My Life as Invisible Intestines with Intense Indigestion Read online

  MY LiFe

  as

  Invisible

  Intestines

  Tommy Nelson® Books by Bill Myers

  Series

  Secret Agent Dingledorf . . .

  and his trusty dog, SPLAT

  The Case of the . . .

  Giggling Geeks • Chewable Worms

  • Flying Toenails • Drooling Dinosaurs •

  Hiccupping Ears • Yodeling Turtles

  The Incredible Worlds of Wally McDoogle

  My Life As . . .

  a Smashed Burrito with Extra Hot Sauce • Alien Monster Bait

  • a Broken Bungee Cord • Crocodile Junk Food •

  Dinosaur Dental Floss • a Torpedo Test Target

  • a Human Hockey Puck • an Afterthought Astronaut •

  Reindeer Road Kill • a Toasted Time Traveler

  • Polluted Pond Scum • a Bigfoot Breath Mint •

  a Blundering Ballerina • a Screaming Skydiver

  • a Human Hairball • a Walrus Whoopee Cushion •

  a Computer Cockroach (Mixed-Up Millennium Bug)

  • a Beat-Up Basketball Backboard • a Cowboy Cowpie •

  Invisible Intestines with Intense Indigestion

  • a Skysurfing Skateboarder • a Tarantula Toe Tickler •

  a Prickly Porcupine from Pluto • a Splatted-Flat Quarterback

  • a Belching Baboon • a Stupendously Stomped Soccer Star •

  IMAGER CHRONICLES

  The Portal • The Experiment • The Whirlwind • The Tablet

  Picture Book

  Baseball for Breakfast

  www.Billmyers.com

  the incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle

  MY LiFe

  as

  Invisible

  Intestines

  with intense indigestion

  BILL MYERS

  MY LIFE AS INVISIBLE INTESTINES WITH INTENSE INDIGESTION

  Copyright © 2001 by Bill Myers

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts in reviews.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Myers, Bill, 1953–

  My Life as invisible intestines (with intense indigestion) / Bill Myers.

  p. cm.—(The incredible worlds of Wally McDoogle ; #20)

  Summary: Wally McDoogle, young writer of superhero stories, has a series of misadventures when Wall Street and Opera decide he should use his sudden invisibility to make money and have fun.

  ISBN 978-0-8499-5991-2

  [1. Cheating—Fiction. 2. Christian life—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M98234 Myse2001

  [Fic]—dc21

  2001042579

  Printed in the United States of America

  08 09 10 11 QW 14 13 12 11 10

  For all the cool folks

  at Young Writer’s Institute . . .

  Thanks for letting me play.

  “Whoever can be trusted with

  very little can also be trusted with

  much, and whoever is dishonest

  with very little will also be

  dishonest with much. So if you

  have not been trustworthy in

  handling worldly wealth, who will

  trust you with true riches?”

  —Luke 16:10–11 (NIV)

  Contents

  1. Just for Starters . . .

  2. “Uh-Oh . . .”

  3. Opera, the Good Luck Charm

  4. So Far, So Not-So-Good

  5. “Anybody Got a Rolaid?”

  6. Suit Guys Say, “Hi”

  7. Let the Chase Begin

  8. Back to OOPS

  9. Pick a Shape, Any Shape

  10. Wrapping Up

  Chapter 1

  Just for Starters . . .

  The interesting thing about cheating is a ton of people do it. From presidents to priests, from young kids to old codgers, from famous movie stars to mass murderers. And, speaking from personal experience, I’ve gotta tell you it’s kinda fun, it’s kinda cool, and

  IT’S THE STUPIDEST THING I’VE EVER DONE IN MY LIFE!

  (Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to yell.

  Guess I’m sort of touchy about the

  subject right now.)

  BUT FOR GOOD REASON!

  (sorry . . .)

  It all started innocently enough. (Isn’t that how all my disasters start?) Just another one of our lame field trips to another lame science laboratory courtesy of our lame science teacher, Mr. Reptenson. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against scientists, I know we need somebody to sell all those calculators and pocket protectors to . . . and I appreciate the sleep I’ve been able to catch up on in Mr. Reptenson’s class. But, let’s face it, science and I haven’t been like the best of friends.

  First there was my little science fair project on raising fleas that got out of control in My Life As Alien Monster Bait (nothing a few thousand flea collars couldn’t fix)—and my accidental journey on the Space Shuttle in Afterthought Astronaut (at least they let me ride inside . . . most of the time)—and my little adventure skipping through time as a Toasted Time Traveler (any idea how long it takes to get dinosaur drool out of your hair?).

  And now, to make matters worse, we were in exactly the same laboratory where Wall Street (my best friend, even if she is a girl) and I got ourselves shrunk down and accidentally swallowed in My Life As a Human Hairball.

  (Hey, everybody needs a hobby—mine just happens to be trying to survive life.)

  The good news was, we had a different tour guide than the last time. (I guess they’re only allowed so many nervous breakdowns per year.) The bad news was, science was still science and Wally McDoogle was still . . . well, you get the picture.

  “What’s that big contraption for?” Opera, my other best friend, asked the guide. As a human eating machine, Opera was cramming another handful of Chippy Chipper potato chips into his mouth. He was always cramming handfuls of Chippy Chipper potato chips into his mouth . . . when he wasn’t cramming in handfuls of candy, cakes, or cookies. Yes sir, if it started with the letter “C” my pal was cramming it. Unless, of course, it came to carrots, celery, or cauliflower —after all, everyone has his limit.

  The guide smiled proudly at the towering machine beside her. “This is our Optical Oscillating Proton Positioning System,” she said.

  “Your, BURP, what?” Opera asked.

  The guide’s smile wilted slightly. “We call it ‘OOPS’ for short,” she said. “When we get all the bugs worked out, it will rearrange the protons of any given object to fit the precise molecular specifications of another.”

  “Oh, of, BELCH, course,” Opera nodded.

  The smile wilted some more. She turned to the rest of the group. “If you place an apple under the OOPS beam and enter the word ‘lemon’ into the keyboard . . . the beam coming from the machine will rearrange the molecular structure of the apple and turn it into a lemon. The atoms will be the same, they’ll just be rearranged.”

  “Cool,
” Wall Street said. I threw my friend a glance. Of course, her mind was already starting to turn—which, of course, made me a little nervous. “So,” she asked, “if I were to, like, put a piece of paper under the beam and type in ‘A THOUSAND-DOLLAR BILL,’ it would change my paper into a thousand-dollar bill?” (Wall Street has a tiny little thing about money.)

  The tour guide answered, “I suppose that’s a possibility.”

  Wall Street grew more excited. “Or if I put a rock under it and typed in ‘WORLD’S MOST EXPENSIVE DIAMOND’ I could create a diamond worth a billion dollars?!” (Actually, Wall Street has a BIG thing about money.)

  “Perhaps, but—”

  “Or if I . . . if I . . .” (By now my pal was getting herself so worked up she could barely speak.) “. . . if I said to turn a ton of garbage into a ton of gold I’d be a millionaire overnight?!”

  “Yes, well, I suppose,” the guide answered nervously, “but we intend to put the OOPS to far more noble purposes than that.” Eager to change the subject, she started toward the next room. “Now, if you will all follow me to our next lab, I think you’ll find our discussion on the genetic structure of the South American fruit fly extremely exhilarating.”

  The rest of the class began following her, but Wall Street had worked herself up into such a pitch that she had to lean against the wall to catch her breath.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Okay?” she gasped. “Okay?!”

  “Hey, take it easy,” I said.

  “Take it easy?! Wally, don’t you get it? I could become a millionaire in just a few seconds. Forget a millionaire, make that a gazillionaire! So could you. All we have to do is turn on that machine and a minute later walk out of here with more money than we could carry.”

  “Or more, munch, munch, chips than we could eat,” Opera added from beside me.

  I turned to him. “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t have to be money, we can create anything including these, burp, chips. Just imagine bags and bags of these grease-saturated, salt-coated, artery-plugging delicacies . . .” He was smacking his lips and getting a dreamy look on his face.

  “But . . . isn’t that like stealing or something?” I asked.

  “What are we stealing?” Wall Street said.

  “I’m not sure—but making money from nothing, or creating bags of somebody else’s potato chips—somehow it feels like we’re cheating.”

  “Who cares?” Wall Street argued. “It’s not like anybody’s getting hurt.”

  “Burp.” Opera nodded in agreement.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but still—”

  K-Bang

  We spun around to see that the door to the lab had just closed. The last of our class had left, and now we were all alone with OOPS. Just the three of us—Wall Street’s greed, Opera’s hunger . . . and my uneasy conscience.

  “Guys . . .”

  “Not now, Wally.” Wall Street was already at OOPS’s side switching switches, dialing dials, and knobbing knobs. It was the usual high-tech, multibillion-dollar machine with more flashing lights than the cop car that pulled Dad over for speeding.

  “How do you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

  “No sweat.” She grinned. “I’m just turning every button that says ‘OFF’ to ‘ON.’ ”

  “Makes sense to me,” Opera belched.

  “Guys . . .”

  “So, who has a piece of paper?” Wall Street asked. “Let’s get this puppy running and start making some cold, hard cash!”

  We all reached into our pockets, but none of us had any paper. The best we came up with was a shiny penny and a lint-covered Sugar Bomb from my pockets; a dozen empty Chippy Chipper wrappers from Opera’s pockets; and the usual stocks, junk bonds, and money market accounts from Wall Street’s.

  “Guess we’ll have to come back another time,” I said hopefully.

  “Not so fast,” Wall Street replied. “Let’s see what we can get out of your penny.”

  “Wall Street . . . ,” I whined.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Put it on that platform under the beam. Let’s see if we can turn it into a hundred-dollar gold piece or something. Go ahead.”

  Reluctantly, I set the penny on the platform.

  “Okay,” Wall Street said. “Stand back.”

  We all took a healthy step backward.

  She reached for the biggest and brightest of all the buttons, the one labeled: OOPS ACTIVATION.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said.

  “I hope you’re right,” I muttered.

  She pressed the button.

  The lights in the laboratory dimmed slightly. The OOPS gave a low rumble that quickly turned into a high whine.

  “It’s, burp, happening!” Opera yelled. “It’s, belch, working!”

  Suddenly, a tiny red beam shot out and struck the new penny. That was the good news. The bad news was, the beam bounced off Abe Lincoln’s shiny new forehead and shot out in another direction. Another direction that just happened to be where I was standing.

  K-ZAPP!

  “AUGH!” I screamed, grabbing my eyes. “I can’t see, I can’t see!”

  “Turn it off!” Opera yelled. “Turn it off!”

  Immediately, Wall Street reached over and shut down OOPS. The surrounding lights came back up as the machine quickly whined down. After a moment or two I could finally see again.

  “Wally, are you okay?” Wall Street asked. “Are you all right?”

  I gave myself a quick once-over and was surprised to see that nothing was damaged. How odd. Could I have really gotten off that easily? (Of course, we all know better, but play along with me for these next few pages just for fun.)

  “Yeah, I think so,” I finally said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  We all turned to the penny. Nothing had happened to it, either. Nothing at all.

  “I don’t get it,” Wall Street said, taking a step closer. “We turned on the machine, the beam struck the penny, but—” Suddenly, she struck her forehead. “Of course.” She pointed to the computer screen, which was completely empty. “I forgot to type in what we wanted it to become.”

  We all nodded in agreement.

  Without a word she headed for the keyboard. But she barely started to type before the door to the lab flew open and two security police stormed in. Two security police who looked anything but happy.

  “What are you kids doing?” they demanded. But before Wall Street could make up a suitable lie, they ordered, “You come with us! Come with us immediately.”

  Reluctantly we followed. (Not, of course, before Wall Street reached out to scoop up the penny from the platform—hey, a penny saved is another penny closer to making her first million.)

  Not exactly treating us like delicate china, the guards quickly escorted us to face the tour guide and Mr. Reptenson. After that, of course, would come facing our folks and some sort of punishment. But that was okay. To be honest, part of me was relieved. A BIG part of me. Because for the first time that I could remember, nothing bad had happened. I mean, other than losing a penny and probably being grounded for a few weeks, everything was okay—no crazy chaos, no mass destruction, no breaking or rearranging of Wally body parts. It was unbelievable, like a dream come true.

  Unfortunately, we all know about my dreams. They always become nightmares. . . .

  Chapter 2

  “Uh-Oh . . .”

  After all the lectures from our tour guide, Mr. Reptenson, Mom, Dad, and anybody else who felt like yelling, I was finally (and mercifully) sent to my room. Then, doing what I always do when there’s nothing to do, I whipped out Ol’ Betsy, my laptop computer. I climbed into bed without even wasting time to take off my clothes and started another one of my stories. Yes sir, nothing like drowning your sorrows in a good dose of superheroism. . . .

  “MuperMlob, melp me! Melp me, Mu-perMlob!”

  The sensationally sloppy SuperSlob looks up from his morning breakfast—— a tasty mixture of last week’s
lima bean casserole and cold, leftover pizza (covered in hardened grease, of course), smothered in frozen orange juice so old and moldy that it should be called “fuzzy-green juice.” All of which is dumped together into a blender to create a rich, pasty goo the color of a toxic waste site—— which, come to think about it, is about how it tastes. (Hey, the guy’s a superhero, not a supergourmet.)

  “MuperMlob, melp me, melp me!”

  There it is again, that voice. It’s coming from upstairs. And, whoever it is, it sounds like she’s in trouble.

  Instantly, SuperSlob leaps from his plastic lawn chair (which he uses as a sofa in the living room since it’s much easier to hose down) and races up the stairs doing his best not to trip over the hundreds of half-empty Domino’s Pizza boxes, broken CD cases, and discarded Happy Meal toys. (And you thought he got his name by accident?)

  “MuperMlob!” It’s coming from his bedroom. “MuperMlob! MuperMlob!” The voice sounds strangely familiar... and for good reason.

  “Mom,” he cries, “is that you?”

  “Melp me, MuperMlob, melp me!”

  He arrives at his bedroom door and discovers to his horror that his mom has actually tried to enter the room.

  “MuperMlob! MuperMlob!”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, he leaps into action and climbs over the towering mountain of dirty socks, dirty shirts, dirty underwear, and dirty anything else he has ever worn in his life. (Hey, it’s either that or actually having to wash them, which, as you might have guessed, isn’t exactly his style.)

  “Melp me, MuperMlob, melp me!”

  Utilizing every muscle of his muscular manliness, he reaches the summit of Mount McSloby. Now he begins digging and burrowing his way down. Nothing will (dig, dig, burrow, burrow) stop him. No amount of discarded comic books, no number of used printer ink cartridges, not even the 3,071 empty cans of Dr Pepper (diet, of course——hey, even a slob needs to keep his neat and trim superhero figure).

  At last he sees his mother’s hand sticking up through the mess, and with a little more dig, dig, digging and a lot more burrow, burrow, burrowing, he is finally able to pull her from the debris.

  Throwing her arms around him, she cries, “Oh, MuperMlob, MuperMlob.”