by Bill Myers
Opera continued his scream, “AHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” (He seemed to be getting better with every breath.) But Opera wasn’t just screaming for his life. There was something else at stake. For every time Gertrude bucked and jerked, she loosened Opera’s hold on his shoebox. Try as he might, the big guy could no longer hold on. At last the box slipped from his hands. His prized possession, his family of one million newly hatched little pets, plummeted toward the earth.
“MY FLEAS!” he screamed. It was like slow motion. Everyone watched his box tumble end over end. Everyone gasped as the lid gently came off and fluttered away. Everyone shrieked as the million fleas started raining down upon them.
Everyone but the director. “KEEP ROLLING! KEEP IT ROLLING!”
Laura Lottalips was the first to lose control. “GET ’EM OFF! GET ’EM OFF!” she screamed as the fleas showered over her. She slapped her shoulders and clawed at her hair. “SOMEBODY GET ’EM OFF!”
Now, Chad would have been the likely volunteer, but he was too busy screaming his own brand of hysteria and tearing at his own hair . . . that is, until he accidentally ripped off his toupee. That’s right, Chad Steel’s beautiful hair was nothing more than a wig. A major wig. Now everyone, including the camera, saw him for what he really was. Not the handsome middle-twenties hunk that set every heart a twitter. No, this was the older, nearly bald coward that made everyone in the crowd start to boo.
Everyone but Dad’s boss. In a f lash Mr. Feinstein broke through the line shouting, “I’m coming, Laura; I’m coming.” Before anyone could stop him, he had reached his dream of dreams, he had come to her rescue. “I’m here, Ms. Lottalips, take my coat, there you go, attagirl.” He wrapped his coat around the sobbing woman and helped her hobble off the set. It was a sight to behold. All that was missing was his suit of armor and white horse.
Meanwhile, Reptile Man had torn away the cover of the control panel and ripped out a couple wires. Immediately, Gertrude stopped bucking— just like that. Amazing. Then Reptile Man turned another knob. There was the hiss of gas escaping as Gertrude slowly lowered Opera to the ground.
I threw a look over at the director. For the first time in the entire film, he was actually smiling. I couldn’t believe it.
“And . . . Cut! Print it!” he said as he turned to his crew, beaming. “We got it boys, we got ourselves the take!”
The crew broke into cheers and applause. Soon they swarmed around Opera, slapping him on the back, telling him what a great job he did, what a great scream he had, and how his fleas had really made the scene.
“THE SCENE?” the director cried. “NO WAY! YOU MADE THE PICTURE! YOU AND YOUR FLEAS SAVED MY MOVIE! I HAVE THE VISION NOW, I FINALLY KNOW WHAT THIS PICTURE IS ABOUT. THANK YOU!” He gave Opera a big kiss. “THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!”
The crew tried to raise the new hero to their shoulders. But it only took a couple attempts before they realized their backs weren’t as young as they used to be.
And me? I kind of stood off to the side. No one even spoke to me. I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly, Opera was the hotshot. Suddenly, Opera was the star. And the worst thing was, I couldn’t even hold it against him. After all, the guy was only trying to save my life.
Speaking of saving my life, I glanced over at Reptile Man. Gertrude’s operator was pumping my teacher’s hand up and down. It looked like he was pretty thankful, too.
Then, off in the distance I spotted Melissa Sue. She was stooping down to pick up Chad’s toupee. She rose with it in her hands and clutched it to her chest. Even at that distance, I thought I could hear a faint, dreamy sigh.
Brock and his date were standing next to the little guy with the big megaphone. He was bragging about how he could get her a job and make her a star, and she was swallowing everything he said, hook, line, and sinker. Brock, on the other hand, was staring off, lost in thought. I figured he was thinking of trading her in for a different model, one with a brain.
And Wall Street? She was on her hands and knees scooping up fleas. “They’re going to be a collector’s item,” she shouted to me. “They’re gonna make me a bundle!”
Suddenly, Dad’s hand was on my shoulder. “Nice job, Son.” I looked up at him. He continued. “For a minute you had me worried, but I guess it was all planned, right?”
I tried to smile.
“And Mr. Feinstein and Laura Lottalips . . .” He motioned toward the two of them sitting side by side on a distant bench. They were sipping Perrier and talking and laughing like they were old buddies. “That was real genius, the way you worked that out. Real genius, Son.”
Again I tried to smile.
“But these fleas,” he said, slapping his neck and rubbing his shoulder, “you’d think they could have used fake fleas instead of the real thing.”
“Well, you know Hollywood,” I said with a grin, doing some head scratching and shoulder slapping of my own. “They hate being fake; they love everything to be real.”
Chapter 10
Wrapping Up
After two showers and a hot bath, I was still covered in fleas. I called up the pet store, but they said there was no such thing as flea collars for humans. I tried to explain what had happened, but they figured I was a prank caller and hung up. After all, what I described couldn’t possibly happen—not to “real” people.
Obviously, they hadn’t lived in my world. I thought of going down there and hanging around the store for an hour or so. Just long enough for a few disasters and calamities to strike. (With my luck that’s all the time it would take). But I figured it wouldn’t be fair to the pets. So I pulled Ol’ Betsy out instead. Let’s see, when we last left James Brawn he was unconscious on the cave f loor as Lizard Lips was closing in . . .
“How will we wake him, how will we escape?” Poppin’ Fresh cries.
Just then the Kool-Aid Pitcher crashes through the back wall. (I didn’t know how he pulled that off, but since this is getting near the end of the story, I guess anything goes.) “Quick, everybody!” he shouts.
“Follow me!”
“But what about James?”
“Too late!” Lizzie hisses as she shoves her giant snout into the cave. Her body is too big to fit, but at least she can get her head and mouth in.
...And that, my dear reader, is her undoing.
One whiff of Lizzie’s breath (hey, even Listerine can’t work forever) and James begins coughing and gagging. The fumes are so strong they wake him. Immediately, he leaps to his superagent feet and shouts, “Friends, we cannot run! Lizard Lips must be stopped here! She must be stopped now!”
“But how?” the crowd shouts.
“Yessssss,” Lizzie laughs, as she flicks her forked tongue back and forth. “How?...”
“We must all work together!” he shouts.
The crowd murmurs in protest.
“You must put aside your differences. You must stop treating one as more important than the other. We are brothers! Equally loved! Equally needed!”
“So what do we do?” someone shouts.
“Doublemint twins . . . take that gum you’re chewing and stick it around Lizzie’s neck to hold her in place.”
Before the lizard can respond, the twins leap to action and accomplish their task.
Lizzie laughs. “I may be stuck, Brawn, but I can still see and hear,...and I can still eat!”
“Keebler Elves!” he shouts. ”Put some cookies over her eyes. Cap’n Crunch, Trix Rabbit, run to her ears. Start crunching your cereal in them nice and loud so she can’t hear.”
Everyone obeys, but Lizzie doesn’t seem worried. “An ‘A’ for effort, Jamessssss, but you forgot my nosssse. I can sssstill find you and gobble you up with my ssssensee of ssssmell.”
“Colonel! Ronald! Get in there with your chicken and burgers and confuse her with your wonderful aromas!”
They quickly obey.
“Toga Man!”
“Pizza, Pizza.”
“Take that thick stringy cheese and wrap up her snout good and tight.”
Toga man leaps to action and begins tying her mouth shut.
“Jamesss, sssstop thissss you mumm muop mmm...mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.”
“Excellent!” James shouts. “Now, Energizer Bunny, Duracell Dancers, toss me your batteries for this TV remote in my hand.”
They do. And before you can say, “Is this getting weird or what?” he shoves the batteries in, points the remote control unit at Lizzie, and presses “Rewind.” Just like that, ol’ Lizard Lips shoots backward out of the cave, across the sand, and into her own hole of a home...at about a zillion miles an hour.
The crowd cheers and raises James to their shoulders.
“No,” James shouts, “not me. I’m only your average, run-of-the-mill, super-good-looking secret agent. You are the real heroes. You worked together....You treated each other as equals. Now go home, get back into those TVs, and do us proud.”
Everyone shouts and claps as each one of them heads back to Hollyweird. They all are smarter, wiser, and perhaps a bit closer to understanding how they should treat each other.
James watches proudly. Yes, it’s another incredibly intelligent and indescribably interesting job done by (Ta-Da-Daaaa! There’s that good-guy music again)...Secret Agent Brawn, James Brawn.
I pressed F10, closed the computer, and smiled. Not bad. I wished real life was that simple. There were still a lot of things that needed fixing. You know, the way I treated people, the way people treated me. But I supposed that would all work out. It would have to.
Three and a half months later, Opera and I stood outside the Mall’s Cineplex. Mutant Monster from Mars was playing. Every critic in the world hated it. (Come to think about it, so did every person in the world.) But that wasn’t going to stop Opera and me. No sir. We had our allegiance, we had our loyalty, and we had the twenty bucks Dad gave us to see it.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said while dishing out the dough. “After all, if it weren’t for you boys, Mr. Feinstein would never have given me that raise.”
“If that’s the case, how ’bout another ten for food?” I asked.
Dad gave me one of his looks, and I gave him one of my shrugs. What was it Pastor Bergman always said, “You have not because you ask not”?
Now we stood outside the theater staring at the poster. It featured Opera. That’s right, my best buddy was in the center of the poster, bigger than life (if that’s possible). He was held between Gertrude’s hissing jaws. And his mouth was open wide in a scream for his life. The caption below read:
They came, they saw,
they did as they pleased.
And worst of all, they carried . . .
FLEAS!
“I’m sorry they cut you out of the film,” Opera apologized for about the hundredth time.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re a better screamer than I ever dreamed of being.”
Opera nodded as he finished off another taco. “I guess it comes with all that classical voice training.”
“I deserved it,” I admitted. “Actually, I deserved a lot worse than that, considering how mean I treated you and everything.”
“We all learned a lot,” Opera agreed as he washed down his last bite with an entire jumbo diet drink . . . all in one gulp.
And he was right, we had learned a lot. I mean, besides the usual stuff—like, “Don’t believe what you see in the movies,” or “Superstars are just people like us” (except for their hair pieces, extra makeup, and all the fakey stuff)—we learned something else. . . .
We learned not to treat people different just because they have more money or popularity or whatever. God loves everybody, so everyone should be treated the same. In fact, if anything, people with less should be treated better than those who—
“Hey, Dorkoid!” It was one of the Metalheads.
“Me?” I asked, glancing around.
“Who do ya think I’m talkin’ to, Salamander Breath? Now git outta da way so I ken see da poster.”
“Oh . . . ” I said, backing up. “Sorry.”
Now where was I . . . oh, yes . . . that people with less should actually be treated better than—
“Ow! That’s my toe, Slime Bucket!”
I twirled around, and accidentally stepped on his other foot . . .
“Get out of here, will ya?”
. . . Then I stumbled backward into someone else. . . .
“Look out! It’s a Dorkoid!”
. . . and landed f lat on my back staring straight up at Melissa Sue and her group of “Melissa Sue Wannabes.” Of course, everyone had a good laugh. Only this time it wasn’t with me, it was at me. I felt pretty crummy and wished I wasn’t there. But that’s okay, as far as Melissa Sue was concerned, I wasn’t. I mean, she looked right at me, but it was like she didn’t see me.
I guess not everybody learned the lesson. I suppose some people like Melissa Sue and her group will just keep playing the Fame Game until they die. Too bad. As far as I can see, it’s a game nobody wins.
“Step right up. Get your souvenir Flea Chains—get ’em right here.”
I recognized the voice and scrambled to my feet. It was Wall Street. She had set up a little booth with a sign that read, “Going Out of Business Sale.”
“Hey, Wally, wanna buy a Flea Chain?” she called.
“A flea chain?”
“That’s right, a key chain with an authentic f lea molded in clear plastic.”
“How much?” I asked.
“A buck a piece.”
“A buck a piece!” I shouted. “For a f lea?”
“Not just a flea but one that starred in the movie.”
I hesitated.
“Come on McDoogle, it’ll be a collector’s item. Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal.”
“What kinda deal?” I asked, already suspecting the worst.
“Since you’re a friend and since I’m going out of business, instead of one Flea Chain for a dollar I’ll give you two genuine Flea Chains for two-fifty.”
I dug into my pocket. Good ol’ Wall Street, some things never change. It’s nice to know you can always rely on your friends.