The Toilet Vortex Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Excerpt from Fart Squad: Underpantsed!

  Back Ad

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Darren Stonkadopolis groaned as he backed away from the toilet.

  Janitor Stan leaned over his shoulder to get a better look at the offending specimen. “Oh, you’re fine,” he said. “Happens all the time.” And with the push of one finger, Stan flushed that toilet good.

  Stan was the only human being whom Darren and his friends trusted to keep their identity as the elusive superhero team, the Fart Squad, a secret. He also doubled as their coach, or scent-sei. Cleaning up toilets after school wasn’t exactly how Darren would have chosen to demonstrate his gratitude. But when Stan asked Darren for help with a running toilet, Darren just couldn’t say no.

  “Okay,” Stan declared to the otherwise empty bathroom, “which one of you won’t shut up?” He eyed the row of stalls before pointing to the far end. “Aha, gotcha!” he announced.

  Darren followed the janitor to the last stall. “No water on the floor,” Stan said as they stopped in front of it. “That’s good.” He pushed the stall door open, and Darren shivered. Suddenly it was really, really cold in there!

  Stan grabbed the toilet handle and tried jiggling it. The water kept running, forming a swirling vortex in the center of the bowl. He lifted the lid off the toilet’s tank and peered inside. “Everything looks okay,” he told Darren, “but sometimes something gets knocked loose.” Then, much to Darren’s horror, the janitor reached inside the toilet’s tank and fiddled with a valve, but the water kept on running.

  “Nothing there,” Stan said, pulling his arm from the tank and drying it on a rag from his back pocket. “Could be something clogging the actual toilet pipe, I guess. What’s weird is the toilets up here have been doing this all week—every time I get one to stop, another starts acting up.” He studied the toilet bowl and the water swirling down into it before finally sticking his hand in there, as well, causing Darren to gag.

  “There’s definitely suction,” he reported. “A whole lot of it, actually. In fact”—his shoulder twitched and wrenched, but his hand was still in the toilet—“I think I’m stuck!”

  “What?” Darren grabbed the janitor’s free hand and tried to pull him loose. It didn’t help. Then the rushing-water noise got louder, and suddenly Stan jerked forward, his arm in as far down as his shoulder.

  “There’s definitely something wrong with this toilet!” Stan said, bracing both feet against the toilet base and pulling with all his might. But he couldn’t get his hand back out. And now more of his arm was being pulled down into the toilet! It was like the toilet was a monstrous mouth swallowing up the janitor!

  “It’s no use. I’m going down!” Stan shouted, struggling against the pull. Darren tried tugging him free again. Still no success.

  There was a scuffling noise as Stan’s feet left the ground, his shoulder and part of his chest in the toilet bowl now. Then, with a loud slurp, his head and upper body disappeared down the pipe, as well.

  “No!” Darren cried, tugging on Stan’s leg. A second later Darren lost his grip as Stan’s legs went, and the toilet swallowed the janitor completely. His wrench made a loud clang as it fell to the floor by the toilet, after which the bathroom was quiet except for the rush of running water. “Stan!” Darren shouted into the toilet.

  “Help!” Stan shouted, sounding very far away.

  “Stan!” Darren called again. But this time he got no answer.

  “STAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Hurry up!” Darren shouted as he waved Juan-Carlos Finkelstein toward him. “The toilet swallowed Stan. We’ve got to save him!”

  “What do you mean, it swallowed him?” Juan-Carlos asked, running as fast as he could. As soon as he’d gotten over his shock at Stan’s disappearance, Darren had texted the Squad to meet in front of the third-floor boys’ bathroom.

  When little Tina Heiney caught up with them she was just as confused. “How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Darren replied. “We have superpowered farts. How is that possible?”

  “He has a point,” Walter Turnip declared, bringing up the rear and huffing to a stop. Bigger and heavier than the others, he wasn’t exactly built for speed. “Given our own new abilities, and some of the strange things we have encountered since, we should keep an open mind.”

  They were an odd foursome—jittery Darren, tiny Tina, lanky joker Juan-Carlos, and bulky brain Walter—but they had bonded when the school’s mystery burritos had given each of them strange superpowers. Or superfarts, really. And that was how they’d become the Fart Squad.

  “Okay, fine, a toilet swallowed him.” Tina crossed her arms. “Grab a plunger and get him back out.”

  “It’s way too late for that,” Darren argued. “He got sucked in completely. It was like . . . magic.”

  “So what do we do?” Juan-Carlos sighed. “This is normally when we’d ask Stan for advice!”

  Darren nodded. Since forming the Fart Squad, Stan had really become a mentor to them all. How would the team function at all without the janitor’s wisdom and common sense? Darren took a deep breath. “We’re going to have to jump in after him.”

  “You want us to jump into a toilet?” Juan-Carlos shook his head. “Man, this Squad is really going down the drain!” As usual, nobody laughed at his awful joke.

  “Let’s go!” Tina said, fearless as always.

  “Are you sure?” Juan-Carlos asked her. “You won’t feel weird about going into the boy’s bathroom?”

  “Feelings?” Tina scoffed. “Who has time for feelings?” And with that, Tina walked herself right into the bathroom.

  “Looks normal to me,” she said, unimpressed. “Gross, but normal.”

  Walter followed Tina inside and then all four Squad members gathered around the toilet. Oddly, the water swirling in the bowl was a deep blue that almost seemed to glow. It was very pretty—hypnotic, almost.

  Walter leaned in over the toilet bowl, studying the roiling water, then reached for the handle.

  “Wait!” Darren shouted. He batted Walter’s hand away. “Look, we don’t know what’ll happen if we do that. It could grab us, too. We don’t know where it goes. We don’t know anything except that it took Stan.” He gulped. “We should probably think about it before making our next move.”

  Walter backed away. “Agreed.” Then he brightened. “Time for a snack?” he asked.

  The others knew that wasn’t just Walter’s stomach speaking. What he meant was that it was time to eat some of the school’s super-special burritos—the ones that gave them their powers.

  “Yeah,” Tina agreed. She glanced at the toilet again and shook her head. “Also, we need our Fart Squad uniforms. If we’re really going to do this, let’s do it right!”

  A few minutes later, the farty foursome met back at Janitor Stan’s closet dressed in uniform, looking every bit the heroes they’d become in the past several weeks.

  Darren loaded up Stan’s microwave, and three minutes later he pulled out a freshly warmed-over plate of bean burritos. “Come and get it!” he shouted.

  “Bottoms up!” Juan-Carlos joked as Darren set the plate down in front of them. The others groaned but dug in. In record time the plate was wiped clean and the Fart Squad members w
ere gassed up and ready to go!

  Darren led the way back up to the bathroom and the end stall, where he and his friends stood around the toilet, staring at their futures.

  “Is this truly our best course of action?” Walter asked. “To pursue our missing mentor into the very commode that stole him from us?”

  “If anybody’s got a better idea, let me know,” Darren replied. He wasn’t so sure himself. If only Stan were here! He’d know what to do!

  But nobody had a better idea. And who else was going to help in a situation like this? This was exactly the sort of problem someone would call on the Fart Squad to handle—and they were the Fart Squad!

  Darren studied the toilet. “One of us should go first and see what happens.”

  The others nodded. Then they all looked at one another. Finally Juan-Carlos clapped Darren on the back. “Good job volunteering!” he said.

  Darren sighed. As leader of the Fart Squad, he often had to do things that scared him. Not to mention things that repulsed him. Besides, his power was superhot farts that burned his butt on their way out. How much worse could a toilet be? He tried not to think about that too hard.

  “Fine. Just, I don’t know, watch and listen in case I need help.” He stepped up onto the toilet seat, the water swirling below him. “Here goes nothing!” Then he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, stepped off the seat, and plunged feetfirst into the toilet bowl.

  Whoosh!

  It was like being sucked into a vacuum cleaner underwater. The toilet pulled Darren in, swirling him around at the same time, as if he were going down a water slide. And just like on a water slide, a few seconds later he splashed down, spluttering as his head went under.

  “Blub, ack!” Darren gasped, swallowing some water and choking a little before he found his feet and stood up. He was submerged up to his waist.

  “Oh gross,” he muttered, raising his arms and shaking them. Not that it helped any. He was soaked from head to toe.

  Darren looked around, and immediately he wished he hadn’t.

  Water seeping into his boots and making his clothes stick to him, and the smell—oh man, the smell!—told him he was definitely not in Kansas anymore.

  “So,” Darren muttered to himself, trying to keep it together, “this is what a sewer looks like.”

  It was pretty disgusting. A giant tunnel with grimy tiled walls that curved up on both sides splattered with yellow and brown streaks.

  And chunks.

  Smaller tunnels branched off to the sides here and there. Bare lightbulbs were strung up overhead, just enough to cast a lot of gloomy shadows.

  There were things floating in the water, too—small, dark things; large, lumpy things. Darren really didn’t want to examine those too closely. And then, of course, the kernels of corn. As bright and yellow and pristine as if they were freshly shucked off the cob.

  Corn, Darren thought.

  The indestructible cockroaches of the human digestive system.

  As Darren tried to find his footing in the slippery slop of stinky waste, something small and green bumped up against him, and Darren automatically reached out and grabbed it. It was a small toy soldier. The little plastic figure’s rifle had snapped off and his helmet looked like someone had chewed on it.

  “Odd,” Darren muttered.

  The other thing out of place here—besides Darren himself—was the glowing blue portal hovering beside him just above the water. It was exactly the same color as the toilet bowl, and so cold, just being near it was making his teeth chatter.

  “Hey, guys, can you hear me?” he shouted into the portal. “I’m okay! Seriously grossed out, but okay!” He looked around again. “I don’t see Stan anywhere, though!”

  “I don’t know who Stan is,” a voice answered, “but I hope you like the sewers, ’cause you’re here to stay!” The voice wasn’t coming from the portal, though. It was coming from behind him!

  Darren whipped around. A man, wrapped in toilet paper like a mummy, was floating toward him from a side tunnel. Three other figures emerged from the same tunnel and joined the man. The four TP-wrapped men quickly surrounded Darren.

  “Uh-oh,” he muttered. “This is a whole new level of deep doo-doo.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Geronimo!” a familiar voice sounded. Shadows enveloped Darren. He glanced back and saw that a patch of darkness had blotted out most of the light coming from the portal beside him.

  The next thing Darren knew, a large form shot out into the sewer, slamming straight into the men and bowling them over into the water. It was Walter!

  “We decided it would be better to face whatever was down here together,” Darren’s friend told him as he clambered back to his feet, shaking droplets everywhere. “We are a team, after all.”

  “Exactly,” Tina agreed, appearing out of the portal and plummeting into the water with a splash, but managing to land on her feet. One of the TP mummies made the mistake of trying to grab her, and despite being immersed up to her elbows she kicked him in the shins and sent him howling into the shadows.

  “Back off!” she warned.

  Juan-Carlos arrived last. “Just bringing up the rear,” he said, slapping his butt—and now it was four against four.

  “Holy crap,” Juan-Carlos added, gagging. “This really is gross!” He frantically waved his hands, trying to flick off whatever had stuck to them.

  “I think I’ve got poop on my hands!” he shrieked.

  Walter nodded in agreement. “Indeed, your metacarpus appears to be smeared with fresh excrement.” He took a closer look. “And judging by the greenish hue, whosoever emitted this particular nugget is woefully due for a visit to their trusted internal-medicine professional.”

  Just then a stern voice bellowed, “You kids are in big trouble.” A TP man sneered. He and his comrades were big, Darren realized. As big around the middle as Walter, but taller. They moved smoothly through the water, almost as if they were swimming instead of walking, but their arms waved about aimlessly, as did the tufts of hair poking up from the wrappings on top of their heads.

  “Give up and come quietly and we won’t hurt you.”

  “Hurt us?” Tina laughed despite the stains now coating her uniform. “You give up and we won’t hurt you!”

  The men paused for a second. They obviously weren’t used to people standing up to them, especially not tiny little girls.

  Darren could see Tina was ready to fight, as always. But what they really needed were answers. “Where’s Stan the Janitor?” he demanded.

  “Who’s Stan the Janitor?” one of the men asked.

  “Our scent-sei,” Tina snapped. “You kidnapped him!”

  “No idea,” one soldier answered. “But you’ve got bigger problems right now.”

  He and his friends surged in closer.

  Darren sighed. Clearly they weren’t going to get any answers here. “Fine,” he said. “Let ’em have it, gang!”

  “You got it, chief!” Juan-Carlos answered. He closed his eyes and grimaced as he released a time-bomb fart, then tried to run away. But the water wasn’t letting him get very far, very fast.

  “Uh, misfire here,” he called out. A few bubbles floated to the surface behind him. If they smelled at all, nobody could tell in the general sewer stink.

  “I, too, am experiencing mishaps of a technical variety,” Walter agreed. He was straining upward as hard as he could, but aside from a little bobbing, he couldn’t get any momentum. “It appears the water and the cold are hampering my abilities.”

  Darren glanced at Tina, who shrugged. “I got nothing,” she agreed.

  “Guess it’s up to me,” Darren muttered. Turning, he presented his backside to the approaching men. Then he concentrated.

  Fssssssssss!

  It was useless. The water level was above their butts, absorbing their gaseous emissions and fizzling them into nothingness.

  The TP man in front cackled like Count Dracula. “Mwah-ha-ha! Are you all done trying
to ‘get us’? Because now it’s our turn!”

  For someone who was completely wrapped in toilet paper, this soldier did a heck of a job being scary.

  “Uh, on second thought,” Darren said, raising both hands, “we give up.”

  His friends looked shocked, but quickly surrendered, as well. Without their powers, they were just kids, after all. Against four big, scary guys, they didn’t stand a chance. Especially without their scent-sei there to tell them what to do next!

  “We’ll take these prisoners to the Head for questioning,” the man in front told the others.

  As they led the kids away, Darren couldn’t help but wonder where Stan was. And whether they’d ever find him—or, without their powers, ever get out of here at all.

  He shuddered.

  Was the Fart Squad doomed to the bottom of the bowl forever?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “This place is disgusting,” Juan-Carlos whined as he picked his way past mounds of something they couldn’t easily identify and really didn’t want to.

  “Oh, suck it up,” Tina told him. Despite being the only girl, she was easily the toughest member of the Squad.

  “Indeed,” Walter offered, “the terrain, the odor, and the contents of this water are all consistent with what one would expect from a functioning waste disposal system.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “And while certain African tribes still fashion their huts out of dried cow dung, wading through moist human . . . well, how should I say—I seem to be running out of synonyms—dookie, is an entirely different story both physically and psychologically.”

  Walter glanced up at the curving ceiling high overhead, no doubt thinking how much easier it would be to just fly away from these men—and all this sewage—and search for Stan from high above, in flight, propelled by the jet stream produced by his all-powerful farts.