A Sleepless Night

2005-07-11T00:43:00.000+01:00

Three nights later, Maximillian could not sleep. He wasn't thirsty, but he felt like he should get up and do something, so he went downstairs to pour himself a glass of water. He never ventured as far as the kitchen, though. He only ventured as far as the front room. For that is where he saw the light.

It was an odd sort of light, coming through the curtains. It wasn't like a torch or street light; the kind of light that comes from a single point. It seemed to be coming from all around, as if it were daylight outside.

Maximillian crept towards the window on tip-toes and carefully found the gap in the curtains. Then, teasing them apart and peering through, he saw the source of the light. Much to his surprise, it was coming from within the fence that George had built!

Suddenly, as soon as he had seen it, the light disappeared. It faded away quite quickly; it wasn't instantaneous like someone turning off the switch. It was more like somebody closing a door on it.

Maximillian stood at the window, transfixed for a few moments before starting to turn away. Yet, just as he was about to leave, he saw a hand appear at the top of a fence, closely followed by a foot. Slowly but surely, a little old white-haired man in a dinner suit clambered over the top of fence. He teetered for a few moments on the brink, before tumbling down head first into Maximillian's front garden.

The strange man stood up and brushed himself down. Then, remembering himself, he peered up and down the street as if to check that the coast was clear. It was, so for a few moments he was about to observe the fence over which he had climbed, before turning his attention to the house. It was then that he suddenly stiffened up, staring straight at the window to the front room.

Before Maximillian could collect his thoughts, the little old man was racing full pelt towards the front door. Only later, when finally he did collect his thoughts, did Maximillian realise that at this moment in time he didn't have any thoughts. He could tell people what he did next, but ask him why he did it and he would not know the answer.

He would tell himself that he had always been on the opinion that little old white-haired men could cause no harm, and that this was the reason behind his subsequent actions. Yet, deep inside, he knew that he had been under some kind of mind control.

And so he opened the front door...

"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, young man!" bellowed the man at an entirely inappropriate volume, offering his hand for Maximillian to shake. "My name is Claudius Cummerbund!" he said, bowing and pulling his hand away before Maximillian had had a chance to shake it. "And who might you be?!"

"Oh. My name is Maximillian, Mr Cummerbund, sir. Maximillian Motorhome," replied Maximillian, for he was always very polite to his elders.

"Max, eh?" A fine name for a man of fine stock, I'll say!"

"If you please, Mr Cummerbund, sir, everyone calls me Maximillian."

"Really?! I've never met a boy who didn't like to shorten his name before! How peculiar! Very well, Maximillian it is! And you must call me Claude!"

Claude, which Maximillian thought a rather silly name, marched past the boy into the hallway, slamming the front door as he went.

"I'm terribly sorry, Mr - erm, Claude - but my uncle and my aunt and my cousins are sleeping just upstairs, and I shoudl so hate to wake them."

"Nonsense!" shouted Claude, who continued on through the front room and into the kitchen, slamming doors and stamping his feet as he went. "I shouldn't worry, Maximillian! They won't wake with me around!"

"I d-don't understand, Claude, sir."

"No, neither do I!" replied Claude delightedly, bringing his fist down upon the kitchen table. "My mother always said that it was some kind of magic! A spell that means I cannot disturb someone if they do not already know I am there! Poppycock!" he shouted, barely noticing the broken vase of flowers that he had just knocked to the floor. "I rather think that it is exclusively down to my inate ability to remain as quiet as a church mouse!"

Magic? thought Maximillian. But surely there's no such thing as magic, except in stories of course. Still, he thought, as Claude started opening and slamming cupboard doors, pulling stacks of tin cans onto the floor. No one seems to have woken up yet. Maybe there's something in it after all.

"Extraordinary!" exclaimed the diminutive pensioner, and rubbed two cans together in such a fashion that Maximillian couldn't decide whether he was trying to open them or start a fire. "Quite extraordinary! So, young Maximillian, what sort of room do you call this?!"

"Erm, this is the kitchen, sir." A momentary silence passed, and all of a sudden a thought struck him. "Erm, Claude, where do you come from, if you don't mind me asking?"

"No, I don't mind at all!" replied Claude jovially, before treading on a rogue tin can and falling onto his back. "Ask away!" he added as he struggled back onto his feet.

"W-where do you come from?" asked Maximillian again after a moment's hesitation.

"Ah! Start me off with an easy one, eh?! The answer to that, dear boy, is Botox-9! Next question! And make it a hard one!"

"What is Botox-9?"

"That's more like it! Botox-9 is what we Guisors like to call a planet! Now, a planet is basically a huge roughly-spherical lump of rock that -"

"A planet? You mean like the Earth?"

"That's right! Well done! It's a lot like Earth, actually! Only slightly smaller! And with less television channels!"

"You mean, you're an alien?"

"My word! I had no idea you Earthmen knew so much about us! If I had, I would have made contact much sooner!"

"But... you're a person. You don't look like an alien. Aliens are big and green and ugly."

"Oh! You mean like this?!" Claude turned over the lapel of his jacket, and pulled out the end of a small rubber tube. He blew into it, in short sharp bursts, taking huge breaths between. He soon began to turn very red in the face. What on Earth was he doing? Maximillian worried that he might do himself a mischief, especially when he started to turn green.

But, then Maximillian noticed something else. Claude's face was not only turning green; it was getting bigger! Before long, his hands had ballooned, followed by his feet, his belly and the rest of his body too. In place of Claudius Cummerbund, within thirty seconds, an eight-foot tall green monster with big lips and bad teeth stood towering in a dinner suit over Maximillian.

"WELL, IS THIS WHAT YOU HAD IN MIND?!" boomed the Claudemonster, still holding onto the end of the tube.

"Erm, yes, sort of," replied Maximillian meekly.

"THOUGHT SO!" grinned Claude. The green giant let go of the blow-tube and began to return to normal. It sounded very much like a balloon deflating, only ten times louder.

"I say! I couldn't trouble you for a glass of water, could I?! That always makes me ever so thirsty!"

"Oh, erm, there's some glasses over there." Maximillian pointed to the sink.

"Ah! I see it!" Claude marched over and pulled out the bottom glass from a precariously-stacked drying rack. A whole dinner set of crockery and glassware clattered, scattered and shattered onto the floor.

Maximillian saw the whole thing in slow motion. He winced.

"Oh dear! Awfully sorry about that!" said Claude, treading all over the broken pieces and bending down to have a better look. "Oh well! Can't be helped!" He pointed to his glass. "How do I, er?!"

"Fill the glass? Here, let me help you." Maximillian rushed over, treading around the broken pot and glass as best he could, and turned the tap on for Claude.

"Ah!" He filled his glass, and pour its contents straight down his neck. "Well, I must be getting along now! Oh, thank you for building that fence, by the way!" He left the tap running and started off towards the front door, all the while trying to shake off a broom that had somehow caught itself on the hem of his trousers.

Maximillian ran after him. "I-I don't understand. What do you mean?"

"Why, with that fence there, I've been able to fixed my ship undisturbed of course!" he barked as he reached the front door.

"Your ship?"

"Yes! Would you like to see it working?!"

"Erm, okay." Maximillian certainly wanted to find out what the old man was talking about, and thought this might help explain it.

"Excellent!" boomed Claude, opening the door to allow Maximillian through first, and then slamming it behind them both. He walked straight over the flower beds to the fence, and then shouted back to Maximillian, who was still lagging slightly behind him in a state of confusion. "Give me a leg-up, will you?! And then I'll pull you up!"

And so that is what they did. The fell over a few times first, and at one point Maximillian had to run back inside to fetch the first aid kit, but in the end they got there, and rested side by side on top of the fence.

"There she is!" beamed Claude proudly. "Millie! My spaceship! My little baby!"

They were looking at the elephant. The same elephant that had apparently died falling from the sky and killing Maximillian's parents. Only it wasn't dead. Maximillian was stunned.

"Claude," he said. "That's a spaceship?"

"Oh yes! Isn't she beautiful!"

"Are all elephants spaceships?"

"Oh no! Just this one! It doesn't really look like that! It's in disguise!"

"Disguise?"

"Yes! A little invention all of my own! You see, it occured to me that if I disguised it as one of your Earth-creatures, then no one would think it unusual if they saw it flying around in the sky!"

"Claude?"

"Yes, Maximillian?"

"Elephants can't fly."

"Really?"

Maxmillian nodded.

"Even better! If anyone tried to find it, they wouldn't know where to look!"

"Claude?" asked Maximillian again, looking at the empty ground on which Millie stood.

"Yes?!"

"What happened to my parents?"

"Your parents?! Oh! Were they the people who I, erm...?!" Claude looked lost in solemn thought for a moment. "Ah! They must have disintegrated on impact!" he said cheerfully. He pointed at the ground. "Look! The flowers are wonderful! Your parents did that!"

He was right. On the very spot where Maximillian's parents had perished, dozens of flowers were blooming large and bright. Except the ones now being eaten by Millie.

"Oh don't worry about that! She's just refuelling! When she's done, would like a ride?!"

A Nasty Fall

2005-07-10T23:55:00.000+01:00

Maximillian Motorhome had never seen a storm so severe as this before. Usually he would joyously join his parents in the front garden, and dance with them in the rain, but these raindrops looked like they would hurt. Especially the raindrops that weren't raindrops. He'd heard of raining cats and dogs before, but when an elephant landed with a nauseating crunch, right on top of his parents, he suspected that his life was about to change forever.

Now, I suspect that you may have read dozens of stories where a boy is orphaned in a similarly gruesome fashion. No doubt, in most of them, the young orphan's substantial inheritance is claimed by two very hairy and ugly aunts.

These aunts usually keep the boy locked in a small cupboard, feeding him once a day with bread and water. They would probably even have the elephant preserved and put it in their garden as a monument to they wealth they now possess.

Perhaps that would make for a far more exciting story than the tale that I about to tell. But it would be quite dishonest of me to change it in such a way, for that is not what happened next.

Maximillian was indeed taken in by his aunt and uncle, but they did not try to rob of his inheritance, of which there was very little anyway. They did not make him live in a small cupboard either. In fact, they decided it was best to move into his house and let him sleep in the largest room, for his life had already been disturbed enough.

Neither his aunt nor his uncle were peculiarly hairy, and they were quite pleasant to look upon. Moreover, they had three very well-behaved and friendly children with whom Maximillian could play. Up until then, he had been an only child, and the presence of his cousins was very good for him.

So, Maximillian's life could have quickly begun to return to some form of normality. Except for one thing; a very strange thing indeed. The elephant that killed his parents would not move from the front garden.

It was most certainly dead, so it had little choice in the matter, yet nothing anybody did could shift it. It quite simply refused to move. They tried everything: rolling it, dragging it, even hiring a crane to lift it. Then they hired a bigger crane, and then one even bigger than that.

The whole street held a fayre to raise money to hire the largest crane in the country, but when that arrived it could not lift the elephant even an inch from the ground. It was as if the dead animal was somehow rooted to the earth.

Word soon spread about this remarkable problem and within weeks the spectacle had become a great attraction. People who called themselves experts came from around the globe to try out their unorthodox solutions. One by one, they tried to remove the offending animal, and one by one they failed.

A man from Australia attempted to use nothing but the power of his mind to clear Maximillian's front garden. There was a scientist from Texas who tried dissolving the elephant in a very strong acid. The French national tug-of-war team crossed the English Channel, but they too could not succeed where others had failed.

It wasn't long before Maximillian and his family became very bored of the constant visits by strangers and men from the press. Maximillian's uncle, whose name was George, decided simply to hide the elephant from view. So, he spent one entire weekend building a seven-foot fance around the offending corpse.

Then, he allowed Maximillian and his cousins to paint the fence however they wished. Since they lived such a long way from the sea, they decided to paint a picture of the seaside upon it, with sand and water and buckets and spades and a big yellow sun in a cloudless sky.

The elephant, however, would not be forgotten for long.

The Many Misadventures Of Maximillian Motorhome

A Sleepless Night

A Nasty Fall