The Beast That Ate Up Everything

Once a beast came that ate up everything; it came down from the stars and it landed upon the earth.

It was only a tiny beast at first; just as small as a golf ball but then it ate up a bug and it grew just as big as a mouse; then it ate up a mouse and it grew as big as a cat; then it ate up a cat and it grew as big as a person then it ate up an old woman and it grew as big as a house and it kept on eating and growing bigger and bigger just like a balloon inflating.

It ate up streets and after that it ate up villages and after that towns and after that cities. It swallowed up whole mountains in a gulp and washed them down with oceans which it drained until they were completely empty; it ate up whole forests and jungles; it ate all the sand and rocks in all the deserts. It ate up all the countries one at a time and all the houses in the countries and all the people in the houses. It swallowed up trains like strings of sausages and sucked up winding roads and motorways like liquorice or spaghetti; it crunched down towering skyscrapers like sticks of rock and tipped up swimming pools full of people gulping them down like bowls of people soup.

And, when it was finished eating and drinking, it had grown enormous, swelling up almost as large in height and width as the earth itself. Its head would have been in the clouds if it had not eaten up all the clouds like white candyfloss.

And there was only one person left in all the world that it had not eaten; a little 5 year old girl called Jane.

“Are you afraid of me, little girl?”, said the ginormous beast looking at her up close with its one gigantic eye as large as a round football stadium.

The little girl shook her head from side to side.

“What? But haven’t you seen how I have eaten up everything in the whole world and grown ginormous in size?”, the beast asked.

The little girl shook her head up and down.

“Well aren’t you afraid that I will eat you up as well?”, said the beast.

“No”, said the girl.

“Well why not?”, asked the beast, very surprised, “I am gigantic and you are tiny. I have a great big mouth that swallows up everything and what have you got…eh?”.

The little girl held up something; an object very small and thin but very sharp and though it was very small, the mere sight of it made the ginormous monster tremble, with fear, like a mountain of fruit jelly.

“I have a pin”, she said.

And then, with her little pin, the little girl poked the gigantic beast, making a little hole and when she did the beast, because it had swelled up so large, just like a balloon filled up with hot air, burst.

“No!”, the beast cried in horror, but it was too late; it had already started to explode and then, out from inside the beast came everything it had swallowed; all the villages and towns and cities; the seas and the deserts; the mountains and the forests; the trains and the planes and the cars and the motorways; all the animals and birds and bugs and all the people; they all came flying out; roaring and bellowing and singing and buzzing and chattering and screaming.

Of course, the world was an awful mess with everything scattered all over the place but, thankfully, the people that the monster had swallowed were still alive and they cleaned up all the mess that the monster had made and afterwards, you know, they treated their planet a lot better; with a lot more respect and love and kindness because they had seen what happens when a monster eats up everything without a care and they did not want to turn into big, fat monsters themselves.