You're an Alien, Minty Beeswax!

By Paul Currant

‘Zambombom!’ said Minty Beeswax, and from where he comes from (that’s the planet Verteld) it’s about the rudest thing you can say without being fed to the Salamak-of-Al-Crendor. But you can hardly blame Minty. Here he is, a young alien made to look like a 12 year old Earth boy and sent on a deadly dangerous mission to find out if Earth is a good place for Vertelders to go on holiday. To make things worse, half of what he sees is totally confusing and to make things worse worse he has to go through the nightmare of what Earth people call ‘school’!

Now, if you’re thinking, ‘Ha, that’s not enough danger to make Minty say, “Zambombom!”’ then you know NOTHING. He’s also discovered there is government organisation called Alien Detection Squad trying to track him down and probably DISSECT HIM. Enough danger for you now?

And if it’s not, then you should know that Minty has another enormous problem, one he knows nothing about . . . .

‘Zambombom!’ See, even you’re saying it now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Currant
• Release date: Nov 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310072161

Paul Currant

Paul Currant has been writing for most of his life - shopping lists, complaint letters, that sort of thing. But has also written plays and books and 'You’re an alien, Minty Beeswax!' is definitely one of those last ones. He has lived in England, the USA, France, and Mauritius either being a student or working with students and is very happy he never has to take any exams ever again. Now please leave him alone, he’s trying to write something.

Book preview

Talita to Elaine and family, Chris and Mike for top critical support, Helen and Michael for guinea pig duties, and Sharon for inspiration and for translating this into English

1. Emergency Exit

Not much was happening in Harperbury that Thursday. Another medium-sized Thursday in a medium-sized town with a medium-sized market and a medium-sized park and a medium-sized just about everything else.

Hang on, I forgot. Something was happening in Harperbury that Thursday: MINTY BEESWAX WAS ABOUT TO DIE.

‘Zambombom!’ Minty swore, ‘I’m only twelve!’

Trembling with terror, he looked around the empty changing room. Clothes lay on the benches, shoes littered the floor. Minty could hear the rest of Class 702 talking in the gym, waiting for him. But he couldn’t join them. All he could do was sit and wait for the bloody, painful, agonising end to his young life.

Beads of sweat dribbled down his face and his heart was beating harder and faster than a heavy metal drummer.

‘Zambombom!’ Minty swore again. ‘I’m going to die! And all because I can’t tie shoelaces.’

I’ll explain.

When his Meldors on the planet Verteld had prepared Minty for his mission to Earth they had spent longer than two Largs getting him ready. Cakorth the Meldor had told him:

‘You must not be worried. Nobody in the town of Harperbury will suspect you are an alien.’

‘Nobody?’

‘Nobody, even if they look closely, or poke your skin, or turn you upside down and shake you hard for three Earth days.’

‘Is that likely to happen?’ Minty had asked nervously and was a bit worried when Cakorth had ignored him and continued:

‘You have been trained to do everything a twelve-year old Earth boy can do. You can recognise the outline of Italy, you know that i comes before e except after c - with certain exceptions our scientists are still studying - and you even know the best way to pick your nose and secretly wipe it on your trousers. Trust me, Minty, there is nothing you don’t know.’

OH NO?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It had only been five days since Minty had been wrapped in a skin of spadawada and shot by the Lipip ray to the planet Earth, but already hundreds of things had happened that had left him totally confused. Like when Cakorth had said, ‘In order to survive, Earth people only cross the road when the red man under the traffic lights turns green.’

Great advice, right? Except everyone started crossing the road when the man was still RED. That’s right. They looked at the cars, looked at the traffic lights, and then just crossed the road. Did they all want to die?

So confusing.

And now the shoelaces! His classmates had tied theirs ages ago and were waiting in the gym. Not Minty. He looked at the stringy cotton on top of his plimsoles and didn’t have the first idea what to do. Yes, yes, he had watched the others tying their laces but they were just too fast.

And now he was really panicking. If he couldn’t tie his shoelaces, Mr Eastbourne the gym teacher would get suspicious. He would ask Minty questions. Minty would be discovered! His spying mission would fail. He would be taken to a laboratory and taken apart piece by piece until HE DIED!

 ‘Zambombom!’ He swore yet again (it’s about the rudest word you can say on Verteld and not be fed to the Salamak-of-Al-Crendor).

Then it got worse. Mr Eastbourne put his head around the door. Minty looked up, hardly able to breathe. Mr Eastbourne stared at him. Minty froze. Mr Eastbourne pointed at Minty with his very official looking clipboard.

‘Today would be good, Beeswax.’

‘Yes,’ Minty managed to reply.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘N-n-no.’

‘You can tie shoelaces, can’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘No problem.’ Minty slid his feet back under the bench to hide them.

Mr Eastbourne walked right up to Minty with a very suspicious look on his face. Minty glanced up as a bead of sweat fell off his nose.

‘Let me see those shoelaces, Beeswax.’

‘But . . . .’

‘Let me see them.’

Mr Eastbourne stood there.

Minty sat there.

Minty was dead!

Suddenly, there was a loud noise from the gym and the sound of a girl crying. Mr Eastbourne looked towards the sound.

‘Typical,’ he said, rolling his eyes, ‘I told them not to touch anything.’ He looked back at Minty.

‘You have ten seconds.’ With that he went back into the gym. Minty sighed with relief. He might live after all.

But what about the shoelaces?

Then Minty finally had an idea. A fairly rubbish idea, to be honest, but it was better than none. He reached over to his rucksack and took out his pencil case. Inside he found his fairly rubbish idea: superglue! He carefully folded over the laces of one plimsole until they formed a bow and stuck them there with the glue. Then he did the same with the other one. After a few seconds the laces were stuck fast and if you didn’t look too closely you wouldn’t suspect a thing. Relieved, and quite pleased, Minty put the glue away and ran out into the gym.

Harperbury School had won piles of design awards when it was opened thirty years ago. Now it looked - got to be honest here - terrible. The gym was the worst. It was really dark and the interior was made of crumbling, grey concrete coloured only by traces of blood from years of children running into the walls. And you couldn’t wipe it off, either; it had soaked right into the concrete.

Minty jogged over to where the other members of Class 702 were listening to Mr Eastbourne who was describing their ‘challenge.’

‘This challenge is called The Vaulting Horse. This is what you do.’

Minty watched Mr Eastbourne run ten paces towards a small padded box, jump off a springboard and land on the other side of the box as gracefully as a middle-aged man could while carrying a clipboard.

‘Any questions?’ he asked. ‘Good,’ he continued before anyone could reply. ‘Line up in alphabetical order.’ He consulted his clipboard. ‘Beeswax, you’re first.’

Now you might expect Minty to be terrified at this. Until ten minutes ago he hadn’t even seen a gym but he knew that, as a Vertelder, he was faster and stronger than any human - with the possible exception of a few Olympic decathletes (none of whom seemed to be enrolled in Mrs Caroll’s year seven class at Harperbury Secondary School).

He took a deep breath and focused on the vaulting horse. He ran in slowly, then quickened up. His feet hit the springboard just right and his jump and landing were perfect.

‘Very good, Beeswax,’ said Mr Eastbourne. ‘Now line up behind Yatling.’

Minty strolled as coolly as he could to the back of the line. His heart was beating fast again, but this was the fast that was good. After four days of rude shop assistants and sarcastic dinner ladies, it was the first time on Earth anyone had ever said anything nice to him. Plus, he had noticed his Imager had finally started to work.

Here’s the thing. Minty was on a spying mission, but it wasn’t one of those ‘Aliens-Spy-On-Earth-THEN-DESTROY-IT-MWHAHAHAHA’ kinds of missions. No, the peaceful Vertelders weren’t like that - I’m not saying they had never done any destroying, but it was usually by accident, like when Regent 657 fell on the ‘KILL PLANET’ button and exterminated their favourite holiday destination, Bornest Trope.

No, Minty’s spying mission was about exploration, about information. He had five Largs (one Larg is about six months to save you googling it) to find out everything he could about Earth. The Meldors had identified it as a replacement holiday destination, but further investigations were necessary. Of course, Minty couldn’t do all the investigating without help, and that’s where the Imager came in. It was a microscopic camera implanted just under the skin on top of his right ear - and it REALLY hurt when they put it in (even now he worried about when he had to change the battery). The Imager was going to record everything he saw on Earth and then he would transmit the recordings back to his Meldors on Verteld. He had been told it would take a few days for the Imager to begin working but would never have guessed that the first Image it would ever record was the back of Nigel Yatling’s head.

Nigel turned around to look at Minty.

‘Good jump.’

‘Thanks.’ Was this Minty’s day, or what? Now a classmate had finally spoken to him!

‘I’m going to be rubbish at this.’ Nigel continued, ‘I know everything there is about birds and frogs, but I can’t even jump out of bed.’

‘It’s easy,’ said Minty, ‘all you have to do is visualise yourself taking a good, strong jump and then bend your knees when you land.’

‘What about the in-the-air bit? The bit where gravity wants you to splatter?’

 ‘You can’t do anything about it. All you can control is the taking off and landing. The rest takes care of itself.’

‘Excellento, or ribbit as a frog would say,’ said Nigel.

It was nearly Nigel's turn. Minty looked at two more of his new classmates leap like frightened cats over the vaulting horse and then turned to watch Nigel as he began his run up.

Now, if you’re expecting Nigel to run straight into the vaulting horse (or even miss it completely and add even more blood to the walls of the gym) you’d be mistaken. Yes, Nigel did hit the edge of the springboard rather than the centre, but this meant he flew over the vaulting horse and (accidentally) performed a brilliant twist in the air. True, he landed like a jelly thrown off a skyscraper, but, believe you me, it could have been a lot worse. And Nigel obviously thought so too because he gave Minty the thumbs up as he rejoined him in the queue.

The rest of the gym lesson passed incredibly quickly for Minty. The ropes he climbed quicker than anyone (though not as quick as he could have done, don’t want to look TOO different) and after a disastrous beginning to the football game where he tackled his own player and then ‘scored’ in the basketball hoop, he soon took to the game. Even though he was almost sent off twice (once for picking up the ball thinking any player could be the goalkeeper, and once for a truly appalling late tackle on little Christine Tixier) Minty found the game a lot of fun. He was more than disappointed when the class ended and they all went back to the changing room. There wasn’t enough time to shower so everyone had to change as quickly as possible and make their way back to the main building for the next class.

And that brings us back to Minty’s plimsoles. He slid the first one off easily, but the second one wasn't going anywhere. He had put so much glue on that some had soaked through and stuck his sock and his plimsole to his skin. He felt himself beginning to panic yet again. The first bead of sweat dropped from his eyebrow on to his cheek. How could he get out of this one? Maybe he could hide in a cupboard for three days until they’d all gone!

Totally stupid idea. He’d get really hungry and what would happen when he needed to . . . ?

Fine. No hope, then. Might as well shout, ‘FIRE! FIRE!’ and run off somewhere.

This surely was the end.

Minty sensed that somebody was standing over his left shoulder. He looked round as calmly as he could.

‘Hi, I’m Nigel,’ said Nigel. ‘Your name’s Minty, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Minty, ‘my name’s Minty.’

‘Hi, Minty, I’m Nigel.’

‘Hi, Nigel, I’m Minty.’

‘I can take you to a frogspawn pond sometime.’

Now, normally Minty would have been extra, extra happy to talk with this Nigel, but right now he just wanted him to disappear. If Nigel saw the glued shoelaces anything could happen - all of it bad.

‘First we need to go to class though, Minty.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t want to be late.’

‘No.’

‘Are you ok?’ Nigel looked concerned.

‘Very ok.’

‘So how come you’re sitting there like your bum’s glued to the bench?’

‘G-g-glued?’ stammered Minty.

‘Yes, glued.’ And that’s when Nigel noticed Minty’s shoes. That’s when he saw what truly was glued. Minty felt yet another bead of sweat slither down his nose. If Nigel decided to shout out, ‘Look at moron Beeswax, he’s glued his laces on,’ he and Minty would never be friends - mainly because Mr Eastbourne would come in and soon after that Minty would be taken to a laboratory and taken apart piece by piece until HE DIED!

But there was an alternative; if Nigel quietly said, ‘I did that once. Never got tying shoes,’ then that would be just brilliantly good.

Nigel looked around the changing room. Minty gulped. And then Nigel said it.

Nothing. He said nothing.

Doesn’t sound great, I know, but the way Nigel said nothing - with a bit of a friendly smile - made Minty think he might survive, after all.

But, let’s not forget, the plimsole was still sticking to Minty’s sock and the sock to his skin. Nigel walked off and Minty tugged the sock as hard as he could. It hurt like trying to rip off the world’s biggest plaster, but still it wouldn’t come free. There was clearly only one solution. Minty checked that nobody was near him, stood up, and opened the outside door.

‘FIRE! FIRE!’

 2. Toy Story

About one hour’s drive from where Minty was causing the whole school to evacuate (and stand for a good ten minutes in the cold wind of the playground) there was a shop called Happy Mike's Toy Emporium. It was a toys and games shop in one of the quietest parts of London. But this was no ordinary shop. If you walked in the front door you would meet Mike, who seemed to be the owner. Mike was not ‘Happy’. Mike would not be nice to you. If you asked for the latest electronic toy he would laugh like a deranged pirate and tell you it was ‘only for mad babies’. If you asked for the latest best computer game he would tell you it had ‘more bugs than a mountain of rotting sick’ and his mate Terry had even told him it made your thumbs fall off. It was almost like he didn’t want you to be there.

Which, of course, he didn’t. Because Happy Mike, Shop Owner, was really Serious Mike, Government Agent, and his Toy Emporium was nothing more than a front for one of the government’s most secret departments: Alien Detection Squad.

If you walked past Mike, at the back of the shop you would find a door with this sign:

KEEP OUT!

KILLER DOG!

NOT JOKING!

FOR PICTURES OF HIS VICTIMS GO TO www.hebiteseveryone.com

And if you ignored that scary sign and bravely opened the door you would find a snarling, rabid Rottweiler ready to bite your bits off just for fun.

That's not true. Sorry. You wouldn't find a Rottweiler. In fact, you wouldn’t even find an orange, furry toy that barked out ‘Scooby snacks!’ You would, however, find The Lab. It was a large room with computers and radars and various other pieces of equipment designed to root out anything that could possibly be ‘alien’.

Four people worked there. Starting from the least important, there was ‘Mr Nether’ and ‘Mr Wallop’ (not their real names, everything was REALLY secret here). They were two men who spent all day poring over radars and radio waves and computer screens looking for the slightest sign of anything extra-terrestrial. Mr Nether was the tall, fat one with the broken nose who you would ban from your rugby team for being too ugly. Mr Wallop was the small, skinny one who you would ban from your rugby team for being useless.

Their boss was the scientific genius they called ‘Number Two’. She was so good she could have won the Nobel Prize for Science every year. Unfortunately, science was the only thing she was any good at. Some of the things she couldn’t do included: 1) thinking of a good code name for herself, 2) touching dogs without being attacked, 3) remembering