The Dominic Effect (A domino story) (Deleted stories)

Even little things can have big consequences.

For example, once a very naughty little boy caused a great deal of trouble with only a single bar of soap but also saved the life of some very important persons.

The naughty little boy, a boy named Dominic,  was in the bathtub and his mother was trying to give him a bath, armed with a scrubbing brush and loofa but the boy hated baths so much that he picked up the wet soap from his bath tub and threw it out of an open window and into the street below.

And as the soap was falling from the window, sliding down his slate roof and onto the concrete pavement below, a policeman, named PC Plumber was walking along the street outside the little boys house, whistling the tune of ‘The Laughing Policeman’ and whirling his truncheon round and round  when he stepped upon the wet, slippery soap and went skidding along the street crashing, helmet first, into some metal rubbish bins nearby.

Now the clatter caused by these metal rubbish bins was so great that it woke up a large Alsatian named Brutus who was fast asleep in the yard of another house and he started to bark and howl excitedly and Brutus was so ferocious that, when he did this, it startled a cat named Custer that had been sleeping nearby and the cat, with a terrified yowl went rushing out of the yard and into the road.

And as the cat was rushing across the road, it ran into the path of a red lambretta belonging to a young woman named Stephanie who was a life-long cat lover and, seeing the cat, she swerved out of its way, turning down a one way street and almost crashing into an oncoming delivery van.

Fortunately for the young woman, the driver of the delivery van, a man named Bill, had, seeing the red sports car, put his foot upon the break pedal just in time, screeching to a sudden, juddering halt but, unfortunately, the car behind him had not breaked in time, nor the car behind it or the car behind it or the furniture removal van at the very back of the calamitous pile up.

No one was seriously hurt however, apart from a few dented bumpers but, because the driver of the furniture removal van had forgotten to lock the doors at the back of his van properly, when he breaked suddenly, the doors flew open and out rolled a double bed on brass casters with rubber wheels and it went hurtling down the wet sloping street and into another street, across a black and white, stripy zebra crossing, through a park, disturbing a flock of pecking park pigeons and sending them fluttering noisily into the air, across a foot bridge  and into the path of a purse snatcher named Phil who was being pursued by an old lady, Mrs Hugget, angrily waving her walking stick above her head.

But then, tripping, stumbling and tumbling head first onto the double bed, the purse snatcher started to bounce on it like a trampoline.

He bounced into the air three times and the third time bounced so high that he was catapulted through the air and in through the open window of a block of flats.

It was the window of a stairwell on the third floor of the block of flats and, when Phil came flying through the window, he bumped into a man who was coming up a flight of stairs who, knocked backwards by the impact of the flying purse snatcher, rolled backwards down the stairwell bumping into a woman on the second floor who rolled backwards down the stairwell bumping into a man on the first floor who, knocked backwards, rolled out of the front entrance of the block of flats and into the back of a young mother named Doreen who was pushing her push chair, with her cooing 2 month old baby Michelle in it, along the pavement.

Sadly, the collision caused the young woman such a shock that she let go of the handles of the push chair, and it nudged the push chair so much that it started to roll down the sloping pavement .

Fast as an Olympic bobsleigh down an icy track it hurtled, followed closely behind by its frantically screaming mother.

Fortunately, just in time to prevent the push chair from rolling into the middle of a busy road, Doreen caught up with the push chair, grabbing hold of its handles.

But then, right at that same moment, looking up from her baby who was lying and smiling contentedly in the push-chair, the woman saw a large motorcade passing down the road in front of her and in the back of one of the cream coloured limousines in the procession which had an open top, she saw a man and woman dressed in elegant, expensive clothes wearing glittering crowns upon their heads and noticed that there were crowds lining both sides of the road, waving foreign flags and cheering.

“Excuse me?”, she asked, tapping the shoulder of a grey rain coated man standing in front of her, “Who is that, in the limousine?”.

The man, known to International police agencies as Boris “The Jackal”, who had been planning to shoot the two V.I.P’s in the back of the open topped car, that happened to be the Prince and Princess of a foreign country called Albertania, surprised by the tap upon his shoulder, jerked instinctively and the bullet that he fired from his gun, though knocking the crown from off of the prince’s head, fortunately missed the rest of him completely.

And, in the next instant, the man in the raincoat was surrounded by armed secret servicemen in black suits and dark sunglasses and arrested.

So you see, if naughty Dominic had not thrown his bar of soap out of the window, history might have been very different but thanks to his little act, the Prince and Princess of Albertania were saved; their wicked stepmother, Blodvina, who had paid Boris “The Jackal”, did not become Queen of Albertania and the people of that little country lived happily for many years to come.