by Emily Judd

 

It starts with an ‘a’

aardvark aardvark

and ends with a ‘k’

aardvark aardvark

not easy to say

aardvark aardvark

but try anyway

na na na na naaa na na naaaaa na na na na naa na na nanana

aardvark

Rose and Amelia were best friends.  They dyed their hair together, planned what color to get when their braces were tightened, shared lunches with each other, passed notes in class, and sang the aardvark song to the melody of “On the Beautiful Blue Danube”, a waltz composed by Johann Strauss the Younger in 1867.  They sang it during lunch and during class; they sang it backwards and forwards.  When they sang it backwards they sang “aardvark” as “kardvarka” instead of “kravdraa” as it ought to have been.

Rose’s tenth birthday was coming up.  Amelia wanted to get Rose the best birthday present ever, so Amelia asked Rose what she wanted for her birthday.  Rose said she wanted world domination, so Amelia set about getting it for Rose.

First she made a plan.  She decided to take over the world with zombie slaves and maybe fix up some of the problems like war and global warming before handing it over to Rose on her birthday.  Then, she decided, she needed a henchman to make zombie slaves and all the other difficult stuff.  Amelia put an ad in the newspaper and since Rose never read the newspaper, Rose didn’t notice.  No one noticed, in fact, except a rather untrustworthy-seeming man who was always chewing gum.  He was the only one who answered the ad, so Amelia hired him on the spot.  She offered him some lunch, but he didn’t want to spit out his gum in case he couldn’t get it back off the napkin.  She couldn’t pay him much because she only got a small allowance, but he said that was alright because he didn’t have to buy gum that often.

Amelia sent him off to the morgue to make zombies out of dead people.  She told him to meet her on the main street with the horde at two in the afternoon.  Amelia packed her own lunch and went to wait for him.  Then, just when the zombie horde was supposed to arrive, she saw Rose.  In the distance she saw a large crowd of people, presumably her zombies.  If Rose saw them, her birthday present wouldn’t be a surprise anymore.  Amelia decided she’d just have to play a trick on her friend and hope Rose would forgive her later.

“Look” she told Rose, “There’s a parade today for-” Amelia paused just for half a second, “Dead peoples’ rights!”

Rose was delighted, she loved parades. “Let’s join!” she told Amelia.  And Amelia agreed. Amazingly enough, it seemed like other people had a similar idea and were also joining the parade.  Occasionally a zombie would notice a living person and bite them, adding to the number of minions.  The parade was turning out to be quite successful.  Amelia was scanning the horde to see if she could find her henchman, when something skimmed past the back of her head.  She saw a wadded up paper which someone must have thrown at her.  She picked up the paper and smoothed it out so she could read it.

                            “Important Notice!

          It has come to our attention that you would like to take over the world.  We have some important issues to discuss with you about this.  Meet us on the third floor, Room 317, in the building with the man feeding the pigeons on the stairs.”

 

Amelia crumpled the paper up again and tossed it in the trash.  She felt a little guilty because her mother always told her to recycle.  She slipped out and made her way to the building with the man feeding the pigeons on the stairs.  She went in and ran all the way to room 317 on the third floor.  She caught her breath and then knocked.  A secretary let her in and asked why she was there.  Amelia replied that she’d been hit with a ball of paper, and needed to discuss some very important issues about world domination.  The secretary showed her into an office where a stern-looking gentleman was leaning his chin on his fists.  The man looked up and glowered as Amelia came in.

“So, you want to take over the world,” he stated.

“I’m doing it right now,” replied Amelia somewhat haughtily.

“Now, that is a problem,” he replied, “because I’m already working on it.  I’ll have to ask you to stop.”

Amelia shook her head, “I can’t agree to that.”

He glowered even more fiercely, “I have Mr. Mopo monopolies in every major city!  I have bribed politicians in almost every country!” he exclaimed angrily.

Amelia glowered back, “I’m going to conquer the world before you can sing the aardvark song half-way through!” she told him forcefully and stomped outside.

She saw her henchman waiting for her and went to talk to him.  She showed him her maps and plans and told him to take over the Eastern Hemisphere and she would take over the Western Hemisphere right after she did her science fair project for school.  She then went and found Rose and explained that she’d gotten lost in the crowd of dead people.  Rose had assumed so anyways.  Besides, she had been very distracted by the news crew which had shown up when the zombie parade had gone through a Code Pink protest.

The next few weeks were very busy as Amelia sent in her zombie hordes to take over major capitals and had them tear down all the Mr. Mopo factories and shops. 

Mr. Mopo was very angry and, of course, sent assassins to kill Amelia.  Amelia had anticipated this and had several zombie girls taking turns acting as her, before they decomposed too much.  Rose was a little confused because the zombies were not very good conversationalists and had trouble even singing the aardvark song forwards, much less backwards.  However, the zombies made do by just singing ‘na na na’ and Rose was too impressed by the zombies eating assassin brains, and the occasional student waiting in line for cafeteria food, to notice that none of them were really Amelia.  Amelia’s parents did notice that Amelia was spending more time wandering aimlessly and chasing the neighbor kids, but they blamed her restlessness on the teachers not assigning enough homework.  Meanwhile, Amelia sent in her homework from whatever country she was conquering, and so her teachers didn’t notice anything at all. 

While the zombies fended off assassination attempts, Amelia met with all the world leaders.  Her henchman helped her out with the finer points of diplomacy.  Sometimes the politicians were very stubborn, but Amelia knew how to throw better temper tantrums and always won.  Amelia was a little uncertain about whether she should visit the President of the USA yet because it was his last year, but she figured that there was no sense in waiting for the next president since she was just taking power anyways.  The moment she saw him she knew something was wrong, but she began her normal talk anyways.

“Hello Mr. President.  My name is Amelia and I’m here to talk you about my current domination of the world.” 

“Is this a school project?” He paused. 

“No, I’m taking over the world,” Amelia said.  As he stared at her, she realized what was wrong-she recognized him from a second-grade class visit to the white house.  He’d given them all handshakes.

“Do I know you?” he began and though Amelia tried to move the conversation back to the topic at hand, he was very distractable and condescending the rest of her visit.  She wasn’t sure he’d really meant it when he signed his powers over to her.  This wasn’t a huge problem though: she could always send in a zombie horde if he caused any trouble.  Amelia then quickly met with all hundred senators and all four-hundred and fifty representatives.  She was a little annoyed by the balance of power because it meant she had to meet with more people than she did with dictatorships.

When Rose came over to play that weekend, Amelia had to remember not to whine about the number of leaders in the world that had to be talked to.  This was made easier because Rose kept talking about some game of her brother’s that she’d been playing and liked a lot.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mopo was not doing well.  Mr. Mopo noticed that Amelia seemed to have super-powers and just wouldn’t die.  He was very bothered by this and sent all of his people to assassinate her, even his secretaries.  Most of these people had signed on wanting desk jobs, not assassination jobs, and so many of his people quit.  Some of the assassins considered it a worthy challenge and went out to face the zombies, but they soon became zombies as well.  Mr. Mopo sat in his office and was not pleased.  Amelia was taking power from all the world leaders and subjugating the world population.  He couldn’t let all his plans go to waste, so he gathered all of his fancy equipment and weapons and set out to kill Amelia himself.

He drove up to her house in a blotchy-grey car with a matte finish and carefully snuck along the driveway using night-goggles until he triggered the motion-sensing porch light and the goggles became rather redundant.  Using a powerful, yet silent motor, he shot a grappling hook up to the second-story of Amelia’s house.  However, her room was on the first floor, so he then tiptoed down the stairs, trying not to let his various hidden-knives rattle.  He squirted oil into the hinges of her door and slowly eased it open.  He edged in the door way and crawled along her messy floor to her bed. As he slid a knife from his sleeve, he eyed the lump curled up beneath the blankets and took aim.  With hardly a sound, the knife flew towards its target.  Startled, the zombie sat up with the knife protruding from its forehead.  It had snuck into Amelia’s bed to enjoy the soft blankets and luxurious pillows since Amelia was sleeping over at Rose’s house and wasn’t there to scold it about leaving body-parts under the covers.  Weapons sprung from Mr. Mopo’s sleeves as he hacked at the approaching zombie and tried to beat a hasty retreat.  However, he accidentally triggered a hidden knife in his shoe as he turned to flee, and it caught the floor, tripping him.  Mr. Mopo soon joined Amelia’s efforts as yet another zombie.

Finally, after a week and a half, Amelia had world domination, and just in time, because tomorrow was Rose’s birthday.  Now all she had to do was give it to Rose.  She couldn’t just wrap the world in brightly colored tissue paper, so she decided to write up a very official-looking paper.  She had her henchman, who had turned out to be fairly trustworthy after all, help her with official-looking water-marks and write her signature in cursive.  He then told her, since they’d finished conquering the world, that he was considering retiring, so she gave him all the gum she’d had saved up for when she would get her braces off.  He was quite pleased indeed and went off chewing his brand new pieces of gum.  She called Rose and told her to meet her at the courtyard tomorrow after school so she could finally give Rose her birthday present.

It felt like ages before school was out and Amelia could race over to the courtyard with the paper tucked carefully under her arm.  Rose showed up soon after because they both knew the same shortcut.

“Happy birthday Rose!” Amelia shouted happily.

“Thanks!  Why are all these people bowing?” asked Rose.

“I got you world domination!” replied Amelia.

Rose beamed, “Oh! Did you get the Mac-compatible version?”

 

 

 

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