Buttheads from Outer Space

by Jerry Mahoney

  “Here, let me wipe that with my napkin,” my mom said.

  “Oh no, Mrs. McBain,” Lloyd said, grabbing the iPhone away. “We’d better take this to the bathroom4 and clean it very carefully. C’mon, Josh.”

  I followed Lloyd to the bathroom, knowing he had more in mind than just cleaning the iPhone off. The whole way there, he was flipping through screens and checking things out.

  “Lloyd, what are you doing?”

  “Nobody knows your new phone number yet. We have to pull some pranks!”

  “Who are you pranking?”

  “Duh. Quentin. He puts his number on his website so news crews can contact him.” Lloyd took a close-up of his mouth sticking out his tongue and texted it to Quentin. “Ooh, that’ll drive him crazy!”

  By then, we reached the bathrooms, but I stopped short as I stared at the two doors.

  “Go in!” Lloyd said.

  “But, Lloyd, which one is the men’s room?”

  I hate when restaurants try to be clever on their bathroom doors, like at the seafood restaurant where they say “Gulls” and “Buoys” or at the Down Under Grill, where they say “Sheilas” and “Blokes.” Sorry, but when my butt is about to explode from eating your food, I don’t have time to stop and appreciate your puns.

  At Chop Socky, the bathrooms had Japanese writing on them, which might as well be pictures of Japanese people laughing at me because I was never going to figure out which one was the men’s room. Underneath the writing were anime characters, one of which was supposed to be a boy and one of which was supposed to be a girl. But they both had long hair and gigantic eyes with stars in their pupils, so I couldn’t tell them apart.

  “Just pick one,” Lloyd said. “You have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right.”

  “Right,” I said, “and a fifty-fifty chance of being the weirdo who walked into the girls’ room and got yelled at by somebody’s mom.”

  “It’s that one,” Lloyd announced, confidently. He pointed to the door on the left.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Look at the other one. It has boobs.”

  I looked closer at the door on the right, but I didn’t see any boobs.

  “No it doesn’t!”

  “Trust me. Boobs look different in anime.”

  I sighed. By this point, no one had come out of either door and we hadn’t heard any flushing, so that meant the bathrooms were probably empty. All I had to do was crack the door open and see if the place was a total mess with pee on the floor and paper towels overflowing the garbage can. That’s what men’s rooms looked like, in my experience. Women’s rooms were much nicer, which I knew because my mom always made me go to the bathroom with her in public until just last year, when I said I’d rather pee my pants than go into a women’s bathroom with her one more time.

  I went up to the door on the left and gently pushed it open. To my horror, there was someone inside—a kid using the sink, but he or she was facing the other way and I couldn’t tell from behind if it was a boy or a girl. Thankfully, they didn’t see me standing there trying to figure out which sex they were. That would’ve been pretty embarrassing for both of us. They were short, though, shorter than me, and wearing a hoodie that covered the back of their head.

  When I looked closer at the hands, there was something very strange about them. They were covered with fur on one side and scales on the other. One hand had nine fingers and the other had four. Then there was a third hand with no fingers at all but a belly button in the middle. Or maybe an ear. I wasn’t sure.

  As I stood there, staring, the whatever-it-was turned around and faced me, and that’s when I realized this was no kid at all. It was an alien, with a huge, scaly head and enormous eyes and four round things on its neck that were probably ears.

  I closed the door and backed away.

  Lloyd was laughing, but he wasn’t laughing at me. He was staring at the iPhone screen. “Quentin just wrote back, ‘Who is this?’ Ha! We got him!”

  I grabbed the iPhone away from him. “Lloyd, there’s something in there.”

  Lloyd gasped. “Was it the girls’ room?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “Well, who was in there, a girl or a boy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said again. “Lloyd, it wasn’t human.”

  “You’re kidding! Is there a rat or a possum in there? People are going to freak out!”

  “No, it wasn’t a rat or a possum. I think . . . I think it was an alien.”

  “Oh, ha ha, Josh. We both know you’re not much of a prankster, so you should leave the jokes to me.”

  “It’s not a joke,” I assured him.

  Lloyd sighed. “Fine, I’ll take a look. I’ll even pretend I believe you if that makes you feel good.” He stepped forward and pushed the door.

  The alien was waiting for him, waving happily. “Bike hockey?” it said.

  That settled it. It was definitely an alien, and he’d read our Earth travel blog!

  Lloyd was speechless, and as his jaw dropped, the iPhone slipped out of his hands. This time, there was no broccoli on the floor to break its fall. It landed with a nasty cracking sound. The screen shattered instantly. A huge spiderweb–shaped crack spread across it.

  If that wasn’t the worst moment of my life, then what came next was, as three squishy alien hands reached out and picked up the phone. The creature pulled it in for a close look, then backed away and closed the bathroom door behind him.

  Just like that, my brand new iPhone was gone.

  4 See page 249 for our blog on human bathrooms, the only place on Earth where it’s OK to poop.

  CHAPTER 4

  Back when we wrote our blog, Lloyd and I spent a lot of time wondering what aliens might be like. Curious, probably. Unarmed, hopefully. One thing we’d never imagined, though, was that they would be lousy stinking iPhone thieves.

  Now here I was at my favorite restaurant outside either the men’s or women’s room—I still wasn’t sure—seething over some three-armed blob from outer space who stole my birthday present. We’d just solved one of the greatest mysteries of human existence. Yes, there was life in outer space.

  And they were total jerk faces.

  What could we do, though? The alien was an advanced life-form who had mastered interplanetary space travel, and Lloyd and I were just two sixth graders faking our way through science class. We were way outmatched. I turned to Lloyd and could see from the look on his face that he was thinking the same thing I was. I opened my mouth to say, “Let’s get out of here,” and at that moment, Lloyd opened his mouth, and said . . .

  “Let’s go get him!”

  “Lloyd, he could vaporize us!”

  “Good!” Lloyd said.

  “Good? How is that good?”

  “Because we Earthlings stick together. There’s one of him and seven point three billion of us. If this sets off an intergalactic space war, so be it. Humans versus the lowlife E.T. scum. Haven’t you seen any movies about aliens? We always kick their butts in the end. Someday, kids will learn about this moment in school. It’ll come right after the question on history tests about how Archduke What’s-His-Name’s assassination started World War I. Universe War I began when what unbelievably brave kid got vaporized at the Chop Socky on Route 48? And you know whose name squijillions of future children will write in the blank?”

  “Yours?” I said hopefully.

  “No,” Lloyd replied, dramatically. “They’ll write Joshua James McBain III!”

  Lloyd could be really good at convincing you of things. As he stared at me encouragingly, I actually got stirred up inside. I felt pride for my planet. I was an Earthling, darn it, and I had to stand up for that big beautiful blue marble I called home. “Besides,” Lloyd added, “do you really want to go on living without an iPhone?”

  “OK,” I said. I slapped my hands against the bathroom door and got ready to push. “Let’s go.”

  But instead of striding confidently up b
ehind me, Lloyd took a step back.

  “One of us has to survive to tell the story of your heroism,” he said meekly.

  I grabbed him by the arm. “Come on!” Yanking Lloyd behind me, I pushed open the door and entered. I took a second to look around and saw that the walls were pink, and there were no urinals or mysterious puddles on the floor.

  “Dude,” Lloyd said, confirming my worst fears. “This is totally the ladies’ room.”

  The alien stared at us, and all my courage disappeared in about a half second. He was small and funny-looking, but I had no idea what he was capable of. I shielded my head with my arms and whimpered, “Please don’t vaporize us!”

  The alien took a step toward us, and then we heard a voice coming from behind him. “Hey, dudes!” it said. “High five!” The alien held up all three of his weird hands. I looked at Lloyd and he shrugged, then went ahead and slapped each one with his palm. So there it was. A historic moment. Humans had finally made contact with extraterrestrial life, and it was me and Lloyd in the women’s bathroom at Chop Socky. I would always be a very special member of the human race. The Abraham Lincoln of alien contact, the Isaac Newton of interplanetary communication.

  Suddenly, Mr. Mudd didn’t seem so crazy, and I realized Lloyd was right for always believing this moment would happen. I decided I should never doubt Lloyd again.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually meeting Lloyd and Josh!” the voice said. I wanted to be flattered that I’d achieved this level of fame in outer space, but I was starting to get really frustrated that I couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from.

  “Are you talking to us?” I asked.

  “Yeah, dude,” the alien laughed. “You’re just looking at the wrong place. Our mouths are where your butts are.”

  Lloyd burst out laughing. “No way!”

  The alien turned around, revealing a thick pelt of blue-green fur that stretched from his neck down to his feet. In the middle of it all, where his legs came together and his butt should’ve been, was a perfectly ordinary, almost human-looking mouth.

  “Way!” the butt-mouth said, enthusiastically, revealing three rows of green, goopy teeth.

  Lloyd and I were pretty impressed. “But where do you poop from?” Lloyd asked.

  “Duh, my butt!” the alien said, and with one of his hands, he pointed up toward the back of his head. Sure enough, there was a long, deep crack running down the middle of it.

  “That’s your butt?” I said in awe.

  “Don’t believe me?” his mouth said. “How about now?” Then I saw the most amazing thing I’d ever witnessed. As Lloyd and I watched with our mouths hanging open and our eyes bulging in shock, the cheeks of the alien’s head-butt quivered like pudding and out came a blaring, unmistakable trumpeting sound: FRRRRRRRT!

  We had met an alien, and we watched him fart. This day couldn’t get any cooler.

  “You were right!” I said to Lloyd. “They do have butts in the back of their heads!”

  “Yeah, we read that on your blog. That’s how we knew you guys were cool,” the alien said. “On most planets, they think buttheads like us are weird.”

  Lloyd shook his head dramatically. “I can honestly say, your head is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thanks. Now stop staring at my butt!” the alien scolded, turning around.

  Lloyd turned to me, patting me on the back. “So they’re exactly like we imagined!” he said. “We’re geniuses!”

  “Not exactly,” the alien said. He held up his third hand and pointed to the thing in the middle of it. “See this?”

  “Yeah, is that a belly button or an ear? We weren’t sure.”

  “It’s a dimple. It only shows up when we smile. See?”

  He frowned with his butt-mouth and the dimple went away.

  “Cool!” Lloyd said.

  The dimple reappeared, and the alien started laughing. “A belly button on our hands! We thought that was hilarious!”

  Meeting an alien was exciting, but I still wanted my iPhone back. “Um, do you have that cool, shiny device you just grabbed away from me?” I asked.

  “Sure do!” the alien said. “It’s in my butt.”

  “What?”

  “Here you go!” the alien cheerfully announced, and he reached one of his hands through his butt crack, felt around for a second, and then delicately pulled out my phone.

  “Eww!” I said.

  “Awesome!” Lloyd gasped.

  The alien held the phone out, and I backed nervously away. I’d spent years begging my parents for this, and now, just a few minutes after I finally got it, it had already been destroyed and then put inside an alien’s rear end. Did I still even want it?

  “Don’t freak out,” the butt-mouth said. “Our butts do lots of stuff. They’re not just poop chutes like yours.” I took a look at the phone. Every trace of the cracks on the screen had been wiped away somehow. It looked just as fresh as if it had come right out of the box.

  “You got rid of its cracks,” Lloyd gasped, “by sticking it in your crack.”

  I grabbed the phone, no longer caring where he’d yanked it out of. I touched the home button and the screen lit up, as good as new.

  “Your butt is awesome,” Lloyd said. “You really are a superior race.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around this strange space creature as tightly as I could. Yes, I hugged an alien. I guess it was a bold step forward for humanity. It was definitely a closer encounter than I’d ever expected to have. Two species from across the galaxies had come together in a sign of peace and love.

  It didn’t feel quite as good as getting an iPhone did, but it was definitely the second-best moment of my birthday.

  And then I heard someone going to the bathroom.

  “FRRT!”

  I looked at the alien in surprise. “Someone’s in here!” I said. “You’d better hide!”

  “It’s OK,” the alien said. “He’s with me.”

  He pushed open a stall door, and I almost fell over when I saw what was inside. There, with the back of his head resting on the toilet seat, was another alien. It took me a second to realize what he was doing with his head on a toilet seat, but of course, it was exactly what you would expect someone would do on a toilet seat if they had a butt on their head. I looked away quickly, and heard a mighty trumpet blast. “FRRT!” Then came a plop, and the alien sighed in relief.

  “You said your butts weren’t poop chutes!” I said.

  “I said they weren’t just poop chutes,” the alien replied. “They can repair small electronics, but they also blast dookies.”

  He closed the stall door, and just then, we heard someone coming down the hallway. Before we could react, she had pushed the bathroom door open. Lloyd and I both dove for it, but it was too late. We saw her, an old Japanese lady, looking directly at us, two boys in the ladies’ bathroom.

  She started to scream.

  “Um, just a minute!” Lloyd said. He pushed her backward into the hallway, while I closed and locked the door behind her.

  “That’s Kaitlyn Wien-Tomita’s grandma!” I whispered. “She saw us!”

  “Ma, Shinji rarenai wa!” the woman shouted. She pounded on the door harder, yelling at us in another language. “Wa, ano koe wa otokono koe da wa!”

  “Oh no! She’s speaking Japanese!”

  Lloyd shook his head. “Yeah, and she totally knows we’re dudes!”

  As Lloyd and I wondered what to do, we felt three hands reach out and push us aside. The alien stepped forward, bent over, and spoke through his butt mouth in a perfect Japanese accent. “Gomennasai. Watashi no yujin wa hidoi geri de komatte imasu.”

  “Ara sore wa yoku nai desune. Daijobuyo, machimasho,” the woman said.

  Lloyd and I were both majorly impressed. “Your butt speaks Japanese?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am fluent in Earth.”

  “Earth? You mean like every language people have?”r />
  “Not just people. Dogs, porcupines, caterpillars. I know every language spoken on your planet. I can even understand when grown-ups talk about politics.”

  “Wow! You guys are geniuses!” I said.

  “I have been speaking to you in adolescent boy dialect. It’s a combination of rap lyrics, language we picked up from your blog, and dialogue from sitcoms starring obnoxious teenagers. We on fleek, yo?”

  “No one really says that anymore,” I said.

  “We may need to do some updating, home slice.” Then, he extended two of his hands, holding one out to me and one to Lloyd. “Wanna know my name?” he asked. “IAmAWeenieBurger.”

  “You are?” Lloyd wondered.

  “You seem pretty cool,” I said.

  He stared at us confused, then burst out laughing. “Oh, right! I forgot that IAmAWeenieBurger means something different in your language. On our planet, IAmAWeenieBurger is a very common name, like Mike or Joe. Some of our finest minds are named IAmAWeenieBurger.”

  From inside the stall, a toilet flushed, and out waddled the other alien. “This is my buddy,” IAmAWeenieBurger said, “Doodoofartmama.”

  Lloyd laughed. “Doodoofartmama? Is that a common name on your planet, too?”

  “Nah,” IAmAWeenieBurger said. “His parents are a little weird.”

  Doodoofartmama held up his hands for a high five, but I backed away. “Um, on our planet we wash our hands after going to the bathroom.”

  Doodoofartmama turned toward IAmAWeenie-Burger, confused, and he farted. IAmAWeenieBurger farted back at him.

  “Sorry, yo,” IAmAWeenieBurger said. “The doodoo man doesn’t speak Earth as well as I do, so I translated to our language.”

  “You speak in farts?” Lloyd said. “Gross!”

  “Well, we think it’s gross that when humans talk, everyone can see all the nasty stuff in your mouth,” IAmAWeenieBurger said. “Tongues? Blecch!”

  “Touché.” I nodded.

  “But how do you know what anybody’s saying?” Lloyd asked. “Aren’t all farts pretty much the same?”