Excerpt: Mik Murdoch vs. the Lake Monster

We were making wallets today. We got to use various leather stamps to put a design onto the leather. We cut the leather using patterns and sewed it up using thick needles. I had a pang of homesickness then. I thought about my Mom and Dad and I wondered how they were doing without me. I especially worried about Krypto. We hadn’t spent much time apart since he was a puppy. I wondered who was playing with him and would he remember me.

I came back from my reverie to the sounds of screaming, choking and swearing. For the briefest of moments I wondered what was going on and then my brain clicked back into gear. Jimmy.

Cynthia and I looked at each other and jumped to our feet. We ran from the Art Shack towards the sound of the noise. The source of the noise wasn’t hard to find.

A crowd was gathering so we had to push our way through. In the middle of the crowd stood Jimmy, his pants down around his knees, rubbing his eyes. The stench of skunk rolled off of him. Cynthia held her nose.

The crowd gasped as a skunk trundled out of our cabin. Of course, Jimmy used the cabin’s washroom around this time every day. Obviously, the plan, the part I didn’t know the details of, was to spring the skunk on him unawares while he was in there. Obviously, by the state of his pants, he had already been using the bathroom when it all happened.

Jimmy looked up through tearing eyes and saw Cynthia and I.

“You!” he shouted pointing at me. “You did this!”

I made a show of not understanding what he was talking about. “We just came from the Art Shack. What happened?”

Jimmy looked around the laughing crowd, pulled his pants up and ran towards the lake. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.