Hilda Hates Tomatoes

Hilda pushed her tomatoes round her plate. They didn't look very appetising. In fact, she was of the firm belief that tomatoes were the single most disgusting foodstuff known to civilisation. When her mother wasn't looking she dropped one under the table into the cat's mouth. The cat ran outside into the garden and exploded.

Hilda saw it through the window. It happened so quickly. The cat just burst, like a fluffy balloon filled with red. Like a dropped melon. Her family didn't see it. They just saw Hilda's mouth drop open like a broken trapdoor.

"What's wrong with you, Hilda?" "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Hilda's eyes stayed fixed on the red patch where the cat was on the lawn, right outside the window.
"The... the cat exploded," she said.
"Oh yeah, this is like that time you said you saw a bear skiing."
"Oh YEAH! And it was just a fat man with a beard and a brown jumpsuit."
"Liar liar pants on fire!"
Hilda tore her eyes from the window and looked down at her plate, stymied and shell-shocked. Then it hit her.

"DON'T eat your TOMAAATOES!" she exclaimed vehemently.
"Or what?" her brother sneered.
"Or you'll explode! You have to believe me!"
Her mother and father looked at her, bemused, wondering what had gotten into their otherwise fairly normal little girl. Her brother was laughing at her, her sister looking at her with that disgusted look that thirteen-year-olds do so well. Then her brother stabbed his fork into a slice of tomato and brought it up to his big-fat-clown-mouth in faux-slow motion. Her parents smirked, then grimaced guiltily.
"NOOO!" screamed Hilda, and she threw herself across the table to knock the fork from her brother's hand.

The tomato slice flew off the fork and landed in the sink where it instantly exploded, blasting chips of crockery and dirty dishwater all over the kitchen.

The family turned and looked at Hilda with wide, disbelieving eyes.
It dawned on her sister that her beloved cat was actually, really, in all likelihood, in smithereens, and she ran into the garden screaming "BINKY!!!! NOOOOO!"

Her father rang up Morrison's and told them about the tomatoes. Then he made a few calls to the NHS and the Police and the BBC, and within a few hours most of the country knew not to eat tomatoes because it was on the TV and everything.

Hilda felt slightly smug because she'd always known that tomatoes were horrible. For years to come, she would tell anybody who would listen about the explosive tomatoes which exploded her cat, and how she helped avert a national crisis, and she would always finish her story with, "And that is how I saved the world."