I'm Telling You, They're Aliens!

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘Shut up!’

  Mrs Zewlinsky’s eyes widened. ‘Then all this equipment here… it’s all stolen.’ Still Mr Vork didn’t answer, and Marsha’s mother moved towards the door. ‘I’m going to call the police.’ Mr Vork blocked her way.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Shut up and sit down.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ whined Mrs Vork.

  ‘We’ll have to move on,’ snapped her husband, ‘like we did last time. But first of all we will have to fix this lot.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ cried Marsha’s mum. ‘Let us through.’ She tried to get past, but Mr Vork gave her such a shove that she stumbled back across the room and collapsed into an armchair.

  Marsha launched herself at Mr Vork, which would have been brave and wonderful if she hadn’t done her usual party piece, and tripped over her own gangly legs. She fell at his feet and ended up beating her fists on his knees rather than his chest.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch my mother!’

  Mr Vork laughed. It was horrible. It was the laugh of the Killer King from Krarrg. He was a very scary person giving off incredibly menacing vibes. I could almost see them shimmering round his hulk, like in some horror movie. His eyes looked as if a million volts of electricity were charging through them. This wasn’t like Norman’s little red doot-doot-doots. This was mega-phaser stuff: Pyowww-pyowww-pyowww-pyowww. I thought he was going to turn into an alien right there on the front room carpet. Except of course he wasn’t an alien, as we now knew, to our cost.

  I have to admit, I was impressed by Marsha’s attack on Mr Vork. It was pretty brave.

  ‘You can’t keep us prisoners for ever,’ I said, ‘just because we know you’ve been thieving all over the place. How long are you going to hold us here?’

  ‘Shut it! I’ve had it up to here with you lot. Norman, you start taking the stuff out to the truck. It’s round the back. Anyone makes a wrong move and that’s it. You lot know too much for your own good.’

  ‘What are you going to do with us?’ asked Mrs Zewlinsky in a tired voice.

  Mr Vork curled his lip. ‘I’ll think of something.’

  Norman and his mother began carting TVs and computers out through the back of the house, while Mr Vork watched over us. At one point he told Norman to fetch the stuff from upstairs and several minutes later Norman came clumping back down, struggling under the weight of, guess what?

  An alien.

  There it was, and I mean, THERE IT WAS, in Norman’s scraggy arms. Three legs, tentacles, poisonous frills – the whole lot.

  You know what it was? A giant pot plant. It was some kind of big frilly green thing, stuck in a pointed pot that rested on a metal stand with three legs.

  I think that was the lowest point I’d ever reached in my life. I just wanted to hide for a hundred years. Marsha and I glanced at each other and then quickly turned away I don’t know which of us felt the more embarrassed.

  Silence descended. It was like waiting for the end of the day at school. You know how it almost gets to home-time and then the classroom clock seems to stop altogether? Time doesn’t move forward at all, and you’re waiting and waiting…

  And then the window burst into a million fragments of glass and a man came hurtling through and landed on the carpet. ‘Everyone freeze!’ he yelled, and about time too.

  I’d been waiting for this moment ever since I had contacted the police on the phone. (Ha! And all along you’ve been thinking what a wally I am.) I’d managed to unhook the Vorks’ phone and press 999 while Marsha was making a lunge for Norman’s dad and all eyes were on her. I knew I wouldn’t actually be able to speak to the police without Mr Vork hearing, but I reckoned that if I could keep the channel open then they would hear the conversation, work out what was happening, and trace the call.

  And that is almost it. Mr Vork was overpowered. Waiting outside the house were half a dozen police cars and most of the neighbours, all agog with excitement. The police swarmed over the house and they found stolen goods in almost every room. There were three more potted aliens upstairs, and a load of other plants. Mr Vork had been doing over garden centres too. Apparently the plants were worth hundreds.

  The police had been after Vork for months. When he was finally marched out of the house to a waiting police van, Mrs Parsloe almost went berserk. She tried to kick his shins as he went past.

  ‘That’s the one that attacked me yesterday! He put a blanket over me – you horrible man!’

  ‘Everyone’s mad round here,’ muttered Mr Vork, shaking his head. Then he vanished into the van, closely followed by his son.

  Norman had made everything up about being an alien and the photonic shield and all that. He had simply used my own fears to protect his dad. They were in it together, and Marsha and I had caught them. It was almost like The Famous Five, except there were only two of us, and we didn’t have a dog, so it was even better.

  Strange thing – when everyone at school heard about it they stopped calling Marsha ‘Bogbrush’. As for me, I still worry and I still play the violin. (And I’m getting much better at both.) My pockets are still full of bandages. I mean, you never know when you might need an emergency nappy.

  They haven’t stopped calling me ‘Chicken Licken’ at school, but it’s like a friendly joke now. They know I’m a worrier, and they also know I caught the Vorks. Even Kevin Durbell was impressed.

  Anyhow, I like worrying. I had some spots come up this morning, red ones with a tiny yellow dot in the centre. I’ve looked them up in my encyclopedia and I reckon it’s the first stage of Frobisher’s Scrofula. All your skin flakes off and your bones fall apart. It’s fatal of course. Marsha said that she’ll look after me. She reckons that we’re all aliens, all of us. You, me, her, everyone.

  ‘How do you work that out?’ I asked.

  ‘I just mean that we all seem strange to everyone, except ourselves. You don’t think you’re peculiar, but lots of other people do. It’s the same with me, and just about everyone. It’s like we are aliens to each other.’

  I screwed up my nose. ‘You’re weird,’ I said.

  Marsha’s face broke into a huge smile and she chuckled. ‘Exactly.’

  Oh yes, you remember that sign Mr and Mrs Vork had on their throats? I saw it again, a few days later, on my computer screen. I was looking at Mystic Myrtle the Cosmic Turtle and she was doing next month’s birthday sign. It was Gemini, the twins. The star pattern was identical. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. I suppose Mr and Mrs Vork had each had the tattoo done in their lovey-dovey days. Not even Marsha had got that one.

  And there’s one other thing. If that wasn’t a UFO over the Vorks’ house that night, then what was it?