The Oomph Machine. Chapter One.

Let’s get one thing clear, oomph is very dangerous. But thankfully oomph isn’t easy to get. You need to be one of those brave, heroic types with shiny teeth, great hair and really clean socks to find it. And if you do get some you’ll probably just lose it down the back of the sofa anyway or create the most terrifying monster in existence.

So our advice, leave it to the experts.

Flibber flabber flump flump, flibber flabber phew.

Milly Moon was a smart young inventor who also happened to have really clean socks on, so yes, she wasn’t easily flabbergasted.

Flibber flabber flump flump, flibber flabber phew.

She’d been bamboozled a few times..

Flibber flabber flump flump, flibber flabber phew.

She’d even been befuddled once, but that was on a monday, so doesn't count.

But flabbergasted, never, no way.

‘I’m flabbergasted,’ admitted Milly.

A ten foot high, beautifully made golden cage, its bars twisted into the most fantastic shapes, loomed above her. It was surrounded by wires and valves, while glass orbs of red and blue glowed brightly on top. Huge copper coils sparked and fizzed on each side and the astonishing machine was making a strange sound;

Flibber flabber flump flump, flibber flabber phew.

Flibber flabber flump flump, flibber flabber phew.

'Oh, please tell me you’ve given it the best name ever?’ asked Milly.

'Well actually now that you ask,’ said Felix von Frankenstein scratching his head. It was possible he’d been bamboozled.

Felix wore a long, glossy blue coat, a silvery waistcoat and a diamond white scarf. He was every bit a Frankenstein and like Milly, a first class inventor. He did have great hair but whether or not he had clean socks on will remain a mystery.

‘No wait, don’t tell me,’ said Milly.

‘It’s a Flibbertron!’.

'Not really,’ said Felix.

‘A Flabbometer!,’

‘Nope,’

‘A flump-a-matic!’

‘Don’t think so,’

‘Boy that’s the best I’ve got. Go on then, what’s it called?’ asked Milly.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said Felix.

'Oomph! Oomph!'

Came a booming, confident voice from the other side of the cage. An old leather armchair, it's back to the room, creaked and crackled as a figure even taller than Felix stood up..

'Oomph I say, oomph! It is, my dearest Felix, an Oomph Machine if ever I've seen one.'

The tallest young man Milly had ever seen, with long legs thinner than two over planed matches, came striding boldly towards them carrying a kite. He made a noise as he walked like the flapping of a great ship's sail. For he had the crispiest of white shirts on. His face was long and slightly blue toned. He grabbed Felix and hugged him..

‘It's marvellous…sniff... and so very…sniff… Oomphy!’ he said and wiped a tear from his eye, making his shirt creak like an old floorboard.

Milly liked him immediately.

Lord Bernard Byron Boathook at your service Milly’ he said and bowed so deeply towards her that his hair brushed the floor, his trousers squeaked and his shirt creaked some more.

‘A poet?,’ asked Milly,

‘By all the flaming underpants in the underworld, yes!,’ said Lord Bernard.

He picked up his kite and smiled back. He liked Milly immediately..

'What do you make of this wonderful new invention,’ he asked..

Milly walked slowly around the Oomph Machine. She traced its golden bars with her fingers and counted the number of levers and pumps.

‘Air induced……..’.

She followed the routes of flashing valves and fizzing wires.

‘electromagnetically enhancing….’

She stood back.

‘matter manipulation,’ she said and for the second time in her life she was flabbergasted.

‘It brings things to life!’

Then Milly had a wicked idea. A life changing, massive whopper of a thought.

So time out.

Because this was one of those moments where you need to make one of life's difficult choices;

A. Do you leave the castle as fast as you can in squeaky clean socks, then run skipping through golden fields of wheat, the wind in your hair, the grass beneath your feet and the sun burning your bottom. Sounds good? Yes, of course it does, But then where's the adventure in that?

Or

B. Do you hang around all moody in mucky socks, then run around in the dark, bump into doom and knock him over. There are worms in your pants, wind in your bottom and the sun burns your feet. Sounds bad? Of course it does. But boy it's just so much more exciting.

The decision was made.

'Milly reached into her knapsack and pulled out an old, cloth toy rabbit.

‘How about bringing him to life?’

She gave the beaten up toy rabbit a squeeze.

‘His name is Frankie,’ she said.

‘I’m not sure the machine is ready,’ said Felix.

‘Oh please, I mean what's the worst thing that can happen?’

(er, hello, burnt toes, worms, pants, wind, bottom!).

'Ok, let's try him in the machine,' said Felix.

Felix placed the toy rabbit in the Oomph Machine. He closed the door and walked around to a large wooden handle, pumping it up and down as fast as he could. The orbs began to glow, the copper coils sparked and the machine went,

Flibber flabber flump,

Flibber flabber flump flump

Flibber flabber flump flump, flibber flabber phew.

And slowly, very slowly, right there in front of Milly's eyes, the impossible happened. That saggy, little toy rabbit rose up on its own spindly cloth legs and began to hop.

Flibber flabber flump flump, flibber flabber phew.

But the machine was slowing down.

Flibber flabber flump, phew phew

The rabbit fell down flat and once again became a still, lifeless toy.

Flibber flabber poo.

The machine stopped. Felix looked at the rabbit.

‘By all the bananas in Basildon, that’s disappointing,’ said Bernard.

'I think we need to find more power and the right ingredients to make a real rabbit,’ suggested Felix.

‘Like bananas?’ said Bernard.,

In the Creation Room of the castle, its shelves packed with ancient books, brightly coloured potions and all manner of machinery they found everything they needed to supercharge Frankie.

‘So I found handfuls of the softest, fluffiest golden brown fur,’ said Felix.

‘I’ve got some carrots and these really cool springs for jumping,’ said Milly.

‘I found an underpant and more importantly a banana,’ said Bernard.

‘Its a rabbit dear Bernard, not a monkey,’ said Felix.

‘Exactly dear boy, that’s why we need an underpant,’

Bernard smiled and ate the banana.

‘You can never be too careful with Monkeys,’ he added.

Milly and Felix attached a great leather funnel to the side of the machine and dropped all the ingredients into it.

It would be impossible here to describe the difficult method for transforming everyday objects into terrifying, fluffy catastrophes. However, for those of you with large brains, we are happy to provide the complex scientific equation for further study:

Boosty woosty + (oomphy woomphy) x thingy-ma-jiggy + jumpy wumpy squared by (fluffy wuffy) + (carrots x10) = nasty big oojamaflip.

Meanwhile Lord Bernard was busy doing what all great poets do in an emergency, he'd taken his kite and climbed the rusty old ladder to the top of the Creation Room's turret.

Its roof, made from two enormous sliding glass doors, led to a dangerous wooden platform that stretched out into the misty gloom high above the courtyard. And in the great forest of Bertwalds far below, the animals went about their business, unaware of the coming storm. Mice clucked, birds barked, dogs quacked and the odd hedgehog mooed. It was that kind of forest.

Bernard walked out onto the platform and lifted up his kite to the storm as flocks of excited crows jostled for the best seats in town.

‘Now we're cooking,' he said and unfortunately decided this was the perfect moment for an epic poem.

It wasn't.

'The lord stood firm

the world was spinning,

his hair was wild,

his legs were thinning.

The end grew near,

he bore no blame,

his trousers thin,

his hair aflame.

The kite flew higher,

the storm the key,

the cage was empty

the rabbit free.'

A long string, one end attached to the kite and the other end trailing down to the Oomph Machine, was held tightly in Lord Bernard's hand. He pulled on his kite, again and again.

'Gods of the fluffy wuffy heavens, hear me!' he cried.

'Give me your oomph!'

'Give me wind!' he shouted and pulled on the kite's string.

As Bernard’s kite rose ever higher into the storm, his feet slipped closer and closer towards the great platform's edge. He was a young man in a crispy shirt, out of his depth. He was either on the edge of greatness or the ledge of disaster and his time had come. In fact his time had come, seen how high the ledge was and left again.

'Watch out Lord Bernard!' shouted Milly.

'Do be careful, dear Bernard!' shouted Felix.

A bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, hitting the top of Bernard's struggling kite. The crows applauded. But lightning doesn't come to a stop so easily. It flashed down the string, looking for the exit. It found it attached to the end of Lord Bernard's little string, the Oomph Machine.

The machine's cage began to glow white hot, the leather funnel blew steam into the air. Coils hummed, pipes burst and wires buzzed.

Flibber flabber, flibber flabber flumph flumph.

Flibber flabber, Flibber flabber, Flibber flabber,

Flibber flabber, Flibber flabber, Flibber flabber,

phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew,

Bang!

Then the lights went out, the room was left in smoke and the crows were seriously, seriously impressed.

'Felix Felix!! Where are you?' shouted Milly.

'Over here! I'm fine,' she replied.

'The Oomph machine!' cried Milly.

The machine still glowed red hot. It smoked and creaked and at the centre of the twisted cage, just where the door should have been, was a hole. An enormous, gaping great monster of a hole. The machine's metal bars had been torn apart, from the inside.

'Footprints! Marvellously, massive, monstrous footprints!' said Felix kneeling down by the mangled door of the Oomph Machine.

'Where's Frankie?' asked Milly.

'Missing, gone, vanished,' answered Felix quietly.

Milly slowly followed the footprints across the floor.

'No wait, over here,'.

Below the ladder Milly found something.

'Look carrots!' she cried.

'We must climb the sky-directed, regular spaced, wooden constructed, human leg powered, vertical propulsion aid!' (ladder), said Felix.

Milly and Felix made their way up the ladder and walked out onto the great oak platform. Lord Bernard Byron Boathook had been cooked nicely. His shirt was now brown and crispy, his black trousers had been steamed tight to his legs, his hair smouldered and the buckles on his shoes had melted. Yet his face beamed with an enormous smile. He turned towards Milly and Felix, then spoke.

'By the gods of Mount Olympus and Basingstoke, now that's what I call flying a kite!' and smiled again from ear to ear, causing small jets of smoke to emerge from each one.

Felix hugged him until more smoke emerged from his ears.

'Thank heavens your safe, dear friend.'

But Milly, Felix and the nicely grilled Lord Bernard, were not alone on the platform that morning. The storm, the lightning and the Oomph Machine had brought something else into the world.

On the edge of the oak platform stood the most monstrous, fabulously fluffy, nine foot tall rabbit in all creation. It stood upright on its huge back legs, had two oversized front teeth, was an utterly fluffy, gloriously golden brown and was wearing a huge pair of underpants. Its nose twitched furiously as it picked up the strange new scents around it.

‘Are they my underpants?’ asked the still steaming Lord Bernard..

‘I’m glad I didn’t give him my banana now,’.

'Look! Look at its tail!' said Milly amazed.

'Great galloping, cuddly oversized, four legged, fur covered, big eared, scream inducing, pant dropping, massive mammal!' said Felix.

Everybody stared at the rabbit's magnificent tail. For it was red, bright red, as red as a rose, a sore nose or a squashed strawberry.

The giant rabbit turned and glared at the three strange looking humans. He blinked his big blue eyes a few times, twitched his nose, then leapt off the edge with a huge bounding leap. He plummeted down through flocks of applauding crows, then disappeared into the layer of mist, far below in the courtyard.

So the recipe is an easy one then. Take one simple rabbit of doom and all the right ingredients. Throw in a genius or two for flavour. Add a dash of dramatically daft poet to spice it all up. Place in an Oomph Machine for approximately 2.3 seconds and apply 30,000 volts.

Now the quiet people of Bertwalds Burgeoning were about to be served lunch. A lunch of terror and torment, doom and disaster and of course that recently oomphed, simple Fluffmeister of Doom. Please allow us to introduce the newly baked fiend himself, the fabulous, ferocious, almost completely golden brown, Frankie the Beast of Bertwalds.

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