Writing | Art By Logovend.com

Blam!

Danny Rogers woke up, got dressed and dashed down the stairs.
   He could smell bacon cooking. Strange for a school day. Bacon was a special treat usually only reserved for weekends. Which made it all the more exciting.
   “Plenty of ketchup on my sarnie, mum!”
   “Er. What?” She shook her head back into reality.
   There was something wrong.

Dad wasn't reading the newspaper. Instead he was listing intently to the Radio. Danny hadn't never even noticed a radio in the kitchen before. And the bacon on a Wednesday? Mum didn't seem her homely self. She sat at the table whilst the bacon sizzled it's own aromatic song unattended. His mum and dad were silent. Blank-faced.
   “What's the matter? Dad? Mum?” Danny turned the question at each.
   “You tell him father,” an expression that he'd never hear her utter. Then she drifted off again.
   “There's no writing. It's all gone, son.”
   “What you on about?”
   “Vanished,” his father said abstractly.
   “Your dad's right. There's no writing any more. It disappeared while we were all sleeping.”
   As Dan sprinted upstairs his mother called after him, “It'll be alright son. I'm sure it'll come back.”
   He frantically flicking through his comic books. All the pictures and colour were in tact but in each speech bubble the hero or the villain said nothing at all. They were blank. His mother and father weren't lying - writing had disappeared!

As Danny tucked into his crisp, crunchy bacon buttie a thought suddenly occurred.
   “Does that mean that there's no school then?”
   “No!” His mother and father said sternly in unison.
   “Yes. No school.”
   “No. We mean you still have to go!”

Maths first period. An air of excitement filled the room. Kids were laughing. They all understood that without writing the teachers were going to have a hard time trying to teach.
   Sweaty Smithson, the Maths teacher, swept in through the door, sweating profusely. He was always in a hurry and late.
   “Right today we're going to learn about Pythagoras,” he drew a triangle on the blackboard, “but before I start, please hand your homework down the lines to the front, for me to collect.”
   “But ...” Said Kelly from the back.
   “Not another excuse. But what?”
   “Well ... it's the writing ... it's all disappeared.”
   Giggles.
   “Pull the other one, Kelly.”
   “It's true, sir,” said Harry, one of the brighter pupils, “all the writing has disappeared. It happen last night while we all slept. My father says it could cause a stock market crash. Can you believe it?”
   “What?!” Sweaty Smithson pulled a text book out from his briefcase. And sure enough he was met with blank pages. He went over and checked Tim's book, then Sally's and another kid, and another. All blank. Sweaty Smithson shot out of the classroom. All the kids started jeering and clapping.
   English with Miss Connelly was of equal entertainment. As was history.
   Last period, Mr. Brown the PE teacher said, “We don't need no writing for Football. We all know the rules don't we. Eh, lads?” Then blew his whistle and started the match. A match that did not require written words to work.
   PE didn't seem as enjoyable as it usually was.

On the way home Danny started to think about Thursday's art lesson. Thursday was tomorrow. Before they re-wrote all those books, P.E. and Art seemed as though they be the only lessens that would work properly. It was upside down. This topsy-turvy predicament didn't phase Danny too greatly because without text books he'd school finished the day without any homework, and this meant he could watch as much TV as he wanted without any complaints.
   “What's wrong with the TV dad, there's no picture?”
   “There ain't any TV, Dan. I heard it on the News. Radio News.”
   “You're kidding. But it's just talking and pictures, there's no writing.”
   “Yeah that's what I thought son, but they were saying on the radio that is was something to do with the ad and the credits. They said that you can't show any programmes without the credits. The people who put to the programmes together are not happy about it. They said that we have to know what the programmes are called and who's made them. Something to do with the law. The advertising people aren't happy either because they say without the words people don't know one product from another. So they can't be shown either. Radio's been fine because the DJs know the records from the covers. Go have a look at the collection, I bet you can pick out a record you know just from the pictures. Video's okay as well. Without writing of course. But like you say, it doesn't really matter, 'cos it's just pictures and talking.”
   Danny had seen all them a hundred times before. So he sulked his way up to his bedroom.

Looking at the useless comics on the floor he wanted to cry. He was angry. They were all ruined. He now understood how his parents had felt that morning.
   He lay on his bed thinking. When he got bored of that he reaching down, picked up the closest comic, found his pencil case from his school bag, took out a black Bic and started filling in the blanks the best he could remember. Recreating the story. He picked up a second and started. But it felt boring, like homework. So Danny started filling in the blanks with his own ideas. This was more fun.
   Professor X man swore at his super-power wielding students.
   The Green Goblin kept asked Spiderman to bum him so Spiderman kicked his ass.
   The She-hulk asked for more make-up in return for letting the villains off. They told her she was green and laughed at her. So she'd kick there ass for being racist.
   Tony Stark after donning the Ironman costume would always need the toilet.
   This task was a lot more fun, although none of the his stories seemed to end properly as they did before.

They rarely do.

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