known to Zibbin as Uncle Creepus.

"Uncle Creepus?!" Zibbin cried, racing towards him. Uncle Creepus was sat cross-legged on a little brick wall. He had on his dark green cloak with the zillion of red buttons dotting it like chicken pox. His white and orange chessboard face was as clean as Zibbin had ever seen it. Living in the castle and poking all the fires left a lot of soot on him.

"You've had a big bath, Uncle Creepus!" Zibbin declared as if telling him something that was new to him.

"Yes, Zibbin. It was a most frightening event. You are late."

"I am?"

"Did you not get my postcard? Informing you of my trip?"

"Well, I got a letter from Cardinal Jimmy, about a bun fight."

Uncle Creepus gave him a look that creased his chessboard face like a paper flower with a bright blue eye at the centre of it. It wasn't the sort of flower Zibbin wanted to sniff.

"No matter, Zibbin. I should have taken the trouble to kidnap you this morning and then you would have been here on time for the big pie party we all just enjoyed."

"Pie party? I missed a pie party because you didn't take the trouble to kid..."

"Never mind that, nephew of mine. You will have an eternity to indulge in pie parties and bun fights and riding around on lemonade horses, so long as my mission pays off."

There was much commotion in the crowd of pie stuffed people. Heads were nodding, hats were falling off, beards were glowing. Zibbin scratched his chin, confused.

"Mission? I thought you were going on holiday?"

Uncle Creepus threw back his orange and white head in laughter, even though no sound actually came out of him.

"Yes, Zibbin. A holiday. Certainly it will be a trip for some."

"Some? Who? Me? Am I going too?"

"No! That would be horrible. I'll show you who I mean," Uncle Creepus swept his cloaked arm into the air and a rubbery boinging noise occurred. Zibbin wondered if Uncle Creepus had meant for that to happen. No matter for it served its purpose. Something was rising from the ground at his Uncle's cherry tipped feet. Zibbin leapt aside in case that something melted sandals. He watched from a safe distance as a glittery red hoop as wide as a fat man's bed slowly ascended until it was fully free of the soil. The hole in the hoop was difficult to see through, like dirty glass or water after a bath.

"Is this your funny hoop, Uncle?"

"Oh do shut your fat mouth, Zibbin! Look!"

Uncle Creepus began to waggle his fingers in an odd manner. He continued to waggle and waggle until a look of confusion crossed his chequered face. Zibbin was fighting so hard not to mention it that his trousers slipped down a few inches. Then the red hoop trembled as if it was cold, or scared, or scared of the cold. The dirty glass vibrated now and turned white and then all manner of colours, even that colour nobody was allowed to talk about. Just before Zibbin had grown tired of the colours and was about to wander off in search of any leftover pies, the flashy glass in the shaking hoop began to speak. A face appeared. Zibbin pulled his pants up at last and concentrated on the woman talking. Even though he couldn't understand anything she said.

"Who's that?"

Uncle Creepus peered around the side of the hoop.

"That is my mother, Zibbin. Or will be."

Zibbin felt like his head would fall off and bounce away with his brain.

"Your...mother?"

"Yes. In a few minutes the man she is talking to will...perform a special act that will allow me to enter the lady's body. I shall grow there and eventually begin my mission."

Zibbin grabbed his own head, sure it was about to topple any second.

"But why? Why, Uncle Creepus? You're giving me scaremares!"

Uncle Creepus smiled. His teeth were pawns and bishops, black and white.

"These are special and important people, Zibbin. Their world is not like here. But our future lies with that world and those people."

"Tell me more, then!"

"I am! That man taking his clothes off is very rich and involved in a thing called politics, which..."

"Polly ticks? Polly Bandyarms from Crumple Alleyway? She's not a clock, is she?"

"Oh, for fu...no! Politics. It doesn't matter. It's boring. Well, you all know how good I am at being boring."

"Yep."

"And as their son I will be in a position to become the head politician of their world. A thing called a president."

"Yep."

"You see, the universe abhors balance. Our world of magic and wonder and foreverness exists because of an imbalance. So long as their world of pain and dullness and fear exists, so shall we. So every now and then I have to cross the boundary to maintain the pain and the greyness...by all manner of devious means."

"Yep."

"And...why do I bother? You're not even listening."

"Yep."

Uncle Creepus twiddled his thumbs and a yellow crab ghost flopped onto Zibbin's head, clacking its gluey claws.

"Yep."

"Zibbin!"

"What? Arrgh! Everything is yellow and stuck on me!"

"Pay attention, slack trousered nephew. While I'm gone it will be your duty to look after my castle. You will be the bogey boy in my place. You will be in charge of scaring the puppy brigade, the piglets in the clown chasm and anyone else who takes your fancy. You will need to paint the swamp trees black, amongst all manner of things. I've left you your instructions at the castle."

Uncle Creepus began to disrobe. Zibbin laughed.

"His pants have fallen down! He cried, scraping crab ghost off his hat.

"I must go now, nephew. The moment is at hand."

"The trousers of the people in your hoop have fallen down too." Zibbin laughed so hard that he needed the toilet. He rushed away, not sure where he was heading. It was only when he smelt farty swamp gas and felt black bird eggs crunching underfoot that he recognised where he had ended up. The castle stood on a jagged hill of rock the colour of liquorice. Bridges and walkways snaked this way and that across the smoking swamp that surrounded the castle.

"I wonder if Uncle Creepus is in," he said. Then he remembered, he was Uncle Creepus now. Some how. The details would come back to him.

"This is so crazy I imagine pie fights must look quite sensible now, " he pondered as he crossed the biggest safest looking bridge and watched the fangs of the castle rise up to allow him entrance.

"I suppose my role is to cause evil here, in this world, so that there is at least some good over there, in the real world. I would assume that a total world of pain would just destroy itself, hence destroying our world." Zibbin had never felt so sure of what he was saying. He wondered if his shirt collar had been too tight before now. Or if the tendrils of blue cobwebs dangling down from the roof of the castle entrance were really whispering all these things to him.

"So if I cause too much evil here, that world would become more like here. It would serve Uncle Creepus right if I did just that. Seeing as he neglected to kidnap me in time for the pie party."

As Zibbin heard the castle door sliding down behind him he wondered of there was anything like a flying belt amongst his Uncle's marvellous collections of devices and implements.