Floods 9 (6 page)

‘There we go,' he said. ‘I've added a No-Poo-Attachment. So I think we're good to go unless anyone else can think of something else I need to do.'

‘I can,' said Betty. ‘I know wiping your bottom with a newspaper is awful, but won't people just do that, or tear pages out of notebooks?'

‘Another good point,' said Winchflat.

There was a delay of another hour while Winchflat built a Ruff'nit Machine. It was programmed to cut in about thirty seconds after the main machine started and make all the remaining paper in the world Very Itchy.

‘You know,' said the Headmaster, ‘the business possibilities are endless. I mean, you could make the remaining paper give anyone who used it a rash that could only be cured with a special ointment from a company that we own most of the shares in.'

In the end, it was decided that was probably going a bit far so it was agreed the Ruff'nit Machine would just give anyone who used it a red bottom like Betty's spell had done. It would scare the living daylights out of everyone, but not actually do them any harm.

‘You know what might be fun?' said Merlinmary. ‘If you made all the bank notes as soft as velvet. Don't you just love the idea of everyone wiping their bottoms with money?'

‘It's a bit mean, isn't it?' said Betty.

‘It is,' said Merlinmary, ‘but also hilarious.'

‘But that's sacrilege!' said Aubergine Wealth, who adored money.

‘Right,' said Winchflat, ‘I think this time we are good to go unless anyone else can think of something else I need to do.'

No one could. So they all put their crash helmets on and Winchflat pressed the Big Brown Button on the front of his machine. At first, it seemed as if nothing was happening, but then toilet rolls began to appear as if out of thin air. It was incredible, but the soft rolls of paper were actually moving through solid walls before flying off down the streets and out to sea.

Roll after roll appeared, mixed up with loose sheets of paper and packets of tissues. There were so many of them it looked like a snow storm as they flew out of shops and offices and bathrooms and people's hands all over the world. It also cleared all the finished paper out of the factories that Aubergine Wealth had bought the shares in. Small clouds of paper merged into bigger clouds, some of
them over a mile wide. Tracking stations around the world picked up the tissue clouds and followed them out into the middle of every ocean. And then, they all suddenly vanished.

Winchflat knew they would be picked up by radar and there was no way he wanted anyone to know where they were going. So, once the paper clouds had grown as large as they were going to, he pressed Button B and they dematerialised into individual atoms too small to follow and continued their journey. Once they reached the Caves of Huge Darkness, all the atoms joined up again and the toilet rolls, tissues and other soft papers collected in piles over the cave floor, where an ancient relic from the age of dinosaurs – the Complaining
Woodlouse,
²⁸
a sort of blind beetle the size of a shoe – began to eat them.

From the inside of millions of bathrooms everywhere came horrified and disgusted screams from people who had been too close to using their handful of toilet paper to stop.
²⁹
The noise was deafening. Apart from the screams, there were hundreds of thousands of people calling out for their mums,
thousands of voices screaming every swear word known to man in every language known to man and woman.
³⁰

The chaos that occurred that day was endless. People about to blow their noses suddenly sneezed into their own hands or, worse still, someone else's hands. Spilled tea, coffee, blood and red wine just soaked into pale clean carpets, clothes and furniture. Governments around the world accused each other of a terrible plot. No one knew how it had happened,
but the Russians blamed the Chinese. The Chinese blamed the Japanese. The Japanese blamed the Indians. The Indians blamed the British and the Americans blamed everyone.

Only Tristan da Cunha didn't blame anyone because none of their toilet paper had disappeared. Winchflat had a soft spot for Tristan da Cunha and had added a special filter that excluded them. Naturally Transylvania Waters itself and the Transylvania Waters Summer School's supply of soft, gently scented tissue remained untouched too. But everywhere else, from royal palaces to humble cottages, was totally one hundred per cent soft-paperless.

This time the traffic jams were ten times worse than they had been when Red Bottom Plague had broken out. Everything ground to a complete halt as people abandoned their cars and ran to the nearest supermarket to buy toilet paper. Of course, the shelves where the toilet paper should have been were empty. Sneaky people broke into the checkout tills – not to steal the money, but to take the paper
rolls the receipts were printed on. But they had vanished too. Humans can never outsmart a wizard.

Enterprising people tried to think laterally, which means thinking sideways to try and find a solution to a problem that is not the usual solution.

This is what they thought.

If there is no paper, what else can we use to wipe our bottoms?

Here are a few things that do not work:

 

• Lettuce leaves.

• Goldfish.

• Sticky tape.

• Golf clubs.

• Weet-Bix.

• Skateboards.

• Belgium.

 

Here are a few things that do work, though you have to be pretty desperate:

 

• Kittens.

• Wigs.

• Cardigans.

• Armchairs.

• Seaweed.

• Bacon.

• Parrots.

• Small children.

 

Here are some things you must NEVER use:

 

• Copies of
The Floods.

• Dynamite.

• Mashed potato.

• Belgian dynamite wrapped in barbed wire.

• Your baby sister.

 

Some people decided they would not go to the toilet until the crisis was over. Some of them exploded.

A few days later posters began to appear everywhere. They were advertising a wonderful new and exciting toilet paper that was softer and fluffier yet much stronger than anything anyone had ever experienced before. The posters said:

And sure enough, a few days after the posters appeared, all the supermarket shelves were overflowing with Cuddlycheeks. Not only was there toilet paper again, but it really was the softest yet strongest toilet paper that had ever been created.

Everyone was overjoyed.

Until they got to the checkouts.

‘Ten dollars a roll!' they cried. ‘You must be joking.'

‘It's a special introductory offer,' said the checkout girl. ‘Next week it goes up to fifteen dollars.'

But everyone paid up. They complained. They argued. They threatened, but they paid up, because if they didn't, there were only too many people who would.

The first week, Transylvania Waters Summer School made three billion dollars.

‘This is not so much like taking candy from a baby,' said Professor Throat, ‘as taking its toothless gums too.'

The second week, with the price increase, they made six billion dollars. The third week, because
worrying about the high price of toilet paper was making all the humans very stressed, which meant they had to go to the toilet twice as often, they made eight billion dollars.

‘I wonder just how much we could get away with charging before people refused to buy it?' said Aubergine Wealth. ‘That would be an interesting experiment.'

People were already setting up stalls on street corners and selling toilet paper by the sheet. In the poorer parts of town, shops were being held up at gunpoint by desperate men demanding all the Cuddlycheeks products and people were auctioning sheets on eBay.

The fourth week, the Floods made ten billion dollars.

They knew they could have increased the price to twenty-five dollars a roll, but at twenty dollars a roll, adverts started appearing on the internet and on shop noticeboards offering second-hand toilet paper for sale. That was when they decided it was time to call a stop.

‘Except there's still a bit more to be made out of this,' said Aubergine Wealth.

He and Winchflat went to the Stock Exchange and sold all of their shares in all of the paper companies for an outrageously astronomical profit. All, that is, except one small factory in Belgium. The sale did not include the secret recipe for making the ultra-super-soft Cuddlycheeks, but the new owners of the factories didn't care. They just began making the old stuff again. Getting twenty dollars for one roll of toilet paper was fabulous. Money began to pour in like water.

For a whole week.

Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for fifteen dollars a roll.

‘It's OK,' said the new owners of all the other factories. ‘We'll charge fourteen dollars a roll. It's still several thousand per cent profit.'

Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for ten dollars a roll.

‘Oh well, eight dollars a roll is still a huge profit,' said the other factories.

Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for five dollars a roll.

‘We're still making a profit.'

Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for a dollar a roll.

Half the other factories closed down.

Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for twenty cents a roll.

The other half of the factories closed down. Aubergine Wealth bought them all back for almost nothing and they all began making Cuddlycheeks and settled on a fair price of two dollars a roll.

By the end of the Great Toilet Roll Enterprise, as it was referred to in Volume Two of Aubergine Wealth's later autobiography,
All Your Monies Are Belong To Me
, the Quicklime College Summer School had made thirty-seven billion dollars.

²²
Don't ask.

²³
See
The Floods 11: Desperate Housewitches.

²⁴
Maldegard had discovered the entrance to the caves when she had been out searching for Gasper Berries in the deserted dungeons below the cellars below the kitchens of Castle Twilight. She had read about the legendary berries that are the sourest thing in the whole world – one berry is enough to make your mouth shrink smaller than a mosquito's bottom – and gone searching for them in the least likely place they would be, guessing that because no one else had ever found them, that was exactly where they would be. She was the first person in living and half-dead memory to go down to the dungeons and, sure enough, there were berries growing and glowing everywhere. And that was where she had found the tiny door that led into the Caves of Huge Darkness.

²⁵
See
The Floods 7: Top Gear.

²⁶
Great minds think alike, because Maldegard sent him a coded text message at that moment saying exactly the same thing.

²⁷
We will NOT be naming the person who did not think Yuk.

²⁸
They probably weren't actually complaining. It's just that their mating calls sounded like they were. So did their singing, snoring and territorial calls. Though of course, if you are the only very small beetle in a world full of dinosaurs with very big clumsy feet, you would complain. I suppose if everyone called you a louse you'd complain too.

²⁹
There had been similar cries from behind bushes, deep in forests and several places where this sort of thing should not have been happening.

³⁰
Have you ever wondered how many people at any given moment are actually going to the lavatory around the world? I know I haven't, but let's work it out.