by Susan Berran
Just when we thought we could breathe again, the guinea pigs came scurrying back into the kitchen. They stood by the drawers and then one jumped up onto the other one’s back and pulled out the bottom drawer. They clambered onto its ledge and then did the same thing to pull out the next drawer … and the next … and the next. Until they got all the way up onto the bench top. Then working like some well-oiled CIRCUS acrobatic team, they went to work making … coffee … with Aunty Ree’s new coffee machine! They were rolling about, doing cartwheels and flipping over each other. Zipping around, grinding the coffee beans, getting the cups and steaming the milk. One poured the coffee and then in went the froth. One even dashed off and came back with a little container of chocolate to sprinkle on top. It was then passed down, drawer by drawer and delivered to … Fluff Butt! Wow, no wonder she’s bouncing about the place like she’s on drugs. Mel’s dog isn’t just an annoying poopy dog, she drinks coffee! For the next few hours they partied on. Cats were sharing Coke with birds; dogs were sharing Cheezels with guinea pigs. The poodle was splayed out on the lounge watching the fashion channel, a rat and a hamster were swimming in the salad bowl and there was a goose playing Sudoku.
What was this? Was this all part of their grand plan, or just the ‘BEFORE WE TAKE OVER THE WORLD’ party?
I was starting to wonder if Jared and I would be pressed up face-to-face against each other all night. We’d been standing in there for so long that Jared’s legs had gone numb. And I dunno what he’d eaten, but the smell … peewww! No wonder our door was peed on. If I could have stuck my head into a bag of cow manure it would have been a big improvement, a big, big, big improvement. But then, right in the middle of the fish doing limbo in their bowl and the cat doing a magic act; cutting off the lizard’s tail … the music stopped. Fluff Butt started yapping out more orders and suddenly everything was very serious. All the animals huddled around the coffee table.
There was chattering and clicking, meowing and tweeting, and even bubbles floated skyward from the fishbowl.
They seemed to be discussing something very important. It had to be their grand plan. Maybe they were hoping to get us into enough TROUBLE so that they could kidnap us to use as slaves back on their ALIEN home planet, and our parents would just think we’d run away. Or maybe they wanted us to run away so that they could replace us and take over the world.
They were making so much noise that it sounded like I’d stuffed my head into a speaker box at a HEAVY METAL rock concert. But with the slam of a paw on the table, the house fell silent. As the pets began to part, I saw Fluff Butt pick up a piece of paper in her mouth. She slobbered and chewed it up before popping her head around the corner of the kitchen and dropping it into the bin. Suddenly the place was a hive of activity again, but not a party. No, now they were dashing about the place and cleaning up! Mademoiselle poopy Poodle was using the hamster to wipe down the lounge suite. The galah and budgies were flapping fur and feathers off the furniture while the lizard seemed to be zooming around vacuuming up any crumbs it could find, straight into its mouth. Meanwhile, the cats were doing the washing up and the guinea pigs were sliding all over the dishes like some freaky rap dancers to dry them. As soon as the dishes were all put away, the cats were given a final spin across the kitchen floor on their back. But as they all continued to chatter to each other, we noticed their voices were becoming fainter and fainter. Then with the click of the front door key, they were gone.
BANG!! Crash!! SLAM!
FINALLY!
We pushed against the closet door and fell to the ground like two sticky lollipops stuck together. We were in AGONY. Jared landed smack right on top of me. Which I didn’t mind so much until I saw the build up of phlegm and saliva.
It’d been building it up for the last couple of hours because he hadn’t been able to even sniffle and now it was escaping from the corner of his mouth, of course gravity was taking care of the rest. Needless to say, it was coming my way really fast. The greeny-yellowish liquid was like a yoyo of slime and stretched out like a bite of that really stretchy, runny cheese that you get on a pizza.
“Oh yukkk!!” I blurted out as I gave Jared an almighty shove to get him off me. I rolled away so suddenly and fast that I smacked my nose on the corner of the cupboards. Jared went the other way, bowling over some bottles and stopping with his head against the garbage bin flat on his back.
I could feel something warm and runny under my nose …
… eewww eewww eewww!!
I’d been PHLEGMED! I grabbed the bottom of my T-shirt and pulled it up to my face to wipe away the gross disgusting stuff. Phew! It wasn’t Jared’s phlegm; it was just my own BLOOD! I turned over and looked across to Jared, who was about to have a problem of his own. The bin was teetering on its corner; it was falling … no, standing … falling … no, standing … ERRR YUK! It fell. Jared was blanketed with rubbish. His head was covered with mouldy garbage and there was food goop flowing down through his hair and into his ears.
“Hang on … that’s good rubbish!” I informed Jared.
“I’m so happy for you and your Aunty,” he said in a sarcastic tone.
“No … I mean that’s real y great rubbish in the bin,” I repeated.
“Yippee!” said Jared, beginning to get snotty as some soggy brown lettuce slid down his cheek and dropped to the floor.
“Look around you idiot!” There it was, that light bulb moment when Jared finally got it. Watching Jared sit up in the garbage was like watching one of those really OLD HORROR movies where the zombie slowly breaks free from its coffin. With old tatty clothes and the face all yucky with skin peeling off and covered in maggots. But as Jared sat up, his clothes just looked really TATTY because they were covered in food scraps and packaging. His face had bits of food sliding off and looked like it was covered in maggots because it was covered in … well … maggots.
He was up and out of that pile with his face shoved under the tap, splashing water, all about in a second flat. When he finally calmed down we started to go through the rubbish. There were juice boxes, milk cartons, all sorts of bikkie wrappers, chip packets and lolly wrappers. You name it, it was there. Aunty Ree did have all the best stuff. So unless the Queen of Bulravia had stopped by, the pets must have been there before, apart from today, so they must have eaten it!
We started to pick up the rubbish and shove it back into the bin when I noticed something. One screwed-up soggy piece of paper with what looked like a paw print on it. I laid it out on the floor and carefully squeegeed out as much as I could of the food and drink juices. It was part of a map. There were a few trees and a house with a road out the front of it. But we had no idea where it was supposed to be. But this must’ve been what Fluff Butt had tossed in the bin.
We needed to find the rest of it.
I grabbed the bin and upended it to pour out the last of the rubbish onto the kitchen floor. A few bits were stuck right on the bottom with the prune juice. So I got Jared to reach in and grab the soaked, sticky bits. I figured since he was already covered in yucky stuff he may as well get it. And there was no way I was going to stick my arm down there, it was way too gross. Anyway; we got down on our hands and knees and started to pick piece by piece through the garbage. We had to uncrumple every chip packet, every lolly wrapper and every other little bit of garbage. Each piece that we found had to have the leftover food, maggots and drink juices carefully squeegeed off them. It took forever, but finally we had all the pieces of the map. We peeled them up from the sticky floor and laid them on the table to study.
“Hey … is that the school?” Jared piped up, spitting a bit of old fruit out.
“Yeah, I think so … and I think that’s your place,” I said as we studied the gloopy, sticky map further.
“And that’s Crabby Abbey’s … and Dopey Sophie’s … and Booga Boris’s … and …” Jared was on a roll.
“I get it, I get it Jared!!”
“So where do you think it is?” Jared asked seriously.
“It can’t be …” Jared spat, “we don’t have a sewage works over there,”he said pointing at a yellowy-brown area on the map.
“That’s chocolate Jared!” I said.
Jared immediately swiped a finger through the brown slimy patch and stuck it all the way into his mouth …
“Eerrrr!!! ” ppttt! ppttt! ppttt …“ No it’s not!!” he whinged and at the same time, he frantically began scraping and wiping his tongue off with his T-shirt.
“Oops, maybe it’s Uncle Karl’s ear medicine, they look really similar … sorry.” There were no words on the map at all, no words, no explanation. So now we just had to figure out what it all meant. Every single house, the church, the school, the pub, even the general store was drawn on the map. But Crabby Abbey’s house, the store and the pub had a paw print on them with a tiny letter inside each one. So did Mrs Duckson’s, Booga Boris’s and a heap of the other houses, including Jared’s place and Aunty Ree’s. Strangely though, Aunty Ree’s, Booga’s and Toffee’s had the paw print scratched out. There was three scratches right through the paper and right across each paw print. Weird!
Boy, the snot was going to hit the fan when Aunty Ree and Uncle Karl got back home and found that all their food was gone. But this time the goats wouldn’t get the blame and I wanted to make sure that we didn’t either. So we needed to get out of there and back to Jared’s place FAST! Jared started shoving the garbage back into the bin and I stuck the map together again as best as I could.
“C’mon Jared, let’s get out of here,” I called as I headed out the kitchen door.
“Yeah, yeah … crunch, crunch … hang on a sec’y. I found some Twisties left in the bottom of a packet and a couple of chocolate-coated bikkies with only the chocky coating sucked off.”
I instantly stopped and took a backward step returning to the kitchen … yes, you heard it right … it was from the garbage. “Yuck … that’s so gross!” I said, in total stomach-churning disgust.
“I kept some for you,” Jared said, looking quite pleased with himself.
“Oh … well that’s OK then,” I replied shoving a few into my mouth. They were actually pretty good.
There had to be a pattern, a clue.
We were awake most of that night. Staring at the map, trying to unravel its secret. Waiting for a giant hammer to leap right out of the ink and WOP us on the head. Or a great bolt of lightning to shoot out and strike our brains from somewhere far above.There were paw prints on heaps of the houses. They had to be targets, but why scratch them out? Did they suddenly feel sorry for the people in those ones? Did they find out that the people living in those places weren’t smart enough to be slaves back on their home planet? Maybe those houses just didn’t have the right type of kitty litter. “Ah ha!!” Jared suddenly yelled.
“What, do you know what it means?” I said hopefully, springing to my feet.
“Nah … I’ve just always really wanted to say that,” he said with a dumb grin.
We spent hours making diagrams and charts. We made lists of every different thing we could think of. But nothing seemed to make sense. What did the store, the pub, Aunty Ree’s, Jared’s place, Crabby’s, Booga’s, Toffee’s, Mrs Duckson’s and a bunch of others have in common? And why not the church, the school, my place, Miss Croonarc’s, Itchy’s and others? And what did the letters symbolize?
The only thing that made any sense was that whatever it was they were doing, was definitely already done … maybe. Or maybe not going to be done at all at the ones that were paw printed and then scratched out … definitely. Or possibly, whatever was being not done had been done at the ones that are paw printed and not scratched out yet. Maybe it was to throw us off the track, and maybe whatever it is that they’re going to do, or already have done, is at the places not marked at all!
Yep, it was as clear as a blocked sewer pipe after everyone flushes at the same time. So now we just had to find out what they had already done … or not done … at Booga’s, Aunty Ree’s and Toffee’s … SIMPLE! We’d been there the whole time the pets were at Aunty Ree’s eating her and Uncle Karl out of food. Maybe while the party was going on, Fluff Butt and some of the other animals had been building something … a transmitter to contact their home planet … a brain-controlling device … a weapon of MASS DESTRUCTION!!
We needed to get back in there!
Before the sun rose the next morning, we were back at Aunty Ree’s. Creeping up on the house through the long, dry, itchy grass. We had to be certain the pets weren’t back in there. We crept closer and closer, inching along on our bellies. Once we were halfway along the driveway, I convinced Jared to go ahead and peek through the doors and windows.
“Don’t worry Jared, I’ll keep watch.”
“Wow thanks Sam, you’re a great mate,” he said, almost making me feel guilty. I watched as he jumped up … sprinted a few metres … dived into the dirt and gravel … rolled … looked back at me … and started all over again. This went on for the next hour. All the way up the drive and then all the way around the house. Finally he was done. “All clear!” he yelled, waking me up. His body looked like someone had used a cheese grater on him. I reckon you could’ve made a suit-case with all the skin he’d lost.
OK, so all we had to do was very carefully search my Auntie and Uncle’s place, quickly … in and out … easy. They’d never even know that we’d been in there … apart from every scrap of food and drink being gone. And of course the coffee stain rings on the tables, not to forget that the guinea pigs had used her coffee machine. Those little piggies didn’t know it, but if Aunty Ree caught them, they’d be pressed FLAT and turned into soft, fluffy toilet paper. We had absolutely NO IDEA what we were looking for so we just decided to start by looking for any suspicious thingamajig. I headed for the office upstairs while Jared checked around the bedrooms downstairs. Where would you hide something to send messages into outer space with? Hmm, the telephone!
Taking my one-of-a-kind awesome Bulravian Spy Pocket nife with seventy-three attachments and a hundred-and-one uses out of my utility belt, I flicked open to the tool set. Ever so gently, I opened the back of the handset … nothing. It had to be in the phone base. I carefully unscrewed each screw and opened it up. Wow, there were a lot of wires and tiny bits in there. Now I just had to gently lift it out, very slowly . . . careful… “Sam!!” yelled Jared as he poked his head around the corner.
CRACK SMASH . . . TINK TINK TINK
“Oohhh crap!!” Bits of phone guts flipped into the air and bounced all over the floor. Breaking into even tinsier bits than they already were. GREAT!
“What?!!” I yelled at Jared annoyed.
“We’re having a barbecue for tea tonight.”
“What has that got to do with any of this?” I replied loudly.
“I just thought you’d like to know,” Jared said innocently.
I managed to stay very calm, even though I really wanted to … you know how when you go to the park and sit on a swing. But instead of swinging you start to twist around and around and around until you can’t twist the swing anymore … then you lift your feet off the ground and the swing unwinds at a hundred-miles an hour. Then the sudden stop at the end just about flicks your head right off your shoulders… . yeah; now just imagine Jared as the SWING.
Well I guessed one broken phone wasn’t too bad.
We headed downstairs, all the time going through what we had heard and seen on their ‘party’ day. We hadn’t heard them go upstairs … so whatever we were looking for had to be downstairs … right? Scanning the lounge room we could see that there weren’t too many places they could’ve hidden something. Maybe the television; since the last one had been broken by the ‘goats’, Uncle Karl had bought an even BIGGER one. It was plasma and so huge that you had to turn your head to look from one side to the other. The TV was mou
nted up on the wall above Uncle Karl’s other gear. We figured there was no way the pets could have got the TV down and neither could we. So there couldn’t be anything hidden in there. The stereo … yeah, that made sense, it had an amplifier attached.
Uncle Karl loved his HIGH TECH gear. Anything computerized and digital, he just had to have. Of course it couldn’t be just any old ¢heapy.
No, it had to be top of the range, all matching and cost a fortune. Mum always says that Uncle Karl’s got more money than hair on his head.
He had the HD set-top box, the DVD/CD player, the digital DVD/video recorder, the pre-tuned computerized amplifier set to play different levels to different rooms, the latest digital readout and thermostatically controlled computerized airflow controller for the entire house … and the stereo. Which was of course at the very bottom.
Very gently we lifted out each unit and stacked them on top of each other on the floor. That way we couldn’t stuff up putting them back in. Finally we came to the stereo. Jared lifted it out of the shelf and held it in both hands for me to unscrew the casing. Each tiny screw dropped into the palm of my hand so I wouldn’t lose them. The last one fell into my hand and I turned to place them down on the coffee table when Jared asked … “Do I just gently pull the sides apart to unclip it, like thi …”