You Can't Have My Planet

by James Mihaley

It was such a bummer. But I didn’t have time to worry about it because the rats were coming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THEY POURED OUT of holes in the wall. They wriggled out of cracks in the floor. They were authentic New York City sewer rats. That didn’t make me feel any better. These rodents made robot rats look like gerbils.

  I took off running. Should I unshrink myself? The rats wouldn’t mess with me then. But if I was big the gatorantula could spot me easily. It was right behind the rats, scuttling through the sewer. I didn’t know what to do.

  Big hungry sewer rats can make you feel confused. I splashed through the muck. I dashed down a slimy tunnel.

  I came to a place where three tunnels met. I paused for a moment, trying to decide which way to go. A rat pounced. It had me by the wrist. My life was over. Dead at thirteen. Man, did that ever suck. What sucked even more was that I would never get a chance to apologize to Tula.

  I’d never get that kiss.

  I had to get that kiss.

  I fought and screamed and wriggled and writhed while it gnawed off my hand. Why wasn’t this hurting? How can you lose a hand and not be in agony? As I stared down at its frothing fangs, I realized that they hadn’t punctured my skin. Instead, they were biting off the S/U. The gadget was made out of some alien plastic which the rat had a hard time severing. If it hadn’t been for the S/U, I would’ve been dead. The rat kept working on it. When it finally fell off my wrist, I threw it at the rat and took off running.

  The only problem with losing my S/U was that I was stuck being miniature.

  I ducked into a rat hole. They were all out looking for me, leaving their den empty. I followed a passage littered with bones and feathers. Everywhere you looked there were bones and feathers.

  Those poor pigeons.

  I fled deeper into the hole, finally emerging into a long passageway.

  A rat crawled out from underneath a rusty bucket. I darted in the other direction, panting, sweating, trying to catch my breath, trying to keep running even though my feet were blistered.

  I came to a towering oval door that looked as if it hadn’t been opened for centuries. I was about to slide underneath it. I stopped. Rats were on the other side, coming for me, squeezing underneath, ready for dinner, for Giles-sushi, for a spicy Giles roll. Do you get miso soup with a spicy Giles roll? Why was I thinking about sushi at a time like this? I was going insane, that’s why. Death will do that.

  Suddenly a voice whispered from the top of the door. “Quick. Climb up.”

  A tiny rope ladder came spilling down. I climbed it frantically. It led to a keyhole in the door. It was an old-fashioned keyhole, the kind that a skeleton key would fit.

  A teeny-weeny wiry hand pulled me into the keyhole and yanked up the rope ladder just as Heads-or-Tails flew down the passageway in the bat cruiser.

  “You’re safe now,” said a gentle voice.

  There was a miniature apartment inside the keyhole, a table and chairs and a couch set up in between the cogs and springs and levers in the door lock. It was cramped but cozy.

  An alien smiled at me. Made out of tubes and wires, he was even smaller than me in my shrunken state.

  “Who are you?” I asked, still panting.

  “We’re Keyholians,” he said. “We migrated to Earth two thousand years ago after our planet became uninhabitable.”

  A gatorantula and Keyholians. Just another day in the life of me, Giles.

  A lady alien stepped out from behind a bolt in the door lock. “Welcome, Giles.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Everyone knows who you are,” she said. “The fate of the planet rests on your shoulders.”

  A girl Keyholian glided into the room on a skateboard made from a half a toothpick.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m Key-wee.” She sniffed me and turned to her mother. “He stinks, Mommy. And he’s ugly.”

  “Now that will be enough of that,” snapped her father.

  Key-wee sailed away on her skateboard. I wasn’t sad to see her go.

  Mrs. Keyholian took off my shoes and gently rubbed an ointment all over my aching feet. It smelled like peppermint and jasmine. My blisters disappeared.

  “My flyplane got eaten by a gatorantula,” I muttered. “I need to rescue it. I have to get out of here. You don’t understand. We’re running out of time. I only have until midnight. I’m going to wake up tomorrow on Desoleen. I don’t have a second to waste. I’ve already wasted an hour and a half down here.”

  I came to the conclusion, right then and there, that my specialty in life was wasting time.

  (Hey, reader, do you have too much time on your hands? Give it to me. I’ll waste it for you. Just stuff it in a manila envelope and send it to The Big Chocolate Eyeball, New York, New York.)

  “I’m afraid you’ll need your lawyer’s help to defeat the munyateeka, Giles,” said Mr. Keyholian.

  He knew I wasn’t a superhero. I didn’t blame him. I was just a kid with some gadgets. That’s all. Real fancy gadgets. Extremely fancy gadgets. I kept telling myself that. Whenever the superhero thing popped into my head, I said it. I was just a kid with some gadgets. A kid who can’t concentrate. A kid like that can’t be a superhero. No way. I kept saying it. I didn’t exactly believe it, but I kept saying it.

  “Do you have a way of reaching Tula?” I asked Mr. Keyholian.

  Opening a drawer, he pulled out what looked like a cross between an old typewriter, an accordion and an eight-track tape player. It had a rinky-dink set of antennae planted on top.

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “What’s that thing? You guys are aliens. Aren’t you supposed to be more high-tech?”

  “We don’t believe in technology,” said Mrs. Keyholian. “It destroyed our planet. We had the most advanced civilization of all. But it didn’t stop us from poisoning the soil, polluting the air and contaminating every keyhole.”

  “I’ll send a message to the Keyholian who resides in your apartment,” said Mr. Keyholian. “He will let Tula know where you are.”

  “We have Keyholians in our apartment?” I said.

  “Yes, there’s one in your front door. His name is Mitchell. He’s a bachelor.”

  “Only a bachelor could fit in your keyhole,” said Mrs. Keyholian.

  “You have a new lock on your front door,” her husband said, slamming an eight-track tape into the tape-player part of the contraption and pressing the play button. “It’s extremely small.”

  “Modern locksmiths have no consideration for Keyholians whatsoever,” added his wife.

  The message sender began to hum loudly. Mr. Keyholian turned down the volume and tugged on his wiry beard. “We moved down here because this keyhole has more space. We didn’t want to live down below. But we needed a larger apartment.”

  “Grandma lives with us,” chirped Key-wee, plopping down on the couch.

  She drew my attention to a little loft above the lock mechanism. Grandma Keyholian was sitting up in bed, knitting a quilt. In a wiry sort of way she reminded me of my grandmother. She smiled at me but didn’t say a word.

  While Mr. Keyholian squeezed the accordion part of the message sender, I peered out of the keyhole to see what was going on. By moving from one side of the apartment to the other, I could see out both sides of the door. Both views were pretty miserable. One side was swarming with rats. On the other side, the munyateeka scuttled around while Heads-or-Tails patrolled in his bat cruiser. He landed alongside the spider monster, climbed out and bounced on his pogo-stick tail to a hologram of the princess, which had appeared on the wall.

  She snarled. “Find him, you idiot.”

  “Maybe the rats got him,” said the boar without a body.

  “He’s still alive,” hissed the Princess. “I can feel it in my bones.” She growled at the boar. “If you don’t find him, I’ll strip you of all your groupie privileges.”

  “No! Not that!” squealed the pig. “Anything but that.” He h
opped back in his spacecraft and kept searching.

  I sat down on the couch alongside Mrs. Keyholian, tapping my hands on a table, my feet on the floor. I was antsy. All this waiting was killing me. I had a city to clean, a planet to save. It was 7:59 p.m. I had to get moving. I had to get back to my team. Only maybe they didn’t want me back. And who could blame them?

  Key-wee whipped out a paper bag and started munching on some candy.

  Her mother frowned. “Dear, it’s bad manners not to share with our guest.”

  Key-wee reluctantly tossed me a piece.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A candy key,” said the girl. “They’re delicious.”

  I took a bite. It almost cracked my tooth. “That’s OK. I’m not hungry right now.” I stuck it in my pocket. “I’ll save it for later.”

  “Good idea,” said Mrs. Keyholian.

  “Remember this, Giles,” said Mr. Keyholian. “If a door can’t be unlocked, try the keyhole inside the keyhole.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. I was hardly listening. All I could think about was the cement wasteland and the hairy cages and my flyplane trapped inside the munyateeka’s belly. When you have a cutting edge vehicle and it gets taken away from you, it’s a major drag.

  Mr. Keyholian kept on squeezing and typing and huffing and puffing on the old-school message sender. The darn thing must’ve worked because five minutes later Tula showed up.

  “Welcome, Tula,” said Mr. and Mrs. Keyholian in unison.

  “Thank you, Keyholians.” Tula gave me a big hug. “Giles, I was so worried about you.”

  I never had a cute girl worried about me before. It was so cool!

  Then my heart sank. “DubDub got eaten by a munyateeka.”

  “Not for long.” Tula grabbed her suitcase. She paused. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot. You don’t want my help. You want to do it all by yourself. I’ll just leave you here. Bye, Giles.” She pressed the button on her briefcase and disappeared.

  “Wait,” I screamed. “Tula, come back.”

  She popped out from behind the lock mechanism, grinning. “Just kidding.”

  “Ha-ha. She got you,” said Key-wee, laughing in my face. “Ha-ha.”

  I felt like throwing my candy key at her head.

  “Listen, Tula,” I said. “I’m really sorry about what I said before.”

  “It’s OK, Giles. I forgive you.”

  When a sky girl forgives you, it’s a great feeling.

  Tula turned to the Keyholians. “Thank you for everything.”

  Mr. Keyholian bowed.

  “Hey Giles.” It was the Keyhole Grandma, speaking for the first time.

  I walked over by the little loft and peered up. “Yes?”

  She smiled down at me. “Stewarding means ‘to take care of something.’”

  “Oh,” I said. “Is that what it means?”

  As soon as we climbed down the rope ladder, Tula handed me a brand-new S/U and I returned us to our normal size.

  The bat cruiser swooped down on Tula, laser blazing. She deflected the deadly beam with her briefcase. It ricocheted off the wall and blew up the bat cruiser.

  Heads-or-Tails ejected himself before being incinerated. He tried to flee on his pogo stick but Tula threw open her briefcase and the squealing pig got sucked into it.

  Chuckling, she let me peer inside the briefcase. His head was mounted on the wall of her office.

  “You can’t mount me on your wall,” he protested. “I’m not dead.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Tula said.

  The boar shut up.

  She calmly closed the briefcase and turned her attention to the munyateeka. Without taking her eyes off it, she reached down and removed the word kindness from the side of her briefcase. (It was part of her law firm’s motto, remember?) When the monster tried to whip her with its gnarly tail, she nimbly stepped aside and tossed the word into its mouth. The monster swallowed the word kindness and began to choke. It gagged. It wheezed. It finally spat it out.

  The word kindness somersaulted through the air back onto Tula’s briefcase. The gatorantula’s indigestion problem wasn’t finished yet. It spat out everything else in its stomach, which included half a dozen rats and a pair of orange aliens who looked like twins.

  “I sure do appreciate that,” said the male twin, straightening his top hat, wiping the gatorantula gunk off his tuxedo.

  “Can you please give us the coordinates of the nearest intergalactic transport?” said the female twin, wiping the gunk off her satin dress. “We have to get back to the ball.”

  “Go down that passageway for a mile and a half and make a left,” Tula said.

  “Thank you.”

  They wandered off.

  The gatorantula let out a deep, deafening reptilian screech of agony. Something was still lodged in its throat. Stomach heaving, hairy legs wobbling, it burped and the final thing came spewing out. It was DubDub!

  The flyplane flew in merry circles around my head, landing on my shoulder.

  “Let’s get going, Giles,” Tula said. “We still have a city to clean.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “Are you calm and focused? Because I don’t feel like landing in a chicken coop again.”

  “Yes, Giles. I’m calm and focused.”

  “Good. At least one of us is. I’m totally freaking out.”

  She pressed the button on her briefcase, and we disappeared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS 8:31P.M. We had three hours and twenty-nine minutes to finish cleaning Manhattan. We were all gathered in the living room, going over our last-minute strategy.

  “OK,” Bobby said, pacing back and forth. “We lost some time. But we can still pull this off. We just need to stay focused.”

  For me, that was harder than fighting off a munyateeka.

  “I’m going to perform a magic spell so we all stay focused.” Nikki closed her eyes and waved her hands in the air. “HOCUS FOCUS!”

  I shared the couch with an octopus cloudfish, tentacles resting on my shoulders. Toshi hung out on the floor with Stanley and Big Daddy.

  Tula left for half an hour. She got summoned to the Halls of Universal Justice on urgent business again. Maybe that was a good thing. Then she wouldn’t see me mess up.

  “How much more paper do the droids need to collect?” Toshi asked. “I can’t wait to see them turn into trees.”

  “I’ll go check on their numbers,” Bobby said, hurrying down the hall into command and control.

  While he was gone, the doorbell rang.

  Toshi herded Stanley and the cloudfish into the kitchen. I answered the door.

  It was the super.

  “Listen, we’re really busy right now,” I told him.

  “Hold your horses. I got something for your sister.” He pulled a violin out of a sack. “I found it in a junkyard.” He handed it to Nikki. “I might be willing to sell it.” He rubbed his hands together greedily. “For the right price.”

  Nikki examined the violin. “Wow! It’s a Stradivarius.”

  “What’s that?” asked the super.

  Nikki’s mouth hit the floor. “You don’t know what a Stradivarius is?”

  Even I knew what a Stradivarius was. The Rolls-Royce of violins. The supreme musical instrument.

  “Never heard of it,” said the super.

  “Um … it’s the Walmart brand,” Nikki said.

  “Walmart makes violins?”

  “Yep. They’re called Stradivarius.”

  “All right then. Give me five bucks for it.”

  “Five bucks for a Stradivarius?” I said. “That’s a rip-off.”

  The super scratched his head. “All right. Three bucks. But I ain’t going any lower than that.”

  “It’s a deal.” Nikki ran off and came back with three bucks.

  The super handed her the violin, snatched the money and took off.

  Boy, was it ever fun to rip off the super.

 
“I’m going to play The Music of the Spheres with a Stradivarius,” Nikki said, running into her bedroom. “There’s no way we can fail the test now.”

  I needed fuel, so I made myself a grilled cheese.

  Just as I was about to take a bite, Bobby hollered, “GILES, GET IN HERE!”

  I raced into command and control. Bobby grimaced at an image on the ceiling. It was the super, up on the roof of our building. He was … he was peeling off his skin, removing it like a pair of pajamas. It wasn’t the super. It was Jerry, boarding his spaceship.

  “NIKKI,” I yelled, running into her room. “DON’T PLAY THAT VIOLIN!”

  It was too late. Her bow was already moving along the strings.

  I grabbed the violin from her.

  “Giles, what are you doing?” she said.

  Toshi burst into the bedroom. “Giles, Big Daddy just collapsed.”

  In the living room, Big Daddy crawled along the floor, wheezing like a dying man. “Big Daddy doesn’t feel so well,” he groaned.

  A minute later, in command and control, we watched one thousand droids collapse, one by one, onto the sidewalk.

  “What’s going on?” Nikki said.

  “This isn’t a Stradivarius,” I told her.

  “No, it’s not,” Tula said, striding into the room, taking the violin from me.

  “Then what is it?” Nikki said.

  “It’s a Destructivarius,” Tula said.

  She hurled it against the wall. It smashed into dozens of pieces. Each piece turned into a scorpion. Nikki screamed. The scorpions had wings. They fluttered around the room like dragonflies, flying in formation in the shape of a violin. They poured out the window into the darkness.

  “The sound it creates is deadly black magic,” Tula said. “It alone can neutralize the healing power of The Music of the Spheres.”

  “And I just played a solo with it,” Nikki said.

  “Look,” Bobby said.

  Gruesome images flashed across the ceiling. A witch was playing the trumpet on top of the Plaza Hotel. An ogre banged a gong in the Meatpacking District. Ghoulish creatures were playing musical instruments all over Manhattan.

  “Who are they?” asked Toshi.

  “The Orchestra of Doom,” Tula said. “The princess must’ve hired them.”