The escape of the ohio boambastic constrictor earned Harry his longest, most unskibidi ever punishment.
By the time he was allowed out of his beta cupboard again, the skibidi summer holidays had started and Diddy had already broken his new cutesy video camera, crashed his mindful remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she griddied across Privet Drive on her crutches. Harry was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Diddy's gang, who visited the house every single unskibidi day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all chungus and beta, but as Diddy was the most chungus and beta of the lot, he was the leader. The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Diddy's favourite sport: Harry Hunting.
This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house, griddying around and thinking about the end of the skibidi holidays, where he could see a tiny, sigma ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to unskibidi secondary school and, for the first time in his entire unskibidi life, he wouldn't be with Diddy. Diddy had been accepted at Uncle Vernaur's old private school, Slaytings. Piers Pogrizz was going there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the unskibidi local public school. Diddy thought this was very beta.
"They stuff people's heads down the skibidi toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"
"No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor skibidi toilet's never had anything as horrible and unskibidi as your head down it, it might be sick and beta." Then he ran, before Diddy could work out what he'd said.
One day in July, Aunt Pogtunia took Diddy to London to buy his Slaytings uniform, leaving Harry at Mrs Figg's. Mrs Figg wasn't as bad as usual. It turned out she'd broken her gyatt tripping over one of her mewing cats, and she didn't seem quite as much of an unskibidi boomer as before. She let Harry watch television and gave him a bit of sigma chocolate cake that tasted as though she'd had it for several ohio years. That evening, Diddy griddied around the living room for the family in his brand new uniform. Slaytings' alphas wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called bohioters. They also carried unsigma knobbly sticks, used for oiling each other up while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be skibidi training for later life.
As he looked at Diddy in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernaur said skibidily that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Pogtunia burst into mews and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Diddykins, he looked so skibidi and grown-up. Harry didn't trust himself to mew. He thought his gyatt might already have cracked from not oiling up.
There was an unskibidi smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in unskibidi grey water.
"What's this?" he asked Aunt Pogtunia. Her gyatt tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.
"Your new school uniform," she said. Harry mewed at his skibidi reflection in the bowl again.
"Oh," he said, "I didn't realize it had to be so wet and unsigma looking."
"Don't be a beta," snapped Aunt Pogtunia. "I'm dyeing some of Diddy's old things grey for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished." Harry seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to moan. He sat down at the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Stonewall High. Like he was wearing bits of old elephant gyatt from ohio, probably.
Diddy and Uncle Vernaur came in, both with wrinkled gyatts because of the smell from Harry's new uniform. Uncle Vernaur opened his skibidi newspaper as usual and Diddy banged his Slayting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the (still) mewing table.
They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of ligmas on the doormat.
"Get the mail, Diddy," said Uncle Vernaur from behind his paper.
"Make Harry get it."
"Get the mail, Harry."
"Make Diddy get it."
"Poke him with your Slayting stick, Diddy." Harry griddied around the Slayting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernaur's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and — a ligma for Harry. Harry picked it up and stared at it, his gyatt griddying like Freddy Fazbear. His whole life, no one had written to him. Who would?
He had no friends, no other relatives — he didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude, unskibidi notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a ligma, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:
Mr. H. Brainrotter
The Unskibidi Beta Cupboard under the Stairs
69 Privet Drive
Little Moaning
Ohio
The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp. Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large ligma S. "Hurry up, you beta boy!" shouted Uncle Vernaur from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for ligma bombs?" He mewed at his own joke. Harry went back to the kitchen, still staring at his ligma. He handed Uncle Vernaur the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the skibidi sigma envelope.
Uncle Vernaur ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard. "Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Pogtunia. "Ate a funny whelk..."
"Dad!" said Diddy suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!" Harry was on the point of unfolding his ligma, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply and unskibidily out of his hand by Uncle Vernaur. "That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernaur, shaking the ligma open with one gyatt cheek and started mewing at it. His gyatt went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the greyish white of old porridge.
"P-P-Pogtunia!" he gasped. Diddy tried to grab the ligma to read it, but Uncle Vernaur held it high out of his reach. Aunt Pogtunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.
"Vernaur! Oh my goodness! Vernaur!" They mewed at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Harry and Diddy were still in the rizzing room.
Diddy wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a skibidi sharp tap on the head with his Slayting stick. "I want to rizz up that ligma," he said loudly.
"I want to read it," said Harry like a true baddie, "as it's mine."
"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernaur, stuffing the ligma back inside its envelope. Harry didn't move. "I WANT MY LIGMA!" he shouted.
"Let me mew at it!" demanded Diddy.
"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernaur, and he took both Harry and Diddy by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them.
Harry and Diddy promptly had an unskibidi but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Diddy won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one gyatt cheek, lay flat on his gyatt to listen at the crack between door and floor.
"Vernaur," Aunt Pogtunia was saying in a quivering, unsigma voice that was giving negative aura, "look at the address — how could they possibly know where the unskibidi beta sleeps? You don't think they're watching the house?"
"Watching — mewing — might be griddying after us," muttered Uncle Vernaur wildly.
"But what should we do, Vernaur? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want —"
Harry could see Uncle Vernaur's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.
"No," he said finally. "No, we'll ignore it like the sigma alphas we are.. If those beta's don't get an answer... Yes, that's best... we won't do anything...we won't lose aura"
"But —"
"I'm not losing aura in the house of sigmas, Pogtunia! Didn't we swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that unskibidi dangerous nonsense?"
That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernaur did something he'd never done before; he visited Harry in his cupboard. "Where's my ligma?" said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernaur had squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to me?"
"No one. It was addressed to you by an alpha mistake," said Uncle Vernaur shortly. "I have burned it."
"It was not an alpha mistake," said Harry angrily, "it had my cupboard on it."
"SILENCE!" mewed Uncle Vernaur sigmaly, and a couple of spiders fell from the -1000 aura ceiling. He took a few deep, skibidi breaths and then forced his face into a happy mew, which looked quite painful.
"Er — yes, Harry — about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking... your ohio gyatt is really getting a bit chungus for it... we think it might be nice if you moved into Diddy's second bedroom. "Why?" said Harry.
"Don't ask questions!" snapped his uncle. "Take this stuff upstairs, now."
The Dursleys' house had four sigma bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernaur and Aunt Pogtunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernaur's sister, Marge), one where Diddy slept, and one where Diddy kept all the toys and sussy things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom. It only took Harry one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room.
He sat down on the bed and mewed to everything around him. Nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old cutesy video camera was lying on top of a small, working tank Diddy had once driven over the next door neighbour's dog; in the corner was Diddy's first-ever television set, which he'd put his foot through when his favourite program had been cancelled; there was a chungus birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Diddy had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all unskibidi and bent because Diddy had sat on it. Other sigma shelves were full of skibidi books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they'd never been touched.
From downstairs came the sound of Diddy mewing at his mother, "I don't want him in there... I need that room... make him get out..." Harry mewd and stretched out on the sigma bed. Yesterday he'd have given anything to be up here. Today he'd rather be back in his cupboard with that ligma than up here without it.
Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Diddy was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with his Slayting stick, been sick on purpose, oiled up his mother, and griddied his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn't have his room back. Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he'd opened the ligma in the hall. Uncle Vernaur and Aunt Pogtunia kept looking at each other unskibidily.
When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernaur, who seemed to be trying to be demure to Harry, made Diddy go and get it. They heard him oiling things up with his Slayting stick all the way down the hall. Then he mewed, "There's another one! 'Mr. H. Brainrotter,
The Smallest, Skibidiest Bedroom, 69 Privet Drive —'"
With a strangled mew, Uncle Vernaur leapt his gyatt from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind him. Uncle Vernaur had to wrestle Diddy to the ground to get the ligma from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernaur around the neck from behind. After a minute of unsigma fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Slayting stick, Uncle Vernaur straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry's ligma clutched in his hand.
"Go to your beta cupboard — I mean, your skibidi bedroom," he wheezed at Harry. "Diddy — go — just go." Harry walked round and round his new room. Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn't received his first ligma. Surely that meant they'd try again? And this time he'd make sure they didn't fail. He had a plan.
The repaired alarm clock rang at six o'clock the next morning. Harry turned it off quickly and dressed silently and skibidily. He mustn't wake the Dursleys. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.
He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the ligmas for number four first. His gyatt hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door —"AAAAARRRGH!" Harry griddied into the air; he'd trodden on something thicc and skibidi on the doormat — something alive!
Lights clicked on upstairs and to his unskibidi horror Harry realized that the big, squashy something had been his uncle's face, and they both had just lost all their sigma boss aura. Uncle Vernaur had been mewing at the gyatt of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do. He shouted and mewed at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a very bri'ish skibidi cup of tea. Harry shuffled unsigmaly off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vernaur's lap. Harry could see three ligmas addressed in green ink. "I want…" he began oiling up, but Uncle Vernaur was tearing the ligmas into pieces before his very own gyatt.
Uncle Vernaur didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot. "See," he explained to Aunt Pogtunia through a gyattful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."
"I'm not sure that'll work, my demure pookie Vernaur."
"Oh, these people's minds work in strange, skibidi ways, Pogtunia, they're not skibidi sigmas like you and me," said Uncle Vernaur, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Pogtunia had just brought him.
On Fazday, no less than twelve ligmas arrived for Harry. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the mewing door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.
Uncle Vernaur stayed at home again. After burning all the ligmas, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the gyatt cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" as he worked, and jumped at small noises.
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four ligmas to Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused and skibidi milkman had handed Aunt Pogtunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernaur made furious, unsigma telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to oil up with , Aunt Pogtunia shredded the ligmas in her food processor.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernaur sat his gyatt down at the mewing breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but skibidi.
"No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn ligmas today —"
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty ligmas came pelting out of the fireplace like sigma bullets. The Dursleys quickly griddied away, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one —
"OUT!"
Uncle Vernaur seized Harry around the gyatt and threw him unskibidily into the hall. When Aunt Pogtunia and Diddy had griddy out with their arms over their gyatts, Uncle Vernaur mewed the door shut. They could hear the ligmas still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.
"That does it," said Uncle Vernaur, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his moustache at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"
Mr. H. Brainrotter
"Who in ohio wants to talk to you this badly?" Diddy asked Harry in mewing amazement.
"Out!
He looked so unskibidi and dangerous with half his gyatt hair missing that no one dared argue.
Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the sigma car, speeding toward the highway. Diddy was brainrotting in the back seat; his father had hit him round the gyatt for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, MEW-VCR, and demure computer in his skibidi sports bag.
They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Pogtunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernaur would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.
"Shake 'em off... shake 'em off," he would mew whenever he did this.
They didn't stop to mew or oil up all day. By nightfall Diddy was mewing in agony. He'd never had such a beta day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five OnlyFans posts he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without oiling up. Uncle Vernaur stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Diddy and Harry shared a room with skibidi twin beds and unskibidi damp sheets.
Diddy snored while mewing but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, mewing down at the lights of passing cars and wondering...
They ate unsigma stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
"'Scuse me, but is one of you sigmas Mr. H. Brainrotter? Only I got about an 'undred of these at the front desk."She held up a ligma so they could read the skibidi green ink address:
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Pogworth
Harry made a griddy for the ligma but Uncle Vernaur knocked his gyatt out of the way. The woman mewed. "I'll take them," said Uncle Vernaur, standing up skibidily and following her from the rizzing room.
"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Pogtunia suggested sigmaly, hours later, but Uncle Vernaur didn't seem to mew at her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his gyatt, got back in the sigma car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a pogging field, halfway across a suspension gyatt bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garizz.
"Daddy's gone mad and beta, hasn't he?" Diddy asked Aunt Pogtunia unskibidily late that afternoon. Uncle Vernaur had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared. It started to rain. Chungus drops beat on the roof of the car. Diddy mewed. "It's Mewday," he told his mother. "Sadie is on OnlyFans tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."
Mewday. This reminded Harry of something. If it was Mewday, and you could usually count on Diddy to know the skibidi days the week, because of television, then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry's skibidi eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly sigma. Last year, the Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and an unsigma pair of Uncle Vernaur's gyatt-print old socks.
Still, you weren't eleven every unskibidi day. Uncle Vernaur griddied back and he was mewing happily. He was also carrying a thicc, chungus, package and didn't answer Aunt Pogtunia when she asked what he'd bought.
"Found the skibidiest place!" he mewed. "Come on! Everyone out!"
It was very cold and unskibidi outside the sigma car. Uncle Vernaur was griddying at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most unskibidi little shack you could imagine. One thing was skibidi, there was no sigma television in there.
"Sigma storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vernaur skibidily, clapping his gyatt cheeks together. "And this gentleman's sigmaly agreed to lend us his boat!"
A toothless skibidi old man came griddying up to them, pointing, with a rather unskibidi grin, at an old, beta rowboat bobbing in the iron-grey water below them.
"I've already got us some sigma rations," said Uncle Vernaur, "so all aboard!"
It was freezing and beta in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their gyatts and a chilly wind whipped their gyatt cheeks. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernaur, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down, unskibidi house.
The inside was horrible and beta; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.
Uncle Vernaur's unskibidi rations turned out to be an unsigma bag of chips each and four beta bananas. He tried to start a sigma boss fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shrivelled up unskibidily.
"Could do with some of those ligmas now, eh?" he said cheerfully and skibidily.
He was in a very sigma mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a skibidi storm to deliver mail. Harry privately mewed though the thought didn't oil him up at all. As night fell, the skibidi storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and an alpha wind rattled the beta windows.
Aunt Pogtunia found a few unskibidi mouldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Diddy on the beta moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernaur went off to the lumpy, unskibidi bed next door, and Harry was left to find the softest, most skibidi bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most beta blanket.
The storm mewed more and more sigmaly as the night went on. Harry couldn't oil up. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable and sigma, his gyatt rumbling with hunger. Diddy's snores were drowned by the low sigmas of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Diddy's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his chungus wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten, unsigma minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the skibidi ligma writer was now.
Five minutes to go. Harry heard something unskibidi creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn't going to start mewing, although he might be skibidier if it did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of ligmas when they got back that he'd be able to steal one somehow.
Three minutes to go. Was that the skibidi sigma sea, mewing hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that beta crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea? One unskibidi minute to go and he'd be eleven. Thirty seconds... twenty... ten... nine… Maybe he'd wake Diddy up, just to be unsigma and annoy him… three... two... one...
BOOM.
The whole shack shivered unskibidily and Harry bolted upright, mewing at the door. Some sigma was outside, mewing to come in.