Buttheads from Outer Space

by Jerry Mahoney

  “Fine,” the woman huffed. “Explain!” She turned to me and waited, her arms crossed defiantly. Beside her, my mom nodded her head at me, smiling encouragingly. And next to her, Kaitlyn zoomed in for a close-up.

  “Well. . .” I said, stalling. I couldn’t confess now, not with my mom’s trust on the line. Then, right on cue, a hero swooped in to save the day.

  “Josh! Did you get him?” Lloyd came running up behind my mom, acting as if he’d been looking all over for me.

  The angry mom and I both turned toward him, baffled. “Get who?” we said.

  “The thief,” Lloyd explained. “The stroller thief. We saw this big creepy-looking weirdo trying to run away with your Ultra Oopsy Baby, ma’am. Everyone’s after this stroller.” He turned and looked directly into Kaitlyn’s camera, with a wink. “It’s the hottest stroller on the market.”

  “Oh, I know,” the woman said, proudly. “It was out of stock everywhere. I paid a fortune for it online! Only the best for my twins!”

  “And you can thank my friend for saving it,” Lloyd told her.

  The woman smiled at me. “Well, thank you!” she said, a bit flustered.

  Once again, I was amazed at Lloyd’s skill. “No need for reward money,” Lloyd assured her. “Just the look on those cute little angels’ faces is all we need. C’mon, Josh.”

  Lloyd started to lead me back into the restaurant. Kaitlyn stopped recording and grabbed her grandma by the arm. “You guys are fun!” she said, laughing, as she walked her grandma to their car.

  My mom wasn’t quite ready to leave, though. “One more thing,” she hissed at the stroller mom. “You owe my son an apology!”

  The lady bowed her head, ashamed. “I’m very sorry, young man. You’re a hero!”

  “I told you,” my mom said. “My Josh is a good boy.” She winked at me, proudly, then walked back inside the restaurant.

  “I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘hero,’” I started to say, acting as humble as possible. I felt Lloyd tugging on my arm. The woman was putting her babies into the stroller now, and Lloyd was eager for us to sneak away while she had her back to us.

  He yanked me toward the front door, and as I followed him inside, I heard the woman say, “Where did this blue fur come from?”

  “Just keep walking,” Lloyd advised me, and soon we were back at the table eating fried ice cream with my parents, while Lloyd snuck the keys back into my dad’s pocket.

  The first part of the plan was a success. Now all we had to do was get home and sneak the aliens inside.

  6 You probably don’t want to read a blog about old ladies, but trust us, it’s surprisingly awesome, just like old ladies themselves. See page 253 and we’ll tell you why.

  CHAPTER 6

  Being in my parents’ car was like being in prison, only worse, because at least in prison, you don’t have to listen to the ’80s channel on the radio. I didn’t know any of the songs, but Mom and Dad swore each one was the greatest song ever. I have no idea if anyone from the ’80s was actually a good singer, because my parents always drown them out with their own off-key howling. This one was about some woman who was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, and Lloyd and I wanted to jump out the window.

  “I’m sorry,” I typed on my iPhone screen, then I passed it to him so he could see.

  “The aliens aren’t going to be so peaceful after listening to this,” he wrote back.

  My dad sang some refrain about whether or not Mom was going to change her mind, or they’d both be sorry, and I typed something that had been on my mind: My mom was SO mad at that stroller lady!

  Lloyd read what I wrote and typed a reply: They trust you. He smiled at me, then added another sentence: Use it to your advantage.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, but he was right about my parents. They thought I could do no wrong.

  Lloyd took the phone back. He pulled up an emoji of a skunk holding its nose and saying, “P.U.!” Then, he wrote, What’s that smell? I took a whiff, and sure enough, there was a pretty strong stench in the Mini Cooper. I’d describe it as halfway between moldy cheese and a new shower curtain when it first comes out of the package.

  The aliens are going number four, I wrote back, then I added an emoji of some guy shrugging. I passed him back the phone and, while he read my message, I marveled at how cool technology was. Before tonight, Lloyd and I would never have been able to talk about aliens two feet away from my parents like this.

  What’s number four? Lloyd wrote.

  I thought it over for a second. Something smelly, I typed back.

  My dad turned around to see what Lloyd and I were doing. “You guys playing a good game back there on the new phone?”

  “Yeah,” Lloyd said, pretending to tap at the iPhone screen. “It’s called Stinky Aliens.”

  “Ha!” my dad laughed. “Those games have some funny names!”

  We pulled up in Lloyd’s driveway behind his family’s bus. Lloyd’s family was so big, they had to buy a small bus so they could cart everyone around. It wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t painted the side with caricatures of each of the kids and the words TEAM RUGGLES in giant letters, like they’re a family singing group on tour or something. If they go to the mall, when they come out, there are always people taking pictures of their van. There’s even a Tumblr page where people put up pictures of themselves pointing at the van and laughing.

  “Want me to walk you in?” my mom asked.

  “Nah, that’s OK,” Lloyd said, and I could see how relieved my mom was. My parents and Lloyd’s parents don’t really like each other, and they try to avoid each other whenever possible. It’s weird, because grown-ups aren’t supposed to be cliquey like kids. Neither Lloyd nor I can tell whose parents are the cool ones. Each of us is pretty sure it’s the other’s.

  “Good luck tonight,” Lloyd said to me as he left the car.

  “Good luck?” my dad asked.

  “With the Stinky Aliens,” Lloyd nodded. Man, was he good.

  As soon as we got home, my parents started complaining about their jobs. “I’m going to get slammed at the office tomorrow! I just know it!” my dad groaned.

  My mom dragged her feet across the carpet, like she’d instantly lost all her energy just thinking about it. “I can’t believe the night is over!”

  It wouldn’t have been so annoying if they didn’t do this every single night. It usually began about one minute after they got home. For roughly sixty seconds, they would tell me how happy they were to see me and how glad they were that work was over. Then, their joy would disappear in an instant and they’d start griping about having to go back to their offices the next day. It’s like they hadn’t realized until that moment that time would continue to move forward.

  My dad patted me on the back. “I hope you had a good time tonight,” he said.

  “Yeah,” my mom agreed. “Birthdays are a great reminder of what life is all about.” Then, in case I missed the point, she added, “Life is not about work.”

  I was powerless against their self-pity. All I could do was ride it out, wondering the whole time how much number four-ing IAmAWeenieBurger and Doodoofartmama could do in the trunk of the tiniest car in the world.

  “Tomorrow’s my staff meeting,” my mom pouted.

  My dad put his arm around her. “Are you giving a presentation?”

  She whimpered like a sad puppy. “Yes!”

  Roughly five bajillion groans and gripes later, they were finally dressed in their pajamas and kissing me good night. As soon as their light went out, I sprinted downstairs and out the front door.

  As I approached the Mini Cooper, I saw the trunk overflowing with an odd-colored ooze. It was a mix of brown, orange, and red I had only seen one other place on Earth—in the Crayola 64 pack. When I colored as a kid, I always wondered what the “burnt sienna” crayon was supposed to be for, and now, for the first time, I had encountered it in nature. Burnt sienna ooze was everywhere, dripping over the lic
ense plate and puddling on the driveway.

  I was starting to understand what number four was, and it was even grosser than number one or number two.

  The sludge had already burst through the lock, and all I could see inside the trunk was a deep pool of the stuff, swirling around the spare tire, chunky like gravy. I gazed around to make sure no one on my block was outside, then I bent down and tried to spot any sign of alien life amid the gunk.

  “IAmAWeenieBurger?” I called into the goop, and I certainly felt like one. “Doodoofartmama?” Two sets of eyes bubbled up to the surface of the sludge and gazed back at me. “What are you guys doing?”

  “I told you we’d be going number four,” said a voice, gurgling up from the goo. “Jump in! It’s fun!”

  “No thanks,” I said. “And can you come out now? It’s really nasty.”

  “Of course,” IAmAWeenieBurger said. His eyes rose up on a hill of slime, and around them formed IAmAWeenieBurger’s head. It was an incredible sight. He turned from a gel to a solid, as his body molded itself back into the shape it had earlier. He was remade in burnt sienna gunk before my eyes, then as I watched, he turned back to his original greenish-blue color, just the way he was when I first met him. The fluffy blue fur sprouted right back out of his skin.

  I checked around to make sure none of the neighbors could see the buttheaded, half-jellied extraterrestrial in my driveway. “We need to get you inside, fast.”

  “FRRT!” IAmAWeenieBurger called into the trunk. “FRRT! FRRT!” Doodoofartmama began to climb out of the trunk ooze, retaking his original shape just as his friend had done.

  “Let’s go!” I urged, but as I pushed them toward the front door, I saw that the trunk was still full of slime. It gripped the sides and curled around the taillights. A trickle of it oozed toward the gutter in the street. It was everywhere, and it reeked. “Can you do something about that crud?” I asked.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” IAmAWeenieBurger replied. “Number four dissolves on its own.” I started to relax, until he added, “Over the course of, like, ten Earth years.”

  “What? It has to be gone by tomorrow morning when my parents wake up.”

  “Oh, no way.” He shook his head. “It’s a real pain to clean.”

  “FRRT?” Doodoofartmama asked.

  “What did he say?”

  IAmAWeenieBurger smiled. “He’s wondering if we can play video games.”

  All I could think at that moment was: Getting revenge on Quentin had better be worth it.

  I set IAmAWeenieBurger up on the PlayStation, and I gave Doodoofartmama my iPhone. I showed him a game called Ultimate PukeCoaster, which I heard some cool kids at school saying was fun. You get to build your own roller coasters and add all the loops, corkscrews, and sudden stops you want. The goal is to earn barf points by making them so maniacal that people throw up while riding them. The only thing that’s kind of annoying is that they make you wait to build each new ride, and it can be hours before you get your theme park going. Still, I had no idea how long it would take me to get the alien gunk out of my parents’ Mini Cooper, so I figured he had some time.

  I tried not to think about what I was cleaning up. It wasn’t exactly poo or pee, but it would definitely have been at home alongside them in a sewer or a human intestine. I decided to pretend it was Nutella. So although it was horribly disgusting, I could at least bear to touch it.

  First, I tried Windex, because that was my dad’s solution to most messes in the house. It always took the stickiness out of spilled orange juice, and it even wiped out the smell that time I barfed up my bean burrito in bed. Unfortunately, though, its cleaning superpowers turned out to be limited to disgusting Earth messes. When I used it on the trunk gunk, it only made it thicker and smellier.

  I returned to the driveway with a can of Ajax, an industrial-scented powder you shake out of a can. I sprinkled a little on the mess, but the mess clearly didn’t like it, because it spat it back at me.

  Next, I rubbed the gunk with the stuff my mom uses to clean the bathroom tiles, and it started crackling and spewing out an orange-colored smoke. I had to duck for cover behind the tool cabinet for five minutes until it finally settled back down.

  It was no use. I tried every spray, powder, and gel, but nothing seemed to cut through the thick, sticky yuckiness. I collapsed onto the driveway with my head in my hands, wondering how I’d ever face my parents in the morning.

  My options were severely limited. I couldn’t tell them the truth, that I had allowed aliens to undergo some revolting excretory function in the trunk of their car. And I couldn’t think of any other explanations for the goo. I wished Lloyd had an iPhone so I could text him. He’d be able to think of something. The only thought that came to my mind was to pack a suitcase and ask IAmAWeenieBurger and Doodoofartmama to take me back to their planet with them.

  Right now, that was Plan A.

  I lay down on the asphalt. It was after midnight now, and I was defeated and exhausted. I decided I’d go to sleep right there and hope that everything would sort itself out magically by morning. Just as I closed my eyes, I felt something run across my chest.

  “Hey!” I shouted. I bolted upright as a squirrel scurried up to the puddle of goo on the driveway and began licking it. “Get away from that!” I shooed, and the squirrel scampered off.

  When he was gone, I noticed he had taken a big chunk of number four with him. He sat underneath a tree and nibbled it like it was an apple or some other delicious treat. Man, animals are disgusting. A few seconds later, he had swallowed the whole thing and was coming back for seconds.

  “Get away!” I shouted. Then I stopped myself. The squirrel was doing exactly what needed to be done. He was destroying the evidence. Sure, he was possibly contaminating himself with some toxic otherworldly byproduct, but that was his problem, not mine. I stepped back and waved him in. “Come on!” I said. “Pig out!”

  Seconds later, there were two dozen squirrels hopping around like maniacs inside the trunk of my parents’ car. They were crawling over each other to get to every last drop of alien discharge the way Lloyd’s brothers and sisters did when their mom put out a bowl of hot dog mac and cheese casserole. It was a slimy squirrel smorgasbord, an all-you-can-eat barf-out buffet for yard rodents, and they loved it. One by one, they skittered away, back to whatever gutter or sappy tree hole they had crawled out of, leaving behind a trunk that had been completely picked clean. Where all the cleaning products had failed, squirrel spit had succeeded. Finally, I could go to bed.

  I rounded up my supplies and marched triumphantly to the front door. As soon as I entered, I was barraged by the sound of laser guns, rockets, and IAmAWeenieBurger laughing his butt off while playing a video game. Good thing my parents were deep sleepers.

  “Wow, you made it to Saturn?” I said.

  “Oh yes!” IAmAWeenieBurger cheered. He zapped the waddling, acid-spitting space aliens one after another, cackling with glee as their guts splattered across the TV screen. “Take that, space jerks!”

  I was a little annoyed to see how far he had progressed. I’d been playing Galacto Blast 7 for weeks and was still stuck on Mars.

  IAmAWeenieBurger took aim at a giant space slug and blasted him to smithereens, then the screen went dark and the end credits rolled. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Whoa, you finished the game.” I was impressed for about half a second, and then I was annoyed. While I was purging his putrid intestinal muck from my parents’ car, my extraterrestrial guest was overwriting my save file and kicking my butt. Now, I’d have to start the game all over again. “Was it at least cool?” I asked.

  “It was AWESOME SAUCE!” IAmAWeenieBurger said.

  I turned to Doodoofartmama, wondering what he had ruined while I was gone. “Are you still playing Ultimate PukeCoaster?” He was obsessively tapping his many fingers on the screen to collect puke points from around his theme park. He was so entranced, he barely even acknowledged me.

  “Frrt . . .
” Doodoofartmama droned.

  “Oh, he’s, like, totally addicted to that app,” IAmAWeenieBurger said.

  From looking at the screen, I could see how much Doodoofartmama had accomplished in the game. He had dozens of coasters built, each with an almost uncountable number of twists, hills, and loops. From what I’d heard, it could take days just to get your first coaster up and running. “How did you build so many coasters so fast?” I asked him.

  He showed me a button he could tap, marked “Regurgitation Station.” It took him to a store where he could buy puke points . . . for real money. Like, 40 points cost $1.99, 110 points cost $4.99, all the way up to 3,000 puke points, which cost $99.99. That one was labeled “Best Deal.”

  “You didn’t buy those, did you?” I asked.

  Doodoofartmama had a guilty look on his face.

  “You can’t do that,” I said. “That’s real money. That’s a lot of real money. How much did you spend?”

  Doodoofartmama shrugged and went back to tapping the screen to collect puke from around his theme park. I grabbed the phone away from him. “I think that’s enough for today,” I sighed. “Let’s go to bed.”

  I moaned and walked over to take the TV remote from IAmAWeenieBurger. Just as I bent down to get it, I felt my shoe sink into something deep and sticky. “Yuck!” I looked down to find my shoe sunk into a disgusting puddle of unknown green goop. “What is that?” I said.

  “Beats me,” IAmAWeenieBurger said, shrugging. “Never seen it before.”

  “FRRT!” Doodoofartmama added.

  “Ah,” IAmAWeenieBurger said, translating. “It came out of Doodoofartmama’s toes.”

  “His toes?” I said. “How could that possibly have come out of his—”

  “Uhh-SHOOZ!”

  Doodoofartmama made a weird sound, and a whole mess of the same green goop came shooting out of his toes. It drenched me up to my ankles.