Madison's Medicine

The large cake sat upon the kitchen table, all chocolatey and creamy and delicious.

Slowly, a pair of blue eyes rose over the edge of the table. They were the eyes of a little girl peering at the cake, a girl called Madison.

“Mmm”, thought Madison, “What a wonderful sight. I wonder if that cake tastes as lovely as it looks.
Let’s find out”.

And then, looking round about to make sure that nobody could see her, Madison ate a large piece of the cake.

“Mmmm-mmm”, said Madison, “That cake was truly-ooly delicious”.

Suddenly, though, Madison’s grandmother came into the kitchen.

“Oh no! Madison!”, said her Grandmother, “You haven’t eaten any of that chocolate cake, have you?”.

Madison hid her chocolate covered hands behind her back and shook her head from side to side, swearing from a chocolate smeared mouth, “No, Grandma. I have not eaten any of that delicious chocolate cake, honest”.

“Oh?”, asked Grandma, “Well what happened? Did the cake get hungry and eat a bit of itself?
Or perhaps the cake thief broke in while you weren’t looking and made off with a slice? Is that what happened?”.

Madison sucked her chocolate covered thumb in thought then nodded and said, “Yes. That’s it Grandma. A cake thief broke into the kitchen. A mouse. A whole gang of mice with bowls and spoons
and they stole a piece of the cake”.

“Oh well”, said her grandma smiling, “Thank goodness it wasn’t you who took a slice of that cake because, you see, I put a whole lot of “Dr. Pinkerton’s Patented Dog Remedy” in that cake. My Dog, Lavinia, has not been feeling herself lately and so I baked a special chocolate cake for her and put the Dog medicine in it. It’s perfectly harmless to Dogs, ofcourse, but it does have some fairly odd effects on us humans ”.

“Dog medicine?”, thought Madison, with a worried look in her wide blue eyes and, suddenly, Madison didn’t feel at all well and had to go and lie down on her grandmother’s couch.

But, while she was lying down on the couch, Madison started to get the strangest sensation in her head as if her head was spinning round really fast like a spinning top in a tornado and her head spun so much that it completely unscrewed itself from her neck and shoulders but she was so light
headed that her head didn’t fall off but instead just floated up to the ceiling of her Grandma’s living room like a helium filled balloon.

“Ouch!”, said Madison, as her lighter than air head bumped against the ceiling.

Then her head looked down and saw its body, still lying upon the couch, flapping its arms about in a panic.

“Oh my!?”, thought Madison crying, “What am I going to do? How am I going to get back down?”.

Fortunately for Madison, her grandmother came in just at that moment and, feeling Madison’s tears dripping upon her, at first thought that the roof was leaking but, once she looked up and saw Madison’s floating head above her she knew exactly what to do and, grabbing hold of Madison’s long, blonde pony-tail as if it were the dangling string of a floating toy balloon, she pulled down Madison’s head and screwed it back onto Madison’s neck and shoulders.

“So, it WAS you who ate the slice of cake, Madison”, said her Grandmother, “I thought as much. Well, dizziness and light headedness are only the first two effects of the medicine. Soon you should start to see spots infront of your eyes and hear bells ringing in your ears”.

And it was true. Just as Madison’s grandma said, all around her, the living room started to break out in a sudden rash of multi-coloured polka dots and there were spots on the floor and ceiling too. Even her grandmothers pet Labrador, Lavinia, had somehow turned into a Dalmatian and her pet cat, Sadie, looked like a Leopard cub because they were covered from head to tail in spots and, just as Grandma had said, she suddenly started to hear a loud ringing in her ears and, shining a light into her right ear, her Grandmother saw little bell ringers pulling on ropes.

“I’ll get rid of them”, said her Grandma, sticking a cotton bud into the child’s ear and knocking over all the bell ringers

“Oh. Thank goodness that ringing has stopped”, said Madison and then she noticed that the spots too were disappearing, one by one, like bubbles bursting, “Are the effects almost over Grandma?”.

“Only two more to go, Madison”, said her grandmother, “Hair loss and weight gain”.

And no sooner had Madison’s grandmother spoken these words than all of Madison’s lovely blonde hair started to fall out until Madison was as bald as a hard-boiled egg and then, without warning, the couch upon which Madison was sitting suddenly collapsed with a crash as Madison started to put on weight and grow as big and round as an inflatable beach ball.

“Oh no! No!”, cried Madison, “Now I’m bald and humungously fat”.

Just then Madison’s Grandmother entered the living room and Madison woke up. “Oh Grandma!”, said Madison, “I had the most terrible nightmare”.

“That’ll be the Dog medicine”, said Grandma, “Like I said. It has terrible effects on humans . It makes you sleepy and it gives you awful bad dreams but don’t worry. While you were sleeping I baked another chocolate cake just for you with no nasty medicine in it”.

“Oh no! No thank you, Granny”, said Madison, shaking her head, with a terrified look on her face, “I think your Dog medicine has put me off chocolate cakes forever”.