Chapter Eight

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Up in the attic, Mr Jones peeled off his shirt and socks. He needed to be as quiet as a dead mouse. His wife was in the bathroom below. He tiptoed over to the humming machine, ran the tips of his fingers the full length of it, and opened the cover. It glowed and hummed a little louder. Mr Jones chuckled, slid a pair of dark glasses on, and climbed inside.

Downstairs in the lounge, Remy stepped out of the fireplace relieved to have made it down the chimney with nothing worse than a bit of nylon rope burn. Lewis was right behind him.

Whoooshhh.

Twannnnnnnnggggg.

There was a high-pitched squeal.

Remy squinted up the chimney into the darkness.

‘Flippin’ squiddly diddly elephants,’ Lewis squeaked. ‘I think I broke my butt.’

‘You can’t break your butt,’ Remy muttered, but Lewis wasn’t listening.

‘You said all I needed to do was slide down the rope, but there’s not much to hold onto. It’s not that thick ….’

No, but someone is, Remy thought, looking around nervously. ‘Can you do the fast version. We haven’t got all day.’

‘I knew I should have listened at Boy Scouts,’ Lewis groaned as he tried changing position. ‘I knotted the rope around my butt like a swing-seat, but the rope’s not long enough and the knots have tightened. It’s cutting off my blood supply. My legs are gonna drop off soon.’

Remy bit his lip. ‘I think that takes a few weeks.’

‘Excellent,’ Lewis sighed.

There was a noise in the hallway. ‘You make a good decoy,’ Remy whispered. ‘Gold star material. I’ll come back with help.’ He tiptoed into the kitchen and gently closed the door.

Lewis whined as Miranda and Giles entered the living room. They froze.

‘What was that?’ Giles said through a mass of yellow goo that was drying and stretching in the hairs around his mouth.

Miranda crept over to the chimney and peered up. She turned to Giles. ‘I believe it’s a bottom wedged into a macramé plant-pot-holder.’

Giles blinked. ‘This is new to me. What does this mean?’ He jabbed at the keys of his assembilator, waited, and then swallowed. ‘The most recent books on this topic are ‘The day my bum went psycho’ and ‘Zombie bums from Uranus.’ There are also magazine articles on ocean bottom feeders and a place called Invercargill which a man called Bryson describes as ‘the arse end of the world.’ I’m not sure I fully understand the complexity of this language.’

Miranda gasped and whispered. ‘That’s a zombie bum?’

She looked again.

‘I wouldn’t look it in the eye,’ Giles said. ‘It says here they’re used as weapons of mass destruction in Uranus.’

Miranda thought for a moment. ‘We can’t just leave it there. It was probably planted there to jeopardise our whole operation.’

Giles pointed. ‘There’s wood in the garage. We could try to smoke it out.’

Up on the roof, Ummm’s moustache twitched in an agitated fashion. ‘There’s a ruby beneath us in a metal container, and it’s getting hotter by the minute. We can’t wait for a sign from the decoys. Buckle your tutu, Too Cool. We’re going in.’

Ummm strode over to the edge of the corrugated iron roof. He gripped a massive chunk of it in both hands and heaved. Screws and rivets strained and popped as the iron bent backwards. Too Cool joined in and together they peeled the roof back like a sardine can.

Ummm dropped through the hole. All he could see were Mr Jones’ sheepskin slippers and a shirt in a heap on the floor, and some pink feet poking out the bottom of a giant metallic pencil case. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing in there, Mister, but you smell like roast pork. I don’t mean that in a good way.’

There was no reply from the container. Too Cool dropped down from the roof into the attic next to Ummm. The house shuddered as he landed.

‘And I’m not happy about you trying to bake our ruby,’ Too Cool said. ‘Especially when the future of the world depends on it.’

The lid of the container opened slowly. Mr Jones lay wide-eyed under the self-tanning machine in his jewel-encrusted undies.

‘I don’t believe this. It’s Henry and D .. D … Dave, isn’t it?’ Mr Jones stuttered. ‘You hound me out of my workplace but that’s not enough for you. Well if you think you’re taking my undies off me, you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘You’ve bullied me enough for one lifetime. Go and buy your own.’

Too Cool’s moustache quivered. ‘Dude, your undies aren’t that cool. I’m not going to wear them or anything. Eeeeuuuwww.’

Mr Jones clambered off the bench. ‘Future of the bleedin’ human race. You think I’m a wally, don’t you? Well, I wasn’t born yesterday,’ he said, nervously jabbing a finger at Ummm.

Ummm sighed. ‘There’s no time to explain. You’ll just have to trust us.’

The attic trapdoor opened and Mrs Jones appeared in her fluffy pink dressing gown with a towel wrapped around her head. She flapped her ‘pink fantasia’ painted nails in the air as if she was swatting flies.

‘What’s going on up here? Oh Lordy,’ she gasped as she squinted up at blue sky and clouds. ‘Why aren’t you at work, Stanley?’ Then she noticed what he was wearing. Her eyes turned into little slits, like a cat eyeing its prey. ‘Why are you wearing Great Aunt Deirdre’s trapeze outfit? It’s a valuable family heirloom.’

‘It’s only the pants and they’ve got these cool jewels,’ Mr Jones explained and then reddened when he realised that everyone was staring at his undies. He coughed. ‘They also give me a better tan line ….’

Mrs Jones gave Ummm a cold stare when he tried to interrupt. ‘Who do you think you are bulldozing your way into our house, and bullying my husband in his underwear?’

Too Cool wasn’t listening. He was staring at his silver ruby detector, which was pointing at Mrs Jones. He glanced up at her and then back at the gadget’s display. He shook the device and checked it again.

‘Excuse me, Dudette, you appear to have a ruby hiding in those flaps,’ Too Cool said, clearing his throat. ‘You’ll need to hand it over before the gorillas get here. They won’t be as polite as us.’

‘That’s right, you went to fairy charm school,’ Mrs Jones sneered. She smiled a crocodile smile at each of them.

Mr Jones looked queasy. He didn’t cope well with conflict.

She leaned in so closely that they could see the hairs on her chin.

‘Ever since my idjit of a husband gave me an engagement ring inside a chocolate cupcake, I’ve been carrying it in here.’ She pointed to her large gut. ‘It’s lodged in the wall of my soff-agus. Doctors tell me one day I’ll pass it. I’ll probably lose it down the bog.’ She tutted to herself, ‘But I sure ain’t doing it because you want me to.’

There was silence as they all absorbed this vital piece of information.

‘Pass what?’ said Too Cool. ‘At what speed?’

Ummm stared at his companion. Sometimes his name seemed completely inappropriate. Then he suddenly realised the significance of what Mrs Jones had said. He snapped his head around and gazed at her with a mixture of fascination and respect. ‘You ate … a cupcake?’

But Mrs Jones was in no mood for flattery. Within seconds of her fixing Stanley with one of her terrifying stares, Stanley confessed that he had been fired from his job five days ago.

‘I was waiting for the right moment to tell you,’ his voice wheedled.

‘You’re a dimwit. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you’d suddenly got a tan?’

‘This is the first day ….’

‘Liar!’ Mrs Jones stepped closer. ‘No wonder they fired you.’

Stanley rolled his eyes at the ceiling. ‘Beam me up Scotty, I’ve had enough of this.’

There was a flash, and when the smoke cleared, all that was left was a small pile of ashes on the floor.

Mrs Jones’ mouth hung open so wide you could have fit a hamster in it.

‘Is this some sort of sick joke?’ she shrieked.

‘Um,’ said Ummm. ‘This is unfortunate. How did your husband know our secret security code?’

‘Security code?’ Mrs Jones shrieked. ‘It’s from Star Trek, you MORON. Everyone knows it. He just says it as a joke when he wants to get away from me.’

‘Well … it worked,’ mumbled Too Cool.

‘I don’t know this trek dude you mention, but this is a serious breach of galactic protocol,’ Ummm said. ‘Anyone who says those four words is zapped to the gyro-sphincter. If they know the second part of the code, the gyro-sphincter opens and allows them into our world.’

‘And if they don’t?’ she said.

Too Cool looked seriously grossed out. ‘He is sphincted.’

‘So what’s the second part of the code?’

‘It’s not something he would know.’ Ummm looked down at the floor. ‘I’m sorry, there’s no hope for him.’

Remy shut the last of the cupboard doors. He was getting bored of searching the kitchen, which didn’t seem to have anything more exciting than baked beans and Mars Bars in it. Actually the Mars Bars were very exciting to Remy but he was pretending they were muesli bars to stop himself taking one. Stealing a ruby to save the future of the world was one thing, but stealing a Mars Bar to stop your stomach gurgling like a drain was another, even if it did belong to the Joneses (the Mars bar, not the drain). He was just about to give up when he noticed an old sideboard with spindly legs at the end of the kitchen.

He opened the right-hand side. Underneath a bunch of musty old photo albums, was an ornately decorated golden box and wedged in the top was a ….

‘What’s that disgusting smell?’ he mumbled, looking around. He put the box down, then opened the kitchen door a smidgeon and peeked through the gap.

Miranda was sprinkling turps over a pile of wood in the fireplace. What the hell?

Remy froze. Lewis!

He ripped the lid off the golden box and shoved it down the front of his sweater. As soon as Giles and Miranda had their backs to him, he slipped into the hallway and sprinted for the stairs.

Remy climbed the stepladder and poked his head through the top in time to hear Mrs Jones shrieking that they had to bring Stanley back.

Too Cool and Ummm were making nervous clicking noises with their tongues.

‘I think it’s what you’d call a one way street lady, but I’m no expert on the gyro-sphincter.’ Ummm smiled weakly. ‘On the bright side, Stanley has taken one of the rubies to a safe place. The un-timer can’t reach him.’

Mrs Jones scowled and shrieked some more.

‘I’ve got one of the others,’ Remy said, pulling the lid out of his jumper for a moment. ‘But I don’t know where the third one is and Lewis needs help. He’s stuck in the chimney, and the gorillas are lighting a bonfire under him.’

‘Dude, that’s not cool,’ Too Cool said solemnly.

‘You know what’s not ‘cool’,’ Mrs Jones said. ‘The fact that you clowns have sphincted my husband, and this little creep has ripped the lid off my Great Aunt Deirdre’s funeral urn.’

Remy didn’t know what sphincted meant but it didn’t sound like a joyride.

‘Ummm,’ said Ummm. ‘We need to get Lewis out of that chimney.’

‘And you’re going to need to come with us,’ explained Too Cool. ‘You’ve got the last ruby.’ He turned to Ummm. ‘Have you got a no.44 cupcake? We need something powerful.’

Remy smelled smoke. Muffled shouting echoed in the chimney.

‘You three, outta here,’ Ummm said pointing towards the hole in the roof. ‘We have to get the rubies out before we encounter those un-timing gorillas. I’ll get Lewis.’

Too Cool grabbed Mrs Jones’ pink fluffy body, shoved her under one arm and

Remy under the other and sprang back through the hole in the roof.

A ginormous explosion made them look up in time to see something blast out of the chimney, fly over the treetops and splash into the slimy duck pond in the neighbour’s paddock.

‘That was undoubtedly, uniquely a chocolate hail cupcake with beer, and baked bean additives,’ Too Cool grinned.

 

- Illustration by Jenny Cooper