Roald Dahl - James and the Giant Peach

"Yes, this is perfect! Don't bite any more, Centipede, or we'll sink too fast! Gently does it!"

Slowly the great peach began losing height, and the buildings and streets down below began coming closer and closer.

"Do you think we'll all get our pictures in the papers when we get down?" the Ladybug asked.

"My goodness, I've forgotten to polish my boots!" the Centipede said. "Everyone must help me to polish my boots before we arrive."

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" said the Earthworm. "Can't you ever stop thinking about -"

But he never finished his sentence. For suddenly WHOOOSH!… and they looked up and saw a huge four-engined plane come shooting out of a nearby cloud and go whizzing past them not more than twenty feet over their heads. This was actually the regular early morning passenger plane coming in to New York from Chicago, and as it went by, it sliced right through every single one of the silken strings, and immediately the seagulls broke away, and the enormous peach, having nothing to hold it up in the air any longer, went tumbling down toward the earth like a lump of lead.

"Help!" cried the Centipede.

"Save us!" cried Miss Spider.

"We are lost!" cried the Ladybug.

"This is the end!" cried the Old-Green-Grasshopper.

"James!" cried the Earthworm. "Do something, James! Quickly, do something!"

"I can't!" cried James. "I'm sorry! Good-by! Shut your eyes everybody! It won't be long now!"

Round and round and upside down went the peach as it plummeted toward the earth, and they were all clinging desperately to the stem to save themselves from being flung into space.

Faster and faster it fell. Down and down and down, racing closer and closer to the houses and streets below, where it would surely smash into a million pieces when it hit. And all the way along Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, and along all the other streets in the City, people who had not yet reached the underground shelters looked up and saw it coming, and they stopped running and stood there staring in a sort of stupor at what they thought was the biggest bomb in all the world falling out of the sky onto their heads. A few women screamed. Others knelt down on the sidewalks and began praying aloud. Strong men turned to one another and said things like, "I guess this is it, Joe," and "Good-by, everybody, good-by." And for the next thirty seconds the whole City held its breath, waiting for the end to come.

"Good-by, Ladybug!" gasped James, clinging to the stem of the falling peach. "Good-by, Centipede. Good-by, everybody!" There were only a few seconds to go now and it looked as though they were going to fall right in among all the tallest buildings. James could see the skyscrapers rushing up to meet them at the most awful speed, and most of them had square flat tops, but the very tallest of them all had a top that tapered off into a long sharp point-like an enormous silver needle sticking up into the sky.

And it was precisely onto the top of this needle that the peach fell!

There was a squelch. The needle went in deep. And suddenly - there was the giant peach, caught and spiked upon the very pinnacle of the Empire State Building.

It was really an amazing sight, and in two or three minutes, as soon as the people below realized that this now couldn't possibly be a bomb, they came pouring out of the shelters and the subways to gape at the marvel. The streets for half a mile around the building were jammed with men and women, and when the word spread that there were actually living things moving about on the top of the great round ball, then everyone went wild with excitement.

"It's a flying saucer!" they shouted.

"They are from Outer Space!"

"They are men from Mars!"

"Or maybe they came from the Moon!"

And a man who had a pair of binoculars to his eyes said, "They look pritt- ty peculiar to me, I'll tell you that."

Police cars and fire engines came screaming in from all over the city and pulled up outside the Empire State Building. Two hundred firemen and six hundred policemen swarmed into the building and went up in the elevators as high as they could go. Then they poured out onto the observation roof - which is the place where tourists stand - just at the bottom of the big spike.

All the policemen were holding their guns at the ready, with their fingers on the triggers, and the firemen were clutching their hatchets. But from where they stood, almost directly underneath the peach, they couldn't actually see the travelers up on top.

"Ahoy there!" shouted the Chief of Police. "Come out and show yourselves!"

Suddenly, the great brown head of the Centipede appeared over the side of the peach. His black eyes, as large and round as two marbles, glared down at the policemen and the firemen below. Then his monstrous ugly face broke into a wide grin.

The policemen and the firemen all started shouting at once. "Look out!" they cried. "It's a Dragon!"

"It's not a Dragon! It's a Wampus!"

"It's a Gorgon!"

"It's a Sea-serpent!"

"It's a Prock!"

"It's a Manticore!"

Three firemen and five policemen fainted and had to be carried away.

"It's a Snozzwanger!" cried the Chief of Police.

"It's a Whangdoodle!" yelled the Head of the Fire Department.

The Centipede kept on grinning. He seemed to be enjoying enormously the commotion that he was causing.

"Now see here!" shouted the Chief of Police, cupping his hands to his mouth. "You listen to me! I want you to tell me exactly where you've come from!"

"We've come from thousands of miles away!" the Centipede shouted back, grinning more broadly than ever and showing his brown teeth.

"There you are!" cried the Chief of Police. "I told you they came from Mars!"

"I guess you're right!" said the Head of the Fire Department.

At this point, the Old-Green-Grasshopper poked his huge green head over the side of the peach, alongside the Centipede's. Six more big strong men fainted when they saw him.

"That one's an Oinck!" screamed the Head of the Fire Department. "I just know it's an Oinck!"

"Or a Cockatrice!" yelled the Chief of Police. "Stand back, men! It may jump down on us any moment!"

"What on earth are they talking about?" the Old-Green-Grasshopper said to the Centipede.

"Search me," the Centipede answered. "But they seem to be in an awful stew about something."

Then Miss Spider's large black murderous-looking head, which to a stranger was probably the most terrifying of all, appeared next to the Grasshopper's.

"Snakes and ladders!" yelled the Head of the Fire Department. "We are finished now! It's a giant Scorpula!"

"It's worse than that!" cried the Chief of Police. "It's a vermicious Knid! Oh, just look at its vermicious gruesome face!"

"Is that the kind that eats fully-grown men for breakfast?" the Head of the Fire Department asked, going white as a sheet.

"I'm afraid it is," the Chief of Police answered.

"Oh, please why doesn't someone help us to get down from here?" Miss Spider called out. "It's making me giddy."

"This could be a trick!" said the Head of the Fire Department. "Don't anyone make a move until I say!"

"They've probably got space guns!" muttered the Chief of Police.

"But we've got to do something!" the Head of the Fire Department announced grimly. "About five million people are standing down there on the streets watching us."

"Then why don't you put up a ladder?" the Chief of Police asked him. "I'll stand at the bottom and hold it steady for you while you go up and see what's happening."