The Mystery of the Mystery Meat Read Free Page B

two huge eyes rotated like planets. Her five little eyes spun like miniature Ferris wheels zooming out of control. Steam rose from the top of her head. She threw back her head and in her best monstervoice shrieked:
    “AIYIYIAZEEEKOOTIEBOIIIE! SHAMALAMAHOTHOTHOT! YOOHOOOOOOOOO!”
    Flames shot from her eyes and mouth. The ice melted on the skeletal branches overhead and hissed into more steam. An owl shrieked,
“Wooooooooooohoooooooo!”
and flapped into the night. The ground shook. Headstones shifted and fell backward and so did Pretty, right on her bottom, as autumn leaves showered down on her like colorful dead bats. They ignited, and Pretty’s field of vision filled with smoke.

    “Ha, Freekin,” she whispered. “Ha ha ha.” She blinked as the smoke began to clear, anticipating the arrival of the cutest boy monster in the Underworld.
    But he wasn’t there. Instead, she had summoned the rotten corpse of a grown-up human
man
.

Chapter Two:
In Which Miss Pretty Falls
Under a SPELL!

    Pretty stared slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the man she had summoned from beyond the grave. The moon shone down on his flaps of skin; the breeze blew the wisps of hair away from the shiny green and bone-white discolorations of his skull. Her two big eyes blinked and her five little ones spun as she noted the shredded striped trousers and the slime-encrusted vest, from whichdangled a watch chain covered with moss. She recognized this man! She had seen a statue of him in the park and a painting of him in the library.
    “You so Horatio Snickering III,” she said, bouncing gently on her tentacles as she got up off the snowy ground. Her ponytail ears bobbed. She was very confused.
    “I am, Miss Pretty,” he replied, bowing slightly from the waist. His head began to topple off his spine; bone clacked on bone as he caught it with his left hand. Then he straightened and reinserted his scabby head onto his neck bone like a squishy pumpkin onto a fence post.
    “And I am very grateful to you for casting that summoning spell,” he added. “I used it to return to the Land of the Living, where I am sorely needed.”
    “Cute boy monster,” Pretty protested, thrusting her hands on her hips. “Pretty wants!”
    Horatio clucked his teeth—what few he had left. He was even more rotten than Freekin, which made sense, since he had been dead longer—a century, at least.
    “Ah, sweet little lady, I have been watching current events from beyond the grave, and it has been driving me crazy. My fantastic original recipe Mystery Meat has been changed into something I don’t even recognize, much less approve of. Neapolitan Nacho. Toasty Twinkle. Huge blunders! I’ve been turning over in my grave, I can tell you that.”

    “Bad Meat Men,” she said angrily. “Eat their eyeballs.”
    “Yes.” He sighed and shook his head. “Bad Meat Men indeed. I knew I had to get back here and fix things. And here I am.”
    “Oh,” she said, nodding at him. “You asking Afterlife Commission, ‘Please, one more chance, Ms. Totenbone, Monsieur DeMise, Lord Grym-Reaper’? They saying, ‘Okeydoke, Horatio Snickering III!
Hasta la vista!
’”
    He pressed his hand to his vest in a gesture of mild protest. “No, my dear. Unlike your friend Franklin Ripp, the Afterlife Commission did not send me back.
You
brought me here all by yourself. You are such a brilliant, amazing, and, may I add, beautiful little monster.”
    “Me so Pretty,” she said sweetly.
    “Indeed you are, Miss Pretty. You are a marvel.” They smiled at each other, appreciating how fabulous and wonderful Pretty was. “Now I’ll stop all this madness. With a little help from my brand-new, very special friend.
You.
”
    “Me so helping?” she asked, astonished.
    “You will be my very special little helper. Won’t that be lovely?”
    “Me so lovely,” she agreed, eagerly nodding. Freekin would be thrilled! It would be like old times—like earlier that evening, in fact—with Pretty,