Mike and the Microscopic Aliens

By Bob Hastings and Victoria Castillo

Mike hates cars. His big brother was killed by one on the Big Road when Mike was only a wee boy. And now his mum won’t let him go to the park on his own.

Stuck at home, he’s fed-up with his cry-baby sister and desperate for adventure. But then Mike finds a mysterious egg in a toilet at school and his life chan

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scot Free Books
• Release date: May 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9788412185904

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Didi for reading and encouraging and setting me on my way.

Thanks, too to Kim and Sinclair at Indie Authors World for all their help.

And muchísimas gracias to Victoria Castillo for the wonderful illustrations.

Chapter 1

Mike S. Cooper

Apart from a few honourable exceptions most of the children in books written for children are nice little boys and girls. So goody-goody they don’t seem real, right?

There are, of course, some bad boys and girls skulking around in stories, but they tend to be mirror images of the goody-goodies: baddy-baddies who are bad all the time and all the way through. Except, of course, at the end of the book when they see the errors of their ways and suddenly become goody-goody and the best of pals with the heroes.

Where are these people supposed to come from? Because although I don’t know what the people are like where you come from, I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that they’re quite like the people where I come from. And the people where I come from aren’t all good or all bad, and the bad ones don’t become better just like that. In fact, they’re much more likely to get worse little by little.

Now, you’re not a goody-goody, are you? I don’t mean to say that you’re a rotten, little, evil, slimy, toady, snivelling, snot-faced worm because you’re not a baddy-baddy either, are you? No. You have your good side and your bad side, your well-behaved days and your not so well-behaved ones. Sometimes you feel so joyful you could run carefree over the grass until the sun goes down, and you want to make your Mum, your Dad and even your brother or sister happy. As long as it doesn’t involve too much hard work, that is. I mean you wouldn’t go so far as to offer to wash the dishes, but you might let your brother or your sister play with your console and only girn a wee bit.

And other times you get a queer kind of pleasure from infuriating your Mum or Dad or especially your brother or sister. You know it doesn’t do any good, and that you’ll only end up getting shouted at, or even worse, but you do it anyway. You know what I mean: you sulk or pout and refuse to eat what you normally like, or refuse to try what you’ve never tasted, and you ask how anyone could possibly like tomatoes, and say there is no way that you are going to taste that sauce because it’s full of little bits. You know that your mother hates cooking and that she spent hours getting her glasses all steamed up over bubbling pots to make you that special sauce, and then you watched her painstakingly taking out all the little bits. But you have eyes like microscopes and you can see millions of little bits, and as you stare at them they almost seem to be moving about like tiny insects and there is absolutely no way you are ever going to take a mouthful of that revolting sauce, which your father is busy guzzling down as if he had just spent a few weeks fasting on a rock in the middle of the ocean. And so you spend your dinnertime chewing bread and butter and moving the sauce around on your plate. You imagine the tiny bits are animals awash in a vast turbulent sea and you are the God creating all the waves.

Well, this story is about a wee boy who is probably quite like you are. Normal, with a good side and a bad side. However, it’s also a story with something impossible in it. Well, when I say impossible, I mean nearly impossible, something highly unlikely. Just as well really, for you surely don’t want a story so ordinary that it’s just like reading about your own life, do you? Now, although our hero may be quite like you, what happened to him will almost certainly never happen to you. Even in your wildest dreams. So that’s why it’s a good idea for you to read about it.

His name’s Mike, by the way, and he’s eight years old. He likes playing football and riding his bike, but more than anything, he loves reading. He enjoys playing with other boys and girls, but he likes his own company, too. He loves eating meat, but he doesn’t like tomatoes much and he hates anything that has got lumps or bits in it. Except haggis. He loves haggis. He would kill for haggis. Well, he wouldn’t kill a person or a polar bear for it, but he would certainly contemplate annihilating an ant, butchering a bee or even slaughtering a slater for it. Haggis, for those of you unlucky enough never to have been to Scotland, is the Scottish National dish. I won’t tell you what’s in it because then you would never try it, but I will tell you this. It’s magic.

Mike drinks a lot of water and he’s fond of milky tea but he never drinks fizzy drinks. OK, so he’s not exactly like you are ‘cause maybe you just love fizzy drinks, but you must admit he is quite like you in some ways, especially about the bits.

Mike does OK at school but he doesn’t like it much. He’s very imaginative but he gets bored very quickly. He’s hopeless at Maths. It takes him ages to learn things like multiplication tables. On the other hand, he loves drawing and nature and ecology. He reads a lot of books and he loves watching TV programmes about animals and the planet we live on. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you prefer watching motorbikes whizzing around racing tracks. It’s up to you if you do, but I’ll tell you what. I hope you don’t.

Mike is most certainly NOT what you would call a tidy boy. His bedroom is so untidy it makes his mother shake and shout and shiver. Mike, however, likes it that way. He thinks that it looks as if it’s undressed when it’s all tidy.

Oh, in case you’re wondering what Mike’s middle name is, I’m afraid I can’t tell you. It’s a really embarrassing name, you see, and he never wants anyone to know what it is. So you’re just going to have to guess what that letter S could stand for.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. Let’s get on with the story.

Chapter 2

Treasure Island

This story takes place in Scotland in the winter. In fact, it starts on the last day of the Christmas holidays, which is not - you may already have realised this - the happiest day of the year. Sometimes you get snow in Scotland at Christmas, but not this year, worst luck. This year it’s quite mild and it’s been raining a lot. It gets dark very early in Scotland in the winter. Some days it’s so cloudy and gloomy that it feels like it’s night time all day. It isn’t that gloomy today, though.

Take a look at Mike.

He’s sitting reading... oh no, now he’s lying on his back - oops, no sorry, I mean his tummy - on the bed and he’s got the book on the floor and he’s hanging head first off the bed. He’s reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson, which is an absolutely brilliant book.

Apart from all his fidgeting to get into a comfier position to read, it looks as if Mike is quiet and calm and nothing much is happening, right? Wrong! Because in his head all sorts of things are happening. He’s rowing boats past coral reefs... he’s fighting one-legged pirates... he’s hiding in barrels full of apples and wishing they were bananas... he’s wondering what’s so bad about having a black spot on the palm of your hand when he normally has them all over his hands and face and body. Except just after his bath, which, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn, he can’t stand.

He’s reached a really exciting bit in the story, so, very carefully, he folds over the corner of the page and closes the book. You might be wondering why he’s stopped reading it if it’s so exciting. Well, it’s because he wants to save it for later. If he reads it all now, it’ll all be gone. But if he waits, he can tease himself by imagining what is going to happen next. Also, he’s a bit fed up with staying inside.

He leaps from his bed and in one bounce he’s over at the window. The book slides off the mattress and falls on the floor. Some of the pages get bent, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Bent pages can’t spoil a good story.

Looking through the window, Mike can see that it’s a perfect day for playing in the park… almost. It’s only drizzling a wee bit and if you look carefully, you can see a hint of blue peeking out through the clouds. He can see the park. It’s not very far away at all, just the other side of the Big Road, which is at the foot of his building. There are always cars and buses and lorries roaring up and down the Big Road. Always. Even at night.

The park is a brilliant place. There’s one area where they’ve built big wooden ships with real nets and chains and gangplanks and even a crow’s nest. They’re not floating on water, they’re stuck in the sand, but they’re still great, and in the middle of them is an island with a fortress on it. Mike closes his eyes, so that he can imagine the park better, but you’d better not do that. Because unless you’re very special and you can read with your elbow or your nose, it’ll stop you from reading this book.

Mike can see himself riding up to the biggest ship and jumping off his bike and climbing up the rigging and feeling it move in the wind and clambering into the crow’s nest at the very top and looking all around him and seeing the pirates on the desert island in the middle of all the wooden ships, and he can feel the short wooden sword he made slapping against his leg and even though it’s made of wood, he sees it glinting in the sun, and he can even hear the pirates shouting at him. And then all of a sudden, in a moment of excitement, he shouts out one word at the top of his voice.

Chapter 3

Lunchtime

M UM!

Mike always shouts to his mother rather than going to find her and then talking quietly and politely to her. It really irritates her. She says that it’s not polite and that she isn’t a dog. Mike sometimes thinks it’s a pity that she isn’t a dog, because if she were, she’d be able to hear him no problem at all because dogs have got a terrific sense of hearing.

There’s no answer, so Mike runs to the door and opens it, and then he fills his lungs with air again. He has just put his lips together to yell out the M of MUM, when he hears his mother shouting from the kitchen,

MIKE!

That’s one reason why Mike shouts to his mother. Because she shouts to him and he doesn’t mind it at all.

MIKE! TIME TO EAT!

Mike goes through to the kitchen. His mum is busy mashing the tatties. The table is set. It’s a small round table in the corner of the kitchen. Mike likes eating there because it’s warm and you can smell the food that’s been cooking. Sometimes, they eat at the big table in the living room - Mum and Dad call it the Dining area