Selby Shattered (10 page)

‘Okay, so now I guess I’m going to have to
yip and yelp and twitch when I’m pretending to sleep,’ Selby thought.

Mrs Trifle went on. ‘Remember that time when we came home and he had his paws up against the fridge?’

‘Yes, I do. We decided that he was probably just stretching but it really looked like he’d just closed the fridge door.’

‘And he had cake crumbs on his chin,’ Mrs Trifle added. ‘Of course, he probably licked them up off the floor but, come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen him lick anything off the floor.’

‘Oh boy,’ Selby thought. ‘Now I’m going to have to start licking the floor. Yuck! How would
they
like to lick the floor?’

‘He doesn’t lick himself, either,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘I thought all dogs cleaned their fur by licking themselves.’

‘Oh, gross,’ Selby thought.

‘And yet he’s always quite clean,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Remember the time there was water on the floor of the bathroom and you said, “I think Selby just had a shower?"’

‘Yes,’ Dr Trifle laughed. ‘That was funny.’

‘You know, I’ve never seen Selby lick his nose when it’s runny the way other dogs do,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘Now that …’ Selby thought, ‘that is where I draw the line. There’s no way I’m going to lick my nose. I don’t think my tongue is long enough, anyway.’

‘And I’ve never ever seen him drink out of a toilet the way Aunt Jetty’s dog, Crusher, used to.’

‘Hold the show!’ Selby thought. ‘Forget about that other line! This is where I really draw the line! There’s no way I’d ever drink out of a toilet! I’d rather die of thirst.’

For the next few days, Mrs Trifle watched Selby’s every move and made notes for her story.

‘This is awful!’ Selby thought. ‘I have to be soooo careful! I’m missing all my fave TV shows, I’m only eating Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits, I have to
yip
and
yelp
and twitch when I’m pretending to sleep, and I’ve licked so much floor that my tongue is ready to fall off. Why did I ever try to help Mrs Trifle with her story writing?’

The days went on with Selby more and more exhausted from having to be completely
doglike. He even brought a stick to Mrs Trifle and stood in front of her, jumping back and forth till she threw it.

‘I hate chasing sticks,’ he thought. ‘My life is a catastrophe! How long do I have to keep this dog-stuff up? I have to be soooo careful. I just wish she’d finish her story and I could go back to normal.’

Gradually, Mrs Trifle began to lose interest.

‘My story is getting to be just like the stories about Selby,’ she told Dr Trifle. ‘The more I write, the more Selby seems like Selby in the books. I don’t want my story to be too much like them. It’ll seem like I’m copying.’

And, just when she was about to give up and let Selby get back to his normal life, it happened. Selby was lying next to the TV licking his paw for the twentieth time and daydreaming when Dr Trifle accidentally stepped on his tail.

‘Ouch!’
Selby cried.

‘Ouch?’ Dr Trifle said. ‘Did he just say
ouch?’

‘Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!’
Selby cried.
‘Yp! Yip! Yip!’

‘It sounded like
ouch
to me, too,’ Mrs Trifle said, ‘but maybe not. You know, I’ve been
thinking. What if he actually
is
the dog in the books?’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘What if Selby can talk and read and write and all those things and he’s the one who rings up Duncan Ball and tells him his stories and Duncan just writes them down?’

‘You mean that dog might actually be a
real
dog?’

‘Yes,
our
dog, our own dear Selby,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘The signs have been there all the time, just like the Search for Selby Society people said.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘Absolutely. Let’s just say that Selby had opened the fridge that time. And let’s just say that he did turn the lights on when we were out and that he even watches TV. Let’s just say that he does use the computer when we’re asleep. We keep making excuses for him.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Dr Trifle said slowly.

They both turned and looked Selby in the eye.

‘Okay, Selby, time’s up,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Talk to us.’

‘Yes, Selby,’ Dr Trifle said, ‘enough is enough. Let’s put a stop to this nonsense right now.’

Selby looked back and forth from one to the other.

‘I’m going to have to do it,’ he thought. ‘I’ve got to finally put their minds at ease. This is it.’

Selby got to his feet. He cleared his throat and licked his lips. Dr and Mrs Trifle stared in disbelief.

‘What do you think he’s about to do?’ asked Mrs Trifle.

‘He’s … he’s going to the loo,’ Dr Trifle said as he watched Selby trot down the hallway.’
Our
loo.’

Selby put his head down into the toilet bowl. Tears flooded his eyes.

‘I’m going to have to step over that line,’ he thought, ‘and drink out of the toilet. I’ve got to do it to convince the Trifles that I’m just an ordinary toilet-drinking dog. Oh woe woe woe! Look at that awful, smelly, disgusting mess. The loo looks like it hasn’t been cleaned for weeks. I’ll probably die of some terrible toilet disease! I can’t do it! But I
have
to do it! Here goes …’

Dr and Mrs Trifle could hear the sound of little splashes from where they sat in the loungeroom.

‘Good grief!’ Mrs Trifle cried. ‘Selby is actually drinking out of the toilet!’

‘I do believe you’re right,’ Dr Trifle agreed. ‘Do you think the real Selby, the dog in the books, would drink out of a toilet?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘He’s too …
too
human.
That would be like one of us drinking out of the loo.’

‘So that settles it,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘Selby can’t be the dog in the books, after all.’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ Mrs Trifle agreed. ‘And I’d better stop him from drinking out of the toilet right now before he catches some terrible toilet disease.’

Mrs Trifle got to the bathroom just in time not to see Selby as he slipped the toilet brush back into its holder, and just in time to see him about to take his first slurp.

‘Selby! Stop that!’ Mrs Trifle cried, picking him up in her arms. ‘Oh, you poor poor dear. Come away from there and let me fill your drinking bowl with clean, fresh water.’

‘Phew! That was a close one,’ Selby thought. ‘Saved by the brush.’

This isn’t the end. Mrs Trifle did finally write her story but it wasn’t about Selby. It was about something she knew quite a bit about — being a mayor.

When Dr Trifle asked her where the idea came from she said: ‘I can’t remember. I was
looking at my notes on the computer and there was this title there — ‘Mrs Trifle, Mayor of the Universe'. I forgot I’d even written it down. But it got me thinking.’

So that was the story Mrs Trifle finally wrote and it even won the competition. Everyone loved it, especially Selby.

Selby struggled around the room, getting slower and slower. He could barely lift his paws or move his legs.

‘I’ve got to keep moving!’ he screamed in his brain. ‘If I stop, I’ll never be able to move again!’

The Trifles watched in horror as Selby stood up on his hind legs, stretched his front paws upwards, and then came to a stop.

‘Selby, what’s wrong?’ Mrs Trifle cried, clutching him in her arms. ‘You’re as hard as a rock!’

‘I’m frozen!’ Selby screamed. ‘And it’s all Dr Trifle’s fault! He poisoned me!’

Or at least that’s what he tried to scream but by then it was too late. He couldn’t move his lips or his tongue or even his vocal cords. The only sound that came out of him was a tiny rush of air.

And then his lungs stopped working.

And his heart stopped.

‘This is awful!’ Mrs Trifle cried, as the tears poured down her face. ‘This is terrible! It’s a tragedy! How could this have happened to him?’

It all started earlier that day. Mrs Trifle had just come home from work as Dr Trifle came out of his workroom.

‘Boy, is it hot today!’ Mrs Trifle said, getting a jug of cold water from the fridge. ‘I just wish summer would finally end.’

‘She can say that again,’ Selby thought as he slurped some cool water from his bowl. ‘And I’m twice as hot because I’m covered in fur.’

‘Stop!’ Dr Trifle called out. ‘You’d better not drink that.’

Mrs Trifle looked at the scribbled label on the pitcher.

‘Do not drink!’
she read out loud. ‘Why? What’s wrong with it? It’s just cold water, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is cold water but it’s not
normal
cold water,’ Dr Trifle replied. ‘It’s a new kind of water that I invented.’

‘You invented a new kind of water?’

‘I did. Pour some into your glass. I’ll show you something.’

Mrs Trifle poured some of the water into a glass.

‘Now, just leave it for a moment to let it warm up.’

After a couple of minutes, Dr Trifle said, ‘Now turn the glass upside-down.’

‘But it’ll go all over the floor,’ Mrs Trifle protested.

‘No it won’t.’

Mrs Trifle slowly turned the glass upside-down but the water stayed in the bottom.

‘It’s gone all hard — like ice,’ she said.

‘It’s Nice,’ Dr Trifle said proudly.

‘Well, yes, it’s very nice but — ‘

‘No, no,’ Dr Trifle interrupted. ‘It’s
Nice
with a capital N. It’s short for
not ice.
Nice. Get it? That’s my name for it. It freezes when it warms up instead of freezing when it gets cold. What you have in that glass is a Nice block.’

‘A Nice block? How did you discover this Nice?’

‘Sort of by accident. I was heating some water to make a cup of tea. Then I changed my mind. It was too hot to drink tea. I thought, why not make some iced tea? That started me thinking about what would happen if you heated and cooled water at the same time.’

‘It did?’

‘Yes. So I put the water-heater thingy in the freezer and, well, somehow it changed normal water into Nice water. When I poured it into my tea cup, it warmed up and froze solid.’

‘I never did understand about water freezing,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘At school they told us that water was made of little bits like soldiers running around everywhere. When you made it really cold, the soldiers lined up in rows and then they all held hands like one solid block.’

‘Soldiers? Holding hands?’ Dr Trifle said. ‘I’ll have to think about that.’

Suddenly the Nice fell from Mrs Trifle’s upside-down glass and smashed on the floor.

‘Oops!’ Mrs Trifle said.

Dr Trifle put the jug of Nice water back in the fridge.

‘Hmm, that’s strange,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn there was more than this. I wonder what happened to the rest of it.’

‘Oh no!’ Selby thought as his tongue suddenly struck something hard in his bowl. ‘I’ve just been drinking it! I filled my bowl from that jug in the fridge!’

Selby struggled around the room, getting slower and slower. He could barely lift his paws or move his legs.

‘I’ve got to keep moving!’ he screamed in his brain.

(All of which brings us back to where we were at the beginning.)

‘I think he must have drunk some of the Nice water,’ Dr Trifle said, touching the hard water in Selby’s bowl.

‘Did you give it to him?’

‘No. At least, I don’t think I did.’

‘But you must have. He couldn’t have got the jug out of the fridge all by himself, poured some in his bowl and then put it back. Call the vet! Quick!’

Minutes later, the vet arrived.

‘What’s that?’ he exclaimed, pointing to Selby.

‘That’s Selby, our darling, wonderful dog. He’s gone all … all solid. It’s too complicated to explain. Can you unstiffen him?’

The man listened to Selby’s chest. ‘I think he’s gone.’

‘What do you mean, gone?’ Selby thought. ‘I’m right here!’

‘What do you mean, gone?’ Mrs Trifle asked.

‘We vets have a special word for it. The word is
dead.
I’m terribly sorry,’ the man said, looking at his watch, ‘Oops, I’ve got another appointment.’

‘No! No! No!’ Mrs Trifle cried. ‘Oh, Selby, my dearest, darling dog!’

‘We love you, Selby,’ wailed Dr Trifle. ‘You can’t be dead!’

‘I’m not dead!’ Selby thought. ‘Okay, so I can’t move but I’m not dead!’

‘What are we going to do?’ Mrs Trifle cried. ‘He was the most darling dog you could ever imagine.’

‘I was and I am,’ Selby thought.

‘He was just so lovable,’ Dr Trifle whimpered.

‘I still am!’ Selby thought. ‘Just thaw me out and I’ll be even more lovable.’

And so it was that Selby was stuck frozen to the spot, standing on his hind legs in the loungeroom. The Trifles sat on the couch with tears in their eyes, not knowing what to do with their beloved pet.

‘I can tell you what to do with him,’ Aunt Jetty said when she called around. ‘Put him out with the rubbish before he starts to stink. Come to think of it, he already stinks.’

‘What an awful thing to say!’ Mrs Trifle sobbed. ‘I can’t believe you said that!’

‘I was only trying to help.’

Dr Trifle tried everything he could to melt Selby. He put him in the bathtub and filled it with ice — real ice. Selby thought he’d die of cold. Then, after he’d dried him off again, Dr Trifle put a dozen electric blankets around him and turned them on.

‘He’s going to cook me!’ Selby thought. ‘But maybe this’ll work, after all.’

But it didn’t.

‘I guess the soldiers are still holding hands,’ Mrs Trifle sighed. ‘If only there was something we could do to make them let go.’

But there wasn’t. It seemed that once water turned to Nice there was no going back.

Dr Trifle rang all his science and inventor friends who tried everything they could think of to melt Selby. They zapped him with electricity and they jiggled him and they even tickled him.

‘We’ve never seen anything like it,’ they said. ‘The strange thing is that his brain scan is still showing multi-morphic auto-synchronicity between the frontal and backal lobes. It’s as if his brain’s still working. But of course that’s not possible.’

Crowds of people came from all over Bogusville, Poshfield and then from every corner of Australia and, perhaps, the world to see The Frozen Dog.

Newspaper people wrote stories about him and TV news people stood in front of him, talking about him, while their cameras buzzed and whirred.

‘I hate this!’ Selby thought. ‘For years I kept my secret a secret because I didn’t want to be studied by scientists. And I didn’t want everybody coming around and bugging me. Now it’s all happening and I can’t even run away and hide! Oh, woe woe woe. The only thing that hasn’t happened to me yet is being dognapped!’

(Funny he should say that because that very night Mrs Trifle chased away some robbers who had come to steal him.)

‘We have to do something,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘We can’t go on like this. I think we’ll have to send him away. We can’t have him in the house any more. I just can’t stand it.’

‘But where would we send him?’

Dr Trifle’s old friend Professor Krakpott had the answer.

‘Put him on display,’ he said, ‘in the Museum of Old and Crusty Things.’

And so began the second part of Selby’s frozen life. He stood in the middle of the museum surrounded by dinosaur bones and lots of other old museum stuff.

Days went by and then weeks and months. And, just when it seemed like everyone in the world had seen The Amazing Frozen Dog, more people came.

‘I can’t sleep,’ Selby whimpered in his brain. ‘I can’t even close my eyes. This is the worst thing that could ever happen to a dog — or a person.’

But, deep in Selby’s little non-beating heart, he knew that when things were really really bad suddenly everything could change. And he was right — things got worse.

It was on a weekday and lots of school groups had been to the museum to see him. It was when the girls of St Lucre’s School for Polite Young Ladies came through the museum that Selby knew his problems were really starting.

Among the group were Mrs Trifle’s uncle’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s stepson’s daughters, Cindy, Mindy and Lindy
. Selby spied them out of the corner of his eye.

‘Oh, no, not them again,’ Selby thought, as the line of little girls in their cleanest, neatest school uniforms filed by.

‘Hey, look. It’s that awful Trifle dog,’ Cindy whispered.

‘Frozen stiff,’ Mindy giggled.

‘Let’s have some fun,’ Lindy said.

‘Oh no!’ Selby thought. ‘They’re up to no good. Though how could they make things worse than they already are?’

Soon, all the other girls had filed by and the terrible tripets were left alone.

‘I know,’ Cindy said, pulling a big bone from a dinosaur skeleton.

‘Good thinking,’ Mindy said, grabbing another bone.

‘One, two, and …’ Lindy said, swinging another dinosaur bone,'… three!’

The first blow hit Selby on the back with a
smack!

The next blow was to his side.
Thwack!

And the third blow went right to his middle.
Crack!

Selby stood there for a moment with cracks all over him. Then, in one big crash, he shattered into hundreds of pieces and landed on the floor.

A guard came running.

‘What happened?!’ he yelled. ‘Who did this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cindy said sweetly.

‘We didn’t see a thing,’ Mindy said, twirling her hair with one finger.

‘He just cracked, that’s all,’ Lindy said.

‘You don’t think
we
did it, do you?’ the girls all said together in their sweetest voices.

‘Of course not,’ the guard said. ‘Hurry along now, girls.’

And so it was that Selby lay shattered on the floor in bits and pieces like Humpty Dumpty.

His head was still in one piece and he watched helplessly as Professor Krakpott and his helpers went to work on him. But all the museum’s scientists and all the museum’s men couldn’t put Selby together again.

‘Well, I guess that’s the end of him,’ the professor said, starting to sweep up the pieces of Selby.

That would have been the end except one last person happened along. And that person was famous film-maker and expert jigsaw puzzler Jigsaw Jabbar
. And there was nothing that excited Jigsaw more than a puzzle.