by Gary Urey
Over the next week, we tried out even more so-called cures: sleeping on my side rather than my back, sleeping on a tilted bed, exercising the muscle on the roof of my mouth, mouthpieces, homeopathic anti-snoring sprays.
Nothing worked.
The downtown coffee shops grew richer. I became more desperate.
“We’ve tried everything,” Mumps said one day while we were hanging out inside the Nostril. “What do we do now?”
Vivian lifted Mr. Sticky from his habitat, stuck him to the wall, and stared out the window.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked her.
She turned to face me. “I hate to say it, but you may have sleep apnea.”
Just hearing the word apnea sent shivers up my neck. I’m not sure why, but the word sounded scary to me.
“What’s sleep apnea?” Jimmy asked.
Vivian explained, “Sleep apnea is a chronic condition that causes the throat tissues to block your airway, preventing you from breathing for ten seconds or longer.”
“How do we find out if that’s causing Schnoz’s snoring?” TJ asked.
“We do a sleep test,” Vivian replied. “We rig up a camera and film him while he sleeps. The next morning we watch the film. If he has sleep apnea, we’ll know exactly what we are dealing with.”
CHAPTER 5
OBSERVATION
That night I felt like a monkey locked inside an animal observation lab.TJ had set up three video cameras in my room.There was one on the right side of my bed, one on the left side, and one directly above my head.
“Why do we need three cameras?” I asked.
“We need backups in case your loud snoring causes one of the other cameras to malfunction,” Vivian answered.
I plopped down on my bed and covered up with a blanket. “I wish Jimmy and Mumps were here to help.Where are they anyway?”
“Mumps melted one of his sister’s Barbie dolls in the microwave and got grounded for the night,” TJ said.
“Jimmy had to go to his little brother’s tap dance recital,” Vivian added.
“That stinks,” I said. “Hey, TJ, where’d you get all these cameras?”
“One is mine.The other two I swiped from my older brothers. If they find out I took them, I’m a dead man. But for you, Schnoz, it’s worth the risk. All I have to do tomorrow morning is download the video from the cameras to my laptop. I’ll slip the cameras back into my brothers’ rooms and they’ll never know a thing.”
While TJ double-checked the cameras, Vivian sat on the edge of my bed and pulled out a bunch of papers from her backpack.
“What’s that stuff?” I asked.
“Information about sleep apnea I printed from the Internet,” she said. “We need to know what symptoms to look for. I’m glad I did some research, because the symptoms in kids and adults can be different.”
I grabbed one of the pages from her and started reading.
“Bed-wetting!” I shouted. “You mean to tell me that peeing the bed is a symptom of sleep apnea?”
TJ laughed.
“That’s what the medical literature says,” Vivian said with a snicker.
“I can assure both of you that I have never wet the bed, even when I was a little kid.”
A knock came at my bedroom door. It was Mom.
“Andy, TJ’s mother just called,” she said. “She wants him to come home now. And it’s time for Vivian to go home. It’s already dark outside.”
Vivian sighed. “Well, this is it. Tomorrow morning we will know for sure if Schnoz has sleep apnea.”
TJ checked the video cameras one last time, and then he and Vivian left.The room was completely dark except for the little flashing red lights on the cameras. I suddenly felt self-conscious. What if I farted or picked my butt in my sleep? The cameras would capture it all. Someone could steal the film and upload it to YouTube. The video could go viral. I’d be the laughing stock of the entire country!
I rolled over and placed the pillow over my nose. My heart was beating wildly; sweat poured down my nostrils. I lay there for what seemed like hours, tossing and turning. How could I ever get to sleep knowing three cameras were spying on my every nocturnal move?
Around midnight I heard my parents shuffle into their room and shut the door. They were in bed for the night, but I was desperately fighting the urge to fall asleep. No sleeping meant no snoring. No snoring meant I wouldn’t keep the town up all night. Not keeping the town up all night meant my colossal beak wouldn’t get so much extra attention.
The struggle was useless. No matter how hard I concentrated, my eyelids grew heavier and I fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 6
SHADOW IN THE NIGHT
Rise and shine, Schnoz!”
My eyes shot open. I sat up in bed and saw Vivian, TJ, Mumps, and Jimmy standing in my room.
“What are you guys doing here so early?”
“It’s not early,” Jimmy said. “It’s ten thirty in the morning.”
I yawned and rubbed my eyes. “I can’t believe I slept so late.”
“You may have slept late, but the town of Denmark sure didn’t,” Mumps said. “Take a look out your window.”
I slid out of bed and peered between the curtains.What I saw outside nearly blew my nose away. There were fallen tree limbs and debris all over my backyard. Something had toppled my next-door neighbor’s chimney like a set of Jenga blocks.
“What happened?” I asked, still not believing what I was seeing.
“Your snoring is what happened,” Jimmy said.
“Scientists from the Seismological Laboratory said last night’s tremor was a 5.8 on the Richter scale,” TJ explained.
Vivian joined me at the window. “Your snoring is getting worse,” she said. “The earthquakes are becoming more destructive. If this keeps up, Denmark and maybe the entire state of New Hampshire could become one massive sinkhole.”
“Don’t worry,” Mumps said, slapping me on the back. “I don’t care what they’re whispering downtown, we won’t let them make you move.”
The room grew silent.Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers had worried looks on their faces.
“What do you mean make me move?” I asked.
The gang hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, and then Vivian finally spoke up.
“There will be a special town council meeting in the next few days,” she said. “That’s when they’ll vote whether to kick you and your family out of Denmark.”
“From what my dad told me,” TJ said, “the damage caused by your snoring is becoming more costly than all the money the coffee shops and noise-reduction stores are raking in.”
I held my nose in my hands and felt like crying. “But my honker saved this town!” I roared. “ECU and Muzzle were about to destroy everything! They can’t kick me out!”
“We still have time to fix your snoring before the vote,” Vivian said. “Let’s check out the video we took last night of you sleeping. If it’s sleep apnea, we can go to a doctor to fix you up.”
Sleep apnea. Video cameras. With the news of my possible banishment, I had forgotten all about last night’s experiment.
“Your snoring messed up the two cameras on either side of your bed,” TJ said. “But, amazingly, not the one hanging above your head.” He hooked a cable from the camera to his laptop. After downloading for a minute, the video was ready to watch in full HD.
I had absolutely no idea how boring watching a video of me sleeping could be.
“I can’t take much more of this,” Jimmy said six hours later.
“Tell me about it,” Mumps said. “Melting Barbie dolls in the microwave is a thousand times more fun.”
Vivian pulled Mr. Sticky from her pocket. “Stop complaining or I’ll sic my assault gecko on you.”
“I don’t get it,” TJ said, scratching his head. “We’ve watched nearly all of this tape and Schnoz hasn’t made one little peep of a snore.”
“Just fast forward to the end and get it over with,” I sug
gested.
“Rewind to the part where Schnoz farts and picks his butt in his sleep,” Mumps said. “That was hilarious!”
TJ laughed. “That’s my favorite part!” Just as he was about to hit rewind, the entire screen momentarily went black, as if a huge storm cloud had passed over my room.
Vivian sat up and pointed to the screen. “Stop it right there!” she squealed. “What was that dark shadow?”
What happened next was like something from a horror movie.
“Ahhhhh!” Jimmy screeched in terror. “It’s a ghost…a demon…”
“Hush up!” Vivian scolded. “We’re trying to watch.”
I gazed in wide-eyed dread as the shadow circled my bed. Slowly, the dark mass molded into the shape of a solid figure. The being was about four feet tall with wrinkly gray skin. The head was unusually large in proportion to the rest of its body, with huge eyes and small openings for the mouth, nose, and ears.
“OMG!” TJ squealed. “It’s an alien from outer space!”
Two large hoses appeared in the alien’s long, bony hands. The space creature then lubricated the ends of the hoses with a green, mucus-looking substance and shoved them directly up my quivering nostrils.
On the tape, I flailed and groaned but was still obviously asleep. My nostrils flared wide and I started snoring, loud snuffling snorts that made the walls of my bedroom shake.
The alien looked directly into the camera with its dark, soulless eyes.The picture grew fuzzy and then went completely black.
CHAPTER 7
NASAL VIOLATION
There was a loud thump behind me. I spun around and saw Mumps sprawled on my bedroom carpet. He had passed out cold. After waking him up by throwing a glass of cold water in his face, we watched the video again.
“This is the creepiest, freakiest, scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Jimmy said.
“Not to mention the grossest,” TJ added. “What did that alien stick up your nose, Schnoz?”
“How do I know? I was fast asleep during the whole thing.”
“Does your sneezer hurt?” Vivian asked.
I shook my head. “No. But take a look inside my nostrils and see if that thing implanted some kind of alien seed or something.”
Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers (except Mumps, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, still recovering from his fainting spell) each took turns examining the inside of my nose for possible alien implantation.
TJ flicked on a flashlight and peered inside one of my nose holes. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he said.
“Just a bunch of crusty boogers clinging to your nasal lining,” Jimmy said, looking up the other nostril.
“You guys are completely overlooking something,” Vivian said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The clue is not what the alien stuck up your nose. But what happened after it stuck something up your nose.”
The Not-Right Brothers and I looked at one another with confused expressions.
“Explain,” Jimmy demanded.
Vivian hit the Play button. “Let’s watch it again and I’ll show you.”
“Do we have to?” Mumps mumbled, still looking a bit queasy.
“Yes,” Vivian answered. “Now, everybody watch carefully.”
We all huddled around the laptop, watching as the alien materialized from the dark cloud and proceeded to shove the hoses up my pie sniffer. I winced at the thought of an alien inserting foreign objects into my nasal cavity while I slept.
When we had finished watching the video three times in a row, Vivian closed the lid of the laptop. “Did you guys see what I saw?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said.
“Duh! Schnoz, you weren’t snoring until that thing stuck the hoses up your nose!”
Jimmy pumped his fists and leaped about four feet in the air. “She’s right!” he screeched. “The alien’s hoses are what’s causing Schnoz to snore!”
“Exactly!” Vivian beamed. “Now we need to find out why an alien enters Schnoz’s room at night and shoves hoses up his nose just to make him snore.”
“Maybe we should call the police,” Mumps said. “We’ll show them the video and then they’ll alert NASA or something.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said sarcastically. “Anybody with the right special effects software can fake a video these days.The police would never believe us and we’d get in trouble for making a phony report.”
“But if we don’t do something about the real cause of your snoring,” Vivian said, “the people in Denmark will drive you out of town like some snoring witch in a thirteenth-century European village.”
I sat up, rubbed my nose, and paced around the room. All this talk of aliens, hoses, and snoring was making my boogers ache. I just wanted to slip on my Super Schnoz costume and fly away from it all.
“We just need to sit down and come up with a plan,” Jimmy said.
“Then let’s go back to the Nostril and figure something out,” TJ said.
“Guys, this isn’t like fighting the ECU,” I pleaded. “They were human beings just like us. How can we possibly stop an alien with higher intelligence from nasally violating me every night?”
The room grew silent. Everyone was confused and a little bit scared—especially me. As far as I was concerned, the task was nearly impossible.
“Well, Schnoz,” Vivian said. “This situation affects you the most.What should we do?”
“I’m really confused right now,” I said, my thoughts tumbling clumsily inside my head like a preschool gymnastics class. “I need to get outside, take a good sniff, and inhale all of this before I can do anything.”
I ran out of the house, hopped on my bike, and took off down the street.
CHAPTER 8
THE CENTER FOR UFOs, EARTHQUAKES, AND ALIEN ABDUCTIONS
I didn’t stop pedaling until I reached the Nostril in Jimmy’s backyard. I spun the code on the combination lock and stepped inside. A blast of heat hit me like a hot pizza oven. Our secret hideout wasn’t air-conditioned and the place was like a sweaty sauna on a hot summer day. Vivian must have left Mr. Sticky out of his cage, because the gecko was stuck to the windowpane, soaking up the sunshine.
My Super Schnoz costume was dangling in the corner on a coat hanger. I hadn’t worn the outfit since defeating ECU. I slipped off my clothes and stepped into the suit. A box of Mardi Gras masks with beaks sat in the corner. I picked one out and slid it over my nose. This one had a plume of bloodred feathers and a glittery paint job. The beak was metallic silver with adjustable black straps.
I was one fancy-looking turkey buzzard!
A breeze rattled the trees in the backyard. I positioned myself in the middle of the grass as a huge gust of air shot up my nostrils. Instantly, they inflated like the wings of a giant wandering albatross. My stomach leaped into my throat, my toes lifted off the ground, and my cape flapped in the breeze.
I was flying!
The town of Denmark stretched out below me like a village in a toy train set. I inhaled deeply and banked hard to the right, heading toward the White Mountain National Forest (WMNF) outside of town. The WMNF was almost a million acres, and within the park were four federally protected wilderness areas.That meant there were no roads or houses in the forest, and the only people were occasional hikers. The area’s remoteness offered just the kind of solitude I needed to contemplate my alien problem.
That was when I caught a pungent whiff of something tantalizingly fishy. The smell was a combination of rotting bait and burning ammonia so intense it made my nose hairs stand on end. I scanned my mental scent library for a match. Nothing. The smell was completely new to my olfactory receptors. I had to find its source!
Closing one nostril with my finger, I began my descent into the WMNF. The closer I got to the ground, the more intense the smell became. I skimmed the treetops until I came to a clearing in the forest. To my wide-nosed surprise, I saw some kind of co
mpound. There were two small trailers, a massive, globe-like structure with the lens of big telescope popping from the roof, an above-ground swimming pool, and a smaller structure about the size of my dad’s garage. That was where that awesome smell was coming from. I had to find what was causing that odor!
I landed softly on an old logging road and walked stealthily toward the garage. Along the path, a hand-painted sign staked into the dirt read: The Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction—Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb, Director.
A hoard of hungry mosquitoes buzzed around my nose. I shooed them away and kept walking. When I got to the garage, I peered into its dirty windows. I didn’t see anybody, but the source of the smell was as plain as the nose on my face. Hanging like giant spider egg sacs were row after row of some kind of drying meat. Next to the Gates of Smell, this nasty jerky was the most horrifyingly delicious glop I had ever smelled in my life.
Quietly, I gripped the door handle and walked inside. The smell hit my cookie detector like a megaton stink bomb. It was as if I had died and awoken in stench heaven!
I grabbed two hunks of the rancid meat and held them to my nostrils. The rancid smell drove my nose crazy. My nostrils flared; my scent receptors quivered in ecstasy. I forgot all about aliens and snoring and basked in the pure joy of smelling!
The garage door flew open. I spun around and saw an older man with wild gray hair and a white lab coat. He was holding a loaded shotgun.
“Get your hands off my hákarl,” the man growled with a thick, European-sounding accent.
I held up my hands. “S-s-sorry,” I stuttered. “I was just…”
“What are you doing here?” the man interrupted. “Why are you wearing that costume and ridiculous-looking mask? Are you with the government?”
