creepy and hatboy – attack of ninjagirl’s uni mates

the case of the missing futon

hatboy wanted to know why i hit him on the head and then dragged his unconscious body up to my room. he wasn’t looking at all comfortable in my chair with the rope keeping him strapped to the seat.
i told him that i knew he’d try to kill me if he didn’t get to hear why i had done things my way.
he said i was probably right. he then went on to explain the gaudy colours you can make on the wall with an electric drill and my upper torso.
i told him to look around. “what do you see?”
“nothing.”
“exactly!”
he didn’t get it, so i pointed at the green whirly thing which should have been floating above my bed.
“see it?” i asked.
“yes. it’s your time-space green thing.”
i rolled my eyes. “no, don’t you get it? it’s supposed to be -”
“- above your bed!” he finished. “so what? so you’ve moved your bed. or it’s been swallowed by your green thing. that’ll teach you for making friends with it!”

sherlock creepy and doctor hatboy

“so, the bed is missing, sherlock.”
“don’t you see, doctor hatboy, that if the bed is missing, then we must assume it was there in the first place? that it must then have been used as some kind of experiment by bizarre and dark forces?”
“do we?”
“of course! note, for example, the pile of linen in the corner. those, doctor hatboy, are the leftovers of the futon. they’re the dirty sheets, if you like. and this, this is the pillow case.”
“so?”
“so, we must deduce that it was no bed-eating monster which consumed my bed. not unless it peeled it first. we might also note the scuff marks on the carpet which, although they blend in nicely with the stains, are by no means a sign of unhealthy living. they are, instead, signs of a struggle. perhaps the bed was resisting the move…?”
“someone stole your futon. is that what you’re trying to say?”
“if someone stole the futon, would they not steal the sheets, too?”
“i wouldn’t steal your sheets, sherlock. not if they were the last radioactive sheets on earth.”
“ah, so we might deduce the culprits, for there were more than one to move a futon of this size, were a little on the fastidious side? perhaps they wanted cleaner sheets. which, my good doctor, explains why the closet in the hallway has been raided of fresh lemony-smelling sheets of much-white sparkly!”

doctor hatboy gets there in the end

“so? someone filched your bed, and some clean sheets. can you let me loose now so i can kill you for hitting my head?”
“think, doctor hatboy! who would go to such an extreme amount of effort to steal a futon? what kind of evil creatures from vast otherworldly dimensions would steal clean sheets?”
“i don’t know. i’ve got a sore head. how can i think? hmm, weasels?”
“there was no coffee in the sheets.”
“super-villains.”
“too tidy. note the lack of a mess. and they didn’t take my jar of fungus growing in the coca-cola puddle.”
“true. okay, it’s not weasels, and it’s not super-villains. there’s dirty washing in the corner, and no mess. they took the clean shee- oh. oh, coke god, no. it can’t be! oh yes, the melodramatic gasping horrror of it all! quick, untie me and bolt the door, we must find some avenue of escape! we must call the armed forces, the navy, the air force!”
“no use! it’s too late. hatboy, they’ve already taken the futon!”
“what evil has invaded our home? what did we do to deserve this foul presence?”
“now you see why i brought you here by stealth! i couldn’t risk you making even the slightest peep! they might have heard. they might have done, ooh, nasty things to our hats.”
“coke god, no. what are we going to do?”
“well, first we’re going to barricade ourselves in here with what little is left. then we’ll have to ration our days out until we’re rescued by a passing automobile rescue service.”
“i can’t believe it. we’re stuck up here without a fridge while they’re down there consuming our marshmallows. are you sure it’s them? we couldn’t be mistaken?”
“yes, of this i’m certain. ninjagirl’s uni friends have arrived.”

doomed

we crouched behind a barricade of splintered furniture and empty bookshelves. i’d piled everything else in front of the door.
we would have dug a trench, but we didn’t have a shovel.
hatboy’s been playing prison blues on an invisible harmonica because i won’t lend him my blues harp.
we sometimes hear sounds coming from behind the door. they sound like voices, only they shiver with evil.
hatboy says we might try to communicate with them. maybe, he says, they’ll respond to reason.
i point out that these are students who go to university. they know ninjagirl. they’re addicted to sugar and shopping malls. they had long nails and longer teeth.
“hey, boys,” a girlish voice giggles through the door. “aren’t you gonna come down and show us your manly bosoms?”
hatboy looks at me. “we’re doomed, creepy. doomed.”

panties by moonlight

“can we escape through your window?”
“we could jump, but the rose thorns would cut us to ribbons.”
“you think it’s worth it?”
“worth being shredded? yes, of course i do.”
“well, let’s jump.”
“we can’t.”
“why not? you said it would be worth it!”
“yes, but one of ninjagirl’s buddies is out there, under the apple tree.”
“what’s she doing?”
“waving her panties at me.”
“uni students. go figure.”

what would macgyver do?

“well, creepy, there’s only one thing left to do.”
“what’s that?”
“we’re going to have to be macgyver.”
“how do we do that?”
“i could use a hairpin.”
“to do what?”
“i don’t know, but these things usually begin with a hairpin. after that, we can kind of make it up as we go along. got a hairpin?”
“no.”
“well, that kills that plan, then, doesn’t it?”
“yep.”
“it was a good plan.”
“a ripsnorter of a plan.”
“thanks.”
“no problem.”
“oh well, i’m out of ideas.”
“me too.”
“doomed, creepy.”
“doomed.”

the green thing

i stare at the green thing which should have been above my bed. if i still had a bed.
ninjagirl and her uni friends would be sitting on it. my poor bed.
now and then, their girly giggles pierced the night silence like the shrieking of evil banshees.
hatboy snores in his corner of my room. he has stolen my blanket.
the green thing hums to itself. it’s kind of calming.
outside, the bats flipflop across the sky. they’re heading to the drackenstein place. everyone’s always heading to the drackenstein place. he must have good parties.
the green thing whirls and drifts on its spot.
it’s very inviting.
i throw a piece of carpet fluff at it.
the carpet fluff disappears with a sucking sound.
and that’s about the moment i choose to dash across the room and begin yelling at hatboy, who takes my ears in his fists and starts bashing my head against the desk.

greenland here we come

“i thought you were going to be stealthy again,” hatboy said, helping me to my feet.
i wobbled for a bit. “if i was going to be stealthy, i wouldn’t yell at you to wake up before hitting you,” i told him.
“sorry.”
“never mind. i had an idea.”
“what have i told you about those?”
“not to have them. but this time it’s different.”
“why’s that?”
“it’s a good one.”
hatboy doesn’t believe me, so i tell him about my green thing.
“stuff goes in,” i say. “so it must come out some place.”
“you think we could escape ninjagirl’s friends through that thing?”
“i don’t know. but i’m betting that by the time we find our way back from inside, they’ll probably be gone.”
“you think?”
“we can only hope so.”
“well, it’s got to be a lot safer than in here. i’m sure they nearly got through the door last time.”
“now all we have to do is decide who’s going in first…”

advanced theories in decision making

hatboy and i have a unique approach to appointing tasks.
first, we each argue our points with cool tact and subtle reasoning.
then we counter each other’s argument with the appropriate mix of denunciation and compromise.
finally, we discard reason and make a decision with our time-proven super-powers of much-decision-makey.
“okay, one potato, two potato, three potato-”
“hey! why am i always one potato?”

sidekicks in greenland

we landed with a thump.
“well,” hatboy said, rubbing his backside. “that was different.”
pulling my leg from the mud, i agreed.
around us, a million bombs were exploding. someone yelled at us to get out of the way. hatboy shuffled to one side.
“thanks, mate,” the man said with a salute. he aimed his rifle and took a few pot shots over our shoulders.
“i don’t suppose,” hatboy said, stepping over the twisted body of someone who’d been unfortunate enough to step on something which had obviously exploded, “that you know where we are?”
“sure do,” i told him. “we’re on the front. world war two, if i’m not mistaken.”
hatboy tapped the soldier on his shoulder. “’scuse me. is this world war two?”
the soldier nodded. “sure is, sport!”
hatboy and i slouched in the mud as more bombs exploded quite close. “great,” my super-sidekick sighed. “we’re in a ditch with diggers.”

swarm

“some days it don’t pay to get up,” the soldier muttered.
“tell me about it,” hatboy said.
“ain’t got time, mate,” the soldier cried, leaping out into a swarm of bullets, most of which seemed to get him square in the chest.
his blood rained down on us and hatboy covered his face with his hands.
the stink of loosened bowels and stale bladderjuice whispered through the mud around us and my super-sidekick looked at me across the chunks of meat which flopped about the place, ripped from the falling body of the young soldier. “you really know how to pick a green thing destination.”
“sorry. i thought it would be nice to see some diggers in action.”
“why on earth would you think that?” he picked up a fistful of chunky meat and stared at it with distaste. “i mean, this is real digger meat!”
i nodded. “yes, but all those ads on tv make it look like fun. come join the army, and see great places and make great mates, all tax free.”
“oh. this is all tax free, is it?”
“certainly is.”
“well,” he dropped the meat and poked his head above the trench to have a look at all the corpses. “that’s different then. check that one out, he’s got no legs.”
“wait, is that a bird?”
“no.”
“is it a plane?”
“no.”
“oh, then it must be bad.”
“incoming!”

things that go boom

“all of this,” the man with the hat was saying. “is righteous. you all get to die for a good cause. pretty rare thing, these days. good causes, i mean.”
“what cause?” hatboy called from the back, thumbing through a copy of homicidal psychotic mercs in the middle east.
“revenge,” the guy said. “best damn cause in the corps.”
and with that, a few more soldiers jumped the trenches and let themselves get cut up by the busy little swarms.
“revenge?” i threw down my copy of do it yourself napalm droppings and decided to play with a gun instead. “what are we revenging today?”
“they killed some of us, so now we’re killing some of them. revenge. pretty simple concept. any other questions?”
hatboy put his hand up. “why’d they kill some of you in the first place?”
“does it matter?”
“not really,” i said. “we’re just passing time until we figure how to get out of here.”
“oh. right-o. well, they killed some of us because we stole their stash of vodka.”
“you stole their vodka?”
“it was good vodka.”

others

the green thing hovered in the middle of the battlefield.
“what do you think?” hatboy asked, chewing an apple. he clutched a pale blanket. i didn’t want to ask why.
“i reckon we can do it, sarge,” i told him.
“it’s gonna get rough, private creepy.”
“bring it on, sarge. those jerries ain’t takin’ me without a fight. damn jerries.”
“they bleed red, private. they’re same as you an’ me.”
“no they’re not. they’re a bunch of blasted materialistic racist sexist-pig commies with bad body odor. and they stink, too! hate them with a passion. have you seen what they write about us on their toilet walls? they’ve got no tolerance for other cultures. i can’t wait ‘til we’ve killed them all. that’ll teach ‘em all a darn good lesson.”
“you might be right. think we can get there before they do to us what they’ve been doing to these idiots?”
“trust british paints, sarge.”
“huh?”
“sure can.”

the green escape

the bike revved like something from a meatloaf album. my super-sidekick sat on the handlebars and probably had his eyes closed.
“you holding on?” i yelled.
hatboy shouted something as i gunned it across the battefield. the wheels skidded on mud and blood and we ran over a few bodies. i tried to apologise to each corpse, but soon found this took too much effort.
the blanket hatboy had been holding on to for self-security, fell over his face. “what the hell are you doing?” he screamed. “stop bouncing! i’ll fall off! i can’t see!”
“sorry! speed bumps are a real killer!”
“watch out!”
“ouch. that’s gonna leave a mark.”

jumping beings

i wheeled the bike in the mud.
“swarm at ten-fifteen,” i grunted. “better go to plan-c!”
“plan what?”
“c!”
“no, i don’t! this damn blanket!”
“c, not see!”
“make sense, you crazy troll!”
instead, i revved the bike and aimed straight for the nearest mound of random bodyparts.
“what are you doing?” hatboy shrieked, flailing about. “the green thing’s over there!”
we hit the mound at a respectable speed and flew into the air.
hatboy was still struggling with the blanket. i had hoped we’d fly, but my super-sidekick didn’t help out, so we fell instead.
luckily, we landed on top of the green thing and found ourselves . . .

further adventures in greenland

. . . on a luxury liner in the middle of the tennis court.
“what the hell were you thinking?” hatboy yelled. “we could have been killed.”
“i thought you might at least have been a little more helpful,” i told him in a tone which i hoped conveyed my disappointment.
“what? i wasn’t driving. you were!”
“yes, but you could’ve done that glowy-finger thing.”
“what glowy-finger thing?”
“you know, the trick where you make us fly by turning your finger into a flashlight.”
“huh?”
i tossed him a coin and wandered off toward the pool.
“and what do i want this for?”
“hatboy, phone home.”

twisting by the pool

they were sitting in the pool, sipping tropical cocktails from scooped-out pineapples.
they wore matching mambo-style bikinis. i was glad i still wore my mambo shirt which remained amazingly free of mud. i straightened it and began to step forward.
they were shouting at a waiter to bring them bugs, fresh in their shells, and none of that frozen rubbish.
the waiter pointed out that it was a long way to the shop for some fresh bugs.
the meanest of the two pointed out that there was a whole ocean under the boat, and if the waiter didn’t want to find out what the bottom looked like, he’d better organise something pretty damned quick.
hatboy wandered up behind me as i knelt beside the blue water. he was still clinging to his blankie.
“oh, no,” he groaned. “xil and xol.”
xol looked up at mention of her name. “creepy!” she squealed. “quick, jump in! make bubbles!”
what else could i do?
i jumped in.
i made bubbles.

shivery by the pool

“what are you two doing here? this is our holiday spot!” xil didn’t look happy to see us.
hatboy pointed at me. “his fault. kill him.”
“we were trying to escape ninjagirl’s university friends. they stole my futon. who knows what dastardly things they’re doing on it right now.”
xol made an understanding face.
xil looked at me with her suspicious expression digging holes into my brain. “how is she? how is my babe? if you’ve hurt her feelings, creepy . . .”
“she’s fine,” i said. “it’s her friends we were dodging.”
“oh. that’s okay then. but i don’t want you showing up here every year, ruining our holiday.”
“promise.”
“hope to die?”
“no, i don’t actually.”
“then be scarce.”
“will do.”
“and pass the nachos before you leave.”
“done.”

xol and the spooky boiler room of doom

“this way!”
“where are you taking me?”
“shhh! you don’t want xil to hear us, do you?”
“she’d probably make good on her threat to do unreasonable things to my party package, won’t she?”
“more than likely.”
“consider me shhhed.”
“good. come on! hurry!”
“i can’t hurry with you dragging my arm like this.”
“i thought you were shhh.”
“i am shhh!”
“then be shhh!”
“i am!”
“quiet, they might hear us.”
“who? i thought we only had xil to worry about. hey, is this the boiler room?”
“yes it is. now . . . hold this.”
“is this what i think it is?”
“yes.”
“lucky it’s warm in here or you’d catch cold.”
“i like you, creepy. you’re silly.”
“you have no idea how many times i hear that.”
“you shouldn’t say such a horrid thing at a time like this.”
“time like what? oh. oh, my. wow. hey, you’ve got green -”
“shhh.”

the boat moves too much

i told hatboy i thought the boat rocked about too much.
he said it was because the waves make it move up and down. it’s not the boat’s fault, he says. it’s the ocean.
yeah, like i’d believe anything hatboy tells me.
anyway, i thought i should go and tell the captain all about it.
i found him in a small room at the top of a flight of wobbly stairs.
i told him all about the moving part. i told him to stop making it such a bumpy ride. avoid pebbles if you can help it, i said. and stop making sharp turns, because it’s making me lose my lunch.
oh, and the stairs need fixing. they’re wobbly.
what the captain called me as he got a sailor to kick me out of his room is unrepeatable, but some of them started with some very harsh letters of the alphabet indeed.

hatboy’s little adventure

hatboy’s been mapping the ship.
he thinks he’s found a secret passageway.
he has pinned his map to the wall in our bunkroom. there are lots of red arrows going all over the place, and in the centre is a huge friendly yellow cross.
tonight, he’s going to go on adventure.
he’s going to sneak down the corridor marked with a big ‘a’. well, not sneak exactly. more like avoid attention. yes, okay, sneak. he tells me to stop interrupting and listen.
he says he’s found what could be the greatest treasure on board the ship.
and no, he hasn’t found where young miss lana keeps her frilly clothing.
yet.
no, he’s found something more important.
he’s found the galley.

mooching at midnight

we mooch down the corridors, mostly dressed in black.
well, okay, hatboy’s dressed totally in black. he looks a lot like a cat burglar, or a ninja gone wrong. i’ve still got my mambo shirt on, but at least i put some black stuff of bright-light-avoidy on my face.
unfortunately, i only had enough to do a groucho-style moustache and a pair of groucho-black spectacles, but it’s still excellent camouflage for such a dark and dastardly business as this.
hatboy complained that i used so much on my moustache that he had to go with the streaky look. his commando-in-the-dark impression looked more like some kind of greased up tiger monkey on the loose.
tonight, my pants are bright green. but that’s all the better to blend in with the lettuces he says might be hidden away in the galley with the real food.
hatboy pads ahead of me, gliding between shadows like some kind of stealthy skaven scum.
i don’t bother to do the stealth thing.
i tell him i can’t.
my moustache has taken over.
i must do the groucho-stride.
hatboy watches, disgusted. “couldn’t you have at least tried to be a commando?”
i look at him blankly for a moment. “why, no, my good man. say, has anyone ever told you you’ve got the nose of a gibbon? lucky nose, too, i’d say. no chance of the gibbon ever coming back for it.”

noises in the galley

we make it past the guards by using hatboy’s secret passageway.
inside is indeed an aladdin’s cave of goodies and sacred munchies.
i immediately go for the choc-chip biscuits like a rabid cookie-monster and start chewing out the choc chips and spitting biscuit bits onto the floor.
hatboy dives for anything greasy.
i try to take one of his crispies but he snarls at me and snatches it from my grasp.
“sorry,” i say. “i forgot. never touch another spud’s salty snacks.”
we drink juice, because there’s no coca-cola. this is a damned ship indeed.
we hear a bubbling sound coming from behind us.
hatboy looks up at me, dribbling crumbs. “what’s that?”
“if we’re lucky, it’s the captain sending goons to come and slaughter us for pilfering the pantry.”
“and if we’re not . . .”
“then we’re doomed.”
“well then. i’m not looking. you look.”
“i tell you what. let’s decide the democratic way. i vote you look.”
“well, i vote you look!”
“stalemate. i win. alphabetically, my name starts with a c.”
“no way!”
“okay, we’ll decide a bit more randomly. agreed?”
“okay.”
“very well. hold out your fist.”
“done.”
“ready?”
“ready.”
“alright. one potato, two potato, three-”
“hey! you made me one potato again!”

another great adventure comes to a grisly end

hatboy peeks over his shoulder.
“what is it?” i ask.
“you don’t want to know.”
“is it a mouse?”
“nope.”
“a weasel? it’s in the coffee, right?”
“nope.”
“a cat?”
“no animal.”
“mineral?”
“nope.”
“well, that’s my guesses done. give me a clue.”
“boo.”
“oh no.”
“yep.”
i turn and check out the eggs which are busily bubbling on the ground behind us.
the galley is haunted by poltereggs.

run, run as fast as you can

we run back to our room and hide in our bunks with our blankies over our heads for two hours and fifty-three minutes, after which time hatboy pokes his head out from under his blanket and says, “is it safe to come out do you think?”
“i don’t know. let’s wait a few more hours . . .”

the captain is grouchy

today, i tried telling the captain about the moving thing again.
this time he threatened to do bendy things with my arms which sounded quite impossible. i told him so.
“look,” he yelled. “get off my bridge!”
“this is a bridge? wow! it doesn’t look like the one in star trek does it? where’s the klingon supposed to sit?”
the captain screamed and his face went very red.
“you should calm down, have you tried tai chi?” i told him as two sailors came in and began trying to do that bendy thing with my arms. “ouch! be careful! those things break if you bend too hard!”

the brig isn’t at all like those in star trek

this one has bars on it.
hatboy came for a visit.
he told me xol was looking for me. “she seems a bit mad about something which didn’t happen in the boiler room,” he tells me.
“oh. i forgot. i was supposed to meet her there again.”
“again!? don’t tell me you’ve been – oh, my god, creepy, you have! are you insane? she’s an alien! she’s a martian! god knows what they’ve got under their underpants! they’ve probably got, ooh, squiggly things which eat your belly button and drill up through your spine into your brain for dessert!”
i didn’t like that thought.
not at all.
i made a mental note to search xol thoroughly next time before we did anything squiggly.

xol visits

“stay back!” i shriek at her.
“what?”
“i know all about you aliens! hatboy told me. you’re going to eat my belly button and chew on my brains!”
“icky, creepy. your brains wouldn’t taste nummy.”
instead, she zaps the bars with her bar-o-zapp gun and tells me to hide somewhere where the sailors won’t find me. and, she adds, i should probably stay away from xil, who found out about our boiler room antics.
“she wants your package,” she giggles.
“i don’t think it’s funny!”
xol tells me to go find my sense of humour.
i tell her if i’m not good at playing hide and seek, xil’s going to cut off my sense of humour and nail it to the wall. i tell her that then she’d have to look at my sense of humour every day.
xol grins at me. “awww, creepy. you say nice things.”
martians. they’re nuts.

the captain also has a screw loose

“well, first you can’t even drive this thing without hitting every bump-”
“they’re waves.”
“huh?”
hatboy shrugged at me. “they’re called waves, creepy. those bumps in the water. waves.”
“bumps, waves, what’s the difference? anyway, he keeps driving over them instead of going around them, right? that makes it a bumpy ride. right?”
“i guess so.”
the captain struggles in his chair. the gag stops him from shouting at us. outside the bridge, the sailors keep banging on the door. luckily hatboy brought his porta-blowtorch of much-door-shutty.
“anyway, as i was saying. then the poltereggs kept us hidden for two days, trapped like prisoners in our bunks, unable to move while outside our very door the poltereggs howled for blood. you hear me? they howled for blood!”
“i heard them,” my super-sidekick tells the captain. “twice.”
“not only that, your boiler room burnt my bottom while i was trying to … well, you don’t really want to know, but it ruined a perfectly good moment and the blisters are still giving me a hard time.”
hatboy sighed. “i keep telling you. you’ll end up like harry kim, you know.”
“yeah yeah. anyway, we just wanted you to know we think this is by far the worst ship we’ve ever been on, and if we had the time, we’d tell you all about what we thought of the floorshow.”
“uh, creepy . . .?”
the captain’s eyes bulged and he struggled to free himself. there were some screams from outside the door.
“what’s going on?” i asked.
hatboy pointed through the window. “umm, what’s that?”
“a mountain.” i looked down at the captain. “now see what you’ve done. you’ve only gone and driven us into a mountain.”

down with the ship

its sharp icy skin pretty much ploughed through the boat.
after the boat slowed its shaking and decided to instead start tilting at some ridiculous angle, i lifted myself up onto my elbows and found the captain still struggling in his chair.
i decided he would probably like going down with the ship. it would be a terribly romantic thing for him to do. very brave, i thought.
i told him i thought he was the most courageous man i’d ever met and saluted him as water gushed into the bridge. i was sure that would do nasty things to the carpet. at the very least it would drench my mambo shirt.
hatboy helped me to my feet and nodded toward the corner of the bridge. “your green thing’s back.”
“nice timing.”
“i thought so, too. you think ninjagirl’s uni friends have left?”
“only one way to find out.”
“you first.”
“super-sidekicks first.”
“you’re a super sidekick, too.”
“oh, yeah. democracy? i vote you.”
“i vote you.”
“fists out.”
“done.”
“one, pota-”
“okay, okay. i’m going.”

landing with a thump

ouchies.
hatboy crawled across the floor toward the door. “damn you, creepy,” he muttered. “why does it always drop us from an unreasonable height?”
“i think it likes to see you bump your head. i know i do.”
he doesn’t think i’m funny.

Tags: creepy and hatboy, martians, titanic