Monstrosity

by Janice Marriott

  The morning of the wedding I lay low, under my bed. I was in hiding.

  ‘There you are, under the bed. Good,’ said Sis, coming into my room and not even looking under the bed.

  She walked out and locked the door. ‘You can’t escape now!’ she called.

  I held up my HELP sign at the window, but Skim Milk didn’t respond. I looked around my prison. What could I use? How could I escape? There were no sheets on the bed now. No ropes. I couldn’t use Mildew’s rented wedding dress because she was inside it, running around the house, squeaking. I couldn’t get out of the window. Dad had nailed my windows shut. I tried picking the lock. Impossible. I sat on the bed.

  ‘Time to get dressed, Monster.’ Mum bustled in with the gross, white silk shorts and white silk shirt.

  I took one look. ‘I am not—’

  ‘Remember your promise?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  No escape.

  The clothes were so slippery I was sure they’d fall off me as I walked down the aisle.

  That thought was very bad. Very bad. ‘I’m worried as, Mum.’

  ‘You can do it. It’s like modelling. Remember that modelling show Sylvie and Sis took you to?’

  I remembered. And an idea, a very little trick, came with the idea. ‘I’ll get dressed by myself,’ I said.

  ‘Here’s your buttonhole too, dear.’ She laid a silly bunch of flowers carefully on my bed.

  You reckon, I thought. Then I smiled a trickster smile.

  Sis got out of the car and shook her green frilly dress out. She looked just like a Brussels sprout with two thin legs.

  ‘How do I look?’ she asked.

  ‘Like a jar of slime,’ I said.

  ‘You look like an angel, Monster.’ She said that to annoy me. ‘Let me just move your buttonhole. It’s right under your chin.

  ‘Nope,’ I said.

  I looked down at my buttonhole and smiled. That buttonhole was covering the opening of my silk shirt. And I needed that covered up so I didn’t give my trick away. ‘And that plastic bag you’re carrying,’ she grumbled as we went into the porch of the community hall.

  ‘Confetti,’ I lied.

  We waited for Mildew to arrive.

  At last the wedding car pulled up with a massive jerk. I saw Mildew grab for her hat, which ended up shooting forward from the back seat where Mildew sat onto the driver’s head. I thought it suited him better than it suited Mildew, but he handed it back.

  Then she was standing there in the porch with Sis straightening out Mildew’s dress and jamming Mildew’s hat back on. They didn’t look at me, which was lucky. I was unpinning my buttonhole and dropping it on the floor.

  ‘What lovely rose buds,’ greased Sis to Mildew. They looked to me like pale Brussels sprouts.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Mildew, and into the hall she swept, clutching a bouquet like a cricket bat.

  Music bellowed at us, a tune very like In the jun-jun-jun-jun-jungle. Everyone turned to look. Mildew was poised at the back of the hall. We were peering around each side of her. Then Mildew started her long march. Sis got in step behind Mildew. Sis is so pushy she didn’t insist I keep up with her. That suited me fine. I grabbed a big head of broccoli out of the plastic bag, dropped the bag and held the broccoli in front of me like a shield. I took a deep breath, got the rhythm of the music flowing in my blood, and then I was off.

  I danced down that aisle better than Michael Jackson. I grinned and twirled and waved the broccoli bouquet. My dance was based on the following steps:

  I looked for my feet.

  I turned myself around.

  I pulled myself together.

  I straightened myself out.

  I shook myself up.

  Yeah!

  Then the music went slow and slidey. That’s when I did the little mime of turning over a new leaf. The music was just what I needed for getting undressed.

  Yep. Because that’s what I did.

  As Mildew led us swaying slowly down the aisle, I unbuttoned my slithery shirt and slid it off me. I did it just like that model girl I’d seen at the modelling show. I even spun around, wobbled my bum and stuck out a hip. I draped the shirt over one arm and then did a great backward pass into the audience. Unfortunately there were no great catchers in the audience. No try was scored. The shirt landed on top of someone’s hat.

  Then came the difficult bit. With Mildew walking very slowly and the music blaring, I slid the shorts down to my knees, jiggled a bit with one arm over my head and the broccoli spinning like a dancer’s umbrella. The slidey shorts fell to my shoes. I stepped out of one leg, swung the other like the greatest kicker in the world, and kicked. The shorts billowed like sails, rose into the air and flapped across to drape themselves over Stone Face’s glasses.

  Purple Nose was standing at what must be the finishing line. We were nearly there. I waved to Mum and Dad, did a couple of poses like a muscle man, then nearly crashed into Mildew. Mildew had stopped. She almost fainted into Purple Nose’s arms.

  We were there! I’d made it!

  I lined up behind Mildew, along with Sis, wearing my favourite baggy shorts and my old black T-shirt, which I’d been wearing under that wedding stuff all the time.

  Sis looked at me and snarled. ‘You are going to get it, Monster. You just wait.’

  I grinned back at her. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Purple Nose and Mildew had a conversation where someone told them what to say. It went on and on. I thought I’d better make something happen. I looked at Sis.

  ‘Hey, Sis, stand very still. I think there’s a weta in your hair.’

  Alien on Wheels

  1

  For about a month after Mildew got married I felt I was being watched. Someone was following me. I didn’t know who. I felt someone’s eyes on me all the time, wherever I went. It was weird.

  Then one evening something very strange happened.

  ‘Bedtime, Monster. Big day tomorrow.’

  They always say that. No day is bigger than any other really. What Mum meant was: we’re going to Aunt Mildew’s and Purple Nose’s house for a week’s holiday tomorrow.

  I didn’t need reminding. I was dreading it.

  ‘D’you hear me?’ Mum and Dad always worry about whether I have glue ear when they’re trying to tell me something.

  I was halfway up the stairs, looking forward to the new duvet Mum had bought me. I’d had a bit of an accident with the old one. Suddenly a blue flash seemed to flare through the window. It lit me up.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ roared Dad, who was at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘I’m just standing here,’ I said. I was totally bewildered.

  ‘What was that?’ whimpered Sis, who’d seen it in her room.

  ‘I’m watching you, boy.’ That was Dad. He always said that when he didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I didn’t do that! I don’t have special powers.’

  ‘Then what did?’

  ‘Dunno. Maybe a UFO?’

  I saw Sis smirk. Was someone playing tricks on me, Monster, the trickiest trickster in town? If so, they’d better look out.

  ‘Better check if the space craft’s landed on your pride-and-joy veggies,’ I joked.

  Dad went outside to look. He came rushing back in, furious with me! He was gabbling and babbling. I couldn’t understand him until he’d calmed down. When I could understand him, I didn’t believe him.

  ‘Go on, look for yourself!’ he yelled. Mum, Sis and I trooped outside.

  Yep, he was right. All his pride-and-joy veggies had been flattened. The whole lot. What was going on?

  I couldn’t sleep. The next morning I needed to take my mind off the blue flash, the vegetable flattener and the person watching me.

  ‘We’ll shut the house for the week we’re away. Dad, leave those seed catalogues alone!’ That was Mum bossing everyone around, getting us packed for the dreaded holiday. ‘Oooh,’ she said, looking around at the sitting room. ‘I do
hate that brown carpet. We need a change. Green, I think.’

  Dad was fussing with the garden hose which he’d coiled on the doorstep.

  ‘I don’t like going away and leaving the garden to shrivel up with no watering,’ he said.

  While everyone was packing, I checked out the seed packets in the garage. One packet said: Mustard and cress. Sprinkle on moist growing medium. In one week will grow into small green plants that can be eaten whole in salads.

  Green.

  ‘Hurry up, Monster!’

  Everyone was getting in the car with bags and bedding. ‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘I forgot to pack!’

  ‘What else is new?’ sneered Sis.

  I rushed back inside the empty house. I dragged the hose in the back door, turned it on and soaked the sitting room carpet. It was organic, natural wool. Just right. I hummed to myself as I sprinkled the seeds. I was thinking about being famous with my own living, edible eco-carpet. I’d set up a company, Meadow Interiors. The car tooted and revved. I shut the sitting room door, grabbed one T-shirt and one sock, and rushed out.

  ‘I’m watching you,’ said Dad as I climbed in the back seat. I smiled into the rear-vision mirror. I wasn’t worried about him watching me. But I was worried about being watched by someone else, someone I didn’t know, someone with way cool blue-flash tricks.

  There was nothing to do in the back seat of the car. Sis and I got bored. We gave each other dead arms. We threw peanuts around the car. One hit Dad on the ear. He was not pleased. We got more bored. Dad slowed down. ‘Eat an apple,’ he said.

  We opened the windows and threw the apple cores out at passing motorcyclists.

  ‘Stop it!’ yelled Mum.

  Sis took out her fantasy book and I sank into terminal boredom. I thought long and hard about cars, which belong to adults, are designed by adults, and are prisons for kids sitting in the back seat.

  In the back seat you get carsick because you have to look at the blur out the side windows. The back seats are uncomfortable. There’s no leg-room at all. Parents never know how horrible it is in the back, because they never, ever travel in the back seats of their cars. And when they were kids, not many people had cars.

  We had to sit there, belted in, doing nothing for hour after hour. After a while I prodded Sis. She made a face at me. We looked around and made evil faces at the Kenworth truck driver who was almost on our back bumper. He did the fingers at us. We did the fingers at him. Dad got really mad.

  I asked Dad to stop at the Mobil coming up because I was bursting, and I was collecting cards so I could win a trip to Disneyland. He said the Mobil was on the wrong side of the road and he stopped at the BP.

  I got mad with Dad. ‘Go to the toilet!’ everyone shouted.

  The toilet was a small, round building separate from everything else. While we were arguing, I saw another car swoop up to the petrol pumps. When I went into the toilet, the guy from the other car came in as well. He looked totally weird.

  He was grey, rather than pink or brown or yellow or black. His head had a kind of tuft sprouting out the middle of it, so it looked like an onion. Were my eyes going bad? It must have been the boredom of all that back-seat driving that made me see this virtual reality of a grey thing, with an onion head. I took deep breaths, shut my eyes, rubbed them until I saw great red-and-black patterns, then I opened them slowly and the grey thing had disappeared.

  Weird. I hadn’t heard the door open and close. And weirder, I was sure this was the thing that had been watching me. When I climbed back into the car, Sis grinned at me with unusually bright eyes. ‘Did you notice that alien who just came out of the toilet?’ she asked.

  Alien? The trick with Sis is to never let on that you heard her.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  2

  Even though Aunt Mildew was married, her house was the same as it always had been. That means it was full of fur balls. They were clumped under the beds and in the corners. One of these fur balls was living: her dog called Bloat. He farted all the time. He had watery, yellow eyes that swivelled as though he was trying to look inside his own smelly ears.

  Her cooking was the same, too. We arrived at dinner-time and had to eat ‘greens’. That first night they were giant leaves called silver beet, even though they weren’t silver. I wasn’t allowed to leave the table without eating the slimy pile all up.

  Purple Nose was trying to be nice. He asked me what my favourite vegetable was. ‘Tomato sauce,’ I said.

  I stuffed the silver beet into my sleeve and wiped the dribbles on the edge of my plate. After dinner, Mildew and Mum discussed TV cooking shows. Dad and Purple Nose went to the garden shed to discuss compost.

  I knocked on Sis’s door and we ended up talking. I told her about the feeling I had about being watched. I told her about the man at the service station.

  ‘I think he’s an onion-headed alien.’

  All she said was ‘Ha, ha. Expect me to believe that?’ and ‘Sounds as though you haven’t eaten enough greens.’

  I shuffled into my cold bedroom where there were only two thin blankets smelling of Bloat and mothballs, and no warm duvet.

  I buried my head under the smelly blankets. Soon I heard the stairs creak and footsteps come along the hallway.

  They stopped outside my door. My heart stopped. The door creaked open. I screamed and leapt up.

  ‘Don’t play those silly tricks of yours on me, boy,’ said Aunt Mildew, who was standing over me with a cup of horrible warm tea. ‘I’m watching you.’

  My heart started again in top gear. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  ‘Stop this nonsense!’ she bellowed. ‘I just came to say goodnight to you.’

  ‘Sorry, Aunt. I thought you were an onion-headed alien.’

  What did I get for my honesty? Sympathy? Understanding? Nah. She shouted at me. ‘We are not taken in by your tricks any more, young man.’

  I tried to explain it wasn’t a trick. She didn’t listen. She plonked the tea down and strode to the doorway, picking up my jersey on the way.

  ‘Disgusting behaviour,’ she said, pulling out all the silver beet. She turned out the light. ‘Remember, I’m watching you.’

  This was amazing. She must be able to see in the dark.

  In bed, under the thin blankets, I forced myself to think of tricks so my mind would stop worrying about The Watcher. But I couldn’t think of any tricks to brighten up the week. Was I losing my touch? Since the onion-headed alien’s appearance, I hadn’t thought up any new tricks. My mind was scrambled. It felt like a beehive having a revolution up there between my ears. Buzz buzz buzz. Chaos. Maybe I was going loony.

  I slept for a while, but then something woke me up. I lay there, listening, trying to grow my ears so they could hear everything. They heard:

  owls, my own heartbeat, wind in the trees, some skittering and a breathing noise across the roof.

  I told myself that the last noise was possums, or cats, or maybe Father Christmas doing out-of-season courier deliveries, but it was not an onion-headed alien or The Watcher.

  No use. I was so tense by now I thought I had a rod through one ear and out the other. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I opened my eyes. The glare startled me. Spaceship floodlight? Hand-held torch? Then long, black hands and arms seemed to wave at me.

  I shot out of bed prepared to fight whatever unknown was out there.

  It turned out to be the moon shining through branches that waved in the wind. The shock had woken me up so much I couldn’t go back to bed. My blankets and sheets were screwed into a lump, lying on the floor by my feet.

  I got dressed in the darkest clothes I had, and crept downstairs and out the back door.

  The garden at Aunt Mildew’s was all silver and black with moonlight and shadows. The clouds and the shadows of clouds, and the tree branches and the shadows of tree branches were whirling across the silver ground and the silver sky, so it was hard to know which way was up. I began to feel dizzy.

  I bent over to
make the blood slop into my head. While I was bent over, I noticed my shadow on the grass. But it wasn’t like an ordinary shadow. It had a glow of blue light around it, like a flame. I whirled around just in time to see a long, blue flash. It rose into a curve right behind me, arced over the hedge and disappeared into next-door’s garden. It was like a firework, except it made no sound. No sound at all.

  I just stood there. No brain activity. No body activity. I was zapped. Stunned. Then I gradually came to my senses. I banged myself on the head to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Ouch! The crashed beehive was still there.

  I shook my legs one at a time. They worked. I walked towards the hedge the silent firework had gone over. I parted the branches.

  Ouch! I jumped. My heart stabbed me from the inside. Something stabbed me on the outside. It was a thorn. The hedge was prickly as.

  I carefully bent the branches apart and peered through.

  In the moonlight the neighbour’s lawn was just racing black clouds, shadows and branch shadows. Just like Aunt Mildew’s. I stepped back and banged my head again—this time on the wall of the garden shed. I put my head in my hands. I had a humungous headache. I wanted someone to come and rescue me. A television reporter would be best.

  I stayed there a long time in the pitch dark. Then I heard a whirring sound. I looked up and I thought I saw a series of small, round lights glide past in the road. But I was concussed. I might have been imagining it. Whatever it was, it made me feel uneasy.

  Was I going insane? What if I couldn’t trust what I saw any more? There were lots of loonies in the world, and I reckoned most of them weren’t loony when they were babies. They must have all had a day when they first realized they were becoming loony. I went prickly all over with fear.