The Invasion of the Gobble Varmint

By C. Garland Miller

One day Dani's entire class went ... different. Out of nowhere, they all began talking and acting the same, they just. keep. smiling, and everyone is pressuring her to explore the abandoned Garcia house. Even worse, thanks to that mysterious recipe box she found on the sidewalk, if she wants to figure out what's going on, she'll have to enter a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Garland Books
• Release date: Sep 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988887614

C. Garland Miller

C. Garland Miller (he/him) is an author, artist and creative copywriter who has been writing professionally for over a decade. He currently lives in the scorching Phoenix heat, and when he's not telling stories, he enjoys spending time with his family & reading books about monsters.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Dani was having a crummy day even before the flowery pizza dude knocked her books into the dirt. It wasn’t bad in the typical sense. She didn’t stain her skirt with toothpaste, or get nail polish on her fingers, or even yank out her hair while pulling her dark curls into pigtails. It was bad because her classmates had turned into snot-faced zombies.

It was like someone had flicked a switch and POOF! All her classmates, each with their own wonderful thoughts and feelings, began acting the same. They all shuffled around together like a mob of mummies, their doll smiles never moving and their mannequin eyes refusing to blink. It gave Dani the collywobbles just thinking about it.

Lots of things gave Dani the collywobbles though, including but not limited to spiders, clown shoes and the sound fridges make at 3 a.m. when you sneak into the kitchen for a snack. So, it wasn’t a new feeling. But still. Groups of kids don’t usually just go all zombie wombie out of nowhere. She couldn’t make sense of it.

The strangest part though, in her opinion, was that every kid in town was suddenly obsessed with the abandoned Garcia place. She had received no less than 34 invites from different boys and girls to explore it to date, and she was fast running out of excuses to turn them down. (You can only have so many Great Auntie Hazels visit from Relativania, after all.)

The most recent example of such a stinky event happened earlier that day as she was walking home from school, when she had to turn down an offer from a third-grade weirdo called Chuck.

Come explore the Garcia house with me, Chuck had said softly with a huge, unnerving smile. It is the best.

I don’t know if my dad would like that, Dani said back.

OK. Maybe next time, he whispered, staring into her with unblinking eyes.

He slithered away, grinning toothily like a creepy snake, and Dani shivered.

I gotta get home, she said, trying to shake the image of his smile from her mind. She turned around to walk the other direction, and a giant shaking belly clad in a bright orange and green Hawaiian shirt smashed into her like a floral brick wall. With a big SPLAT! Her books said hello to the ground.

Eep! Sorry. I didn’t see you there, the person attached to the belly boomed. He scooped up the books and dusted them off with the tip of his beard. A pink flower stuck among the whiskers floated lazily to the ground.

No problem, Dani said. She snatched the books back and slowly looked up into the massive mustachioed face above her.

Well … look up is a bit of a stretch. She didn’t look up so much as she looked straight ahead, as despite the fact that Dani had only graced the Earth for 8 amaze-tastic years, the person who belly bumped her books into the dirt was only a few inches taller than her.

A cold wiggle shot down her spine. Bright Hawaiian shirt? Flowers in his beard? AND hair that smelled like fresh oregano and dough? She’d recognize this guy anywhere, he had to be the owner of the new pizzeria in town! It was right down the street from her house, in fact.

Papa Loa, Dani said. I saw you on a commercial last night. You’re short.

Papa Loa laughed a deep booming laugh. He took off his pointed hat, which looked like it came from the bottom bin of a thrift store in 1932, and bowed so low his eye lashes tickled the ground. Thank you, it makes me quite aerodynamic in a fight, which is never a bad thing. He winked and put his hat back on. Are you sure you’re OK?

I’m fine, Dani said.

Papa Loa beamed at her. All right, if you’re sure. Stop by the pizzeria with your parents sometime though, OK? Let me make it up to you, he said.

Dani opened her mouth to respond, but before she could answer, Papa Loa scurried past her. As she stared, he dove out of view into a nearby hedge, and his hat slowly BLOOPED up above the leaves in Chuck’s direction like an ocean buoy.

Why does everyone have to be so weird? Dani thought, shaking her head. She paused for a moment while her timbers stopped shivering, then stuffed her books