Maybe staying in for Sunday wasn't such a good idea.

Pete and Sue Brockman's idea of a nice enjoyable day was a quiet one without too much activity. Not so uneventful that it would be classed as "boring", just a calm day where maybe they wouldn't have to be embarrassed by their three children in three separate ways creating three slices of hell.

They loved their children of course, but they certainly weren't what you'd call a "normal" family. Normal families don't have sons that manage to end up in the emergency room at the local hospital every other week.

A nice relaxing Sunday would have been ideal. Sure, place Jake, Ben and Karen in front of the TV and let's hope that will keep them occupied for the rest of the day. But Jake would only end up fulfilling his role as a stereotypical teenager and making life hell for his parents. Ben would find some interesting object decomposing in the garden and somehow, magically, it would end up either in one of his bedroom cupboards or down the kitchen sink. And as for Karen… she would be able to select any subject in the world and somehow transform it into a debate. Still, better than calling up Auntie Angela to tell her she'd won the lottery like last time. Nobody, not even Karen, had known Angela would be that gullible.

'Okay everybody, the TV is yours,' Sue announced at the breakfast table once everyone had finished. Everyone except Ben, that is; he was busy testing whether dead flies could float in milk. So much for rice crispies.

'There's no point,' Jake muttered dismissively. 'You know there's only crap on TV on a Sunday.'

'Well, never mind being optimistic about today,' Pete said to Sue.

'I want to go out today!' Karen said, bouncing slightly on her seat. 'It's boring just sitting around.'

'Well you see, love, we're a bit short on money right now, what with having to pay for the… er… accident at Granddad's,' Sue answered.

'It wasn't an accident!' Ben piped up. 'Granddad said the toaster was asking for it!'

'Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure that if the toaster had a choice it would have preferred sitting on the kitchen surface instead of ending up on a one-way trip out the window,' Pete said fairly.

'How to you know?' Ben questioned. 'The toaster was probably really bored 'cause in its entire life all it did was make toast. It was probably the experience of a lifetime!'

'Yep, ending up in next door's pond would have been the best moment of its life,' Jake said sarcastically.

'At least it could have made friends with the fish,' Karen mused. 'Unless it electrocuted them.'

'Do you think that's why we have electric eels?' Ben asked. 'Because people got angry when they forgot to switch their toasters on, thinking that the toasters just weren't working? Maybe everyone chucked their toasters in the rivers and seas and they hit loads of eels and now we have electric eels.'

'I really doubt that,' Pete said feebly but Karen and Ben weren't listening.

'That's like saying that… a lot of people just chucked horses into the sea and now they've mutated into sea horses,' Karen argued.

'Maybe they have!' Ben pondered. 'Maybe there's, like, toxic waste leaking into our oceans from a nuclear reactor…'

'You have no idea what you're talking about,' Jake snapped but Ben was well into his theory.

'… and the toxic waste caused loads of creatures to mutate, which is why we have loads of weird looking fish.'

'But that's not environmentally friendly at all!' Karen protested, her eyes open wide in denial.

'I know!' Ben said, 'and the fish are going to get really mad because it's our fault in the first place that they all mutated so they'll lead a rebellion and annihilate the human race!'

'It's funny how a conversation stemming from a toaster can result in this, isn't it?' Pete said, and Sue smiled whilst Jake groaned at the imagination of his younger siblings.

.

'So everybody, what shall we do today?' Sue said enthusiastically as she walked into the lounge, only to find that, actually, there was something decent on TV because all three of the children had their eyes glued to the screen, sitting on the sofa with Karen in the middle and Jake and Ben on either side of her.

'What's this? A repeat of Doctor Who?' Sue said incredulously. 'Oh come on, you three, you've seen it a thousand times!'

'Yeah, but this one has Weeping Angels in it!' Ben cried, turning the volume up so you could easily hear somebody screaming in horror on the TV.

'I don't like them, they're scary,' Karen murmured, not quite daring to look at the screen. 'I hate how everyone's always saying "Don't blink", but that's really hard! You'd have to keep winking, like taking blinking in turns with your eyes.'

'Maybe you could have, like, two extra eyes on the front of your head, and four on the back so one pair could blink whilst the others are open,' Ben suggested, his head tilted as he gazed at the TV screen.

'Why would you need two pairs on the back of your head?' Sue asked.

'No, don't!' Jake cried but Ben was too quick.

'Well, if there's an angel behind you you'll see it,' Ben said, with an "isn't-it-obvious?" look on his face.

'Wouldn't that look really creepy, though?' Karen interjected. 'You can't go through life with um… seven- no, eight eyes. Everybody would make fun of you!'

'I'd want it, it would be really cool!'

'Nobody would see the eyes on the back of your head though, because all of your curly hair would be in the way,' Karen added.

'Well then, I wouldn't be teased 'cause no one would see the back eyes!'

'You'd still have four on the front, and besides, you wouldn't be able to see behind all that girl's hair!' Karen pointed out.

'OW! Ben hit me!' came Karen's voice from the lounge. Pete, who was at the laptop in the kitchen, rolled his eyes and continued to read the essay that one of his students had sent him.

'Look, no hitting, both of you,' came Sue's voice, commanding and frustrated but with a hint of amusement behind it, which implied that they'd obviously been talking about something interesting before the violence broke out.

'Bloody hell…' Pete muttered, the email capturing ninety percent of his attention.

'Finally gotten fired?' Jake asked, walking over to the fridge.

'No, but apparently some kid thinks it's okay to write "Hitler was a toss-piece" in their Holocaust essay,' Pete replied in an exasperated tone. 'Well this is bloody ridiculous…'

'I thought "bloody" was a bad word,' Karen piped up, making her way into the kitchen.

'Yeah, well Dad just made a mistake, Karen,' Jake answered.

'But he tells me off when I say words like that!' Ben shouted, emerging from the doorway behind his sister. 'Dad's a tosser.'

'Ben!' Pete scolded. 'You can't say words like that! And you certainly can't call me that!'

'I just made a mistake, like you did earlier,' Ben said innocently.

.

'Karen, have you finished your homework?' Sue called from upstairs. Karen, who was sitting at the table drawing her brother Ben dying in a numerous amount of ways replied, 'Yes!'

'What about you two boys?' Sue continued.

'Yes, yes, yes,' Jake answered in a frustrated voice from his bedroom.

'What homework?' Ben shouted.

'Karen, I need you to tidy your room, you can barely make your way across the floor with all this… crap,' Sue said, adding the last word in a quiet voice.

'What homework?!' Ben repeated in a panicked voice.

'Jesus Christ!' Sue shouted. 'Ben, what the hell is this in your wardrobe?!'

'Um…' Ben thought about it. 'It might be the dead badger…'

'Today has been…' Sue trailed off.

'A bloody nightmare?' Pete tried with a groan. 'I still don't understand how Ben got stuck in the chimney.'

'Or how he got that Godforsaken badger into his wardrobe,' Sue added. 'And he told me it had been there for two months. Two months!'

'Well, at least his interest in science is notable…' Pete fell silent when he saw the look on his wife's face.

'You're not the one who's going to have to scrub the blood off the sides. It's green, you know. Is it supposed to be green?'

'I'm not entirely sure that's blood,' Pete muttered. He pulled the bed covers over himself and switched the lamp on the bedside table off. He only hoped that tomorrow would be so much better than today; a stressful day at work was ahead, where he would have to consult a student about their choice of language concerning the Nazi leader. Still, better than hearing Karen and Ben argue about which creature would win out of an elephant and a kangaroo with a taser, whilst Jake complained about their immaturity.

As Pete and Sue closed their eyes, they tried to imagine better days ahead, when they heard Ben shouting as loud as he possibly could.

'YOU SAID NO MORE DEAD ANIMALS IN MY ROOM, SO WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO WITH THE BATS AND THE SQUIRREL?'