I know I prefer to keep this story more like the book, but I'm starting to get to a point at what happened at the orphanage where Joanna got into a fight with one of the girls. I want to warn you that this flashback will contain some swearing and physical fighting. Enjoy this chapter and review!
As the Giants were fighting, the Big Friendly Giant took us back to his cave to do some writing on his dreams. He sat on the table with an enormous paper and pencil I wonder how did he learn to write?
Sophie and I sat crossed legged on the table as we watched him write as he watched the glass jar that contained the very good dream we caught today.
As we watched him write, an unpleasant flashback flashed in my mind in front of me that happened one week ago at the orphanage.
I was sitting at the table with the other orphans and Sophie. We had to eat in silence, but my stepmother would be out and I'd whispered to the orphans.
Sophie got up to put her plate away, but Prunella stood up and got in front of Sophie.
"Where do you think you're going twerp?"
"To put my food away," Sophie said.
Prunella grinned cruelly and shoved Sophie against the table causing her leftover food to be spilled over on the table and girls.
When I saw that, something inside of me snapped. I grabbed my sharp knife and held it behind my back as I marched towards my stepsister.
"You stupid bitch!" I screamed. "Leave Sophie alone!"
Prunella glared and backhanded me in the face, it stung my cheek, but I did not cry.
"You are such a weak whore!" Prunella said. "I have as much right to hurt any of the girls, mother doesn't even care. We can beat you until you're dead!"
"That does it!" I screamed as my temper took control of me and I held out my knife. "I'm going to give you a scar you deserve for treating us like crap!"
The other girls screamed as they watched me come towards my stepsister. Prunella screamed as I came towards her and I jumped on top of her and held her down.
"Get off me you bitch!" Prunella screamed. "Or I'll tell mummy!"
"I don't think so!" I held the sharp blade to her right cheek and I scratched a line on it and it started to bleed. My stepsister let out a bloodcurdling scream as I cut her and I cut another line creating in X. The girls screamed loudly as they watched me scratch her face.
Two girls pulled me away and two helped Prunella up.
I smirked in satisfactory as I looked at my knife covered in blood.
Prunella was about to attack me but the girls held her back.
"What is going on in here?" my stepmother appeared in the room, and saw my stepsister clutching her cheek.
"Prunella!" my stepmother came to her daughter. "What happened darling?"
Prunella lifted her hand and showed stepmother her X slashed face it was covered in crimson blood.
My stepmother's face was filled with horror and her face turned beet-red in anger.
"Who did this?" My stepmother screamed, causing the other girls to flinch in fear in her shouting.
"I did!" I said keeping my guard.
My stepmother came towards me and grabbed me by the hair and pulled me close to her face.
"Why did you scar my Prunella you lazy wench?"
"I did it because, I'm sick and tired of you two treating us like garbage and if my father was here, he would have kicked you out. Prunella deserves that scar to show her that she has no right to hurt Sophie and me, and the orphans! You are a monster, when I am eighteen I'm going to report the authorities for child abuse and take back what was rightfully mine!"
My stepmother threw me against the table and I felt pain shaking my body, and felt a lightning stuck of pain hitting my back. It was the whip! She stuck me twenty times, and dragged me by the hair again.
She opened the trap door and threw me down the stairs, I felt pain on my wrist and back.
"You will stay in the cellar for one week, for punishment! It's your own fault you cut your stepsister! She was my sweet innocent daughter! But you are ugly and stupid! And you don't deserve the orphanage! You stay there until your punishment is up!"
She slammed the cellar door loud and I was alone in the darkness, I lay on the floor and sobbed. I looked up as the crack of moonlight went through the small opening on the wall.
"Father?" I said. "Why did you marry her? I hate her so much! Please I don't want to be in the cellar forever!"
I sobbed my heart out as if I had been miserable for the last four years filled with sorrow and betrayal. Oh how could this get any worse?
"Joanna?" I jumped back into reality when Sophie was looking at me with a concerned face. "You okay?"
"Oh yes Sophie," I said. "I was just thinking."
Sophie nodded and turned her attention to the BFG.
"What are you writing?" she asked.
"Every dream is having its special label on the bottle," the Big Guy said. "How else could I be finding the one I am wanting in a hurry?"
"But can you really and truly tell what sort of dream it's going to be simply by listening to it?" Sophie asked.
"I can," he said without looking up.
"But how?" I asked. "Is it by the way it hums and buzzes?"
"You is less or more right," the BFG said. "Every dream in the world is making a different sort of buzzy-hum music. And these grand swashboggling ears of mine is able to read that music?"
"By music, do you mean tunes?" I asked.
"I is not meaning tunes."
"Then what do you mean?" Sophie asked.
"Human beans is having their own music, right or left?"
"Right," Sophie said. "Lots of music."
"Including classical, jazz, and blues," I said.
"And sometimes human beans is very overcome when they is hearing wonderous music. They is getting shivers down their spindels. Right or left?"
"Right," said Sophie.
"So the music is saying something to them. It is sending a message. I do not think the human beans is knowing what that message is, but they is loving it just the same."
"That's about right," I said.
"But because of these jumppsquiffling ears of mine," the Big Guy said. "I is not only able to hear the music that dreams is making but I is understanding it also."
"What do you mean understanding it?" Sophie asked.
"I can read it, it talks to me. It is like a langwitch."
"I find that just a little hard to believe," Sophie said.
"Me too," I said.
"I'll bet you two is also finding it hard to believe in quogwinkles," the BFG said. "And how they is visiting is from the stars."
"Of course I don't believe that," Sophie said.
"I don't think so," I said.
The BFG regarded us gravely with those huge dark eyes of his.
"I hope you two will forgive me," he said. "If I tell you that human beans is thinking they is very clever, but they is not. They is nearly all of them notmuchers and squeakpips."
"I beg your pardon," Sophie said stunned.
"What did you say?" I asked glaring at him.
"The matter with human beans," he said. "Is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles. Of course quogwinkles is existing. I is meeting them oftenly. I is even chittering to them." He looked away from us and continued to write. We moved over to read what he wrote so far. The letters were big and bold, but they were not so well formed. I read the big words…
This dream is about how I is saving my teacher from drowning. I is diving into the river from a high bridge and I is dragging my teacher to the bank and then I is giving him the kiss of Death…
"What the…" I stammered when I read that last sentence.
"The kiss of what?" Sophie asked.
The BFG stopped writing and his dark eyes looked at us.
"I is telling you two once before," he said. "That is never having a chance to go to school. I is full of mistakes. They is not my fault. I do my best. You two is lovely girls, but please remember that you two is not exactly Miss Koweverything's yourselves."
"I'm sorry," Sophie said. "I really am. It is very rude of me to keep correcting you."
"Yeah," I said as I rubbed my neck in embarrassment. "Me too."
The Big Guy gazed at us for a long time, but he then bent his head again to his slow laborious writing.
"Tell us honestly," Sophie said. "If you blew that dream into mine or Joanna's bedroom when we're both asleep, would we really dream about how either one of us save our teacher from drowning by diving off the bridge?"
"There must be more," I said.
"More," the BFG said. "A lot more. But I cannot be squibbling the whole gropefluncking dream on a titchy bit of paper. Of course there is more."
The BFG laid down his pencil and placed one massive ear close to the jar. For about thirty seconds he listened intently. "Yes," he said, nodding his great head solemnly up and down. "This dream is continuing very nice. It has a very dory-hunky ending."
"How does it end?" Sophie asked. "Please tell me."
"You would be dreaming," the BFG said. "That the morning after you is saving the teacher from the river, you two is arriving at school and you is arriving at school and you two is seeing all the five hundred pupils sitting in the assembly hall and all the teachers as well, and the head teacher is them standing up and saying, "I is wanting the whole school to give three cheers for Sophie and Joanna because they is so brave and is saving the life of our fine arithmetic teacher, Mr. Figgins, who was unfortunately pushed off the bridge into the river by our gym-teacher, Miss Amelia Upscotch. So three cheers for Sophie and Joanna!" And the whole school is then cheering like mad and shouting bravo well done, and forever after that, even when you is getting your sums all gungswizzled and muggled up, Mr. Figgins is always giving you two ten out of ten and writing Good work Sophie and Good work Joanna in your exercise book. Then you two is waking up."
"I like that dream," Sophie said.
"Me too," I said.
"Of course you like it," the BFG said. "It is a phizzwizard." He licked the back of the label and stuck it on the jar. "I is usually writing a bit more than this on the labels. But you is watching me and making me jumpsy."
"Maybe we'll go and sit somewhere else," I said as I slowly got up.
"Don't go," he said. "Look in the jar carefully you two and I think you will be seeing this dream."
Sophie and I peered into the jar and sure enough, we saw the faint translucent outline of something about the size of a hen's egg. It was a pale sea-green, soft and shimmering and very beautiful. It was like jelly, and it was lying quite still and moved slightly.
"It's moving!" Sophie cried. "It's alive!"
"Of course it's alive!"
"What will you feed it on?" I asked.
"It is not needing any food," the Big Guy said.
"That's cruel," Sophie said. "Everything alive needs food of some sort. Even trees and plants."
"The north wind is alive," he said. "It is moving. It touches you on the cheek and on the hands. But nobody is feeding it."
I was silent and so was Sophie. This strange, but extraordinary giant was disturbing our ideas. He seemed to be leading us towards mysteries that were beyond our understanding.
"A dream is not needing anything," he said as he went on. "If it is a good one, it is waiting peaceably forever until it is released and allowed to do its job. If it is a bad one, it is always fighting to get out."
The Big Guy stood up and walked over to one of the shelves placed the latest jar among the thousands of others.
"Please can we see one of the other dreams?" I asked.
The BFG hesitated. "Nobody is ever seeing them before," he said. "But perhaps after all is letting you have a little peep." He picked us up off the table and carried us in his huge palms. He carried us towards the shelves. "Over here is some of the good dreams, the phizzwizards."
"Would you hold me closer so I can read the labels," Sophie said.
"My labels is only telling bits of it," the BFG said. "The dreams is usually much longer. The labels is just to remind me."
Sophie started to read the labels. The first one seemed long enough to her. I also read them with her and they were very long too, I couldn't stand to read long sentences. It went right around the jar, and as we read it, we had to keep turning the jar. It says…
Today I is sitting in class and I discover that if I is staring very hard at my teacher in a spheshal way, I is able to put her to sleep. So I keep staring at her and in the end her head drops on to her desk and she goes fast to sleep and snorkles loudly. Then in marches the head teacher and he shouts, "Wake up Miss Plumridge! How dare you go to sleep in class! Go fetch your hat and cote and leave this school forever! You is sacked!" But in a jiffy I is putting the head teacher to sleep as well, and he just crumples slowly to the floor like a lump of jelly and there he lies all in a heap and starts snorkelling even lowder than Miss Plumridge. And Then I is hearing my Mummy's voice saying wake up your brekfast is reddy.
"What a funny dream," Sophie said.
"Very amusing!" I said.
"It's a ringbeller," the BFG said. "It's whoppsy."
Inside the jar, I stared at the edge of the label and looked at the dream that was sleeping peacefully at the bottom, it looked like it was getting its beauty sleep.
"Do you have separate dreams for boys and girls?" Sophie asked.
"There must be," I said. "Not all boys and girls want a mixed gender's dream."
"Of course," the BFG said. "If I is giving a girl's dream to a boy, even if it was s really whoppsy girl's dream to a boy, the boy would be waking up and thinking what a rotbungling grinksludging old dream that was."
"Boys are silly," I said. "They would die of embarrassment if they dreamed of a girl's dream."
"They would," Sophie said.
"These here is all girls' dreams on this shelf," the BFG said.
"Can I read a boy's dream?" Sophie asked.
"You can," the BFG said, and he lifted us to a higher shelf. I stared at the label and read the writing carefully.
I is making myself a marvelus pair of suction boots and when I put them on I is abel to walk strate is the kitshun wall and across the ceiling. Well, I is walking upside down on the ceiling wen my big sister comes in and she is starting to yell at me as she always does, yelling wot on earth is you doing up there walking on the ceiling and I looks down at her and I smiles and I says I told you you was driving me up the wall and now you had done it.
I started to laugh at that funny story.
"I find that one rather silly," Sophie said.
"Boys wouldn't," the BFG said grinning. "It's another ringbeller. Perhaps yu has seen enough now."
"Let me read another boy's one," Sophie said.
The next label says:
The tellyfone is rings in our house and my father picks it ip and says in his very important tellyfone voice, "Simpkins speaking," then his face goes white and his voice goes all funny and he says "What! who?" And then he says 'Yes sir I understand sir but surely it is me you is wishing to speke to sir not my little son?" My father's face is going from white too dark purple and he is gulping like he has a lobster stuck in his throte and then at last he is saying, "Yes sir very well sir I will get him sir" And he turns to me and he says in a rather respeckful voice, "Is you knowing the President of the United States?" And I says, "No but I expect he is hearing about me." Then I is having a long talk on the fone and saying things like, "Let me take care of it Mr. President. You'll bungle it all up if you do it your way." And my Father's eyes is goggling right out of his head and that is when I is hearing my father's real voice saying get up you lazy slob or you will be late for skool.
"Like I said Big Guy," I said. "Boys are silly, but crazy. Let me read the next one." I then started to read the next label.
I is having a bath and I is discovering that if I press quite hard on my tummy button a funny feeling comes over me and suddenly my legs is not there nor is my arms. In fact I has become absolootely invisible all over. I is still there but no one can see me not even myself. So my mummy comes in and says, "Where is that child? He was in the bathtub a minit ago and he can't possibly washed himself properly." So I says "Here I is!" And she says, "Where?" And I says, "Here!" And she says "Where?" And I says, "Here!" And she yells "Henry! Come up quick!" And when my daddy rushes in I is washing myself and my daddy sees the soap floating around in the air but of corse he is not seeing me and he shouts "Where is you boy?" And I says, "Here!" And he says "Where?" And I says "Here!" And he says "The soap, boy! The soap! It's flying in the air!" Then I press my tummy button again and now I is visible. My daddy is squiffy with excitement and he says "You is the Invisible Boy!" And I says "Now I is going to have some fun," So when I is out of the bath and I have dried myself I put on my dressing-gown and slippers and I press my tummy button again to become invisible and I go down into the town and walk in the streets. Of course only me is invisible but not the things I is wearing so when peeple is seeing a dressing-gown and slippers floating along the street with nobodyin it there is a panic with everybody yelling, "A ghost! A ghost!" And peeple is screaming left and right and big strong policemen is running for their lives and best of all I see Mr. Grummit my Algebra teecher coming out of a pub and I float up to him and say "Boo!" And he lets out a frightsome howl and dashes back into the pub and then I is waking up and feeling happy as a whiffsquiddler.
"Pretty ridiculous," Sophie said, and she pressed her navel and she didn't disappeared. I pressed my own too, and nothing happened.
"Dreams is very mystical things," the BFG said. "Human beans in not understaning them at all. Not even their brainiest prossefors is understaning them. Has you two seen enough?"
"Just this last one," Sophie said. "This one here."
"Just one more," I said and I looked at the Big Guy's strange handing writing.
I has rittin a book and it is so exciting nobody can put it down. As soon as you has red the first line you is so hooked on it you cannot stop until the last page. In all the cities peeple is walking in the streets bumping into each other because their faces is buried in my book and dentists is reading it and trying to fill teeths at the same time but nobody minds because they is all reading it too in the dentist's chair. Drivers is reading it while driving and cars is crashing all over the country. Brain surgeons is reading while they is operating on brains and airline pilots is reading it and going to Timbucktoo instead of London. Football players is reading it on the field because they can't put it down and so is Olimpick runners while they is running. Everybody has to see what is going to happen in my next book and when I wake up I is still tingling with excitement at being the greatest riter the world has ever known until my mummy comes in and says I was looking at your English exercise book last nite and really your spelling is atroshus so is your puntulashon.
"That's enough for now," the BFG said. "There is dillions more but my arm is getting tired holding you two up."
I noticed those small labels on the other jars.
"What are those over there?" I asked. "Why have they got such tiny labels?"
"That," The BFG said. "Is because one day I is catching so many dreams I is not having the time and energy to write out long labels. But there is enough to remind me."
"Can I look?" Sophie asked,
The long-suffering BFG carried us across to the jars she was pointing to. Sophie and I read them rapidly, one after the other.
I is climbing Mount Everast with just a pussy cat for cumpany
I is inventing a car that runs and toothpaste.
I is able to make the elektrik lites go on and off just by wishing it.
I is only an eight year old little boy but I is growing a splendid bushy beard and all the other boys is jalous.
I is abel to jump off of any high window and flote down safely.
I has a pet bee that makes rock and roll musik when it flies.
"What amazes me," Sophie said. "Is how you ever learned to write in the first place?"
" Ah," the BFG said. "I has been wondering how long it is before you is asking me that."
"Considering that you never went to school," I said. "I think it's very fascinating and quite marvelous. How did you learn?"
The BFG got up from his table and went to one of his shelves and opened a very small secret door. He pulled out a book, it was very old and tattered. But it was an ordinary human-sized book, the BFG held the book in his palm and it was like the size of a stamp.
"Where did you get that book?" I asked.
"One night," he said. "I is blowing a dream through through a window and I sees this book lying on the little boy's bedroom table. I wanted it so very badly, you understand. But I is refusing to steal it. I would never do that."
"So how did you get it?" Sophie asked.
"I borrowed it," the BFG smiled. "Just for a short time I borrowed it."
"How long have you had it?" Joanna asked.
"Perhaps only about eighty years," the BFG said. "Soon I shall be putting it back."
"And that's how you taught yourself to write?" Sophie asked.
"You ought to be proud of yourself Big Guy for teaching yourself to read," I said.
"I is reading it hundreds of times," the BFG said. "And I is still reading it and teaching new words to myself and how to write them. It is the most scrumdiddlyumptious story."
I took the book from his hand and looked at it and shared it with Sophie.
"Nicholas Nickleby," I read out loud.
"By Dahl's Chickens," The BFG said.
"By who?" Sophie asked.
"Like Charles Dickens?" I asked.
"Yes," the BFG stood up and packed the jars in his suitcase. "And now I is off to deliver the dreams to the childdlers. Would you like to come with me?"
Sophie and I looked at each other and we nodded.
"Of course," I said. "It may be way past our bed time, but we'll do it."
"We would love to go," Sophie said.
He scooped us up in his palm and set us in his pocket. He put on his cloak, grabbed his cloak and trumpet. He moved the stone, closed it and he rushed down the fields of Giant Country.
His running picked up the speed and he lifted himself in the air as if he were flying. Sophie and I ducked down in the pocket to protect ourselves from the blowing strong wind. Then the wind died down and we look out from the pocket. We were down in the countryside of England will the rolling green fields. The BFG was landing on the street at a small fishing town. It was by Saint George's Channel and the sign read, "Welcome to St. David's."
He held Sophie in one hand and I sat perched on his shoulder. He looked at each window and continued going up the streets looking for sleeping children.
"I know this place," I whispered. "My parents went there for their honeymoon after they were married."
"Shh," the BFG shushed. "We can't be making any tichy-wichy sounds."
"Sorry," I whispered. "But this place is bringing back my memories."
The Big Guy placed Sophie back in his pocket and kept walking up a street. He looked through each and every window. He then jumped off a side walk and landed quietly. For a minute there, I thought there would be a loud thump and everyone would wake up. But the lights did not turn on.
We came up to a house and the sign read, "The Swan."
He removed his hood and looked through the window, he gave Sophie and I a better look. It was a boy sleeping in his bed.
"How about that one?" Sophie asked.
"I think that dream will do for him," I said.
The BFG nodded and knelt down to his suitcase. He opened it and looked through every bottle.
"How can you tell what to choose?" I asked.
"I gets a tinkling feeling when I is reaching into the bottles," he said and he grabbed the one with the invisible dream in the bath, with the math teacher. He uncorked the jar poured the magic dream in his trumpet. He stood up straight, slipped the trumpet through the window. He placed his lips to the small end, puffed up his cheeks and then woof! The green dream was being blown into the boy's head and he tousled in his sleep as if the dream were taking effect. It seems that I was seeing into what the boy was dreaming, he was in a flying bathtub. He pressed navel, and then pop! He was gone!
"He is pressing his tummy button and becomes invisible," the BFG whispered as Sophie and I giggled. He then started floating with the other bath toys and grabbed his red bathrobe. He knew starting chasing his Algebra teacher and he was freaking out. We were all laughing.
"Now, we can't be waiting here all night," the BFG said. "We has dillions of dreams to blow."
We left 'the Swan" and continued through the fishing village and the BFG blew more dreams into the houses of the sleeping children. We were having a lot of fun.
"Come on, come one," the BFG said.
"Give them the one with the clowns in the circus," Sophie said. "I want to see."
After blowing a few dreams, Sophie and I were now sitting on the BFG's hand. We were indeed very happy
"Big Guy," I said. "Thank you so much for taking us out for dream blowing! I never felt so happy."
"BFG," Sophie whispered excitedly. "This is the best fun I ever had in my life! It's like being..."
"Shh," the BFG whispered and hid behind a wall. I suddenly felt very uneasy and the hairs were sticking up on my flesh.
There was a low growling and it made me shudder, but I held in my breath. There were loud steps. The BFG peered behind the corner and I saw the most terrifying sight.
It was the Fleshlumpeater.
The ugly giant was walking near 'the Swan" where we blew our first dream.
The Big Guy him behind the house as the Fleshlumpeater turned, but he did not see us. The Fleshlumpeater then decided to keep going.
The BFG looked again and saw the Fleshlumpeater with his head near 'the Swan.' He held Sophie and I out on his hand and we gasped in fear, but we covered our mouthes.
"Oh BFG, stop him!" Sophie said.
"Don't just stand there Big Guy," I hissed angrily. "Do something!"
But the BFG stood still like a statue.
The Fleshlumpeater placed his eye near the window to see the boy, then brought his head back and stuck his index finger with the longest fingernail through the window.
"Oh God," I whispered and looked at my friends.
"Nooooo!" Sophie yelled.
"Stop!" I yelled.
The Fleshlumpeater turned around as if he were chewing on something, but the BFG fled from the scene and headed back to Giant Country before that Giant could catch us.
Well, this is what happened at the fight, Joanna slashed her stepsister's face and that was why she was locked in the cellar for a week. It was inspired from Bizet's opera Carmen, where Carmen slashed a woman's face because, that woman insulted Carmen and she did not ignore her and move on. But I thought I'd be a little violent.
I rewrote to make more dream blowing in the movie and add more drama with the Fleshlumpeater eating more children. I hope this is the best.
There will be more to the story, please read and review.
