Future Ratboy and the Attack of the Killer Robot Grannies

by Jim Smith

  when I saw my reflection.

  My nose had whiskers on it and a black blob at the end like a shiny full stop. A pair of aerials poked out of my head, and a plug sat at the end of a cord that was sticking out of my bum. A bin bag hung flappily down my back like a cape, and on my belly fizzled a TV screen.

  42

  No wonder that angry-looking woman had screamed when she saw me! Not only had the bolt of lightning zapped me and Not Bird into the future, it’d fused me together with the rat - and my rubbish old TV too!

  43

  ‘WHAT DO YOU RECKON, DOREEN?’ bleeped MAVIS 3000. ‘NICE SLICE OF RATBOY ON TOAST FOR BREAKFAST?’ she said, her shiny metal teeth glinting in the Sunkeels morning sun.

  ‘OOH, I COULD JUST MURDER ONE!’ nodded DOREEN XL97-220, pressing a button on the side of her head.

  44

  The bubblegum blob she’d been chewing on started to balloon out

  of her mouth, blowing up to the size of a baby elephant. She crunched her lips shut and the balloon floated into the air, bouncing on the pavement towards my shiny full-stop nose.

  ‘I am NOT a ratboy, my name is Colin Lamppost!’ I shouted, as the balloon tried to swallow me whole.

  45

  ‘RATBOY! RATBOY! RATBOY!’ squawked Not Bird, and I tucked him under my arm, twizzled round and forward-rolled into the bin, which immediately started to roll away, thank coolness.

  46

  ‘Operation Don’t Get Swallowed Whole By A Bubblegum Balloon!’

  I cried, zooming down the High Street inside my wheelie bin.

  I leaned left and we skidded down an alleyway, crashing into a wall.

  47

  The bubblegum balloon floated past the end of the alleyway, followed by MAVIS 3000

  and DOREEN XL97-220, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘It’s just like ATTACK OF THE KILLER ROBOT GRANNIES!’ I said, crawling out of the wheelie bin and giving Not Bird a thumbs up.

  48

  ‘NOT!’ squawked Not Bird, giving me a thumbs down with the thumb bit of his wing.

  I looked up and peered at a man with thirteen eyes.

  49

  ‘No need to be scared, little ratboy!’ smiled the man with thirteen eyes. Not that he was a man exactly,

  he was more of a man-sized fly.

  His arms and legs had hairy spikes sticking out all over them, and on his back, neatly folded up like a see-through tablecloth, hung a giant pair of wings. Next to

  him was a woman-sized fly

  and two kid-sized ones.

  50

  51

  ‘My name isn’t Ratboy, it’s

  Colin Lamppost!’ I said, and the

  man-sized fly chuckled.

  ‘Very nice to meet you, Colin! My

  name is Dindle Frogshnoff, and I think

  I might be able to help you,’ he buzzed,

  shooting his hairy hand out to shake.

  So I shook it.

  Even though it was pretty

  scary looking.

  But not as scary looking

  as a robot granny claw.

  52

  ‘. . . and that’s how I ended up standing

  here talking to you!’ I said three hours

  later, once I’d told the Frogshnoff

  family my whole story.

  ‘Fascinating,’ yawned Dindle. ‘Now, as

  I said three hours ago, I think I might

  be able to help you - I was an orphan

  once too, you see . . .’ he buzzed, and

  my plug-tail twitched.

  53

  ‘Hang on a millisecond, I’m not an

  orphan!’ I said, smoothing my

  nose-whiskers down with my tongue.

  ‘We’re just stuck here for a bit until

  we work out how to get home, isn’t

  that right, Not Bird?’

  ‘NOT!’ screeched Not Bird.

  Mrs Frogshnoff patted me on my aerials

  and grabbed Not Bird, giving him a little

  cuddle. ‘NOT!’ he screeched again,

  wriggling out of the cuddle and lowering

  himself down on my head like a wig.

  54

  ‘I understand, Colin,’ buzzed Dindle.

  ‘But until you DO get home, you’ll need

  a place to rest your head,’ he smiled,

  looking at Not Bird, who’d dozed off

  and was snoring NOTs.

  He pointed up the street to a tall brown

  building with a shop at the bottom of

  it called ‘Bunny Deli’. On its roof sat a

  gigantic plastic cheeseburger and chips.

  Next to them stood an enormous blue

  cup with a stripy red-and-white straw

  sticking out of it.

  55

  The cheeseburger looked like it’d been

  designed on a computer. Its bun was all

  jaggedy like the pixels on a screen, and

  the chips were zigzaggedy instead of

  straight like I was used to.

  My TV belly rumbled, and I patted it,

  realising I hadn’t had anything to eat

  in millions of years.

  ‘Lets go see if there’s any room at my

  old orphanage!’ grinned Dindle, flapping

  his wings and buzzing off towards the

  giant cheeseburger.

  I shouted, running after him.

  56

  57

  I followed the Frogshnoff family up

  the street, wheeling my bin behind me.

  ‘Don’t worry Not Bird, I’ll find a way

  to get us home!’ I said to Not Bird,

  who’d woken up from his nap and was

  fluttering next to me.

  ‘NOT!’ he squawked, dodging a

  lamppost, which is my second name,

  in case you’d forgotten.

  58

  ‘Dindle!’ smiled a fat lady standing

  outside the tall brown building. She

  was quite a bit older than my mum,

  and had ten arms. Her hair looked

  like it was made out of an enormous

  smelly green mop, and her nose was all

  pointy like a beak.

  Apart from that, she seemed quite nice.

  59

  ‘Bunny!’ buzzed Dindle, and

  I guessed her name must be

  Bunny.

  ‘Ooh, it’s good to see you,

  Dindle!’ grinned Bunny,

  hugging Dindle with her

  ten arms, and his thirteen

  eyes bulged out of their

  hairy sockets.

  ‘And who do we have here?’ she said,

  peering down at me.

  60

  Dindle explained how I’d been zapped

  into the future and turned into a half

  rat, half boy, half TV.

  ‘My name’s Colin Lamppost,’ I said.

  ‘And this is my sidekick, Not Bird.’

  ‘RATBOY! RATBOY!’ squawked Not Bird,

  pointing his beak at me, and I nudged

  him away while staring through the

  window of Bunny Deli. Inside were

  three weird-looking kids, sitting at

  a table, chatting and laughing.

  61

  One of them was a boy with two

  faces. He was wearing a shiny red suit

  with two little wings sticking out of

  the hood. Covering the top half of his

  two faces were two masks, one for

  each set of eyes.

  Next to him sat an alien with a big

  bald blue head. His eyeballs were

  black, and he had pointy,

  dinosaurish teeth.

  62

  The third kid was a girl with round

  glasses and five arms - two on each

  side and one in the middle. She was
r />   wearing one of those long white

  coats scientists wear, except

  with five arm-sleeves

  instead of the

  usual two.

  63

  Bunny put two of her hands on her

  hips and scratched her head with the

  third one. She itched her bum with

  her fourth hand, and shook hands

  with Mrs Frogshnoff with number

  five. Hand numbers six, seven and

  eight gave the Frogshnoff kids a hug,

  and she patted me on the head with

  number nine.

  ‘Well, you look like a lovely little

  Ratboy to me!’ she said, grabbing

  one of my hands with her tenth

  one, and she led me into Bunny Deli.

  64

  The Frogshnoff family waved goodbye

  through the window as Bunny sat me

  down at the weird-looking kids’

  table. ‘Meet the gang!’ she smiled.

  ‘This is Twoface, Splorg and Jamjar,’

  she said, pointing at the two-faced

  kid, then the blue alien, then the girl

  with five arms.

  65

  Bunny explained to them how me and Not Bird had been zapped into the future inside a bin.

  ‘There’s a spare bed for you upstairs, Ratboy - until we work out how to get you home, of course!’ she added, and I nodded, feeling all relieved that Bunny was going to get me home.

  66

  Not Bird fluttered across the table and landed on Twoface’s hood, right between his two little wings.

  ‘Er, is it just me, or did that bird thing just land on my head?’ said Twoface with one of his mouths. ‘Hey, I felt that too!’ he said with his other mouth, and his wings waggled.

  67

  Not Bird squawked and jumped on to the table.

  ‘Don’t be rude to our guests, Twoface!’ drawled Splorg, who sounded a bit like a slug, if slugs could talk. He picked up Not Bird up and lowered him on to his big bald blue head. ‘Nice to meet you, Ratboy!’ he said, sticking his hand out all slowly, and I shook it, even though Ratboy isn’t really my name.

  68

  A see-through floating menu fizzled up in front of my face, and I peered at it, remembering how hungry I was.

  ‘Hello, my name is Malcolm and I’ll be your Smellnu today!’ said the menu, which was all photos of food, with none of the boring writing bits.

  69

  ‘What’s a Smellnu?’ I said, and Jamjar pushed her glasses up her nose.

  ‘It’s a menu you can smell!’ she smiled, waving all five of her arms around.

  ‘I invented it myself! It was nothing really, just had to bump up the biometrics on the nostrilisation variables. Once that was done, it was simply a matter of decalibrating the choosification modules . . .’

  70

  ‘Gotcha,’ I said, my eyes going all blurry, and Bunny put one of her ten arms around Jamjar.

  ‘Jamjar here’s my niece,’ she said.

  ‘Her mum and dad are famous scientists! Except they accidentally shrunk themselves to the size of full stops during an experiment last year, and nobody can find them anywhere.

  So Jamjar’s staying with us for a bit, aren’t you, Jamjar?’ she said, and Jamjar nodded, looking a tiny bit sad.

  71

  ‘So . . . your name’s Jamjar?’ I said, because I’d never met anyone named after a jam jar before.

  ‘Yes, Jamjar!’ said Jamjar.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Jamjar!’ I said, holding my hand up, and Jamjar high-fived it with one of hers.

  I focused my eyes on the Smellnu and noticed that my full-stop nose was

  a millimetre away from a photo of

  a cheeseburger. ‘Hmmm . . . let’s see

  if this thing really works . . .’ I said, breathing in. ‘Mmmm, cheeseburger!’ I cried, the smell of cheeseburger going up my hairy, ratty nose, and Jamjar tapped the photo with one of her twenty-five fingers.

  72

  ‘You have chosen the Cheesebleurgher Meal Deal!’ crackled Malcolm, and the floating see-through Smellnu started to quiver.

  A beam of light shot out of the photo, and a computery-looking cheeseburger with zigzaggedy chips fizzled to life on the table in front of me. A pixellated blue cup with a stripy red-and-white straw appeared next to it, and I remembered the giant plastic meal

  deal I’d seen on the roof of Bunny Deli.

  73

  ‘CheeseBLEURGHer?’ I said, lifting the burger up to my mouth and giving it a chomp.

  burped the cheesebleurgher, and I realised why the cheesebleurgher was called

  a cheesebleurgher - because it said

  BLEURGH every time you chomped it!

  ‘Cool times a millicools!’ I smiled, picking

  up a zigzaggedy chip, and Twoface started to laugh. I turned to him and

  did my ‘WHAT?’ face, which is just my normal face, but with slightly raised eyebrows.

  74

  ‘Did you just say the word “COOL”?’ he chuckled through his left mouth.

  ‘Er, yeah?’ I said, chewing on my cheesebleurgher. ‘Cool’s my favourite word!’ I grinned, putting my hand up for Not Bird to high-five it, but he just ignored me.

  75

  Twoface shook his head, both his faces rolling their eyes to themselves. ‘We

  say “KEEL” here in the future!’ he said out of his right mouth. ‘Yeah, Ratboy! Saying “COOL” is the unkeelest thing ever!’ he said again, going back to the mouth he’d started this whole thing with.

  Bunny winked at me and gave my aerials a ruffle. ‘You’ll get the hang of it, Ratboy!’ she smiled, and I nodded, not that I reckoned saying ‘keel’ instead of ‘cool’ was all that hard a thing to get the hang of.

  76

  I carried on chomping my cheesebleurgher while Splorg slowly tilted his head downwards and started staring at the plug on the end of my tail. ‘What’s that for?’ he smiled with his jaggedy dinosaur teeth.

  77

  ‘Excellent question, Splorg!’ I said in my superhero voice. Then I said, ‘dunno’, in my normal voice, seeing as I hadn’t really had time to plug my tail in anywhere, what with the killer

  robot grannies trying to eat me

  for breakfast and everything.

  ‘Let’s see!’ blurted Jamjar, pushing her glasses up her nose with one of her hands and grabbing the plug with another.

  78

  There was a socket in the wall on the other side of Bunny Deli, far too far away for my tail to reach. ‘Here, Socky Socky!’ shouted Jamjar, waving her three spare arms, and

  the plug socket peeled itself off the wall and tiptoed over on two little plug-socket-sized feet.

  ‘KEEL!’ I said, saying ‘keel’ for the first time, which felt keel.

  79

  ‘Good plug socket!’ said Jamjar, picking the plug socket up and patting it on its head. ‘This is Socky the

  never-ending plug socket . . . he was my first-ever invention - no wires

  or anything!’ she smiled, plugging my plug-tail into Socky’s three little holes, and my bum lifted a centimetre off its seat.

  80

  ‘Keel times a millikeels!’ I cried, saying ‘keel’ for the second and third times, which felt keel times a millikeels, and Bunny patted me on the back all mumsily.