Pests!
Practice Words
Words containing the 'ei' vowel combination, which can make various vowel sounds.
Skel loved his brick house more than anything in the world. Each morning, he cleaned the floors and dusted the shelves all the way up to the ceiling. He lined his books up in a straight, neat row. 'A clean house is a happy house,' said Skel with pride. Zom crossed his arms and grunted. 'Dirt is fine by me.'
Jack was even worse than Zom when it came to cleaning. Skel handed him a mop. Jack dropped it with a clang. Skel handed him a cloth. Jack dropped that one too. Then Jack shrugged his big orange hands and grinned, like he had just done something very clever. 'Cleaning,' said Jack, 'is weird. It is really not my kind of thing.'
Skel looked at the sticky counters. He looked at the muddy boot prints on the floor. He looked at the pile of crumbs where Jack had been eating toast over the rug. Again. Skel gripped his broom so tight his knuckles went whiter than his skull. 'Fine,' Skel said. 'You two are weirdly allergic to cleaning? Then I am done cleaning for you. Good luck on your own.'
Zom and Jack watched Skel march right out the door. They looked at each other. They looked at the sunny yard outside. 'No more sweeping!' yelled Jack. 'No more scrubbing!' yelled Zom. They flopped onto the grass and kicked back like kings. No chores to do all day. No Skel fussing at them. Life felt weirdly great, just the two of them.
Day one, a sock got stuck to the floor. No big deal at all. Day two, something in the kitchen started to smell weird. Zom gave it a sniff and shrugged. By day three, the muck was so thick you could leave footprints right in it. Zom looked down at the grime oozing around his shoes and grinned a big grin. 'Still fine by me!' he said.
It was not fine at all. The sticky floors got stickier. Then they got... crunchy. Strange little shapes skittered in the shadows. Tiny legs tapped across the floorboards in the dark. Silverfish! Eight of them, then more, then way too many to count. They poured through the muck like it was a busy road.
Zom's tummy rumbled really loud. He reached for the last slice of pie sitting on the counter. Bzzzzz. Flies! A thick, buzzing cloud of them sat right between Zom and his lunch. He reached again. The flies swarmed closer and closer. He lunged forward. But the flies got there first and seized the pie. 'Hey!' Zom yelled. 'That is my pie, not yours!'
Jack finally picked up the pile of clothes he had left on the floor for eight long days. Something moved underneath, something dark with a weirdly large number of legs. Spiders poured out of the crack in the wall and seized their chance to swarm across the floor. Jack stumbled backward, his arms flailing in the air. 'Nope, nope, nope, nope,' he yelled loudly.
Zom and Jack let the pets in to help. The pets tried their best. They pounced. They chased. They swatted. But for every bug they caught, ten more appeared. Silverfish on the shelves. Flies in the food. Spiders in the socks. One huge, bright pink creepy crawly sat right in the middle of the floor like it owned the whole place. Zom and Jack looked at each other with wide eyes. 'We need Skel,' they said. 'Right now.'
Skel stood in the doorway, bow gripped in his hand, grinning the biggest grin his skull had ever grinned. 'So,' he said slowly. 'Dirt is fine, is it?' Zom stared at his shoes. Jack stared at the ceiling. 'I will help,' said Skel. 'But from now on, we all clean. No slacking. Deal?' Zom grabbed his sword. Jack raised a fist. And neither of them dropped a thing.