Chapter Seventeen

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It all seemed to happen in slow motion.

The cupcake flew through the air.

Remy’s mum flew through the air.

Mr Jones flew through the air, where he had flown from, Remy had no idea.

‘Like dudes, you should totally duck right now,’ Ummm said. ‘That was a butterbuttermilkmilk cupcake.

‘You didn’t!’ Too Cool gasped.

‘I did,’ Ummm said, and that was all there was time to say.

The cupcake in question was descending in an arc towards Miranda’s feet.

Remy flung himself to the ground, Lewis beside him.

There was a starlight of intense colour, as if the fabric of the universe had just split directly in front of them. There was a crack like thunder, so loud that it shook their bodies as if they were made of jello. Smoke or steam exploded in front of them.

Then silence.

At first they could not see anything, just big red spots in front of their eyes. But those faded and vision quickly returned.

The gorilla they knew as Miranda was gone, and in her place was a hideous, tentacle creature with oozing suckers.

Bits of fur and clothing were flying up into the air, along with the precious rubies. Miranda-monster was waving two of her longest, ugliest tentacles up in the air flailing at the rubies, trying to catch them, when through the smoke and the haze with a Tarzan-like yell, came Remy’s mother, swinging on the vine, catching one ruby in her outstretched left arm, and the other in her mouth (which immediately turned her Tarzan yell into a strangulated qurrrxschllffe).

She let go of the vine as it reached the end of its swing and flew through the air, right into the outstretched arms of Mr Jones on another vine.

Except it wasn’t Mr Jones. In Remy’s befuddled brain it could only be Mr Jones, except this man was bigger, much better looking and was not wearing jewel-encrusted underwear (as far as he could see).

‘Go Dad!’ Remy yelled.

‘When did you learn to trapeze?’ he heard his mother ask, even as his dad deftly caught her by both arms.

‘I’ve been practising for months,’ his dad said. I was going to audition for the Twirling Brothers circus. I wanted to surprise you.’

She gasped. ‘So that’s why...’

That was all Remy heard before his parents swung backwards, out of the reach of the flailing tentacles.

‘Come on,’ Remy yelled, jumping to his feet, and grabbing Lewis up with one hand.

Suddenly Ummm and Too Cool were alongside him.

Miranda-monster was growing larger by the second. Beside her, Giles had also lost his gorilla form and his true tentacle shape was revealed.

Tentacles lashed out at Remy and Lewis who ran for their lives towards the jungle where Remy’s parents had flown. They dodged and dived, and made it to the safety of the trees. They turned back to see Ummm and Too Cool engaged in furious hand-to-tentacle combat with the monsters.

‘Quick, the un-timer,’ Remy yelled.

His mother appeared beside them with the rubies in her hand. ‘Do you need these?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Lewis said.

‘No!’

They all looked around. It was Ummm who had yelled.

‘No! Not the un-timer!’ he broke off to avoid being flattened by a crushing blow from a huge tentacle. ‘You like totally don’t want to undo any more time. You might take us back to the Big Bang, and then we’d all have to start all over again.’

‘Then what?’ Remy yelled back.

‘You totally need a re-timer,’ Ummm yelled. ‘You need to like re-do all that was un-done. Here!’

He ducked under a swinging blow and in a deft motion flicked off both his fairy slippers, hurling them towards the edge of the forest.

‘One ruby in each shoe, dude’ Ummm yelled. ‘Then think what year you want, click your heels together three times to activate the re-timer, and say...’

He didn’t get to complete the sentence. A tentacle got him from either side, and no fairy, even a big body-builder fairy like Ummm could withstand that. His unconscious body slumped to the ground. Almost immediately a huge suckered tentacle picked him up and hurled him against a tree. There was a horrible crunching sound, and Ummm lay very still.

‘Ummm,’ Too Cool shouted.

‘Quickly,’ Remy yelled.

With Ummm out of the way, Too Cool had no chance against both monsters. A moment later he too lay dashed and broken at the base of a tree and the monsters had turned in Remy’s direction.

‘One ruby in each shoe,’ Lewis muttered. There was a small opening in the heel and he pushed in the rubies. ‘Now what?’

Remy had already pulled off his own shoes. He reached for the fairy slippers, but there was no time. ‘Run!’ he yelled.

The forest was dense enough to slow the huge alien creatures behind them, but there were gaps and trails between the trees that a few small humans could fit through.

They heard crashing and cursing behind them (at least Remy thought it was cursing but it was in some alien language so it could have been a shopping list for all he knew).

His mother and father ran ahead of them, and somewhere in front they could hear Mr Jones running too.

A small clearing opened up and on the other side of it was the solid wall of a cliff.

‘It’s now or never,’ Remy said. He quickly pulled on the fairy slippers, which fit surprisingly well, considering the size of Ummm’s feet.

‘What are you supposed to say after you click your heels?’ Lewis asked.

For once it was Remy who had the answer to that.

He clicked his heels together the required three times and was rewarded by a buzzing from the shoes, and a dim red glow. He focussed his thoughts on the year 2010, and managed to hold that thought even when Miranda-monster crashed through the trees behind them, reaching out for them with huge tentacles oozing with green slime.

‘There’s no place like home,’ Remy said.