Chapter Fifteen

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“Death penalty?” Lewis squeaked. “That’s not awesome.”

Something was nudging Remy’s foot. He would have ignored it, there were so many other interesting things going on, if only the pressure wasn’t getting stronger and stronger. He looked down casually and …

“Woah, Lewis!” he exclaimed.

“What?” Lewis snapped, a string of drool descending from his lengthening upper canines.

“Mate …” Remy wasn’t sure what to say to his best friend but his widened eyes and raised eyebrows hinted at some new strangeness. Remy whipped around to Eyepod. “What was in that water?”

“Eh?” said Umm turning to join in the conversation. When he saw Lewis he let out a long slow whistle. “Dude …”

“I think he might need to step outside,” Eyeypod said, her expression hovering between horror and amusement, “while he can still fit through the door.”

“I’ve a good mind to evaporate you all right now,” the voice boomed irritably from the walls.

“No, no. Don’t do that … um … sir. I’ll, I’ll fix this.” Remy said uncertain where to face when he spoke. He licked his lips nervously. He looked at Eyepod, Umm and Too Cool and mouthed ‘help’ at them.

“I saw that” boomed the voice.

“I’m not going outside,” Lewis said. “There are dinosaurs out there.”

“I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about,” Eyepod smirked.

“That’s for sure, dude,” Too Cool said, nodding. “If anything, they’ll be running away from you.”

Lewis held his hands out in front of himself and looked down at them. “Arghhhh!... What am I?” As they all watched Lewis’ body expanded, shooting skyward, forcing him to hunch more and more under the low ceiling, his skin dimpling and darkening into green scales, his nose lengthening and widening forcing his nostrils to the outer edges of what was now clearly a dinosaur snout.

“Open the door,” Remy screeched. Pop! Ummm vanished and re-materialised by the door in an instant and yanked it open. Lewis, his nostrils flaring, his eyes full of fear, dashed for the opening and squeezed himself through just in time.

“T-Rex. One of his favourites,” Remy said with a sigh as he watched his best friend’s hulking form disappear into the distance.

“Well. I wasn’t expecting that,” Eyepod said from behind Remy.

“That was pretty gnarly,” Too Cool muttered.

“This is all your fault!” Remy turned on the mermaid. She fluttered her long and somewhat hypnotic eyelashes at Remy.

“He was thirsty,” she said. She smiled. Were her teeth always that sharp Remy wondered?

“I can’t take any more of this,” he said slumping to the floor. “My friend, my Mum, my planet, my time … I’m never going back, am I?” It WAS all hopeless. He was never going home. Lewis and his Mum were gone forever and the only girl here was a smart-alec mermaid who could read his thoughts and wanted to eat him. His heart sank and his mind felt like it was full of dark grey cotton wool.

“What’s that?” Too Cool pointed through the doorway at a silver cigar shaped object high up in the violent purple sky. The silver thing darted erratically, steadily drifting lower and lower as it zigged and zagged, until with a nasty metallic crunching sound it came to rest heavily on the yellow, rolling hills of Awe. There was a flash of something red and black, and long furry arms flailing.

“Well that’s a turn up,” Eyepod said.

“Who invited the gorilla’s?” the body-less voice said icily.

“SHUT-UP!” Remy, the fairy policemen and the mermaid yelled in unison. Through the doorway they could see plumes of black and grey smoke rising unsteadily from the silver cigar, now lying in two pieces half way up a slope. What could only be Miranda was jumping up and down, arms waving wildly.

“The un-timer,” Remy gasped and jumping up he dashed outside making straight for the hills. This was the only chance he had. His stomach groaned with hunger but he forced his legs to keep moving. He hadn’t got very far when he felt hands on the back of his t-shirt, pulling him up.

“I got ya little buddy,” he heard Too Cool say, and his feet were suddenly running in mid air as the ground dropped away below him. Alongside he could see Umm, his fairy wings whirring above, clutching a wriggling Eyepod. “You should never give up,” he heard her say inside his head. She gave him a flash of her needle like teeth.

It wasn’t long before they were coming in to land just below the busted spaceship. Although it had broken right in half, the two ends of the vehicle were in reasonably good shape. Just a small spiral of smoke trickled up from what was obviously the engine end. A single fire extinguisher lay on the ground alongside an empty packet of chewing gum but there was no sign of Giles and Miranda. Remy was just about to curse his luck again when a strange gurgling sound made him look up, past the wreckage. His eyes widened. His brow furrowed. His jaw dropped open and moved around trying to find the right shape to fit with the words he couldn’t quite come up with. He could almost count the scales on Lewis’s muzzle. He could smell the pungent rotting meat smell of what could only be its breath. But his confusion was the result of the two gorilla legs dangling from the T-Rex’s mouth, a shred of checked swanndri just visible, and a hand clutching what looked suspiciously like the un-timer giving one last wave before Lewis shook his head like a wet dog, tipped it way back, opened his jaws wide and with several crushing bites gulped Miranda down.

Remy clamped his jaw shut and swallowed.

“Ummm,” said Umm.

Several bad words ran through Remy’s head but he just frowned.

“Well that’s torn it,” Eyepod said.

“Every time we nearly have the un-timer something goes wrong,” Remy said bitterly.

“Dude, totally no worries, we can make a new one with a Random Generator,” Too Cool said. “I think my cousin Not Quite Cool Enough has one in his garage.”

“Yeah but how do we get there,” Remy said. “It’s not like it’s just around the corner from Planet Awe in the year 3629.”

Just then there came a series of horrible hoiking noises.

“I think Lewis has a hairball,” Eyepod chuckled. The T-Rex gagged and belched, followed by an unpleasant waft of acidy stomach gas. Finally the dinosaur gave an almighty groan. There was a loud gushing sound and T-Rex vomit cascaded down.

“That’ll teach him for not chewing his food properly,” Umm said.

“Hah hah, gorilla chunks,” Too Cool chortled.

“So who’s going to put their hand in that for the un-timer?” Eyepod piped up.

The others turned to look pointedly at Remy.

“Don’t you have some gizmo for that?” he asked.

It smelt disgusting. It felt even worse, but there was a lot riding on this. Remy had no choice as he swirled his arm around up to his elbow in dinosaur puke. Closing his eyes helped a little bit. So did holding his nose closed with his free hand. It was still warm. He nearly sobbed when his hand closed over a small, smooth, hard object. He slowly pulled it out and wiped it on the grass. He opened one eye and a wave of relief surged through him as he saw sunlight glinting on the metal casing of the other half of the un-timer.

“Who’s got the rest of it?”

Umm put his hand down the vest of his tutu and revealed their half. He passed it to Remy.

“The ruby?”

Umm blinked. So did Too Cool and Eyepod still being held by Umm.

The T-Rex, who had been patiently waiting just beyond the space wreck, now gave a little cough.

Remy walked slowly over to his former best mate and stared up at his face metres above. The T-Rex hung his head. Remy groaned and smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I gave it to Lewis for safe keeping. Things fall out of my pockets all the time. His have zippers,” he explained. “The universe hates me. Everything keeps going wrong.” He held the two pieces of un-timer together, rubbing goop off Miranda’s one with his thumb. “I just want to go home.”

A catherine-wheel of colour surged around Remy, yellow and purple, while green scales gently rained down. Like putting his hand over the bath plughole as the water drains he could feel himself being sucked down. As he fell Remy caught a glimpse of Lewis’s face; slightly green-tinged but definitely boy shaped and with its usual expression of uncertainty, before everything went black.

“Where are we now?” Lewis whimpered.

“Ow,” Remy yelled. “Get your elbow out of my eye.”

“That’s not my elbow,” said Lewis.

“Who just bit me!?”

“I feel like a sardine,” Eyepod giggled.

“It’s very warm,” Umm said.

“Who’s humming?”

“Can I smell a roast?” came Too Cool’s voice.

Suddenly there was a creaking sound and a sliver of light appeared and quickly grew and they were tumbling down on to floorboards.

“Wha…?” Mr Jones said, his ruby trapeze pants sparkling in the glow from the sun bed, as he stared down at the collection of very strange looking individuals at his feet.

 

 

Illustration by Nikki Slade Robinson