Annie Pitts, Swamp Monster Page 2

  Well, I worked very hard trying to look like a scary monster. I was green and I was slimy. And I smelled really bad. What more did they want?

  I was about to find out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Let’s Give Her a Hand?

  As soon as we got out of the car, Mark headed straight for the woods, with Matthew right behind him. I tried to follow too, but with the flippers on, I could barely keep up. Not to mention that my hair kept getting caught in the branches along the muddy path.

  “Did anyone bring a mirror?” I asked. “Or a brush?”

  “Oh, brother,” Matthew said. I guess that meant no.

  “Didn’t you guys bring anything?” I asked. “What about a tape player? Don’t we need scary music playing in the background?”

  Mark started walking faster and said over his shoulder, “Stop worrying. I have everything we need.”

  “Well, I know something about movies,” I said, “and I know you need stuff like music and lights and directors’ chairs …” I stopped to catch my breath. I guess Mark was so far ahead, he couldn’t hear me. He stopped only when he got to the top of the hill.

  When I caught up with him, I could see that he and Matthew were looking down into a dark, muddy ditch. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The swamp,” Mark announced.

  Matthew started down the hill with his backpack bouncing over his shoulder, while I stood next to Mark, ready to help.

  “I’m going to take a shot of that ditch for the first scene,” he explained. “That’ll give the movie just the right feeling—dark and mysterious.” He set up the tripod.

  “Ah, dark and mysterious,” I repeated. I looked over his shoulder as he looked through the camera. He sounded really professional. Maybe he would know some famous directors or producers that I could interview for my biography project. Then after I interviewed them, I could audition for any parts they might have for a talented person such as myself.

  I was about to ask him, when he shouted, “Matthew, get out of there! There’s no mummy in this scene!”

  Matthew climbed back up the hill and Mark turned the camera on and filmed the swamp monster’s “home.”

  “Maybe you should get a close-up of that log down there,” I suggested.

  Mark stopped filming and turned to me, saying, “Annie, this video camera has sound. Do you know what that means?”

  “Of course I know what that means. I’m an actress. I know all about cameras.”

  Matthew started laughing so hard, he almost fell back down the hill.

  Mark didn’t think anything was so funny. He said, “If you know anything about video, Annie, then you should know that it picks up every word you say when you’re standing near it. I would like the opening shot of the swamp to be silent. I don’t want to hear talking in the background.”

  “Sorrr-rrry,” I said.

  “Sorrr-rrry,” Matthew said, imitating me.

  Mark filmed the swamp again. The very quiet, silent swamp. Then he said, “Okay, Annie, this is going to be your first scene. We’ll start out with the swamp monster rising up out of the ditch.”

  I had a better idea. “What if the camera first zoomed in on my hand, like in The Creature from the Black Lagoon? I think that would be a good beginning to the movie.” I told him. I held up my Ruby Red claws and turned my wrist gracefully so Mark could get a good view.

  But Mark just said in a low, steady voice, “I know what I want. And I want the swamp monster rising up out of the ditch. We’re meeting the swamp monster for the first time, and I think it would be more exciting if we shot the whole monster at once.”

  I certainly wanted my first scene to be exciting, so I said, “Okay. If that’s the way you want it. What would you like me to do?”

  Mark said, “Get behind that log down there, and then slowly stand up. And make a scream of some kind.”

  “Why should I scream?” I asked. “Just because I’m a girl monster doesn’t mean I have to go around screaming. Let the mummy do the screaming.”

  “Okay, Okay.” Mark sighed. “You don’t scream. You … yell. Yes, you yell and howl like a monster who’s really mean and scary. How does that sound?”

  “Better,” I said. “But exactly what kind of yell should I make?” I asked, trying to sound professional.

  “You can yell any way you want to,” Mark answered, still looking through the camera.

  “But you’re the director. Should I yell like I’m angry, or just sort of crazy-like?” I wanted to get it just right.

  Mark stuck his face into mine. “Just yell!” he yelled. “Now get going. We don’t have all day! It’s going to start raining any minute!”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m going.”

  I wiggled my way down the hill as carefully as I could, holding on to rocks and roots to avoid slipping in the mud. I finally reached the log, but it was half buried in the gushy, gooey mud. My flippers made a slurpy noise as I stepped around it. Yuck. I didn’t think acting was going to be this gross.

  “Get lower so I can’t see you,” Mark shouted.

  I squatted daintily.

  “I can still see you,” he said, looking through the camera. “Get all the way down!”

  “It’s too muddy,” I answered back.

  “Of course it’s muddy. It’s a swamp!” Mark shouted.

  I guess I had no choice. I lay down on my stomach. My face was almost in the mud. I was trying not to think about how gross it was.

  I tried to think about how I would rise up from the swamp. What emotion should I have? Should I really yell, or should I just have a mean look and sort of growl a little?

  What I did do was gasp, because suddenly I spotted something weird right next to me. It was a hand. A bloody hand sticking up out of the mud.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAARGK!” I screamed. I jumped up, tossing mud in all directions.

  “AAAAAAAARGK!” I screamed again, tripping my way up the hill.

  “AAAAAAAARGK!” I screamed at Matthew and Mark. I couldn’t get any words out, so I pointed to the swamp. Then I pointed to my hand.

  But Mark was still pointing the camera at me the whole time. “Perfect!” he said. “And cut!”

  “But there’s a dead body down there!” I finally managed to say.

  “You mean a hand,” Matthew said, leaning against a tree, smiling.

  “You saw it?” I shouted. “I can’t believe we’re making a movie in a swamp with a dead person in it!”

  “Calm down,” said Matthew, laughing. “It’s not real. I put it there. It’s only plastic.”

  “Plastic!” I screamed. “Plastic?” I lunged at him.

  “Hold it! Hold it!” Mark came between us and said, “It was my idea. I wanted to make sure the monster was scary-looking when it came up out of the swamp. And believe me—you were!”

  “Well, you could’ve asked me to act scary,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. I’m an actress! I’m supposed to act.”

  Mark shrugged his shoulders and said, “I wasn’t sure you could do it.”

  “You should’ve given me the chance,” I said, still angry.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get one,” he said. “We’re going to do the scene now where the swamp monster and the mummy meet.”

  Matthew took his karate pose and hopped toward me, chopping the air. “I’m ready,” he said. “Hee-yah!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Getting the Willies

  Matthew chopped the air a few more times with his bandaged mummy hands, but Mark pulled him back and said, “Stop fooling around, Matt. I want to get this done right.” Then he explained what we were going to do next.

  “We’ll shoot the next scene at the playground. Annie, you’ll creep up on some unsuspecting kids, and pretend to grab one or two of them. Then the mummy comes along and tries to take them away from you. This will be the first time the mummy and the swamp monster meet.”

  “I’m supposed to grab kids?” I asked, surprised. “Won’t they be sc
ared?”

  “That’s the idea,” Mark said, packing up the camera. “I want them to look really frightened, just like you were when you saw that fake hand. Remember—it’s only pretend.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked Mark’s way of scaring people. But I had to admit, it worked on me.

  I followed the boys along a path that led to the playground. Unfortunately, it was such a nasty day that the playground was empty, except for a little boy playing in the sand. His mother was reading on a bench under a nearby tree.

  We watched them from the bushes. “There’s nobody there except that little kid,” I said. “He’s practically a baby. I can’t go scaring a baby.”

  But Mark said, “It’s for the movie. Remember, you’re an actress.”

  I still wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I went along. I guess an actress has to do what she has to do for her career.

  We hid behind a tree while Mark said, “Remember what I told you, Annie. I want you to sneak up behind the kid, scream real loud, and pretend to grab him. Then the mummy sneaks up from the other side and does the same thing. Both of you hold on to him while I shoot from back here.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “What about his mother? She’s sitting right there.”

  “I’ll explain everything to her afterward,” Mark said.

  Mark seemed to have everything under control, so I prepared myself for my big scene. I was finally going to do some real acting!

  When Mark gave me the okay sign, I crept as quietly as I could toward the boy. I had to lift my flippers up real high with each step so they wouldn’t make any noise. I raised my arms over my head too, because I figured that’s how a monster would walk.

  Along the way, I turned my head to make sure the camera was on me. And when I was sure that it was, I gave it my best smile—smile #1. This was the smile that was going to get me into toothpaste and lipstick commercials, and any other commercials that needed a professional smiler such as myself.

  I was so busy looking at the camera that I wasn’t watching where I was going. I walked right into the wall of the sandbox. My flipper got caught under it and I lost my balance. But just before falling face-first into the sand, I, Annie Pitts, remembered to say my line:

  “AAAAAAARGK!”

  Of course, the little boy jumped sky-high and screamed. When Matthew suddenly leaped out of nowhere and yelled “GRRRRRK!” the boy jumped sky-high and screamed again.

  Then everything happened at once.

  The boy’s mother came running toward us, shouting, “What do you kids think you’re doing? Get away from here! I’m going to call the police!” She picked up the screaming toddler and tried to comfort him, but he was a goner. I wished that Mark would hurry up and get here to straighten things out.

  Meanwhile, Matthew tried to calm the boy down by taking off some of the mummy bandages that were wrapped around his head. “Hey, look,” he said with a goofy smile. “I’m not really a mummy. I’m just a kid. See?”

  Since I thought Matthew was still gross-looking, with or without bandages, I was surprised when the boy actually stopped crying. I wanted to help too, so I said, “And I’m not really a swamp monster either. I’m really an artichoke!” I danced around with a stupid smile on my face. One that I would never, ever, use in front of a camera. The kid burst out crying again. I wished that Mark would hurry up and get here to straighten things out.

  This wasn’t fun anymore. I didn’t like the idea of being this kid’s worst nightmare. He’ll probably grow up being afraid of artichokes for the rest of his life.

  He could be in a restaurant someday, and a waiter will pass by with a plate of artichokes, and the kid will start screaming bloody murder. Everyone will think that he found a cockroach in the food, and they’ll all get up and leave and put the restaurant out of business.

  And it will all be my fault.

  Finally Mark came out of the woods carrying the video camera. “I’m sorry your little boy got scared,” he said in a sweet voice that I had never heard him use before. It must be the one he uses with grown-ups.

  “Willomina’s a girl,” the woman said sharply.

  Mark didn’t miss a beat. “And she’s a real sweetheart too,” he said.

  He smiled at the woman and continued, “I’m making a movie for my film class at school. These are my actors, Matthew and Annie. And this little bo—girl must be a professional model. She’s a real cutie.” To me, she looked more like a cootie.

  “Oh, no,” the woman said. “She’s never modeled. But everyone says Willy is so cute, she should be in the movies.”

  Mark asked if he could film the cootie, I mean cutie, some more, and Willy’s mother was delighted. He filmed the kid jumping off the bench. Ten times. Then he took some shots of her throwing sand all over Matthew and me. Mostly me.

  I went along with it just so Willomina’s mother wouldn’t call the police. I was glad it worked, because if we got arrested, I’d have to go to jail in this monster costume and have my mug shots taken—front and side view—with mud and green stuff all over my face.

  I’d also have to invent a new smile for the mug shot.

  One that says, “It’s-not-my-fault-they-made-me-do-it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Slimebreath Meets Fungusface

  After Willomina and her mother left the playground, Matthew climbed to the top of the monkey bars. He pounded on his chest and yelled, “Hey, Mark, take my picture up here!”

  But Mark said, “Get down from there. We’re going over to the baseball field. We need more room to shoot the fight scene.”

  “Awwww-right!” said Matthew. He came chopping toward me, but Mark stopped him.

  “Cut it out, Matt!” he said.

  “Yeah, watch it,” I added. “You might get hurt.”

  Matthew put up his karate hands again and said, “If anyone’s going to get hurt, it’s going to be the moldy broccoli!”

  “No way,” I said. “Swamp monsters are stronger than mummies.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah!”

  That was the way our conversation went all the way to the baseball field, where we continued to “Oh, yeah” each other until our noses were about two inches apart. We would have been closer, except my puffy costume was in the way.

  Being this close to Matthew gave me a whole new view of him. For instance, I never noticed the row of little brown hairs sticking out between his eyebrows. Or the gaps in his mouth where his baby teeth had fallen out. Or the veins in his neck that stuck out when he got really mad. Or …

  Ooof!

  Matthew karate-chopped my stomach. It didn’t hurt, because I was so well-padded, but he did manage to knock me off my feet. Right into the mud puddle at first base.

  “Ha!” he boasted. “The swamp monster is history!”

  That’s what he thought. I grabbed his leg and pulled him into the mud with me.

  And so the fight scene began. Sort of. I rolled on top of Matthew and tried to pin him down, but I was so round, I rolled right off again.

  “Wait!” Mark yelled from across the field. “I haven’t set up the camera yet!”

  We didn’t wait. Matthew and I were mud wrestling. I mean, we wrestled more with the mud than with each other. Every time we tried to get up, we slipped back into the mud. Matthew finally managed to stand, but I was stuck facedown in the mud.

  “Ha!” Matthew sneered. “The swamp monster eats dirt!”

  “I’m almost ready!” Mark shouted. “Hold on!”

  I didn’t hold on. I stuck out my flipper and tripped Matthew, sending him once again into the puddle.

  Matthew was getting mad. He shoved me with his feet and rolled me over. Now I was stuck on my back with my flippers waving all over the place.

  Matthew grabbed my foot, and the flipper came off in his hands. “I win, Slimebreath!” he shouted.

  “One more second!” Mark yelled.

  “Hey
! Gimme back my fin, Fungusface!” I yelled. I reached out and grabbed a handful of bandage from Matthew’s leg. I tugged hard and the mummy fell forward—arms, legs, and flipper flying in all different directions.

  His head landed right next to mine. Suddenly something inside me made me do something I never expected to do.

  I bit his ear.

  “Owww!” Matthew yelled. “No fair biting!” He rubbed his ear and tried to get up. But it wasn’t easy. Like me, he had become part of the mud puddle.

  “Okay! I’m ready!” Mark shouted. “Action!”

  Matthew waved to his brother and said, “Wait! Did you see that? She bit me! She touched me with her tongue! That’s disgusting!”

  This, of course, was coming from a kid who is famous for licking worms if someone dares him to.

  “Don’t worry about it, Matt. Let’s start that scene all over again. It was great, but I wasn’t ready.”

  “No way I’m done,” Matthew said. And then he shouted to the world, “Annie Pitts is disgusting!”

  I sat up. “What’s disgusting is this mud,” I said. “What are we going to do now? Our costumes are ruined!”

  Mark looked at his watch and said, “I don’t think we have time to do any more shooting anyway.”

  “But what about the movie?” I asked. “How does it end? It has to have an ending.” I managed to stand up and make my way onto the grass.

  Mark put the camera into the case and said, “It doesn’t have to have an ending, Annie. It’s just an assignment for my film class. It’s really not that important.”

  “It is to me!” I said.

  “Who cares?” Matthew whined. “I’m cold, and I’m hungry, and I want to go home so I don’t have to look at your ugly face anymore.”

  “We can’t go anywhere,” I said. “Look at us!”

  Matthew and I were completely covered with mud. Maybe Matthew didn’t care, but I couldn’t go home looking like this.

  “Go see if the bathrooms are open,” Mark said. “Maybe you can get cleaned up in there.”