Planet of the Girls

Chapter 2. The Strange Stranger

Our adventure all began in the most unlikely of fashions. There we were, Gerald and I, on our way to West London Swimming Pool on a sunny Sunday morning, with our backpacks bulging full of sandwiches, drinks and swimming gear, when suddenly a voice fired towards us from the shadows of a side street...

"Hey, boys? I need some help to get my vehicle working?"

The man who said it was peculiarly dressed. He had a strange sort of lime-green woollen overcoat and matching balaclava on, and all in the height of summer (I did say our adventure began in the most unlikely of fashions). The overcoat was weird because it seemed to be held together with invisible buttons. All you could see of his face were his hooded eyes, his nose, and his mouth; and all in dark shadows.

Gerald looked at the man, then at me. And he shrugged his shoulders.

"What sort of vehicle is it?" I asked. "I mean we're not pushing a lorry up a hill, you know."

"It is...it is...well, it does not matter, does it?" he said. I realised then, as my eyes got used to the shadows, that his nose seemed to have three nostrils instead of two. And his lips were blubbery like a fish's and hardly opened when he spoke. Poor guy, I thought.

"Will we be able to help you, there are only two of us?" I asked.

"Definitely, my fortuitous friends. It is most definitely an easy function to achieve."

Not only did he dress funny, but he talked funny too.

"What's he on about?" said Gerald, looking extremely puzzled.

"I think he needs our help with his vehicle, and it's easy for us to help him. Maybe we should give the guy a hand. What do you think?"

"Er-dunno, really. I mean, we might be late for the cheaper half-priced swimming session, and then we'll have to go home as we can't waste money on a normal-priced session."

Gerald was a stickler for not wasting money because he never had any, unless Mum gave him some. No one would give him a job anymore because he was completely unreliable and incompetent. For instance, they're absolutely desperate for paperboys in West London-I say "paperboys" but of course they'd take a four-year-old girl if only they could-but Gerald only managed eight days before he was sacked. You see, he kept mixing up the deliveries, and when Vicar Dawkins received Extreme Nudist Bodybuilder Monthly instead of Regency Vicarage Restorations, well, things finally came to a head. Especially as the Vicar was extremely short, less than five foot tall, and as skinny as a catwalk model on a hunger strike. Not to mention the fact that I once saw the vicar cuff a small eight-year old girl on the back of her head for wearing a short-sleeved blouse on a double-decker bus: "Bare arms are the work of the Devil, you shameless hussy!" he had barked.

Gerald would do anything to earn some money, if only someone would give him the chance.

And then suddenly, it looked to Gerald as if a chance had come...

"I will reward you handsomely, boys," said the man, patting one of his bulging lime-green overcoat pockets, which jingled and jangled impressively.

"When do we start?" said Gerald before I could say anything-and I can tell you it's a rare thing when Gerald beats me to the mark.

"Ah, so you both agree to help me?"

"Yes," we both said-in for a penny in for a pound, I thought.

"Good," said the man rubbing his hands with glee, and I'd never seen such huge fingers and certainly not six on each hand! "I have to get your agreement, or I will lose my Advanced Stationary Driving License, which allows my vehicle to become still."

The guy was surely as batty as Batty MacBat of Battinghamshire, who recently won a prize consisting of a pair of Batman underpants for being the battiest man in Batland. The more I looked at him the more I began to conclude that he must have been born in the core of a nuclear reactor. Still, he looked like he was reaching into his pocket for his wallet, so what the hell if he escaped from a mutant farm.

Well, I thought we were going to push a car to help get its engine turning or something like that-but we weren't. Out of the blue, the man whipped from his pocket, not a wallet but what looked like a mobile phone-only it wasn't. He pointed his strange device at us, and seemed to press an invisible button...

Kappow!

There was a blinding flash of light and a crash of thunder-!

______________

I hope you enjoyed this Chapter. I welcome any votes, comments or constructive criticisms (style, spelling, grammar and punctuation errors).

T. J. P. CAMPBELL.