This is Oscar. He lives in a normal house with a normal Mum, and a normal Dad. He has a normal big sister called Poppy, who always makes fun of him, and has a normal ginger tomcat called Fudge. His bedroom, however, is not a typical bedroom. It is full of clutter and dirt. It is a dump. There are mountains of torn books. Jumbles of dirty clothes. Piles of broken toys. In other words, it is filthy, from the grubby bottom to the grimy top. But Oscar is not the only one who lives in this tangled maze, the Messy Monster lives here too!
It slithers amid the rubble of long-fallen building blocks. It veers between the cars without wheel. It nibbles on the long-lost socks behind the toy-box and gobbles down the hotch-potch. In Oscar's bedroom, it eats so much that it's mouth is always full. The Messy Monster is happy living under Oscar's bed, bathing in ink blotches, because that is what Messy Monsters do.
Oscar and the Messy Monster are the best of friends, even though the monster is always a nuisance. It gets Oscar shouted at all the time. The Messy Monster stirs up trouble with Mum and Dad and Poppy. It likes to leave toys anywhere and everywhere. It leaves them on the sofa, on the stairs and even in the washing machine. His family sits on them, they stand on them and they fall over them. Then they shout at Oscar;
"TIDY UP OSCAR!" Really loudly. Oscar tries to tell them it is not his fault, but they don't believe him. Oscar doesn't really care, even though getting yelled at hurts his feelings. He knows that it is really the Messy Monster's fault. So he doesn't tidy up, not even a little.
The Messy Monster gets Oscar into trouble at school as well. Even when Oscar tries his best to be good. He takes ages getting his homework just right for Teacher, he even misses football practise to get it perfect. Then the Messy Monster gets inside his schoolbag, and makes him look like a fool. It takes his workbook, tears at it and stamps on it, and crumples it. Into a tiny, dirty, screwed-up ball of paper. His teacher gets mad then, and says he doesn't try very hard. Then when Oscar tries to tell her that he does, she yell;
"TIDY UP OSCAR!" Really loudly. Oscar tries to tell her that it isn't his fault, but she doesn't believe him. Oscar is upset by this, because he really tried his very best, and getting yelled at hurts his feelings. He knows that it is really the Messy Monster's fault, so he doesn't tidy up, not even a little.
Oscar and the Messy Monster are still the best of mates, after all that. Oscar doesn't mind that Mum and Dad and Poppy are always mad at him. He doesn't care that Teacher always yells at him, and that Fudge avoids him. It doesn't upset him that nobody in his class wants to talk to him, and that they laugh at him all the time. That's what Oscar says anyway!
Today the Messy Monster went too far, even for Oscar. It was school sports day, and the monster climbed into Oscar's sports bag and messed things about. Oscar sat down at his lonely space on the bench in the changing room. He opened his sports bag to get out his tracksuit. He was thinking of chips. Suddenly he heard his sport's teacher let out a yell. Oscar looked down. He was holding his sister's bright pink tracksuit instead of his own, navy one. He started to turn bright red as the class began to laugh, some of the boys even rolled on the ground. His teacher just shrugged,
"You brought it, you wear it!" he laughed. Then he burst into big, belly laughs, and his class became even more hysterical. Oscar all of a sudden realised something, the Messy Monster was not his friend. It was a pest and he want to get rid of it. But he did not know what to do.
Later that day Oscar was in the school canteen. He was trying to think of how to get rid of the Messy Monster, when all of a sudden it yelled in his ear and made him trip up. He splattered himself with the tapioca he was carrying. Everyone turned to stare at him, still in the pink tracksuit, dripping. Everyone began to cheer, and clap at him. The teachers didn't even get a chance to yell at him. He burst into tears and ran off as fast as he could. Once in the main hall he stopped by the big fish tank. He was out of breath, he was angry and he was upset. His teacher soon found him, he often stood at this spot alone, pretending to be friends with the fish.
"Do you want to tell me what is wrong Oscar?" She knelt down beside him, and suddenly the whole story about the Messy Monster came flying out. Once he finished, she began to smile. First she looked left..then right...then left again, just to be sure the monster wasn't listening. It wasn't, so she whispered gently in Oscar's ear;
"Tidy up, Oscar!" Oscar felt confused, everyone was always saying that to him. He felt like crying.
"What?" he whispered back, wide-eyed.
"That's the only thing you can do to get rid of it. It scares them you see. When they see a clean room, they run away. Away to a new, dirtier room!" She nodded at Oscar.
"How do you know what to do Miss?" he asked.
"I used to have a Messy Monster too, back when I was your age!" She smiled at him, Oscar wasn't sure she had ever been his age, but it was worth a try. Oscar nodded.
"Now lets go to my office, I'm sure I have one of your tracksuits that you forgot..it's got to be better than your sisters!" She said, leading him away.
A few hours later, Oscar said goodnight to the monster as usual, and pretended to go to sleep. He lay waiting, with his eyes shut, until he heard it snore, then silently slipped out of bed. He threw all his broken toys in the bin, and put the unbroken ones into the toy-box. Next he took all the torn books and put them in the recycling bin. Finally, he took all the dirty clothes and put them in the linen basket in the corner of his room, then he took the clean clothes and folded them into their drawers. He kept tidying until he fell asleep, exhausted on his freshly-made bed.
In the morning, he woke up early and waited. Soon he heard the Messy Monster wake up. He heard it glide from under the bed, it was going to hunt a breakfast of broken soldiers. But there weren't any left, they were in the bin. At first, there was only shocked silence, then the monster let out a blood-curdling scream! Oscar's room was spotless, and this was terrifying to the monster. Turning grey with fright, the monster sped from Oscar's room. It left so fast it just looked like a blur. Watching it vanish from sight, Oscar smiled and said,
"No more monsters for me now, I'll keep tidy...Well...I might!"