The Fantastic Flatulent Fart Brothers Save the World!: A Comedy Thriller Adventure that Truly Stinks (Humorous action book for preteen kids age 9-12); US edition Read online

  “Butt. That’s funny. Never say it again,” the clown said. “Here’s where we test different food combinations for maximum gas production.”

  Strange, for a windowless room where boys were forced to fart, it was completely odor-free. A boy two cages ahead let out a real buzzsaw blower that would have put a whole classroom in stitches, yet there was no smell.

  Willy discovered that the boy’s backside was covered by a suction cup with a tube leading into an electronic device. A clipboard clown ran over and examined the screen.

  “H2S zero-one-six,” the clown said.

  “What’s that mean?” Willy said.

  “Means it stinks only above average. Have to turn up the cabbage.”

  A clown wearing tiger stripes grabbed Peter by the neck and led him alone to a tiger-striped door.

  “No!” Willy shouted.

  Peter put on a brave face and winked back at Willy, but the way he squirmed and grunted, he must have been scared. Or maybe he just had to pee. The tiger-striped clown shoved him in and slammed the door.

  Then the clown turned on Willy and growled like a tiger. “Your turn soon.”

  Willy decided that if his brother could show courage (or hold in his pee), so could he. He pretended to be calm.

  Only then did he notice the circus music playing through speakers and the circus animal dolls dangling from the ceiling.

  Nothing here made sense. A fart-hating clown studying farts with clown scientists? Boys in cages—how did they get here? And more important, how would he and Peter escape?

  Peter came out wearing a silly grin. Before they could exchange a word, Willy was pushed through the door. Inside a small white room, a clown dressed like some silly circus doctor grabbed him and pressed a red toy stethoscope to his chest. Willy was too scared to move.

  The doctor shoved something in Willy’s mouth which tasted like a cross between dog food and spray-on cheese. He wanted to vomit, but the doctor slapped his back and, without thinking, Willy swallowed.

  His guts rumbled and bubbled and fizzed. Uh oh—a fart was brewing. Should he hold it in? The doctor listened with his stethoscope, then turned Willy around and leaned his face into Willy’s butt.

  You mean a grown-up actually wants me to fart in his face? Willy thought. I could get used to this!

  He spread his feet just the right amount, bent one knee just so, and let out a soaring musical fart like a cow playing the trombone, right in the clown doctor’s face. Now, that was funny, though he didn’t dare laugh.

  The clown doctor sat up, neither laughing nor disgusted. He tapped Willy’s belly and scribbled some notes.

  Then the doctor opened the door and led Willy outside.

  The tough blue-haired guard clown had returned. “So? Which one you keeping?” he said.

  “No!” Willy said. “You can’t separate us!”

  “Yeah! No way!” Peter said. “Let us go!”

  “I can’t use either,” the clown doctor said. “These two are highly advanced farters. Not appropriate for such elementary experiments.”

  “Can we go home, then?” Peter said.

  Willy added, “It’s our sister’s birthday, and—”

  “Quiet!” The blue hair clown grunted. “Come along!”

  They went down another rock staircase, then stopped at a door labeled: P.U. Lab.

  A clown wearing a bowtie and gas mask motioned them inside. It was just like the FLATULAB, with one huge difference: it smelled like a thousand clogged portable potties that hadn’t been emptied since the Stone Age. More cages held more boys: older ones farting and younger ones inhaling them. Here they tested the physical effects of breathing in farts.

  “Where do all these boys come from?” Willy said.

  The bowtied clown lowered his gas mask. “Weren’t you sent here?”

  “Of course not,” Peter said. “We came on our own.”

  The clown’s bowtie spun and his eyes went wide. “Never heard that one before. As for these guys, we have deals with schools. You know when a boy farts or pulls a girl’s hair or says rude words in class and the teacher sends him out of the room? Well, guess where they end up?”

  He rolled his eyes and laughed a goofy clown laugh.

  “What about girls?” Willy said.

  “What about them?” the clown said. “Girls don’t fart.”

  “Yes, they do,” Willy said.

  “Well, if they farted—which they don’t—their farts wouldn’t stink.”

  “Girl farts smell worse,” Willy said.

  “Hey, who’s the fart expert here?” the clown said.

  “Actually...” Peter began to say, but Willy silenced him with a little kick in the leg. They should be as useless as possible, so they’d be released.

  “Actually, we have enough stinky farters in this lab,” the bowtied clown said. “We don’t need boys who also fart out their mouths. Good day.”

  Down a deeper staircase, this time to the Propulsive Flatulence Formation Terminal, or PFFT. Instead of cages, boys were chained inside wind tunnels, where farts were tested for speed and power. One boy actually launched a bowling ball halfway across the room. Willy had to admit that he was impressed.

  He and Peter were forced to eat greasy onion rings and prune ice cream, which tasted as gross as it sounds. Then a clown wearing a goofy sports cap and coach’s whistle led them to a basketball hoop and told them to bend over. He carefully balanced basketballs on their bottoms.

  “This is almost cool,” Peter said. “Watch me poot a basket!” But one look from Willy reminded him: they had to try their best to be thrown out of this place.

  The clown coach blew his whistle. Putting all his years of farting experience to the test, Willy tooted just enough that the basketball lifted into the air.

  Peter couldn’t resist showing off. His basketball rode a greenish gas stream, circling Willy’s ball in a figure-eight. Not to be outdone, Willy twisted his butt muscles and made his basketball perform a loop-de-loop. The balls smacked into each other and arced through the air, dropping one-by-one into the basket.

  Willy panicked. They’d lost their heads, and now they’d lose their freedom.

  The clown coach grabbed them both, but instead of chaining them with the other boys, he carried them to a heavy steel door. Willy kicked and screamed and grabbed the clown’s whistle, ready to blow it in his ear, until the taste of gooey thick clown saliva made him retch.

  The coach pressed a big red buzzer beside the door.

  A motor cranked. Gears rattled.

  The door rumbled aside, revealing an inner chamber filled with flashing lights and huge monitors. But no caged boys. Just blue-haired clowns in blue uniforms, and one familiar tattooed face.

  “Hoo hee ha ha walla walla wing ding! We meet again. It appears that you are the Chosen Ones I’ve been waiting for!”

  CHAPTER 9

  Fart ABC

  “It’s my lucky day!” Booby the Clown paced the room, hands waving as he spoke. “I had a strong sense about you boys when I first laid eyes on you. Or should I say, I had a strong stench. Hoo hee ha ha walla walla wing ding!”

  Dozens of clown laughs echoed around the small room. Willy waited for Peter to say something, but for once he looked more scared than Willy.

  “I don’t get it,” Willy finally said. “If you hate farts so much, then why is this whole mountain set up as one big fart science project?”

  He could have sworn that Booby hissed at him. “Have you not figured it out by now? What are you, a poo-for-brains? Hoo hee ha ha walla walla wing ding!”

  The other clowns, laughing louder than before, circled around Willy and Peter.

  Booby squatted in front of Willy and flashed his multi-colored grin.

  “This is the control room for our four-part—or shall I say four-fart—plan to take over the world. All that research you saw going on above you? In here we put it all together, to produce military weapon-grade farts.

  “Once we unleash thes
e lethally rude bombardments upon the world, then forever after, all of humankind will associate farts with misery and destruction. No one will ever, ever laugh at a fart again.”

  “Oh yeah?” Willy said. “There’s a problem with your stupid plan. People might not like your fart bombs, but plain farts will always be funny. So as long as ordinary folks go on making honkers and bubblers and rump rippers and tushie trumpets—”

  “Don’t forget fanny flappers and butt bazookas and wallpaper peelers,” Peter added.

  “Yeah,” Willy said. “No one will ever stop laughing at farts!”

  “Enough!” Booby twisted Willy’s nose until it hurt. “You think I didn’t take that into consideration? Part—shall I say Fart—B of our strategy is to eliminate mankind’s ability to fart...forever!

  “You may recall the exploding onion dip factory? That was only the beginning, gentlemen. As we speak, our agents are dropping gas relief pills into public water supplies all over the earth.”

  Booby let go of Willy’s nose, licked his fingers clean, then pinched Peter’s shoulder until he squirmed.

  “Ah, but that’s not all, my fart-tastic young friends. Turn your eyes to monitor 18 and witness Fart C!”

  A screen came to life on one side of the room. A big city full of tall buildings in the background; in front was a giant green figure.

  It was New York! The Statue of Liberty!

  A crowd surrounded the base of the statue, all dressed in wild colors. The camera zoomed in: they were clowns! They all bent over and pulled down their pants.

  The speakers roared with a tremendous buzz like a thousand power lawnmowers.

  The mass fart went on and on until the statue was hidden inside a thick green cloud.

  Willy heard screams.

  Then silence.

  The screen gradually cleared. Lady Liberty dropped her torch and plugged her nose. Then the whole statue toppled backwards into the Hudson River.

  The clowns around Willy and Peter danced and played toy cymbals and kazoos and bicycle horns. All except Booby the Clown, who studied the screen, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Monitor 26!” he announced.

  Everyone faced the other side of the room. The Eiffel Tower stood grandly under a blue Paris sky.

  A huge troupe of clowns ran into the scene. Tourists cheered, expecting a funny show.

  The clowns ate something that looked like food from the PFFT Lab. Then they split into four groups and grabbed hold of the tower’s legs.

  Someone yelled a countdown:

  “Three...two...one...blast off!”

  A roar like a million honking geese. Greenish smoke clouds billowed around each leg of the tower.

  The Eiffel Tower shook violently, then left the ground, propelled by colorful blasts of clown fart. Up it went, rocketing into the sky, until it was nothing but a tiny speck.

  And so it continued.

  A thousand farting clowns blew down the Great Wall of China.

  The Sphinx of Egypt was covered in fart clouds so corrosive, it dissolved before the world’s eyes.

  Willy cried his guts out. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, spreading sticky snot all over his cheeks.

  “Ah, more boogers. Yum yum!” said Booby the Clown, removing his glove.

  “You can’t have them!” Willy shouted. “You have to stop all this! Shut this down! And you have to let us go home in time for our sister’s birthday!”

  “That’s a lot of orders in return for a single booger,” said Booby.

  Hulking blue clowns grabbed Willy and Peter by their collars.

  “You’ve seen nothing yet,” Booby said. “All this mischief is, shall we say, a jolly good show. But it’s nothing compared to Fart D.

  “And that, my feisty fart-master fellows, is where you come in.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Fart D

  Beefy gloved hands carried Willy into a cold, windowless chamber with solid rock walls.

  The clown guard pressed him into a chair with a big hole in the seat like a trainer potty, and handcuffed him to the armrests.

  Willy couldn’t wipe away his tears and couldn’t see Peter, though he heard his brother putting up a fight like an angry cat.

  Why can’t I be brave like my brother? Willy thought. Why am I such a crybaby?

  “Quit blubbering,” Peter said. “I’m right behind you.”

  Willy gulped back his crying. Indeed, they sat back-to-back in the center of the room, surrounded by clowns with big red painted-on frowns. At the end of the room Willy saw what looked like giant flying bombs with long fat hoses attached.

  The guards stood to attention as Booby the Clown marched into the room. He stopped beside Willy and Peter, and pinched their chins.

  “All settled in? Good. Time for science lessons,” he said. “If an average person farted non-stop for six years and nine months, the total gas would have the same power as one atomic bomb. Well, guess what?”

  The hand wrenched Willy’s head the other direction. On the other side of the chamber was one more bomb.

  “I have three, waiting to be filled with farts. What I don’t have is six years and nine months. But I do have you boys, the most truly amazing fart machines I have ever seen! Using your powers of super flatulence, these warheads should be full by Monday morning. On that day I will either become supreme ruler of the entire world...or its destroyer! Hoo hee ha ha walla walla wing ding!”

  “You’re insane,” Peter said. “Anyway, even we can’t fart that much.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong, my gassy young gentlemen. Why do you think we are doing so much research? We have fabricated the finest fart-inducing food formula ever found. Combined with your, um, talents, I will reach my goal in days, not years. Let the feeding commence!”

  Booby strapped on a gas mask, followed by everyone else in the room. Everyone except Willy and Peter.

  A clown chef pried open Willy’s jaws and spooned in a big, slimy, jiggly blob of lumpy glop. Then they clamped his mouth shut so he couldn’t spit it out.

  Willy gagged and choked and tried keep the goop wad away from his throat. Then he noticed something familiar, even pleasant, about its texture and flavor.

  It tasted—he couldn’t believe it—like an enormous, perfect snot ball.

  How exquisitely gooey and squishy it felt upon his tongue. Such a delightful balance of salty-greasy flavor. Willy’s stomach growled greedily. Before he could stop himself, he swallowed it whole.

  “Not bad, huh?” Peter said behind him. “I’m ready for seconds.”

  “Yes. I mean, no! No way! We should be resisting them!”

  “Aren’t you even curious?” Peter said. “I mean, I’m against destroying the world and everything, but it’ll be cool to see what kind of farts this makes.”

  Willy’s guts began to bubble and pop, like soup boiling inside. Then his stomach swung side-to-side like a bouncing ball. From his neck down to his knees his body swelled like a balloon.

  He didn’t care what Peter said. He was going to resist. He squeezed tight. He shifted on his seat. But the fumes inside him were expanding painfully. If he could just manage a one-cheek side-squeak, so the gas didn’t go down the hole and into the bomb.

  Behind him Peter let out a boisterous, booming bowel howl that sounded like trains colliding during a thunderstorm while marching bands played and three volcanoes went off at the same time. Willy’s chair rocked in the aftershock. He couldn’t hold it anymore.

  He felt as if his insides were blowing out of his body. This was beyond a cheek screamer, beyond a bone rattler; this fart transported him to another dimension.

  His vision turned dark, filled with green planets and yellow shooting stars. His arms turned to jelly, his legs turned to pudding. But the thing he noticed most, the thing he didn’t want to admit to himself, was this:

  It was the best-feeling fart he’d ever had in his life.

  Except for one.

  “Psst. Peter.”


  “Psst. Yeah?” Peter whispered back.

  “This was almost as powerful as—”

  “I know.”

  As huge and violent as this fart had been, it was a distant second compared to the ones he and Peter had cut loose after eating camel food. In fact, he still had a handful of it in his pocket.

  “We can’t let them know,” Willy whispered.

  “Can’t let me know what?” Booby’s voice thundered across the room.

  “Um. That...uh...” Peter stammered.

  “That at this rate, you’ll fill your bombs a day early,” Willy said.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Booby said. He honked a bicycle horn. “Bring on the second course!”

  The trouble was, Willy had told the truth. How were he and Peter going to get out of here and also save the world?

  He had to think up a way!

  CHAPTER 11

  The Wee Wee Plot

  The next huge snot ball was slimier and chewier than the first, and took longer to eat. The clowns had adjusted the formula, so that the farts were not so ear-splitting (though they now all wore earplugs too), but went on forever. Willy had never cut such a drawn-out, exhausting fart in his life.

  “Our butts can’t take this much longer,” Peter said, though no clown could hear.

  They were alone with three clown minders. Willy said maybe he and Peter should talk to them. Maybe the others weren’t as crazy as Booby. “Maybe they’ll feel sorry for us and let us go.”

  “Yeah, right,” Peter said. “And maybe farts don’t stink.”

  Willy’s chest heaved. It wasn’t a fart trying to escape, but big, fat sobs.

  Willy still blamed Peter (and their sister) for getting them into this mess, and Peter could be a big-mouthed lunkhead sometimes, but he always knew how to cheer up both of them.

  Peter spoke about all the happy times they’d had together, playing pranks on the neighborhood kids.

  “Remember that time we snuck up on Harry Wiener while he was taking a leak in his family’s vegetable garden?”