January 7th: The Day Nobody Was Born

By John Callaghan

Though Will Stills is the most ordinary boy in the world, the whole world is convinced he is far from ordinary. Every January 7th, Will is forced to celebrate his birthday in the most peculiar fashion but it is not his proud parents who are planning these bizarre parties. The twisted minds behind the world’s biggest media company, ViewYou, are pulling the strings. But what exactly are they trying to prove and why are they and everyone else so obsessed with this eight year old boy?

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Callaghan
• Release date: Jul 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463222461

John Callaghan

Vice Principal and English teacher in catholic school in Essex. Born in the East but raised in the West of Ireland. Married with two children. Writer of plays, short stories and two novels.

Book preview

Part 1 - A Boy Turns Eight

Chapter 1 – Drive-by Drenching

If you had a million pounds to create the perfect birthday party, what would you splash the cash on?

You might fritter a fraction of your fortune on a brilliant, balloon-filled venue stuffed with trays of gleaming desserts. Why not buy your own super-speed jet so you can fly the world’s most delicious pizza directly from New York? Of course, you would just have to splosh the dosh on a chocolate fudge cake the size of a small island. And what is the point in even having a birthday unless you are guaranteed a lorry load of really thoughtful (and REALLLLLLY EXPENSIVE) gifts.

But how would you pass the time?

A funky, foam disco?

Pass the ridiculously over-wrapped parcel?

No way!

Wouldn’t you just love to wow your friends with the wildest, most insane obstacle course ever designed - complete with impossible jumps, slime bombs and top prizes for whoever made it to the end. After all that, you might just have a few pennies left to ensure you travel to and from this perfect party in style; in a shiny, black limousine stuffed with iPads, PlayStations, ultra HD TV screens and enough sugary drinks and sweets to make a dentist scream.

Surely, if you had all that, your smile would be so wide you would definitely set a new world record for the widest grin in the galaxy. In fact, everybody else would probably have to give up celebrating their birthdays because you threw the party to end them all.

Believe it or not, one blue-eyed, scruffy-haired boy had all this and more.

As Will Stills was chauffeur-driven towards his own 8th birthday bonanza, he was sporting that record-breaking grin.

"Super Soaker Double Drench Blaster!" the lucky boy screamed as he unwrapped the next gift in the back of the limo. He had so many presents to open, he just had to start ripping the wrapping before he even got to the party. There just wasn’t enough time.

"I’ve wanted one of those for ages." Bill Stills, Will’s very excited father, raved, … I mean, I wanted it for you … of course. Why don’t we fill it up, open up the sun roof and squirt everyone as we drive past?

Bill Stills was 34 years old but he was so fantastically excited, you would have thought it was he who had just turned eight.

"Don’t be so ridiculous!" pleaded Gill, the M.W.M. of the Stills family (Mother, Wife & Manager) as she pulled her brown pony-tail tighter. And anyway, we don’t have any water. she added with a little ha-ha tone in her voice.

"Awww! Mum’s right." Will groaned as his shoulders slumped slightly.

"Can’t we use the bottled water from the fridge?" Bill suggested rather riskily.

"Are you serious?" Gill scolded – annoyed that, yet again, she was the one having to say NO. It must cost £10 a bottle. You are not going to waste it in a water gun!

Bill was not listening. It is not water. It’s drenchin’ juice and I am ready to drench! he boldly claimed as he emptied an entire bottle of the super-fancy water sourced from a volcanic island in Honolulu into the green, plastic canister attached to the super-charged water pistol.

"I’m going up!" he announced as he pushed the sun roof button (and his luck!) while Gill flicked her eyebrows skyward.

Popping his rather large head through the rectangular hole in the roof, Bill kept on rising until all that was visible to those sitting below was a long, lean pair of legs and large, shiny belt buckle.

"At least it’s a bit quieter down here now." Gill snarked as Will smiled.

After furiously pumping up the pressure in his super soaker, Bill Stills took aim.

"Good morning people of Earth! Which of you stinkypoos is ready for a shower?" he screamed into the wind around him.

First, he drenched two cyclists sporting so much fancy cycling gear they looked like they were training for the Tour de France. Though the female cyclist laughed and playfully squirted her water bottle back at Bill, her male companion wasn’t quite so pleased. The sodden cyclist retaliated with a double V-sign that made him almost lose his balance while Bill giggled like a girl.

"One hundred points!" the man child cried as he pumped his water pistol once more.

As the limo halted by a red light, Bill swivelled to his right and sprayed the pricey H2o all along the windows of a stationary school bus. The children on board thought it was so much fun they started kissing the windows, pretending to catch the water in their mouths. As the jet stream hit the glass in front of them, they all looked like mega thirsty fish.

"IF YOU DO NOT SIT DOWN, YE WILL ALL BE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT WINDOW," the grumpy bus driver screamed, bringing the fun fairground game to an end.

"Eight hundred points!" Bill roared in triumph.

"Dad! Dad! Can I’ve a go? Can I’ve a go?" Will shouted from below.

"Yeah, of course, climb up. If you lean in to the side, you can balance on my knee." Bill instructed.

As he popped his head out of the sun roof and aimed the super-soaker at his first target, Will was no longer just an ordinary eight-year-old boy. He had been transformed into a highly trained sniper-soldier on a very important mission - A MISSION TO DRENCH!

While the limo zoomed onwards, Will soaked and squirted car after truck after car.

"Double points for dirty cars!" the Super-Squirter decided because he could; it was his birthday after all.

Most squirtees just turned on their wind screen wipers and smiled but there were one or two who could not resist moaning and honking their horns until they disappeared into the distance.

Will was having too much fun to care.

"Eighteen thousand points!" he wheezed as he took aim at a line of birds who chirped casually upon a telephone wire.

With all the random, imaginary points he had gained, Will had now built an unassailable lead. But there was one problem.

"Dad, we are running low on drenchin’ juice!"

"There’s none left bud. That was it … two bottles. Unless…"

Bill’s right eyebrow jerked upwards as if it had a mind of its own…

"… unless we fill it up with whatever’s left in the fridge!" Bill craftily suggested.

"But there’s only fizzy orange and cola left!" Will replied, acting like the adult in this situation.

"Don’t you worry my boy!" Bill reassured. Once these two lethal fluids of cola and orange combine, they will bubble and mix to form a perfectly deadly concoction that the secret service call … CORANGE! Bill raved as if he had lost his mind (though there was little evidence he ever had one to begin with.)

Tutting her tongue and rolling her eyes, Gill reluctantly handed up the bottles to the father and son sniper team. Though she whole-heartedly disapproved, she could not help but release a sliver of a smile.

Armed with a full tank of CORANGE, Will didn’t even aim. He just squirted and sprayed anywhere and everywhere he could. He was laughing so hard and giggling so much while still trying to balance on his father’s knee that he didn’t realise what he had actually just done…

"What are you playing at?" an angry voice screamed as the limo slowed by another red light.

A raging, seething little man with no hair and a black leather jacket was stomping towards the car, holding a very soggy cigarette in his dripping left hand.

Will had hit the bulls-eye: ONE MILLION POINTS! He had extinguished a cigarette … a flaming cigarette … while it was being smoked … and the smoker was not best pleased,

"You can’t do that!" the angry Leather Jacket screamed as Bill ducked down and dragged his son with him.

"Go! Carlysle Go!" Bill demanded of the limo driver as the incensed smoker banged on the blackened glass with his open palm.

"Eh … Mr. Stills – it’s a red light and there is a truck stuck … it’s blocking the junction…" the chauffeur patiently explained.

"Please Carlysle – he’s really angry – I don’t think he likes CORANGE!" Bill spluttered, panic-breathed. Lock the doors! Lock the doors!

It was too late. Mr. Furious Face had opened the side door of the limo. He was ranting and raving and throwing his arms about like a crazed octopus. Carlysle was just about to jump from the driver’s seat in order to protect the Stills family when the squabbling squid suddenly fell silent.

"You’re that boy." he gasped with a thunder struck expression.

"You are … aren’t you. You’re that boy off the TV."

He was pointing at Will.

"You’re that January 7th baby!"

Chapter 2 – That January 7th Baby

THE WAIT IS OVER!

January 7th Baby Finally Arrives

WORTH THE WAIT?

The January 7th Baby is Here but Why Now?

JANUARY 7th DELIVERS

Miracle Boy Wows the Whole World

BOY WONDER!

Will Stills Arrives on The Day Nobody Was Born

On average, 350,000 babies are born every single day.

Since 1962, 19 million 937 thousand 2 hundred and 17 babies have arrived on the 6th day of January while 19 million 943 thousand 6 hundred 94 tiny tots came squealing into Planet Earth on January 8th.

But during that same period, not a single baby arrived on January 7th.

For decades, this flummoxing fact went unnoticed and believe it or not, it was only a few years before Will was born that the American president first stumbled across this odd gap in the birthday calendar. Immediately, he speed-dialled all the other presidents and prime-ministers around the world and after a hasty records check, they all confirmed that he was correct.

For half a century, billions of babies were bouncing into this world on every single day except one - January 7th.

News of this bizarre discovery had a flabbergasting effect.

Many began to worry. Most began to wonder.

"Why is this happening?"

"Is it a sign?"

"Is this day being saved for someone special?"

The longer it went on, the more bonkers this worrying and wondering became. Radio programmes invited anyone with a mouth to ring in and speculate why the seventh day of January had somehow stopped delivering babies.

"I think the 7th is being saved for someone extra special!" cried Catherine, 54, from Guernsey.

"They will have massive wings and super laser vision!" hoped Joe (with his fingers and toes crossed), 10, from Bristol.

"I know they will come and show us the way … how to be good again. I know … I’ve seen a sign." prayed Marjorie, 83, from Aberdeen (who was banned from driving ten years earlier because she could not see signs – especially on motorway junctions.)

"I just hope they can kick a ball because our team can’t score to save their lives and we need a new striker," moaned Gordon, 37, from Suffolk.

Would you believe these were the more sensible suggestions? The less sensible (or criminally insane as you might call them) predicted that the January 7th baby would have three heads! Six eyes! No butt-crack! It seemed nobody could figure out why there was such a huge gap. (Not the butt-crack, the fifty years.)

All the big TV and radio stations became so obsessed with this strange story that ever since the president’s discovery, they had a big, silly countdown to January 7th. It was treated like a national holiday; there was Christmas Day on December 25th, New Year’s Day a week later and then seven days after that, the whole world cheered for … THE DAY THAT NOBODY WAS BORN.

Yet after five years of waiting and counting down and waiting some more, there was still no sign of the January 7th baby. Not a sniff! Not a whiff! By then, the last baby to be born on January 7th was a creaky, old man.

Two years before Will arrived, after yet another failed countdown – the world’s biggest (and weirdest) media company, VIEWYOU, had a reckless and rather dim light-bulb moment.

Transforming this baby-less day into a competition, they launched a multi-media campaign advertising a prize that everyone had to get their mucky paws on. Suddenly, airwaves and newsfeeds were flooded with a very special announcement,

"January 7th may have stopped delivering little bundles of joy but here at ViewYou, the joy never stops. We have one holiday of a life time to give away to the family of the first baby born on January 7th. You will travel the world in your own private jet! Scuba dive in Santiago! Bathe in the Bahamas! Marvel at the magic of the Maldives! Wherever you desire, that is where you will go and with your own private jet, you can be home in time for tea. All you have to do is bring your baby into this world on January 7th. What a birthday it will be! Terms and conditions apply."

Even the faintest whiff of a sniff of getting their hands on this spectacular prize made everyone go loopy. Soon to be parents now had to deliver their baby on that day and instead of letting things happen naturally, many resorted to cheating.

While their wives suffered through the most terrible labour pains, once caring husbands morphed into cold, cruel football coaches. Instead of holding their wives’ hand and reassuring them that they were doing a "great job", they yelled, Push faster! Faster! Hurrrry!

One rotten scoundrel was splashed across newspaper front pages for demanding the opposite,

"It’s not time yet love! If you push now, she will be here too early. Leave it an hour and then push! Think about that private jet!"

Though there were one or two near misses, yet another January 7th passed without the pitter patter of tiny feet. But ViewYou were not going to stop there. What they did next set everyone on a one-way trip to Crazy Town. On January 8th, a second special announcement looped around the world and just after the lunchtime news, a super-excited voice boomed through everyone’s radios,

"Nobody won the holiday of a lifetime but don’t you worry! We at ViewYou love to give second chances and this year we have a prize that will make one lucky winner the envy of the Universe! The family of the first baby born on January 7th will win a beautiful six-bedroom mansion with a swimming pool, an arcade, a mini-cinema, their own ice-cream maker and a colossal back garden, the size of a football pitch. And that is not all … the lucky family will also receive one hundred thousand pounds every year for life! Terms and conditions apply."

A holiday of a life-time on your own jet was one thing but a mansion costing hundreds of thousands and your own ice cream every day for breakfast sprinkled with hundreds and thousands was bound to make everyone go super loopy.

As well as shouting at soon-to-be mothers to either push or stop pushing so hard, some soon-to-be fathers had now sunk so low, they resorted to bribing midwives by offering them £5,000 for life if they would help them to either delay or speed up the miracle of child-birth.

Of course, this would never work. Midwives are very honest people and would never give in to such terrible tactics. Another rascal was rapped on the knuckles for trying to bully a doctor into changing the time of arrival on his daughter’s official medical records.

This whole sorry affair was bringing out the worst in people. What should have been a day to remember was fast becoming THE DAY THAT EVERYONE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF!

Despite yet another January 7th failing to cough up the goods, ViewYou decided to leave their competition open. This was just as well because twelve months later, one baby boy closed the curtains on all this madness.

Weighing 7lb 3oz, Will Stills arrived at three minutes past twelve in the early morning of January 7th to a happy and exhausted Gill and Bill Stills (Bill wasn’t quite so shattered but he had found it all rather stressful.)

If it hadn’t been for his rather large head, Will might well have been born on the 6th and the 57-year wait would have dragged on further. For generations, the Stills family were famous for their massive noggins so his bowling ball bonce was always going to slow things down. But Bill and Gill didn’t just get a blue-eyed boy with an above average sized head, they also got a very large mansion and buckets full of dosh.

Bill was thrilled. He had never won anything in his life. In fact, until that moment, he thought he was the unluckiest person alive. Truth be told, his luck was so